Amazon in the making?

We had Bruce's Mom's Mom's (his maternal grandma) Thanksgiving party on Friday evening. Bruce's niece and nephew were at the party. His nephew is almost exactly one year older than Nathan and his niece is two years older than Nathan. Nathan stood next to his cousin and was at least two inches taller than him! Then he stood next to his female cousin, and he was the same height as her. When Bruce's aunts, uncles and cousins remarked on the height difference, my sister-in-law said that Nathan gets his height and build from my side of the family. No arguing that fact!

Problem resolved?

I am afraid to type this as I don't want to jinx myself, but it has been several weeks/months since we had anybody sleep on our bedroom floor. There have been nights when we are so tired that we let them fall asleep on the couch while we just go to bed, but I am satisfied with that improvement. I hope that I did not just jinx myself....keep your fingers crossed.

Big eater

My Mom picked Nathan up Monday night so that he could spend the night and help Grandpa on the farm on Tuesday. My Dad asked if Nathan could come over and help since Bill has been laid up. Mom then asked if Bruce could come over Tuesday night and help slice the bacon that we processed over the weekend. I stopped at the farm on my way home from work and help wrap some of the bacon packages. As we are wrapping, Justin is starting to get grumpy and I know it is because he is hungry. I am trying to think of what to make for dinner when I realized that I could take some fresh, just sliced bacon and make that with some eggs. I grab Justin and head home since we are almost done so that I can start dinner.

I fry the bacon, make some scrambled eggs for the boys and start to make dippy/bubble/over easy eggs for Bruce and myself. Bruce gets home with the other two boys and they immediately dig in. In a few years I am afraid of how big my food bill is going to be. Nathan, for a fact, ate more than me last night. He had several strips of bacon, a large helping of scrambled eggs, three pieces of toast and two dippy eggs. I was astonished when I put the eggs away and realized that I went thru 18 eggs and 3/4 of a loaf of bread. Darren had to try a dippy egg since Nathan had one, but he was not fond of it.

Barfly

My son Nathan can now be considered a barfly. On Saturday night we had my cousins co-ed, family, Ohio State themed baby shower. (obviously it was just an excuse to throw a party) As the evening goes on, the crowd thins out. That left seats available at their bar. Nathan pulled up a seat and was sitting there talking to everyone and listening to the conversation. After a while I see him pull two bar stools together (there are no backs to these stools). He lays down, but he is to tall/long for the bar stools so he pulls up a third one. The next thing I know, he is sleeping.

I, of course take a picture of him. We all laugh about it and point out that there is an empty couch just a few feet away. Instead I gather up the kids and get everything ready and we head out the door shortly after that. I guess he just didn't want to miss anything that was going on at the bar!

Fever

Bruce picked the kids up Friday night and went straight to my parents. I was a little late getting there as I had to pick up my aunt Karen from her group home and then bring her to Grandma's. Then I had to make my food for Mom's, so it was probably 6:45 or so until I got to Mom's. I took one look at Justin and said that he doesn't feel good. You could tell by his eyes. Not sure how to describe it; they were just puffy I guess. Bruce tells me to pick him up and see if he feels warm. I feel his forehead and he definitely has a fever. I give him some Motrin and just hold him as that is all he wants.

After about a half hour you can tell that the medicine has kicked in because he is getting off my lap and playing again. The cycle continues into Saturday. I give him a does of medicine about 3:00 in the afternoon. You can tell that he just doesn't feel the best, and when we go to a party later that evening (more on that next) he just sits on aunt Patty's lap. After about a half hour-hour later, I can almost see the fever breaking. It should almost be time for his next dose of medicine and he is talking more. He is fidgeting more. He is looking around and acting curious as to what is going on.

I had assumed that this was all due to teeth and on Sunday we were both on the couch and I was tickling him so that he would laugh and I could see inside his mouth. He did have four teeth that had just broke the surface. He is without a doubt back to being himself.

Weekend recap

Over the weekend we were at my parents on Friday night and Saturday morning/afternoon processing several pigs. That means that the boys got to bed late Friday night. As we were walking into the house Friday night, Nathan starts crying. It took me a while to understand what he was saying, but he was upset because he had to poop. He took care of business and then wanted to hang out for a while.

Then Saturday morning Nathan had to poop, so he was up early then. Then he played out at the farm all Saturday morning and helped Grandpa do the feeding on Saturday afternoon. Needless to say that all the boys were pretty tired. They had a lot of fun though!

Ready to go

Last night Bruce had to go over to my parents to help my Dad, and I had a jewelry party to attend, so Mom watched the boys while Bruce helped out. Bruce wasn't done helping when Mom had to leave to go setup the hall for a banquet so all the boys went with her.

Apparently they were basically done setting up and the kid that Nathan was running around playing with just left. He walked up to Grandma and said, "My friend left Grandma, I am ready to go now." You can never say that he doesn't know his own mind!

I wanna go....

I just remembered this cute story. I had made plans early in the week to leave Bruce home with the kids while I returned several things to Sears on the Kidvantage program and then go grocery shopping since Mother Hubbard's Cupboards were bare. While sometime during the week, Bruce's boyfriends (the neighbors across the street) asked him to go to an auction on Saturday with them. I told Bruce that he could go, but he had to find someone to watch the boys. He said that he would call aunt Patty as she always loves to watch the boys. Of course he forgets to make the arrangements so I have to do it. She said that she would love to have them for the afternoon and they didn't have any plans that evening so maybe we could come over later that evening and just visit for a while.

I take my time shopping and just enjoying the luxury of not chasing kids down the aisle at the grocery. I get home and put the groceries away and kind of enjoy doing it without any of the kids to "help." Anyway, Bruce and I go over to Patty and Tony's about 6:30 and I can instantly that the two youngest are tired. They had a late night the night before with the campfire and they are almost always up when the sun comes up in the morning. They played outside all afternoon at Patty's and had no naps. Not long after we get there, Darren puts his coat on and starts telling us that he is ready to go. We keep telling him, "in a little bit." He eventually lays down on the linoleum in the kitchen and starts demanding that we go home now. I eventually notice that he is quiet and look over and see that he fell asleep on the floor. We grab a blanket and cover him up. Then someone feels bad, so they put a pillow under his head. Are we bad parents that we let him sleep on the linoleum floor? I think that we redeemed ourselves with the fact that at least he was staying warm!

Do it again!!

Last Friday night, since it was very nice evening, we caved into the boys demand for a campfire. Apparently we didn't have enough people between us and the neighbors, so Nathan called Grandpa Ken & Grandma Deb to come over. My parents were sitting around the fire and I was sitting there also talking to them while Bruce stood to the side talking to the neighbors.

I looked over at Dad and said, "Dad. From where I am sitting, it looks like your feet are smoking." Dad pulls his feet back and we continue talking. A little bit later he picks them up and discovers that leaves and grass are now stuck to the soles of his shoes. They had apparently melted. Dad shows the boys and they were very impressed. They asked him to "Do it again!" (I have to admit that I thought it was pretty neat too) Dad was upset as they are his favorite pair of shoes and he has had them for like ten years. I told him to tell me who the manufacturer is, what size and a design style if they have it and our family would get him a new pair for Christmas since I am always struggling with their gifts.

Smiley faces

I have been hooked on a new type of apple called honey crisp. These apples are huge! They are the size of a softball or better. The boys like to snack on apples, and the other day the three of us decided to split and apple. I decided that I wanted peanut butter with my apple so I got the peanut butter out. Both the boys were intrigued. Nathan asked if we had marshmallows. I told him that we do not so he got out the raisins instead. I spread peanut butter over the side of the apple and Nathan and Darren would put raisins in the peanut butter. Then they would put the quarter slice in their mouth and make a "smiley face" with rotten teeth.

Rejection

Nathan absolutely worships my Dad, Grandpa Ken. When Grandpa asks him to do something, Nathan never hesitates to do as Grandpa asks. When he is misbehaving, we threaten to call Grandpa and tell him how bad he had been as he is so afraid of disappointing him. Yesterday (Sunday) my Dad calls to ask Nathan if he wants to come out to the farm to help Grandpa walk a steer. Nathan was not in the house so I told Dad that I would go out and get him and Nathan would call him back. Nathan calls Grandpa back and when Grandpa asked if he wanted to help, Nathan said no. I was absolutely floored. I asked Nathan if he was sure, and he said that he was sure as he wanted to play with his friends.

Nathan handed me the phone when he was done and so I talked to Dad briefly. Dad said he understood as he was growing up and wanted to have a social life, but I could tell that he was a little upset. When I spoke with Mom briefly this morning, she said that Dad's feeling were hurt a little bit.

15 month checkup

I completely forgot to post the results of Justin's 15 month checkup that we had nine days ago or so on the 25th. She never gave me what percentile he was in, but did say that it is pretty consistent with the past history. He was 31 3/4" tall and 23 pounds and 8 oz.

The other day I was sitting in my bedroom watching TV while Darren was in the bathtub. Justin was whining and wanted up on the bed, so I put him on the bed with me. I was flipping thru the channels when I stopped on America's Funniest Videos. They were doing an animal segment and Justin said "doggie" as plain as day. I was pretty impressed. He only says a few words that you can hear plainly, but he sure can jabber!

The other day Justin was just jabbering on and on and I would make comments like, "Really?" "I don't think so" "You don't say" Well, the neighbor girl was over and watching the two of us converse. She looked at me and asked if I understood what he was saying. I told her no, but he was trying so hard to have a conversation with me that I felt that I had to humor him.

It's frozen

We used to have a computer at home, but when Nathan was little it just stopped working one day. Since I am on a computer all day at work, I was in no hurry to purchase another one. Bruce and I have decided that since Nathan is now in school that maybe Santa will bring one for the entire family this Christmas.

I believe it was two Christmas's ago that Santa got Nathan a V-Tech laptop computer. Last night he was trying to turn it on and it wouldn't turn on. He looks at me and said, "My computer is frozen up." What? Where did he learn that? I told him that I doubt the computer is frozen, that maybe the batteries are dead. He removes the battery cover and discovers that someone had taken the batteries out and put one back in the wrong way. The "frozen" computer problem was quickly resolved.