Christmas in November

My parents came up for Thanksgiving, and we decided to do Christmas gifts the following Saturday so they could be there when the boys opened their presents and got to work enjoying them.

But first ... Thanksgiving feast! Naomi did a fabulous job on our bountiful spread.

Trimming the tree on Friday night. Everyone pitched in!

One of our two most precious gifts, under the tree.

Saturday morning, let the unwrapping begin.

One of the biggest hits: a little pop-up dinosaur tent for Brennan and Owen to play in. It's been out nearly every day since.

Another big hit: a trampoline. For boys who love to jump and bounce and who have energy to spare.

Sunday morning ... happy boys with their Grammy and Grampy!

Antlers

Because this is how all the cool kids are wearing their antlers this season...

Leaves, Leaves, and More Leaves

We love our house and our yard. With two small boys, it's great to have such a large space for them to run and play. It's really only about this time of year that I don't really like our yard. We are surrounded by tall trees that shed. And our yard was completely covered by pine needles and leaves. This morning became the "clean the backyard" day. Sidenote:  this was our first year using a leaf blower, which cut the amount of work down significantly. After several hours hard work (and a little bit of fun), our backyard is clean, mowed, and ready for play!

 

The result of our hard labor this morning:  The Wall. Our giant pile of leaves that we hauled to the edge of the front lawn, waiting for the county to come and vacuum them away. And yes, the majority of it is from our backyard! There was only a small amount from the front yard that contributed to this lovely leafy structure. Whew!

Brilliant

Ah, fall. Love it. I just don't get tired of seeing the leaves changing into all their brilliant colors. Today is just the most fantastic fall day. Warm temperatures, windows open, gorgeous blue sky. In all this fall glory, I'm conveniently forgetting the sheer amount of raking and blowing of leaves that will need to be happening! But days like today make it totally worth it.

Book Love

I love taking the boys to the library. And they seem to love going. They love playing with the toys, looking out the windows at the fountain out back, and attending story time. And then we fill our library bag with books to bring home. Once we are at home, the fun begins. They pull out the books and immediately start browsing these new treasures. So glad for all the book love in our house!

Fall Festival Fun

Last night we attended the annual Fall Festival at West End Assembly of God (WEAG). We went last year and had a blast and have now added this to the list of Downer Family Fall Traditions. The weather was less than ideal (rainy and temps in the 40s), but adorable kids, fun games and good memories made for warm hearts. (I know ... cheesy!)

Half man, half giraffe ... he's a miraffe!

Half man, half dog ... he's a mog! He's his own best friend.

Brennan tried his hand at throwing items into the little boxes.
He was a good sport and tried lots of games to earn candy.

In this game you had to pick a duck and the number on the bottom of the duck corresponded to the number of pieces of candy you could select. Brennan (four) and Owen (three) each hit the jackpot!

Owen's puppy costume was just a bit too big for him,
leading to droopy dog head throughout the night.

Train ride with daddy!

Bonus photo: Owen at his manly best ... sitting on the couch watching TV with the remote in his hand. I can't believe he's only 18 months old and I already have competition for control of the remote.

Leafy

On our outing to Maymont last weekend, we collected a bunch of leaves for a future art project. The constant rain yesterday made it the perfect day to make a couple of leaf placements! Brennan was pretty excited to do this art project and has been proudly using one of his new placements at mealtimes since.

A work in progress. (You might not be able to tell, but he's wearing a shirt that he made at VBS this summer. It says "God is Wild About Me". It's his most frequently requested shirt!)

The finished product. My favorite leaf is the one in the bottom right corner. I love the deep, rich red!

An Update

Many of you know that chronic constipation has been part of Brennan's life for a long time (over two years, to be exact!). After trying different remedies and enduring some pretty bad instances of diaper rash, we were referred to a pediatric gastroenterologist back in January. Despite much tinkering with a daily dose of Miralax, it didn't seem to help. The kid just seemed to leak. And diaper changes were endless.

After expressing frustration to our GI doc a couple months ago, he had Brennan do a Sitzmarker study where he swallowed a bunch of little markers and was x-rayed five days later. Ideally, every marker should have passed from his system. Unfortunately, our little guy had quite a few still left in him. This seemed to indicate a motility disorder, where things just don't pass through his system the way that they should.

We received a referral to a motility specialist...in Winston-Salem. Four hours away. Not exactly close. But we need some answers and some assistance in figuring out how to help Brennan with this issue. We headed down there this past weekend for his appointment on Monday morning.

It was definitely a productive trip. We definitely felt like the doctor was very understanding with what has been going on. We really feel like we are finally on the road to making some progress. Brennan was a trooper during his appointment! Owen even did pretty well as well, despite being confined to his stroller most of the the time!

He had some blood work done to rule out anything like problems with his thyroid or celiac disease. After doing an x-ray, it was discovered that his colon is again completely full, so we are in full swing of doing a complete clean-out.

We are waiting to hear back from the hospital there in order to schedule our next appointment which will be a 3-4 day hospital stay for Brennan while the hospital does another complete clean out in preparation for a colonoscopy. Once we find out about that appointment, we'll be able to figure out what it will look like for our family in regard to traveling down there again.

This has definitely been a long road for us to have already traveled and there is still a long road ahead of us. Brennan essentially has to relearn how to go to the bathroom (which will result in a referral to a physical therapist who can help with that process, but she is thankfully at VCU here in Richmond), and that process could take another year or so.

We would covet your prayers for Brennan! The hospital stay is not going to be fun for anyone involved. The clean out we are doing now is also not really fun. Necessary, but not my idea of a good time! We will keep you posted as things progress with these upcoming appointments.

October Fun (a rare post from Daddy)

One of my favorite things as a kid was building and playing in forts, so I took advantage of my day off on Friday to build one for Brennan and Owen to play in.

Today we went to Maymont for the morning since it was a nice day and we hadn't been there in about six months. Owen admired the goats.

This picture lacks an appropriate reference point. That branch is almost six feet up, so I was proud of Brennan for being brave and humoring my obsession with "boy in a tree" pictures.

He's like Rocky Balboa at the top of the Art Museum steps!

Sandbox Fun

In the past, Owen has loved to put things in the sandbox, such as rocks, leaves, and pine needles. Little did I expect that today he would put himself in the sandbox. Sometimes, I guess, it's just more fun to become one with the sand.

Annual

It is tradition in our family to visit Carter Mountain Orchard to pick apples. Previous years have been warm enough for short sleeves and jeans. This year was a bit different. This year, there was enough chill in the wind to merit long sleeves (and jackets had we thought to bring them!). Despite a slightly chilly breeze, it was a beautiful day on the mountain. Brennan was much more excited to pick apples off the trees (as opposed to off the ground, as he has in years past) and Owen was definitely interested in wandering all around and stretching his legs. Our picnic spot had a great view overlooking Charlottesville and the apple donuts, another tradition, really hit the spot. Ah, how we love fall in Virginia!

Backyard Soccer

Brennan is enrolled in a Good Sports class through our local Romp 'n Roll kids gym. It teaches kids the basics of different sports in a non-competitive environment. It's really helped him in many ways, including developing a greater interest in playing sports in our backyard. Today, he kicked the soccer ball around and had a blast showing off his new found skills!

Who can resist the sight of this cute little face? Especially with those dimples and four of his six teeth peeking out!

And since I'm so rarely on the blog, Brennan and I caught this shot just as a bit of rain started to fall (this is the 9th wettest September on record in Richmond--seriously, the rain can go somewhere else already, like Texas where they need it!).

Fall

I found this on Pinterest. It's a pretty accurate description of why I love fall so much! Now if only the heat would retreat to the deep South...

The Best Part of Baking...

...is licking the beaters!

8 Days

There has been good reason for our utter and complete blog silence lately. We had a very unwelcome visit from Hurricane Irene which plunged us into a nearly eight-day power outage nightmare. The day of the hurricane started off fine. We ended up going to the mall play area for the boys to burn off some energy.


Our mall outing was our lifesaver that day. Being cooped up in the house with two high-energy boys is not our idea of a great Saturday! Our power flickered a few times, but stayed on long enough for us to heat up some dinner. Then, 5:20pm, it died. We had prepared for a power outage. Honestly, having been through three major hurricanes in Florida, Irene was really no big deal. No one slept well that night due to a warm, stuffy house and no nightlights for the boys. We finally surrendered and got up before 6am. We quickly surveyed our yard and the house. No damage, just some small sticks littering the yard. We were hopeful our power would be back on soon. Then, to pass the time, we took a walk around our neighborhood. Nothing prepared us for what we saw.

This tree fell on a house three doors down. The house eventually was condemned.

This tree took out power lines at one end of our street.

This tree took out power lines and blocked the road a couple blocks over.

This tree took out power lines at the other end of our street.

We really only made it through the next eight days due to the assistance of wonderful friends who provided us with warm meals, places to rescue some food from our freezer, and places to stay while we waited for our power to finally be restored. We are so, so very grateful for their help!

On Our Nightstand, Part 11

Here's another installment of some great recently-read books:

1. "One Thousand Gifts: A Dare to Live Fully Right Where You Are" by Ann Voskamp
2. "Free-Range Kids" by Lenore Skenazy
3. "Mudhouse Sabbath" by Lauren Winner
4. "The Power of a Praying Wife" by Stormie Omartian
5. "Radical Homemakers: Reclaiming Domesticity from a Consumer Culture" by Shannon Hayes
6. "Same Kind of Different as Me" by Ron Hall and Denver Moore

Another First

We've thought and said for a long time that Owen would be the child that required the first visit to the emergency room. John mentioned this again just a couple weeks ago on our weekend visit with friends. Little did we know how soon that would be fulfilled!

Owen has become the child that challenges our childproofing capabilities. Just this past Saturday, he located a drinking glass that had been left out and forgotten on our small filing cabinet. Both John and I had stepped into another room briefly and not even 10 seconds later, we heard the sound of breaking glass followed by persistent crying. We ran back into the room and there was Owen standing in a pool of blood and the glass was laying shattered all around him. I scooped him up and ran into the bathroom to see what the damage was. It quickly became clear that this was going to land us in the emergency room. Our neighbors graciously stepped in and watched Brennan for us so we could whisk Owen off.

Thankfully, the bleeding slowed on the way to the hospital (after layering four gauze squares on it!). That turned out to be a really good thing because we rushed in the doors and...no one was there. No nurse, no registrar, no one. It took about 10 minutes for someone to finally come out and get Owen triaged and back in a room. An X-ray revealed that nothing was broken and that there was no glass in the cut. The doctor was able to use Dermabond to glue it shut and off we went. Owen did fabulous through the whole thing. The cut didn't seem to bother him that much; he was really only annoyed that he couldn't move his foot since we had to hold it the whole time to keep pressure on it. Of course, having the doctor take a look at it wasn't any fun either (that cut was DEEP!), but all things considered, he did quite well.

When all was said and done, we were able to see the grace of God in the whole thing. Neighbors watched Brennan so we didn't have two kids to manage in the E.R. John's quick thinking to start layering gauze on the cut. No glass in the cut. No stitches needed. And a brave little boy who managed quite well during the whole event!

Weekend Getaway

We were fortunate enough for schedules to align so that our annual weekend gathering with friends happened a couple weeks ago. We love this group of friends so much! It was such a joy to get together again this summer and see what God has done in these friendships (some of which have spanned 17 years!). There was plenty of pool time, outside play time for some pretty active kiddos, and lots of great quality grown-up conversations mixed in as well. We're hoping this happens again sometime before next summer!