favorite things

I'm stealing this post idea from one of super dude's girlfriends.  Sofie's mom does a "favorite things" post every couple of months and I love it, so here it goes.

(1) Saying: "I do it" and "Nope!"  He has become VERY independent and wants to do everything himself.

(2) Purple shirts.  Every morning when we ask him what he wants to wear, he goes to his closet, points and says, "Puh-puh shirt, pweeze."  And when I ask him what I should wear, it's "Puh-puh shirt, mommy."

(3) Brown Shoes.  Nothing but THESE brown shoes.  In fact, I had to order another pair in a larger size so that we are never without the brown shoes.  He has several other pairs of shoes that look better with certain outfits, but in the grand scheme of things, it really doesn't matter which pair of shoes he wears, so he wears the brown shoes.  And if we attempt to convince him to wear another pair of shoes, he uses one of his two favorite phrases (see #1 above) and replies, "Nope!" while putting the unwanted shoes in the closet and digging out "brown shoes."

(4) "Pay-doh"

(5) Sleeping in his big-boy bed.

(6) Mini M&Ms.  Or in his words, "MMs"  We truly can bribe him to do just about anything with a few of these babies.  Plus, the tubes are a great size to stash in your bag and whip them out whenever needed - like in Target when he's "singing" loudly or when you're in a public restroom and need to distract him so he won't open the door and expose you to the free world.

.....and this is why we switched from larger M&Ms to minis.  Whoever said they "melt in your mouth, not in your hands" didn't have a 2-year-old!

(7) Blocks.  He loves to build "towas" with "bwocks."

(8) Playing in the water.  The only time he really gets into trouble at school is when he is supposed to finish washing his hands, but chooses to continue running the water and playing in the sink.

 (9) Playing outside.

(10) Uh-Huh!  The video speaks for itself!

If you're curious about what's so funny, you can view for yourself here:  UH-HUH!

did you say something?

Age:  2 years, 5 months
Height: 36" (50th %)
Weight: 13 kilos (40th %)
O2: 99%

We were thrilled to see those numbers today!  I can't believe how well and how quickly he bounced back from that nasty GI bug he had.

In February, at a routine Audiology follow-up, Super Dude was diagnosed with significant hearing loss.  [As a side note, it is recommended that CDH kiddos have their hearing screened frequently until age 3 because of the risk of late-onset sensorineural hearing loss related to diuretics, mechanical ventilation and high-frequency oscillation]  Luckily, SD's hearing loss is conductive, meaning that he has a problem conducting sound waves, which, for him, is caused by fluid accumulation in the middle ear.  SD's (fantastically wonderful) Pediatrician, Dr. B, referred him to an ENT, so that we can solve this problem before it further delays his speech.

The ENT quickly confirmed that: (1) SD's eardrums do not respond to sound at all, (2) he can not hear anything below normal conversation and what he does hear, he hears as if he's under water, (3) his hearing remains unchanged since the Audiology report in February, and (4) that he needs tubes.  Dr. ENT mentioned that reflux can add to the fluid build-up in the ears and gave us some pointers on how to reduce those effects. The tubes should also help SD sleep more soundly and breathe easier.  It's amazing how related everything is inside the body!

She is willing to perform this surgery in conjunction with SD's abdominal wall hernia repair surgery that we had planned for late summer, but she doesn't want to wait that long before putting the tubes in.  So, we have moved up the surgical consult with Dr. H to next week in an effort to convince beg Dr. H to allow the ENT to insert tubes during his repair surgery.  We'd really prefer to only have SD under anesthesia and breathing-tube placement once, but if Dr. H (whom we literally trust with our child's life) doesn't think it's a good idea, we will be planning two surgeries for this summer.

We'll update more once we know more, but we'd appreciate any happy thoughts you can send his way!

Big boy sitting in the ENT chair!

For more info on tubes, click HERE

bubbles and sunshine

We've had beautiful weather this weekend, so we took full advantage of it by staying outside as much as possible. We bought new patio chairs, planted several new flowers and tried out Super Dude's bubble machine. He and Lucy had such a great time chasing bubbles!

elvis lives!

Super Dude loves to dance and tonight learned how to dance like Elvis.  At the start of "Jailhouse Rock" Elvis has his hands on his belt loops, so Super Dude copied him!

happy birthday daddy!

my daddy's birthday was this week and his co-workers with gave him a yummy birthday cake that he brought home to share!  i love it when mommy and daddy have birthdays because it means i get to eat birthday cake ~ i even convinced them to let me eat cake for breakfast today!!!

happy birthday to the best-est daddy in the whole world!

the dude loves mj

Super dude loves watching Michael Jackson perform.  He points to the laptop and says "moonwalk" when he wants us to play a video.  A few nights ago, after watching MJ moonwalk over, and over, and over, and over...he got down, ran to the hallway and started moonwalking!!!!