Joey/Brother of the week Room makeover update

At first I put Joey's room then thought, no, he's got a brother in there, Jon. However it's not going to be Jon's room for much longer before he and Jack flip so is it Joey and Jon's room or Joey and Jack's room? Ok well flavor of the week is what is easiest at this point!! LOL

Anyways, Jim got the shelves up tonight!! They look great. He's got them butted up to the adjacent wall and brought up how we can put shelves up on that wall and abutt shelves together in a "L" shape and really utilize that corner space! I'm super excited about that. Might do it sooner than I'd originally would have thought.

Next steps, curtain's and bedding. I also need to come up with a way to cover part of the shelving hardware. It's got like a curtain up at the top. The brackets hang off of it. It's really an eyesore so what to do to make it look nice? Yes that is a blanket we hung up at the window :(

Joey and I went to the library and picked up our first 15 books to read. One of them is more of a chapter book (didn't realize that when I picked it, I just liked that it is by Julie (Andrews) Edwards). So those will be located on the shelves unless we are using them. Need to gather up all the rest of his books and put them up as well.

We went to Target and looked at all the awesome Toy Story 3 toys. OMG they are going to make a mint off us this year. My boys are all in LOVE LOVE LOVE with Toy Story! My favorites for them so far are: Woody and Buzz, the Bucket O Soldiers, the gift set is awesome and totally worth the money too (well not now after I just read the reviews!) Totally love this Woody and Buzz Rocket and there is a Mr. Potato Head that they don't have on their site. It acutally will fall apart (shooting out the parts) like in the movies!!

I want to do the bedding to. I'll have to get 2 Toddler sets and one Twin. I love little kids blankets too so gotta get the matching blanket. There's more that I'd love to get but not necessary. Totally want the waste basket and if only I had room for this or this (not to mention the funds!) LOL

I've not come across any before pictures yet but just took some (thank God for flash) of in progress. That's the table and chairs, easel and organizer drawers all in that corner. The easel is going to be moved I think and we're going to hang my big white board off the bottom of the shelf tracks. If that doesn't work then it will go low there on the blue wall and just above that will be the letters boarder. There's a Diego folding chair there between the organizer and easel for when all 3 are in there. Then to show you just how small this room is (and it's the biggest of the two kids rooms, here is my big guy sleeping and Jonny too! How fun that none of the furniture matches. That dark chest of drawers is over 38yrs old. It was part of MY baby furniture set. The dresser is in the hugely messy closet. I'll take that picture when I clean it up a bit.

The BIG boys

When I was younger I remember hearing or being told (probably by my mom) that you should not criticize your husband. If you do, it gives them the excuse to not do it at all because, "well I don't do it right anyway!" frame of mind comes in to play. I took that to heart and never criticized the BIG boy. When he'd do the dishes and put away half of them not yet clean I'd just take those out and rewashed them. Told myself, at least he got 1/2 clean, better than nothing. When he'd wash clothes and leave them in the wash for days to get smelly from mildew I'd just add more soap and rewash, at least they were in the wash already. When he'd leave crumbs all over the counter and table I'd just clean it up, at least he fed the kids something.

Eight year later, it's gotten really old!!!!

Growing up I didn't have a bread board, my gram did and I loved it but apparently they stopped putting those in before or around the mid/late 70's when my parents built our house. I so LOVE that I have one but did you know that they're not enclosed? Nope, they're not. If you use the board and leave food/crumbs on the top of it and push it in dirty that stuff just falls into the drawers/cabinets underneath! So I always have "crumby" silverware!! Because of this I always grab one of my flexable plastic cutting boards so then if I need to shove in the bread board I just have to move the cutting board elsewhere and voila, no crumb mess! It's easier to clean too.

Yesterday I went to go make us some tuna salad and the kitchen is destroyed. I have a very small kitchen and it literally takes like 5 dishes and a few odds and ends to make it look like I've not cleaned in a year! My bread board is covered in formerly wet and now dried oatmeal square cereal that he had fed to the boys for breakfast. I lost it!

My sinks were full of dishes and I always try to rinse the dishes and put them in the left sink so then when I go to load the dish washer I just have to load and it takes 5 mins not rinse and load which takes an additional 15mins. I go to rinse his and the kids dishes and they're covered in coffee grounds (I do NOT drink coffee) and grease from the dishes that didn't get rinsed the night before and are nasty as hell. The sink is plugged up so the water is rising as I'm rinsing and let me tell you, those wet broken up oatmeal squares covered in grease and coffee grounds up to my elbows are DISGUSTING!! :(

As my mom likes to say, he wasn't raised he was jerked up by the hair on his head. How do you train this without being the nagging witch?

Loved this one first

Love this

I was just wasting what should be my sleep time, reading some blogs of friends and some from their friends too. I came across this and just loved it! Now lets see if I can figure out how to put it on MY blog too! LOL I need some blogger lessons. Text and pic, that's about all I know...man I'm getting old :(

Big Boys

My boys have always been very destructive. I thought at first that it was just how kids were but I think mine are a bit more than the usual. Those email's we get with kids getting into trouble (ie. a carton of eggs/shells all over the floor or the naked boy covered with panty liners) are what I deal with on a usual basis. I don't seem to know how to teach my boys not to destroy things and have had to just take those types of things away. There's always something else they find but I learn what not to give them on a regular basis.

For this reason the kids rooms are very bare. We tried to decorate Joey/Joshy's room last summer/fall with posters and glow in the dark stickers etc. It lasted all of a few days before they tore it all down and destroyed it. I was crushed as was daddy.

But now I NEED to get Joey's room made up so that he can do what he needs to to learn. He needs to have access to markers and crayons, paper and glue and I need to trust that he can use them 99% of the time (at least) properly. I have workbooks and flash cards that I want him to use to learn his letters and spelling. He can't use them or learn from them if they're locked up in my closet.

So I had a talk with Joey and advised him we're going to make him a big boy room again (twin bed instead of toddler bed too) and a place for doing school work. He LOVES doing homework, he needs a place to do it. I told him what I expect of him and his punishment if he destroys it or anything with it. He gets the room stripped once again back to a baby room and I won't make him a room again. I think he understands.

Yesterday we took down his toddler bed and put up the twin. We moved Jackson out and into Joshy's room. Moved a chest of drawers into Joshy's room and rearrainged the furniture in both rooms. We added to Joey's room the Disney Car's wooden table and chairs that he/Joshy got for Christmas, a plastic drawers organizer and his art easel. I have a large magnetic white board that will be hung and so far (plan to get more) I have a boarder like they put up in classrooms with the alphabet to hang as well.

I filled up the drawers with "WASHABLE" markers, water color paint (with smock) and crayons, a glue stick and scissors and construction paper. Flashcards, magnetic plastic letters and workbooks. Again, reminding him of the punishment if he doesn't use this stuff correctly. I even told him, you want to make a picture with your markers you ask "mommy I want to use my markers, what can I draw on?" In case he's not quite sure.

They all are napping right now, when they wake we're going to pick up some shelves to put up on the walls and magnet strips so I can hang his art and good papers.

I make a list on the library website of over 500 books we're going to work on reading (as many as possible this summer) and teaching him to read! I ordered 15 of them and as soon as they are in I will go pick them up. I printed up 3 webpages of that list (8 printed pages for each webpage) and put that into a binder so we can keep track of what books we read. Once I get it all done I'll take some pictures but for now lets see what I can find as to how it was set up before...

Well here an example of the destruction... Joey and Joshy found an old bag of flour that daddy was throwing away. They took it out of the trash and proceeded to do this... to the basement.

I'll have to look elsewhere to find a before bedroom picture, I can't seem to find it now and kiddos are waking up.

To Be Continued...

Jackson's almost surgery

My unhappy/hungry baby pre-op

Last night we packed up and went to my mom's for the night since she lives closer to the hospital than we do and was going to watch the boys for us while we were with Jack. It was a long day packing up the 6 of us just for a night and then maybe longer just in case something went wrong...


I was feeding Jackson some solids as he couldn't have solids past midnight, no more brst milk after 1:30am....

He ate like a trooper, he was HUNGRY, I made sure of it :) Gave him some cereal (oatmeal with fruit by Beechnut) and some 2nd foods (apple, banana and pears).

I nursed him when he was done and he fell asleep. About an hour and a half later he woke up vomiting his cereal all over the place. This exact same thing happened 2.5 weeks ago, the last time he had that same cereal!!

He was then up for about 4hrs vomiting from larger amounts down to like phlem. Twice there was blood in it and I was getting very nervous. He was whiter than a ghost, even his ears where white. He'd fall asleep with is eye lids half open still.

I called the neuro resident on call at the hospital and he said it didn't sound like a virus from what I was telling him and to go ahead and bring him in for the surgery and it will be the anesthesiologist who ultimately determines if the surgery will proceed or not.

After he had the blood I called the pediatrician on call for our pedi to see if maybe I should be taking him to the ER but she never called me back (more on that...)

So we all got to bed about 3am and slept though the alarm. Jim woke on his own at 5:20am. We were supposed to be there at 6am and it was about 20mins away.

We would have just made it or been just a tiny bit late but Jim went to start up/warm up the car and for some reason it locked on him and he had to work to break into it!! We left as soon as he got back into it and we were 30mins late but no big deal.

The PA came in and felt the cyst and marked it with a regular pen then felt it again and accidentally (unknowingly) rubbed the marking away. They gave him some versed to calm him down since he was starving (having thrown up everything and not eaten since 9:30pm!) He was a very unhappy little baby and finally the versed kicked in. It was so funny, you could see he was loopy!! He was sticking out his tongue weirdly and trying to rip off my face! LOL I felt so badly for him but it was really funny and I was so glad he seemed to be more comfortable.

We walked down to the surgery holding area and the anesthesilogist(s) came in and were ok with going forward with the surgery but they wanted the PA to come back and remark the cyst. We waited forever and when he finally got there he said he wanted the neurologist to come in and see/feel the cyst that it was much smaller than when I first brought him in and she might not want to do the surgery.

We waited a while for her to show up and in that time the versed was wearing off but it was too early to give him more so he was once again a very unhappy little baby!

Dr. Lee felt it and stated she thought it had popped on its own and it was unlikely that it would come back. The remainder of it would absorb into his body and we'd be done with it.

I did tell them I'd mentioned it to our pedi (about it being smaller) and she felt that it would just grow/shrink/grow/shrink and drive us nuts. The neuro said not with a dermoid cyst as it's not fluid filled. It's like a bunch of dead skin cells that get encapsulated, the capsule popped and the cells will just dissolve. No fluid to play games with us.

So they said I could feed him and were going to take us back up to the original pre-op area where it would be more private. So we started to walk that way and he was just screaming his little head off so I did what any good mommy would do and just popped the boobie in his mouth and let him eat while we walked to the room. Oh boy was he HAPPY!

I called my mom to let her know what was going on and she was on the phone with the doctor and I was to call her back...??? She called me back like 10mins later and told me it was that pediatrician whom finally had called back at like 8am! The pedi at first blamed the answering service then admitted she had her pager on silent! Uggg!! I'm going to be letting Dr. Jenny about that one for sure. The pedi stated that she thought it was an allergy and when she found out what it was (the cereal and type it was) she was not happy that it might be a wheat allergy ( I hear you loud and clear on that one doc!) and that if I want to bring him in later she'd see him. Um, no, you're not my pedi and you're not responsible enough to make sure your pager is on when you're on call!

So, they made us stay for another hour, as they wanted to watch him for 2hrs after administering the versed and then as soon as that hour was over we were out of there.

We went out for breakfast and then back to my mom's. Packed up our stuff and our kids minus Joey and his stuff and came home. Joey is spending the night and quite possibly tomorrow night as well with grandma.

We got home and we all took a nice long nap... The boys are all sleeping now and I'm going to head to bed in about 15mins! :)

Surgery

I've got 32 hours before my baby has to check into Children's hospital for surgery. He's having a dermoid cyst removed from his left temple. The time between scheduling this surgery to now has flown by. I'm not ready. He is ready though, he's much more healthy now than he was before as we've fixed this feeding issue we were having and he's finally gained some good weight.

We all are going to be spending the night at my mom's tomorrow night. She's closer to the hospital than we are and we have to be there at 6:30am. Then the kids won't be disturbed so early and are already there for her to watch while Jim and I are at the hospital.

It's an outpatient procedure. The surgery is supposed to last all of 10mins or so then they will want to observe him for a while so we should be home by early afternoon I imagine. I'll post pictures before and after...