winter | The Angel Forever

Category Archives winter

Fall, where are you?

Posted on October 21, 2008 5:15 pm by TheAngelForever

Depending on where you live you may have noticed that fall seems to be quickly slipping away. The signs here are all there:

Leaves almost all off the trees

Frost outside in the morning – sometimes enough that you have to scrape it off the windshield

Temperatures barely making it to the 40’s or 50’s during the day

Temperatures below 30 in the night

Frozen fingers

Toescicles on the bottom of your feet

When all of this begins you start to think about heat. Will it kick on when you test it out? And, of course, the biggest question of all. . . . when do you finally give in to the numb feeling in your feet and hands and turn on the heat?

For us the answer was checking things out a few weeks ago when the temperatures started to dip. Thankfully everything went on with no trouble. Our thermostat is set at 62. The heat will only turn on when it goes below that, or when one of the kids has a tub and we turn it up slightly.

Yesterday morning it was below 30 outside. I had to take NHL into school to bring his antibiotic eye drops in. It was bone chilling outside and I know it is just the start of things. When JSL and I arrived back into our 62 degree house it seemed toasty warm. Goes to show it is all a matter of perspective. Right after JSL went for a nap it was time to put the all important flannel sheets onto our bed.

Let me tell you those were quite welcomed last night when I put my purple and blue toes into bed. Silly me, I was working on something in the living room and did not wear any socks. I think I learned my lesson. Now I just need to convince another little someone that going sans socks is not a smart thing to do for at least another 5-6 months.

While I am at it, I suppose I should tell him that includes stripping his socks and shoes while out and about in the car, restaurant, mall . . . . or anywhere these days!

BTW – Quick update on the potty kid. Yesterday our #2 did a #2 while sitting on our throne!

Categories:
house jsl milestone sarcasm weather winter

They stayed in their room – ALL night!

Posted on February 28, 2008 11:23 am by TheAngelForever

For the first time in weeks both of the boys stayed in their room all night.

WAHOO!!!!!!

Sure, JSL fussed a few times, but he managed not to bunk with us for any of the night. He was so exhausted from no afternoon nap. Why? Well, thanks to another snow storm NHL’s school was on a 2 hour delay. It just was not worth taking him for 10:00 to pick him up at 1:00. Too much effort. Plus Tuesday night NHL was up with several nightmares again. So we did a PJ day here. Every time that JSL fell asleep in the afternoon he would hear NHL and wake up

This is Spud on the couch in the morning:

The brotherly spats started already. NHL was upset that JSL got his toy. NHL took it away and JSL went crawling over to him at one point and slapped him. This at nine months – I am in for it! Here are the sweet boys together after the mini tiff.

Near brotherly headlock

JSL quickly lost interest in sitting with his big brother and wanted to be on the move. He would not take both of my hands. So he took one and I took some shots from above for a different perspective on things.

As nice as it was to have both of the boys with me for the day . . . it was a LONG 9 hour day. It was great to see NHL head out to school for a few hours.

I even managed to get JSL out of his PJ’s for the first time since he has been back from the hospital. I figured it was time, plus it was a way to celebrate that he is officially done with antibiotic.

Then it was time for the boys to say goodbye to each other.

Poor JSL was sad to see big brother go. . . I think.

I will cherish these moments now. Before I know it the two of them will be clawing at each other and wresting on the floor while screaming for me to stop the other.

P.S. – Stay tuned . . . a new blog design is coming soon. My webmaster (JL) is almost done so it can go live and then we can tweak things. A giveaway will be coming with that too!

Categories:
brothers jsl nhl photos sleep winter

A LONG icy day

Posted on February 14, 2008 10:11 am by TheAngelForever

Yesterday morning every single school in the area was closed thanks to the 3-4 inches of snow that we received topped off with an icy mess. During the morning commute freezing rain was making for an even more treacherous drive in to work for hubby. NHL was home from school, so it was going to be an interesting day with both of the kids trapped inside thanks to the freezing rain and ice.

To make things even more "fun" JSL woke up and his eye was completely glued shut. Not a good sign after using antibiotic drops for almost two days. In addition to this I mentioned to JL that his face was puffy. Sure enough, not only were his upper and lower eyelids red and puffy, but his cheeks that are already big, was horribly distorted on that side of his face. The picture below shows how he can not open his right eye entirely and you can see the puffy cheek. At this point the redness was not as intense as it eventually got and the flash washed it out a lot.

I freaked out and immediately called the doctor’s office at 8:00. After that I called the pharmacy to see about an allergic reaction response to the drops. I was curious about this since I am allergic to that family of medicines. They told me to stop and wait until I heard back from the doctor. At 11:00 (yes, you read that right) the nurse from the doctor’s office called me. She basically said that JSL had to be seen. Ice or not they were very concerned. I took a 3:00 appointment and called hubby with the news. There was no way I could clean off my icy car, and the house with a clingy 9 month old and 4 year old in the house with me.

This is what the hockey rink outside of my house looked like.

Ice Prints

I nearly fell just trying to stick my nose out the door to take the photos. This is the tree right outside the door. Many other trees came down thanks to the icy . . . along with power lines galore.

Another look at the walkway an hour or so after JL left for work.

NHL enjoyed lounging on the couch in the morning, but was jealous that Mommy was with the baby most of the time.

JL took a half day off and met me home at about 1:00. We left our house at 2:00 after I broke my car out from under the ice. When we got to the doctor’s office his eye was performing nicely. I have NEVER in my life seen an eye ooze so much green nastiness. Mind you as a mommy of a 4 year old and a teacher, I have seen a lot of pinkeye. While there we also noticed that tooth #7 has officially cut and is moving up in the world rather nicely. When the PA came in and said he had a really nasty case of pinkeye and thankfully he did not believe it was anything worse. He told us that the eye is draining into his cheek and causing the swelling. Basically JSL gets a beautiful first case of pinkeye at 9 months old. He changed the prescription to a different antibiotic, only this time I have to pry open his eye for an ointment four times a day for the next week. We also canceled his well baby visit for today and rescheduled for two weeks from now.

After picking up the baby’s new medicine we went home. As we were on the street before ours we saw that a firetruck was blocking the road. We went around another way and saw there were a lot of people there. Then we saw that the traffic light was out. Ugh, not a good sign at all.

Sure enough when I went inside to check we had no power. I grabbed a few things and checked in with my parents. They had power, so we went to crash there. Our sweet neighbor was kind enough to agree to call us when we got power back so we could try to avoid darkness, cold and candles with the boys. At 7:20 she finally called and we were on our way home with two very tired boys.

_______________________________________________

After the boys were in bed JL and I exchanged Valentine’s Day gifts early. Tonight we are going to my parent’s house for dinner since Aunt M, Cousin S, and M’s mother are in town (someone always has something when we see Aunt M and Uncle I).

JL gave me a Whirley Pop and a great knitting bag (thanks to Laura for helping him with that). I can not wait to use both of them. Hmmm. . . popcorn when knitting sounds yummy!

I bought JL some dark chocolate and Cooking Mama Cook Off for the Wii. He enjoyed it when we rented it, so I thought it would be nice for our chef to have.

JL played his game and I started knitting a Peek-A-Blue (basically Blues Clues) wash cloth.

Later the boys will get their gifts, as will Cousin S.

Categories:
doctor holidays jl jsl knitting nhl sick kid teething winter

Wordless Wednesday – Winter Baby Blues

Posted on February 13, 2008 11:49 am by TheAngelForever

Categories:
jsl winter Wordless Wednesday

Great green globs of eye boogers

Posted on February 11, 2008 6:31 pm by TheAngelForever

Ugh, we have another first here on the baby front. Yes, JSL officially has become a member of the family and thanks to his first ever bout of pink eye right before Aunt M and Cousin S come to visit. For those that are new or may not remember, every time my brother and his family come here or we go to visit them someone gets sick. On the way to their wedding, almost two years ago, NHL had pink eye and the next evening had a 103 fever. So here is it Monday before they come on Thursday and JSL is going to start antibiotics later.

I was not sure at first if it was just his eye being irritated from the cold, nasty wind when Mommy took him out this morning. When we went to pick NHL up from school it was oozing stuff, but not pink or swollen. This afternoon he napped again, woke up scared and shivering since he could not open his eye. Sure enough green eye boogers were staring me in the face. UGH! In addition to that his eye was swollen and didn’t open well and getting pretty pink.

The doctor was called and gave him a script for eye drops to kick this in the butt. Aunt M was then called to tell she’s a jink (just kidding) and she agreed we should treat both eyes since he is already rubbing from one eye to the other. You just can not tell an almost 9 month old NOT to do that.

So the poor kid has tooth sever coming in, a small goose egg from yesterday (he went lunging at the table leg an hour after the other incident – forgot to mention that yesterday) and now will be traumatized with pink eye drops. Hopefully he will rest well tonight like this:

A nice quiet evening would be lovely since the wind was horrible last night. We had a mysterious noise all evening that made me think a train was coming through our driveway. This morning I figured out the cause. Our neighbor’s roof vent is hanging on by almost nothing and is blowing in the gusts to make the horrid noise. Here is what it looks like when the wind is not lifting it straight up in the air. Hopefully tomorrow it will be fixed and nobody or anything will be hurt/broken before.

Time to snuggle with the little monster who will likely share his pink eye with Mommy. Hopefully it will not mess up my eye appointment to have that lump checked.