Splish, splash!

Bathtime is defintiely one of my favorite parts of the day, as opposed to the after bathtime getting dressed routine which involves a few pulled muscles (mine) and lots of energy (his). Because of the staph infection, he got 2 baths a day for the past week!

We got him this really fun fountain toy. I highly recommend it! It's called kiddoo or something like that and it has these interchangeable pieces that you can make crazy different streams with. It floats & just sucks up the water from the tub. So fun.

Another fun/dangerous game we play is a bathtime version of tag. We have these annoying shower doors so Anderson discovered very quickly that he can just move to the other side & we can't get him out. It usually turns into hilariousness.

Then, we just lock him in. That'll teach him.

the good news

First, I would like to thank you all for the encouraging comments on the last post....there was a little frustration there. There definitely is more positive so I decided to focus on that in this post! HUGE thanks to Elizabeth & Clare who found an awesome website (http://www.littlefoureyes.com/) full of info, advice & encouragement for parents of little kids in glasses. It also had a patch chart & fun coloring patches of a kid wearing a patch & glasses. There is this whole world out there full of lingo like "patching" and "PO" (pediatric ophthamologist)! A lot of the advice about patching is suggestions like, "tell him it's a sticker!", "let him decorate it!"...Ok, he is 1. He has no idea what a sticker is and would eat the markers. Then, I found a post by a mom of an 18month old and I was hopeful for advice. Until I realized her kid wears one for 30 minutes a day. Somebody was about to be punched.

Anyway, on to the really GREAT news: We are SO beyond lucky that the Hill family hooked us up with an amazing pediatric ophthalmologist named Dr. Cogen in Birmingham. (Thank you, thank you!!) He gave us a very different approach to the eye situation than the Knox doctor. He wants us to definitely do surgery sooner rather than later BUT he wants to do a permanent lens implant & normal glasses!!!! I was so happy I almost cried. (almost=did) NO scary glasses and NO contact! Also, he may have thrown around the word, "curable". I know. I can say that I left there feeling as if our future had shifted for the better. It was a huge relief. We scheduled surgery for Feb. which seems so soon, but Dr. Cogen said, "Time is not our friend."I am beyond relieved about the outlook that he has!!!! This was especially helpful as right after arriving home from Bham, we had to take Anderson to the doc where he was diagnosed with a staph infection. We don't play around in this house. If there is a vision problem, it is hard core. If it is an infection, it's not going to be something cute like a sinus one. Always to the extreme.

Since we keep having to go back for checkups, he has had 6 doctor appointments in 10 days. (Hello deductible, nice to meet you! )My poor boy. I am getting a better grip on my emotions though because the only time I came close to crying during this infection situation was when I had to remove the eye patch because the tears from the pain of the doctor lancing it were stuck in there. It is a little heartbreaking to see him all bandaged, but he is such a trooper and hangs in there with everything. And even the hardest day with him is better than the best day before he was here.

Clearly, none of this effects him. Some pictures of the cuteness.....

Helping me clean the dishes after thebday party. In his pirate pjs and pirate shoes, of course.

He gets pretty hard core into vacuuming with the play vacuum. I have got to figure out how to get some electricity and suction into it.

We went crazy and grew afros.

Despite all of the new toys, his favorite is the $2 CVS clearance find that plays Christmas songs, lights up, etc. What can I say, the boy loves a bargain. I guess he recognizes how expensive eye patches are.

OBSESSED with taking off and putting on the lid to anything. He is especially excited about the milk container.

He still loves him some Lily. Unfortunately, their visit was cut a little short because of the doc appointments but if anything can cheer him up, it's her!

This video is hilarious. The best part is the end when Lily pushes him down & then says, "Oh, no!" like he fell. I love them.

it kind of sucks.

Imagine a 1 year old. Imagine taking that 1 year old to the mall. Imagine the trail of mum mum & goldfish that follow you. The tantrums in the stroller. The throwing on the floor (or at innocent shoppers) whatever you hand them to act as a distraction. Clearly, toddlerhood is not the best behaved time of anyone's life. Now, just for fun, imagine adding a large adhesive bandaid to the mix. One that has to be stuck to said one year old's eye for "more than half of his waking hours". Imagine walking beside the stroller so you can hold one of his arm's down & be ready in half a second if he tries to pull the patch off. (he can do it in a second, so I literally have to stop it in half) Chugging your water so you can, in a last ditch effort, distract him with the bottle/lid. Carrying him, holding his arms down, pushing the stroller while he is screaming. Public staring. Loving him so much you know you have to do it. Kind of loving him even a little extra because you know it's so unfair for him. Knowing this is not an option, but really, really hating the whole experience.


But I am not throwing a pity party. (It's more like a pity small gathering) Anderson is curious, active, snuggly and stinking cute. He doesn't realize what is happening except that he is inconvenienced. The doctor appointments, the surgery, the patching, the glasses...we have to do these things for his sight. Children can completely lose vision in the cataract eye. But not my son. Not today of the mall fiasco & not tomorrow of the "fill in the blank" fiasco. I am a pretty determined person, married to an even more determined person, daughter of maybe the most determined person I've ever known & a bandaid (or a few hundred at the rate we're going) is not going to stop us.

it's a pirate party!

The pirate party was so much fun! While I do have a lot of pictures, you will notice it is mostly him (as it should be) but I didn't get really any of him with everyone at the party! Family and friends were there, but no proof! So the next time we see you, we need to take pictures! (Great Aunt LoLo, Jack Brimer...I am talking to you!)

A present before the party!

He is just excited here. I love his little face. And Aunt Manda's.

You would be shocked at the pirate themed stuff that GG found! Shoes, puzzles, toys, clothes...all in a pirate bag! Clare found cute pirate bath toys & a pirate doll and Noni got him a pirate fountain/activity thing for the summer! I love a theme.

Too much partying!

"Godmother"

Since the pirate thing began early, most of the decorations were bought last year at various clearance sales. I recommend planning the theme early so you have as much time as possible to not pay full price. 90% off halloween decorations at Target is a pretty nice way to throw a party.

Goody bags!

Love a chalkbaord wall.

The Build A Monkey from the Hughes fam. He kept kissing it!

We even had games at the party.

First Mate Lily!

The Best Day.

I think he thought that Lily was his present. He is so obsessed with her. The feeling is not mutual. As Nicole said, "I don't think someone is ready to be a big sister."

Obsessed.

Precious!

The Chloeworm

For 7 years now we have blessed with the worm. She has always been calm, patient, respectful....when there is food around. Really, she has been one of the worst behaved dogs I have ever seen. She is a total spaz, so much so that people who met her last week for the first time thought she was 7 months old when I said 7 years. She has eaten light bulbs, mace, crayons, dryer sheets, playdoh, toy soldiers, the carpet in every apartment I have lived in, furniture, multiple collars and leashes. I could go on. She has jumped in random people's cars, ran through random people's houses if she escaped & their door happened to be open at that second, jumped out of moving car windows & broken a dog bowl out of impatience. These, of course, are the reasons that we love her. To be honest, my heart stops when I think the doorbell might ring, but the rest of the time she really is just our very high energy daughter. One of her most endearing/weird qualities is the fact that she randomly takes clothing of ours and puts it out somewhere when we are gone. She has always done this & the vet said it was like her security blanket-kind of spreading us around. I think it is because maybe that particular sock was where she wanted to lay but I guess there is some love to it, too. Anyway, I forgot something the other day & when I walked back in I caught her mid-drop. Precious.

A sock. And some kind of food or something on the floor?

Brandon's houseshoe.

Now that Anderson has discovered her, I realize all of the hard work of raising her has totally paid off. She is SO wonderful with him. The other day he was "petting" her with a spatula & she wasn't even really aware of it. We have found a purpose for Chloe other than giving me chest pains from the barking. Here is a little video of him playing with the girls. I don't know why my pants are weirdly rolled.

Snow with Captain Anderson!!

Because Mother Nature has decided that she wants my students to fail the AP test we have had more snow days! The positive, of course, is that I was able to hang out with Anderson! He was not crazy about actually touching the snow but really liked being outside in in.

His clothes look gigantic, which is an effect of the layering. Lots of layering.

Chloe & Gabs love the snow more than any kid. They seriously are like siblings with the way they fight. It is hilarious.

We did a little coloring on the pirate thank you notes. If you are lucky, you will get one with a little extra fun on it!

One of the requirements of a snow day is to stay in jammies all day & we definitely did that! Here he is drinking his milk out of his sippy cup! Like a grown up! Actually, this lasted for about a second as he does not like to drink alone & he doesn't do well getting off of furniture yet. It did make a cute picture, though!

He has lately become fascinated with the high chair straps, the car seat straps...really anything that he can take apart or put together. It clearly is a boy thing because after the high chair is clean I have no interest in it.

Update on Captain Anderson: The cataract is still here. Apparently he is pretty special because this only happens to 1 of every 10,000 babies. (I am pretty sure that is the same odds of winning a lottery?) His pediatrician has never even seen a patient with one. We went back to the ophthamologist & she said that he has made some progress but the cataract is continuing to impact his vision. This means that we have to increase the patching to 4 hours a day and surgery is "most likely". This was, in my mind, the worst case scenario. Then, she told us that even with the surgery we will have to continue patching AND glasses. Not just baby glasses, but probably for life. Depending on the surgery he might not be able to wear contact lenses. She kept throwing around 11 as the year when we know a lot more about his permament vision because his lens will be developed. So, I had 2 days to adjust to life with a 1 year old and there I was trying to process that I am going to one day have an 11 year old who is wearing glasses. Part of me kind of felt like he was being given a life sentence. I know it's glasses, not a million things that could be worse, but how unfair that he doesn't have an option. Don't think I am against glasses, I have worn them as long as I can remember and so do most of the people that I know. It just seems realistic for me, but not my baby. But, as I watched him play (try to climb on the $10,000 eye machine) like the perfect curious, active, precious thing he is I realized that he is the best thing ever, no matter how many cataracts he has. (Even though I would like to keep it at one) He will learn at an early age to suck it up & that he has parents/family who love him enough to wrestle a giant bandaid on his eye 4 hours a day for possibly 11 years.


Comments that I heard that were very helpful...

"We'll get through this." (grandmothers-emphasis on "we")

"The kid in Jerry Maguire was so cute really because of the glasses." (Aunt Cole. True)

"Harry Potter wore glasses & he saved the world." (Clare. Also true)

"Bathilda Bagshot had a cataract, so maybe he will grow up to write a history book." (One of my students with a perfectly straight face. As if him writing a history book would make everything ok. It was really cute.)

Birthday!

Anderson is 1! I can't believe it. I have a toddler! A very fast, excited, loud toddler.Brandon at 1 for comparison purposes. Definite similarities, but the blue eyes are different. Ha.

Because he is ridiculously spoiled/loved Anderson went to Chuck E Cheese for his birthday with NoniBop!! Mom said he loved the other people who were there most of all, which is not surprising. He loves some people (as long as they are not trying to hold him) We were at Target last week & he was yelling at everyone. We basically had a crowd gather around us on each aisle of people who were waving at him/talking to him. He totally caught on after we heard this teenager say, "That is the cutest baby I've ever seen". After that he would start up as soon as he saw new people. It was so funny.

Oh bear pics, thank goodness you are done. I love the monthly pics but they are beyond exhausting to try to take. For example, he kept running away with the bear!

And this was the best shot of the 12 month blanket picture. He LOVES the girls and I actually lured them closer to the blanket so he would somewhat stay on it. His favorite thing right now is to sneak up on them and attack, laughing hysterically.

Cake!

The attempt to get a grandparent pic didn't go too well.

New toy from GG & Jpa!

Brandon made this cake! Yes, Brandon! He is so much more patient than I am & a better cook. Let's be honest, this plate is probably better at me than both of those things, too. Not only was it cute, but it was delicious!

Birthday juice box!

This one turned out pretty cute!

Things we left in infancy...

1. Bottles/formula! The day after he turned one we gave him a sippy cup with milk! It has not been a huge hit yet, but we are hoping. I am reminded that the bottle transition wasn't the easiest either but it worked. I was looking at his baby book and saw his eating schedule from the 2nd week-13 times in a day! Holy cow. No wonder I was crazy and sleep deprived. Formula was way easier and now I am hoping that milk will be even better! I think he has had 4 oz in the last 2 days and he is definitely grumpy. Hopefully there will be better news in the next post.

2. The sound machine! This has been the biggest transition for us-even more than the bottle. It kept spazzing out and then shutting off so the night of his birthday I put it up for good. I just knew the tornado in his room was going to be replaced by a screaming baby, but so far so good.

3. Sitting still He definitely walks more than he crawls/butt scoots now, which is so fun! He has always been an active baby & it is so cute to see him walking around. He falls down but less and less everyday & has even learned how to walk around the dogs! He loves it and threw a MAJOR tantrum when I moved him out of the aisle at BabiesRUs. "Public" was judging a ridiculous amount considering they all were pregnant. Hey ladies, you keep registering for those cute newborn onesies and thinking how your precious baby will never do that. It's coming your way.

4. Baby Food He stopped eating it a few weeks ago, but now he completely refuses it. I would keep it around if he would eat it because eating is not really his thing right now. I know that is normal for this age, but it is slightly scary when an entire day's diet consists of half a cracker. I have about 10 different things I try at each meal with the hopes that one will stick. Some days he eats great-the other day he ate 21 blueberries in one sitting! His favorites right now seem to be oranges, blueberries, goldfish, Bop's chicken soup, black beans and yogurt. Thank God for yogurt, it has been our saving food many days.

Here is a little video of the day. Please notice the terror in his face on the first shot. I was so excited about turning the car seat around & had his "Anderson" cd on the birthday song and he really just seems traumatized (and awkwardly large?) by the whole thing. The clip where he is opening the present is also hilarious as Brandon realizes that we gave him a twice handed down toy. Nicole got it for Lily at a consignment sale & she didn't like it, but I knew he would love it. I love my son more than anything, but I also know that he just got A LOT of presents 2 weeks ago and has grandparents/aunts/friends who are going to spoil him rotten at his party next week. Clearly the kid is loved so I think it was ok.