Sunday afternoon entertainment - "Snow" Cones in March!

When we pulled in to the garage from church on Sunday afternoon Nathan said he wanted to eat snow for lunch.  Last spring we bought the boys a sno-cone machine so I broke out the cones and sent the boys outside to get their snow.  I let them add 2 flavors and now they have asked for "snow" cones every day.  Thankfully the temperatures got warm today and things started to melt so hopefully we are now in the clear for "snow" days!

As you can see they all were happy with their selections!

Alberta Peaceful Demonstration - self explanatory...

If you can't see the sign, it says, "If you have had enough cold and snow, please... raise your hands."

The Adventures continue...

Sharing a pillow

I finally have proof... Jay and Nathan can share and theoretically get along while doing it:

It's really sad that they had to be asleep to accomplish this, but it does prove it can be done.  Nathan sure knows how to push Jay's buttons and make his little life miserable.  This in turn makes me not such a happy mommy at times but then look how cute they are asleep!
     Today was family day in Alberta.  Although Clarke is working right now I thought it would be fun to take the boys tobogganing today.  Nathan was very excited to go "Bonky-Bonky" which is apparently how 2 year olds say tobogganing!  Clarke decided we should go out and ride the ski-doo.  Sadly it was a little windy where the ski-doo now lives and much of the snow is off the prairie with the blowing that we haven't got in town.  Jay was too cold and wanted to stay in the van, Carson wanted to play with the cats and Nathan wanted to ride the 'little doo' that the Williams' family has (we store our sled out at one of Clarke's friends houses in the bald prairie).  We didn't get very many rides in and Carson decided he wanted to go with mommy and he wanted to go really fast and over a jump.  Short story - we flipped the sled and the biggest injury Carson got was that his glove got buried in the snow.  Mommy was stuck trying to lift the sled off of her so that Carson could get out and then Clarke and the other two boys came racing down in the van.  As we got in the van and I reversed it up the drive while Clarke went and parked the sled, Jay, very proudly announced that he had come "to the rescue!" followed by his somewhat evil sounding laugh.  Thanks, Jay!  Don't know what we would have done without the rescue!  Next time maybe he'll get out of the van to see if we are okay!

      As mentioned Clarke is working right now.  He works four on, four off.  This photo was at the beginning of his four on.  He was playing with the boys just before heading in to work.  They were doing a dog pile on daddy and Nathan insisted that I get a picture.  I told him it was okay, that we didn't need one.  He climbed off of Clarke and went to get the camera.  He then instructed his brothers to climb back on daddy and for me to take the picture!  What a goofball.
Nathan will often ask me to take a picture of him or of the other boys doing something or other.  It is interesting that he really seems to have connected that this is how to preserve some memories.  It is interesting as well the things that he chooses to preserve in his little head.  As Clarke headed off to work as well on this tour Nathan asked him why he had to go to work.  Clarke tried to explain that if he didn't go to work that Nathan wouldn't have any toys to play with.  For the last 2 days now I have heard how daddy is at work buying Nathan toys and Jay wants to know why daddy is only buying toys for Nathan!

Of 'scabs' and other entities - Nathan's quotes of the week

So, this week at church Nathan is standing on the pew beside me and I absent mindedly scratched my right arm.  I happened to scratch off a scab that I didn't know was there.  I turned my wrist over and found where I had scratched it from when Nathan noticed the scab on my finger and says, loudly, as only a 2 year-old can do, "Booger, Mommy!?!?"

    Earlier in the week we were having another not so effective effort at potty training.  Nathan decided that he wanted to put on underwear to wear to bed.  Hmm.  He won't go to the toilet during the day and he wants to be in underwear at night.  Okay.  So I let him put on some underwear.  Mater and McQueen underwear to be exact.  (Hand-me-downs of course but he hasn't clued into that fact yet.) I put a diaper on him overtop.  The boys were watching movies on my bed - I am not stupid!   It was still about 2 hours before bed.  About an hour later I asked him if he had to go to the bathroom.  He said no but things weren't smelling too good in the bedroom.  He had filled his underwear.  I was not impressed.  Thankfully however, this was not mushy stuff and I was able to remove said underwear and its contents without making a mess and flushed it all in the toilet.  I went back to Nathan's room to put a clean diaper on him and he asked where his underwear was.  I asked him if he had heard the toilet flush and he burst into tears!  His eyes got big and he put his right hand out in front of him and looked like an little Italian speaking with his hands.  Bouncing his hand up and down in front of him he told me through the tears, "I wasn't done with my underwear yet!"  I burst out laughing at how cute he was and that he seriously thought I had also flushed the underwear instead of tossing it in the laundry basket as I had walked past on the way back in to his room.  I assured him that we would get him some more underwear when he was ready to wear them.  In the meantime, I need to figure out where the Italian came from!
      With it being Valentine's day tomorrow, the boys and I made some sugar cookies to take to Clarke at work last night.  I made some for the nursery kids to be able to decorate as a filler activity for the end.  Nathan told me he made 2 cookies, one for me and one for Clarke 'for tomorrow'.  I told him what a good job he did on them.  I asked which was mine and it was one with pink icing and red sprinkles.  Clarke's had jelly beans and sprinkles that Nathan actually calls sparkles.  Anyway, he then proceeded to lick the jellybeans and leave them on the table and then he licked the icing off of both cookies.  He then took Clarke's cookie upstairs and put it on his desk for him to find when he gets home at 3am.  He took a bite out of mine and then set it on the counter for me.  What a honey!  I waited until he went downstairs to play with his brothers to throw away the jellybeans and the cookie.  Clarke's is still waiting for him though!

ProActive and other 'gems' from Carson

      As the  sacrament prayer finished, Carson turned to me and said, "If you buy ProActive you can clear up all the red marks on your face."  He is not convinced that it doesn't work on everyone because the TV people claim otherwise. 
     Carson has a cold sore.  He has been sick this week and his dad gets cold sores.  He has also been to the dentist this week.  After the next prayer at church today Carson asks why the dentist gave him a cold sore.  I told him it was an infection and now he thinks that the dentist is an infectionist.

     Grandpa had called yesterday and told me about some issues with a funeral home in Lethbridge.  I am medical examiner and Clarke will often help me with my exams.  We were discussing the funeral home and an incident where they cut off someone's finger to get a ring.  Carson obviously heard the conversation as he made Jay cry tonight with a little story.  Carson got a new CTR ring at church.  They are sizable but Jay obviously isn't aware of how they work.  He wanted to wear Carson's ring and Carson told him it was too small.  If Jay were to put it on he wouldn't be able to get it off and would have to go to the hospital to take it off.  If they couldn't get it off they would have to cut off Jay's finger because Carson really wanted his ring back!  I had to reassure Jay that he could always get Carson's ring off because of the way it is made and that doctors don't cut fingers off, just rings!  If Jay has nightmares tonight Carson is grounded for a month!

My Feelings are Hurt!

OK, so no picture with this story but had to share anyway.  So, I nearly ended up in the ER with Jay on Thursday night.  He was fine when he fell asleep and then he awoke at about 11:22 with a horrible barky sounding cough and wheezing.  I went into his room as he was sounding worse and worse within seconds and the harder he tried to breathe the less oxygen he was getting and he was panicking.  Me, being the doctor, ran to get the prednisone (so who other than me has prednisone in their house?) and the ventolin, and a stethoscope!  I managed to get Jay to swallow the prednisone.  Breathing in the ventolin with an aerochamber while he was wheezing - and indrawing! with a tracheal tug! - was a little harder.  After 5 doses of ventolin with me saying, "Slow, Jay!  Sssslllloooowww!  Slow down your breathing" (and each dose being two puffs of ventolin and at least 4 breathing attempts) I could finally hear air entry in his lungs.  At that point, I decided that I need to have an O2 saturation monitor present in the house and that it would be on my next wish list!  I got Jay to lay down with me beside him, stroking his hair, reminding him to breathe slowly.  About 5 minutes later the wheezing and barking was coming back with a vengeance so we had more ventolin and went outside for a few minutes.  When he needed more ventolin about 7 minutes later we went back upstairs where I then got the humidifier and cranked it up in his room.  I could hear better air entry then and decided we probably didn't need to go to the ER but I still sat beside him and we repeated the ventolin regimen about every 15 minutes for the next 2 hours.  (I stopped it when he told me that it made his heart run fast!)  Once I finally got Jay settled and he wasn't panicking anymore I asked him if he could tell me if he hurt anywhere to which he replied, grasping his little chest with both hands, "My feelings hurt."  Oh my Jay!  I wanted to cry for the little man.  Clarke finally got home from work at 3:15am.  I had sat by Jay until 3 and had finally decided it would be safe to go to bed.  I told Clarke about my night and we both checked on Jay again and then I crashed until 6 when I had to get up for work.  When I went in to check on Jay he was breathing quietly and opened his eyes just for a second.  I asked him how he was and he answered better.  I could go to work then knowing that his "feelings were better".
      (I would like to add as an additional note here that I don't know how mom's can be mom's sometimes.  I don't think I would survive if I wasn't a doctor.  I never gave mom's a hard time for coming in to the ER at 2am and after this episode, I know how scary it can be with a sick little one.  I have not gone out and bought an O2 saturation monitor and I think I will survive without one but I never want to have another episode with Jay's "feelings"!)

Once there was a snowman...

Melted Snowmen!
So, about two weeks ago my friend Lynn, posted some pictures of the cutest cookies I have ever seen.  Melted snowmen.  So, for New Year's Eve entertainment, I let the boys - that would be our 3 and our friends 2 - make melted snowmen cookies.  Oh my, they were incredibly cute.  The ages of the artists are: 2,  4,  5,  7 and 9.  Here are a few samples of the artwork: 

Carson creating!

Jay showing off!

Jay was having problems getting the icing bags from the bigger boys.  Being the 'glue' lover that he is, he didn't care if he got the same stuff as the other boys as long as he could stick something on the cookies he was a happy man!  I must admit that these are the funnest cookies I have ever done with the boys and I am getting much better about letting them do things they way they want. I actually just laid the stuff out, showed them what the final product should look like, more or less, and I walked away!  This activity kept the boys entertained for about an hour,  it was great!