Trigger Thumb

Not getting the "mom of the year" award this year. Micah's thumb had been weird for the last few weeks.  He got it caught in the refrigerator door but seemed fine right after it happened. A few times I had asked him to straighten it and he wouldn't do it.  I thought he was just being a stubborn two year old.  He hadn't acted like it hurt him.  He was coloring, eating with a spoon, and doing everything else he normally would with no problems.  The other night we were sitting at the table and counting.  Nathan noticed that he couldn't straighten out his thumb.  We thought he had broken it at this point and rushed up the the ED to have one of Nathan's colleagues take a look. It didn't appear to be hurting him and the x-ray looked like it wasn't broken.  Nathan put it back in place and we splinted it with a band-aid so he couldn't bend it.

Trigger Thumb

We followed up with his pediatrician who agreed with Nathan that Micah has "trigger thumb". It wasn't caused by the refrigerator incident, but the injury probably irritated it enough that we were able to notice it. Basically, Micah's thumb is getting locked in a bent position.  Sometimes he can bend it and straighten it with it popping, but other times it will get locked.  We have been giving anti-inflammatory medications and  keeping it taped to prevent him from using it.  It's hard to keep a two year old from using his hand and he hates having it taped!  Even more than he hates having it taped, he hates us having to pop it back into place.  He will be keeping the tape on from now on.  We are hoping that the inflammation will go down after a week and that we can avoid any type of surgery.  If not, Micah will have to have a procedure to clip one of the bands in the thumb to release his trigger thumb.  Please keep this little guy in your prayers!

All he does is study!

Has anybody seen my husband?  He's been missing for the last three weeks.  Oh yeah, he's studying!  Nathan has been studying for 8+ hours a day for the last three weeks.  I really don't know how he's doing it! I certainly don't have the drive or motivation to do what he does. He takes his Emergency Medicine boards on Monday and we're going out to celebrate his passing it that night. They take inservice exams every year of residency as a practice for the real exam.  He's done well on these and will have no problem with the written exam.  Eleven years of post secondary education boils down to this one test. But wait, he's not quite done yet.  After this he has to take an oral exam and then retake the written portion every ten years.  It really seems to never end.

I'm ready to have my husband back. The house is a mess, dinner hasn't been on time, and Micah is getting himself into all kinds of trouble because Mom can't keep up with him on her own. My boys are ready to have their daddy back.  He comes up from the basement for meals and to shower.  That's about it.  So we've not had any quality time in the past month.  Micah is sneaky and will tiptoe downstairs to get a peak of daddy and make up some excuse as to why he's down there. Usually he comes back upstairs with a random toy but no daddy.  Just today he said, "Daddy, take off your eyes (glasses) and stop working".  I said, "Just three more days buddy". He knows when daddy's sleeping or working that he can't play, and it's killing him!

Fall Crafting

Micah loves to paint, color, or do anything messy.  We haven't done much of this lately since Owen's arrival.  It's hard to keep an eye on Owen and have Micah with a handful of paint.  The night before Halloween we had some painting fun.  Micah and Owen spent a few days with Ma-Ma and Pa-Pa earlier this month.  They went to the local pumpkin patch and came home with two small sugar pumpkins that were just their size.  I hoped to get Owen's footprints on one but it was an epic fail.  Our washable finger paints were not dense enough to leave a good print.  Micah took advantage of this and had two pumpkins to paint instead of one.  He had a blast!  Maybe next year we'll be a little more brave and get to carving a pumpkin, but for now this   what we've got.  

My little artist

My sweet smiling Owen. 

"I wish I could chew on my toes.  They look tasty!"

"Punkin" patch

"I've got a pumpkin for my baby brother!"

My little Micah and I snuck out of the house during Owen's morning nap to go pick some "punkins". Don't worry, we didn't leave baby alone.  Dad's been studying for his boards (more on this later) so he was home too. I really wanted to make this a whole family event, but the days that we could go it was too rainy, too cold, too late, or they weren't open.  It was the last weekend for pumpkin picking so we headed out to Kristin's pumpkin patch just off of Toronto road. If you're in Springfield you have to check them out!  Not super busy and well worth their price. It was so much nicer than I'd expected.  It seemed like an odd location for a pumpkin patch, and the directions sent us right to one of the nearby neighborhoods. Once we got out of the car, we picked out our wagon and headed to the field.  They had a huge corn maze but I'm not a fan of spiders so we passed on this.  Micah and I picked out one large pumpkin and two mini pumpkins, one for each of the boys.  We had a blast!  Just wish Nathan and Owen were able to join us.

I picked this one

Trying new foods

We seriously have 2 of the worst eaters out there!  Poor little Owen has a tight frenulum (tongue tie) and he wasn't a good nurser.  After struggling for 2 weeks and supplementing every feeding he still wasn't back to his birth weight.  We gave up and went with bottles, but he didn't do much better with that either.  We tried 3 different formulas and finally found one that worked.

And Micah.  Where do I even begin.  I thought I was doing everything right.  I introduced new foods one at a time to look for allergies.  I followed everything by the book.  We took his bottle away at 15mo and he really didn't drink much milk for the next year.  He just now at 2 1/2 started drinking milk!  I'm hoping he will start eating some new foods.  He's too busy to eat and asks to play or go to the bathroom through the entire meal.  We started using a timer and setting it for 20-30 minutes.  He can either finish his meal and get up to play, or wait for the timer.  I'm so surprised, but he's actually sitting the entire time!  Still not eating much more, but taking a few more bites than he would have.  He lives on cheese/yogurt, crackers/bread, fruit, and cereal.  I've always let him try anything that he asks for.  Today it was my Fiber One bar.  He picked some of the chocolate chips out of it but thankfully didn't eat much more.  I don't want him to have an upset tummy.  I'll never get him to try anything new if it does!

I sure hope Owen doesn't pick up on Micah's poor eating habits.  Maybe Micah will start eating better before Owen picks up on it.

Potty Training Success!

I was putting off potty training Micah as long as I could.  We had a big move and a brand new baby all within about 12 days of each other, and potty training was just not on my agenda.  Micah had shown some interest and I could occasionally get him to sit on the potty.  He would rarely do anything on it but if he did we always made a big stink about it.  His cousins Cole and Noah were both potty training and I kinda felt like Micah should be too.  I had received some advice from a friend with 5 children.  She said that she struggled training her first child and he finally trained himself around the age of 3.  All 4 of her other children did the same.  So I thought, "I'll just wait until he's closer to 3 and then we'll get him trained".

Micah has been waking from naps and nighttime dry for some time now.  One day he'd gone from 12:00-5:00 and was still dry when he woke from his nap.  This child had to go I was sure, so we sat in the bathroom for about 2 hours playing and reading books.  All of a sudden he looked at me, ran to the potty, sat and peed!  Yippee!  We made a huge deal of it, gave him a handful of M&M's, and then called it a day putting a diaper back on him.  I still didn't think he was really ready to potty train.

Well the next day he refused to put on a diaper, and we started potty training in full force.  He was a trooper. He picked out a pair of Mickey Mouse undies and we were confined to the playroom the rest of the day with the potty nearby.  I'd read a blog about potty training in a day and it truly worked!  Check out her blog for details of this method.

http://www.themoesfamilyintexas.blogspot.com/search/label/Potty%20Training

Basically we stayed home for the first 3 days.  Micah really had it down after the first day and a half.  We drank lots of juice, set the potty timer for every 15 minutes, ran him to the potty whenever he did go, and kept the potty close. We rewarded him immediately with M&M's and Dum Dum suckers and he got to choose his treat of choice.  We called different family members to share our successes.  We did a happy dance to celebrate each time he went potty, and we made it fun to run to the potty.  We had luck letting him go bottom free, and he even went on his own the first day! I was in shock!  After the first 2 days we moved the potty back into the bathroom and it didn't seem to confuse him. I heard little boys were hard to train.  He's been so difficult with other things like eating and throwing temper tantrums that I think God is giving me a little break.

We've had some accidents here and there, but overall it's been a success!  He's never had an accident on the furniture thankfully.  We're going on nearly 3 weeks without an accident (knock on wood).  I'm so proud of this little boy!  He's growing up so fast!

Roll over, roll over

Our little guys has kept us on our toes.  For being so small, his muscle tone has always been advanced.  At just 3 weeks old he rolled over!  I'm not making it up.  Nathan and Micah were both there to witness it too.  We were reading books with Micah, and Owen was on the floor doing some tummy time.  Before we know it, he'd pushed himself up and was over.  We didn't believe it.  So we had him do it again and in just a second he'd flipped himself over again!  It wasn't until about 2-3 months that he was rolling over consistently.  He's sleeping on his tummy now most of the time.  I've tried rolling him to his back and he just flips right back to his belly to sleep. He's sleeping nearly 12 hours at night and that makes this mama happy.  We couldn't love him any more!

Micah showing Owen how to roll over.