My Brave Boy

Wyatt had his first "surgery" this morning and he was such a brave boy!

He has been tongue-tied since birth and to this point I did not think it was a big deal -- he ate great as an infant and his speech seemed on par with other 4 year olds. However, a couple of weeks ago at the dentist, she pointed out some speech issues he was having that could be directly related to being tongue-tied. I contacted our pediatrician and he referred us to an ENT who we saw yesterday. Evidently Wyatt was "severely tethered" and the ENT also thought it would be a benefit to have this taken care of. With it being the holiday weekend there were a lot of openings in today's surgery schedule and they fit us in first thing (7:30 am) this morning.

Wyatt did GREAT! He didn't not fuss about the early wake-up call (6 am) and he was very brave walking into the hospital. A friend of mine came with me to keep me company and help in case Wyatt got sick at all from the meds on the way home and we were surprised by one of our pastors (and good friend) who also showed up with treats to keep us company as well. Wyatt was entertained by Playhouse Disney as we waited for surgery time. All of the nurses were very kind and patient to my sensitive little boy. The hardest part of the whole ordeal was watching and listening to Wyatt scream for me as they took him back to surgery -- broke this mama's heart. The procedure itself went well and his hospital recovery was easy! It has been a long day with a tired and crabby boy, but overall I could not have asked for this to have gone better.

Wyatt "Reading" the Christmas Story

We have been reading the Christmas story from Luke 2 out of Lily and Wyatt's children's bible every night. Wyatt is great at memorization and this is a video of him "reading" the story. It is a long video (10 minutes), but if you have time to watch it I think you might enjoy it.

** Remember to turn off the music on the blog.

*** If you don't have a lot of time, there is a shorter video posted below.

something to laugh about...

This is a very short video of Wyatt playing this past weekend with Papa Steve. I am sure that it will make you laugh! :)

Remember to pause the music on the right hand side of the blog.

Fear or Rebellion?

I am trying to determine if Wyatt is afraid of the dark or if he is just going through a rebellious phase. I am thinking it might be a combination of both. I believe that he was truly afraid last week before we got his new night light. His cries, his words, his actions all pointed towards fear.

However, with the new night light in his room (which fully lights up his room and part of mine if both our doors are open), he seems to be testing how far he can push me and my concern for his fears. He has a little whimper cry that he does as I am about to shut his door each night. At first it was both cute and kind of sad, now I am starting to think it is fake -- how do they learn these things?

This phase is going to take a lot of patience on my part, something I do not always have. I want to sympathize with his fears, but I don't want to feed into his mommy-testing game if that is what he is in fact trying to do. I will continue to ask God for discernment and patience in raising my toddlers and I will continue to ask you all for prayers as well!

A Mommy Adventure! :)

Wyatt and Mommy...Wyatt is playing with the toy from his kid's meal!

I have been wanting to be more intentional about spending one-on-one time with Lily and Wyatt with "Mommy Dates." (Mommy/Daddy Dates was one of the goals that Ryan and I had for parenting twins.) Obviously, being the only parent makes it more difficult to be able to take only one child out, but a few different things made it necessary for me to spend some one-on-one time with Wyatt yesterday:

• Wyatt has suddenly become afraid of the dark. I mean screaming-at-the-top-of-his-lungs-several-times-in-the-middle-of-the-night afraid. One night of that was enough for me, so I wanted to take him to get a new, brighter night light right away.
• Lily has been running a fever (100-102) since Sunday afternoon. I didn't want to expose the rest of the world to her bug, so I could not take both kids out to run errands like I normally do.

Thankfully, my parents were willing to watch Lily, fever and all, allowing me to take Wyatt to get his new night light. I decided to make a Mommy date out of it, so Lily went to Nana and Papa's for dinner and playtime while Wyatt and I went out together. We went to Burger King (Wyatt's choice), Dollar Tree, and Target together. Wyatt got a new night light that matches his sheets and actually lights up his room quite well!

I really enjoyed my time with Wyatt! As we were driving to pick Lily up I asked if he enjoyed his mommy time. He responded, "that wasn't mommy time it was an adventure!" :)

(Side note: do you know how much easier it is to take only one child on errands?)

What do you say ...

...when your 3 year old son asks if Jesus will let Daddy come back from heaven to live with us at our new house?
...when that same 3 year old son asks why Daddy had to go to heaven from the hospital?

Thanks!

I just wanted to take a moment to thank all of you for your words of encouragement and your PRAYERS! They definitely helped yesterday. We had a much better day. I could laugh and enjoy my children...I could breath. THANKS!

We also passed another "milestone" yesterday...it had been one year since Ryan was officially listed on the lung transplant list. Here are my thoughts from that day:

God's Timing
Things never seem to go as planned, well not my plans anyway. The big news today is that Ryan is officially listed for a lung transplant after having a successful heart cath this morning. He is number 1 on the list for his blood type and body size. There are others who have a higher lung allocation scores (LAS), but they have a different body size than Ryan so they don't pull from the same donor lungs.

We had gotten the feeling last week that Ryan would probably be higher on the list that we first thought, but I must say I was SHOCKED when he called and told me that his is number one. I thought that I would have more mental time to prepare, but in all reality I/we could get a call at any moment. It could literally be in the next hour. WOW!!!!!

Please pray that God allows us to both mentally prepare before the time comes, even if it is tonight. Please also pray that I can physically prepare (bags packed, oil changed, bank stuff, phone list done) before this life changing moment happens for us.

This is a picture of Wyatt and I from yesterday. He was in a picture taking mood and I thought this one turned out well. Hopefully he will be in a picture taking mood when I take them for their 3 year old pics on Saturday!

The Weekend

I think this might be one of the first times in my life that I am glad it is Monday. We had a long weekend with a lot of snow and two kiddos not feeling so well. I am happy to report that both kids slept all night last night and they are just beginning to stir at 8:20 am! :)

Here are two pictures that capture our weekend:

"I don't feel so good, Mommy"

Snow, snow, and more snow!