Errata

I have uploaded a small variety of new photos to Flickr.

I came on this site one night in the boys' room, which I believe is an alternate ending to either Curious George or King Kong.

School time. Haven't talked much about that, but it is going ok. We don't do enough, but David is learning to read, write, do math, etc. When it is going well, it looks like this. Simon occupies himself on the other side of the table, usually with crayons and a coloring book. But here I decided to see if he has what it takes to begin doing some basic letter shapes . . . he does not . . . but look at the way he is holding the marker. It's like he was born with it in his hand. He also has much more interest in drawing, etc. than his brother.

David reading Where the Wild Things Are to me.

Getting violent on Thanksgiving.

Jaime was on the phone and Simon hopped up next to her . . .

To enjoy another Thanksgiving tradition.

David reading to Simon.

About Simon's arm

Simon has a broken Ulna (not a Radius, as previously reported). It happened like this. Sometime in the past week, he began to occasionally complain about pain in his arm. I would pick him up by the arms or bump him and he would say his arm hurt. He did the same with Jaime. Each time we would both do the same thing: carefully examine the area where he indicated he had pain, and ask him to flex his fingers, wrist, elbow, and shoulder. None of this revealed any problems. Yesterday (Saturday) Simon, David, and I went up to the farm to fly kites. Simon got himself tangle up in his kite string and I began untangling him. At one point, I asked him to drop the string he was holding and I picked him by the torso. He screamed and wailed in pain. He said his arm hurt. So I took him ot the emergency room.

He wailed all the way to the hospital about how he was scared. Which surprised me, since his mom works there so he is pretty familiar with it. Nevertheless, he was certain that they would hurt him. I assured him they would not and prayed that he didn't have a dislocated joined or would not need a shot.

Jaime was working, so she met us in triage and what would become a weekend of Social Worker jokes began. Doctors and nurses asked questions and recorded stats and then we got X-rays. He was nervous about the X-ray room--a large dark place with strange machinery. I held him in my lap with his arm on the table. I wore a lead skirt and he wore a little lead cod-piece. He did fine until he was asked to lay his forearm on the table palm-up. The process of rotating those bones (the Radius and Ulna) was painful.

The images revealed a tiny fracture. It appears as a bump on the edge of the bone in the picture. I have to believe the doctor that it is not part of the normal topology of his skeleton. So the nurse used a piece of gauze to measure his fore-arm because the weekend nurses are not certified for tape-measures. Then she came back with a splint that is only three-or-four times larger than his arm. The splint is a long, flat thing with something like plaster inside. She got it wet and then clam-shelled if over his arm from the elbow to the wrist. Once it set. she wrapped it with an ace bandage to secure it. The whole time he is alternating between curious and freaking the heck out. She procures a small sling, but he would have nothing to do with it.

On the whole, he did really well. Thank God for Curious George. We have a book which he goes to the hospital due to a case of the curiousness. I referred to it constantly: "remember when they put the bracelet on Curious George's wrist with his name on it?" "Remember when Curious George got the X-ray?" It really seemed to help. We left the hospital and he fell asleep in the car imediately. I took him back up to the Honakers and put him to bed. When he woke up, it took about 10-minutes to rediscover the cast, which caused him a moment of confusion.

So, tomorrow, he goes to our doctor for a permanent solution. He will probably get some sort of cast--either a standard plaster affair or a softer splint that secures with velcro.

Meanwhile, he is adapting well, doing a better job of adjusting to his own one-handedness than I am. He and David never stop regaling everyone with the story of how he broke his arm, which is a pretty boring story, so they are embellishing it a lot. If you have heard it, rest assured that I did not really drop him off of the roof.


Simon pictured here enjoying yogurt wearing one of the few shirts we can get over the splint.

So, how did he break his arm? We have no idea. He has slipped and fallen on/down the stairs a couple of times recently and he has fallen out of bed (and on the sidewalk, and in the kitchen and at church--the kid has gravity issues). It seems most likely that he struck it against the edge of a step or his bed frame. We will never know.

UPDATE: Simon went to the orthopedic surgeon this morning. He break is described as a "Nightstick Fracture" so called because of the injury that results when attempting to block the downward blow of a nightstick with a raised forearm. Which narrows it down to two possibilities: the aforementioned falls on the stairs or Simon has been sneaking out at night and rioting, which we have told him would earn him a time out. A full cast is not called for and they don't make soft splints that small, so they created a small soft splint that is basically like the one he had but that is only on his forearm, starting above the wrist and ending below the elbow. So he has full mobility and we can bath him without putting his arm in a sandwich bag.

Cute cap

Jaime phoned me a photo of her latest hat. She didn't make for herself, but she sure looks cute in it.

Pasta

So, we made pasta last week. Sometime during the summer, Grandma Suzie gave a real eye-TAL-yen pasta makin' contraption. This thing is so authentic, the directions are in seven languages and none of them are American. We had to use British directions.

Aunt Marla was in town, so we invited her and Aunt Skylar over and made a morning of it. Lots of fun. We took pictures and I made a set called "cooking" for this and future such endevors.

David takes his pasta very seriously.

Simon played quietly with the left over flour crumbs the entire time.

Yes, we bleached all the surfaces that the pasta touched

AHGHG! MY FINGER, YOU ARE CRANKING THE WRONG WAY!
It is amazing how long your index finger gets when you set the press to "5"

1.5 hours later. Simon is still playing with the flour crumbs.

On the couch, in the woods.

Last week, Jaime sheared the boys, dressed them up in flannel, and took their pictures.



Then on Saturday, I sat them down myself for a photoshoot.




On Sunday afternoon, the weather was perfect for a three-hour walk in the woods, with dad, and his camera:

Look! New photos up on Flickr!

This is our Topeka

Check out this video. It is nothing exciting, but it gets really great at the 2:18 point but don't blink; it goes back to the mundane around 2:19.

Shoot

The other day, Simon woke up his mother by bringing her the camera and insisting she take pictures. You can view the set here.

Then David took a few photos, which I have added to his set.

By the way, our bedroom walls are not green, as shown here; they are "Clamshell" (or as I call it, "Honky Skin." I think Simon's deep brown eyes are throwing off the camera's white balance.

Yesterday, part 1--Summer, sickness, distant relatives

David's sense of time and grammar has evolved to understand the past tense in terms of "yesterday" and "last week." "Yesterday" is anything that happened in the memorable past, such as seeing "Horton Hears a Who" when it came out. "Last week is anything that happened before a time he can remember; his infancy and my childhood both took place last week. While is makes for some difficult conversation, it does make belated blogging better. Rather than feeling guilty about not having blogged about anything that happened this month, I can simply assert that anything blogworthy happened "yesterday."

"Yesterday" summer finally really began. June has been a gorgeous, beautiful month with a lovely mix if mild days, mildly hot days, and thunderstorms (worse for parts west of us). Typically, the starting event for our summer is the Smoky Hill River Festival in Salina. This year's was particularly nice. Everyone was able to attend, the weather was lovely and Jaime and I figured out a way to rig our finances so that we could do our Christmas shopping. Since the festival is Father's day weekend, that means we knocked out two holidays in one weekend.

David followed up by getting sick. It began on a Tuesday night with a sore throat at bedtime and progressed to a fever and continuous vomiting throughout the night. Wednesday afternoon he saw a doctor and Wednesday night, after 36 hours without food or drink, he went to the hospital for fluids. He'll describe this to you in detail. "Yesterday, I went to the hospital and the poked a hole in my arm and purple blood came out. I didn't like it." He has been obsessed lately with the color of his blood, observing that it is blue in his veins but red when it gets out, so it was an opportune time to have blood drawn and an IV inserted. We never did determine conclusively what he was sick with. He was neg. for strep so it was probably a virus. He still had a fever at bedtime that Friday night. I haven't seen him that miserably sick since his first birthday. Because of it, we skipped my company picnic on the 21st, which I had been looking forward to for about 6 months. Instead we had a lazy Saturday together.

June also saw visits from several relatives. Firstly, my aunt Marla, her son, Shawn, and his wife, Janelle, came to visit. I have never met Janelle and the last time Shawn was back, Jaime was still pregnant with Simon. Simon was typically shy around them at first but eventually warmed. Since they left, every time we go to grandpa's (which is where Simon saw them), Simon says "Shawn? Shawn?" This was actually Marla's second recent visit. She was here in May with her youngest, Patricia with whom Simon also took his time falling in love. I don't have any photos of either of these visits, but the visitors do. Maybe I can get some from them eventually.

More recently, uncle Grant visited from Seattle with similar results. Initial shyness followed by obsessive longing. They got go to the Kansas City Zoo where Ducks were apparently the highlight. Grant very self-consciously cultivated the role of cool uncle for himself, which both he and David enjoyed immensely.

lightnin lightnin

As we all know, David is a great fan of the movie Cars and all things Cars related. In spite of my continual forbidding of any more Cars stuff in our house, it continues to poor in like so much sewage. At some point during the transition out of diapers, he acquired a half-dozen pair of Cars underwear (as opposed to an underwear car), which he wears backwards so that he can see the larger picture that is supposed to be on the rear. This is so much a habit for him that he even puts underwear on backwards that does not have a picture on the fanny.

I have to pause for a moment and wonder if I am violating my son’s privacy by telling you that he wears his underwear backwards. What will his friends say in a decade when they find this blog? Is he going to be victim of wedgies from jerks claiming to check if his underwear is on backwards (and I assume it still will be)?

Stuff to think about.

Anyway, David’s love of Cars has taken hold with Simon, who currently imitates everything about David except his eating habits. So Simon has began insisting on wearing Cars underwear as well—over his diaper. But not backwards, yet. The other day, Simon was walking around in his diaper and underwear when he found another pair of Cars underwear in the laundry basket, pulled it out, sat down, and commenced with trying to put it on over the underwear he already had on over his diaper while saying plaintively, “Lightnin’? Lightnin’?”

newish addition

moar funny pictures

Jaime didn't want a cat, but I was embarrassed to be the only blogger online without a pet to blog about.

Her name is Dusty. She came to us via a friend in need and has fit nicely into our household. She is affectionate without getting under foot (once fed). She is not shy. She does not object to getting chased and picked up by the four-year-old. She often comes when called. She snuggles. She is some sort of Maine Coon mix with a tail like a big ol' dusting wand (hence the name). She is less than a year old, so we are hoping she'll grow a bit more.

Also, Jaime took some shots of the boys. Go and see.

shutter bug, larval stage

We've allowed David to shoot some of his own pictures with the digital camera lately. I have created a new set of photos he has shot that I'll add to as we go along.



Our mustached mini Bresson, his camera strap like scarf of creativity shielding him from the bitter cold wind of mundanity.

david falls asleep, simon's sense of humor develops

treed in colorado

Last week, we drove to Colorado and back. It was a lovely vacation at Jaime's parent's house. The weather was beautiful and it was quite relaxing. David got to spend enormous amounts of time watching movies and playing, which was a welcome respite from his normal grind of playing and watching movies.

If you want a great adventure, head off into the woods with a three-year-old as your guide. David, Hildy (the grandparents' dog), and I went for a walk about one day in some Bureau of Land Management land adjacent to the Oakson's neighborhood. We were trotting down a wide path that serves as something of a road, when, without a word, David turned right and headed into a field of Sage Brush. I followed and Hildy ran up ahead and then returned, ran up, returned, etc. We descended into a gully and picked up a trail through some woods. David chatted and played. I showed him tracks of various animals. At one point he attempted to leave the trail again and plunge into woods whose thickness would only comfortably accommodate a three-year-old. I had to stop him. Eventually the trail looped around and deposited us just down the block from where we began. A paid guide could not have lead us on a more perfect walk. Here it is in Google Maps.

Our whole time in Colorado was sunny and mild. But the whole time, David could see snow capping distant peaks. He wanted nothing more than to throw snowballs. So he was thrilled when, a couple of days later, Grandpa Steve took us up to another wilderness area with proper trees and snow. He would ask me to make a snowball for him and then throw it at me. It was delightful watching him run around like a little boy jump in snow and investigating rocks and stick and playing fetch with Hildy.

At one point in the trip, Jaime and I were sitting onthe porch while David played in the yard. Suddenly he anounced that he was going to climb a tree and disapeared around the house. Jaime asked me, "are you going with him or are we going to take him home in a cast?"
I was skeptical, "he won't get off the ground."

So, we waited for him to return.

And we waited.

And waited.

Finally, I went to investigate.

Of course, no vacation is complete without sickness. Simon had a fever of 104 at one point. But hey, we are old pros at this.

summer rescue me

While driving, I often sing Love Rescue Me, by U2. David calls it the "sha la la song" and insists that I sing that verse first. Yesterday, David interrupted me after I sang this part:

And the sun in the sky
Makes a shadow of you and I
Stretching out as the sun sinks in the sea

"And then it's dark" he said. I didn't quite catch what he said the first time and asked him to clarify. "The shadows stretch out and the sun sinks and then it is dark."

Very true. And it is happening earlier and earlier. This week, the last before the time change, marks the end of our favorite summer activity, evenings in the park.

To commemorate the passing of another season, I dug back through my files and pulled up some summer photos that never got posted.

Enjoy. As always, clicking on this photo takes you to the rest.

simmons' summer fun

Mom and Alex took some great photos of the kiddos this summer and sent them to me. View them as a set here.

a few thousand words