In the meantime...

It's been a long week.  Charlie had his two big medical tests this week, and oh my, are we exhausted.  The first test ended up being quite early on Tuesday.  7:30am to be exact, which means we had to arrive at the hospital at 5:30am, which means I had to stop feeding Charlie at 3:30am so he could be ready for the anesthesia.  At 4am, Charlie decided that if he wasn't going to be fed, then he wasn't going to sleep.  Luckily he was very sweet and coo-ey instead of mad, but whew baby, it was early.  He did get very angry about a half hour before the test when I wouldn't feed him.  Anyway, he did great with the anesthesia.  The test was a "direct larynscopy bronchoscopy," which I will translate for you as "camera down your throat."  The doctor said he has some floppy vocal cords, which might account for Charlie's frequent squeaking noises, and is usually something they outgrow.  The hardest part of that day was spending four hours in the recovery area listening to all  of the other kids wake up from anesthesia.  Apparently most kids do not wake up well from anesthesia (big surprise when you think about it), and it really broke my heart to hear so many kids cry that desperately.  I was very very thankful when Charlie kicked his leg a couple times, opened his eyes and smiled.   

His next test was on Thursday-- a CT angiogram.  I am stilled a little amazed when I think of this day.  The nurses decided to give it a go without anesthesia.  Apparently they can swaddle them really well, and if the baby is not crying too hard or struggling or something, they can get the imaging they need.    The only problem was that Charlie is so very very chunky that the nurses could not get an IV in him.  They tried three times and were about to just put him under anesthesia when someone had the great idea to call up a doctor they know who is apparently the queen of finding a vein.  And she proved the title.  Still, I was apprehensive that Charlie would calm down enough after having been poked four times, and not being fed for the last four hours.  I think a ridiculous amount of people must have been praying for us because sure enough, he just sat in that little papoose and sucked furiously on his pacifier.  The got the imaging and off we went with no anesthesia.  YAY.  We are still waiting on hearing the results of this one. The offices are closed for Veteran's Day, so hopefully early next week we will know.  Thank you thank you for all of your prayers for us.  I am relieved to have these out of the way.  Unfortunately, Charlie now thinks it's okay to wake up at 4am every day and not go back to sleep so I still feel like I'm recovering from the craziness of it all.

Yet, in the midst of all of this stress, we've had some very happy times recently.  Last weekend our friends Mike and Carly came to spend some time with us (well, mostly Charlie, who is their godson, but they let us tag along).  It was quite the day.  We went to mass.  We ate waffles.  We went to the nearby nature park.

There are a lot of really interesting trees here.  

Lucy has a love for leaves and cannot bring herself to pass them by without making a bouquet of as many as her little hand can hold.  Carly and Mike were very indulgent.

When we got home, we started on a 3-hour homemade pasta making adventure.  Carly brought over her pasta maker and we all pitched in and made some very delicious pasta.  Perhaps this picture is too small, but in the pan sitting on James' lap you can see all of the pasta that we had already rolled out.  His job was to catch it out of the pasta maker.  

 After dinner, we read autumn themed poetry together, and then sang songs together, accompanied by James or Carly on piano and Mike on guitar.  We sang everything from Beatles to Sufjan Stevens to bluegrass.  Oh, and Lucy put in a request for "Hot Cross Buns."  It was quite a fun day.

This is Charlie the night before his first test.  He just looked so sweet all wrapped up in this towel after a bath.

Today I tried to make a special effort to play with Lucy a lot.  She's been here and there this week while Charlie and I have been at the hospital.  She had a great time with everyone she spent time with, but it seemed like she was a little peeved at me for leaving her and for not playing with her more in the evening when I was so tired.  We were playing kitchen and she decided this would be fun.  What would you do if THAT popped out of your sink?  It was fit for a scene from Ghostbusters.

 Then she wanted to hang out in there for a while and eat some grapes. 

 Then we made a refrigerator tree.  The tree itself is taped on the fridge, and all of the leaves are magnets that I cut out with magnetic strip and cardstock.

Then she wanted to take a picture of mommy, Lucy and Charlie.

Play place with G-ma

Well, I had hoped to post a combo of zoo and play place pictures, but my mom has the zoo pictures and having some troubles sending them to me.  So, just the play place.  One of the days my mom was here we decided to go to an indoor play place called Be With Me.  It was cute.  It was basically just a ton of little rooms that each had a theme or different activity for kids: a sand box room, a pretend grocery store room, an art room, a multi-cultural room, and so on.  We didn't even make it to all of the rooms.  When we first arrived, Lucy started screaming because she had wanted to go to the park  (it was rainy) and we told her we were going somewhere "like a park but inside."  You had to go down some stairs to get to this place and she thought she was being tricked into something boring.  Luckily a well-placed picture of Curious George on the wall convinced her that we were in fact going somewhere fun.

We hit up the animal room first.  I was surprised by how readily Lucy walked up to this giant rabbit and started petting it, as she can be a little skittish with some animals.  They also had some birds, fish, turtles, and reptiles but the bunnies were Lucy's favorite.  They even got a kiss.

In the art room, you could paint a little white pumpkin.  Lucy has never been terrible excited about paint but she was very excited about this possibility and adamantly demanded paint when the art lady tried to interest her in just putting stickers on it.  A lot of paint made it on this little pumpkin.  So much that even after having let it dry for about an hour, we had to use a blow dryer to get it to a state where we could transport it home.

The art lady cracked me up a little.  I heard her asking a couple of the kids if they wanted some bling for their pumpkins.

In this room, they had a lot of instruments and costumes from other countries.  My little music maker was in heaven.

A "rainy umbrella."

I'm not really sure what this room was themed... entertainment, perhaps?  I only have pictures of Lucy playing this drum, but there was also a puppet theater, some more dress-up clothes, and a place where you could pretend to run your own Domino's pizza place (which was quite realistic). 

 James and I have been delighting in Lucy's literary memory lately.  She remembers all of her books and stories in great detail and can often be heard reciting them word for word as she plays.  One day a few weeks ago, I asked her what she wanted for dinner.  I did not expect what came out of her mouth: "a roast."  I laughed, confused, and then she said, "Cider?"  And then I realized she had gotten it from "Stone Soup," a book we've been reading recently.  When the stone soup is just about ready, the villagers decide that such a tasty soup should be served with a roast and cider, thus turning it into a great feast.  Anyway, another great literary moment happened in this little room, which had a trampoline, a little Lego play thing, and these toys that had really strong magnets in them.  Lucy picked up two of the magnet toys, jumped on the trampoline for a while and then held out the toys and proclaimed, "'Frog likes chocolate best,' said Toad, 'and so do I.'"  She was talking about a scene in the book "Frog and Toad All Year," in which Toad buys two ice cream cones, one for his friend Frog and one for himself.  I love her imagination.

Halloween

I still need to gather up all the photos from all the fun we had while my mom was here, but in the meantime, enjoy some Halloween cuteness.  Lucy was a kitty, just like last year.  That's what she wanted to be and the costume from last year still fit so we went with it.  Charlie had a hand-me-down lion costume that fit perfectly so all in all, we had an easy time of the costumes this year!  

Here's the friendly lion.

Here's the kitty, who didn't really want to put the costume on until we mentioned that there would be kids.

The kitty wanted to give the lion some hugs before we left.

We had a great time of it.  Grandma, Lucy, Charlie and I hit the streets.  Charlie sacked out on Grandma's shoulder pretty quickly.  Lucy only said "trick or treat a couple of times," but did manage to say "thank you" a decent amount.  People kept bringing the bowl of candy down to her level and after the initial shyness wore off she often took two pieces, or three, or five whether the people had invited her to or not.  We made it around a large block and then it was getting a bit chilly.  The last house we went to had an angel statue at the front door.  Lucy tends to get very affectionate when she is having a good time, and all of her affection was lavished on this little angel statue-- it was petted, hugged and even kissed.  We went back to our house, came in the door and Lucy proclaimed, "We got big tasty food!!"  So, I guess in her mind, trick-or-treating was just like really awesome grocery shopping.  I told her she could choose two pieces of candy to eat that night and wouldn't you know it, the smarty-pants chose the two biggest pieces which were bags of M&Ms.  

The little lion stayed sleeping even after we came inside.  

The kitty enjoying her spoils.

October

 I'm not really sure what happened to October, but I just realized that it's over and I have a bunch of pictures from it!

Here is the necessary sleeping Charlie picture.  This particular picture was taken after we went to what I can only describe as a hoe-down-- an outdoor dinner with dancing afterwards, in a country field, complete with a man with a very serious beard playing the fiddle, a woman calling out the moves and a bonfire.  We had a blast.

 Here is Lucy attempting to overcome some trauma.  A couple weeks ago, we had a plumbing issue-- a plumber came and tried to fix a minor problem.  The next day, our upstairs landlords flushed their toilet and water came gushing out behind our washer and dryer.  Unfortunately, Lucy was standing somewhat near the washer/dryer at the time and it must have scared her half to death.  She cried for a loooong time.  Then every water noise scared her to the point that every time we'd turn on a faucet, flush the toilet, or sometimes even pour a glass of water from a pitcher she would cry.  After much explaining and showing, she no long cries but she still talks about it a lot.  She usually comforts Curious George about it-- "It's okay, George, just water."  I'm not sure why we have this picture, but here she is, still in the trauma mode.

 Lucy loves a bagel with cream cheese.

Charlie's nebulizer finally came after a month of phone calls and waiting.  He is not sure what to think of it.  Lucy hates it.  It is very deceptive.  It looks like a fun toy (basically a blue elmo without a mouth) and is named "JoJo the Jellyfish."  Then you turn it on and it makes a loud hum and a bunch of mist comes out.  So, Lucy usually runs to the other room and looks concerned for Charlie.  Sometimes she will call to me, "Okay, all done Jellyfish.  Time to put the jellyfish away."  It definitely helps when Charlie has a cold and his breathing gets really bad.

Sometimes Charlie wakes up really early and just does not want to be in bed anymore.  So, I take him out to the living room  where James is usually eating his breakfast and getting ready for work.  Charlie rolls around on the floor and chats while I lay down on the couch and pretend that I'm still in bed.  One morning Lucy came out and was really excited to snuggle me.  

Lucy's friend Tessa came over to play one day.  They had a really great time playing piano together.  After that, they ran in circles and laughed for about 45 minutes.  They are such sweet friends.  Tessa calls Lucy "my Lucy."

Charlie has gotten to be quite active on the floor.  He is rolling both ways now, pushing up, and even scooting along.  If there is something hard anywhere in the vicinity Charlie is sure to find it.

Lucy has developed an obsession with leaves and sticks.  One day, we gathered a bunch of them and preserved them in wax.  There were so pretty that I wanted Charlie to be able to enjoy them too, so we made them into a mobile.

Another funny Lucy story: one day, we were getting ready for church and I had a new outfit for Lucy.  She usually likes to talk about her clothes as she's putting them on.  But, we came to a piece of clothing that she didn't have a name for.  I told her it was called a jumper.  After we came home from mass, she wanted to take her clothes off as usual.  She came up to me and asked, "Take your... Take your... Take your hopper off?"

In the last days of October, my mom came to visit and I will have to do another post on all of that fun.