Famous!

We made it on the jumbo tron at the reds game last night!

(Luke doesn't like how loud things are before the game starts. Once it started he was fine.)

These kids!

A week or so ago, Nathan backed up while getting ready to go down our slide and fell about 4.5 feet from our swing set. I was standing at the ladder. I do not know how he was not hurt -- he landed on his shoulders/back/neck region. I seriously thought that maybe I shouldn't move him and just call 911. But, he was fine except that he bit his lip. Seriously, there is no reason that he was fine. It was awful. I called the pediatrician but by the time they called me back he was acting like his normal self. So much to be thankful for. 

Our swing set was the previous homeowner's and it was very old and unsafe and we had been meaning to take it down. But we didn't and just were watching to make sure the boys were safe on it. Well, that night I pulled the slide off with my bare hands and also broke the ladder rungs so they couldn't climb up to the platform. The whole swing set is now dismantled.

These kids, I swear.

Tonight, Luke, who is recovering from a cold, went to school today, and didn't nap, asked to go to bed at 7:30. Yikes. Nathan cried for an hour when he woke up from his nap (teeth and cold) and was mad when Hal put him to bed. I can't wait to see how they are tomorrow.

But then there are these moments. This picture makes me so happy. I looked up from checking email yesterday (my birthday!) and these two were like this. What a great birthday present. 



And here's Luke on the first day of school:

Luke hates his birthday, but he's three anyway!

I have no idea what happened to make Luke so anti-birthday this year. Was it the fireworks on "America's Birthday?" Was it that Nathan got all messy on his birthday? We have no idea. He was super upset about his birthday, though. He burst into tears the other night when I sang "Happy Birthday" to him! I did not think that the birthday hating started at age 3.

Due to major protests when we mentioned his birthday, we ended up having a "baseball party" or a "party for no reason." 

Instead of singing "Happy Birthday," we sang "Take Me Out to the Ballgame." Could he look more glum about it?



BUT! He loved presents. He got all sorts of things, and especially love his automatic pitcher.





(He also got that bengals jersey. He is sleeping in it.)

We celebrated with family. I was proud of my photo collage I did for him today: 

Conquering the goopy eye.

This guy had a goopy eye.
It wasn't very fun.
So we went to surgery.
And now the goop is done.

Nathan has had a blocked tear duct since birth. After massaging his eye for a year, the doctors surmised that it was not going away on its own, like they normally do. After consulting the ophthalmologist, we discovered the best course of action was a quick surgery to unblock the tear duct. Yesterday, we had the surgery.

Our whole little family trooped up to the Children's Hospital surgery center. Pre-op, Nathan was in good spirits. We loved that they marked his eye so they would fix the correct one!
   

(Check out that molar!)

Surgery lasted approximately 25 minutes. I was able to hold him while they put him to sleep, which was nice. He didn't fight the mask at all, just sat calmly on my lap while breathing the strawberry-flavored gas in. The anesthesiologist sang "Itsy Bitsy Spider" to him twice and he was out.

Post op was not as nice. He wasn't in pain, but he was grumpy and confused from the general anesthesia. He also tried to pull out his IV. I took this picture once we got to the car and he had calmed down. Poor little guy. He was pitiful.

He got a little nap in in the car and once we got home it was like nothing had ever happened. 

The eye looks great today! 

Pool!

On Sunday, we got Nathan into Gammy and Pa's pool for the first time! He loved it! Luke is getting braver this year, too. He likes jumping off the side!

First Soccer Game!

In order to help Luke burn off some energy this summer and give him something a little structured to do, we enrolled him in a soccer program. It is a program for Under 4s and consists of a short lesson/practice session and then a 3v3 game.

We have been trying to prepare him for soccer for awhile now by talking to him about it. We have met lots of resistance because he would remind us that he is a baseball player, not a soccer player! He was also not impressed to be on the green team instead of the RED team (we convinced him that his team was called The Green Reds). He was unhappy when I brought home shinguards for him last weekend, but wore them to bed when we told him that catchers wear shinguards, too.

He has been iffy about naps lately, so I was surprised that he fell asleep for a nap on Saturday, the day of his first session. Which started at 4:30. And he fell asleep at 3. Yikes. We woke him up at about 3:50 and he fought us from that moment until he got to the facility. He cried the whole way there. We promised him if he didn't like it we didn't have to go back and we could get ice cream to celebrate his first game (sigh -- resorting to food bribery). He still didn't want to go.

Until we got in. And he saw the teams in front of him playing. Then he perked up. And then I gave him his uniform shirt, and he was convinced:

When the group before him was done, he ran out, grabbed a ball, and had a blast! So much of a blast that he didn't really pay much attention when they tried to do the lesson with them. I tried to go out there and hold his hand for a little while, but that didn't really help. I was just excited that he wasn't crying (several of the kids were).

The poor kid liked to kick the ball and fall down immediately. That reminds me of...me. I could never stay on my feet while playing. Poor Luke.

He is going to have to work on having nice hands. Luke gets great joy out of tackling people. That is not good. His pushing stressed me out! He kept going between pushing and hugging. I am hopeful that he'll learn to be less pushy by next weekend. I do think that by the end of the game he was doing less overt pushing and more of a soccer "lean-in" with the shoulder. Which is not better, but a step in the right direction!

The lesson was adorable (even if he didn't pay attention), and the game was really cute, too. Every time the kids did something right during the game, they got a stamp on their hand. It was fun to watch. 

He ran for an hour straight (the 3v3 game turned into an everyone v everyone game because so many of the kids were having a hard time just being on the field). He was a sweaty mess, but he loved it!

A weighted statement

Luke held the meat thermometer up to me tonight and said, "Mommy, I see how much you weigh." 

Me: "How much?" 

Luke: "Two years and 20,000 miles."

Great.