It was bound to happen…

He certainly can’t help it.  After all, Mike’s dad is a Hoosier who still thinks Bobby Knight is King of the round ball.  And Mike’s mom grew up in Kentucky watching Adolf Rupp and Joe B. Hall run the show in Lexington.  And we also have the fact that Mike’s mom and dad bought him a Tennessee season basketball ticket before he was born – and he actually attended several of the games this year.

Yep – it was bound to happen.  Mike is a basketball fan through and through.

How can we be so sure?  Because of the television of course!

The NCAA basketball tournament began yesterday and we’ve had the television tuned in periodically.  And when Mike is awake, regardless of whether he is in his swing, in his bouncy seat, on his play mat, in his bumbo seat, or even if he is in our arms being fed – if a game is on, he is bending over backwards to try and watch it.

And I understand that some of you might believe that he would watch anything that is on.  But believe us – he only watches basketball.  Break for commercial and he turns away from the TV until play resumes.  The evening news?  No interest at all.  Oprah at 4?  Not a chance.  It’s round ball or nothing for Mike!

So if you are firmly in the grip of “March Madness” – feel free to consult with Mike.  He’ll be more than willing to watch with you all day long!

Mike and his dad watching the Vols beat San Diego State

The things we say

There are a lot of things we say that are due to the influences of other people.  I’m not talking about “peer pressure” or anything like that.  I’m talking about the interactions between parents and their children!  It turns out that there are many things that we say that we’ve learned from the children of our friends and family.

This is certainly not a complete list.  But some examples are – we still call a hot dog “hot goo”.  And every time we get on an escalator, we say “nana go up down”.  Or every time someone sneezes, we say “hess you”.  We are likely to call our dogs “goggies – BIG goggies”!  And when the mosquitoes swarm around us in the backyard, we’ll say “these bugs are getting me”.  We still call turkey’s “big chickens” at Thanksgiving.  Most recently, when we eat something hot (like the jalapeno Doritos that I just tried) we will say “my Doritos – they are stinging me”.   

There are many more, but one of our favorites is “Go Vols”!

Of course, the phrase itself is simply a way to cheer on your team and is yelled out my adults and children alike.  But in our case, we’ve begun to use it as other forms of speech.  For example, a common exchange between us in the evenings is “Is Mike asleep?  Yep – he’s sleeping in the ‘go Vols’ position”, which is laying on his back with his hands over his head in the “touchdown” pose.

And where in the heck did we get that from?

A couple of years ago, the “quad squad” parents taught all of the kiddos to raise their hands over their heads in the “touchdown” position and say “GO VOLS”!  It was the most adorable thing! 

They say that you should be careful what your say because your children will repeat it.  But we are living proof that the adults are just as likely to repeat what the children say!

A visit to the Orthopedic doctor

Today was the big day.  Another “follow up” visit with the orthopedic surgeon.  We’ve been worried about it for a while.  Not worried because we thought something was wrong.  But worried because we are parents.  “Have we really been getting the shoe strap tight enough”?  “What about the laces”?  “What about those times when we accidentally buckled the shoe with the sock wrinkled underneath”?

And then there has been all of our detailed observations of his foot.  “Is his pressure point healing ok”?  “Do you think this foot looks different?”  “What about his toes”?  “Does this heel look right”?  “Is that a bruise”?  And so on and so on it would continue until bath time was over and the brace went back on.  Even though Mike’s club foot correction has really gone remarkably well (with the exception of the two weeks before the tenotomy), it took remarkably little to convince us that things were surely going awry.  And as the appointment with Dr. Crawford approached, the more convinced we were that Mike’s prognosis wasn’t really great (it was merely good – or maybe it wasn’t even good, probably not even mediocre – in fact, the prognosis will most likely be bad – or maybe even horrible).

So – here it goes.  Today is the day.  Time to load up and head out to see Dr. Crawford.  We arrived at his office, signed in, and waited for our name to be called.  A short 2 minutes later, we were following the nurse back to the examination room.  She tells us to go ahead and take the brace off and that Dr. Crawford will be in shortly.  By “shortly”, she meant 30 seconds. 

Dr. Crawford walks in the room – and for a fraction of a second, our over active imaginations were convinced that we would be heading directly over to Children’s Hospital for a complete foot re-construction surgery.  Dr. Crawford walks over to the table where Mike was lying.  He holds his little foot in his hand, takes a breath, opens his mouth – here it comes – he’s going to tell us that we’ve been horrible parents and have been doing it all wrong - “why have you been putting his brace on backwards”?

ohmygoshohmygoshohmygoshohmygosh!!!!!!  Here it comes!  What is he going to say??!?!?!?!??!?!?

“WOW!  His feet look FANTASTIC!  I mean, they look really, really good!  And both feet are so supple – no pronation.  They look great!”

Whew – that’s a relief!

And we would have been happy with just that information.  We had a few questions that we were wanting to ask Dr. Crawford, and he quizzed us on how things had been going.  And then he dropped the big bomb on us.

“Since Mike’s feet are so supple and aren’t showing any stiffness at all – I think it’s ok for him to start having a little time out of the brace during the day”. 

What?  No more 24 1/2 hours a day?  He can spend some time with his little feet free?

And as excited as we were about this – there simply aren’t words for how excited Mike is.  Up till now, his absolute FAVORITE time of day was right before his bath when we would take his brace off and let him play and kick for a few minutes.  There is simply no other time of day where he laughs as much, “talks” as much, wiggles as much, or has as much fun as he has during that 15 minutes.  And now that 15 minutes gets to be stretched out to HOURS at a time!  It makes me smile just thinking about it…

Our first road trip…

Ok – so it’s not our first road trip ever.  But it is our first road trip since we’ve been parents!  And let me tell you – we really had no idea what to expect.  We’ve heard stories that go all the way from “it was nothing” all the way to “our 30 minute drive took us 3 hours”.  Yikes!

So our first trip – we decided that it should probably be somewhere reasonably close.  Our closest family is Aunt Diane, Uncle Jessie, and cousins Anthony, Jessica, and Amber.  It’s about a 3 1/2 hour drive (or at least it used to be) up into Kentucky…

We started by packing things up.  We’ve learned from other folks.  The biggest advice we got was “on our first road trip we packed everything but the kitchen sink – and we didn’t need 99% of it”.  So we packed light.  It was only a weekend trip after all.  For Mike, it was a small bag with plenty of clothes, and overstuffed diaper bag (packing light is one thing – running out of diapers is another!), the Pak-N-Play to sleep in, bottles, and pumping supplies.  For the dogs, it was beds, food, treats, and leashes.  For mom and dad, it was simply clothes.  And that was it!  We nearly packed as much for the dogs as we did for Mike!

And Mike was a really good boy.  He let us tie him into the car seat and drag him all over creation.  And if you only knew how much he doesn’t like the car seat – you would be amazed!  Not once did he get fussy until we were nearly back home.  He was such a trooper!

So – how long did it take us to make the 3 1/2 hour drive?  Believe it or not, it only took us 3 1/2 hours to get there and 3 1/2 hours to get back!  And it was worth it all just to see little Mike and his cousin Amber (who is just a couple of months older) playing around!  And now that we’ve had a successful trip – beware!  We might be planning a world tour that includes a city near you!

 

 Mike and Amber say “HI!”