Finn’s Four Year Checkup

Finn has his four year checkup (or “check-out” as he calls it) this week and it went pretty well. He grew three inches and gained five-and-a-half pounds over the last year. Dr. Rodarte gave him a clean bill of health, said his weight and height curves remain steady and described him as “solid.” At 40.5 inches tall and 44.7 pounds, I’d say that’s a fair assessment. (For comparison, Ezra is 44.25 inches tall and weighs 43.4 pounds.)

He also had hearing and eye testing done. I snapped a picture of him doing the eye test because it was just so darn cute. They do it in the hallway and everyone walking by oohed and aahed at him — even one of the other doctors said, “He’s so cute!”, which never happens.

Finn takes an eye exam

He had a little trouble with the letters, but once they switched to the shapes chart he was fine.

He also got two shots, which didn’t go so smoothly. Usually he’s pretty stoic, but not this time. He just cried and cried — so much so that the nurse came back in with four stickers for him. Later he was happy about that but there was no consoling him when we were in the office. The whole ordeal must have really worn him out because he fell asleep in the car a couple of hours later and slept for almost three hours.

Finn’s New Bike

Filling in some posts out of order here. For some reason, I just wasn’t in the mood to blog last week.

At any rate, Finn got a new bike for his birthday. It’s a little big for him — he’s sort of in between a good size for his old Skuut balance bike and the new one. Here’s a quick video of him and Ezra riding at the park.

We’ve had a few crashes, including one incident where he rode down our driveway and right into the street before crashing, but so far he’s survived. I’m not sure my nerves will, though.

Cottage Special Visitor’s Day 2011

We have a guest blogger for today’s entry: Jamma!

4-19-11 Special Visitor’s Day at Cottage

There are no pictures with this posting because Jamma never has her camera and if she does, it is never charged. Bad Jamma.

Other than that, excellent day at Cottage. Finn was excited to see me, barefoot, dirty and wet to his knees. He did decide that taking me inside was better than making sand “cement.” Jamma needs overalls for Cottage visits. Inside we went where Finn made me a beautiful lavender bouquet with a red and green ribbon. It made my car smell so nice all the way home. Next was snack time, which Finn loved. Snacks were particularly good today at Cottage. There were muffins (blueberry and corn) and bagels and creme cheese, quiches, and another hot egg dish, as well as tangerines and juices. Finn particularly loved the corn muffins (2) which he had after he ate the blueberry one. He needed the extra energy because it was a very speed intensive day at Cottage with a race track in the big yard on the trike spinners. Finn was particularly helpful picking up all the scattered toys that interfered with the pursuit of speed. Next we swung until it was time to sing the “goodbye song.” Finn kissed Jamma goodbye and lickety-split headed for his lunch box and was diving in before I even hit the door.

Finn’s lunch looked good, but Jamma prefers the adult food or restaurants, so she and Christy had a lovely lunch. Then Jamma drove home.

Yeah Finn, thanks for inviting me to Special Visitor’s Day at Cottage.

Jamma

Finn’s 4th Birthday

Finn turned four on Tuesday and we had a little party for his school friends on Monday at Amy’s Indoor Playground. It’s my favorite of the local indoor playgrounds, but it’s usually packed and it’s kind of small. But we got private use of it for two hours — the kids were in heaven. Here are Ezra and Finn (up in the pink tunnel) while it was empty (the 15 minutes before the party started).

Empty Amy's

It filled up with friends and siblings.

Getting busier

The kids ran around crazily for the entire time — except for quick breaks for pizza and, of course, cake. We decided since we were farming out the party this year we’d make the cake ourselves. Here’s my masterpiece. Finn liked the Batman candle — and the vanilla buttercream frosting — the best.

Cake

And here are a couple of pictures of the kids waiting patiently.

Admiring the cake

Cutest picture of Finn

I cut off the happy birthday song, but here’s what I got.

It was a fun party, although we felt a little detached not having it at our house. Hopefully by next year, we’ll be more prepared for Moision birthday season.

Finn’s Project

Today when I picked up Finn from school, he was insistent that he wanted to take his “project” home. His teachers and I thought he was talking about the project he did today but that one wasn’t dry. “No,” he said, “my project!” Not an entirely helpful description. Finally, Teacher Ana remembered that he did a project last week — and lo and behold that was the one he was talking about. (Thank goodness she remembered because I’d still be there negotiating with Finn if she hadn’t.)

This is his masterpiece.

Finn's project

He was sure Ezra was going to love it because it’s all green. He spent the entire car ride home from school telling me about every detail, down to which way it should be held. When we picked up Ezra, Finn immediately showed him his treasured piece, and said, “Ezra, do you love it?” As I was holding my breath, hoping that Ezra would say something nice, I heard, “It’s really, really neat!” Sigh. Such sweet boys.

Finn at the Hardware Store

Yesterday Finn and I went to the local hardware store that sells crazy expensive reproductions of period-appropriate hardware for those of us nuts enough to attempt old house restoration. I was there in search of locks for the windows, specifically two-inch brass locks. While we waited for the next available hardware expert, Finn enjoyed sitting on the swiveling chair and I snapped a picture.

Finn at the hardware store

Unexpected Cottage Work Day

I got called in as the Alternate today when the snack mom’s daughter got sick early this morning, so I had an unexpected work shift at Cottage. It was a pretty uneventful day — at least for me. I had fun watching Finn escort his new yellow Angry Bird all over school and share it with the other kids at Show & Tell. He even took it on the swings.

Finn takes his yellow bird on the swing

After school, some of the kids stayed for lunch bunch and looked super cute eating their lunches and listening to Teacher Art.

Lunch Bunch

Cottage at the Arroyo – Year 2

Last year, I accompanied Ezra and Finn on their field trip to the Arroyo, and I decided to go again this year with Finn’s Oak Tree class. What a difference a year makes! Finn, who refused to walk at all last year, walked the entire way on two separate hikes.

The morning was still exhausting and stressful, but apart from that it’s a joy to watch 27 preschoolers explore the great outdoors. Here are a couple of pictures from our pre-hike round-up.

Cottage at the Arroyo

Cottage at the Arroyo 2

Finn and the NASA Helmet

I worked at Cottage yesterday and thoroughly enjoyed Finn’s love for the NASA helmet he found there. I’ve never seen it before, but judging from the shape it’s in, I think it’s been around a while. Here he is.

Finn and the NASA helmet

And here’s his countdown to blast off.

He also found another use for it …

Hmmm ... what else is the helmet good for?

Somersault!

Somersault

And here’s a cute video of him with his friends Kai and Charlie being a train on the slide.

Conversations with Finn

Finn and I had a couple of interesting conversations yesterday.

 

Finn: Why can’t Charlie come in our car today?

Me: Charlie has to go to the doctor for his check-up.

Finn: What’s a check-up?

Me: Every year around your birthday, you go in and the doctor checks you out to make sure you’re doing well.

Finn: I don’t want a check-up … Mommy, do aardvarks have checkups?

We went on from there to talk about animal hospitals, vets, etc. Not sure where the aardvark reference came from.

 

And the second:

 

Finn: Mommy, everyone is differenter.

Me: Yep, that’s true.

Finn: You’re differenter because you don’t have any penis.

Two Workers

We replaced the well-worn awnings on the new house and this morning Bruce installed the new ones. Finn was a huge help, as usual.

Bruce and Finn work on the awnings

Two workers

And here’s the fruit of all their labor.

New awnings

Let’s Not Do That Again, OK?

A mere couple of hours after I snapped the picture of the boys watching cartoons in my previous post, things took a turn for the worse. At about 11:00 I noticed Finn felt really hot and when I took his temperature it was 104.4. I gave him a dose of Tylenol and put a call in to the pediatrician to see if I should take him to Urgent Care. A few minutes after that I walked into the family room to find him face down on the couch having a seizure. When I picked him up he was dead weight and unresponsive. I started yelling for Bruce, who came running from outside. I handed Finn to Bruce and called 911, screaming at the poor operator to send an ambulance.

The ambulance (and to Ezra’s delight, fire truck) came and took Finn and me down to Huntington’s ER. The paramedics could see that I was scared to death, and they assured me right away that he would be fine. They said what the doctors later confirmed — Finn had a febrile seizure caused by a spike in his fever. Apparently it happens a lot with little kids because their bodies can’t tolerate the sudden rise in temperature. They all did a good job of assuring me that he was OK, while confirming that seeing your child having a seizure is terrifying (and that we did the right thing by calling 911).

It took Finn a while to recover once we got to the hospital. He was very sleepy and we couldn’t seem to keep him awake for more than a few seconds, which was worrisome. When I finally felt like we were out of the woods, I snapped a picture for posterity’s sake.

Sleepy Finn in the ER

About an hour after he got a dose of Motrin, he finally started to perk up. And by perk up, I mean beg for food. Luckily we had a granola bar or we might have been in trouble.

Feeling a little better and having a snack

Our stay in the ER lasted about three and a half hours and when we left his temperature was 99.8. He’s had a few more spikes since we got home, but this time we jump right on it with medication and a lukewarm bath. So far, so good.

I was worried that Ezra would have some anxiety over this episode, but he seems fine. We were lucky enough to have Jerri come get him from the ER so he didn’t have to wait the whole time. (Everyone should have a great friend who lives a couple of blocks from the hospital and volunteers weekly in the ER so she can just waltz right back to the restricted area!) Once they got to her house, she tried to grill Ezra for details but he had none. I think the extent of his reporting was that the fire truck came.

All kidding aside, this incident made me realize just how fortunate our little family has been health-wise. I know several children with serious life-threatening health issues, and parents who have to deal with ambulance rides, ERs and hospital stays on a regular basis. I feel so lucky that Finn’s seizure is not related to any greater problem, and my heart goes out to the families I know and love who have to handle medical emergencies all the time.

Batman’s Errands

Finn and I had some errands to do on Wednesday and he wanted to wear his Batman mask.

Batman

My favorite part was that when I told him we were going to pick up Papa from work he said, “Mommy, don’t tell Papa that I am Batman!”

Rapunzel

On Friday morning Finn asked if we could go to Target to see if they had a doll that had long hair he could cut. My mantra lately whenever the boys ask for toys is that we just had Christmas and their birthday are coming up, so we can put whatever they’re asking for on their birthday lists. This was not OK with Finn. So Bruce had the idea that they could make Finn a doll. That sat better with Finn and they made a plan to go to the yarn store so they could make a long-haired doll. Seventeen dollars later (mainly due to the race car buttons Finn insisted on), they headed home to make the doll.

By the time I got home, they had cut out the doll from cardboard, used an old shirt for material for the clothes, sewn on shoes and buttons, and Bruce was starting on the hair. Finn was thrilled and couldn’t wait to show me. Rapunzel started off with painstakingly sewn-on orange hair, which Finn promptly cut off (the whole point of the long-haired doll, after all).

Rapunzel 1

After a couple more rounds of this, Bruce decided to sew loops on and attach long hair to the loops so that new long hair could be put on more easily after each haircut. Here are two more shots of Rapunzel in all her glory.

Rapunzel 2

Rapunzel 3