Over the weekend, the turkey asked for a bible story about God. “Bible. Read daddy. God.” this week, he started saying his own prayers, led by daddy. “Jesus, thank you for my food. Amen.” my heart swells 😀

I love my little turkey so completely that my heart aches when I look at him. When he smiles at me or calls my name, my heart bursts. I can physically feel my overwhelming love for him. He’s always had all of me. Now, I smile at the little kicks in my belly and I worry. The sequel deserves all of me too but the turkey doesn’t deserve any less of me. And suddenly I’m hyperventilating and crying because I don’t know if I’ll be mom enough for both of these precious blessings. I don’t want either of them to ever question my love for them.

i’m just constantly amazed at the vocabulary that the turkey is building, without us even prompting him.  this week, he started identifying “cow” and associating them with “moo”, saying “apple” clear as day, and last night he came out of nowhere with “turtle”.  today, he said his first color word… “purple”.  i think he may be trying to butter me up for something 😉  i know there will be a day when i’ll just want him to stop talking but, right now, i think it’s the most adorable thing ever to see him making connections and verbalizing them and then getting so proud of himself for it.  i love it!

I was watching my beautiful little boy playing tonight.  and then I watched him give his daddy hugs and kisses and my heart painfully swelled with love and I caught myself thinking the unthinkable… will I ever be able to love this new little baby as much I love the turkey?  and then it occurred to me that this is truly going to be the proof that God exists.  over the coming months, God is going to work the incredible miracle of multiplying our love in ways that we can’t even comprehend now.  I can’t wait to be shown the depths of God’s love.

it seems like the turkey has been amazing us left and right lately.  within the last few weeks, he has mastered colors and shapes and countless objects.  he has started to say more words… most heartwarmingly was an unprompted “home” when we got back from vacation a few weeks ago.  he has started to take more interest in his chunky puzzles and we are working on numbers and letters.  it is just incredible to see how much he soaks up even though he can’t really communicate it yet.

of course, since we spent most of the month off schedule due to vacations and family and holidays, we’re also going through some rough patches behaviorally. I have the hardest time getting him to drink milk any more.  and since he also decided to start boycotting water, we ended up having to finally introduce juice just to keep him from dehydrating.  now the little twerp walks around the house asking for “tzssss”.  he’s also started growling “mom” when he’s upset (like when i’m making him drink his milk) and swatting undesired foods/drinks away. we’re working through it while trying to get him adjusted back to our normal schedule but it sure is frustrating.  it’s a good thing God made him so daggum cute!

hubby and I joked on as we went to bed Christmas eve that it would be our last restful one… the turkey must have heard us and decided to give us some practice for future crack-o-early Christmases. around 02:30, he started fussing in his bed.  when we went out to dinner after church, he gobbled down a bunch of onions (as I was carefully picking them out of my food because *blech*) so I had given him some gripe water when we got home and figured he was just having some gas discomfort.  by 03:00 he was crying so I went to check him out and give him some gas drops.  when I picked him up, he was burning up.  so some snuggling while waiting for the Tylenol to bring down his fever and gas drops to ease his tummy… we all got back to sleep around 05:00.  he continued to run a fever (high 102s) all Christmas day but he didn’t have any other symptoms of any kind and it didn’t really seem to be bothering him much. he opened gifts and played and had a great time with friends.

Saturday, he sounded hoarse when I got him up in the morning but that’s not entirely unusual since he tends to sleep with his butt in the air and his face pressed into the mattress and wakes up stuffy a lot.  by 09:00, he started with the classic croup seal cough.  we spent 45 minutes playing in the steamy bathroom trying to get him some ease but it seemed like he was getting worse.  by the time we left the bathroom, he seemed to be laboring to breathe.  he fell asleep on my chest on the couch for about an hour and when he woke up, he was sucking his whole chest in trying to catch breath.  we decided to go to the urgent care.

you really walk a fine line when you’re a first time parent.  you don’t want to be one of those crazy people who runs to the dr for every sniffle but it’s terrifying to think of the consequences if you ignore something serious.

by the time he was seen by the pa, his fever was up to 104.7 and his sats were down to 90-91 (89 is where they start giving supplemental oxygen).  the pa was obviously concerned and put a call into the on-call dr.  twenty minutes later, the dr came in and immediately stated that he was admitting the turkey to the hospital.

it wasn’t the most fun holiday weekend but, thankfully, it wasn’t as bad as it could have been.  steroids and breathing treatments fixed him right up.  the first 30+ hours, he was NPO and on IV steroids.  he laid around and cuddled and displayed general malaise.  the second day, the dr decided to try taking him off the steroids to and kept him another night to make sure that he didn’t backslide without them.  by Monday morning, he was definitely getting back to his usual self.  we had a heck of a time keeping him from tearing up that hospital room.

as far as hospitalizations, i’m glad it was a “non-serious” one.  and the pediatric unit and nurses were terrific.  here’s hoping that we never have to spend another night there again though!

my poor one-armed turkey

The turkey has been doing better lately about giving out kisses when prompted. He’ll even give me an Eskimo kiss occasionally when I ask (and man do I wish my dad was here to see that!). Last night, while we were saying bedtime prayer, he kept hitting me in the ear. I didn’t know what he was trying to do. I thought he was  just playing with my ear. I finally figured out that he was trying to turn my head so that he could kiss my cheek. Just because he wanted to.  Cue tears.

I think one of the most emotional experiences of motherhood has to be when people come up to me to tell me how awesome my kid is.   When a stranger is so affected by my child that they have to seek more out and tell me about it…. my heart bursts with pride and it spills out of my eyes every time. I love that this is not an infrequent occurrence. This morning, someone from church sought me out to tell me about an incident last week in the children’s ministry.  Apparently, all the kiddos were doing fine until one boy got dropped off and went straight into a crying fit.  This made another girl start crying and my turkey got very anxious about all the crying so he took his goldfish and started giving them to the other kids to try to calm them down.  The compassion of a fifteen month old can be astounding.

The turkey has become much more affectionate lately. He’s snugglier in general but, more importantly, he’s started giving kisses when asked. Sometimes even when not asked. He’s been really into looking through our old photo albums lately and occasionally he’ll lean over and kiss a picture of me and hubby. Melts my heart like butter! Tonight, we stopped by a friend’s Halloween party and got to play with his little girlfriend. When we left, I told him to give her a kiss goodnight so he leaned over and kissed her forehead. It was so daggum sweet!

Monday night was the first time in his entire life that the turkey had trouble sleeping at night. He’ll fight naps like crazy, sure, but that boy gets his solid eleven hours every night.  But Monday, he was up until well after midnight. We rocked him, soothed him, brought him into our bed (for the first time) to cuddle him… The poor thing.  Last night, he was running a fever so we went ahead and gave him some Motrin and he slept like a… well, like a baby.  This morning, I pinned him down, pried open his mouth, and found a new tooth! Poor little guy cut his first back tooth (lower left mid-back) and we didn’t even notice. Ready to collect my Lousy Mom Of The Year award. :-/

Earlier today, I could have sworn the turkey said “book.” he said it once and then started signing it so I want sure if I just heard it because he was signing it or if he actually said it.  A little while ago, hubby was playing with him while I was inn the other room and shouted that he thought he just said “book.” we can’t get him to say it again but we’re pretty sure that’s his newest word.  And I would consider it his first real meaningful word because “hi” and “bye” are just sounds that he mimics mostly.  I’m so proud of my little bookworm!