What's with the ears?!

We finally, finally, finally seem to have gotten poor Joel's ears cleared up. He was scheduled to have his tubes put in this past Tuesday, but after a follow up visit last week to the ENT his ears were proclaimed clear and Dr. D told me that we could postpone tubes and just keep an eye on him to see how he does. So far, so good (knock on wood!). We got back to the ENT in a few weeks to have his hearing checked and make sure that his ears are still clear.

But now, my poor baby girl is the one with the ouchy ears. She spent the night Monday night and Grandma and Pappa's house and Tuesday morning my mom called with a report of a very restless/sleepless night where Alyssa was complaining of her ear hurting. Last night when I got her home she was running a temp of 102 and still saying that her ears hurt. So I decided I was taking her in today just get her checked out because she's been "off" lately. I was fully expecting to hear that she had an ear infection, but my heart sank when Dr. K told me that both her eardrums were ruptured. He assured me that it wasn't a big deal, but that world RUPTURED sounds so awful! We came home armed with good old amoxicillian and some ear drops, so hopefully she's feeling better really soon as it just breaks my heart seeing her all weepy and miserable and sick. All she wants is love and cuddles and that's hard to do with two kids. Makes me wish that I could hit the pause button on Joel so that I could devote all my attention on her.

The Tree of Pooh (as in Winnie)

I started collecting Winnie the Pooh things when I was around a sophomore in high school. Since then I've acquired quite the collection of Pooh Christmas ornaments. For the past few years I've thought that I should really do just a small "Pooh tree" since we have so many ornaments on our regular tree. (Or I should say ADAM has so many ornaments on our regular tree). This year I bit the bullet and did a Pooh tree. I put it up in the front window in the play room, so we can kind of pretend that its the daycare tree.

My two favorite ornaments ~ I think this first one is a fave because it reminds me of the mural that I painted in Alyssa's nursery.

And this one I received the year Alyssa was born ... kind of another baby-ish one since its a mobile of Tigger, Pooh, and Piglet hanging on stars under a moon.

Along for the ride

Its that peaceful time where Joel is able to play and interact with Alyssa ... and she hasn't figured out what a pain in the rump a little brother can be. I LOVE it!!! :)

Family Picture

Our friend/neighbor Amy took family pictures for us this afternoon at the lake by our house. We took almost 100 shots ... I think about 3 turned out fairly decent. :P

ts tough getting 4 people to all smile/look at the same time. Especially when one of those people is Alyssa. But I think this one turned out pretty well ~ its my fave!

The "T" word

Yesterday marked the 4th time in 6 weeks that I took Joel to Dr. K's office to have his ears checked and each time we were sent home with a new medication to try. Yesterday we also left with a referral to an ENT (ear, nose and throat doctor) to set up a time to have tubes put in his ears. I had a feeling that news was coming, but I still didn't like getting it. I know that its a really common and simple procedure, but I still hate to think about it. But if it'll make Joel feel better that's all that really matters.

The really amazing thing that happened at our appointment yesterday was that there's always been this big ball of wax in one of his ears that prevented doctors from getting a good look in his ear. But we saw 3 different people and each one said that they didn't want to dig around too much in his ear and since they knew the other ear was infected they didn't really need to see that ear. Well, yesterday Dr. K got the "ball" of wax out. This sucker was a little thicker than the ink insert of a ballpoint pen and almost an inch long. I don't know how on earth something like that could have been stuck in my little guy's little ear! The really cute thing was that after that Joel kept touching his ear like he couldn't believe he could hear out of it. :)

Life under a rock

It was about 9:15 last night while I was talking to Paula on the phone that I found out last night was "fall back" night. I had thought about daylight savings time changing a few times over the past couple weeks and I think I *thought* that it was this weekend, but I totally would have spaced it off had I not been talking to Paula. I must live under a rock because that seems like a pretty big deal to miss.