My baby boy just told me he loved me for the first time!!!!

He was drowsy, drifting off to sleep in my arms, when his tiny little voice said, “I yuh you”. And then he leaned up to me and gave me a big kiss on the mouth. 

He then proceeded to repeat that he loved me over and over, with intermittent kisses, until he fell asleep.

And I am a pile of mush.

It’s been a week since the tube surgery happened, and I finally have a moment to report back. With surgery, the Thanksgiving holiday and normal life all smooshed into one week, it is safe to say we’ve been full speed ahead at our house!

This could be a really short entry. I could just write “Tubes changed everything for the better” and leave it at that. That would really be enough. But I’ll fill it out and gush about our new post-surgery life for you anyway.

Tubes changed everything for the better, as I already mentioned. Lewis sleeps better and longer at night. He goes down for naps and bedtime more easily. He eats better. His mood is better. We haven’t given him a single drop of Tylenol since before the surgery. He hears better. Everything is better.

The hearing improvement was a surprise. We didn’t think Lewis had any hearing problems, since all measures indicated that Lewis was advanced in his language skills. But as soon as we got home from the surgery, Lewis was suddenly fascinated by sounds that should have been old news (ex. the rustling of cheerios in his snack cup, or Kyle walking on the second floor above us). And his pronunciation has gotten significantly better (“banana” used to be “mamama”… and, well, now it is “banana”). What a bonus!

Sleep has been insanely good, which makes life easier in general. What kid could be grumpy when he sleeps between 11 and 12.5 hours every night without stirring? So the sleep improvement has meant that nights AND days are – dare I say it? – how they’re supposed to be.

Don’t get me wrong – we’ve still got a toddler on our hands. Just yesterday he screamed endlessly because he saw the bag of M&M’s on the counter and I wouldn’t give him any (gosh, I’m such a jerk). We also had a good fit because I wouldn’t put his tennis shoes on over the top of his slippers (I would have if I could have, kid). So he’s insane, but he’s normal-insane now. I am totally game for normal-insane!

The surgery itself was easy-peasy. We got there dark and early, before the doors even opened (oops!), got checked in, got kiddo’s vitals taken, changed him into his gown, and then off he went with the surgical team for a quick 15 minute procedure. He didn’t even cry when they walked away with him (my brave boy!). He did, however, cry quite a bit when the anesthesia wore off. He was disoriented, groggy, and scared – I don’t blame him.

He calmed down once we were headed out the door, snoozed a bit in the car, and then was bouncing off the walls at home like nothing ever happened, eating everything in sight. And that was that.

The nurses gave Lewis a stuffed elephant to keep him company while mama and dada weren’t there, and he has really bonded to it. He never really had a “lovey” before, but this semi-traumatic experience has made this elephant into his best buddy and source of comfort. I wish I had a recording of him saying “elephant” on-hand to add to this post. It’s adorable. *swoon*

We did have a pretty dismal night of sleep last night, and therefore a rough start to the day. And shoot, the rest of the day has been rough for me too. Hopefully the kid is faring better at school than I am at work. But we’re hopeful that the rough night was just a fluke, and doesn’t become a pattern again.

That being said, tubes don’t prevent ear infections 100%, they just minimize the problems and make them easier to handle when they do come up. So we’re watching him for signs of an ear infection, since he’s been digging in his ears the past day or so. That, combined with the bad sleep last night feels very familiar…

Thanksgiving snuggles on the couch watching hallmark Christmas movies. So thankful for this little dude.

Tubes are happening in the morning. The day has finally arrived. 

I just wish the kid wasn’t waking up every two hours….

He has actually been sleeping great for the last week. He even went 12.5 hrs last night! But tonight we are back to his old ways. 

I wonder if he knows on some level that something kinda scary is happening tomorrow, and that’s messing with his sleep. 
Anyway, probably not. I’m sure I’m just projecting. As expected, I’m a little nervous. And because of kiddo’s bad sleep tonight, I get to marinate in those nerves more than I would like. 

It will be over soon. Relief is on its way!

I’ve had a little more time to think about “The Trump Thing” since my last post, and while I still feel the same way… I would like to add a couple things.

1. Thank goodness we have three branches of government, and he doesn’t get to make all the decisions alone. I don’t anticipate him being very good at his job, but I do believe that there are other people in D.C. who are good at their jobs, and they will get us through the next four years, and hopefully keep Trump from turning his platform into reality. Checks and balances, people.
2. I actually do wish that Trump would do a tremendous (ha!) job. I want him to surprise me. If he does a good job, it’s better for all of us.

All we can do now is wait and see. My values in my home stay the same, no matter who my president is. And I hope that the next 4 years aren’t as disastrous as they feel like they could be.

P.S. One more week until tube surgery! YAY!

Donald Trump won the election. I don’t think I can accurately describe how this makes me feel, but I’ll throw a few words out there to give it a shot.

Fear. Disbelief. Shock. Shame. Hopelessness. Sadness.

Fear is probably the biggest one. No one can predict what is going to happen under an Donald Trump presidency, but based upon what we saw in the campaign, I don’t have a sunny outlook.

For personal reasons, I’m terrified. The way he treats women, speaks of women, thinks about women is… well it is a perfect example of the reason women take self defense classes, never go anywhere alone, carry weapons. I’ve been sexually harassed verbally more times than I can count, because that just happens to women. It shouldn’t, but it does. I’ve even been physically assaulted on public transportation by a man, and a whole bus full of people ignored what they saw and wouldn’t come to my aid. Because improper sexual treatment of women is so normal that people don’t even intervene. With the leader of our country displaying these behaviors, how are women supposed to have hope that this treatment will end? The examples of poor behavior towards women that little boys see are already everywhere, and now they’re going to watch their president get away with it. How am I supposed to explain to my son that he can’t act that way, if his president does?

But it isn’t just women that Trump offends and treats poorly. It’s literally everyone else, too. Except, apparently, enough Americans to get him elected. Homosexuals, Muslims, blacks, hispanics, foreigners, leaders of other countries… he’s got the whole world against him, and only about half the American voters with him. That’s about 60 million people who approve of him, and probably about 7 billion people against him. What does that say for our safety? Who will he start a war with? Will the economy survive when the whole world is terrified of what we’ve done? Is my family’s well-being in jeopardy?

My son is my biggest concern. I want him to be a kind man. I want him to be accepting of people who are unlike him and to see the beauty in diversity. I want him to be respectful. I want him to understand the power of words. I want him to be safe. I want him to be open minded. I want him to be…. everything that Donald Trump isn’t.

Kyle and I are just going to have to work harder now that Donald Trump is our president. We’re going to have to work our asses off to make sure that Lewis doesn’t turn out like him. We’ll give him better, louder, bigger examples of what a person should be. We’ll make him see us instead of his president. He’s going to be better than that.

I mentioned yesterday that we’ve been experiencing some challenges in our house, and you probably guessed that they are (still) sleep related.

Lewis’ sleep has been abysmal. I can’t remember the last time he slept through the night. And each wake-up is scream-filled, violent, awful, and sometimes lengthy (to the tune of 4 hours, on occasion).

We did finally get him into the ENT, and – sure enough – the doctor was on board for tubes. We didn’t have to fight for it, or even gently ask for it. The doctor took one look at his ears and his chart, and we were submitted to the scheduler to get things rolling. So on November 21st, we’re doing the surgery. And hopefully that will bring some relief.

In the meantime, we’re trying to get through the nights with some sanity intact. Lewis is so inconsistent with how he goes to sleep that I never know what to do. Sometimes he wants me to rock him. Sometimes he wants his bed. Sometimes he wants to sleep on the floor. Almost every time, he screams a lot.

After consulting with family (specifically the ones who watched Lewis while we were out of town last weekend), we decided to go against my instincts and let him scream longer when he wakes up. Kyle agreed that he would comfort me and talk me through my panic – AKA keep me from getting up before the agreed upon time has passed.

I have typically maxed out at 5 minutes of listening to him scream, and when Lewis is well, that has worked fine. Plenty of time for him to calm down and get back to sleep. But it hasn’t worked in a while, so we doubled it last night to 10 minutes. Didn’t really help. And he was up at 5am for the day after a second major scream session.

He was down for a nap by 8am, which is 2-3 hours earlier than normal. But he was a basketcase, so I couldn’t put it off any longer. We’ll see how the rest of the day goes.

I’m very excited for the tube surgery. I’m hoping it will help him sleep easier, which will help us get out of “transition limbo” and he will either begin to reliably put himself to sleep, or he will go back to a rocking-to-sleep routine. I honestly don’t care which. I just want bedtime to be less of an ordeal. And I want him to stay asleep. I know he is capable, since he’s done it in the past when he’s been well.

If things don’t change after the tubes, we have a list of other things we’re going to try. But we have decided to keep things “scientific” and not change too many things at once, so we can truly identify what is happening.

12 days until tubes. 12 long days.

We have been having some challenges at our house. But I’m too tired to write about it right now (how’s that for a hint about what the challenges are…). So I’m just going to post this video of Lewis saying his first sentence.