Thanksgiving!

Thanksgiving! My grandma has been ill. She has brain tumor that was discovered over the summer. The weird thing is it is a fast growing tumor and probably started around the time the boys were born. With the long term prognosis not good for the type of tumor it is, we made our first deviation from our holiday plans to spend Thanksgiving in Dayton with my family. I knew it would probably be the last Thanksgiving that we would have to spend with her. In fact it was the first time since M and I started dating that we didn’t spend a holiday with her family. I know it made it hard on her but I don’t think they always recognize that I don’t get the opportunity to spend time with family at the holidays and how hard it is. I think M did a great job of explaining it to them and paps was so supportive and helpful to make the time we got to spend with mamaw special.

As far as the trip goes, it was extremely stressful for us. Uprooting and going to Dayton takes and extreme amount of effort on M and I’s part. I don’t think my family really respects the time it takes either. I think they think we can just do this all at the snap of a finger. Here’s a sample of what we got to do just packing wise, boys dressed and loaded, toys, breastfeeding pillow, pump, food, milk, formula, snacks, diapers, wipes, change of clothes, sleepers, and did I mention we haven’t gotten a bigger car and I could keep going as there is more. To top it off, Mamaw wasn’t having a good day but she left me with a memory I will cherish forever. Since having her surgery and the gradual decline, she has days where she isn’t always with it. Today she was tired and just not having a good day. My aunt and mom were helping here back to her room for bed with her walker. I was blocking the route she needed and my aunt told me to move or she would run me over, I said, “if she does I probably deserved it.” As Mamaw got right next to me she stopped and said,” You would have deserved it!” and then cracked a smile. I will never forget that smile she made after saying that to me.

Long Time No Update

I am going back and finally getting some of these updates in and will really make more of an effort to get timely updates. The boys turned 9 months old on this day. It has really flown by and I have always said I will be a parent who doesn’t look back and say, “Wow, the time has really flown by.” It has and there is really nothing I can do about it. Here are the 9 month stats, taken from M’s blog.

Jackson:- 13lbs 12oz (0th percentile)- 27.5 inches tall (25th percentile)- 17.75 head (40th percentile)Sumner:- 15lbs 13oz (1st percentile)- 28.5 inches tall (52nd percentile)- 18.25 head (70th percentile) hello big head!

What else have I missed, there was Halloween. Sumner was a dragon and Jackson was a hot dog. We found some really great outfits at Old Navy. We had some duck outfits that we got from somewhere. Don’t ask me where ‘cause I don’t know, but I bet M could tell you. I wasn’t feeling the duck. There should be some rule out there that tells people not to buy them outfits for any Holidays in their first years. It should be the parents choice. I know M and I disagree but I think the first year we are establishing ourselves as parents and setting the boundaries to how we are going to parent. M will tell you I am being difficult because I don’t like people telling me what to do, which is also right.

Speaking of which, we were flipping channels and landed on QVC and they we advertising our home phone we have. They showed us this feature I was unaware we had. I should have read the manual. There is a button on our phone that we can push and it will automatically mute the ringer on all the phones and if someone calls they will go directly to the answering machine. They cool thing is we don’t even hear the answering machine. I wish we could use it every night at 9:30 (which is the normal cut off for phone calls but should be more like 8:00 with the boys being in bed at 7:00) to prevent people from waking the boys, but with M being a teacher and possible snow days we would need to be able to hear the phone. It works great on Saturday and Sunday mornings so we can have some peace and quite while the boys sleep in a little.