Is it spring yet?!

Finally we had a nice day!!!  This weather has just been awful.  Cold, windy, rainy, frost, tornadoes, etc.  I'm ready for spring!!  Today we finally got a taste of it.  You can bet I will be outside with the kids as much as we can be during the next 3 days of 80 degree weather, before it drops to the upper 40's again.  Brrr!

I am ready to plant outside.  We still haven't planted our tomatoes or other garden vegetables, or any of our flowers in the beds.  It's just been too cold!  Hopefully this week I can finish getting the flower beds ready and get some color in the ground.  We do have some pesky gophers and moles, but hopefully our mole man took care of that problem so that our plants and flowers will survive without getting their roots nibbled off!

Back to Normal

Life after Alex's surgery seems to be back to normal.  He is as full of life as he's ever been!  It's so great to know that he's not hurting anymore and that he is back to his old self.  Abby is very happy about it, too.  She was maybe harder than Alex during his recovery.  She wanted to play so badly with him and he just couldn't.  She also thought she needed Popsicles and ice cream each time he had some.  Ha!

Alex really loves T-ball this year.  He understands so much better than last year and has so much fun while he's playing.  It's been so fun to watch him get better each week.

Alex's Surgery

Alex has fought ear problems since he was a baby.  He had a set of tubes put in and his adenoids taken out about 2 months before he turned 2.  It was great for a while.  He started hearing better, he had less ear infections, his speech therapy took off and he "graduated" from speech because he was considered on level.  However, once the tubes fell out, problems started all over again.  He started gradually having ear infections again and not hearing as well.  The past 6 months, it seems he's been on antibiotics for ear, nose, or throat problems every 4 weeks.  We'd go in for a recheck and he'd have another infection.  Poor guy got so used to the pain that he wouldn't complain, unless it got to the point that he couldn't take it anymore.

After visiting with our ENT, failing his hearing test, and having a flat tympanogram, we decided to have another set of tubes put in and his tonsils taken out.  Although he didn't have strep throat a lot, it was interfering with his breathing and his sleeping because they were so large.  Here is a bad cell phone picture of his tonsils before surgery.  These are healthy!

The surgery was easy, and he came out of it easily.  He only cried a little when he was coming to, and was happy to drink some juice and eat a Popsicle before we left the hospital.  The day of surgery and the day after were fine.  He enjoyed Popsicles, juice, mac-n-cheese, pudding, push pops, and Gatorade.  But day 3 was not a fun day.  He was so uncomfortable, restless all day, wouldn't talk, signed everything, and started running a 101.5 temp.  I felt so helpless to see him so miserable.  I was just heart broken and cried with him.  Since day 3, he's been up and down.  He'll feel good, then bad.  Night time seems to be the worst.  He wakes up disoriented and scared.  He cries and whines and is almost in a trance.

Today is day 7 and he had a pretty good morning.  He took Abby to school with me and he wanted a sausage roll from the donut shop.  We came home and he watched Peter Pan with Pop, and he helped Brad carry some sod to the backyard.  But he crashed about 2 and started running a low temp again.  I was hoping he'd be able to go to school tomorrow, but I'm not going to rush it.  No need to send him and totally wear him out before he feels up to it.

Being a parent is hard!  Seeing my baby hurt and him trying to be strong but not being able to tough it out, breaks my heart.  I'm so ready to have the funny, playful, energetic Alex back!

Spiderman Jello

One of the things I made for Alex's birthday party with family was Spiderman Jello.  Really, it was just blue and red layered jello, but calling it Spiderman makes it much more fun!  If you make this, make sure you plan to be home for a while because it takes about 30 minutes per layer!  I've done this before with rainbow colors and it ended up being a 12 layer jello.  It took about 7 hours!  But look how fun it is!

Ingredients:

Jello (I used 3 boxes of red and 3 boxes of blue)
Sour Cream (you'll need 1/3 cup per box of jello, so I used 2 cups)
Time!!!!

I made the rainbow jello in a 9x13, but wanted to make sure I had enough for everyone and make it easy to serve, so I used little clear cups for the Spiderman jello.  It made 20 of the clear cups.

1.  Pour 1 C boiling water over jello and stir until dissolved.
2.  Take 1/2 C out and put in a separate bowl.
3.  Whisk in 1/3C sour cream into one of the bowls.
4.  Pour sour cream mixture into cup or pan, which ever you're using.
5.  Refrigerate.
6.  Leave remaining jello on counter and add 3T of ice cold water.
7.  After jello sets up, about 25-30 minutes, take out of fridge and pour remaining jello on top.
8.  Refrigerate.
9.  Wait another 25-30 minutes and repeat with a new color.
10. Top with Cool Whip and sprinkles.  Fun!!!

Here are the kids devouring their jello!  The adults gobbled it right up, too.  It's a nice, light, and refreshing dessert, especially if you use sugar free jello and fat free sour cream, just don't tell my husband that or he won't think it's delicious anymore! :)