"Big Old" Man

Well, we have had a fun week. Michael’s rheumatology rotation has been wonderful – allowing us to spend a lot of time together as a family these last few weeks. Last weekend we went down to Lehi and had dinner with Mel and Christian and Annette. That was really fun. Then on Thursday morning I took Isaac for his 9-month check up. I quite like the new pediatrician we have – she seems young and knowledgeable, and willing to take time to explain things if needed but not too long-winded when we are going over the basics. Isaac was 19 pounds and 31 inches long – tall and skinny just like his brothers. He is healthy, and everything was pretty routine, except we did express some concern that at 9 months old he had just barely started to sit up. She asked some questions, had some blood drawn (which came back totally normal), and gave us the number to call for a state agency that does physical therapy for babies. The doctor didn’t seem too concerned, just thought we should have him seen and maybe do some work with him to get him all caught up. I had a long phone call today with the person at the therapy agency (who I think is really nice), and she is coming to our house with a nurse and an educator to evaluate Isaac on September 9th. So that is good. (And, of course, over the last week since Isaac had his doctor’s appointment, he has become even more mobile – scooting and rolling all over, and even pulling himself up on little things like the bottom step of the basement stairs or the toy boxes – so I think it will be good to work on some exercises with him to get him crawling and walking when he should be, but I’m not concerned that he will have any long-lasting problems because of this. Kolby and Eli had swim lessons last week, and had a lot of fun, as always. I signed them up to do one more session of lessons before school starts, and Camden will be starting too, which I am really excited about since he would love to be in the water each time we go to watch his brothers swim. We have thought a lot about it, and I think we are going to have to take a break from swim lessons once school starts, unless we can come up with any other ideas. I am pretty frustrated with the fact that I can’t find AYNONE in the area at all who offers swim lessons year-round just once a week. In Milwaukee we took the boys one evening a week, all year round, to the pool at the YMCA and we really enjoyed that. But here I can’t find anything like that. Right now their lessons are on Tuesday and Thursday mornings, but once they start preschool they won’t be able to go swimming during the day anymore, so the only option the rec. center offers is Tuesday and Thursday nights and Saturday mornings. I just think that doing preschool several days a week, plus we were hoping to get Kolby into piano lessons this year, and adding 3 days a week of swimming on top of that sounds like a lot for such little kids. I really don’t want to over-schedule our 3- and 4-year-old. But I have spent a lot of time searching on the internet and calling all the rec. centers, public pools, gyms, and several high schools with pools within a half hour drive of us, and have found none at all that offer swim lessons once a week. I would love to have my boys swim year round – they love it, it is fun for them, it is good exercise, it gets me to get out and swim with them more often than I otherwise would, and it’s a good skill for them to have for safety around water. We’ll see, but right now we just can’t figure out any way to make it work without making their lives way too busy. Well, on to something else: we drove up to Boise this weekend. It was Michael’s 10-year high school reunion and his 28th birthday on Saturday (I asked Kolby if 28 was old or young, and he said “Old.” I asked, “How old is it?” And he said “Big Old.” Way to go, Michael – you have finally attained the status of Big Old Man. :) We hit traffic on the drive up to Idaho Friday night, and got there late. It is a long drive through a lot of nothing to get from Salt Lake to Boise. But once we got there we had a lot of fun. Michael’s reunion was really fun – it was just a BBQ at a park, but we both enjoyed talking to his old friends for several hours. Then we went home and got to go out to dinner for Michael’s birthday with Dick, Debbie, and Grandma Bradshaw (thanks, Mindy, Dalin, and Jennie for watching the boys for us so we could do that). It was a really nice dinner at a restaurant called McGraths. Then on Sunday, after going to church, we enjoyed a lunch of taco salad (Michael’s favorite), with dutch oven peach cobbler for his birthday “cake.” The drive home was long again, especially since Michael had pulled a muscle in his back just before we left Boise, but luckily he said that the pain wasn’t as bad at the end of the drive as it had been at first. So, we got home safely and everything has gone well today. And we will have to enjoy this week, because next Monday Michael starts his internal medicine rotation, which will mean a lot more hours at the hospital and a lot less time off with the family. Hopefully that 4 weeks goes by quickly. Oh, and last week we did a couple other things too that I forgot to mention – I cut Kolby and Eli’s hair again. Eli’s needed a trim to make it short enough to spike again, and when I asked Kolby how he wanted his cut he said he wanted it “up straight” so he got spikes too. And the boys and I made a fun t-shirt for Michael for his birthday with the words “No 1 Dad” and each of the boys’ handprints on it. It turned out pretty cute, if I do say so myself. I’ll have to post photos of that later too. Oh, and I hit 14 weeks today with the pregnancy. Just a quick update -- I am mostly over the morning sickness, as long as I get enough sleep and eat at certain times, and I have started taking a couple Flintstones children's vitamins a day as an alternative to prenatal vitamins, which has been working a lot better for me. So, things are going pretty well now.