Brown has a sister!

Well, Brown is almost 2 years old. Thinking back to the roller coaster ride of 2 winters ago in Utah...from first holding this boy attached to tubes and monitors...to flying him home to Chattanooga...to night time feedings...to preoccupations with fans, clocks, trucks, water...ER visits...fun in the water...running with the stroller...camping in below freezing weather...diapers in the middle of the night...diapers in the middle of the night while camping in freezing weather... etc. Most parents will have been through many similar experiences which is just all part of raising a child. And though we have had a false start or two, we are about to do it again. As we enter this new phase in our family life, we think back on all the prayers and help that we have received from family and friends and are most grateful. Thank you.

In some ways, we all live at the center of our own little universe. The world in some ways does seem like it should revolve around us. Learning that this is not the case is part of growing up, and stepping into our roles as individuals. Brown is to begin a crash course in this form of study. His world will have to make room for another child. When someone asks about the baby (as still happens), they will likely be referring to the new baby, and not to the almost 2 year old! This brings emotions to the surface for me even as I type this today. How in the world will we have room in our hearts for another child when our love for this child threatens to burst the bounds of our love even now?

Have we learned anything as parents? I hope so, but if we felt inadequate for one child, we feel twice as inadequate for 2 children. We are approaching this second child with some degree of fear and trepidation. Our prayer continues to be that we will continue to be equipped sufficiently for the situation that presents itself.

We are all about to find out. Please join Brown in welcoming his new little sister, Joseay Rebekah, to our family. The adventure continues.

Chris has posted a birth announcement at http://www.joseay.com/ and we will be continuing to blog about Brown, Joseay, family and life at http://chattanoogachaffins.blogspot.com/

This will be our last post at this blog. It's been fun. Thanks for following Brown's life, and we can't wait to share more ridiculous stories about Brown and Joseay on our new family blog.

What can Brown do for you

Well after a night of revelry and sugar (not really- in the house by 9 and no sugar for the Brown), my family seems to be taking advantage of the time change. I think Chris and Brown both think that we gained 3 hours rather than 1 as they are still snoozing away. As you can see, we dressed our little 22 month old as a delivery man though getting him to wear a hat is still just about impossible and the great little trick or treating bag made out of a UPS mailing package that we fashioned for him, there was not a chance that he was going to carry it. Anyway, we had great fun running around playing and barging in on our friends and family for the evening - thanks for your hospitality!

The Beach!

As any parent knows, seeing your kid really enjoy the beach for the first time is so fun for some reason. I have no idea why. But it is great. As my friend Anna said, you just have to embrace the sand. It is everywhere. And it doesn't bother Brown, so I have to try and not let it bother me. As he ran down the beach (or toddled quickly) yesterday, he wiped out face first several times and ate mouthfuls of sand. It would slow him down for only a minute while he waited me to scoop it out of his mouth with my finger as best I could, and then he would stand up and take off again. I can't figure out how he kept his eyes open with grains of sand hanging off of every eye lash. It looked painful, but again, it didn't bother him, so I tried to let it go. Every bite of food he ate on the beach had at least a tablespoon of sand on it, and again, he didn't care. So I tried not to. It's harder than it sounds.

Destin is absolutely gorgeous this time of year. The water is warm, but the air is a perfect 80-85 degrees. Brown is having a great time being led around by his older cousins as they try to teach him the ways of the beach. Digging holes, chasing sea gulls, splashing in the waves, etc. We are having a blast watching him.

Ode to Poop

We have been parents now for about 2 years and have been through some of the typical experiences of these years. Night feedings, colds, bumps on the head, phases of food throwing. And did I mention diaper changes? A quick google search tells me that during the first year, babies go through somewhere in the neighborhood of 2500 to more than 3000 diapers. That’s a few. It is sort of a hazing ritual you have to go through to join the parent club. The loss of sleep is just bonus.

But what the number 3000 does not tell you is the tremendous variety of diapers that you will change during these years. Of course the easy one is the wet diaper. That is one that doesn’t even seem like a diaper change. You can do that one in your sleep. Literally. The only other good diaper is the one that you think is going to be really poopy because he has been smelly for about a half an hour. You finally get a chance to change the diaper and after getting the wipes, the clean diaper, the mat to change him on, and a facemask (not really though I have thought about it), you open the diaper to find nothing. Wow. What a relief. Of course the relief is short lived. Where there is smoke, there will be fire!

But once you get into the true poopy diaper, then the fun begins. The most dreaded is the up-the-back-while-in-the-carseat poop. This one is particularly onerous when you don’t discover it until arriving at your destination. The only cure for this is full body bath which never seems to be an option when this happens. The car seat cover must be washed also which is hard to do on a road trip. Fortunately, we have only had this situation a couple of times.

This post has grown way too detailed so I will only mention the other varietals by name. The run of the mill soft playdo doo. The dripping out of the diaper diarrhea. The walking around naked nugget on the driveway/deck. The hard as rock marble. The liquid. The no smell surpise. The normal poo but left on way too long so it is hard to get off poo. Need I continue?

I say all this to say, we are not poop neophytes. We have endured our share of diaper time. I thought we were experienced. But yesterday, I walked in to get The Brown after a nap, and as soon as I opened the door, I knew one of two things had happened. We had trapped a dead armadillo in the attic (unlikely in Chattanooga) or we had just discovered a new level of smelly poop. I turned around to request back up. She (a.k.a. backup, aka wife) looked as me somewhat doubtfully. I said, come see/smell for yourself. After she had satisfied herself that this was indeed a new level, she said, “oh, no, the pesto.” What? Turns out, Brown had decided to major in pesto the previous day. Lots of pesto.

After double bagging this specimen and rushing it outdoors, a sense of normal odor began to return to our house. However, twice more during the remainder of the day, this ghost of pesto past returned to give freely of its smell. Brown has now been asleep for the night and is only now beginning to wake up. I am all nerves. Will this Pesto Poop, this Granddaddy of Nasal Annoyance, this Most Feared Fecal Fountain return to haunt us yet again today? Only time will tell. But we have now learned 2 more lessons in our parenting. Never underestimate the power of the poo. And never, no matter how tempting or how much he begs for it. Never give the Brown pesto before a long car ride. Trust me. I am a certified poop professional.

Virginia

The Brown and Chris are returning today from a trip to Charlottesville to visit with many a friend there. Just in the last year, we have had several friends relocate there, so Chris decided she should mosey on up to UVA town and tell everyone hello. I am sure she will have lots of stories and pictures to post, but I will leave that for when she returns and recovers. But it sounds like Brown has been a champ, dealing with plane flights, new people, disrupted nap schedules and having fun to boot.

Several people have commented that Brown is not a baby anymore but looks like a little boy. As parents, I think we are the last to see our kids growing up, often thinking of them several months (at this stage) or years (teenage years) behind from where their abilities and thinking currently lie. He will be running along (do toddlers ever walk?) and come to a stair. In the past, he usually gets down on all fours and crawls down/up. But now he is just starting to take them in stride. When I seem him do this, I expect a skinned knee. But most of the time, he is negotiating these things well. He has gotten very good with sign language (more, help, milk, food, etc), so much so that it is hard to get him to try to talk. But I am sure that will happen soon enough so that we will soon be fondly remembering the quiet days. But he is no longer and infant.

Cousin Andrew's 5th Birthday Party

We just got back from a fun afternoon with family birthday celebrations. Cousin Andrew turned 5, and Uncle Brian turned... in his 30s somewhere.

I had fun snapping a few pictures at the playground, and then of Brown playing with the legos and trucks at Andrew's house. Unfamiliar toys rock!

Off to conquer the playground...

Hmmmm... which should I do first? The slide or the swings?


The slide!


Thanks, Cousin Sarah... these are big kid swings.


And now to the legos!




Ummmm... I need a basket, please. Too many good trucks to choose from.



Shocking, I know. Dad is kissing me again. Sheeeesh!

Recent Pictures

Here are some of my favorite pictures from the last couple of weeks.













a stare down with Nana.












Raise the roof!

Lake and Family

Brown has been hanging out at the lake with his Uncle Matt (chris's brother) and his 3 1/2 yr old cousin Keely, along with Butter and Papa (Chris's parents) and us (that would be Chris and Curt).

It's been a hoot this week watching those two kids together. Brown likes to follow Keely around, and she loves it. Usually. But then she gets tired of the attention she has to share with him, so she tries to come up with ways for us to leave him behind sometimes. The mind of a 31/2 year old... hilarious! Here are a few pictures from the last couple of days.

He's all good

We got the results today from the doc and they said that the results from Brown's EEG were all good. Wahoo! They didn't find anything abnormal (except an unreal amount of cuteness activity in his brain). We thought this would be the case, but we were happy to hear it anyway. Poor Brown looked like a little Mad Scientist when they had him hooked up for the EEG, but he did GREAT! He didn't freak at all and was just pretty chill laying there on the bed with daddy. We read some books to him and he looked around and wondered what in the world we had dragged him into this time. But he was very good, and we were so proud of him. And we are more than happy to put this last week behind us. On to more adventures...

Brown is back

Its Saturday night and we took Brown on his first outing in a while to the lake which he loved. He woke up on the wrong side of the bed this AM (sort of weird since his crib is against the wall) and was back asleep about an hour later. He was then up for a long car ride as we ran some errands and then back down for a nap. But evidently he is just catching up on his sleep because after a couple of naps, he was good for the afternoon. He was walking all over the dock, playing and splashing in the lake and charming some lady visitors from Baton Rouge playing hide and seek. All in all, this afternoon we welcomed the old Brown back into our lives and it was a wonderful reunion. He still has some rough edges but he has made remarkable improvement. We have to have an EEG Monday which will be a pain and is unlikely to show anything, but we want to make sure. Unfortunately he has to be somewhat sleep deprived so that will be a fun few hours. But all in all we are super grateful that he has recovered and look forward to the next few days of normalcy.

I wondered as he went through various stages and painful procedures (the seizure, starting the IV, spinal tap, CT etc) if there has ever been a parent who did not wish or pray that they could somehow take on the pain that their child was experiencing. That is, when you see your child in such pain, to be able to switch places with them so that the parent felt the pain rather than the child. That thought went through my mind several times in the past week.

Friday morning

Brown is about the same. Still has a bit of pain when he tries to crawl or walk therefore he is doing little of either. Other than that, he is in a good mood, eating and sleeping well. Hopefully we will see some improvement later today.

"Feel Better, Brownie" Voice Mail

This is the cutest voice mail I have ever heard! My 4 year old niece, Keely, called Brown last night and left a message.

	Voicemail You'll Love Share this ...

One for the road

They are starting one more infusion of antibiotics to run over a half hour and then we are headed home! Jeanie Jung just came in and gave us the boot so after too much paperwork I am sure, we will be sleeping in our own bed tonight.

Erlanger Jello

Well, I don't know how it has happened, but we have made it to 19months with the Brown without him having any Jello. So to update you, he slept from 11am to 2pm and has been in a reasonably good mood though this is all in comparison. But he has eaten like a moose today and one of the things he zipped through was Jello. He loved it. The first bite was interesting. He couldn't decide if he liked it, but soon he was asking for more-more. So lots of Jello, milk, macaroni and a roll have rounded out his lunch. The word we are getting is that as long as he doesn't have any more seizure activity, he can go home tonight. So that is the tentative plan right now.

Surrounded by Friends

Well, we are at the children's hospital and have been since yesterday evening when we had to make another quick car trip to the ER as Brown was having another febrile seizure. It was longer than the previous two and had to be stopped with some medicines, but after CT scans, spinal tap and some other lab work has come back all normal, it does seem to be simply related to the fever again. He had a terribly irritable night and didn't go to sleep until about 430 am for a few hours during which Chris and I did get a few minutes of sleep. He has been somewhat better today but still super sleepy and fussy. Chris and I have been trading off taking care of him this morning and he has just gone down to sleep again at 11am. So he is sleeping, I think Chris is sleeping and I hope to join them soon. Thanks for all the calls and texts and sorry we won't have time to respond for a while. The pizza last night and the donuts this morning were especially nice. Not sure what will be the plan today as we have to wait and see how he is acting. Thanks to all and continue in prayer.

The day in pictures

I haven't been taking as many pictures lately, so I pulled the ole camera out yesterday to capture some typical images of our morning.

There are always little milk droplets around the house because he still likes to hurl his bottle across the room after he finishes drinking what he wants. And yes, we are trying to curb this, but so far, no luck.




He still loves playing peek-a-boo around the corner, which I never tire of. And like in the picture below, he'll pretend to be (at least I HOPE he is pretending) shocked when he sees we are still standing there around the corner.

I think he is doing it to entertain us because we almost always laugh.


OK... that's all for the morning routine. We're bushed. Now he's sleepy it's time for him to go down for his morning nap. He is still on the 2 hour nap twice a day. Night, night, sleepy guy.

Balls and Lights

Brown loves throwing the ball back and forth (or at least in our general vicinity). He will throw it across the room, giggle with a super high pitch girly scream, and waddle over to pick it up and throw it again. We never let him play with remote controls because he likes to throw them. But last night he picked up the remote the ceiling fan/light and I let him enjoy it for a minute. You could tell he was in heaven.

Facial!

Brown has taken some HUGE "strides" in his walking over the last week. He is LOVING walking, and does not seem to enjoy crawling nearly as much as he did a couple of weeks ago. He gets really excited and starts walking so fast that he is almost trotting (or stumbling forward) and he raises both of his arms up in the air so that he looks exactly like an orangutan walking. Sometimes, a drunk orangutan.

Well, a couple of days ago he happen to be trotting on some asphalt and tripped and face-planted. Since his arms were up in the air, he had nothing to catch himself with but the tip of his nose. And then he did it again but this time he caught himself with his forehead. Poor guy. He looks AWFUL! We keep trying to hold his hand so he won't do it again, but Mr. Independent likes trying to do it on his own and will sometimes start crying and try to run away when we reach for his hand. Ahhhhh... good times ahead. He obviously hasn't looked at himself in the mirror lately, or he might decide that holding mommy or daddy's hand isn't such a horrible thing after all.

Even though he looks terrible, he's in great spirits and it doesn't seem to bother him at all.

Food Fights

Brown officially entered training for the world championship in food fights. Though his small size and lack of experience may be hindrances, his backhanded technique has improved to the point where he can hit a wall at 5 paces and he can make his mom beat her head against that same wall in a matter of 30 seconds. The funny thing about his training is that he seems to have fun doing it and we simply do not enjoy it at all. In fact, if you are looking to start a traveling team, please call us. If you call right in the middle of one of his training episodes, we might gladly loan him to you for a while. His crowning achievement this week occurred when he thumped a strawberry from the kitchen bar to the white upholstery on a chair at the table across the room at his Nana’s house. The accuracy, the stain and the complete lack of remorse has earned him a position of food chucker on the varsity food fight team. His final training begins this Sunday as we take him to Harrison Bay for a 2 week mission project (see posts from June/July 08). He is disappointed that there will be no white upholstery to make his mark, though I have assured him he will figure out some way to continue his training.He is being very helpful here by pointing to where he threw the chunk of banana. Such a little helper bee.

Walker