My sweet, adorable little man received two awards from school last Wednesday! I was able to go to the Primary School for their assembly where the awards are given out. He didn't know he was getting any awards, or that I was going to be at the assembly, so it was super fun to surprise him. The look on his face when his class walked into the gym and I yelled his name and he saw me was priceless. :)
One award was for his effort, attitude, and achievement in the HOSTS reading program he is part of.
The other award was for one of the Primary School's "habits"....habit 4, thinking win-win. His teacher explained to me it is for always being kind, respectful, thoughtful, and having the win-win mentality.
We are so proud of Anthony......just so super proud. And he is proud of himself, too. That is the most important thing. Self pride. With love, Mama Hauck
I loved them yesterday and the day before that. I love them today. I will love them tomorrow and the day after that. I never understood the criticism over Valentine's Day. No, we don't need a day marked on the calendar to remind us to show the ones we love that we do indeed love them. Honestly, is there anyone out there that shows their love only on Valentine's Day? Hahaha.....No. We show our love towards the ones in our heart every day. So why not have a little extra fun on a day many people like to deem commercial?....it makes my children smile and therefore makes me smile. If you are a non-lover of Valentine's Day, maybe it's because you don't have children yet. I don't know, just my humble opinion. :) Valentine's Day started out with a special love note I wrote to Anthony and stuck in his lunch box. :) It was a busy morning for Timothy and I.....a dr. appointment and other errands ate up our whole morning while Anthony and Molly were at school.
When I got home, Molly couldn't wait to show me all the valentines she got while at preschool! It was the first thing Anthony did when he got home as well! Too cute. I love their decorated Valentine's Day envelopes! We went through each and every valentine, reading them, seeing who they were from, and checking out the candy. I hope I get to have a piece. ;)
In the afternoon after school when the kids were off keeping themselves busy, I decorated the kitchen table with candles, balloons, and the kids' valentine baskets (yes....we do valentine baskets in our home!) Isn't it so pretty to look at!? I love it.
When Papa got home it was go time! The kids dug into all their goodies. There were cards and love notes, books and stickers, tattoos and t-shirts, candy, chapstick, legos, a new bathing suit for Mols, a special Cliff Barackman of Finding Bigfoot beanie for Anthony, and a little barking doggie for Timothy. Papa even got some goodies....handmade cards from the kids and a book for on the airplane for our upcoming trip to NY. And I got some glass stir sticks for my coffee!
Unfortunately, Timothy is not a fan of the little doggie. He was all about it, until I turned it on and it barked and moved. It really freakes him out, hahaha. I hope he'll learn to love it! I got it specially for him thinking he'd love it.....oh well.
After opening our valentine baskets, Papa made us all a special Valentine's Day dinner.....chocolate chip pancakes, eggs, bacon, sausage, biscuits with gravy, and chocolate milk. Mmmmmm. It was mighty delicious! Love breakfast for dinner.
To cap off our wonderful day, we had a yummy desert of chocolate dipped strawberries!
I'm loving my house of love. With love, Mama Hauck
Valentine's Day is so fun when you're a Mama. :) A few weeks ago I went on a mother - daughter shopping trip with Molly and picking up valentines was number one on our list. Have I mentioned how much I love the Dollar Store? It allows us to make incredibly sweet goodie bags for super cheap. I am completely fine with just getting some valentine cards and calling it good, but how awesome it is to see the shit eating grin on my little gal's face when we can spend only a few bucks and we have super sweet goodie bags she can hand out to all her friends! For Molly's goodie bags we got clear bags, two different kinds of candy, stickers, pencils, and valentines. She couldn't wait to put her friends' goody bags together! She even did a fantastic job writing her name.
Once Anthony saw that Molly was making little goodie bags, he wanted to also! So back to the Dollar Store we went. For his valentines we bought the clear bags, pencils, two different kinds of erasers, silly drinking straws, some heart gems, two different kinds of candy, and boy and girl valentines. For the teachers we bought a couple valentine themed glasses (they could be vases?) and filled them with candy. I also picked up a few valentine themed glasses for Molly's preschool teachers as well. Anthony had a lot of fun filling the bags and writing his and his friends' names on the valentines. It was really good writing practice for him. We made a great team, he and I!
Ok Valentine's Day! We are ready for you! :) With love, Mama Hauck
We are now 9 days into Timothy's hernia surgery recovery and he is doing very well! His bandage was removed yesterday night and his incision looks wonderful. It's bigger than I thought it was going to be, but it's healed up nicely so far.
What a little trooper he is! With love, Mama Hauck
This month we are taking a trip to NY for my brother's wedding and Timothy sure seems excited about it, as well as the packing process!
I think I need to break it to him that he can't travel via suitcase though. Haha Packing is such a pain. Really, who enjoys it? I do it for the whole family and have to start a whole week before we actually leave in order to do it right! I'm trying to pack small and light, but it's hard being that it's winter and boots and warm clothes take up much more space then flip flops and tank tops. We also have to pack all of our wedding attire, and dresses and suits take up space. Hopefully we can make 2 suitcases work for our family of 5 because I completely forgot we have to lug along 2 booster seats and a car seat. Yikes. Our flight is an early one and with having to be there 2 hours before our flight and with it taking us a bit over 2 hours to even get to the airport......I'm not looking forward to getting on the road at 2:45am. The 6 hour long straight flight to NY with 3 children (one being a lap kiddo) sounds amazing as well. And when we land, we still have a 3 hour drive from JFK to my Aunt's house. Hopefully we can all survive our long travel day with minimal melt downs and causalities. Ok, all of my packing and travel complaining aside, we truly are looking forward to this trip! It'll be nice to be back in NY for a few days and get to spend some time with family and friends I haven't seen in a long while. And the reason we are going, to witness my brother be wed to his beautiful gal, is more than enough reason to endure a couple rough travel days. :) Well, better get to packing and marking things off my to-do list! With love, Mama Hauck
Sometimes I am so blown away by my little man's big heart. Anthony drew a love picture for his teacher simply because he "really likes her." Awesome. I am a proud, proud Mama!
We are in the middle of giving our bedroom a little face lift. Two summers ago we repainted. Shortly after that we made a new headboard and bedside tables. Finally I bought new bedding and curtains. With new doors and trim in the process right now, I decided a simple change for the room would be to move around photos and make new collages. I checked out Pinterest for some ideas and found this.... The pin:
I found this old window frame at this really cool antique place I like to go to when we get out of town. They had a few there, and I really should have picked them all up, but at the time I only had the money for one. This one is really self explanatory. Print your desired photos out, tape them to the back of your window frame, and hang. As with most things that need hanging in our home, my go to is Sam. He did the usual....screw in two screws on each side on the back, then took hanging wire and wrap each end around a screw multiple times until he was sure it was secure. Hang and enjoy! With love, Mama Hauck
Monday morning, hernia surgery morning, started at 3:30am. Way too early for this Mama. With an upset tummy and nerves just shot to hell, we managed to get on the road by 4:30am. Timothy wound up falling back asleep a little after getting on the road. This was a good thing as we weren't able to give him any food at all and we had to take his water away at 5:30am and I didn't think I could handle a grumpy baby in the car. As for me, I tried my best to quiet my dry heaving by munching on a few crackers. Ugh.
We made it to Doernbecher Children's Hospital, part of OHSU, in Portland, OR at 7:15 and headed right in to the surgery check in desk. Timothy, as well as Mama and Papa, got hospital bracelets. Timothy was not a fan of his bracelet, but eventually got use to it. We were instructed to head up to floor 8 and check in at the surgery waiting area under the big maple leaf.
After checking in at the surgery waiting area, we got busy.....waiting. It was now 7:35. There were 3 other couples already waiting there, each with a child, and 2 other couples showed up right after us. I didn't realize it would already be so busy that early in the morning. Timothy sat quietly for a bit, then wound up getting down and playing. He entertained himself quite well, and I was really surprised he didn't seem grumpy at all at this point. I expected him to be wanting to eat and drink, but I think he was too caught up in this new adventure, he didn't care about being hungry or thirsty yet. We were given a little booklet to fill out about Timothy and his likes to help the staff get to know him better and do things that would help keep him calm and give him comfort. For instance, they asked if we brought anything special that might help calm Timothy. We brought one of his blankets, so I made sure to make note of it. I thought the booklet was pretty cool and a great idea. The booklet also contained a chart and your specific case number. Your case number would be put up on the board in the waiting room, and the color it was would indicate where your child was in the surgery process. It was pretty awesome.
We got called back at 8:35 to a holding room and a nurse took Timothy's vital signs and instructed us to wipe him down with these special wipes and then change him into his surgery pajamas. They were huge on him, but he looked so adorable! The anesthesiologist came by and talked to us about the anesthesia process. Afterwards a different nurse came in and was about to start giving him his pain meds to wind him down and start getting him sleepy, when she was stopped and we were told an emergency just came in and our surgeon was the only one not in surgery yet, so he was called away to it. Apparently a child swallowed a coin and it was lodged in his throat. And just like that our on time surgery for 9 am got pushed back an hour. Timothy was a trooper. You could tell he was getting tired of sitting around and he was starting to get grumpy. Definitely no fun when you're hungry and thirsty. We completely understood that shit happens and emergencies come up, but it didn't make knowing we now had to wait another hour any easier.
At 9:25, after waiting 50 minutes so far in the holding room and just when we thought we couldn't wait any longer, a nurse came in and began the medication process. Timothy was given some Tylenol and a drug pretty much equivalent to a Valium. It only took about 5 minutes and our sick of waiting little baby turned into a laughing and loopy funny boy. It was the funniest thing! He kept smiling and giggling and petting Papa's beard and petting the wall, haha. A few times he tried to get down and walk, but there was no way he could. He was such a little ham and made waiting the last 30 minutes for them to finish setting up his surgery room not so bad.
At 9:55 we did the pass off. The nurse wheeled the crib down while Papa carried Timothy. Once we got to the "kissing corner" we each gave Timothy a kiss and passed him to the nurse. He didn't put up much of a fuss other than arching his back. And there were no tears from him....this definitely helped me. If he had cried, I probably would have cried too. I already felt like puking, so it was nice to not have any tears in the process. I snapped one photo, then quickly turned around and we walked back out to the waiting room.
Back out in the waiting room, Sam headed out in search of some much needed food and coffee for us while I sat down and sent out my online updates to people. It was so nice to drink a coffee and eat a muffin and salad. It was the first thing we'd had all morning and definitely took my upset belly and faintness away. I needed that. Every so often we would look at the surgery update screen to see what color our case number was. It went from green (active surgery) to yellow (finishing up) and then at 10:45 the surgeon appeared and told us everything went well and Timothy would be in recovery soon. I was surprised and thankful the surgery didn't take very long at all. After speaking with the surgeon, we watched as the case number color changed to purple (in the process of being moved) and then finally blue (in recovery area). At 11:20 we were called back to the recovery area to see Timothy. He looked so precious laying there sleeping in that baby crib cage! Next to us, separated by only a curtain, there was a child screaming his lungs out and I was so thankful that wasn't Timothy and hoped he would wake up much more calm than that! We talked with the attending nurse for a good while and she explained all his after care to us all the while Timothy just snoozed away. He only opened his eyes once when we lifted him to move some wires and tubes.
At about 11:40, we were moved back to a private recovery room where we would finish out our wait for Timothy to wake up. I didn't think it would take Timothy very long to wake up, but boy was I proved wrong! So we patiently waited and rubbed his back and talked to him. We ate some snacks and talked to the nurses and got things prepped to go home. When Timothy finally started to stir, the nurse gave us a water cup and when he decided he wanted to sit up, he wasted no time chugging that water down. Thirsty boy! Once the nurse and the surgeon came and took his stats and checked him over one last time, we were given the ok to get him dressed and then we finished up some paper work.
We were finally able to leave the hospital a little after 1:00. Ohhhh we were so ready to get out of there! We grabbed our little man and his blankie and we booked it.
His after care and recovery is simple. We are to give him Tylenol every 4 hours for two days and then as needed after that. If we need to, for breakthrough pain, we can give him Ibuprofen in between the Tylenol times. He drank a whole cup of water and started munching on crackers right out of the hospital and last night was already back to eating anything he wanted. He slept great last night too, going down at 8 and not waking up till 5 when we gave him another does of Tylenol and then went back to bed until 8. He can go about as he pleases, but we need to be careful when lifting him and of course just watch his activity. His dressing will come off on it's own in 7-10 days. We can sponge bathe him or hose him off and pat dry, but we can't let him sit submerged in a tub. I am so glad to finally have this surgery behind us. We had been dealing with this since the week of Thanksgiving and his hernia just kept getting bigger and bigger. This past week it really started messing with his bowel movements, so I'm very glad surgery is now done and he is on the mend. We are to go back to Doernbecher's in about 4 weeks for a follow up. I want to thank everyone who reached out to us to lend their thoughts, prayers, and support. It truly means the world to us and it was reassuring to know we had tons of people thinking of little Timothy and us all day! With love, Mama Hauck
