Time for breakfast!

The kids have not been getting enough sleep - it's light out until late so they go to bed late, but it's also light early, so they get up.  Poor Henry gets more and more tired until he crashes for a long nap every few days.

Yesterday he woke up from his long nap at around 5pm.  He was actually pretty happy when he came down the hall, which surprised me a bit.  Then he announced it was breakfast time, and he wanted some cereal.  I was making dinner, but he was hungry, so I poured him some Cheerios and he happily ate them.

Miracle on Grass

Emmett's soccer team tied again today (that makes 1 loss and 2 ties so far for the season).  It was 2-2, and Emmett did a couple of really great things.  First, while he was playing in goal, he charged from the goal line at the right time when an offensive player was uncontested coming towards the goal. Unfortunately (or maybe fortunately), his self-preservation instinct prevented him from coming up with the ball in that encounter and they scored.  Still, he charged at the right time and I consider that a win.

Another time, when Emmett was deep in our half of the field, he got the ball and quickly passed it to an Zack near the half line.  Zack carried the ball a bit and then passed to McKenzie who was open.  After beating one defender, McKenzie passed it to Ashely who took a shot on goal.  She missed, but I never expected these kids to be able to complete a passing chain and effectively move the ball up the field like that!  It was great.

The real reason I'm uploading videos!

Emmett's neighborhood friends both have bikes and have been riding them for a while.  David and I figured we should help him learn to ride one sometime soon, but hadn't gotten around to it.  The only thing I did was to tell him that if he learned to ride his friends' bikes, we'd buy him his own.  Well, leave him alone for long enough and he'll teach himself!  These videos were taken over a period of about 15 minutes this evening.

In the first one, notice the helpful brother and neighbor kids scooting right into his path as he goes by:

A few minutes later, he's doing a bit better:

Not much later and by George, I think he's got it!

Henry is odd

Henry was "spitting" audibly into his hands over and over.  It was odd and pictures just didn't do it, so I took a little video:

Henry sings the ABC song

At bedtime, Henry was torturing Luke by singing the ABC song over and over and over again.  I took a video and promised to post it if he promised to stop singing the song in bed.  He agreed, so here's the video.

What brothers are for

Not long ago, Luke's bottom front teeth started getting loose.  Since Emmett's permanent teeth came in behind and didn't push his baby teeth out (the dentist pulled them), I encouraged him to wiggle them.

I didn't need to worry - Emmett pulled the tooth right out a few days ago.  They were playing with the foam "pool noodles" in the basement.  They battle with them, mostly whacking each other.  Sometimes, though, they bite the noodles.  I've discouraged it because it damages the noodles and I don't like finding bites of foam in the basement, but on that day, Luke bit the noodle.  Emmett continued swinging it around, and Luke was suddenly without a tooth.  He bled a little because it wasn't really ready to come out (the new tooth isn't visible and it's been 5 days now).

Luke recovered quickly, though, and we found his tooth in the carpet.  Luke insists that there is no such thing as a tooth fairy, but he still didn't refuse the money that showed up under his pillow.

Head injury Henry

Long story short(er):  A couple weeks ago, Henry hit his head.  Then he started throwing up so we went to the ER where he got a CT scan and was declared fine.  The next morning, he was running in the house, hit his head on a corner, and needed four staples in his head to close the gash.  It was literally 18 hours from the time we went to the ER one evening until we left urgent care the next morning with staples.  When we went to get the staples out, one got stuck and while they were trying to get it out, the whole cut re-opened so once it was finally out, he got 4 more staples.  In the end, he was very nervous about the idea of getting the staples out again so David did it while he slept (urgent care let us take the remover home, they would have thrown it away).

There are only a few things I want to remember about this ordeal, so here goes:

While waiting in a room in the ER, Henry seemed really tired (which made us nervous).  David started making faces to try to make him smile, and Henry promptly stuck his tongue out at David.  That made us feel much better.

The CT machine was like a huge vertical donut with a narrow bed coming out from it.  There was no talk about sedating him, and I wondered if he'd be ok without me.  The nurse said it would be better if I wasn't in the room, but I could stay if I had to.  Henry was calm, so I told him I'd be right through the window and left with the nurse and CT technician.  The donut moves around a bit to scan different planes of the brain, but Henry just lay still the whole time (probably less than 90 seconds, really).  I could see that he was staring at me the whole time - he did great!  Once the CT scan was over, Henry was talkative and alert - much more normal behavior.  Was he reflecting my relief that the scan was over and went well?  After that, he just wanted to go home.

Henry also did great when they put the staples in his head.  We brought an iPod touch and he was playing "Cut the Rope" the entire time.  They'd used numbing gel on the cut, and he didn't even seem to notice the first two staples go in.  I think he felt the next two a bit, but he quickly went back to playing his game.

The first attempt to remove the staples was a horrible ordeal, but whenever the "insult" was over (be it shots of lidocaine or the doctor tugging on the staple / cut), he'd immediately be back to playing his game.  We even managed to get his attention on it during the tugging, sometimes.

The day before the staples were due to be removed, I mentioned to Henry that he was getting his staples out soon.  He was nervous about it, so I demoed removing a staple from an orange with the staple remover.  I thought he might want a try, but he didn't want anything to do with it.  I quickly put them away and decided that we'd try to get the staples out while he slept, and if we had trouble then we'd do it awake at the Dr's office.

David did a great job of removing the staples.  After playing with the remover on regular staples in an orange (a poor facsimile, but practice nonetheless), he figured out what went wrong the first time and had a plan to be damn sure it wasn't happening again.  With Henry asleep, I held his head and David took the staples out using a flashlight in the dark room!  He didn't even wake up.

The next morning we told Henry his staples were out and showed them to him.  He was so relieved!  He immediately wanted to play with the orange and staple remover.  I think he took 100 staples out of that orange over the next couple of days!  (and his brothers did, too)

If mom had four wheels she'd be a wagon

Luke just came out of bed to enlighten David and me.  Here's what he said:

"If 'u' and 'e' were not vowels, 'Luke' would be a word with no vowels."

(David replied with the title of the post.)

Spring Skiing

Today was quite likely our last day skiing, and it was a pretty short one at that.  In the morning, skiing through deep powder tired Luke out.  After eating lunch on the early side, he stayed with me and Henry.  All that work in the morning started David's knee hurting, so the afternoon wasn't long either.  Luke went out for one last run and we were home just after 2pm.  Pretty great snow for mid April, though!

Definitely our son

At an outdoor potluck on Easter, Emmett looked at a large dial-type thermometer and then asked me "Mom, do you know what temperature is the same for Celsius and Fahrenheit?" 

As it turned out, David had taken a "how much science do you know" quiz on the computer just the night before, and mentioned to me that very fact, so I told Emmett, "Yes I do - it's 40 below zero." 

He said, "yep!" and I asked him if he'd talked to Dad about it, or if he'd just noticed it on the thermometer.  He had just noticed it.

This whole conversation took place in front of our neighbor.  I had a hard time deciding whether to tell him that David and I had talked about that bit of science trivia the night before or not - which is less weird - for that to come up repeatedly in my family, or for me to just know that fact?  (I told him David and I talked about it the day before.)