I Spy With My Little Eye...

... a big three year old!

This little boy - whom I like to call my favorite little boy ever - has melted my heart, poured it into a heart-shaped-mold, sprinkled it with some love, watched it grow, squished it, loved it, hugged it, kissed it, then gave it back to me. I'm a big pile of mush when it comes to my Toddy! 

Three current favorite things about Todd:

1. I love his imagination and watching him play with his toys. From shooting lasers, to fighting robots, to sleeping Star Wars characters. He makes his toys come alive!

2. He is getting better each day learning to communicate. My favorite is when he says "Dad...best friend!" I'll confirm what he says and repeat "Dad is your best friend?!" and he'll squeal "YEAH!" Oh how I wish I could demonstrate this for you. It's adorable and heart-wrenchingly cute!

3. His mind is always at work. He loves building and constructing things. He's so clever when it comes to attaching things together, or building spaceships, or making houses. He's got a creative, engineering brain.

I asked him to hold up three fingers for me. He did so but then started "shooting" me with his three fingers!

Squish that boy!!

Kiss him!!

For his birthday, he woke up to streamers and other decorations. We had a simple breakfast then opened some presents with daddy before he had to leave for school. I later took the kids to lunch at McDonald's where they could run around. Then we headed to the Children's Museum for the rest of the day. A perfect birthday spent for a happy little boy. 

Happy Birthday Todd! We love you dearly!

You've Had a Birthday, Shout HOORAY!

Usually a birthday post starts out with "I can't believe this boy is two already!"...well, I sure can! In my mind,Todd has been "two" for the last six months!! His birthday just snuck up on me here. 

And what better way to start your birthday morning than with streamers and Mickey Mouse pancakes?!

Lets see...Todd at two....
Perhaps we named him perfectly. Because he is every bit of what a Toddler is! Climbing, jumping, rough-housing, destroying, and dirt. Not to mention bugs and dead birds. I can hardly keep up with that boy!

Everything is BUZZ BUZZ BUZZ! That boy is obsessed with Buzz Lightyear! He "flies" around the house with his arms stretched out in front pretending to be that oh so famous Space Ranger. He "shoots" his laser from his arm and makes "pew! pew!" sound effects to go along. He is always wanting to wear his Buzz costume from Halloween and his Buzz pj's. He wakes up asking for Buzz and goes to bed asking for him.
As much as it drives me nuts, I secretly find it absolutely adorable!

The trains, planes and yes, automobiles, are a given. He LOVES anything with wheels or flies. I'm grateful to live near the train tracks because we get to see the trains nearly everyday!

Todd is working on his communication skills. He is a little, maybe a lot, behind. He has a hard time with his consonants and piecing words together. But we're working on it! A big part of it is teaching Lucy not to do all the talking for him and allow him to answer the given question.

He has endless amounts of nicknames:
Toddy, Todders, Toddagin, Tater Todd, Todd Squad, Tiddles, Tiddly Wink, Todgy, Taj Mahal, Todd Man, Todd Gack, and the list goes on.... we add to it daily. But for the most part, he goes by Toddy or Todgy around here.

Happy Birthday Todd!
What a perfect fit you are to this family! We adore everything that is YOU!

Two Infinity and BEYOND!!

Birthday Celebration

We started off Todd's birthday celebration by going out to lunch to a place called Fritz's. There they have trains deliver your food to you instead of a waiter. The kids were mesmerized the whole time!

Lunch was followed by a trip to Deana Rose Children's Farmstead where Lucy rode a pony (for the first time!), the kids fed the animals, and got to see a cow being milked! The best part about this place was that it was all free! :)

It was getting close to bed time by the time we got home. We hurried and had dinner so we could have cake and open presents! Todd was surprisingly cleaner than I expected. I think he was too tired to really dig in. 

Lucy trying to sneak a piece...

We celebrated Todd's birthday with just the four of us. It was low key and lots of fun. Lucy probably had the most fun out of all of us... I don't think she'd mind if we celebrated Todd's birthday all the time!

One Year Older and Wiser Too

Happy Birthday my sweet Todders!

I can't believe that it was only a short year ago that you joined our family. Life has been that much better because of you. You are so happy all of the time and you just have a love for life. I love rocking you in the middle of the night as you snuggle oh so close. I love chasing you up the stairs and watching you laugh as you try to get away from me as quick as you can. I love that as I am typing this, you somehow weaseled your way onto my lap to be front and center of what I'm doing. 

Some things that you are up to these days;

*You are almost walking! You took your first step about 2 weeks ago and are nearly a pro. Just a little more practice and you'll soon be running!

*You love your little airplane toy. You do the cutest flying sound effect as you wave it around in the air.

*You are always on the go... it's hard for me to read a book to you or even watch a movie with you. You want to explore what's around you.

*You point to what you find interesting... which is everything.

*You are a great eater! Even if it's edible or not. :)

I love you, Todd! Happy birthday!

Again?

This morning I watched the sun rise as I drove Todd to the ER... again. Last time we thought he may had fractured his foot, but this time it was for a head injury. (He's not even a year old and we've already taken him to the ER twice! Goodness.)
Last night, I put Todd in his high chair and scooted him up to the table to munch on some snacks. I had my back turned to him as I was preparing a salad. I all of a sudden hear this big *thump*. I turned around and saw Todd laying on his back, still strapped in to his chair...wailing. I unbuckled him as fast as I could, swooped him up, and put a bag of frozen blueberries on the back of his head. It was hard to console him. Then he started having concussion like symptoms. He got extremely lethargic and wanted to fall asleep (even though he had just woken up from a nap about an hour an half earlier). We had to keep him from sleeping about 3 times. We did some little tests on him, and after all was said and done we figured he had had a minor concussion. About an hour after his fall, he started being his normal self again. He went to bed and all was okay.
He woke up at 3am and went back to sleep... again, just fine.
But then at 5:30am he woke up with an extremely high temperature and his little hard was beating as fast as a rabbit thumping his hind foot. He hasn't been sick at all, so of course I could only assume that his rapid jump in temperature was due to him hitting his head.
I took him to the only place I knew where at 6 in the morning... the ER. Normally I wouldn't have taken him and would have treated his fever like any other fever. But because he had just had a minor concussion 12 hours prior, I wasn't going to take any chances.
We got to the hospital and his temperature was 103. One hundred and three! I was really concerned... but despite my concerns, they all got pushed aside as I was told over an over again that the fever had no correlation to Todd's head injury. I was getting really upset because I just didn't believe them. I couldn't understand how Todd could go from being perfectly fine to having a temp of 103 within an hour and a half. I especially couldn't understand it when they'd tell me he looks "just fine" and his fever is due to his runny nose. Really? A runny nose?
We hung around the ER for a couple of hours and his temperature finally went down, but not much. They let us go home and we have an appointment to go back on Friday.
The thing that upset me the most was that the 5 people who told me that his temp had nothing to do with his head injury made me feel so dumb... like I didn't know anything. All I needed and wanted was a little validation for my motherly concerns. I didn't get any. I just got "his fever had nothing to do with his head injury" repeated to me in a slow and concise manner as if I didn't speak English.
There was nothing for me to do about it anymore. I had told them that their answer didn't satisfy me, and so in response they asked me if I wanted them to call my husband for me for support. Oh sheesh. NO...I'M FINE. Thanks for your concern though. (....was that sarcastic?)
I'm sorry... doctors get such a bad rap (my husband is going to be a doctor!). They're doing their job the best they can. There are just so many emotions involved that make things stressful, and doctors are an easy target to unload that stress on.

We've got to keep an extra eye on that boy.... I don't want to be going to the hospital again any time soon.

Sensitive

I don't know why it's taken me this long to realize how sensitive and shy Lucy is. She's not shy at all around me, so when she clams up around others I'm always taken back.
But lately, she focuses much of her attention on three emotions... happy, sad, and mad. If I ask her to give back Todd's toy, she gets so upset, runs to her bed, dramatically flops onto her bed and yells out "Lucy's so sad! Lucy's crying!" ...She knows how to break my heart.
A couple of days ago, it took me at least a half an hour to convince Lucy that I wasn't mad at her. She woke up that morning and all she could say over and over again was "Mommy mad... Mommy very very mad!" She has even talked in her sleep saying/crying "Mommy mad!" What?! Is that all she sees me as... mad? When we get upset at her, it cuts her to the core. And apparently if she is having nightmares about it, she is really affected by it. I think I need to be a little more careful with how I react to her sometimes.

But I do take a little advantage of her current focus on emotions. Like when she won't stay in her bed when it's 9:30 at night. I tell her that if she gets out of bed then "I'll get very, very mad"... but if she stays in bed, "I'm so happy!"
Most of the time, it works like a charm.
My favorite is when she wakes up in the morning or from a nap, runs out of her room with a big smile, gives me a big hug and says, "Mommy happy!"

"Yes, Mommy is happy! Because now I get to be with you!"