we don’t “celebrate” halloween in this house yet, but the boys love acting out being firemen. so i figured i could make them some shirts to enhance that play time. they love the shirts so much - jasper especially- that he has asked if they could wear them again today.
the outfit layout:
i know it’s been a long hiatus, but i thought i’d jump in with highlights from our awesome trip to california. thanks, jon and kate for getting us out there!
playing in Donner Lake in Truckee, California
rehearsal ready and color-coordinating with the bride and groom
the view from Glacier Way
the funniest wedding reading i’ve ever heard by nick i. what a trip!
kate and jon with all the kiddos before they melted down. kate looked gorgeous and radiant, and jon was as handsome as could be. 
benjamin really liked grandma’s flowers. how they survived the night after he was playing with them is beyond me. both boys liked cutting a rug, and had fun with mommy and auntie lou.
look, benjamin is still trying to woo kate. do you think it’s working? jon had high praise for his ring-bearing nephews, even if they didn’t follow their designed route for the ceremony.
the view from the top. literally. what a sight from the ritz carlton at the top of the northstar gondola. so glad jon suggested we take the trip. it was great!
a day trip after the wedding (3 hours round trip) got us to emerald bay in lake tahoe. it is picturesque and popular. benjamin missed the entire trip. he was asleep about 5 minutes into the drive and woke up as we were coming back into truckee (although it was a great nap for him!). jasper was awake for portions, and got to throw rocks into the lake in tahoe city. rubicon bay has amazing, unreal really, striations of blue in the water.
after so many hours in the car, we needed to stretch our legs and enjoyed a quick hike to the donner lake overlook at glacier way (the wedding site).
jasper loved looking at all the tractor trailers on I-80 below and talking about how small they looked even though he knows they are soooo big.
as the early evening shadows grew long, we headed back to our home away from home in tahoe donner for dinner with the extended family. jasper was tired by this point and wiped out royally at one point – but still finished the hike. what a strong trooper. we’ve found if we play i-spy it really helps keep him moving. or we count to see how long it takes for him to run and catch up to us.
but a bath makes all things new, and makes the boys ready for books with auntie lou.
there were many other adventures the boys had on the trip after drew and i escaped for two days to wine country. they went back to donner lake to swim, visited with the construction workers multiple times (and brought them leftover wedding cake), went shopping in downtown truckee for treasures and generally had a blast with grandpa and grandma. it was a treat for us too! we didn’t worry about them a bit.
not only that, but papa and nana came for the wedding and were a huge help during the rehearsal dinner and the reception. i think the reception was the most relaxed i was all weekend, because literally nana and papa just corralled the boys and walked with them around the country club when they were getting antsy. then they took them home and put them down for the night so drew and i could stay through the crazy dancing that topped off the official evening. it was great to have both sets of grandparents there. what fun!
really and truly … who could sleep? i’m interested in a show of hands. this is just ridiculous. clearly my boys who are in their beds now calling out to each other’s stuffed animals would not be still enough to attempt such a task, and WOW can i just say i would have to literally place them in the hands of my savior to let them do this at a more mature age.
As of yesterday. Jasper’s wound was looking really good. You could barely see the points of entry for the stitches, and the actual scab was coming off on its own.
That was until we got home from the post office.
I was carrying in Benjamin and Jasper was in front of us carrying his Lightning McQueen hat. He turned the corner out of the laundry room, and I turned around to close the door to the garage. In an instant things changed. When I turned back from closing the door, there was Jasper standing in front of me with blood pouring out of his wound and out of his nose. It was in his mouth and all over his hand which was also in his mouth – his gaping wide mouth from screaming.
I couldn’t believe it. I didn’t know what happened or really what to do. I put down Benjamin and picked up Jasper and made a bee-line for the kitchen sink. Jasper would not stop crying and would not tell me what happened. Neither thing was helpful. He recoiled when I put a wet paper towel on the wound, but I could not get the bleeding to stop. I tried having him lie down on the floor to let gravity help me, but the wound on the bridge of his nose just poured blood into his eye. Goodness!
So I had to get tough. I put more pressure on his wound and told him he HAD to stop crying. Once I started talking like that, he realized I was serious and fell in line. He explained that he hit himself in the nose with his hat (you know how kids hold the back of the hat – the loop that loosens - and kind of fling it around? I can only guess he was doing that and really clocked himself in the nose. How does that happen? How does it happen to my kid who just had stitches???) The fact that his wound was pouring out blood with greater force than when it was actually injured initially was wild and totally shocking. I guess the nose has more blood vessels that the bridge of your nose, and when they rupture, the blood looks for the easiest way out. (Spoken like a true layman.)
As far as I can tell – the stitches stayed in, and things don’t look too bad up there. Now, of course you can see the points of entry from the stitches again and the scabbing is fresh. And I think the blood vessels inside are more damaged from this latest injury … so we could see more colors of the rainbow. But other than that, he seems back to normal.
We’ll see what this afternoon holds.
Summer in Texas is hot, and I’ve been copping out and staying inside more than in past years.
In light of that, I’m trying to come up with ways to entertain the boys – or let them entertain themselves – with a little more creativity. So, we’ve been doing art more and I made a “fort” out of the dining room table. I bought two queen size sheets and was going to sew them together to totally cover the table. Turns out, Jasper didn’t want the ends closed – so one sheet will do just perfectly.
In addition to that, I had to line up the chairs along the sides of the room, and Jasper thinks they make perfect trains on the left side and the right side. We ride them all the time to Costco, HEB and Target. (Can you tell where we go the most frequently?) It took one day to figure out how high they could rise up and how they had to be careful about hitting their heads. Now, they like to be in there a good amount of time. They like it when daddy comes in to play when he gets home from work, too. :)
The only progress we’ve made on the potty is that Jasper will sometimes be willing to sit there to go #2. He does not go on his own and will not stop what he’s doing to tell us if he has to pee (even when he’s wearing cloth training pants). He’ll only go pee when he has nothing on bottom. But, he’s willing to sit there. It helps that we have this h-u-g-e toy catalog that neither he nor Benjamin tire of looking at.
At 4:25am on Thursday morning, Drew and I awoke to the cries of someone in pain – Jasper specifically. We bolted out of bed, and seeing as I sleep on the side closer to the door, I made it to Jasper’s bedside first. He was kneeling in his bed, with his knees nearly on the pillow. I could see something was on his face, so I took him out of the room and, holding him with his head on my shoulder, asked Drew to tell me if he had a bloody nose. Drew turned on some light and said “oh no, he has a shiner.”
Right between his eyes, on the bridge of his nose, he had a cut. We do not know what happened. We can only speculate, but here is my theory: He rose up in his sleep either to a sitting or standing position (as we have witnessed him to do) and moved some amount. Then when he went to lay back down he smacked his head on the headboard.
Thankfully the cut did not bleed much at all. We put pressure on it with a cold pack, and Drew sat with him a while … seeing as how I actually got whoozy from the whole episode and had to pass him off before I passed out. In a relatively short amount of time he calmed down and was sleepy enough to go back to sleep. Seeing as how his wound was not bleeding, we put him down back in bed. I thankfully fell back asleep. Drew worried that he had suffered a concussion and lay awake some with regret about removing Jasper from our observation.
In the morning Jasper slept in until 7:22 and came running out to the kitchen alert, refreshed and nary even giving me cause to think he’d been awake overnight, let alone injured. After breakfast I cleaned his wound to examine the dimensions and sent Drew a photo: 
We decided to prevent as much scarring as possible, we’d take him to Dell Children’s Hospital for stitches. Thankfully our neighbor Amanda was available to come stay with Benjamin, and truth be told the whole trip to Dell was as good as could be. They are totally professional & efficient at Dell and supremely sensitive to caring for kids.
We did not have to wait terribly long. Dr. Mouw talked to us about our options, and we opted for calming medicine administered via nasal spray and then restraint while he stitched Jasper (as opposed to putting him under). They took good care of Jasper, and while I still do not understand why they did not have him close his eyes for the stitches, Dr. Mouw was able to get them in and get Jasper all taken care of. The stitching took maybe 6-7min. Jasper started to get upset almost right away when he had to be restrained (by the nurse and me) and when Dr. Mouw needed to tilt his head back. We could keep him pretty still … until he started kicking his legs (his only loose appendage). Drew was holding my iPhone above him for him to watch Cars as a distraction. But that was pointless. Once everything started, he was too distracted with not liking things to even notice the movie. So, live and learn. Next time he needs stitches on his face, just blindfold him.
Photos from the time at Dell
in the waiting room:
with numbing gell on his wound:
looking at Mr. Matt’s glitter wand while the numbing gell took effect. Mr. Matt explained all about the procedure, showed him the tools what would be used, explained what his job was going to be (to hold his head still), and assessed Jasper’s mental stated to let us and the doctor know how he’d do for the stitches.
after the stitches, ready to hit the truck aisle at Target for being a brave boy:
after his afternoon nap, for which he slept soundly:
Friday afternoon, bright eyed: 
and kinda scary-looking:
Saturday on our hike (sunglasses are the one thing he can’t wear right now. they hurt his wound.)
Sunday night, the rainbow of colors is setting in:
I told Drew on Sunday that each time I looked at Jasper on Saturday I had a hard time not thinking of him as Herman Munster’s son.
Not once since the event has Jasper complained about his wound. He wasn’t himself the following morning (Friday) when he stayed home with a babysitter, but that seemed to clear up after his nap. Since then he’s really been just himself – a really great kid!
Last Tuesday night/Wednesday morning, thunder boomed overnight and woke Drew and me up with the loudest and longest clatter, rattle and shake that I’ve ever remembered hearing in my more than 30 years. We were startled awake and shaken alert by the thought that the boys would start screaming any minute. But … they didn’t. They slept through it all!
There was no lightening or thunder to speak of once the sun came up, and as it was clear that the rain was just going to fall lightly throughout the morning, we headed out for some pre-lunch fun. The boys donned their boots and rain jackets and took their monster trucks out for some muddin’ action.
Jasper was methodical in driving his trucks through the puddle over and over. Benjamin wandered around trying to find what interested him. Eventually he found the plopping rocks into the puddle and making a splash was cool, so then he was on a hunt for rocks. Jasper later figured out it would be great fun to splash his “stroller” in the puddle and repeatedly ran it up and down the driveway to make the best splash. All in all, just about every outdoor toy got used and muddied in the process. After about an hour or so, both boys were quite wet and dirty, but boy did they have fun!
Benj trying out boats (the puddle wasn’t quite deep enough): 
Benj is moving on to find something else to do.
Benj now discovering the presence of rocks:
Out come the jeep and the “stroller.”
I fought the jeep, and the jeep won.
We hear sirens! Is the fire truck going to come down our street? (nope)
All done! Time for a bath!
