ER visit #3

Tonight Jeff was scheduled to judge a mock trial at the law school, and I was set to attend VOICES, a fundraiser for the Hiscock Legal Aid Society, so Grandma Joanie and Grandpa Stu were enlisted to extend their usual childcare day until I got home from my event. I went home, took a nap, and then I left at 5:15. At 5:20 I got a frantic call from Grandma Joanie that Theo had fallen on the rocking chair in the backyard and had a gash in his forehead. As Jeff is the designated "blood parent"--the parent who deals with blood and traumatic injuries (I am the vomit parent, if you must know)--I told my mom to call Jeff to go home and assess.

Jeff and Theo and Grandma Joanie went to the Upstate ER (no more screwing around with Community General pediatric ER and their lack of anesthesia options--thanks for providing an opportunity for us to learn about that, Beckett), and Grandpa Stu and Beckett stayed home. Then I went to pick up Grandma Joanie from the hospital so, after eating dinner, Joan and Stu could return to Ithaca. Beckett and I had a really wonderful night, with a long bath by himself and then reading books together. I was trying to keep him up at least a little later so the boys would be on close to the same schedule. Beck and I also needed some quiet time together. The one sour moment was when Jeff texted me a picture of Theo with his big bandage on his head, playing with a Hulk car set on his gurney. I thought, since Beck had been persistently asking if Theo was okay, that this would reassure Beck that indeed Theo was okay. But Beckett got teary and said he wanted to go to the doctor too! And then, will Theo bring that stuff home from the doctor? Geez, way to incentivize going to the ER, Bryn....

It's been close to five hours that they've been gone now but Jeff assures me that they are on their way and will be home soon. Theo was reportedly a fantastic patient, and did great with the two or three stitches (and some intranasal versed, hooray, to calm him for the stitches). We'll try to offer him some food, since he hasn't eaten since lunch (at the hospital they wouldn't let him eat in case he had to be sedated) and get him to bed. I'm guessing it will be a quiet, laid-back day at home tomorrow for Mama and the boys.

Cuddles at home

School update

Preschool at Most Holy Rosary with Miss Mo has been a rollicking success. The kids love everything about it--putting on their Cornell hoodies and backpacks in the morning, eating snack, coloring, doing watercolors, and pasting, and the playground at school. They have not been eating much at lunchtime, I think because they have been overwhelmed with the chaos of a school cafeteria full of kids. We know they go to sleep at naptime almost immediately, and have to be woken up when it's time to leave the classroom. And of course it's impossible to get anything out of them about what they did during the school day. Beck's most common response is a smile and "we sat around doing nothing." Don't have any idea where he came up with that.

The bad news is that they have not been as happy with the afterschool program. I think it's a combination of factors, including a not-super-warm teaching group and it just being a long day for the boys. After two days of Theo crying upon seeing me, and then leaping into my arms, I decided enough was enough. We're now trying to move our schedules around so that one of us can pick them up each day at 2:30 when school is over, and we're going to start them in Friday school 8:00-2:30 as well, to make up for the time I will miss at work. It ended up actually being cheaper to do that than to have them in afterschool anyway, and since they seem to love the school part, I'm hoping it will be a good change. We start that schedule in a few weeks; until then it's just Mondays and Wednesdays. We'll probably still have to use afterschool occasionally when neither of us can get there but it feels good to know that they will not have to be there twice a week.

Llama Llama Misses Mama

Friday I brought home a book from the library that I have been waiting months to get retrieved from another branch. The boys have seen the cover of the book on the back of other Llama Llama books and have asked for it several times. They first saw the book Friday at about 5pm when I brought it home after work. We read it three times that night and countless times Saturday. A few more times Sunday morning. This video was taken Sunday afternoon, less than 48 hours after bringing the book home.

Fun with Preston

Last week we had two fun playdates with the boys' friend Preston. Tuesday we hung around our house, and Thursday we met at Barry Park on the east side of town. The boys invented lots of great games together, including seeing how many boys they could fit on one Cozy Coupe. Preston did more than his fair share of turns pushing Beckett and Theo in the car.

At the playground they chased squirrels, rode bikes on the tennis courts, climbed soccer goals, and invented a game on the slide that involved running up the slide, then sliding down all together in a big ball of little boy.

Check out these dance moves!

The only thing better than watching Beckett dance, is watching Beckett dance in slow motion!

A couple cool things they did yesterday that impressed me:

One, the boys made a contiguous, connected train track. Usually it is hard for them to plan how to connect it, and then suddenly yesterday, it was done!

This is Beckett's chalkboard in the playroom. He's very good at Ts but there are also a couple pretty reasonable looking Bs. He told me that Bs are a lot harder than Ts and so his Bs weren't as good as his Ts.