This will be the last time I post about one of my children being in the hospital

What to say? Nora is now better, but was VERY sick--needing a bunch of oxygen, antibiotics, lots of rest.

The word "superinfection" was in her discharge summary, so yeah, pretty sick. Can we please be done with all of the pneumonia? Once she started to feel better, her chatterbox opened up again and she kept John and me well entertained throughout the visit. She also kept our sweet roommates entertained as well. I knew she was missing her brother when she started smacking her own leg and shouting "DOH DO DAT, YA YA." (don't do that, Ryan).

Caitlin and Ryan loved the BigBirds all throughout UMHS which shows you the detour route, so going to and from Nora's room was the highlight of each visit. Caitlin made me take a picture of her by the biggest BigBird each time we left the hospital each day. She also measured herself on the yard stick the second biggest BigBird was holding and everyday asked "am I 4 feet tall, yet?" She fully expected to grow that last 1-2 inches overnight every night and was disappointed each time, whining things like, "but I slept for a really long time last night," or "but I ate tons of healthy food yesterday."

I would like to thank Dora the Explorer for making the accomodations bearable. Thankfully UMHS is getting a new pediatric hospital in the fall--they need it. We got great, great, great care--the nurses, respiratory therapists and physicians were very competent and wonderful communicators. I'm sure the pharmacists were great too :)

The biggest thing is that Nora is well. We have some questions remaining like why did Nora have 3 pneumonias this season? 2 of which landed her in the hospital for 7+ days each time. something wrong? bad luck? We're not sure how much to pursue it. Hopefully we'll get some clarity on that.
In the meantime, we are thrilled to be all home together and all healthy. Thanks to God.

Polished

This morning Caitlin and I were getting ready in the bathroom together.

C: Mom, why are you playing with your hair like that?
Me: I have a few gray hairs that I don't want to see, so I'm moving my hair around to make sure they're covered.
C: Boys are supposed to get gray hairs. They look handsome.
Me: Oh, really...Who told you that?
C: Grandpa Wayne.
Me: Ahh.
C: Don't worry, mom. Girls can polish their hair.

no luck but lots of love.

I didn't get the picture of the 3 smiling together like I'd hoped. I love how this series shows off each of their personalities.
Caitlin eats up her role as the big sister--she is great at corralling them, snuggling and loving on them, play wrestling, whatever. Ryan loves any type of attention or cuddling. Nora can take 'nuggles for about 10 seconds at-a-time. Then she is done. What I'm really noticing these days is that the kids REALLY love each other. It is so fun to watch their relationships bloom.

sandbox

Nora is following in Caitlin's footsteps in both her loves of sand play and sand eating as well. I know it's gross.

Every once in a while I get crafty.

The crayon bits were bothering me. They were taking over the crayon bin and everyone avoids them. What are they good for anyway? Choking on perhaps? So I thought that certainly we could make something cute with them by melting them. When I googled it I felt way less crafty because clearly every other mom in the history of the world has done this before. These were the simple directions I followed. It was fun and easy to get the kids involved.
I wanted to put it up here because I will certainly do it again.

We set up stations:
-a bowl for soaking crayons so that the labels would peel off easily
-a washcloth for patting dry crayons after soaking
-a container for the labels/paper
-muffin tin

Then I let Caitlin design her new crayons by placing the bits in the muffin wells. She made one pink/purple, many mixtures, one of various yellows--whatever. Once the colors schemes were designed, we broke the crayon bits down further as best as we could by breaking them into tiny bits with our hands.


Then we popped them in a 250-300 degree oven. It took maybe 10 minutes. Just until they were soupy. The thing that I did wrong was I didn't make each muffin/crayon equal size, so the ones with less crayon bits were melted way before the ones with more. So if I did it again, I would make them all the same as much as possible. In a couple cases, most of the crayons were melted together, but one or two bits were sticking straight up. I just used a wooden craft/popsicle stick to mash them in while they were hot and that worked okay. Note--do not mix them up unless you want a bunch of brown crayon disks in the end.
Then you pop them in the freezer for 30-60 minutes and then kind of fall out after that. Take them out carefully b/c they're pretty brittle and break easily.

The end product is pretty fun. They kept Caitlin busy coloring and experimenting for a good 2 hours this afternoon. The 2 year olds liked them too. We will do this again. They'd make fun little gifts too--especially if you have cuter muffin tins or the silicone ones that come in cute shapes. But I really like the circular ones.

2 (ish) year stats

A boring little blurb so that I can look back 15 years from now, when i finally get their baby books going, and write down where they were at...

Ryan:
25 pounds 8 ounces
33 inches tall
10th percentile for both for an actual 2 year old

Nora:
27 pounds 6 ounces--50th percentile for an actual 2 year old
35 inches tall--75th percentile for an actual 2 year old


Their "adjusted" bday is not until May 17th, so they aren't quite supposed to be 2 yet. We're really happy with their growth, especially considering Ryan had completely fallen off the growth chart during his hospitalization last month. He has gained 2 pounds in the past 4 weeks! amazing. No developmental delays or any other concerns. They were both really well behaved with our pediatrician.

Tiny dancers

Caitlin started her 2nd tap session a couple weeks ago and this is the first time I've seen her really get excited about dance and want to do it at home. She loves it.
Don't let her slow start fool you--she's got some moves. My favorite is right near the end with the pivots and head turns-"fancy dancing."