here's a video of our car-loving boy engaging in one of his favorite past times -- playing with a car.
Saturday, March 31, 2012
Thursday, March 29, 2012
bluebonnets
noah and i took advantage of some beautiful weather to venture out and take some pictures in the bluebonnets. gotta love spring in texas! :D
we found a ladybug too :)
Sunday, March 25, 2012
Saturday, March 24, 2012
spring is here
our big boy is now 13 months old and is more grown up by the day. he will now take several steps at a time -- up to 5 or 6 -- but is still convinced crawling is faster than walking. he has practically mastered the use of a fork and can now hold and drink from a cup with a straw with no assistance, although he needs frequent reminders to either take a drink or put it down and not try to invert it to make a mess. at our pediatrician's recommendation we made the transition from bottles to cups shortly after his 1 year appointment and we all struggled for a few days with the new routine. despite going "cold turkey" noah did pretty well not having bottles, with only the first few days being particularly difficult since he wasn't getting as many liquid calories as he was accustomed to getting. this was also exacerbated by the fact that he had whatever cold i had fought with during the week of his birthday, so not only was he changing routines, he was dealing with low-grade fevers and a runny nose :(
now that it's been a month, he's doing great on his new schedule and it's *very* nice for us to only have to worry about 4 meal/snack times a day. this has allowed us to be much more mobile during the day, since he can eat pretty much whatever/wherever we are eating and needs to eat slightly less frequently.
in other updates, he *loves* to play outside and begs us nearly constantly to take him "out" either to play or for walks. we try to oblige as much as possible, but the last few weeks have been fairly rainy, so it's been a little difficult. he also loves pushing any type of car/truck/toy-with-wheels and makes car noises while scooting around on the floor. he loves reading books, especially at bedtime, and is eager to point things out in the story and turn the pages for you. he loves scribbling on paper or on his magna doodle, although i think he loves the extra magnets that came with it even more. he still loves bathtime, and he pretty much expects the ipod to be playing during his meal times, or at least during the meal prep. he has also begun singing along with the songs, which is especially fun to watch and hear. i first noticed this when colbie calliet's song "brighter than the sun" came on which has several verses where she says things like, "I, I, I wasn't expecting..." and as soon as the song's first notes played noah began singing "i, i, i, i, i...." it was adorable :)
he still loves to play with lexi and has finally started to enjoy car rides...yay! we used to dread them because he would inevitably cry and scream for at least part of the ride, but now he sings, talks and plays with his stuffed monkey (a favorite toy) or reads a book unless he is completely exhausted or really hungry -- two things we attempt to head off before getting into the car anyway.
noah can say a few words now, but his favorite is still "cup." he will readily point out any coffee cup, glass, etc. and tell you that it is a cup. he also likes to say "that" and something that sounds like "see it." in addition to his growing vocabulary, he loves to sing and giggle and has recently discovered that he likes being upside down. yup, upside down. he loves for us to pick him up and turn him upside down while he giggles hysterically. it's actually pretty darn cute :)
and lastly, this month i realized that i am actually the mother of a "boy" and not a "baby." not only has my son gathered an interest in cars, trucks, sticks, dirt and other "boy" things, but i was putting away a birthday gift that i received and had transported home in it's gift bag. when i went to take the gift out i also found a large rock in the bag that i had seen him playing with outside earlier in the day. seriously? how did that rock even get inside? at least i can give him credit for "picking things up" when he's done playing with them :)
Friday, March 23, 2012
a new vision
no glasses in these pictures!
after talking about it for years, we finally broke down and set aside money in a flex spending account to get matt's eyes surgically corrected. most of you probably know my husband has always worn glasses, but what you didn't know is that his vision was actually pretty bad. about a year ago we had planned to do the surgery...sometime around the end of february. in fact, matt went to an appointment the day before i went into labor. we stalled on talk of eye surgery for a while after that ;)
but now it's been a year and we planned for it and finally made the big leap. it all went all right in the end, but as per our usual plans, nothing went quite as expected. matt's surgery was on january 27th. we had done all the necessary pre-op visits and medications and such. i went with him for the actual procedure since he wasn't allowed to drive himself home and watched as they prepped him and he waited for his surgery. as a guest, i was able to view the operation from outside the room on a small tv screen that showed the surgery in real-time. it was crazy to watch, but interesting to this ER nurse, until i realized that they had done one eye and had stopped working. then the doctor walked around to the other side of the bed, to talk to matt. then he sat up. my medical intuition and experience made me fear the worst for my husband, who was now sitting with one eye impaired from previous vision problems and the second fresh from surgery. after what seemed like much too long, i was asked to come into a room to sit with matt and the doctor to discuss "possible options." oh Lord, that is *not* what you want to hear when your spouse is having eye surgery (or any surgery, for that matter)!
it turns out that matt has a "weak epithelium" (outer layer) on his eyes that meant that the traditional lasik procedure ended up damaging it so badly they had to remove a portion of it. it sounds much worse than it really is, because your eye actually regenerates this tissue and it has no adverse effects on the outcome of the procedure -- meaning, they still fixed his vision in that eye. that's the good news. the bad news was that it meant that instead of healing overnight, like you would if your epithelium was intact, you heal over the course of a week and then some. eek! this meant two things: 1) matt was probably not going back to work the next day, as originally planned, and 2) if we wanted to operate on the other eye we would have to decide if we wanted to do it "now" or "in about a week or two."
after discussing the options and weighing the possibility of matt being able to return to work sooner with just one good eye vs. having to schedule another surgery date and recovery time, we finally decided to "get it over with" and let matt take some extra days off work, get both eyes done and put the whole thing behind us. i think we figured that one week of misery with blurry vision was better than dragging the whole thing out over a month. after a quick phone call to update his work, matt was back in surgery to have a different procedure done on his left eye. instead of lasik they did a procedure called PRK, which has the same result but essentially removes the entire epithelial layer (hence the longer recovery time). this procedure was much faster and seemed to be a much better fit for matt's eye.
after the surgery we headed home where i dropped off a sleepy husband before dashing back out to pick up new prescriptions (because of the different procedure) and our son (thanks, mom!). matt slept and woke up for rounds of eye drops and medications for about 2 days before starting to see some progress (literally! ha!). it took about a week for his vision to start getting much better, and we had follow up appointments nearly every other day for that first 7 days. by the time 5 days had passed matt was able to see well enough to go to work and drive. after that, his vision continued to improve and they staggered his follow up appointments to a week apart, then a few weeks apart, and now a month apart. he has been weaned off most of his eye drops and continues to enjoy his glasses-free lifestyle. despite the worry and the hassle we endured (and didn't expect), i think we both feel that it was a completely worth-while investment.
now next year we just have to schedule his wisdom tooth extraction....
matt's favorite part of the process: wearing the protective goggles
pretending to ski
and pretending to sky-dive
at one of many follow up appointments
working on the computer
Monday, March 19, 2012
birthday #27
a few pics from the celebrations at my parents' house:
the kiddos play in the back yard
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