Ari Milestones

This is going to be a "quick" post today with heavy pictures and video and mostly about Ari. 

Last weekend we stayed home and had a nice relaxing weekend. I had a few sessions. Anthony took the kids on a bike ride. 

 

Ari ate his first peanut butter and jelly sandwich which he loved.......

 

He also began taking his first steps on his own which led to stair climbing and all sorts of other crazy things!!

Before this video was taken he had taken about 4 steps. 

Then the stair climbing. He has no fear and a lot of bruises on his forehead to prove it. 

I caught him climbing on the jungle gym in our back yard almost to the top. He has no fear. 

Anthony has worked nights this week so everything has been a little weird. 

Lilliana is oh so sweet but into EVERYTHING. I guess it is the age but at times I want to tear my hair out. She got into old makeup the one day and well you can see what she did............

 

Eli is being pretty good other than picking fights with Lilliana. I took this picture for a project with kids his age. It was freezing the morning I took it. 

 

The weather has been a little crazy. This week we had to go to the basement for the first time for a tornado. It was not that close to us but close enough it made me nervous. Eli won't be quiet about tornados now and anytime there is a cloud he is a nervous wreck one will come get us. I have decided I am going to make them have tornado drills because he just panicked when I told him we needed to quickly and safely go to the basement. If you know any childhood stories I am famous for my drills...........I use to make my sisters do fire drills as a kid. HAHA They were silly enough to follow it but it is a family joke. 

The real fun this week was I let them play in the mud. 

Big Boy Standing on his own

 

Pat-A-Cake 

 

  Then Ari did another milestone which was standing up from sitting.......These pictures are poorly composed due the fact I was just snapping and didn't take the time to not chop limbs but you get the picture.

                                                                 My three little monkeys......

 

This little boy turned 11 months yesterday. I will get to his photos today. We have a wonderful weekend planned and I can't wait to share about it next week. Have a happy Friday! 

Mosquitos and Heat

The mosquitoes are bad and it is hot and more humid than anything. I am grateful for the warmth but could leave the humidity and the mosquitoes.  They are so bad when I was editing a session the other day I thought my camera had dust spots on the sensor. I zoomed in to check only to find mosquitoes everywhere. We were even wearing bug spray. Needless to say that has meant for less time outside because I don't want to be bitten everywhere. The kids have been a little crazy because they want to be out but end up coming in after five minutes because they are getting bit even with bug spray. 

Ari is doing so much better. He is healing so well and I have cut down on his pain meds so I am happy. He hopefully gets his catheter out today! He will be so happy as he can take a bath and not have mommy and daddy poking at him everyday making sure it is draining and has not been pulled out. He fell asleep last Saturday twice on his own. This is monumental! I have always had to rock or bounce him or Anthony has so for him to put himself to sleep I am thrilled and I have not let him cry it out. Our patience is paying off. He is sleeping better too. 

 

He is also trying to stand in the middle of the floor  and trying to step away from furniture. 

 

Lilliana is getting so big. She is at the mischief stage and I have to keep my eye on her as she gets into things like my wallet. 

 

She also loves Popsicles and asks for them multiple times a day. 

Eli is Eli. He is having a lot of seasonal allergies and not doing so well with those. He would rather spend his time outside per usual. He is getting sooo big!

 

He put on Anthony's glasses yesterday. It made him look so grown up. In a picture I took on my phone he reminded me so much of how his Uncle Todd. Eli loves Uncle Todd too. I saw my future for a second and while I love the fact that he is getting big I do wish time would slow down.

 

My three little monkeys! They are crazy but oh so fun. Life would be so boring without them. 

Ari's Surgery

I think this week may have been the hardest week for me as a mom. 

I debated how much to go into about Ari's surgery. He is going to read this one day and I really don't want to embarress him. The truth is everybody who is close to him knows what happened and honestly whoever he marries won't care any less for it, if she does well she isn't the one in my opinion. 

At birth we figured he would end up having a Hypospadia surgery and that is what happened. This had been canceled once due to him being sick. I just wanted it done so we took a later time in the day which is not normal for babies as they can't eat before surgery.

I had some anxiety leading up to his surgery but the night before was hard. I got up to feed him something at 11:30 and made sure to nurse him at the last time that I could. I physically could not be around him for much of the day as if he saw me he cried and it was heart wrenching. I had a bag of things to do to keep my mind occupied for his surgery. 

We arrived at the hospital and were sent to the Pediatric Ward. It was nice and very kid friendly. Anthony said he would love to work there if he had to work in the hospital. We sat and waited. They gave him some purple PJs to change into. They were too big and well they looked girly to me. 

 

He watched Mickey Mouse and played cars. Then they took us down to the operating rooms floor which is below ground from what I could tell. We were put in a holding area. At that point we would wait to speak with the Urologist before his surgery and the anesthesiologist.  They take you down 30 minutes before your scheduled surgery time. I still could not hold him and it was getting worse if he saw me so he sat with Anthony with a curtain between us. I kept my mind busy crying at one point when they brought in a crib that looked like a cage. My biggest fear in all this is he would be held down to be put to sleep and it would be screaming and crying without me. I had bad visions in my head and that is all I could think of.

As it was getting closer to his time the nurse called to see how long for sure it would be. That is when we learned it was going to probably be another 2 hours this was after they were already behind. A disadvantage to a later surgery time as sometimes they get in and don't realize more needs to be done. I wanted to scream but realized nothing we can do about it. If it was my kid they were fixing I would hope the person behind them would be understanding. So we went with it and surprisingly Ari did not cry much and was pretty good. He even took a little nap. 

Finally it was our turn. Normally they don't allow a parent to go in to be with the child to be put under if they are under 1. Why I have NO IDEA but it is silly. It is all up to the anesthesiologist. The nurse came in and explained exactly how they would do it and explained it was good for him to scream so he could get a good breath of the gas and that they would not put him in the IV until he was asleep for that. I felt better after she explained how she would hold him and it would be gentle. The anesthesiologist came in and said, "where is this mom that wants to beg me to let her go back." I told him I felt better but he didn't care. He let me go back and was wonderful. I sat in a chair and just hugged him while he had him breath the gas and he was out. That didn't start until 3:00. It was a 2 1/2 hour surgery. 

Finally it was over and the Urologist came to tell us everything had went well. He explained all the things that needed done for taking care of it. Then they took us to see him. He was happy to see me but out of it. We sat in the general recovery for a few minutes and then they took us upstairs back to the Pediatric Ward for a bit longer. 

 

See the nice blue pants. He threw up on me twice. This was after the first time. I got to wear scrubs. The second time he got all my clothes. After that we were able to go home though and I got a new pair of scrubs. 

 

He was pretty out of it all night and didn't sleep well but this is how I reminded myself the worst was over. 

 

It was easier emotionally but not taking care of him. Anthony left for out of town on Wednesday. I should have had him take more days off.  By this point the pain was noticeable to him. He also had bandages so if they got pooped on I had to take him in. Well just my luck they did. He hadn't even had them on for 24 hours. So I had to hold him down as they ripped them off. Talk about torture.  The bandages help stabilize everything and keep the swelling down so he was going to be in more pain.  He has a catheter and we won't talk about all the stitches and where they are but let me tell you it is not comfy. I spent the day with him in the chair snuggling. Thank goodness for Family as they took the older kids Wednesday and Thursday. 

He spends a lot of time doing this. 

 

I can only assume it is more comfortable as he is trying to walk and stand as opposed to crawling and he has never wanted to do that since he can crawl so fast. He was up all night Wednesday night and Thursday was not fun. I had a hard time keeping on top of him with his pain meds. When he had his pain meds he was very happy. We spent another day in the chair together.

 

He did sleep a lot better last night but still looked out of it from pain or the anesthesia I am not sure. 

 

Today is much better. He still screams and tries to crawl away as fast as he can when it comes time to change his diaper as I have to put antibiotic cream on him. He also tries to run when he sees the syringes of bladder relaxing medicine and antibiotics coming his way but we are doing better. I am hoping I get some sleep tonight and that this weekend continues to go better. Anthony will be home and I will get a break so I am grateful. Thank you to those that prayed. I really appreciate it. We could still use prayers that it continues to heal and no infections happen after we get his catheter out.