1/26 - Sick boys update & Brad picture

I forgot to update on the boys. We went to the dr last Friday for a follow-up for Eli's pneumonia and we found out his right hear tube had fallen in to his ear canal. Boo. Aiden has been messing with his left ear so I asked their dr if she could quickly look in Aiden's his left ear tube was completely out. Wow. Thankfully, Aiden already had an ENT appt scheduled for today and the dr said if he gets another ear infection, they will have to put the tube back in. Regardless, we go back in 3 months and the might take his adenoids and tonsils because of the level of snottiness the child has even being on 3 allergy medicines year-round. We'll see. Aiden has some negative pressure in the ear that the tube fell out but no ear infection thankfully.

Brad got a mighty honor the other day. The Secretary of the State was on-board the USS Enterprise and Brad got to meet him. In fact, he came in the ready room where Brad spends a lot of time. He has spent a lot of extra time in there lately because he hasn't been allowed to fly because of a nasty infection on his eye. His right eye is fully open now and it's healing appropriately. We miss Brad dearly. He the rock of this family and as the kids get older, it's more apparent how much they need their daddy!

1/26 - Chuck E Cheese & St. Pete

Eli has been doing a good job of trying to play on his own. The sad thing is that now Aiden doesn't like to play by himself He is always trying to get Eli to come play with him. I've started intervening more and telling Aiden he has to play by himself because Eli doesn't always want to play with him.

Aiden is getting used to putting together the marble run but it's definitely a learning process and much harder to construct (correctly) than a train track.

Last week, I took the boys to the gym with me for the first time and rewarded them for sitting in a small little room for 40 min with 40 min at Chuck-E-Cheese. They had a blast. Aiden loves skeet ball but he is horrible at it. He likes watching the balls come back down.

As you can see on the scoreboard, Aiden has zero points. He can roll is just hard enough to make it over the little ramp for .... 0 points. He's gonna be so excited when he wins more than one ticket when he gets strong/bigger.

Eli just likes walking around with 2 or 3 tokens and not spending any of them. He's so cute by saving them. He has fun just watching the lights and sounds on the machines at this point.

I taught Aiden about the ticket chomper that counts your tickets. He and Eli were a little nervous to get their fingers close but they eventually found that putting tickets in was really fun. When they found out the could get a piece of candy for their tickets, they were REALLY excited.

On Saturday, we went down to St. Pete. It was fun for the boys to see their nana. It was a smooth drive and Eli started yelling "Nana's house" the closer we got. I let the boys play for a bit and then it was naptime. Aiden didn't nap at all (he tried) and Eli was starting to go down that same track. I eventually put Eli on Nana's bed with her and he was out like a light. He slept for about 1 or 1.5 hrs.

After Eli and Nana woke up from naps, we just hung around and played for the rest of the day.

The boys just having fun rolling up in blanket and sitting in special chairs at Nana's house.

Aiden is getting better about blowing bubbles and actually blew a few really big bubbles once Nana taught him how to blow nice and slow. He was excited about the huge bubbles he could blow.

Here are the boys and I at the park by my mom's house on Saturday night. It was a gorgeous sunset.

On Sunday, I took the boys over to my dad's for naptime and then he took them for the afternoon so I could go to my cousins babyshower. Dad took them to go see Great grandma Hagan which was good.

It was a busy trip. We left papa's on Sunday morning and went back over to my mom's to get the rest of our stuff. I got a run in while my mom watched the boys and then we all went for a long walk/bike ride to the bridge by my mom's house. This first black and white picture is Eli staring out over the water.

This is the picture that you get when you take a helmet off a little boy who loves his helmet. No "cheese" for me.

I had to stop taking pictures at this point because if you look very closely, Eli is in the background and his little feet are off the ground. I had to go be a better parent and make sure he didn't fall off the bridge.

This isn't the best picture of Eli and I because my face is so red from running an hour before but Eli's face is so cute.

We had a good visit to St. Pete even though it was pretty short. We'll be going down to visit more often when Brad is actually deployed.

1/17 - Getting healthy

I actually took these pictures last week at Aiden's occupational therapy session. Here he is swinging in the tire and having fun. That is Ms. Lisa, his therapist, holding his hands. She is great with him. He had to swing for a while and then pick up froggies and throw them in a bucket. He normally does something similar to this so that he can work on his trunk/upper body strength. Today, Aiden cried almost the entire time through therapy. I have no idea why. It was so frustrating. He wouldn't do anything Ms. Lisa asked and then curled up under my chair and cried for about 10 min (therapy is only 30 min long). I was so frustrated he wasted my time today. Hopefully next week he'll be back to his normal self.

We've been trying to get healthy back here at home. Eli is on the mend although he's still pretty tired. The other night we had movie night and watched Tangled (which we just bought). Aiden actually watched the whole thing and Eli did too for the most part.

Aiden got some Lincoln Logs for Christmas and when Grandpa Dave was here, he showed Aiden how to build houses (daddy helped teach Aiden too). I was shocked that Aiden knew which pieces to put on the bottom and he actually built a door and window into the house, all on his own. He pile of logs you see by him are ones with a straight side on them and he said "Grandpa Dave said to put these in a pile." He's so cute.

Aiden was trying to tell Eli that he had a pile of separate logs. Eli didn't really understand but tried to listen.

Here is the marble set the boys got for Christmas. I actually followed the instructions and it was worth it. We built a super cool marble run that has 4 entrances and 6 bottoms. The boys love it.

Eli is starting to feel much better. He's still pretty sleepy but overall, he's doing much better. Mommy, on the other hand, is still sick. I go to the dr tomorrow and maybe they can give me something to help kick this nasty, mucosy cold.

Last night the boys played on their cars carpet. They love this thing. I moved it to Aiden's room and they both had a fit so now it's back out in the living room. They really could spend hours playing on this. I wanted to take it away so it won't loose it's novelty but apparently the boys are not ready for that yet.

Brad is keeping very busy on the ship right now. My on-line classes started today so I've been trying to get ready for that. Other than that, I've been doing some crafts to keep busy at night while Brad is away and to relax me some after dealing with sick kids for a majority of the day (especially last week).