Cash is 9 months!!!

I am just totally head over heels for these boys! And when they are all together, its almost too much for me to handle!  Somedays, it literally feels like too much too handle!

Eli and Owen have both really embraced the roll as Big Brother.  They make him laugh, feed him snacks, keep him company while I am trying to get stuff done, brings me wipes and diapers, make sure all their little toys are off the ground and alert me when they see him going for something he is not supposed to have.  Occasionally they forget that he is still a little baby and get a little rough with him and he falls over from a hug that was a little to rough, or a push that was supposed to be "funny" that was really more of a shove to make him fall head first onto the floor.  Owen especially gets annoyed with him sometimes, and I hear "No Baby, NO!!!" multiple times a day when Cash tries to take his toys, bang on the ipad he is playing with or pulls his hair.  Eli has way more patience and is very nurturing and loving to him.

Cash is now 9 months old.  I know it is what everyone says, but I can not believe it!  The days are so long and the years are so short! I am baffled that we are so close to Cash turning 1.
This kid is ALWAYS happy.  Always smiling. And so darn chunky you cant help but squeeze those fat legs and chunky cheeks! The kid has rolls!
He checked out healthy at his nine month appointment.
Height: 27 inches (25%)
Weight: 20 lbs (60%)
Head: 46 (75%)

There are evenings when I need to get dinner ready, and Cash needs a bath, Blaine is at work and its almost time for Cash to go to sleep (he goes to bed around 6:30-6:45), so this is how he has to get his bath some nights while I am making dinner.  He LOVES his bath and does a little happy dance as he is standing at the tub watching it fill up with water.

He is obsessed with balls!!!  And goes crazy when he sees one.  

His army crawl slowly but surely turned into a regular crawl, but he often prefers what we call his inch-worm crawl.

I am feeding him three "meals" a day now, but I would be lying if I said that there were days that I just totally forget to feed him lunch because of the hustle of the day. He doesnt seem to mind so much.  He likes little bits of muffin and Laughing Cow cheese so far, and we are slowly adding more and more things into his diet as far as solids go.  He is still tooth-less, so we are taking it slow. He loves the food pouches, eats them right from the pouch, and yogurt so that is where the bulk of his food is coming from aside from nursing.

He is a chill little man.  He puts up with a lot being the third child and gets carted around to all sorts of places at all times of the day and endures his brothers dressing him up, stealing his toys, being totally rambunctious at all hours of the day, and some days, napping on the go.

We have a cruiser.  Cash started pulling himself up to stand about a month ago and has spent the better part of most days perfecting his new skill.  He has gotten very good at it and will let go for a couple of seconds before plopping on his behind.  He really likes his new view.

He can already take a few steps holding onto this little play table!!!

And he is into EVERYTHING, never stops moving!

Other happenings around here....
We converted Owen's bed into a big boy bed.  While he has been ready for this for some quite time, we knew that once we did it, bedtime would become harder than it already was.  And honestly, bedtime is always hard with them. I was told that after a couple of weeks of the boys sharing a room, the excitement would ware off and things would get easier.  Not so.  Eli and Owen still (7 months later) would play for hours at bedtime if we let them.  We have started not enforcing naps every day for Owen because it helps with bedtime, but rather sending them to their room for "quiet time" which is never very quiet.  But more often than not, I find Owen just like this in my bed by the end of quiet time and most mornings.

 This last week in the news has been so sad and depressing.  It makes me sad that this is the world my children will be growing up in.  Tragedies like this tend to bring communities together, and remind us just how precious life is.  Though the Austin running community is huge, it often time seems so small.  Gilbert of Gilbert's Gazelles put together a run on Thursday night for the Boston Marathon victims and I felt honored to be a small part of it.

It was amazing how many people turned out for this event!

Before we took off for our run, we had 26.2 second of silence for those victims of these horrible tragedies then listened to "Amazing Grace."  Everyone then ran the trail each holding a glowstick. When we finished our three miles, all of the runners met up and in the darkness all you could see was a sea of neon glow sticks.
It felt great to run in memory and in honor of the victims of Boston and West. I have so many feelings about this, but I think I will leave it at that for now.

 At the boys school, they had Donuts with Dad Day.  Unfortunately Eli was sick that day, but Owen was more than pleased to have Blaine all to himself in his classroom for the morning.  And honestly, I think Eli was happy to have Blaine all to himself the rest of the day while Owen was at school, so I guess it was a win-win!
Eli's class made super-hero capes for the "real" superheros, their dads, and Blaine came home wearing this..

The boys brought these home for Dad

 Gelatos?!?!?  I dont think Eli even knows what that is or has ever seen Blaine eat it!

And we got their spring pictures back, these fake backgrounds just kill me!

Catching Up

I hope you enjoy the original title.
I am dropping behind on blogging lately, so I am literally just trying to catch up here!

The Friday of Spring Break, my mom went in to have a root canal on one of her bottom molars. She had an infection in that tooth (the bottom three molars are very prone to infection) so the dentist put her on antibiotics and sent her home.  She had been having some pain the week prior, but it came and went, and would travel to her ear, then to her neck, but would never stay too long until the pain was unbearable that Friday morning when she went in.
On Saturday, she was in crazy pain.  On Sunday, she was in pain, and was so swollen, it didn't even look real.  The doctor told her to go to the ER for some IV antibiotics.  She and my dad went, and after doing a cat scan, looking for an abscess, she was even more swollen so the kept her over night to watch her and make sure she didn't swell anymore since it was around her airway and it was hurting a little for her to swallow.  At first they thought it was a blocked salivary gland so they did a little procedure to help that.  But she just kept getting worse.  It was not until Tuesday morning after another cat scan that the doctor identified what she had as Ludwig's Angina and scheduled surgery for a few hours later.
Of course the first thing I did when my dad called to tell me was turn to Dr. Internet and look up what the heck this was....it was horrifying and scary, and I had to get off the computer as fast as I could and get up to the hospital.  It is basically a potentially life-threatening condition from infection of the floor of the mouth that can cause you to swell so much that it cuts off your airways necessitating a tracheotomy or worse.
When I got to the hospital to see her, her tongue was so swollen, her neck and cheek, all swollen, she could barely talk.  Rachel and I got to the hospital at the same time (my Dad never left her side) and listened to the nurses and doctors come in and talk about getting her prepped for surgery and all the risks because her airway was already compromised.  Rachel and I sat there and looked so brave and calm, kissed our mom good-bye as the wheeled her away and almost at the exact same time as we stepped into the elevator we both broke down. It was scary.  And it all happened so fast.  The infection was so quick to spread that if they had waited any longer, things would have been really bad, they even kept a tracheotomy kit outside her room.
After the surgery they kept her heavily sedated and had her intubated for two days after the surgery to make sure the swelling in her airways had gone down enough to allow her to breathe on her own.
Walking into her room the evening after the surgery, I had to catch my breath after I saw her for the first time.  I knew what to expect, but could have never been ready to see it. This was my mom laying there, someone who is always there for me, to pick me up when I need it.  I just always assume my mom will be OK.  That is my mom!  So to see her with a breathing tube, to be sedated, hooked up to all kinds of machines, and not breathing for herself was literally heart wrenching for me.  They put in two tubes to drain the abscess from the infection. One end of the tubes came out from under her tongue and the other end came out of her neck.  It looked like straws were coming out of her mouth and neck, very crazy to see, and I can only imagine how uncomfortable!
I spent every morning, afternoon and most evenings up there to keep my Dad company and to sit with my mom so he could have a little break.  He refused to leave her alone!  Thankfully Blaine was able to take off work that week so that I could be up there as much as I wanted to.
Everyday she looked better and better, and the tubes slowly went away.  She stayed in the ICU until the the day before she was discharged.
The recovery has been tough.  The pain and exhaustion have been exhausting.  Almost three weeks later and she is still not back to herself.
This same week, all my boys passed a stomach bug to one another and we were constantly cleaning up every bodily fluid you can think of.  And we found out that Blaine's mom would also be having surgery that week to remove part of her lung because she had been diagnosed with Lung Cancer earlier that month.  She is also back home and recovering well now.

The week before Easter, the boys came home from school telling me the story of Easter.  They made resurrection biscuits in school to help explain the story.  They definitely left out some of the details when they retold the story to me.
Owen explained to me how they dipped Jesus in spices, and wrapped him up in dough, put him in the oven, and when the biscuits were done they ate Jesus.  Hmmmm.
Eli told me that Easter was his favorite day ever, which is mostly funny because we are Jewish, and after Passover dinner Blaine asked Eli if he had fun at Passover and Eli's response was "Whats Passover?"  I guess we have some teaching to do over here.

We had a play date Wednesday before Easter with some friends at the park that we dubbed "Confetti Egg Park Day"

Our friends Barbara and DJ have an Easter Breakfast every year, and the boys were very excited about it this year. This was our fourth year to go.

It is worth nothing Owen's pants.  He insisted that he wear them all day long even though they are 12 month sweat pants, that kid!

 Right after one of the big kids went to hit the pinata and the stick flew out of his hands and hit Owen right in the head, they took cover.

We have been very busy around here trying to get everything ready to put our house on the market.  This is very exciting for us!  We are ripping at the seams here.  Although I am excited and ready, this was our first house,  the house we brought all of our babies home to.  The place where we have so many memories of our growing little family.  We spent many happy hours on the porch.  There are pencil marks on the door marking Eli and Owen's growth.  I will miss the sound of their feet on the floor and watching them run around and around the island.  And as crazy as it sounds, I will miss the closeness we have in this house. We have no choice but to all be together when everyone is awake, I will miss the homey-ness of this house.  But even with that, I am so ready to get the heck out!

I will cherish the memories we had in this little home but will focus on the future and imagine all the wonderful memories to come in our new home. I am giddy thinking about the excitement this change will bring.

Now, fingers crossed we can find a house:)

Next up, a little Cash update!