Fun Visit with Nonnie!

We had a nice visit with Nonnie today. As usual, she came bearing fun little gifts for the kids, an airplane for Kyle and a bulldozer for Luke. We all (adults included) especially enjoyed the toy airplane...when you pull it backward, it shoots forward with its propeller spinning, nose lifting. The first time I did it, I thought it was actually going to takeoff!

Once the novelty of the cool airplane wore off a bit, the boys had fun playing outside in the wonderfully-snowless-in-February backyard with Nonnie. Isn't this just the best winter ever?! Luke's new favorite thing when he's outside is watching his shadow (and saying "shadow" over and over again until someone acknowledges it)...very cute, as is almost everything about little Pooks :)

Then it was inside for pizza. Kyle has been talking about that for the last few days because that's our lunch tradition when Nonnie visits...veggie Kashi frozen pizza which Kyle thinks is a HUGE "special treat". Clearly that boy doesn't get out much.

And the highlight of the day for me (other than seeing Nonnie of course) was the fact that Kyle actually slept during his afternoon "nap" today!! Probably only about 20 minutes, but those little power naps usually reset him into sleeping a bit later in the morning. Hopefully that holds true. So for a brief, wonderful window this afternoon, I had the pleasure of flipping back and forth on my baby monitor and seeing two sleeping boys. At the same time! Ahhh, I could get used to that...

And I had been promising all sorts of things to Kyle when he actually sleeps during his nap (usually he just mills around in his crib for about 5 minutes, yells that he has a poop, I change his diaper, he mills around another 10 minutes or so while I eat my lunch, and then he starts yelling and I get him before he wakes up Luke).

So today, I paid out on these nap promises that I had been making. The highlight for Kyle was a Cars puzzle he had picked out on Amazon a few weeks ago, that I told him the UPS man would deliver when he sleeps during a nap. He was super excited to see it! And up until now, he has only done 24 piece puzzles. This one is 46 pieces, and he put it together all by himself fairly easily, although it took him about 20 minutes instead of only 5 minutes like with his smaller ones. As you can see in the picture, he was so proud when he finished :)

Diaper Rash and Super Bowl

Over the last week or so, Luke has developed a HORRIBLE diaper rash. His poor little bum is all raw and bleeding :( And unfortunately, it coincides with (or was caused by) him now pooping 5-6 times per day, when he had been down to a more reasonable 3 per day before. So his bum never gets a break from the irritation of poop and wipes, and any benefit of the "bum cream" is quickly negated by the next poop. Poop little guy :(

Needless to say, it is REALLY hard to change his diapers because it hurts him so much that he keeps trying to get away. And he's very strong! It brings back such vivid memories of Kyle right around when Jared died. He had an equally bad rash that just went on FOREVER, made worse by the fact that Kyle would constantly claw at it (queue the "hand socks"). Fortunately Luke isn't doing that...yet.

And then it occurred to me that Luke is the exact age, to the day, that Kyle was when he last saw Jared. Luke still seems like such a baby to me, which sort of makes me feel better about Kyle's stage in life when it happened. He really was just a baby. And in some ways, I think parenting without Jared will feel a little less sad going forward now...all of Luke's stages and milestones up to this point have so vividly reminded me of Jared and I going through them together with Kyle. Now all new "kid stuff" will have only been experienced by me alone, and won't trigger any memories.

I do have the Super Bowl on right now. When I let myself get at all into it, I just start crying and feel so sad...I can hear exactly what Jared would be saying, and picture his concentration/facial expression as he'd watch. Patriots football was by far his #1 sports passion, and football in general was absolutely his favorite sport to watch/analyze/discuss. So now I have the game on mute and will do work, laundry, etc while keeping tabs on it. This is literally the first game I've tried to watch since he died, and I guess it proves that I am still a long ways off from being able to enjoy sports again. Watching/following sports was literally my one and only hobby, so there is definitely a void in that department.

And while my heart isn't into the game today, I still wanted to dress the boys appropriately, in case the Pats win the first championship of their lifetime tonight. So here they are, looking absolutely thrilled..go Pats!