Graduation

We attended Justin's graduation reception at the University of Oklahoma last night. The reception was very nice and it included about 30 graduates from the College of Engineering. It was a short and sweet ceremony, which was nice because Spencer wanted to sit with daddy, but couldn't.
Madison looked so nice last night. She was sitting snacking on the good food and waiting for the presentation to begin.

What a great picture of Spencer. This was the ONLY picture of him that he sat still long enough for me to take. He was constantly moving and squirming. When the presentation started, he was not a happy camper. He could see Justin sitting amongst the other graduates and that is where he wanted to sit. I ended up walking around and bouncing him most of the presentation.

Madison took over the camera since I was busy with Spencer. She did a good job considering that there were many taller people standing in her way. This is Justin accepting his degree from the Dean.

Justin's cap and gown were easy to get on, but trying to figure out how to put on the yellow sash was not so easy. We had to enlist the help of our friend Shyla, who graduated from law school in May. Thanks so much Shyla!

As you can see, Spencer was not in the mood for picture taking.

We celebrated with tons of food:

• little smokies
• BBQ meatballs
• cream puffs
• cheesecake
• cookies
• cake (yummy cake made by our friend Leslie)
• red velvet cake balls (delish - made by our friend Emily)
• chocolate fountain with lots of yummies to dip
• veggie, meat and fruit trays
• great wine and other adult beverages

We enjoyed the feast and sharing it with great friends and co-workers.

Some of the truly great friends that joined us, Clay, Shyla, Becky and Leslie. There were many others that attended and we truly appreciated everyone who came or stopped by.

It was a great night had be all. We are sooooooo very blessed to have such a great set of family and friends to support us. Justin deserved a great party and I have to say, I think he got one.

Look What I Can Do!

Spencer's new fascination is to climb! He has learned to hike up his knee and push off to get up on the fireplace or the couch. He has tried it in the bathtub and his crib. Thank goodness he has not yet achieved that goal.

He looks so proud of himself.

This picture was after climbing up and down from the couch over and over until his hair was electrified! I just knew I was going to get shocked when I touched him.

Wordless Wednesday

Wordless Wednesday

White Knuckles

Last Wednesday we headed to the zoo. It was chilly, but not too bad. After visiting a few areas, we stopped to let the kids play at the playground.
My niece, Carly, thoroughly enjoyed being pushed nice and high from Madison.

I put Spencer in the baby swing and I thought he liked it, well, I was wrong. His hands gripped the swing so tight, we had to peel them away to get him out. He is not a fan of swinging.

We checked out the zebras, okapi (still don't know how to say this correctly) and Carly's favorite, the giraffs. After a couple hours, it was time to head home.

A First

My brother and his family came to visit from Iowa for the holiday. We had a good time playing games and eating too much food. Something I have NEVER done is get up on Black Friday and go shopping. That is until this year. My brother wanted a TV (and some other great deals) at Target. He popped his head in at 6am and said, "Let's go to Target!"
So I stumbled out and we headed for the madness.
I don't get it, really, I don't get it. There were so many people with carts overflowing with items and lines that stretched to the back of the store. I just have to wonder, are people really buying these items because they are on someone's Christmas list or are they just buying them because they are on sale. I mean if Uncle Harry really wants a toaster for Christmas, then I understand that getting a Toaster for $3 is a good deal. I don't understand why people load up their carts and purchase a bunch of items just because they are on sale. Strange.
My brother didn't get his TV, but we picked up a few other items that weren't sold old yet.
But, I will stick to my online deals that I can do in my pajamas and don't have to argue over a parking spot or stand in a line for an hour. My time is more important to me.

Reflecting On A Nightmare

This post is about one of the worst weeks I have had. For those that have heard this story from my daily update e-mails, you probably don't want to read this. For me, this is my way to vent and clear my mind of the emotional roller coaster the past week as put on us. I am not writing this for any one's benefit, except mine. Read if you would like, dismiss if you like.


The nightmare began last week on Friday the 13th (fitting isn't it). We woke up at 4:30am, got Spencer up at 5:15am and arrived at the surgery center by 6am.
Spencer asleep in the car seat on the way to the surgery center.

Getting ready to go into surgery center.

Sitting in the little bench in the pre-op room.

In recovery room with daddy after a quick 15 minute surgery.

Getting to eat at McDonald's after being discharged. Eggs and pancakes, YUMMY!

That was all the normal part. Here is the abnormal part. Spencer went down for a nap at 12:30pm. By 6pm he was still asleep. We decided to get him up and he was cranky and had a 102 degree temp. After reviewing the discharge instructions, we called the Dr. B, the ENT doc and explained what was going on. He said to give him Tylenol and see how he is in the morning. OKAY - first of all, why in the heck do they give you a list of items to watch out for and list it as an emergency if all they are going to do is tell you to give your kid Tylenol, seriously folks!

I set my alarm and got up every four hours to give Spencer Tylenol or Motrin in order to keep his fever down. He woke up and did not eat or drink anything. He refused it all and he still had a fever. By mid morning he was just mad and cranky. I gave him another round of Tylenol and tried to lay him down for a nap. He didn't stay down long and woke up crying. He was hot, really hot. I checked his temp and it was 103.6. I called the ENT back and NOW he said to go to the ER.

The ER was a nightmare, I am skipping those details. All I will say is they are incompetent to treat a child! If our ENT hadn't told us to go to that specific hospital, I would have chose to go to the Children's Hospital. We left with a diagnosis of UTI and Flu. They put him on an antibiotic and an antiviral drug and told us to see our pediatrician on Monday.

Sunday came and it was bad. Spencer was badly dehydrated. We were force feeding him with a syringe (because the hospital didn't give him an IV) and still trying to treat the fever.

We got into the pediatrician's office on Monday morning and went through the details of the weekend. After reviewing the hospital lab work and notes, he determined that Spencer DOES NOT have a UTI or the FLU. Are you kidding me? Okay, now I am confused and mad. How do two doctors get a completely different diagnosis? The pediatrician changed his antibiotic to a broader spectrum antibiotic in hopes to kill whatever bacteria was causing the infection. He didn't know where the infection was coming from or if it was bacterial or viral either!

Monday night brought a whole new host of problems. Diarrhea, constant crying, not eating, not drinking.

The fever disappeared on Tuesday, so things were looking up, until a rash appeared and Spencer cried and fussed constantly the entire day. This is no joke, the entire day was spent holding him and walking or bouncing him to try and get him to calm down. For the first time ever with him, I took him for a ride to calm him down. When he did finally sleep, it was for 45 minutes. At the end of 45 minutes the poor boy woke up instantly crying and screaming. HELLOOOOO he is in pain. I called the doctor's office and explained to the nurse what was going on. I told her I suspected it was the antibiotic and she said it could be his stomach cramping from the diarrhea. Okay, we will stick it out. His attitude did not change all the way into Tuesday night and Wednesday morning. Justin and I took turns sleeping while the other one soothed (as best we could) him to sleep for 1-2 hours at a time. It was obvious to me that he was in pain.

Wednesday morning I called and told the pediatrician that we were coming back in. I also decided that I wasn't going to give Spencer ANY of his medication that morning. While in the lobby, Spencer's shirt got stuck on his jacket and I noticed that his entire back was now covered with the rash. HA - finally something to show the doctor that we were not crazy!

After a rather matter-of-fact discussion with the pediatrician, he agreed that Spencer is probably allergic to the new antibiotic. After further research on my end, I have concluded that is he isn't allergic, but suffered from severe side effects. It just so happens that the drug maker has an e-mail to the FDA to report any severe side effects, such as what he had.

SOOOO, what I have learned from this. Probably the most important thing is to trust my instincts. I know my child better than any doctor does. I am upset with the hospital and I will never return to it again if it is my choice. I learned that we have great family and friends who made us dinner (thanks Clay & Shyla), who e-mailed or called daily to check on him and those that said many prayers. No one should have to go through these types of issues, but everyone will at some point in their lives. I hope that everyone has a great support system like we do.

You Might Be A Fan If....

Justin is in a digital design class in which they have to build a robot out of Legos. The age range on the box of Legos is 10 years old. This entire class (mostly men) get to build their manly robots out of toys designed for children. Justin and his lab partner decided to make their robot say a phrase when it passes over a sensor. So, what phrase did they agree upon? Well, first you must picture a mechanical robot built out of Legos moving about and saying....


Hello, My name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die.


If you have not seen the move "The Princess Bride" I am truly sorry. We are a fan. Our entire family and our closest friends can quote almost this entire movie word for word.

There second voice option was the Imperial Death March from Star Wars, but that just isn't the same. It was inconceivable that they would use a different phrase!

Spencer's Ears

Today we saw Dr. B, the Ear, Nose & Throat doctor. The appointment began with a hearing test. Spencer and I were placed in a soundproof room with speakers on each side and some other mysterious looking stuff throughout the room. The audiologist told me to hold Spencer in my lap, but not to react in any way to the sights and sounds that I would hear. The first sounds were to the right and it sounded like paper shuffling around. Spencer didn't turn toward the speaker. The sound repeated, but this time a small puppet of Winnie the Pooh also lit up and moved. Spencer turned toward the right. We repeated this with the left side and various volumes.

Next was tones, repeat the same pattern and repeat with Spencer looking at some, but not all of the speakers. We ended with his name being called over the speaker at various volumes, with and without Winnie the Pooh.

The last test was to see if there was fluid behind his eardrums. I didn't need a machine to tell them this, of course he has fluid! Their little machine said his left ear is full of fluid. His right ear was clear, but there was negative pressure pushing on his eardrum, not normal.
The summary of the audiologist was that he has some hearing loss. She wasn't going to continue with any additional tests until the fluid was gone, because the results would not be accurate.

After a short wait in the lobby, we got to see Dr. B. He reviewed the audiologist tests and then did a full exam on Spencer. He asked about his medical history and we went over the past 10 months of infections, antibiotics and frustrations. He asked what words Spencer could say. We thought and the list was short, too short for someone his age.

Dr. B got out the color picture flip charts and explained what a normal ear looked like. The next picture was what happens to ears when there is fluid build up (Spencer's ears). Without hesitation he says that Spencer is a prime candidate for tubes, just based on what the audiologist found and not even considering the ear infections. His hearing loss, lack of speech and the infections are all of concern.

He reviewed the procedure, risks and follow up care with us. He said the nurse would come in and book the surgery. SOOOOO surgery is this Friday! We have to be at the surgery center at 6am and with no breakfast. Spencer is not going to be happy about that!

We will head back to the audiologist in a month to test his hearing again and hopefully have some improvement.

We feel a sense of relief that maybe we can finally move on from Spencer's health issues. Some months it has dominated our lives and has definitely increased the amount of stress for everyone in the house. Whether it is because the lack of sleep or trying to rearrange schedules to accommodate the multiple doctors appointments, work, school and other obligations. We are all truly hoping that this will close the chapter in Spencer's health issues.

Halloween

Last night was fun, but way too hot for Halloween. Most everyone was outside handing out candy. I am really bummed because our neighborhood was dark. There were not very many lights on last night. I took Madison and four of her friends around and Spencer rode in the wagon. He got out every now and then to go and cautiously take a piece of candy from someone. Surprisingly enough, he didn't try to eat it. His favorite thing to do was to toss out whatever was in the wagon out of the wagon, including the flashlight. It is lost someone on the last street in the neighborhood.

Asian Dragon Slayer, Witch & Alice in Wonderland
AKA
Madison, Vanessa & Alexis

Way to cute!

Can you find it?

Can you find the hidden handlebar mustache?

Yes, these are mashed potatoes.

Drunkin' Sailor

Yesterday started out as any other Monday - it was Monday and I really didn't want to be at work. My cell phone rang about noon and it was day care. Uh - oh, that was my first thought. Ya see, day care doesn't call ya to tell you that your son is being a wonderful angel or he just said a new word. They call because something is wrong.
I could hear a child screaming in the background and Sonya (Spencer's teacher), said, don't worry that isn't your son. Whew.
With that said, Sonya begins to explain that Spencer has been falling down, falling down a lot. Unfortunately he used his face as landing gear. His tooth had a blood blister right above the tooth and the tooth itself had started to discolor. He wasn't in pain and everything else seemed okay, she was just calling me to let me know.

Okay, so not too bad. I'll take a look at it when I pick him up from daycare. I walk into daycare at 5:45 and the first thing I see is blood all over Sonya's shirt.
"Please tell me that is not my son's blood all over you."
Uh, yeah. Well, he fell again and hit the same spot on his mouth and the second time it did bleed. His mouth looked pretty gross, but the doctor's office was closed, so we would wait until morning.

Justin and I both talked that Spencer had been falling a lot over the past week and he always looked drunk when he was walking. The poor guy walked into two doors this weekend.
This morning we decided that we better take him in to the doctor; we were concerned that te had fluid in his ears again and it was messing up his balance.

So first things first, his tooth is TBA - if it turns grey or begins to darken, we will have to take him to a pediatric dentist. Not cool - Spencer only has four teeth, he can't afford to have any go missing!

Second of all, his ears. BOTH ears have fluid in them and it is a matter of time before they get infected. So as a preventative measure, he is going back on an antibiotic and adding the Claritin to his already daily dose of Singulair. This is to try and keep an infection from forming until we FINALLY, yes FINALLY get to go see an ENT (Ear, Nose, & Throat) doctor. We go there on Nov. 11th. Our doctor thinks that Spencer will have no problems qualifying for tubes. Thank goodness, we have only been pushing to go see an ENT, since the first 5 ear infections and 4 antibiotics since April.

So with that said, Spencer chews with his back gums and doesn't try to take a bite out of anything. He continues to walk crooked and fall a lot, so we have had to keep our eye on him a bit more than usual.

She's 12

Today is Madison's 12th birthday. WOW, it is so hard to believe she is growing up. I keep telling her to stop growing! She is wearing my shoes now. Thank goodness my shoes are "too old" for her.
Madison's Favs

• Food: pizza
• Book: Revenge of the Shadow King by Benz & Lewis
• Dessert: il dolce's gelato
• Board Game: Shadows Over Camelot
• Online Game: Wizard 101
• Color: green or purple
• Clothing: t-shirt with hoodie and skinny jeans
• Drink: Dr. Pepper
• Musical Artist: Daughtry
• Song: No Surprise
• Subject: math

Madison enjoyed the day playing Wizard 101 and her new Nintendo game that Spencer picked out for her. She choose to eat at Johnnie Carinos for dinner and tried something new: chicken parmesan. She loved it! Dinner was finished with a complimentary huge bowl of ice cream, with three spoons of course. I think overall she had a good day. We have a small party with some of her friends next week.

Are You Ready for Some Football?

Can I go outside?



















Pleeeeeaaaaassssseeeee mama!

Can you open the garage?

This is my "ba".






















Are you ready for some football?

Read the Directions

Last weekend Madison asked me to buy her some new face cleanser. Her friend was using it and she thought it would work for her (yeah, we never did this as a kid). She has had the typical pre-teen acne for a couple of years and we have varied our product usage trying to find what would work. We bought the new cleanser on Sunday and she began to use it that evening.
Flash forward to Thursday. Madison's face was horribly broken out. Her entire forehead was full of red inflamed bumps or what looked like really bad acne. It didn't surprise me because she has had these breakouts before. We have kept some prescription medication for "spot" treatments. I applied this to her problem areas.
Flash forward to Saturday. Her acne still looked horrible, but now she had some dry patches on her face. That night I started researching products and what to use for her. On Sunday, I broke down and bought a trial package of ProActive. That evening, Madison's face was "burnt" and I mean red, raw and burnt. Her skin had started peeling and flaking off, A LOT!
I washed her face with some of my gentle cleanser and whoa, burning and more redness. I caked her face with lotion, ya know the kind you pay ridiculous amounts of money for.
Monday morning I checked her face and it looked like an alligator. Nothing had changed. It didn't even look like the patches had gotten any better. If anything, there were more dry patches. I put more lotion on.
By Monday evening, it was still bad and not getting any better. I asked her to bring me the cleanser and tell me when she started using it and when she stopped. Justin and I both asked her how she was using it. FINALLY, something made sense. Ready, don't gasp - she was putting the cleanser (gel with acne fighting beads in it) on her face at night and patting it dry. She had mis-read the directions and missed the part about rinsing it off of her face. So for 5 days straight she had let this cleanser dry on her face. The "breakouts" were actually a reaction that her skin was having a "heat rash." To make matters worse, I put on the prescription medication on her face during this "heat rash."
Trip to the dermatologist today! Our dermatologist rocks! Madison basically gave herself a really strong chemical peal. Not really that good for an 11 year old. The awesome thing is that there is no permanent damage, but it will take about 4-6 weeks to heal. YEP, she did it good. She will use a prescription lotion for three days and then we switch to a new recommended cleanser (not ProActive by the way) and prescription. The doc made sure Madison understood how to do everything and explained it to her in words, in print and motions (how she should put the creams on and take them off). The whole time she talked to Madison directly, which was great. Have a mentioned I love her! She is such a fantastic doctor.
Needless to say, Madison and I both learned a lot today and she is confident she will have great skin in about a month. We go back for a check up in 5 weeks.
Moral of the story - read the directions!

Friday Favorites

Spencer will turn 13 months on Sunday. He is growing by the minute and learning so many new things. Here is just a few of my Friday Favorites to share.

• If he wants to go outside he will pick up his shoes or one of dad's shoes and bring it to you.
• He whines a lot for me to pick him up. If I won't pick him up, he immediately goes to the lap top cord that is plugged into the outlet. He knows I will immediately come and pick him up then. His arms are already raised waiting for me to get him. (Okay, so this really isn't one of my favorite things he does).
• When I read one of the Dr. Seuss books, he chatters back to me as if he was reading to me.
  If you ask him if he wants to take a bath, he runs into his room and tries to get his clothes off. He if very good at helping get his clothes off and on, but when he is in a hurry, he ends up making things worse because he is impatient.
• He loves bananas. If you set him in the high chair and he sees a banana, he literally starts grunting and swinging his arms in excitement.
• He likes to play "I'm gonna getcha." He runs excitedly down the hallway and looks back at you while laughing in order to see if you are chasing him.
• He likes to help shut doors (dryer door, closet door, etc.) and to turn on and off the lights for me. He just grins when he has accomplished the task.

He LOVES to clean out my kitchen cabinets. The worse time of day for me is right when I get home. The kids are hungry and I can't get anything done fast enough. Spencer decides to "help" me by pulling EVERYTHING out of my kitchen cabinets. We used to only have the two cupboards locked that contained the cleaning supplies, but alas, we have had to add more. (Once again, not really one of my favorite things).


Other bits of news:
Spencer finally had his top two teeth break through. That puts him at four teeth, yep, only four. It doesn't stop him from eating one bit. He enjoyed pizza tonight and ate the entire piece.



He is finally over the horrible ear infection that plagued us all last week. We will be heading to the doctor in a few weeks for both kids to get flu shots. Spencer will have to have two since it is his first time. I do plan on having both kids vaccinated against H1N1; that will probably be in October. There has been a lot of mis-information regarding the vaccine in the media and internet. Anyone who has heard of people dying from the vaccine or other horrible side effects, get the facts. Go to the CDC's website and look it up to be sure before believing what is out there.

Totally off the subjects from above, but too funny not to share:

Bad Hair Day & Blue Eyes
Spencer was taking a nap on Monday and it was warm. Evidently it was a bit warm in the house and he was sweating a bit. This is what I found when he woke up from his nap.




My last favorite thing:
Spencer's piercing blue eyes. LOVE THEM!

Who's the Doctor?

Little Man has been down with an ear infection since Monday. Monday night was horrible, oh well let me think, so was Tuesday and Wednesday night as well. We had to visit Urgent Care due to the fact that my peds office let two people go on vacation at the same time (what were they thinking). So, a LONG and scary wait in the Urgent Care lobby and finally the diagnosis is an ear infection on Tuesday. Okay, wait, it gets better. While I appreciate the doctor (yes, I use this term lightly) asking us what antibiotics he has been on in the past and prescribed one of those we listed, I am NOT the doctor. I shouldn't be making that decision. The prescribed antibiotic should be one that is effective and appropriate for the bacteria that is causing the infection.

So after four days of a temperature of over 100 degrees and alternating Motrin and Tylenol every four hours just keep the his temperature under control, I called the Children's Hospital on call nurse at 5am. Her simply explanation is: the antibiotic isn't working.

We are headed back to the doctor today (our ped doctor) and hopefully we can get this under control. Justin and I have missed work and school all of this week and missed a lot of sleep. The only thing that seems to calm him down is sitting outside on the porch swing. Granted, it is usually in the middle of the night, but I don't really care as long as it keeps him from crying. If it isn't the swing, I am carrying him around swaying or bouncing him.

My back and sanity really needs him to get better.

More Isn't Always Better

Spencer had his 12 month check up today. I was surprised to learn that he is only 20 pounds 14 ounces. This puts him in the 10-25 percentile for his weight. I really thought we had cracked 22 pounds, primarily due to the fact that he eats so much. His height is in the 50-75 percentile, so I guess he is just growing taller. Things went great because he has been on cow's milk for almost a month and he has been off of bottles for about 3 weeks. He has been walking for awhile now, so there really wasn't much to discuss with the PA.

Vaccinations were next. The kind nurse said he gets seven vaccinations today. SEVEN - are you kidding me? Where the heck were they going to put those seven vaccinations? There were only 5 (yeah right, only 5) needles because two of the vaccinations were doubled into one shot.
No child likes getting shots; it isn't my favorite thing to do either, but come on, FIVE injections into his NOT so fat thighs. With each injection the horrible face and tears came. The time in between injections was just long enough that he thought it was over. WRONG. Needless to say after all injections, I have never seen Spencer look so angry as he did at that nurse. At least he wasn't mad at me.

Loot

Yesterday I went to a HUGE consignment sale in OKC. It is called Just Between Friends and it is held at the state fair grounds. For those of you that don't know about it, it is a fantastic consignment sale for kids stuff only and there were 1700 consignors. I am volunteering to help on Saturday, so I received a pass to shop yesterday before the doors open to the public.
WOW, I had so much fun. Here is a list of the loot that I got Spencer:

• Little Tikes Castle Slide
• Winter Coat ($7 - awwwwwsome)
• Winter Hat
• Fall Jacket
• Monkey Halloween Costume ($8)
• 7 pairs of Khaki pants and or jeans (nothing more than $4)
• 8 or so short and long sleeve shirts (nothing more than $4)
• 2 pairs of shoes (one pair is brand new)
• two toy trucks

It was great stuff and great prices. I will definitely be looking forward to the spring sale! Spencer is definately set for fall and winter.

The Vice Principal Called...

On Tuesday I received a call at work from Madison's Vice Principal. My first thought was uh oh, what has happened. She actually called to tell me that Madison received a perfect score on the writing portion of her state CRT exam that she took in March/April. I was completely surprised! The school was planning on recognizing the students on Friday morning (yesterday) during their morning assembly.

Madison had no idea about this. Justin wouldn't let me tell her. She was really confused about why I was taking her to school. She was even more confused when she saw Justin's truck at school also.

The principal went through the normal assembly routine and then he said he gave some background about the tests and said he wanted to recognize some students. Five hundred kids took the test last year and 5 - YES -only 5 students received a perfect score on a portion of their test. Madison was the only one to score perfect on the writing portion and our really good friends' son Quinn received a perfect score in Math. How totally awesome is this? We are soooooo very proud of both of them. They were the only two sixth graders who received perfect scores. The PTA rewarded the five kids with a $10 gift card to Walmart.

I Love Cake

We celebrated Spencer's birthday on Saturday and it was quite the bash. We are so lucky to have such great friends and co-workers.
My friend Leslie made Spencer's dinosaur cake, it was soooo cute. If you are in the OKC Metro and you need a cake, please let me pass her contact info to you. She does a fantastic job and the cake tastes wonderful!

Spencer decided that he was going to peak into some presents while everyone was busy. He more or less just wanted the tissue paper to play with.

I LOVE this hat and bib, but I knew there was no way he was going to wear them. The look on his face says it all. Needless to say, the hat and bib did not stay on, thus the subsequent cake and frosting went onto his clothing.

There is no way to explain in words how much Spencer liked the cake. Let's just say he inhaled every crumb of his cake. See the condensed video below of him eat cake at

http://picasaweb.google.com/mistymadisonjo/2009Aug?authkey=Gv1sRgCObMq6SFgr241QE&feat=email#5371502984380227410.

Click on the second picture. It takes about 3o seconds into it to really get to laughing.

One piece at a time was NOT enough for the poor boy, he wanted it all. He went to grab a new piece and the whole piece of cake came, so he just shoved it into his mouth. He couldn't chew or swallow.

After the whole ordeal of eating the cake, we had to try and clean up. We took Spencer straight outside and took his shorts and shirt off. There were tons of little crumbs that fell to the ground from his clothes and of course, he tried to eat them. Justin took his highchair outside and used the hose to get it clean.

He opened presents in a diaper since his clothes were filthy. He really liked the tissue paper and wrapping paper and didn't really want to sit still to see what was inside the bags. He did in fact LOVE the box that the toy was in. He didn't care what was inside, he just knew that he had a box he could climb on.

After a very long afternoon, it was time for a good nap.

I gave him a bath to clean off the excessive amount of food that was still stuck to his body.

He was cleaned up and ready to play again. He slowly discovered his new books and toys one at a time.

It was a long day for everyone, but it was fun.