Happy Birthday Nathan!

Nathan had a great day start to finish.  When he got up, there was a surprise for him in the living room: a new slide.  Nathan loves slides and so I thought it would be great if he had his own.  It was the best gift of the day.  He didn't stop playing with it all day long.

Right before Nathan's nap, I let him open another present.  I grabbed the camera and as soon as I lifted it up to take the picture, Nathan gave me the biggest cheese.  What a ham!

While Nathan was down for his nap, I went to work on his party.  Have I ever mentioned that Nathan's favorite color is yellow?  He shows a definite preference for all things yellow.  A yellow birthday party was in order for my sunshine.

We had a few friends over to celebrate.  We sang happy birthday and Nathan gave everyone a round of applause afterwards.  Nathan did NOT like the frosting.  But once I wiped it off he was very happy to eat his cake.

No, no, no frosting Mom!

Then it was time for presents.  Nathan got a bunch of books, a car ramp, and an animals puzzle for his birthday.  All were great hits with him.

What a wonderful year it's been with this bug.  He's such a happy little guy.  He thinks he is the funniest thing in the world.  I love his fun little personality.  We're sure lucky to have this little guy!

Pulling a Packer

There is something you should know about Packers.  We are not planners.  We are go-with-the-flow, we'll-see-how-things-work-out, just-go-with-it kinda people.  In fact, we often don't make plans and then have everything work out better than if we had.

We pulled a Packer a few weeks back.  With 24 hrs notice, we had bought tickets and we're heading to the airport to go to Minnesota to see Brad's parents.  Not as awe-inspiring as Greg & Lauren's 1 hour to the airport escapade, but we were impressed.

There was this awesome little mini playground right by our gate for Nathan to play at

We just spent the whole time with Doug and Janet, which was perfect.  Nathan loved to play with his Grandma and Papa.  Nathan also got to meet a nice doggie while we were there and Nathan was unfazed by the dog licking him or taking away his ball. We were there for just 3 days, but there is nothing like being home for awhile.

And too soon it was time to go back to Philly.  Nathan did great on both flights.  On the way home we had the comfort seats with extra room so Nathan laid down and took a little nap on the floor.  Nathan also tried out headphones for the first time and was so cute holding the earbuds up to his ears.

On another note, this will be our last trip with Nathan flying free since we will have a 2 year old by the end of the week!  Unless we plan to go on vacation tomorrow.  You never know with us Packers.

Spring Blooms Festival

Last year I missed all the tulips at Longwood.  This year I was determined to see them.  Nathan and I made a little trip out to see all of the spring flowers and we enjoyed our little mommy and son day out together.

Going to the Zoo

We decided to get a pass this year to the Philadelphia Zoo (#12).  We went for our first time a few weekends ago and Nathan loved it.  I loved seeing the wonder in Nathan's eyes as he was seeing so many new things.

The lioness came over to snuggle with the lion and everyone let out a collective "Aww!" at seeing them cuddling.

I thought Nathan would love the monkeys most of all.  They're one of the few animals Nathan recognizes and knows the sound for. But as it turns out Nathan loved the turtles.  He picked right up on saying turtle and he says it in such a cute voice and gets both t's in there.

I'm glad we bought the zoo pass because I know this little boy will be asking for more zoo, zoo, zoo!

Penn Boy

Nathan's very first Penn shirt

We were picking up Brad from school one day when Brad got called in on an emergency case.  We had about an hour of free time on our hands so Nathan and I went for a walk around campus.  Penn is exactly what you picture when you think of any Ivy League university.  I love all the old architecture around campus.  Nathan also liked visiting Ben Franklin.

Easter 2014

Back before Thanksgiving, Brad was having a conversation with friends from school about their favorite holidays.  Brad was talking about how much we like Easter at our house and one of Brad's friends, Amy, said that she hated Easter.  Brad invited her to join us for Easter and we could show her how we celebrate.

Well, 5 months later, we had Amy and a few other classmates join us for Easter.  We went to church together and Brad and I sang in 3 pieces with the choir.  After church we went home for our easter feast.

Nathan enjoyed his easter egg hunt in the backyard and was so pleased to find goldfish and teddy grahams in his eggs.

Nathan's favorite gift in his easter basket was his very own bubbles. He loves trying to blow bubbles and then running around and popping them.

Happy Easter!

Post Op

Let's go back to a time when Nathan was learning to crawl.  Nathan was having a grand old time crawling, but would occasionally head dive. And one of these times he happened to go right off the rug we had him on and hit his noggin on the hardwood.  Nathan got quite the goose egg.  And over time it didn't go away.  We got it checked out with the pediatrician and the bump turned out to be a cyst that got bigger with the hit.  Not a big deal, but for cosmetic reasons (it's right on his face and people were starting to ask about it) and since he wouldn't remember it if we removed it now, we scheduled surgery.

They had to verify the side to operate on and mark it with a big red X.

Bye bye bump!

We had quite the early morning (6:50 arrival time.)  We actually arrived a little early and the first patient was late so we got to go first.  This was especially nice since it made our stay an hour sorter.  As soon as I changed him into his surgical jammies he knew something was up and he did not like it.  I don't blame him.  It was early.  He wasn't allowed to eat or drink.  He was wearing purple jammie bottoms for goodness sake.  To help him relax before surgery they gave him some "giggle juice" aka. valium for kids.  When they gave this to him they told me to hold on to him tight because he would go limp afterwards.  Nathan just melted back into me.  I gave Nathan a new stuffed doggie for him to cuddle with.  Nathan loved patting the soft fur and holding on to his doggie for support.  I was able to talk to the doctor and the anesthesiologist before the procedure.  Then it was time for him to go into surgery and me to wait.

I had about a half hour to wait for the surgery.  The doctor came out and let me know everything had gone great.  It was about 1.5 cm wide cyst and they had removed all of it.  The anesthesiologist came out also and let me know that he didn't have any problem with the anesthesia, but he had been pretty upset and cried himself to sleep. Poor buddy.  She said he was in recovery now and that I would be able to see him in about 5 minutes.

When I was able to go back to see him, he was still asleep.  I wasn't quite expecting to see him the way he was.  The plan was that he would wake up in the next 15-30 minutes.  He went the whole 30 minutes and didn't want to get up when the nurse roused him.   She gave him some apple juice to make sure the anesthesia hadn't made him nauseous before she released us.  Nathan drained the whole sippy cup and he was so mad when it was all gone.  He wanted more, but we didn't want to make him throw up by giving him too much.  After 10 minutes and he hadn't thrown up we were allowed to leave.

Once we got home I made us some eggs for breakfast (one of Nathan's favorite foods.)  Nathan was so furiously hungry.  I've never seen him eat so fast!  He ate through all the eggs, strawberries, blueberries, and toast I could put before him.  We let him pick out a movie (Up) and he then proceeded to zonk out.  Nathan NEVER falls asleep on the couch.  Never ever.  Poor bug was so tired.  So it was right off to bed.

Day after surgery

The next few days the trend of being really tired continued, but when he was up he was back to his happy self.  I can already see the scar de-puffing and becoming thinner.  He really doesn't seem bothered by it.  We're happy that we're done with surgery and that there's no more bump.