Thanksgiving, birthday, no posts in awhile

Thanksgiving was great.  Sam was a champ with lots of people, lots of changes, and a couple big dinners.  He loved running around outside in Door County.  

He is now a pro at "how big is Sam?", High Fives, waving goodbye, and shaking his head "no".  

Sam is a voracious reader... or at least great as a lap sitting page turner.  He will go through ten books if you keep reading them.  But, he usually bails out after dozen pages to grab a new book. His ABC animal book can be read cover to cover multiple times in one sitting.  I finish the book and set it down.  Sam gets up, walks over to the books, looks at them, grabs the ABC book we just finished, takes my hand with his hand, puts the book back in my hand, then turns his back to me and walks backward until he falls into my lap.

His building blocks are another favorite.  If I start a tower Sam adds to it and then usually destroys it.  He was moving blocks between Kate and I today, adding to one and then the other. 

We bought a kid's sized chair.  He likes the squishy chair just fine.  The better prize was the box it came in.  This turned into a big fort.  Dusty watches as Sam's hand reaches out from under a blanket and grabs things to bring into the fort.  Today he had a toy phone, blanket, kid-sized putter, puzzle pieces, newspaper, and a couple blocks slowly collected.  Dusty watched, periodically peeking behind the blanket, and then looked back at me trying to figure out what was happening.  The toy phone was my phone growing up.  No real phones like it exists these days.  Sam talks into the receiver, waits for an imaginary response, and hangs up.

We had another scheduled 24 monitor on Sam last week.  We will review the results with the cardiologist next month.  No surprises so far.

He talks a lot, just not English yet.  He points all over and seems to be describing what things are and what they do.  Sometimes he flails his arms while babbling if we don't respond how he anticipated.  Kate and I have taken to mimicking his babbling.  We speak normally 99% percent of the time, but when we babble back to him he knows it isn't quite right.  At dinner tonight I copied his speech.  He actually squinted at me and had a wry smile, then started laughing.  

Check up

Sam is one!  He had a check up today and is doing well.  He is ok despite the fact that he has a cold and some molars coming in.  He plays and acts normal for awhile and then when he takes a break he remembers the blinding pain.  

Kate wanted a "sleep in" day this week.  She picked Tuesday and I took Thursday.  I talked to Sam last night while I was putting him to bed and asked him to sleep through the night because I was tired.  He slept from 8pm past 7am.   Good kid...  I think Kate wishes she picked a different day.

We are heading to Menominee Falls on Thursday for Thanksgiving dinner

 with the Hughes clan and then up to Door County until Monday with part of the Buchach crew.  We will get to see how Sam does in his giant red puffball snowsuit.  

Here is Sam reading with his turtle.

Updates and Third "Official" Photo Shoot

I took Sam outside a few days ago and a goose made a single honk.  Sam looked straight up and started scanning the sky.  When the V came into view about ten seconds later he pointed and started babbling.  When I didn't say anything he looked at me, babbled some more, and pointed again.

We went to the zoo on Thursday.  It was cold, raining on and off, and virtually deserted.  The polar bears were very active and Sam yelled at them from the backpack.  One was pacing, looked right at us, and essentially barked.  Sam laughed.  The other bear was behind a "concrete rock" and bobbed his head up and down.  Sam thought he was playing "peek a boo" and laughed some more.

Home day care is great.  We weren't sure how he'd adapt... or us.  We love it.  Kate is home with Sam on Tuesdays and I am home on Thursdays.  It is working out well.  There  are a couple other kids at Jeannine's house and they all love him.  

Sam is infatuated with Jeannine's Greater Swiss Mountain dog.   A few days back I went to pick him up from day care.  He was in the front with the other kids sitting in a little plastic car laughing with the dog looking through the window at him.  He wasn't necessarily excited to leave and head back home.

Sam is mimicking us quite a bit lately.  Bzzzz noises, pointing, and holding your arms up often get a copied response.  Sam is also very aware of "stop" and "watch out".  He usually stops where is stands and turns to look at us.  Sometimes he runs back to us, not quite knowing what he was about to do wrong.

He's got running and stairs down pat.  He can get up on the futon easily and can get up on the chairs if he happens to have a toy or box to push off.  The big surprise for me is Sam getting off our bed.  He lays on his stomach and slides back until his legs are hanging off into space.  Then he holds the sheets and slides back onto the floor.  Half the time he ends up on his rear, but I'm still impressed.  

 

Hurricane Samuel

Hurricane Samuel was last spotted off the coast of Lake Mendota.  He has reached sustained speeds in excess of two miles an hour.  He was last tracked heading west but changes direction frequently and without warning.  This is a dangerous storm.  He can climb and descend stairs, walk, and has the ability to create short running bursts.  He leaves a path of destruction in his wake.

Day care and pictures

Sam had his first day at an in home daycare on Friday.  It went great.  The woman who runs it is a retired kindergarten teacher and the other kids' parents are all grade school teachers or staff.

Here are some pictures from the zoo as well as a shot of some old man mowing his lawn in the early morning wearing his bathrobe.

No-spray spray park

Sam and I went to a local "spray park".  We had visited before and Sam was a bit intimidated by the towers shooting water down.  There was nothing to worry about on this visit as the water was turned off on Labor Day.

Carpet Cleaning Mini-Vacation

We had the carpets cleaned on Monday.  It was quite a project with a van pumping cleaning chemicals in through one hose and another hose pulling dirty water out. The van mounted cleaning machine broke down so the guys got done later than planned.  When they were done the house didn't smell, but the carpets were still wet and I was a little nervous about Sam inhaling some crazy carpet sanitizer fumes.  So, we decided to stay at a hotel for the night.  

This should have been relatively simple as there are probably a dozen hotels within five miles of our house.  However, Epic is a huge local employer with a campus in Verona.  They write hospital records management software and happened to be holding a conference this week which filled all the local hotels.  Luckily one group canceled their trip to Madison and the hotel they planned on visiting had vacancies.  The hotel was packed, but Sam was the only kid (and Kate and I were two of very few not in business attire).  

The hotel is brand new and Sam loved the kiddie area of the pool. 

Hide the Women and Children

Sam took his first steps on Tuesday, September 2nd.  I came home for lunch.  Kate got really excited and said "Sam, let's show dad your new trick."  He is good for about a half dozen steps.   If you crouch down outside this range he will crawl to within the 6-8 step walking range and then stand and walk to you.

The day after he started walking he stopped eating baby food.  It was an immediate and definitive decision.  He bobbed and weaved to avoid spoonfuls of food he liked the day before.  Now he eats a lot of what we eat.  The only difficult part is if you are eating something he shouldn't eat, like an apple.   Sam is now confident he can handle any food we can handle.  If he sees us eating something he wasn't offered he starts reaching for it.  I've tried explaining that apple sauce is chopped up apples, but I'm not sure he understands quite yet.  The only thing he has tried so far that he doesn't like is cantaloupe.  He'd love to try chips and salsa, eat an apple, and have turkey with spicy mustard on it.

Sam downtown

The last few weeks

Recently we went to an outdoor concert with the Meyers.  Claire was a dancing machine.  Sam, Kate, and I spent a day hiking around Devil's Lake.  One of Sam and Dusty's favorite games is to play tag through the glass table.

Sam Laughing

This is from two weeks ago. Sam crawled out of the sunroom and then I heard a "boom". I thought it was him falling, but it was my camera hitting the floor after he pulled it off the couch. I picked him up and told him what I thought had happened. When I said "boom" he thought it was hysterical. Kate and I got a lot of mileage out of saying "boom" for the rest of the day.

Quite a lot to cover

I haven’t done any posts in a while.

I am typing this at a Caribou Coffee in Milwaukee. Katie is in Middleton. Sam is in Sussex. Betsy is in Oconomowoc. Mom is in Wauwatosa. There, you are caught up.

My mother went in for a check up on her ankle last Monday at Froedert. She had surgery to fuse her ankle about two years ago. She tripped two weeks ago delivering Meals On Wheels and had a sore ankle since that date. Last Monday her ankle was checked out at Froedert Hospital and instead of sending her home she was admitted

.

She has a Staph infection in her ankle. She has spent the past week at Froedert and has undergone three surgeries. The first was to pull the hardware and clean up the infection as well as draw fluid to culture the infection and figure out what was in there. The two following surgeries were to further clean out the ankle. I have been primarily in Oconomowoc since last Monday. Mom’s friends (some of “The Network”) have been taking Betsy to and from work.

I went home (Middleton) with Betsy on Tuesday after mom’s first surgery. I played with Sam and finished cutting out the bottom foot of drywall/studs in our basement to prep for a perimeter trench/sump pump install on Wednesday and Thursday. Then Betsy and I went back to Oconomowoc. Kate got our nanny to come in early/stay late and avoid the house while the jackhammers were running. On Wednesday Kate took Sam to a cardiologist appointment. Thankfully everything looked good for our little guy.

Mom’s second surgery was Thursday. The cleanout went well. Her third surgery was Saturday. Again, the cleanup looked good. During the Saturday cleaning the surgeons removed the vacuum dressing that had been sucking goop out of her ankle. She is on an IV of antibiotics tailored to fight her particular strain of Staph.

Betsy and I went back to Middleton Saturday night. Some friends were visiting from out of town. I hadn’t seen Sam in a few days. He seemed strangely quiet and snuggly. Then he had a temperature of 101. We reviewed the last two weeks. Our Wednesday to Friday nanny’s daughter had a slight fever. Then Kate remembered taking Sam to a friend’s house the week prior to play with their kids. I called these same friends to see if they could watch Sam so I could head into Oconomowoc to help mom. They said Sam probably shouldn’t come over as the kids were just getting over Hand, Foot, and Mouth disease. Their kids exhibited symptoms a few days after Sam’s earlier visit.

So, Sam has Hand, Foot, and Mouth. He obviously can’t visit his grandma in the hospital and probably shouldn’t be around mom until she is feeling better. He is with the healthy mom (grandma Hughes) and Katie’s sister Lisa in Sussex right now. They will meet Katie in Johnson Creek this evening. There is an outside chance that Kate and Samuel will spend the night in Oconomowoc tonight depending on mom’s release time. If she is in the hospital they will come over. If she is back in Oconomowoc they will head for Middleton.

There was a check up on Mom this morning and the doctors seemed satisfied with her progress. She is allowed to eat again which would seem to indicate that they are done opening the ankle. She has not been given a release date/time yet.

My clients have been wonderfully understanding in rescheduling reviews and giving me time to help out my mom where I can. Thank you. My wife has been an unsung hero coordinating the nanny and taking care of our sick kid. Sam is always great. Betsy has done a good job dealing with the daily changes in her schedule. We spent some quality time at Lakerz last week, two nights in Middleton, and were at the State Fair yesterday.

Mom has been a great patient. She usually wants to help everyone else and pushes her own stuff to the bottom of the list. That is difficult to do when your foot is held up by a metal bracket and you are hooked to an IV.

Mom’s friends have been wonderful. I didn’t know (and still don’t) when she would be coming home so I haven’t been able commit to Betsy’s work schedule. I sent out an email of The Booper’s schedule and the moms split up her transport amongst themselves.

A number of pictures are attached in no particular order.

Please pray for mom’s ankle and recovery. Please pray for Sam to get better soon too so he is at 100% when I see him.

Sam and Mya

Sam's Second "Official" Photo Shoot