It's Pumpkin Time!

This past weekend, we decided to carve our pumpkin. We had taken the boys to a pumpkin patch on Thanksgiving where we picked out two pumpkins, one large pumpkin for carving and one smaller pumpkin that Joshua picked out. Last year, Chris and I were a bit excited about carving pumpkins and carved them a bit too early (I’m talking beginning of October early) so our pumpkins barely made it to Halloween (and by barely, I mean we should have gotten rid of them the week before Halloween).

So this year, we were patient.

On Saturday evening, we brought the pumpkin inside, washed off the dirt, and got to cutting it open. I started cutting the pumpkin open and apparently looked like I had the ability to lose a finger doing so, so Chris finished it for me (luckily, I was trusted to carve the pumpkin). Joshua was so excited about the process of cleaning out the pumpkin. A few times he turned to me with pumpkin “guts” in his hand and said “ewww, disgusting on Joshua’s hand.” I had so much fun watching his enjoyment of cleaning the pumpkin and he did an awesome job. Finally I got to carving the pumpkin and below is our end result of our family pumpkin! 

A Kelsey Emergency

I’m going to start off this post by saying that I have an Ileostomy. I’ve had an ileostomy since I was 17 and it saved my life. Having an ileostomy has been a great thing for me, but with it can come some serious complications. Illnesses that just cause others to feel under the weather, like a common cold or stomach bug, can knock me right off my feet.

And that brings me to yesterday. I must have ate something that my stomach didn’t agree with or picked up a stomach bug, but Thursday early morning, I was so sick. My ileostomy started to act up, I was nauseous, and even the thought of having a drink made my stomach turn. I woke Chris up at 4:30 and this is how our conversation went:

Me: I don’t feel good.

Chris: What’s wrong?

Me: I don’t feel good and I feel dehydrated.

Chris: Do you want some water?

Me: No.

Chris: Do you want some Tylenol?

Me: No.

Chris: What do you need?

Me: Nothing.

Chris: Do you want to cuddle?

Me: No…I feel like throwing up.

I had a very restless night and managed to get some sleep between 5:30 and 6:30, before my alarm went off. I got up, determined that I was okay and could go to work. That lasted all of 5 minutes before I crawled back into bed. My energy was depleted. Thankfully, I have an amazing support team. Chris wrangled up the boys, got them ready, and made them breakfast. Then my mom came and picked them up to take them to daycare (which she does not want to do again since the boys were so upset when she dropped them off). At around 9:30, I realized I needed help. I couldn’t catch up on my fluids, my heart felt like it was beating out of my chest, I had leg cramps, and struggled to breathe. I called Chris, who left work to pick me up and take me to the hospital. When we got there and I saw the wait time was 4-5 hours, I wanted to turn around and walk right back out, but I felt too sick. So I went back to triage where they took my vitals and immediately hooked me up to an IV (having a resting heartrate of 140bpm is alarming). I was able to wait in triage, instead of the waiting room, for a bed to become available, and luckily it only took about 20 minutes. The entire time, Chris made sure I was comfortable and made light of being stuck in the hospital. On a side note: I don’t think Chris has a career as a doctor in his future.

After having 2 litres of fluid pumped into me, I was given the okay to go home, rest, and drink lots of fluids. That evening, the bowl of soup I had managed to eat gave me terrible indigestion and made for a long evening of very stinky burps (haha, so attractive on my part). I was so exhausted that Chris and I went to bed at 8:30.

As of this morning, I am feeling much better and hydrated. I am so thankful for my wonderful boyfriend who has officially experienced his first “Kelsey emergency.” 

Thanksgiving Weekend

I have so many reasons to be thankful (every single day), the main reason is my family. I will never be able to say it enough or explain how truly blessed I feel to have two amazing boys who call me mommy and an adoring boyfriend, who makes me feel like I am his entire world.

This Thanksgiving weekend was full of family, fun, and lots of turkey. We spent Saturday at the farm with Chris’ family (where all Joshua wanted to do was bowl and Grayson played shy and just wanted mama snuggles) and Sunday out of town with more of Chris’ family (where Joshua spent the entire day running around with the other kids and Grayson spent a quiet day with my parents). And Monday we spent with my family, where pork roast was highly anticipated after eating turkey all weekend. And since we were all cheering for the Jays to pull off another win and take it to game 5, we ate our dessert in front of the TV (dinner was periodically interrupted to sneak a peak at the score).

On Monday, we also took the boys out to a pumpkin patch to pick out pumpkins, a tradition that we started last year. We picked out a big one to carve and a small one because Joshua was set on having a small pumpkin. We also picked up 4 mini pumpkins to decorate since we had cornstalks to put up on our front porch. So now, our house is officially decorated for fall (something we weren’t going to do but somehow, cornstalks ended up in our garage while we were out). All that is left to do is carve the pumpkin.

Late Night Thief

It's 11:30 p.m. and I am woken up from a sound sleep. I can hear Joshua yelling for me in tears. He sounds panicked and I feel like I can't get to him fast enough. There he is, crying hysterically in his bed, barely able to catch his breath. And here I am, not sure what's wrong and barely able to function in my drowsiness. So I do what seems most natural, I cuddle him up in my arms and tell him everything is okay and that mommy is here. After about 10 minutes, Joshua has calmed down to the point of only sniffles and I am able to sneak out of his room and get back to sleep. 

It is now 3:30 a.m. and I slowly wake up to what I think is crying...was that part of my dream or is something wrong? Something is wrong, Joshua is crying hysterically again. I hate seeing my baby like this, something must be wrong. Is he having nightmares, was there a storm that I missed, what is wrong? I cuddle Joshua up in my arms and ask him what is wrong, and his response? “My cup!! My cup!!!”

Back up to 9:00 p.m., Chris and I always check on the boys before we go to bed. Joshua normally goes to bed with a sippy cup of water (with an ice cube, as per his request) but last night he wanted milk. I didn’t want him to drink any of the milk that was left in the morning, so I took his sippy cup. Now, what I should have done was replaced it with another sippy cup of water, but how is a mom to know?

Fast forward back to 3:30 a.m. and this mama can save the night! I quickly race to the bathroom (where I know he has left a sippy cup of water…he leaves them all over the house) and bring it back to him. TaaDaa! Here you go buddy, here’s a sippy cup. He quickly stops crying and happily grabs his cup and snuggles into bed with it, closes his eyes, and drifts back to sleep .

And this mama is able to crawl back into bed and stare at the ceiling because she is now wide awake.

I’ll have to make sure this evening the sippy cup thief doesn’t strike again! 

The Sweet Sound of Laughter

Have you ever heard a noise that grabs your attention the second you hear it? A noise that stops you in your tracks no matter what you are doing? A noise that draws you to it? A noise that completely melts your heart?

That noise for me is the sound of Joshua and Grayson’s laughter. No matter what I am doing, it will halt me in my tracks and I just have to go see what is making the two of them so incredibly happy.

Last night, I was cleaning up after dinner when I heard the loud laughter coming from the bathroom. Joshua and Grayson were laughing hysterically and I wondered what they were laughing about because I wanted to join in on this fun too. So I sneaked upstairs and peaked my head around the bathroom door, and I saw Chris scooping up the bathtub bubbles and blowing them out of his hand and it had our two boys in hysterical laughter. Joshua was also scooping up the bubbles for Chris to blow and Grayson sat and watched patiently, his laughter beginning as soon as he saw the bubbles in Joshua’s hands.

Their laughter melts my heart and these sweet moments make the most precious memories.

Elf on a Shelf

This Christmas season, Chris and I have decided that we want to buy Joshua and Grayson an Elf on the Shelf. It looks like fun and Joshua is at an age now where he will understand and remember that he has to go hunting for an elf each morning.  Part of me thinks this game is more for the parents than it is the kids…I’m probably going to be more excited about hiding this elf than Joshua is going to be finding it.

Naming an elf is serious business in our house. We don’t want to just pick any name because this name is going to stick with this elf which means we are going to have to like it for the next 10+ years. The elf needs to have a Christmas themed name, one that is witty and makes sense (at least to us). I know some families would have their children pick the elf’s name, but when you have a 3 year old who is obsessed with certain cartoons and also likes to name things what they actually are, we would either end up with an elf named Gru or an elf named Elf.

So Chris and I have taken matters into our own hands. We don’t even own this elf yet, but here we are, being the dedicated parents that we are, trying to come up with an appropriate name for this thing. And of all the possible names there are for this, I think it’s going to be named Ralphie. And let me just say, I cannot stand the Christmas movie that we have taken the name from, but Chris on the other hand loves it. And I’m sure this year and every year to come, just like last year, he’ll come to me with his boyish good looks and charm and ask me to watch it with him because he knows I can’t say no. 

The Small Moments

Life is busy, it has always been busy, but I never knew how busy it could get. This busyness thing is a real thing, it’s not just something I say or make up or joke about. It’s not always easy to balance schedules and work and daycare and meals and kids and anything else that just happens to pop up, but for the most part, I think Chris and I do a fairly good job of keeping everything running smoothly like a fine tuned machine.

But sometimes, just sometimes, something slips and we end up with 3 bags of milk open, more specifically, 3 bags of 3.25% milk that only Grayson drinks, or a wallet gets left in a pant pocket and washed, or a banana bread loaf gets left in the oven and is hard as a brick by the time the burnt banana smell is noticed wafting around the house, or a washing machine is cleaned and the filter isn’t properly secured and water is running into the basement.

It’s these things that happen in the busyness of life that make for funny stories later on. Normally I don’t find these situations amusing while they are happening, like when I drink Grayson’s milk wondering why it tastes so thick and wonder how Chris just managed to drink a whole glass and not mention it. Or when Chris just looks at me and says nothing (he doesn’t need to because his eyes were saying it all) when I pull my banana bread out of the oven that was under cooked before I forgot about it. It’s these moments that we can look back on and laugh about. These moments remind me that life can’t be taken too seriously and we need to have fun, laugh, and enjoy every moment.

As I once read somewhere: life’s short, smile while you still have teeth.