Whirlwind

We've had quite the month. And have another big month ahead of us. I'll tell some of our stories interspersed with some pics I took of the boys last weekend. 

This is the face your 5-year-old gives you when he's had way too many pictures taken in his short lifetime. 

This is the face your 3 1/2-year-old gives you when you try to take his picture without any sort of bribe. Happy indifference. :)

A few weeks ago, Eli had a procedure at the Children's Hospital downtown. The procedure was more like outpatient surgery, complete with general anesthesia and a painful recovery. The point was to use a scope to look in his bladder (cystoscopy) to see if there were reasons for having trouble staying dry. We've been dealing with these issues for the last 2 1/2 years now and his urologist recommended doing this before kindergarten started so we would know what we were dealing with - whether it was a physical issue or behavioral or both. 

Eli playing Angry Birds, waiting for the anesthesiologist to take him to the operating room.

Eli handled the anesthesia amazingly well (I was very nervous about how he would do with that) and it hurt for him to go to the bathroom for about three days afterward. The hospital was a brand new facility downtown and absolutely fabulous - the nurses were great, the urologist had his team texting me and Ben throughout the hour and a half that Eli was in surgery, and even called us from the operating room to give permission to do something extra during the procedure. It's amazing to get such immediate feedback from the surgeon and staff while you're anxiously hanging out in the waiting room, hoping everything is going smoothly. There were some small reasons found for why it is hard for him to stay dry, but we had good news too. 

Here's Eli on our way out of the hospital. Still groggy from coming out of the anesthesia. But a total trooper.

Now we're working on night potty training, and that has not been a picnic. We're on our second underwear alarm (he lost the sensor in the first one) and the one we're currently using clips to the top of his shirt to hopefully wake him up with vibration, lights, and a loud alarm sound. Does it always wake him up? Nope. It wakes me up though!! :)

I think the most accidents we had in one night were three. So the alarm went off around 10 p.m., 2 a.m., and 4:30 a.m. When I got up that third time to change his sheets and help him go to the bathroom and change pjs, I thought, "This is worse than having a newborn!!" 

But on the bright side, this is helping me get ready for interrupted sleep again :) We'll keep working at it. Last night he had just one accident, so that was great. His doctor is having us cut out all dairy in his diet from lunchtime on, because apparently dairy makes you have to go to the bathroom more. He's on a medicine called Ditropan that supposedly helps as well, but I'm not totally sure it does much. I write all of this because I know there are other kids out there who struggle with staying dry, and it can be so frustrating as a parent to constantly deal with a child peeing his pants. His daytime dryness is still up and down. Some days are better than others. Today was not one of them. But tomorrow will hopefully be better.

Enough of that. The weekend after Eli's procedure, I flew to Denver to visit my wonderful friend Carrie. I got my Cafe Rio fix two times (ate the entire burrito the first time, but didn't quite finish the second time :). Oh the happiness. I had been craving Cafe Rio this entire pregnancy and was so happy to finally have some.

 We went shopping, ate more good food, had massages, stayed at a hotel in downtown Denver and had fun people watching, doing facials in the hotel bathroom, and catching up. I came home exhausted but happy. :) It was good to get away and it did feel like my kids appreciated me more when I returned! So nice. 

Fast forward to last weekend, with pictures of the boys being silly together after I bribed them to take a few pictures for a lollipop. They have so much fun together. 

It makes me smile to see their simple, lighthearted sweetness. 

Three more weeks until Eli starts kindergarten. Ahhh! I still can't handle it. Love him so much.

What is Charlie going to do when his best friend is gone at school all day??? Ahhhh! I foresee a lot of snuggling on the couch with this boy, reading books together. That is probably his favorite thing to do with me when Eli isn't entertaining him. 

Cute boys. Darling brothers.

And our impromptu photo session ended on a very silly note when they pulled this stunt. Notice Charlie's shorts are on backwards :) Goofballs!! They were totally cracking up.

In the month ahead, life is not slowing down. I hope I have the energy to make it through before this baby comes. I've had a ton of photo sessions in the last few weeks and am working until August 25th, when I have my last two sessions scheduled. This week, I have two regular family sessions and a wedding. 

Then on Monday, our upstairs bathroom (read: our one and only full bathroom) is going to be gutted and our bathroom remodel project will last for about two weeks. We have a slow leak from the bathroom that goes down to the living room that we've ignored forever and thought we would deal with it next year. But the thought of remodeling our bathroom with a napping baby in the house gave me hives, so we are squeezing this in while it's still easy to leave the house all day and shower at a friend's house or at the gym. 

Choosing the fixtures and different parts of the bathroom has been ridiculously hard this time around. We had our bathroom in our old condo remodeled, but it was more simple - we didn't have kids and we knew we wouldn't be there long term. This time, Ben and I had a heated debate over which tub to get and have stressed about the different choices with the rest of the bathroom. Some of the things in our bathroom are original to the house (built in 1925) and the update will be wonderful. Just stressful getting everything figured out in a short amount of time.

The baby's room is nowhere near ready - it's being painted about two weeks before the due date (thanks to a groupon that doesn't have much flexibility) and then we'll hopefully get our act together so it actually looks like a nursery. I have furniture I would like to paint and a million other projects that are on the list. I want to make it to Eli's first day of school after Labor Day.

And then I can have this baby. :)