Crazy Storm & Halloween

What a nutty weekend it has been - snow before Halloween? Oliver and I made the trip to Jersey and were stuck at my Dad's without power for a few hours. The storm let up and I carefully made my way to my mom's. The trees were weighed down by the snow (because of all the leaves) and we watched/heard quite a few trees come down as a result. We had to shake the snow off of one tree just so we could the driveway since the branches were hanging down to the ground!

Oliver observes from a safe (dry) distance

On Sunday, we went to Kristy & Ray's to have a Halloween party with the cousins.  As you can tell by the photos, Oliver & Bentley were less than enthused by their costumes.  I have been joking that Oliver looked like an extra from Cirque du Soleil, since he wouldn't wear the mane and was just walking around in a gold jumpsuit (that was really too small/short).  I think I may have broken my camera during all the hoopla, which is really bumming me out.

Week in Review

We've survived our first week of our new life.  But just barely... 

Oliver has not been enjoying his first week at daycare, as we had feared.  The teacher actually told Adam at Monday's pick-up that she had never seen a kid as distraught all day like Oliver was - poor lil' guy!  He seemed to be better by the end of the week, but there is still plenty of crying at drop off.
 

drinking tea with Mommy to start our day!

GOOD NEWS - OLIVER'S BLOODWORK CAME BACK CLEAN! So, whatever he had, it seems to be gone.

Jana to the Rescue!!!

It turns out that Oliver DID charm Jana into coming for a visit!!!!! (The free flight offer probably didn't hurt either)

I just heard from Jana that she got off from work for two weeks, so its official!!!  She will be here from Nov 20th - Dec 4th.  Yeah!!!!  So, she will be with us for Thanksgiving and hopefully for the annual trek to get the Christmas Tree (and maybe even Maultaschen-making, if we do that this year!)  I am SO excited and know that Oliver will be thrilled to death to see her too! 

We had four au pair interviews on Sunday and there were two girls we really liked.  We have second interviews lined up for Friday afternoon, so it looks like we will be able to match before the next deadline and would welcome our new au pair on December 8th!  How fortunate for us that things seem to be falling into place.

Photo Comparison

Does Oliver look like his Daddy, or what???  
I don't know how old Adam was in this photo with his infamous blanket. 

Night-night Time

"Night-night Time" is a very popular game in our house recently.  Oliver is constantly asking us to put a sheet or a towel down and then asking us to sleep.  It is very cute.  He will lay more calmly when we are playing this game than when we are trying to get him to lay quietly in our bed on the mornings he gets up early!

Tonight, Oliver wanted Car-O (Ricardo) to play with us.  I was so happy my camera was close by!

Putting Ricardo to sleep

hugs

Life Changes Ahead

We have had a drama filled week and big life changes are ahead for our family.  I don't have the energy to share the full version, so here is the highlight reel.....

On Wednesday, our au pair Katharina told us that she was too homesick to finish the year and she was leaving the program.  The original plan was for her to stay for a few weeks (per agency guidelines), to give us a chance to make alternative childcare arrangements (my busy season is the next two weeks!).  Midday Thursday, she informed us that she had booked a flight for next Friday and could no longer care for Oliver.  Things went downhill from there.  Katharina is now flying home tomorrow, as the agency would not allow her to stick around if she wasn't working.  It is going to be so hard for us to explain to Oliver what happened to his Dee-Ta (Katharina).  She didn't handle the situation well and it is a shame that things between us are ending on such a sour note. 

Fortunately, our daycare center has room to take Oliver.  He still hasn't adjusted to daycare and I had hoped we could do a week of half days (he goes just 2 mornings a week, currently) to ease in to the new routine, but that just isn't in the cards. He will be going fulltime Mon-Thurs.  We decided to keep him out on Fridays, so he can attend gymnastics.  Fortunately, Adam & I both have vacation days remaining, and December is a pretty slow time in finance-land, so we will alternate having him.  We thought some family members also might like to come and spend a day with Bubba.  

We are holding out hope that Jana might be able to come back and help us out for a few weeks, but she has a job now and is interviewing for internship/study programs, and we certainly don't expect her to put her life on hold to help us.  We did Skype with her yesterday and Oliver was SO excited to see her -- maybe that will pull on her heart strings a bit (Jana - did it work?)  Our offer to pay for her flight over doesn't hurt either since she was already trying to arrange a visit. 

We have started our au pair search and are interviewing 3 au pair candidated tomorrow. If we could find somone we like, the next match date would have an au pair join us on Dec 8th. We aren't too optomistic that we will find someone interested in starting before the new year. This late in the year, could you really blame them for wanting to stay home through the holidays? I wouldn't be sad to have the house to ourselves over Christmas, instead of having someone new with us either.

18mo Update

Time continues to fly by and we are constantly amazed at the pace which Oliver is learning new things.  It is truly fascinating to experience -- I'm trying to have my camera and Flipvideo on hand more often so we can capture the little-milestones.  Hopefully, a movie-compilation will follow shortly (as soon as I figure out how to use the software).

We took Oliver for his 18mo doctor appointment shortly after his hospital stint.  He remains in the 10th percentile for weight and 50th percentile for height.  We saw a new doc, since Adam didn't have a great experience the last time around, and I really got a good vibe from him.  We'll see what Adam thinks when he takes Oliver back for shots on Wednesday. 

Package from Jana

Last week we got a care package from Jana.  It was so sweet of her to think of us, all of us!!!  Adam & I each got chocolate we really like and my favorite kind of gummibears (pacifers!).  Oliver got a toy police car, which he really loves.  We have definitely entered a very toddler-boy phase of enjoying buses, cars, trucks, & trains and Jana's timing was perfect!

Someone grew impatient and helped himself to some chocolate

Philly Phun Weekend

The weather was gorgeous this weekend and we made good use of it and spent lots of quality time with Oliver outside enjoying the city.  Best of all, Oliver was in unsually cheerful spirits and a lot of fun to be aroun!!!!  On Saturday we went to a nearby park that was having a fall festival and yesterday we met Scott, Jenn, & Remi (Oliver's cousin) for a morning at the Zoo, followed by a trip to Smiths Playground.  Fun was had by all!
Lots of photos this time, because I just couldn't narrow it down any further.  I {heart} my camera!

Oliver made a beeline for the tractor (read: steering wheel) at the Children's petting zoo

In such a good mood that even Aunt Jenn could hold him!

Roar!  Up close & personal with sleeping lions

cousins!

I was there too!!!

On the wooden slide (very proud of this photo - tricky lighting)

Daddy enjoys Oliver's favorite fire engine too!

On the mend

Oliver is doing much better!!!  He is using his left arm again and the swelling has gone done a bit (but not entirely).  This morning he was feeling well enough to take part in gymnastics class!  He is saying "hurt" much less often (just at night) and we stopped giving him pain medication.

We need to go get bloodwork taken one more time next week and our pediatrician wants to see him again, but it finally seems as though we are through the worst of it.  Phew!!!

I should have mentioned this sooner - sorry!!!

POTD: So Vain

We have been trying to use our Flip Vidoe camera more frequently to capture all of Oliver's cuteness (movie collage hopefully to follow soon).  Oliver loves nothing more than watching himself on screen. Perhaps we have a budding actor?  Gee, I hope not!

18 Months Already?

Today, Oliver is officially 1.5years old - I still can't believe it.  I looked back today on what Oliver was like just one year ago (link for 6mo Milestones post) and am so thankful that I have this blog to help retain the memories. I had completely forgotten, for example, his fascination with the corner of bathmats. 

Adam is on a rare business trip tonight.  Oliver let me practice the camera settings on him today - what toddler doesn't love an excuse to run up and down the hallway.  I hope to be able to take indoor photos without the flash soon, but I'm just not there yet.  I had hoped to get a nice photo of Oliver and his 18mo sign, but that wasn't in the cards either, so I resorted to props (seal puppet) and finally just getting in the photo myself. 

Oliver's Hospital Adventure

You would never bring a camera to the hospital, because this isn't the type of experience that is really worthy of documenting.  But now, in this cell-phone era, it's easy to capture all kinds of memories/ experiences, you otherwise wouldn't.  Here are some of our photos from this week.

This was from Monday night, Oliver & Adam's first trip to the ER, when they got Xrays taken and sent back home. 

POTD: On the way to recovery

I think most of our family & friends know that Oliver has been in the hospital this past week (photos from our experience to be posted soon).  Today is our first day back at home and we've got our fingers crossed that his swelling goes down and all is well in a few days. 
I'm very glad to be working from home today, although I'm not exactly getting much done.  I'm able to keep an eye on Oliver and give Katharina some additional directions to care for him.  Even something as simple as getting him dressed requires some adjustments to make him more comfortable.

I can also oversee giving him his meds, which is no easy task.  Last night we followed the directions on the back of the box (we're just giving him over-the counter Advil!), and this morning I realized that the nurse had given me larger syringes -- something wasn't adding up.  I looked at our discharge papers and they instructed us to give him 5mL of medicine, while the back of the box said 1.25mL-- big difference.  After a talk with my peditrician, I learned that since bought Advil instead of Motrin NEITHER the discharge papers nor the directions on the box were the correct dosage!!!  He needed half of what the discharge papers said, double what is stated on the back of the box.  Nonsense!  So glad I figured that out this morning and we weren't continuing to under-dose. 

Katharina & Oliver went out for a walk this morning (the weather is gorgeous!!! Yeah Autumn!) and I decided to put the temporary cast on his arm.  He had it on at the hospital to keep him from playing/pulling on his IV from his healthy arm.   I snagged it when we left.  While I understand they want to keep his arm free so it can heal and encourage him to use it, that just didn't seem like a good plan to this Mommy for a trip to the park.  How can he play if he has to constantly worry about hurting his little arm? 

collecting leaves for an art project

Opa & Mormor Visit

My dad came back from Germany for a quick visit and he & Margit came down to spend the afternoon with us.  I was planning on taking Oliver to Smiths Playground for a Celebration of Play event and they came along.  The weather was great and since we were there after lunch, it wasn't too crowded.  Afterwards, we hung out at the house, had an early dinner, and took a walk around the neighborhood.  I will post more photos later, but here are some of my favorite photos from the day.

Saturday Videos

I'm trying to make more of a point of having the FlipVideo camera around to record Oliver's cuteness.  So, you should have videos to look forward to more frequently! (If you are getting this via email, you need to click on the actual website to see the video). 
Here are two I took today (don't mind my singing!)

Bed, Bed!

On Friday morning, I got up with Oliver & was trying to keep him entertained in the office (so that Adam & Katharina could sleep) while I got some work done.  In a desperate plea to entertain, I pulled out a beach towel from my not-yet-unpacked-Girls-Weekend bag.  Oliver was immediately impressed with the new activity.  After some peek-a-boo, I laid it flat on the floor, and Oliver called it a bed.  He would lay on it and pretend to sleep and wanted me to do the same.  His favorite part was when my eyes would open and I would "wake up".  He would try to do it too - very cute. 
 

Maybe I should bring the towel into bed with us tomorrow morning when he gets up at 5:30am, again.