In the Pile

Not sure what he thought of the whole thing, he had to swim off the pile!!

Big leaf pile

Getting ready for the pile!!

Late again!

Friday came and went again. Too much stuff going on and too much to get done. Last weekend we spent Saturday cleaning the yard up, raking leaves etc. Brayden loves to be outdoors and it was a lovely day to spend out there too, a bit nippy maybe, but mostly comfortable. Well for November in Wyoming anyway. This last week as been busy too. Wednesday got a bit too exciting for mommy, Brayden wasn't feeling real good. I had noticed he was a bit warm on Tuesday just sometimes I would notice his head felt warm, then wednesday a bit more often I noticed. He wasn't acting right either, but I wasn't just sure what was up. We were going to go to town early to install a cabinet and then have supper and go to church, I went up to see if he was up from his nap and found him awake in his crib just lying there with his head on his arms and his butt in the air. He looked up at me and didn't even wiggle. Normally he jumps right up and wants out right a way, but not today. I reached down and picked him up and he was HOT. Took the temp and it was 104, scared me to death!! The doctor said to come right in there was time to see us, of course its a 45 min drive to Lander to see the dr. We got there and he checked him over, still can't see in that left ear. Everything else seemed ok, strep test was neg, blood test showed elevated levels for a bacteria infection. The dr guessed it must be that left ear and it must have an infection. We got our prescription and instructions and headed for Riverton and the pharmacy. Brayden and I got home about 7 or so, had a bite to eat and then took all his clothes off, he was soo hot. He was drinking some, but not alot, so that was something I had to work on a bit. We just sat and rocked mostly. Finally about 9 or so the fever just wasn't budging, so I ran a tepid bath and put him in to see if we could get it down. Found out that is how we could get him to drink water, he loves to drink his bath water!! :-) As long as there hasn't been soap in it yet, I figure its safe enough. His fever finally came down a bit and I got him down to sleep. He got about 2 hrs and was back up again with a hot fever. Mommy got a little sleep after the midnight bath and Brayden did too. Thurs was a bit better, but he still wasn't real good. Finally today we have gotten ahead of it and he isn't playing or tugging on his ear all day. We have a couple of other things to try on the wax in that ear after we get a few more days of antibiotic in him. Maybe we will get it cleaned out better so it can drain too. This week we have had a clinging whining boy for the most part. Tonight he was near normal and was playing independently again. MUst let this do for now and get some sleep, got to keep up ya know.

Just riding by!

This birthday toy has been a lot of fun and good while mommy is cooking. It helps keep him occupied so he doesn't want held all the time!

Bye Bye, time to go

He has the wave down, but the word starts with a "d" not a "b".

Anybody remember this little guy?? Its amazing the changes in him over the time we have been home. Just thought I would put this on here so others would see the changes too. Wednesday November 1st was the appointment with the cardiologist. The doctors come up from Denver Childrens once every three months, so this was our visit. The dr said he has a very boring heart. He listened to it rather extensively I thought, but that means he heard all there was to hear. That was excellent news. Can't complain about that at all. Of course getting the EKG was interesting. Brayden apparently remembered the thing about nurses because he gave this one fits. She wasn't even armed with a needle, and he still gave fits. She had to put 10 sticky tabs on his body, one on each ankle, four on the chest, two on the collar bones, one on each side, then attach the little wires with clips to each tab. He screamed and fought that with everything he had. She got kicked so many times I am sure she lost count. AFter she had him all hooked up she stepped back and I could get his entire attention on me. He quieted down pretty good and she said the third EKG was the best reading one. That would be once the screaming stopped. Taking the tabs off then was a whole new screaming situation. Anyone would have thought it hurt really really bad the way he was reacting. When we were finished with that dr I stepped next door to our regular dr to have his ears checked again. We are still having the wax battle. Dr Barnes cleaned out his left ear with a tool and said that should help, and the right ear is looking lots better. He is even talking a bit better all the time, so must be hearing better too. Dr Barnes also explained the EKG a bit to me, all looked normal and he said it was nice to wipe his Russian medical records completely clean with no evidence of truth in them. That means that should we need to change insurance companies at any point, there wouldn't be anything there to keep another company from insuring him. Good to know why we are jumping through all these hoops and dr visits that we really hadn't intended to do. Feels a little like having a dr that watches out for your interests. When we finished with all of that we went to see mommy's dr, just to introduce them, was fun to just stop in and say hello. Even the ladies from the accounting office came out to say hello. They gave Brayden his first sucker. I am not a fan of suckers and still NOT, after I got him buckled in I exchanged his sucker for a cheese stick. He loves string cheese. A pretty good trade I would say!! All in all a good week. AFter the dr visits though he has gotten pretty clingy, hope that gets better in a few days. We hope to rake some leaves tomorrow if the weather will cooperate. Would be so nice to have a good day outside, like last weekend.

Hands Too!!

First Mud puddle

And did he enjoy it!! He was wet all the way down!!

Halloween

Today is Halloween and we have a little towel ghost running around our house. We decided not to dress him up for trick or treating because he can't talk yet, and really doesn't need the candy!! Today I am doing laundry and the towel just became so much fun! This last weekend we made the trip to Grandpa and Granny's house. It was a whole new adventure for him but his favorite was the dryer. I wish I could send a video to everyone, he just waved goodbye and climbed right in, closed the door completely behind him, then opened it back up and stuck his head out and waved again. Good thing the camera was ready or it would all be a memory now. We have alittle video of it, its really quite good. He played with the dryer lots, the rest of the time the three wheeler Grandpa bought him was most fun. Today we are still on daylight savings time, he gets up at 6:30 or so and wants lunch at 11:30 and nap immediately following, then bedtime is 8 or so. He is a bit behind, wonder if he will catch up or if we will just be on this schedule for a while. Will just have to wait and see, for now, Mom needs a nap too.

Time gets away!!

To everyone watching this page...we took the weekend off and simply didn't get our blogging done. I will try to post some pics today, if they work out. If not, it will be in the next day or so. We took our first trip to Grandpa and Granny Eisele's house. Brayden made the car trip fine and spent two nights in a portable crib just fine too. He really had a wonderful time exploring all the new territory. A whole new world up here. He has been really busy this weekend running all over outside and helping daddy and Grandpa with the new porch. He has held the back end of the drill to help push the screws in. Its really been fun to watch for us too. We played some domino games last night too, he had to learn to sit on mommy's lap without taking the dominoes off the table. Was a bit hard on him too!! Meal time has been a bit hard as he has just been toooo tired to eat, sooo much to do and not enough time to eat and sleep and do it all too. Lunch today he ate just a little bit of potatoes and some veggies a bite or two of meat and then laid his head down and sang to himself for a bit. Finally Granny took pity on him and took him to the rocking chair. It wasn't long and he was fast asleep. Its hard for him to sleep for his full two hours though since there is so much to do and he really doesn't want to miss a moment. We will head home after supper and then its back to normal ground again. Its been beautiful weather up here, hope it is at home too.

Look at these sunglasses

New vacuum cleaner, it makes noise like a real one. Now maybe he will vacuum with his instead of with mommy's!

Learning the party favors

The birthday party went off with all the trimmings thanks to all the family!! Brayden had a wonderful time opening all his gifts and is now even more spoiled than before! He loves to tear the paper off, sometimes just in little pieces but as long as it all comes off he is happy. The toys now days are very well packaged and don't come out of the boxes very well, so there were times when he wasn't a very patient little boy, but all in all he was pretty good. He even ate his supper pretty good and had a couple bites of cake but wasn't real impressed with it. I made an icecream cake using mint icecream, maybe that is what threw him off. And maybe he was just full too, but he really didn't want to eat much of it. We opened packages first and then after dinner he had time to play with the gifts he was given. It was really fun to watch him go through each one and enjoy them all in turn. Tomorrow we go back to the doctor for the two year checkup. He was supposed to weigh in at 24 lbs by tomorrow, don't know that we made it though. Will have to see if the drs scale weighs him different than ours. On our scale it looks like we missed it by 6 oz or so, he kind of went on a picky diet for a while there. Up until the picky part he was putting on weight pretty well. It will also be interesting to see where he is on the growth chart too now that he has been home for two months. I decided to take a parenting class offered by one of the BEST headstarts here in Riverton. This lady really has a nack with kids and really handles things very well with them. It has been most interesting to pick up her tips. We have found that they work just pretty well when we are patient enough to remember them!! Our little boy has a very stubborn side and we needed some help in dealing with that effectively. I have one more class this tuesday night to go to and then we are back on our own trying to remember all we were supposed to learn. The good thing is that she has allowed me to tape it each time since we really don't want to leave Brayden with anyone else just yet and Roger really needs the info too. There is only so much one can relate through notes and retelling, so its been so nice for him to watch it off the camera. She is offering one more class on stimulating the young mind, that should be helpful too. For now we are just so very pleased with his efforts to talk and all his busy side. He gets harder to keep up with all the time. We had our first snow that actually accumulated outside last night. This morning after church Uncle Bobby tried to get him to touch it and feel it. He wasn't really interested. Perhaps later when there is more of it we can go build a snowman and really enjoy it. This time he handled new people a lot better. He really took to Uncle Bobby right away, that was really fun to see, he also met Aunt Jeanine and while it took him just a little longer to adjust to her, he went to her twice yesterday on his own. His horizons continue to expand and he just gets more and more used to the changes and different people all the time. He doesn't seem to have the tendency to hide his face much with new people now. All the strides are so nice to see and this is a nice forum for me to sit down and remember them as they happen. And its great to know there are people out there that are interested and come along with us every week.

Almost 2!!

I will just put this note on for now and then update on Sunday. Brayden will be 2 tomorrow, so we are having a family party. I am sure he will have a grand time opening gifts and there will be plenty judging by those that have already arrived in the mail! We will have lots of opportunity for pics and good fun so will tell all about it come Sunday.

Look at that smile!

This is what happens when Mom comes to the shop, thats why there aren't any pics of him playing in sawdust! Daddy got some stuff this morning, but he mostly likes to get in the cabinets and dig around, mess with cords and big stuff!
some of these pics are a bit blurry as they are taken out of video clips. He moves so fast and so much that still pics are near impossible.

Such a pill - Check out that DUST!!

Just me and the airgun

He likes this as long as it doesn't blast him with air!!

Pics as promised

This is a "look" that we see quite often. Wonder if this is something WE have taught him...anyway its cute!

A Quick Note!

Tonight I don't have any pics to share!! I spent most of this week out of town, so no pics were even taken!! I left Monday night and got home thursday afternoon. Just one of the perks of a job, I had to go to a school for pics and it is three hours from home, so we go and stay three days and get the whole thing done. Anyway, it wasn't much fun, mostly work and not much sleep either. Roger and Brayden stayed home together and seemed to do just fine. In fact when I did get home on thursday afternoon I went out to the shop to find our little boy, he just looked up at me and then went right on with what he was doing. What a let down!! I had hoped he would run right up to me and want to be held, but not so at all. He was a daddy's boy until well into the evening. I didn't even register on his radar until I ran his bath! After that I was on the radar but not quite back to normal. I may NEVER leave again!! On Tuesday night I called home and Roger was giving him a bath, so he called me back using the business line with the speaker phone. I talked to Brayden that way for a bit, he kept talking to me and Roger said he looked at the phone really funny like why can I hear mom and not see her! Anyway, that was fun for a night. Today all is mostly back to normal, he wants to be held and cuddled by mom again, so I am feeling good about that. I will take pics this weekend and post them first of next week. Should be interesting, I need to make salsa tomorrow, will see how much help he is for that!