Spring and Stitches

We are so thankful it's Spring, even though the rain has been non stop for about the past month.  At least the temperatures are slowly climbing and making our outdoor adventures much more bearable!  We've even had a few wonderfully sunny days to go hiking and exploring that have given us a glimpse of our fun summer ahead.

The chicken whisperer.  OMG, he is in LOVE with the chicks.

We've had a rough week in our household, though.  Last Friday, my dad and Chris broke me down and we brought home a box of chicks to take care of until my parents get their coop built at their new house.  We brought home four chicks, one for each of the grandchildren.  Z and O got to pick out their own and named them Cinderella and Roar.  :)  The kids LOVE going and checking on them every day in the garage where they are in a cardboard box with a heat lamp to keep them at the appropriate temperature.  Every day we notice they're losing more and more of their baby fuzz and gaining feathers.  Apparently you're supposed to buy more chicks than you actually want because they have a high likelihood of dying when they're so little.

Oliver and Roar.  Surprisingly, he's been quite gentle.

SO.  The kids and I were getting ready to leave the house on Wednesday, I was loading up the car and the kids were checking on the chicks when I heard "Mama, why is that one just LAYING there?"  I knew immediately what had happened and sure enough little Roar died.  Explaining the death of this chick to Zoë was excruciating and she was HEARTBROKEN.  Sobbed all the way to the Zoo which is where our morning adventure was taking us.  She had all sorts of questions like, "why can't I see it after we bury her?" "why did she die?" "how do you KNOW all of the other ones will not die?" and just general heartache.  I told Chris and Dad that I was never forgiving them.  When Chris came home from work we had a brief funeral where we buried Roar in the front yard in a box Z had decorated that afternoon and under a rock for a grave marker she had painted.  She was super teary and then choked out "ice cream" and the tears disappeared.  She is related to Chris and myself, after all.  Food fixes everything.  ;)

Zoë and Cinderella

WHOSE idea WAS this?!

Oliver with the numbing cream on his forehead, waiting for the doctor to come back.

What a champ!  Capri Sun and graham crackers afterwards!

 And then yesterday I took the kids to the library for storytime and I kid you not we were TEN steps into the building when Oliver tripped over his own two feet and fell INTO THE CORNER OF THE BOOKSHELF and split his forehead open.  Like, a big gash.  Blood gushing from his forehead I whisked him to the front desk and asked a librarian if they had a first aid kit we could use, and then told her we'd be in the bathroom (I didn't want blood to be dripping all over the carpet and figured the bathroom would be easier to clean up safely).  The gash looked huge and I had a feeling we'd be getting stitches.  Luckily I had the foresight to call our amazing pediatrician who said to bring Oliver in right away so we checked out a few books for Z in case we were waiting for a while and drove up to Renton to see Dr. Moore.  As soon as the nurse saw the picture of O's forehead she said, "oh, yes, that'll need stitches" and put some numbing cream on it right away.  We waited about ten minutes and Dr. Moore came in to check it out.  He was hoping to only use the special glue to help his skin heal but determined it was too wide of a gash and that the glue wouldn't hold it together, so stitches it was.  Oliver was a CHAMP so far and didn't even flinch or flail when everybody else was touching him or looking at his head.  They were quite impressed with our almost two year old.  :)  Dr. Moore put cleaned up his wound, they put more numbing cream on it, and then came in to do the stitches.

This kid is never down for long.

 They put a piece of paper completely covering his head except for a hole cut around the gash.  So the poor kid couldn't see anything except Dr. Moore's face out the top of the hole.  He thought it was a game at first until the stitches started, but he held still and was fine until I lifted the paper up after the second stitch and could see that his lip was puckered and he was holding in his tears.  Such a tough guy!  We kept reassuring him and he finally started to let the sobs out around the start of the third stitch and then it was downhill from there.  It broke my heart to see him trying to be so tough and know he was probably really scared.  The whimpers of "ow, ow, ow" were not helping, either.  Five stitches later, he got to sit up and have another graham cracker and Capri Sun while they wiped him up and put some steri-strips over the stitches.

Bedtime "stodies"

So.  That has been our week.  Quite traumatic for Mom.  (Update:  Oliver got his stitches out, easy peasy.  The doctor put glue over them so they stay put.  For the next 3-6 months we have to put a mixture of sunscreen and vitamin E oil over the scar...).

Family hike at the Nisqually Wildlife Refuge. Enjoying a brisk but sunny day!

And now the month of April is looming with Oliver's birthday coming up, then Easter, and then all of the planning that comes along with summertime!  We already have several trips planned for our summer and can't wait for pool and BBQ weather again!