Darth Elmo.

Meet Darth Elmo, he's just like regular Elmo, except he can kill you with his light sabre. That's a Brett original, for sure.

Band Concert

Here's Brendan, at his very first 6th grade band concert. He's the one in the striped shirt-he who didn't inform me until 20 minutes before leaving that there was a suggested dress code for the evening. Sigh. It was a great concert-especially considering they only meet 2x/week. I look forward to many more!

Fish Art

The other day, Bryce handed me his MagnaDoodle and signed "fish". Since there were no fish anywhere in sight, I can only presume that he "drew" a fish on his MagnaDoodle. Seems a bit young for representational art, but who knows. What do you think?

Pink Eye.

It's true. Even adults get pink eye. Poor Brad! Bryce had pink eye about 10 days ago and Brad was the only one who also ended up catching it. Yuck. It cleared up within a few days with the help of Bryce's prescription.

Binky Addict.

Bryce is an addict.

A binky addict.

Well, folks, that's over. We cut him off. Cold turkey.

NO MORE BINKIES.

For the past month or so, we'd only been allowing him to have binkies at sleep times and he had to leave his binky upstairs when he woke up.

But we realized that some of his wake-up troubles were from binky problems, and not just related to being wet or cold or refluxy or what have you.

He would wake up in the middle of the night, SHRIEKING, (seriously, shrieking) for DaDa or MaMa. We'd dutifully go into his room, to find him standing up and signing "binky".

Where was his binky?

Yeah. Laying on his bed, just a few inches from him.

Game over, Bryce.

Yesterday, I hid the remaining binkies, gave him a binky with a cut-off nipple and told him his binky was "broken" and the rest were "all gone". He was NOT happy.

It took 80 minutes of him screaming (yes, screaming) and me settling him before he fell asleep for his nap. Bedtime went more smoothly, only 45 minutes of screaming/settling.

And-the big news-he only woke up ONCE last night, with about 20 mins of screaming/settling. Then he slept until 6:15.

The war is not over, but he's losing his battles. YAY!!!

Pumping Iron.

While I pledged to have a more balanced blog in 2010 and fewer Bryce health posts, he's had a change in health that warrants a post.

He had some blood drawn last week at his Pedi GI appointment. They ran an autoimmune panel and checked for lead and iron levels.

Well, the disturbing news came back that he is severely iron-deficient. The range they'd like him to be in is 20-50% and he's at 12%. This is very serious stuff. At 10%, heart failure is possible, so Bryce is dangerously low.

The solution? He has to take a liquid compounded ferrous sulfate solution, 30mg, 3x/day. After 2 months, they'll check him again and MAYBE they can adjust his dose down a bit. It's so severe that they really didn't even talk about bolstering this with food.

It's just so frustrating trying to keep this kid healthy. He has such poor eating/feeding skills and now this iron supplement has to be forced down his throat for 2 months. I'm told it's horrible tasting. Great.

Not one medical professional has mentioned that with his diet, he's at risk for being iron deficient. Well, let's look at what he eats. Fruits, vegetables, meats. That's it. Iron is found in fortified grains, which he doesn't eat, leafy greens (yeah, no-doesn't eat that) and beef.

So the plan is to pump iron & re-check. And pray this horrible tasting stuff doesn't completely turn him off to food.

Awww, Poor Puppy.

I went downstairs last week to run a load of laundry and found this:






Puppy had evidently been left downstairs, unwashed, after I washed the kids' bedding last week. Brendan had been without his sleeping companion for several days, poor guy.

Puppy was promptly washed & returned to Brendan's room, with my apologies.

Quote Of The Week...Jan 10, 2010

The big boys spent the night at Auntie Cheryl's over the weekend, with her niece and nephew. She took them to her gym, which has an indoor pool, then home to make pizzas and play her Wii. Then they all camped out in her finished basement and woke up for doughnuts and chocolate milk. She spoils them, for sure.

But the quote of the week came from Brendan, yesterday. He was telling me about what Cheryl eats.

"Mom, did you know Cheryl eats a milkshake for dinner sometimes? She had one while we ate our pizzas. It's cool how she makes it. First, she pours in some Silk-not like Bryce's though, a different kind. Then this milkshake mix. She blends it in her blender and then this is the really cool part. She adds Jell-O in for flavoring."

Me, "yeah? Jell-O?"

Brendan, "Yes, the Jell-O is quite ingenious, I must say. Very clever of her."

I about died. "Quite ingenious" isn't what I expected, but I guess those word lists at school are paying off.

Toddler Traces.

We know a toddler lives here because my pantry is always in disarray.

We know a toddler lives here because there is Sharpie on our walls.

We know a toddler lives here because the silverware everywhere BUT the drawer.

We know a toddler lives here because cows can ride plasma cars, unassisted.

Drive-in.

We have FINALLY visited our new Sonic & eaten in the drive-in (we've only done drive-thru so far). Not so great when it's 15 degrees out as you have to run the car on and off. But the kids got Sonic gift cards (actually, we all did) in their stockings for Christmas and I didn't want to cook, so off to Sonic we went.

Bryce can eat the tater tots at Sonic (and the fries at most fast-food places except Chick-fil-a) and he ate ALL of his tots plus some of mine! It was a fun Friday night diversion for us.

Cell!

Brendan is notorious for putting off big school projects until nearly the last minute. This is with me nagging him-he still puts them off.

They have been studying animal & plant cells at school and about 1 week before Christmas break, the teacher sent home a detailed rubric for a 3-D cell project due today.

I thought-"Perfect! He can get this done over break!"

Brendan evidently thought, "Perfect! I can do this the weekend before it's due!"

Not so fast, buster.

He and I sat down last week, discussed his project, he went out on the web looking for inspiration (neither of us are artsy) and came up with a great design. We then went and purchased the supplies (large styrofoam ball, acrylic paints and Crayola Model Magic Clay) and he got to work. I must say, this is 100% Brendan's work and it is probably the best project he's done in his 6 years in elementary school. The little flags are the various cell parts, labelled. Hair courtesy of bed, ha ha.

Take a peek:

Brett's Top Ten

"Foods I like, not including fruits or vegetables"
By Brett

1) noodles
2) cheese or garbanzos
3) ranch
4) bologna
5) hot dog
6) chicken
7) M & M's (when I can have those)
8) Garlic chicken w/peapods & rice
9) Cauliflower Mac-n-cheese
10) homemade pizza

Fruits & vegetbles:
1) bananas
2) pineapple
3) grapes
4) cucumbers
5) cauliflower
6) strawberries
7) melon
8) carrots
9) apples
10) corn & peas

New Year, New Goals.

I started this blog on a whim in December 2008, with one lonely post. Months went by before I tried blogging again and really made an attempt to stick with it. 137 posts later, I feel like it's time to set some (attainable) goals for the blog.

1) 10 posts per month. While this is less than I had in 2009, it's a good goal because those 137 represent 3 months with no entires, several months with single digit entries and a few months with 20+ entries. 10 posts will spread things out a bit.

2)Balance the entries. I was a bit heavy-handed writing about Bryce and his health. This blog is about ALL of my boys, not just him. This will be hard, however, as his health issues do dominate a lot of our life.

3) Quote of the week/month. My older boys say so many funny things! I'll be trying out a new feature where I highlight some funny conversation or statement made by Brendan or Brett.

4) Spend less time blogging & reading blogs. The kids give me a hard time about all the blog reading/writing I do. I want to blog about our life, not have life be all about the blog.

Let the 2010 blogging begin!

Happy 2010!

The boys and I all celebrated a nice, quiet, stay at home kind of New Year celebration. The kids will tell you it was "perfect".

First, we hit The Henry Ford for one last go at the super cool Lego Exhibit. We got there nice and early and left as it was getting completely packed. Bryce got his first taste of Pepsi-not ideal, but I forgot his sippy cup and he kept signing "drink", so we let him try it. He seemed to like it but didn't really drink more than a sip or 2. We'll not try that again any time soon.

We came home and ordered pizza from a yummy local pizza place, played Wii, the kids popped several of those little party poppers (with the messy streamers) and then played Wii some more. We had hoped to play some board games, too, but honestly, we got too wrapped up in the Wii games to stop! Fun stuff.

And we all went to bed long before the ball dropped in New York. But that's ok. We had a nice transition into 2010. Happy New Year, everyone!