Park with growing boy..

As much as I already miss some of the cuteness of the whole "little teenie newborn thing", one of the things that I love about Fox' growing independence is how much he can enjoy himself at my feet at the park. We went to the park next door to Brooke's soccer practice today. Mostly he sat in the sand (of course, making a huge mess of himself, but hey..) then he crawled around on the pavement. But to top it all off, he took his first ride on the slide. Ashley really does love carrying him around and taking care of him. She has been requesting to change his diapers (I let her), put him to bed (not quite working) or just come take him from me, so i can get something done!

Before and Before?

I have ruined Ashley's life, according to her anyway. After 3 weeks of waiting, taking a "before" shot, and Ashley telling me every day, "I guess I only have ____ number of days left now until I get my braces", Ashley came home looking like this:

I guess she is the one who was getting the palate expander first and then the braces later on - oops. She was so mad at me! You'd think it was not that difficult to keep track of thousands of dollars of orthodontic work and yet somehow I still keep getting confused on what they are getting done. Her eyes were actually tear-ing up. She even said, "I can't go back to school, I already told them all i was getting braces." Me, "Well, just tell them you got lucky and only had to get the palate expander". Ashley, "I already told them I was excited AND there is already someone else that has a palate expander in my class (insert her extremely grumpy tone)."

sandy

My knee is still definitely in early recovery - It's hard for me to get in and out of the car and I'm still limping when I walk without a huge range of motion back yet. But I just HAD to get out, I can't handle just sitting at home all the time - so with the motivation of some friends we headed to the beach on Tuesday. It was such a nice afternoon. Last month when we went to the beach Fox got sick of it pretty quick - in fact, he was thrilled as soon as we got to the car. This time he was stoked to be crawling around and eating sand. I kept trying to pick him up and clean his face off but all he wanted to do was get to my soda can. I moved it forward he went for it - I moved it back, he crawled over there. I remember Brooke used to always find cigarette butts in the sand - so gross. He finally just entertained himself with the top wrapper from the Pringles can and the sand. Such simple needs.

The girls actually even got in the water a little - it was really cold, so I say they are crazy! As I was dragging them out our friends were about to do s'mores. Being the horribly mean mom I am, I told them we just had to go. Lucky for them, we forgot Lauren's shoes so when we circled back, everybody jumped out of the car to mooch some smores before the ride home. This and great weather week was the perfect example of the only downside to daylight savings time - the sun was still up - we were having a great time, it's so hard to stop the fun and get to bed on time!

Braces and surgery...

Brooke got braces! actually, to be specific she got a palette expander and braces on just her top teeth. Apparently, her top teeth sit inside her bottom teeth - but not for much longer..

Ashley is right behind her - she was supposed to get hers on the next day, but then I decided to have surgery on my knee so we had to reschedule and the soonest appointment they had was 3 weeks later (which both she and I thought was really annoying). After the first couple of days when Brooke's mouth was pretty sore, Ashley wasn't as excited but now that she isn't hurting much anymore Ashley is continuously asking me how much longer it is until she is getting hers on. She actually said to me, "So I guess your knee is more important than my braces, right?" (insert annoyed tone) Kids sure do know how to push their parents' buttons.

I did have the surgery on my knee a week ago Thursday. It definitely feels different than I thought it would. I guess I was expecting more knee pain, but instead it is a lot of tightness and muscle pain. My quads were actually the most sore. Now that they are loosening up, my knee is starting to hurt more - which I'm figuring means that it is healing, right? By the end of the day it definitely aches quite a bit, and I am still limited in my movement, but I was only using one crutch until Tuesday and off the crutches completely by Thursday. I still limp quite heavily and I am starting to get some serious cabin fever. It is still quite swollen just on the outside (that's from the separating of the muscle on the outside, i guess?), but at least it isn't elephantitis anymore like it was most of last week.

The surgery is called a chondroplasty and a lateral release. My favorite part of the surgery was when it was over and I didn't have to do anything at for 3 days (robie took a few days off work). I just yelled out and one of the kids would bring me a drink or whatever I needed - so nice! Alas, those days couldn't last forever. I was put to sleep with very light anesthesia, but I thought she would take a little longer to make me comfortable or something, but as soon as my back was on the table she was like, "ok, this will take about 10 seconds, just take a deep breath here (puts oxygen mask on)." I really wanted to say, "Ok, thanks," but next thing I knew I was awake again and very curious about my surgery. It was obvious that I was curious because I guess I kept asking the same things over and over again, like, "how did it go", "did they find anything?" All I really remember is asking the nurse and she said, "I guess you don't remember the dr talking to you - he just barely left." I still have no recollectin of that. Then I hear her say to Robie, "she's going to be doing this for a while, just asking the same things over and over again". I thought my questions were quite original - whatever~!

In a couple of weeks I'll let you know if it was a success or not - success would be defined as pain free bending of my leg, running, lunging and kneeling - that's not asking for too much, right? In the meanwhile I can not believe how nice people have been bringing dinners, calling to check up on me, making fun of the way I walk at church (you know who you are, ha ha) - now I'm just ready to get back to real life - yard work here I come..

Can I stop this?

I thought it was cute when Fox rolled over. Then the sitting up. then the sitting up from the laying down. Then the army crawl. All so fun and exciting. But this is just pushing me too far. Sort of cute when he pulls up to the bottom stair, even when he is standing on the side of the tub.

But when he pulled himself up in his own crib - that's just not right. Like we don't have enough trouble getting him to sleep... that little stinker figures this out.

caption: Help me - my parents are lame, and I'm trapped in this prison cell...