The long and short of it...

Riley says "I think I'll wear shorts today mom." Mom says "Those aren't shorts, they're Liam's jeans." Yes, Riley is that slim.

Testing out the ol' mobile blogging! Here's one of Liam from his hospital stay.

EDITED TO ADD: Yay, it worked! I can officially post to the blog from my mobile phone. Hopefully this will mean a few more pictures, because I often take pictures on my camera phone and then never get around to transferring them over and then posting them. This way is a snap. So now you all will just never know what captured moment I just might throw up at any given time!

Overheard conversation of the morning...

This one just transpired about 2 minutes ago.

E - "How do you spell 'baby poo'"?

R - "How do you spell what? Oh. 'Baby Poo'. B-A-B-Y then a space then P-O-O. Then a period. A period is a little circle that you put on the end of the sentence."

E - "Ohhhhhhhhhh, ok. Wait, how do you spell Y?"

R - "Well you do a slash, then a slash again under (aside in his room: 'Thank you for visiting Casey, I hope you had a splendid time. Come back again!') - orrrrrrrrrr, you could do kinda like a U with a line...."

E - Ok!

Liam's update...

Well, we had our follow-up appointment with the doctor yesterday for Liam. He said that if yesterday was our initial visit, with Liam sounding like he did, he would be admitted to the hospital directly. But it would be to try everything that was already tried and didn't work for Liam... so instead of going back into the hospital, we got an antibiotic to treat what is probably a secondary infection, and then some Pulmicort respules to put into the nebulizer. He is still not sounding great, but at least we must be making some kind of slow progress here. At least he is primarily happy and smiling.

I will post some new photos soon of the boys. Both Riley and Elliot have grown and both of them look so different than even just 7 months ago when Liam was born.

We're setting up for a quiet weekend in while Liam continues to recover. Hopefully I'll get to a bit of sewing and organizing.

Crouped up and cooped up...

Well ladies and gents - we are home!!

For those of you who didn't know... Liam managed to develop a severe case of croup last week and was admitted to the hospital this past Saturday morning. After 5 days in the hospital (almost to the minute) we were allowed to come home, and boy is it good to be back! However, Liam still isn't fully recovered, and I'm sure we'll be laying low for several days yet. The poor kid got SO sick Friday night -I had never heard a cough like that from either Riley or Elliot. Liam didn't respond to the saline treatment or epinephrine nebulizer treatment in the doctor's office, so they gave him a steroid shot of Decodron, and off we went to the hospital. I thought we'd be in for just the night, boy was I wrong! He continued to receive nebulizer treatments of racemic epinephrine, as well as oral Prednisone. That didn't quite do the trick though, so yesterday he received a second shot of the Decodron. Thankfully last night was one of his better nights, and so we were released today. He is still having a little bit of the hallmark stridor, this high pitched very distinct noise that happens when you inhale - and his chest is mucousy, and his cough is lingering. But he is definitely on the road to recovery... and thank GOODNESS we are home. You can only take so much of being in the pediatrics unit, listening to children of all ages crying and screaming at all hours. You can only see so many little sad faces with IVs, and hearing the word "obituary" the other morning nearly sent me into a tail spin, with an apparent death the night before. Things such as those make things like the fact that we had to switch rooms at 1AM this morning seem like true minutia.

So, for those of you who sent texts and checked in with phone calls and visits - THANK YOU!!! We were pretty much quarantined and I could barely leave the room, so seeing familiar faces and hearing familiar voices was much appreciated!! We can only hope that Liam will continue on his road to recovery and this will soon be all in our past.

In the meantime, I'm finally back home with all my guys... and no longer relying on my 3 hospital meals a day!! Hoorah.

I have a couple of photos of the ordeal on my camera phone. Somehow Liam's cuteness manages to make it look like it wasn't a big deal at all.

Okay - it's 9:00... on to bigger and better things... namely the season premiere of LOST!!! It's good to be home. :)

Brannon out.

The results are in...

Well Elliot had his 4 year physical last night. That was an experience. All was great until the shots... and let's just try and forget about those.

Here's his stats:

36 lbs. 4 oz.
39 1/2" tall

50th percentile for both height and weight. And yet not average by ANY stretch. The doctor said he's one of the top 10 most hyper/active kids he's ever seen. The only thing reassuring about that is that he's a young doctor, fairly fresh out of med school.

At any rate, glad it's all over until next year - he'll get 2 shots at his 5 year checkup and then be shot free until he's 12... yeah!!!

Oh, and thanks to Laura and Marty for the lobster lollipops from Maine. I kept those suckers (quite literally) in my diaper bag, knowing I'd need them some day. Sure enough, I pulled one out last night as Elliot was in hysterics after the second shot and he pretty much snapped it right together. He even still has a red mouth to show for it! So thank you for the gift that kept on giving. :)

Raindrops on roses...

...and whiskers on kittens--

So the other day I figured I would ask the boys about some of their favorite things. And here's the results.

Favorite Food:
R - Chinese chicken w/ broccoli, pork fried rice, egg rolls, dumplings, noodles
E - Oatmeal, chinese chicken, bread and butter

Favorite Color:
R - sky blue and brown
E - yellow and red

Favorite Shape:
R - hexagon
E - triangle

Favorite TV show:
R - How Clean is Your House? (on BBC America)
E - Little Bill (on Noggin)

Favorite Movie:
R - Wall-E
E - Wall-E

Favorite Song:
R - theme song from How Clean is Your House?
E - soundtrack from Wall-E

Favorite Book:
R - cookbooks
E - books about boats

Favorite Animal:
R - kittens
E - dog

Favorite thing about Liam:
R - feeding him
E - playing with him

Riley's favorite thing about Elliot:
Watching TV with him and petting George & Schere

Elliot's favorite thing about Riley:
Playing games with him

Favorite Season:
R - Fall, because you can jump in the leaves
E - Winter, because you can go outside and make snow angels

Favorite Drink:
R - cranberry juice
E - milk

Favorite place to go:
R - Chili's
E - To Target and then eat at the mall

Favorite toy:
R - electric trains
E - trains

Favorite flavor ice cream:
R - mint chocolate chip with no nuts
E - strawberry

Favorite thing about Casey:
R - giving him treats
E - giving him treats

Favorite thing about our house:
R - sitting under the blanket Justin's grandma made us
E - reading books with Riley


So there you have it - a little bit about the boys!