Little Farmer

We made our annual Little Farmer trip two weekends ago. Brode was much more into it this time and we had perfect weather. Of course because it was perfect out everyone was there, but it was still fun! Brode mostly liked the playground and climbing on the hay much more. We stocked up on caramel apples and Brode picked a pumpkin just before having a meltdown and needing to leave. We may need to make another trip back for pies and muffins as the season goes on.

Birthday Weekend

Brode's 3rd birthday was Monday, September 26th! I can't believe he is 3! The jump from 2 to 3 has made him seem like a little kid instead of a toddler!

The Sunday before his birthday we had a party with family and friends. We made a spread, hung a few decorations and had a party! After combining each of the families we had quite a houseful! Brode got great gifts from everyone - he was desperately in need of fall clothes so all the pants and shirts were perfect, he got great learning games and books, art supplies, and some fun boy toys like Nerf guns and a chainsaw.

(LeapFrog Write and Scribble - teaches writing and identifying letters - amazing! He loves it!)

Brode's cake was an adventure in itself. We had this plan to make cake pops that look like basketballs, footballs, and baseballs then we would have this small basketball cake for Brode to blow candles out.

Major failure. The cake pops were beyond disaster so we baked a sheet cake and decorated it for everyone else. He was very embarassed when everyone san to him, but blew his candles out like a champ.

If you have been around Brode anytime in the last 6 months you know what he was begging for for his birthday. Every time we asked he begged for hockey skates. He wasn't overly noted for his party and turning 3, he ju st wanted skates so Daddy got his his first pair of skates and Grandma Beth got him elbow pads to go with them when learning to skate.

Brode was exhausted Sunday night after his party. Monday morning he was up bright and early to play with all of his new toys! Monday we kept him out of day care to celebrate!

Our first stop was the credit union. Brode has been filling his piggy bank when he was born so after 3 years we cashed it in to see how much he made - $164.34! That made a good dent in his savings account! After he picked his birthday prize we headed to Toys R Us to be the honored birthday boy where he got a crown and to pick a toy. We went to Monkey Joes to play before lunch time. Brode is always begging to go and loves every minute there. After running, jumping, and diving we headed out to lunch and home for a nap.

We spent the afternoon playing with new toys then went out to his first birthday dinner! We picked a restaurant that would sing to him, and he hated it just as much as adults do. After dinner we stopped at the Halloween store where he picked out his costume for this year, here is to hoping he actually wears it!

Tuesday morning Brode had his 3 year check! He finally weighs 31lbs (he was 29 for over a year) and he grew 3 inches, putting him at 38inches tall! That's 75% in height and 50% in wieght = tall and skinny.

That ends birthday weekend, Brode is already looking forward to 4!

It's back!

This post is not going to be exciting, as in exciting I mean only 1 picture.

I lost the camera. I'm horrible at misplacing things. First I lost my handheld video camera then my Kindle. They alwys show up a few weeks later in random (or not so random) places! Well of course I MISPLACED our little black camera. My dad was to the point of making me buy a new one when...

It shows up! Again!

In my golf bag!

I should have known. I THOUGHT I used it last in our kitchen, but I guess I forgot I brought it to the driving range again. My bag went to the back corner of the garage until our family golf outing on Labor Day weekend and as I was digging around for tees and wouldn't you know there is the camera!

Whew!

(I really need to work on this, it's horrible. Of course it's always the expensive things.)

Well anyways, there is probably no point in updating on yet ANOTHER month. I knew I said I'd work on it but things were crazy yet again. I finished my internship for school and had been continuing to work at the Y so the 50 hour weeks were a regular thing. Our empty weekends became full fast (including completing my first half marathon!) and time flew by.

I've got a bit more down time as I'm working two part time jobs while I look for jobs (it's sick to think that working two jobs is a slow time for me, ugh) so hopefully I can get some more updates.

Definetaly one next week because it's Brode's Birthday Week! We're having a little get together and I'm taking him out of day care on  Monday for a day of fun! Now that the camera is back I'll be sure to get a lot of pictures.

That's all for today, just letting you know we're still around and not giving up on the blog updates completely!

Weekend in iPhone pics

This past weekend we had NOTHING to do! Truthfully we had nothing on the schedule to do, so we had everything to do! I started capturing a few pictures on my phone then started realizing we had a whole lot of fun things we were doing and decided the whole weekend would be documented in iPhone pics (the camera on my iPhone 4 is sometimes clearer than my actual camera! love it!)

We started Friday coming home from day care with this:

Best art project ever, they were learning about the circus. Usually his projects come home and get saved in a box upstairs. He has loved this one and ran around making elephant noises and blowing the trunk out of his face.

Grandma got home and pulled out 5 dozen corn out of the back of the car! Of course curious little boy couldn't wait to inspect it all. We always get a lot of corn at the end of the summer to cook, shave off, and freeze to use throughout the winter - and it always tastes just as good even after being frozen. Much better than canned!

He volunteered to "help".

Once he was all corned out (after 1 piece) he jumped on his tractor to mow the lawn. Grandpa wears headphones and his iPod when he mows lawn so brode has picked up this new habit of copying. We have children's headphones that fit his head and soften the sound so we hook it up to an old iPod that fits in his pocket, turn on The Beatles and away he goes!

Saturday morning we got up bright and early to start playing.

Brode's pull-up was dry after breakfast so he asked me "Mom, can I wear underwears today?" I guess I'm going too slow on the potty training for him! I have just been dreading the accidents even though he keeps pull-ups dry all day. We have never pushed him to be potty trained, we just encourage and he started asking!The weather was beautiful and I knew we would be outside all day so we did it, Brode wore his first pair of underwear! He ended up keeping them dry until 5 minutes before bedtime. We're trying again this week at day care so he should be finished soon!

We headed outside to play. Grandpa was cleaning the garage and Brode insisted he needed an upgrade in tractor size.

While sweeping the toddler found a grasshopper. You forget that they haven't seen these strange things before so he chased and poked at the poor little thing as it jumped away.

I made lunch Brode tried new toys. A co-workers son had outgrown a few toys and wanted to pass them on so Brode has been enjoying them all week!

I put Brode down for a nap in my room so I could do his laundry and a major closet cleaning. After yanking clothes off every other hanger his closet was empty. I hadn't cleaned out his long sleeves from last year so there was a lot to catch up on! The final pile needed to be packed up for storage.

 After a short nap we woke Brode up and went to the Greenville parade. They have a Summer Send Off event every year that has a parade leading up to it. I was always in it along with my cousins when I was little so we knew it would be a big hit with Brode. He grabbed his bucket and was ready to catch candy.

He was really good at waving to all the people and floats!

His favorite float was Blades Hockey!

He was a bit shy in the beginning, especially because we were teaching him to stand in the road (he was not comfortable with that!), but by the end he was catching candy left and right!

We came home with quite a pile of winnings. A TON of candy, handouts, beads, a frisbee, and a stuffed animal!

Brode and I played outside after the parade and went for a bike ride before hitting the neighbors pool. Brode loves to jump in and have Miss Amy catch him!

Brode was drained by the end of the day, ate a huge dinner and a delicious root beer float before heading off to bed.

He was up with the sun the next morning ready to play again! After barely eating pancakes he was ready to run. With back to school deals going on we decided it was the best time to re-stock for Brode's empty closet. Brode, Grandma and I made our list of stops and set off with a bag of parade candy in hand.

After dog food, birthday party invites, Fleet Farm, and the grocery store we made our biggest hit for fall clothes.

We also found a few little extras that the growing boy could not be more excited about!

After shopping Brode was too exhausted for lunch and went straight down for a nap.We spent the afternoon playing outside, this time with a few of the neighbor boys. These high school boys love Brode and they are always looking for each other when they're outside. They played basketball, baseball, golf, tractor, and any other toy that Brode owns.

Once they were all tired out and dinner time was approaching they decided it would be a perfect time for S'mores. Well hey, it's summer, he is two, why not! The boys all enjoyed S'mores and jumping on the trampoline before finally coming in for dinner as the sun went down.

Once again Brode was exhausted after a long day, but couldn't wait to get his new shoes on. He wore them all night with his pajamas to get them broken in for day care Monday morning!

Wow, what a weekend. It was nice to have nothing but play time and we haven't had weather this perfect in a long time!

Eye Patch

Alright, so 3 months ago I informed everyone of our newest battle, the eye patch.

3 months later here we are. Last Friday (yeah, I know, late update) we went down to Milwaukee for a check-up. I was already dreading this appointment because the last time we were there our head surgeon told us "Come back in one year!" yay! Then the eye doctor told us "Come back in 2 months!" Boo! I originially had to work at my internship so I was just tuning out the entire appointment. In the end, the one day of the 12 weeks of my internship I was given off, was this day.

Grandpa, Brode, Daddy and I drove down to Milwaukee bright and early for a 9:30 appointment. A 20 minute, 9:30 appointment. It gets old - trust me. I was really looking to make some progress on our goals and future treatments at this appointment, but just didn't know what to expect. We had been patching Brode's eye for just over 2 months and were meeting with his ophthamologists consultant to gauge where his current vision is now. The first appointment he had vision of 20/25 in one eye and 20/50 in the other. We patched the strong eye to strengthen the weak one. After doing a matching game we determined his vision IS...... 20/25 in one eye, 20/40 in the other. Ugh. The progress is good and they were extremely surprised how well Brode sat, matched, and took direction (proud mother right here - yes!) but the next answer what now what I wanted hear.

More patching. Our ultimate goal is to perform surgery on his eye muscles so that he tracks from left to right correctly. Muscle weakness determination and surgery cannot be performed until they know he is seeing properly. Therefore, the 20/40 eye needs to come down to 20/25 so they are symmetrical. 3 more months of patching it is until we reassess. Other bad news, once we reassess we need to start weaning. Brode didn't breastfeed, he jumped straight from the bottle to the cup, and he never had a nuk, I've never had to wean and I didn't plan on it! They'll slowly lower the number of hours he needs to wear it a day until they are sure that he can sustain the 20/25 vision or better with the weak eye. If he can't, they'll bump it back up and keep trying. This calls for many appointments down to Milwaukee and back to keep measuring.

I'm taking it harder than Brode, and I don't even have to wear the patch. I put it on his eye at 7am and send him off to day care where he wears it for 4-6 hours, they take it off and it's done. He has even gotten much better at wearing it, there are no tears to put it on, and I've gotten a "Will you put my eye patch on before my shoes?" I'm sure we'll get through 3 months easily. We've stocked up on our boxes of patches and are still just working away with them.

Always remember, things could be much worse!

Ok, next time a more exciting post. I've got a good hodge-podge of pictures to share, including Brode and the cinnamon roll bigger than his head! Check back!

Miracle Treat Day

Tomorrow August 11th is Miracle Treat Day all over North America!

Children's Miracle Network raises money for Children's hospitals across the country which is the usd for research, training, equipment, and suppot programs as the hospitals. At all local Dairy Queens portions of blizzard sales will go directly to the local Children's Miracle Network hospital!

Children's Hospital of Wisconsin is a Children's Miracle Network hospital, clearly having given us a lot of care in the past! CMN provided a tremendous amount of documents to prepare Brode as well as our family for our visits, how to talk about surgery with him, as well as resources for anything we needed while in Milwaukee.

Since Brode's surgery he has been included into CHW's - Children's Champion group. Children's Champions and their families are asked to speak at events and telethons, volunteer for CHW activities and events, do photoshoots to be featured in calenders, pamphlets and more. They are also asked to advocate and participate in their local communities events for the hospital.

In June as Walmart and Sam's club did their Miracle Network campaign our Champion Brode went to the local stores shopping, thanked them and indicated how directly their work effects families in or communities (ok maybe I did that part) and presented them with pins to wear throughout the campaign.

On Thursday August 11th we will be going to the local Dairy Queens, purchasing a blizzard, thanking the managers and workers for their work towards CMN and giving window stickys to promote CMN and CHW!

Visit miracletreatday.com to learn more!

I know it's a tough job, eating the ice cream and all, but we hope you'll take your friends and family out for Blizzards on the warm Thursday night to directly help Children's Hospital of Wisconsin where children and families are going through the emotional times we were once in!

Busy Weekend

Last weekend we didn't have too many plans, but of course it became a busy weekend! Doesn't that always happen?

We had gotten tickets to EAA so after Brode and Grandpa went on Tuesday we went again on Saturday! This time we went to the KidVenture tents where Brode got to fly a mini plane, do a pedal plane, color wooden planes, and many more activities.

When we got up to the main grounds we walked around for a bit then went to the air show. The beginning of the show was about all the war bombers and what they were used for - we struggled to keep our attention. They got to the planes that do the loops and tricks right as the cold front and storm rolled in. I'm talking a huge gust of freezing air and rain sent us all sprinting to the tents! They grounded all the planes and we headed for the traffic to get out.

(Brode wanted to take pictures again like he did with Grandpa, so we took one of each other!)

After the day at EAA we were resting Sunday morning. Grandpa and Brode were reading the paper when all of a sudden, I don't know how it happened, but we decided to go to the Brewer game! They had an afternoon game that worked perfect with Brode's schedule and we thought for sure there would be extra tickets. We all started getting ready while grandpa looked for tickets and of course it was sold out! After working some magic on StubHub (try it!) we got tickets 9 rows directly behind home plate. Not too shabby!

We drove down right away and made it just in time for the trek from the farthest parking lot to get there for the beginning of the game.

Brode's eyes were wide when he saw the stadium! We saw a great 5-4 win against the Astros and Brode loved every minute. He got popcorn, a corn dog, and ice cream, cheered for the runs, watched Bernie Brewer go down the slide, and entertained everyone around us!

The game we went to happened to be Kids Club Day, so wouldn't you know it Brode got to run the bases after the game! He was a bit nervous at first but then he took off running for second and finished strong.

You bet, it only took him 3 minutes to fall asleep on the way home!