Bram Ronin

My sweet little boy arrived on Wed. April 20th at 10:49am. He weighed in at 8lbs even and was 21 inches long.

Airplane party

*warning, this post is going to consist mainly of a hodge podge of pictures*

We celebrated Ambrose's 2nd birthday and it was so much fun! I could not have done it without my mom and mother in law, but the work actually ended up being a lot of fun and it was totally worth it :)

I went with an airplane theme and Ambrose and the kids all had a blast! The pic to the left is a flight simulator that John and Ambrose built together. Ambrose absolutely loves it and sits in it multiple times a day!

After watching some you tube videos, I made an attempt to ice his cupcakes. It's amazing that I didn't gain 10 pounds while I practiced because Ambrose and I ate the mistakes!

Mom lent us her cookie making/icing abilities and the airplane cookies turned out super cute!

Despite the high 70 temps, most of the kids came decked out in their own toddler sized flight suit. They

were adorable!

Instead of playing games with a bunch of toddlers, we painted wooden airplanes.

of course, cupcake eating and present opening was a hit. It was a blast to watch Ambrose realize all his friends were singing to him and that ALL the presents were his!

What a memorable day!!

phases

phases we're in right now

1.) Blogging hiatuses apparently. It's over halfway through March and this is my third post.

2.) MINE: Since all the toys here are technically his, he is having a hard time grasping the idea that he can't shout MINE to every friend that even looks at one of his toys when they're here on a play date.

3.) ineffective time outs: there have been a few times lately where he has actually gone runninginto timeout. When I go over to get him out and discuss why he was there, he sees me coming, signs and shouts "Sorry mama" and runs in the exact opposite direction.

4.) worlds best bed head: Ambrose takes a bath as part of his bed time routine, and the bed head that results from this is unreal. Not sure what he does in there at night, but much of it must be on his head!

5.) Car seat tantrums: The tantrums that ensue over getting in the car seat just about kill me dead every time.

6.)end of "small" maternity clothes: As I unpacked my maternity clothes there were about 4 shirts that I came across that I foolishly said, "these are WAY to big, I'll never get big enough to fit in these." Ha ha. I've reluctantly dug into that box and grabbed all of those over sized items, and wear them continually because nothing else really fits.

7.) any day now?: I am still working out about 5 days a week, and as if the looks weren't bad enough, the comments at the gym are even worse. Mainly, elderly ladies are the culprits, but if I had a nickle for every person that said "any day now," "trying to get things moving?" or "whoa, you look uncomfortable" I'd be building my own home gym rather than subjecting myself to all those comments.

2

My sweet boy you have somehow stealthily transitioned from my chubby cheeked infant to my gangly, long legged little boy. With the help of a little piece of technology called a video monitor, I'm sitting here, watching you sleep. At one point, I totally thought those video monitors were for crazy neurotic moms, but I am totally whistling another tune ( or am in complete denial that I am one of those crazy and neurotic moms). There is nothing sweeter than ending my day by watching you fall asleep. I often catch myself looking down at the monitor and staring in awe at how big you've become. Every part of you, even your sleep, shouts little boy.

I spend each day wishing and hoping I could keep you just as your are today. I know that's not an option, so I drink in the adorable two year old boy that you are. At two years old you

are not athletic. your running is still incredibly uncoordinated and in all honestly, it's slow. You throw balls straight up into the air, and more often than not, they land behind you.

You still love the alphabet. you recognize/say 85% of the alphabet and love to find letters in every day life. Your speech is incredibly endearing. You amaze with your ability to hear a word once and remember and use it from that point on. You are, for the most part, an incredibly compliant and sweet little boy, except for when you're getting your diaper changed or when I'm trying to get you into your car seat, both of those produce their fair share of intense screaming, but we look past that, because your "gentle touches", " I love you's," or "doing mama?" are just too adorable to dwell on the not so pleasant side of being two .

I look forward to each day with you. John leaves for work, and often will remind me how jealous he is that I get to spend my day you. and he's right. Don't get me wrong, there are boring, desperate and frustrating days, but in all honestly, I can't think of the last time I had one. Life with you son, is unfathomably great. I could have never dreamt a more blessed life for myself, and you son are parked at the top of my "I'm thankful for" list.

Life was great before you my sweet boy, and I couldn't imagine it getting better, but I can honestly say, I have never been happier than I have been these past two years. I have never smiled more, laughed more or felt more blessed than these moments as your mom.

I love you!

ER

Yesterday was our first visit to the ER with our boy. It wasn't for a busted lip, or split head or even a broken bone like I had thought it would be (which, thank the Lord!). It was for a skin infection.... before you think we don't bathe the kid and let him wonder around dragging a blanket and encased in a cloud of dirt and filth, let me explain.

Ambrose is a thumb sucker...still. While we've tried to "help" him cut down on the habit, I'd say that he is still categorized as an addict. Most of the time I'd say it's out of boredom (car rides, while watching tv, when reading a book...), and when we ask him, he takes it out immediately. However, he clearly is sucking it often enough to have two huge callouses on each (because he doesn't play favorites, God gave him two and he uses them both!) thumb. Somehow, the left thumb either got a cut or he rubbed it on his teeth or who knows what, because something pretty gnarly got in there and grew.

The first time I noticed anything was Thursday afternoon around 3, I saw it, thought it was chapped or irritated and made a mental note to keep an eye on it. Well, by the time John came home, the thumb had swollen twice as bad and there was a giant green puss filled bubble ( eewww, gross, I know!) on the knuckle and the entire thumb was quickly going from pink to a more purple color ( probably because of the swelling, it was significant). It was slightly warm to the touch and Ambrose had a slight fever. John sees it, and immediately says he needs to be seen, like now. I look up from dinner quite surprised. You'd think that my worrying genes would kick in on things like this, but really, I only worry about completely trivial, improbable things ( sharks in a pool, soup burning my in utero baby...)never anything practical.

So after John mentions he needs to be seen ASAP, I call the on call doctor line. They call me back, I explain the symptoms, and the doctor confirms how John is feeling and says we need to head to the ER. Infections like these can spread incredibly quick into surrounding tissue and into the bone, don't mess around with it, get it taken care of. So, at 7:40, we pack up and head to the ER, where as you can guess, we waited. And waited and waited and waited.

During our 3.5 hour I couldn't believe the amount of people in there. I wanted to go up, ask each person what they were here for and how long they'd been waiting, because they didn't look that sick to me. Which, right about that time, my wild banshee of a child came running around the corner in his choo choo jammies and asked me for some chocolate (that was another thing, my boy did not show a single sign that this giant abscess on his thumb was bothering him?! ), so I decided to keep my mouth shut, since my kid certainly didn't look all that sick either.

While we sat there filling out paper work, Ambrose is acting completely normal, and I start to second guess whether we really need to be there or not. I wish I had taken pics, because really, he looked right as rain. While I sat filling out paper work, John received a text from his friend and flight doctor. Earlier in the evening we had texted him a pic asking what he thought, but we hadn't heard from him...until now. He confirmed that we needed to stay and basically agreed with what the original on call doc said, we needed to get it taken care of. I believe the words, IV antibiotics and admitted were thrown around in the conversation.

Anyway, after 3.5 hours in the waiting room we head back and wait another half an hour before someone sees us. They take a look at Ambrose's thumb, inform us that it's infected, they'll need to drain it and then put him on antibiotics. Sounds fairly quick but not so painless. We wait for another 20ish minutes where they send in a resident doctor to do the procedure. Let me tell you, I used to have that "everyone has to start somewhere" attitude, but there is nothing like seeing a young unsure new doctor getting ready to cut into my little boys hand to make me feel otherwise. Really, it was a simple thing, but if I'd had my choice, I would be asking for a brain surgeons hands to cut open this puss bubble.

I didn't get my way, and the resident continued to set up. He explains to us someone is going to have to hold him really tight. Check, John's your guy. So he attempts and Ambrose puts up a fight, full of back arching, leg kicking and arm grabbing. So, we all stop, and they inform us they may have to put him in a straight jacket type thing, strap him down and do the procedure. Um, no. I ask them to let us try again, and they agree and go and grab another nurse to help out. John again holds his body, the nurse is holding his hurt hand (so tightly that it's turning shades of purple and John was convinced Ambrose would wake up with a few bruises) and I am just trying to keep Ambrose's feet from knocking over the medical tray and his hand tied down well enough that he's not batting the needle/razor away from the doctor. They numb up the thumb with lidocaine in a big, giant needle and then cut open the nasty bubble and squeeze/drain it. I couldn't believe how much puss there was! My dad told me that his body must have been doing a good job trying to fight the infection, which made me feel a little better in some way :)

The entire thing takes maybe 4-5 minutes but golly if it didn't seem like forever. We wait some more for his first round of antibiotics and wait again for them to bring the paper prescription.

We finally walk through the doors of our house at 12:30 exhausted and even a pinch traumatized but incredibly grateful that he's on an oral antibiotic and we caught the infection early.

Operation wean the thumb is in full force right now. We'll see how it goes. Daytime so far has been very successful, but how much can you do in the middle of the night and at nap time? Wish us luck!

Letter phase

Ambrose is still in a "name/letter phase" and has started to recognize the letters that are in his name. He'll point them out on signs, shirts, menu's....it's a game that never stops around here.

Goings on

* My service engine light came on the other day. John is a stickler about car maintenance, so we took it in immediately. I always see $$$ signs when the service engine light comes on, so I was a little nervous. However, shortly after I had dropped it off, the service place informed me that they had good news and bad news. Good news was the problem was very easy/cheap to fix, bad news was that that easy thing was simply the gas cap wasn't screwed on tight enough. Ugh. Who knew....apparently my husband...of course.

* We went out for shopping and dinner to a small town in the mountains this past weekend. Whether it was distraction due to pushing a stroller, corralling a toddler or window shopping, somehow I had missed that John had spent his entire time shopping with his v-neck sweater on backwards.

* Like I mentioned in my last post, snowmageddon hit, and with it came rolling power outages, gas (and thus heat, hot water and cooking) outages and many frozen pipes for friends. the lowest temp we had (-3) were some highs I saw on the news, and yet, here we are, crippled by what most would consider a mild snowstorm. Living where it never snows is awesome....until it snows.

* Murphy doesn't play favorites around here. It's something that many military wives joke about, but only because if you don't laugh about it...you'll cry. It is inevitable, when our husbands go TDY everything will break, kids will get sick and life will challenge you in every way possible. Well, the tables have turned. It's my turn to head out of town for a girls weekend, and wouldn't ya know it, the previously mentioned snow storm has come and made life that much harder. As always Murphy, your timing is impeccable.

* I am getting further into my pregnancy, and, as things go, I'm getting bigger (and bigger and bigger) and the "due any day" comments have started. Nope, not any day now, 11 weeks to be exact, but thanks. Yup, I'm sure it's not twins, but again, THANKS!