recovering

Ol*iver has had quite the couple of weeks. He had a bad cold that kept him home for days, during which he learned a few new tricks.











Then this past Monday, we showed up at the hospital for his tonsillectomy/adenoidectomy. After many, many cases of strep, it was time to get rid of the "extra body parts", as Ollie put it. He spent the first half hour of waiting examining the mechanics of the bed, as he spent much of the hospital tour doing the week before. The nice tour lady kept trying to explain to him about the surgery and where everything was, and he just wanted to know all about the interesting bed. Very typical Oliv*er!



Every person who checked on Ollie that morning got a slightly different story about how he was feeling, from " REALLY nervous" to "not even a little bit nervous. I don't even care about the surgery. " Then he'd look at me and smile slightly in our own little inside joke. He watched Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory when we had to wait longer than expected.



He was so calm and trusting, and didn't even need the customary sedative going into the anesthesia. Jo*el and I went to the family waiting area and the minutes ticked by. And ticked by. And. Ticked. By. And the time range we'd been given to expect came, and then went, and then doubled. It was pretty terrifying, and when we were finally led back, we found out that while the surgery itself went OK, Ollie had a laryngial spasm in the post-op area and needed to be "re-tubed" and given epi to open up his seriously blocked airway, all while awake. It was asthma-related, and related to the unfortunate timing of yet another cold setting in just then.



Thankfully, he remembers none of this, though it's hard just knowing he went through all that while awake. He had some trauma to the inside of his mouth and a very swollen tongue from when they had to put the tube back in, so he's now dealing with recovering from the surgery, asthma, another bad cold with a high fever, and some extra trauma to the inside of his mouth and the surgery site. Fun times. Given all that, though, he's doing OK. He spent the night in the hospital, and came home later the next afternoon. Jo*el was a daddy superhero and spent the night with Oliver cradled in his arms, the position he most wanted to be in. The staff was great - very kind and attentive to his emotional and physical well-being.



He was clearly glad to be home. No*ah was glad to have him back too (and is giving him a kiss here). On the way home, No*ah said, "Ollie, if they had wanted a bunch of money to let you come home, I would have given them all my money!" Not sure where he got that from, but it was very sweet. Right after we got to him after the surgery, Ollie was asking about No*ah - "How will No*ah know what is happening to me? How will No*ah know how I am doing?"



No*ah misses his wrestling partner quite a bit, but they're bonding over the suddenly unlimited movies and popsicles around here.



Ollie is still very tired and intermittently quite feverish, and spent most of the next day sleeping.


We had some pre-Thanksgiving snow for No*ah and Jo*el to play with.



We did actually make it to Thanksgiving at Steve and Kathy's.





Some of the grown-ups played games, a wonderful meal was eaten by most of us, and No*ah got to release some pent up energy with his buddy Zo*e.







and Oliv*er got lots of love and hugs.




And this sweet baby was a delight, as usual.


Obviously, there is much to be thankful for, even amidst the stress and chaos of the last week. On the short list this year are:

• Good health
• Healing
• Family
• Friends
• Medical Insurance
• Employment
• 2 loving church families
• The laughter of children
• Good teachers
• God's love
  
• Sunshine in an often dreary MN November
• The opportunity to use talents and gifts
• The time to appreciate all of the above.

Happy Thanksgiving to you and yours!

this is a playful house

The hospital where Ollie is having his tonsillectomy sent a kit of items to play with to help him prepare. The boys have been playing "hops-pital" over and over, which is a little heartbreaking to watch. Ollie asked me if I'm "absolutely certain" he won't wake up during the surgery. We're going on a tour, which is probably just as important for Noa*h as for Oliver. No*ah's been pretty worried for his brother, and yesterday, he and I went and bought a stuffed animal for him to give to Ollie for at the hospital.

Aaand, Ollie has yet another sore throat, which means it's time to make homemade chicken soup. We got a little distracted by the carrots.....

October

We've had the most gorgeous fall here, with much leaf-gathering, apple-crisp and applesauce-making, and crafting.









My mom came for a very nice visit, and we all went to an apple orchard nearby.



As usual, Oli*ver found the nearest tree to climb, and at one point he had a small crowd of Japan*ese tourists taking his picture. The only word I could make out from their conversation was "circus". Indeed...















Notice the "Oli*ver" tractor?




We also had lots of time for just hanging out together, which we all enjoyed. We will see Omie and Opa next at Christmas in Manhattan.





















On the Monday before Thanksgiving, Ollie will have his tonsils out. He's had case after case of strep since last spring, and it's clear that it's needed. No*ah suggested we put his Thanksgiving pie in the blender this year.

for you non-facebookers

I did this once before, but here are some funny kid-isms that have come up recently. In reading them, I notice a lot are about the very quotable O*liver, who is king of the funny comment around here at the moment. Noah*'s quite funny too, but his physical humor, funny faces, and flair for acting out stories are a little harder to translate into a blog post...

The four of us spent half an hour chasing 4 escaped hens around the
neighborhood and back into our yard this afternoon - a little nerve-wracking, but the teamwork was good! The "ladies" are having a time out until we can plug the gap in the fence and clip a few wing feathers.

Oli*ver: "Mama, I think tears are really liquid feelings."

[Mi*nke] is raising the Litter Police. The boys Freak. Out. if they find litter in front of the house, and have all sorts of theories about how such an atrocity might have come to be. In this case, the answer was: it fell out of Ollie's pocket on the way in from the car yesterday....

Olive*r: "Is it completely certain that there's not even ONE dinosaur left? Not ONE?" Me: "Yup, not a one." Oliver: "That's a tragedy, isn't it?"

[Mink*e] is thinking that the urinal smell may only go away by actually removing the toilet and cleaning underneath. Ah, the joys of little boys. At least they can pee against a tree on a hike...

Enjoying a lazy Saturday morning with the boys, playing board games in the sunny living room in our pj's while listening to Bluegrass Saturday Morning. (Also so glad the board and card games are finally getting more interesting. Am I the only one who hates playing Chutes and Ladders and Candy Land?)

Oliv*er, upon staring dreamily into space whilst listening to a Bach Cello Suite: "I think this is the most beautiful thing my ears have ever been used to hear." Wait till I bust out the Goldberg Variations....

The boys and I took a hen to church as a prop for Children's Time (Matthew 23:37). The hen was less trouble than the boys on this particular morning.

[Mi*nke] wonders how old the boys will be before they learn about 9/11. Not yet, please - them finding out about the bridge collapse was bad enough.

Oliv*er tooted at the table and then leaned over conspiratorially, saying, "Between you and me, there's a smell." Oh, the lovely things we learn in the school lunch room...

Oli*ver wants to be an "idea" for Halloween. Do I have to come up with a giant lightbulb type costume?

I volunteered at school today, and there was a fire drill. I was so charmed by all those cute, earnest kindergartners, and also my own, blowing kisses at each other from their respective lines.

[Min*ke] is glad for the increased reading fluency observed in her children, but less so that they picked the City Pages ads to read while mom was checking out library books

No*ah: "Oli*ver! Don't do that! Some ideas that come into your mind are supposed to just stay there and never come out!"

Watching the original Alice in Wonderland movie with two tired boys and a giant bowl of popcorn. Noa*h says Tweedledum and Tweedledee are "pregnant twins".

I love my sons' names, but admit we had no idea how popular they would be. Noa*h S. and O*liver S. they are destined to be. I suspect the parents all the Jennifers, Lisas, and Jasons in my grade school classes had a similar experience.

Noa*h asked Olive*r why he only had one apple from today's orchard field trip when N*oah had received several. Oliver replied, "I think maybe they're rolling around on the bottom of the bus."

Strep case #7 in 5 months for Ollie. ENT referral for tonsillectomy. Sigh.

Before school started, I let Oli*ver know that his often anatomically-correct drawings were not going to be OK in the classroom. He apparently took this to mean that he should draw his male people as usual, then use a darker color to add pants.

quick update

Hi there -
Quick update here: School is going quite well for our little kindergartners. We had a honeymoon of a beginning followed by a bit more of an adjustment followed by what feels like a good settling in and a good routine for the family. The boys are making friends and learning, and seem to feel positive about school. I volunteer weekly and am always impressed by the calm and gentle atmosphere and the friendly staff and students.
If you'd like to see some recent pictures, you can see them here.

big yellow bus days

School is going quite well. After some tearful jitters from No*ah the night before, they both got right on the bus last Wednesday with huge smiles of excitement, and off they went. I didn’t cry, though I’d had a lump in my throat on an off for days. Then J and I embarked upon 3 intense days of basement cleaning and wall repair. We’re still not done, but we’ve taken a huge leap forward in clearing out excess junk, and the longer term plan is to create a large-motor space down there. We’ll put a gymnastics mat on the floor and hang some of those rings and ladders from IKEA from the ceiling, and they can go to town. Our long Minnesota winters can make it hard to get the kids enough exercise, and I think this will help, though with Ollie’s asthma, we can’t have mold and damp down there either. So we’re patching the walls and painting, and it is a big project.

I was fine that first day, until we pulled the lazy boy I nursed them both in, the giant hideous brown thing that made it possible to rest with a colicky reflux boy semi-upright, to nurse them both at once without dropping either of them, to rock them for hours and hours before sleep. These milestones are so intense, but even more so with twins – poof! They’re both out the door, and the house is silent. But they bounded off the bus bursting to tell me that they loved it so much, they didn’t even want to come home.

Reports are that school is great, that they love choice time (the long Montessori work periods) and recess best. No*ah said his teacher is “almost as beautiful as my mama”. Ollie has been playing with the same little girl every day, so he feels like he’s made a friend already. No*ah has 2 kids from church in his class, and my good friend Carrie’s daughter as well.

So things are going well. Such nice parents, kids and teachers. When No*ah and I visited for his assessment, older kids in the hall sweetly asked if we needed help finding anything, and wished him a great first day. It’s the type of place where the kids know the janitor, where teachers develop relationships with kids that last for years. On Friday, we received a thorough list of what they’d been doing all week, and there’s definitely some stuff there for them to learn or work on. There are 27 kids in each class, with a teacher and an aide per room, and thankfully, lots of parent volunteers too.

No*ah had a nightmare last night, something about being lost in outer space. Rocking his sobbing little body, I hit upon what it is that I’m hoping for – not academic perfection or sports prowess, or popularity, but not being lost or adrift, to be ensconced in a community of peers and adults that cares about them and holds them accountable to do their best, these sweet brave boys of ours.

It was quite a party at the bus stop!



I drew a heart on each boy's hand, a la the book: The Kissing Hand. I thought it was so sweet that Ollie kept pressing his hand to his own heart.

late summer

I hope late summer finds you well. It's been pretty hot around here, but we've gotten outdoors quite a bit regardless.

Ollie was very pleased to discover that he could climb the pussywillow "tree" in our backyard.

Watering the potatoes.

"Going to Chicago on our red-barrel mobile"

Lately, Oli*ver has forsaken his Reader's Digest Guide to Home Improvement for this book.

No*ah talking to Omie on the phone to tell her his tooth was loose.

He lost it the next day. Very exciting around here!

Our new "ladies", who are doing quite well. We hope they start laying at the end of September before they molt.

We've been having some talks about what will probably not be OK on the playground at school...

This past Saturday, Jo*el and I slept in until 9 AM. No*ah was upstairs drawing and reading and this guy was building...

It’s been a good summer, with lots of family time. We went to New York, camping once just the four of us and once with friends, the boys went camping with Jo*el, and we’re all going to a cabin on the edge of the Boundary Waters in a couple of weeks. The boys have done VBS as well as a couple of great little camps at our favorite nature center, and they’re in a Music Tog*ether camp this week. In 3 weeks, they start Kindergarten, which is still a little hard to imagine. They’re ready, both academically and socially, but it’s a big transition. They’re mostly excited and a bit nervous as well.

The boys are at a lovely stage where they take pride in and even compete at being helpful, bringing in groceries, helping with peeling and even cutting and cooking up veggies and putting things away. They have bad days, but mostly, they’re really pretty good, loving, and pleasant to be with. They sit nicely in church with me now after a somewhat rocky transition out of the nursery this Spring. And I love all their nutty “inventions”, their games and their stories. They ask such wonderful questions, and their observations blow me away.

Of course, they do still need some re-directing at times. I was straightening up in the living room a few days ago when I saw something go sailing by outside, with lots of giggling to follow. I looked more closely through the window and was somewhat mortified to discover that their earlier experiments with a fork and a screw at the kitchen table had lead to the full-on discovery of the catapult, complete with boards and rocks. I went outside and gave a rather stern and emphatic lecture about the importance of using non-rock-like object for one’s catapulting, and the possible consequences of using rocks near roads, people, and windows. A little later, No*ah came in and said he had a theory: If a little person stood on one end of a board over a big rock and a big person jumped on the other end, would the little person go flying through the air? I told him that would depend – on just how much heavier the big person was, if the board didn’t break, and so on. No*ah went back outside, and a little later, I saw him dragging a larger board from the backyard to the front. The front door opened and he asked, “Mama, would you step outside?” Umm, no….

So yesterday, we found a large number of yellow cukes in the garden, as there seem to be about 20 minutes in between tiny-gherkin size and big-fat-over-ripe size lately. I did a lot of garden work on this cooler, drier day than we’d had in some time, but most enjoyable was helping the boys catapult the cucumbers into the compost pile from 15 or so feet away.

camping

The four of us just got back from a weekend of camping. Pictures are here (check out the bottom of page 1, plus pages 2 and 3 of that album). It was lovely, if a bit of a noisy and crowded campground. We went there specifically because the hiking and climbing are so great, and we thought the boys would enjoy the 3-mile hike along the river. We were right, they loved it, as did we. Summer is going by so fast - the boys have one more little camp, then in two weeks we're going to a cabin on the edge of the Boundar*y Waters for a few days, and two weeks after that, Kindergarten begins. Gulp...