Horrible Trauma or Bad Eater?

Yannick got a cereal bar for snack. Somehow he ended up smooshing it on his face.  It looks so awful, like a horrible accident has occurred.

I quick glance looks like he's bloodied himself badly.  Upon closer inspection, it's the inside of  a cereal bar on his face.

Art was on the phone with his parents.  I took a picture with my phone of this, and held it up to him while he was on the phone, just to freak him out a bit (no, I'm not the best wife there is!), which he did.  Though he was not terribly alarmed since I was pretty calm.  If this was a real trauma, you can bet Art would have heard his name yelled by a crazy lady.

Hup Holland!

A nice present from family in Holland.  Yannick is the only one who hasn't been to Holland yet, not that the other boys remember going.  We will have to change that!

Looking a bit tight around the middle!

On a side note, our friends, the W family, who are missionaries in Slovenia are here again for 2 nights.  Our Wyatt is happy to have baby Wyatt in the house again.  However, Wyatt is not a huge fan of baby Wyatt's head adjusting helmet (he had surgery in March to correct his lack of soft spot) b/c he said it looks like it hurts.  Which is doesn't, and does not affect baby Wyatt's disposition at all.

Happy 1st Birthday Yannick!!

Yannick Arthur Counts (how is it he never gets called Yac?)  Happy 1st Birthday to our little guy!  We are going to have to stop calling him the baby...he's quickly becoming NOT a baby anymore. It has been a tough year, but we made it to this momentous day!  Happy Birthday sweet bear!

Art helping Yannick open a birthday card

Yannick's decorated chair with presents (check out Nick in the background crawling toward the kitchen; not caring about presents!)

 Showing off his sippy cup skills!

Doing a great job vacuuming after making such a mess

Yannick with chocolate cake mess

Happy messy cake boy

Two videos of Yannick getting his cake and dancing while his brothers sing to him.

Here are some pictures, albeit out of order, of Nick and his brothers helping him open a present.

 

  

Yannick looks so proud here - he knows he is the center of attention!

 Looking for more yummy crumbs!

Big boys being a great help with opening presents.

Yannick in March

Here are some pics of our youngest during March, minus any Vegas pics.

3-18  We awoke after getting in LATE from Vegas to find spring had sprung for just a few days.  Here is the youngest Counts boy in his summer leisure wear.

March 29: Of course it got cold again.  Cold enough for long sleeves, but apparently pants are optional in the basement (that is Zachary's preference at least)

3:31 Yannick fell asleep in his carseat in the basement while we were trying to get ready to leave.  One of the big boys felt he needed to be armed, despite being asleep, and gave him a sword.  Z & W were fighting with light sabers and did not want Y left out.  Very funny to come downstairs to collect the 3 and see this.

3/31: We knew that Nick had been acting older than his age, but this is crazy.  He actually ate his corn off the cob using the handles.  The boy thinks he is 5!

Wearing Sunday Best

Here's Yannick looking a bit like a munchkin in his hooded stripy number he wore to church today.

YAC - Transition time

It is time to start transitioning Yannick to the sippy cup.  I am doing this at the same time as the weaning begins.  With the other two boys, it was very easy, because nature did it for me.  The 4pm nursing would dry up, then a month later, the noon nursing would dry up, and so on.  Yannick however seems to have an endless supply of milk if I would let him.  But I would like him to be weaned shortly after his 1st birthday.  He is not the nicest nurser and there have been several blood-drawing bites.  Sigh.  All that to say, sippy cup, here we come!  In these pictures, it looks larger than his head!

He is not great yet, but he is enthusiastic, and eager.  Now we'll have to test him in a few days to see if he will accept milk from a cup and not from a bottle or from mommy!

ALLERGIC

Yannick's chart at the Dr.'s office now sports a bright red sticker that says ALLERGIC TO AMOXICILLIN.  Poor baby.  He has had a rough rough winter, being sick A LOT.  So much so that they did some blood work to ensure there was nothing odd going on with his immune system.  There is not.  The reason seems to be "he has two older brothers who bring home everything".  This seems to be true.  He's had pink eye (thanks Z who brought it home from Kindergarten but did not get it himself), numerous colds, fevers galore, and now an ear infection.  To treat the ear infection, a very common antibiotic, Amoxicillin.  It is widely used because it is RARE for anyone to be allergic to it.  Our son is.  MAYBE.  That's the drama.  His Dr. says that he is the 5th case of Amoxicillin allergy in 2 weeks, when normally he gets maybe ONE case per YEAR.  He suspects that Evanston has gotten a bad batch.  Yannick will be , unnamed, part of a report he has to send to the CDC.  Doubt we will ever hear of a resolution.  But to be on the safe side, our little Nick is considered ALLERGIC (in angry red letters) from this point forward.  The Dr. said, unless he accidentally gets it sometime and has no reaction we should forever consider him ALLERGIC.

Why the all caps??  Because of this:

Here's the worse part...it kept getting worse and worse until his whole body was one purplish/red mass, face swollen and red. He did not seem to mind at first, but by the end, he was miserable.  Sadly, he got more meds, some steroids to put him back to normal.

The odd thing was that it came on pretty slowly then just went nuts.  I saw a few bumps while we were at the zoo on Monday, and my first thought was "did he get some strange allergy or condition from one of the animals"?  Over night there were a few more bumps, then BAM, went nuts.

Funny story about the steroids.  I was not able to pick up the prescription until the evening, when we were on our way to Awana for the big Grand Prix race.  So we gave him the meds once we got settled there, around 7pm.  Then our friend Stephanie, a nurse, casually mentioned that steroids keep them awake. Oh no.  By the time we got home, he was wired.  Art and I wanted to wind down and watch a little tv, so we let Yannick just play downstairs with us.  By 10:30, he was showing no signs of sleepiness (his usual bedtime is 7-7:30!!!), but WE were tired so we thought we would just put him down and hope for the best.  Praise the Lord that he went quietly to bed.  Did not sleep for awhile, but did not complain either.  Note to self and others, give steroid doses in the MORNING!

Happy Baby

No words needed - Our happy baby!  Check out those two bottom chompers!

Movies of Yannick

Catch-up time on some of the stuff that Yannick has been doing.  Today there were 3 videos that seemed necessary to take.

Yannick crawling II

Yannick crawling some more

Yannick eating

We do feel badly that there are far fewer pictures and videos etc of our little Nick than the other two.  He just keeps us on our toes - no time to grab the camera! :)

Bye DaU!

We (Wyatt, Nick and I) try to wave goodbye to Art every morning as he rides past on his bike.  Some mornings we don't all make it.  Today, just one of us was there to wish DaU well on his way.

Yannick watching DaU leave for work

We're FREEEEEEEE (mostly!)

Art and I and Yannick drove back to Chicago on Sunday, Jan 2nd, leaving the big boys at Leisure Dr. until Saturday evening, when they will be driven back home by Poppi and MeMa.  It was a mini-vacation for us, taking care of just one.  What did we do???  Mostly work.  I make the 40 minute trip to IKEA to spend all of Art's Christmas bonus plus some Christmas $ on new shelves etc to make a new and improved playroom.  We spent a few evenings putting it all together and getting it spiffy.  We did go out to eat a few times - so much easier with just 1!

Friday night we also went to the B family's house, put Yannick to bed and proceeded to destroy them at first the game Perfection, then Ticket To Ride (train game).  Bob was so furious that I beat him in the first game of Train Game (yes, I MAY have taunted him a bit), that he INSISTED we not leave, and had to play another game.  We got out of there around midnight, but BY JOVE, the won the game!  Granted he had to do it by being spiteful to Lexi, which was also humorous to watch her get irritated at him.  A great evening all the way around! :)  And Lexi made this wonderful brownie pudding thing that was so so so good!

Little Nick missing his superhero brothers is wearing his bib like a cape, which he did himself with no help from mommy!

Partial shot of our new & improved playroom - 2 Expedit cases, 2 green doors, 8 blue pull-out boxes, 2 Billy bookcases, and not shown stuva cabinet ~ $450.  We were still working on this, getting it done just barely before the boys got back home.  They were not impressed.  I had sent a text to MeMa asking her to show them the new playroom so they would not be shocked.  Well, Mommy is thrilled at least!

We enjoyed our little mini-vacation.  Next year, Nick will be old enough to leave also, and then it will be a REAL VACATION!!!!  Oh I am giddy with the thought of it!

Yannick preparing for crawling!

Oh no.  It's begun.  Yannick is starting to push up... that will only lead to crawling.  YIKES! :)  We have some time, but it is approaching quickly!

Our little handsome guy!

Happy Baby!

Look how happy our little Nick is with having a house full of people who want to hold and kiss him!

Spending a few minutes of "alone time" in his jumpy

Laughing Baby!

Seriously...who can resist the laugh of a baby?  We can't get enough of it at home, and the big boys will often compete for who can make Nick laugh.

Makes hard days a little easier!

Sleepy Baby

Good Mom/Bad Mom??

Today, trying to get Wyatt ready for preschool, our little guy fell asleep on the floor.  Always feel badly when this happens for some reason.  But there he slept until we were ready to go!

Yannick's First Meal

Little Nick has been ready for solid food for awhile it seems.  He has been hungrier and hungrier after nursing, often not satisfied.  We wanted to wait until we moved and got a bit more settled to start him, but now, he is 5 months, and is ready.  So here we go!

He seemed more irritated by the bib than he did excited about food.  However, he was QUITE good at it.  None of the tongue thrust issues that babies often do when first trying food.  He seemed to know exactly what to do!  Easy peasy!

Yannick eating while Wyatt chats away

Yannick is vertical

Recently it has seemed that Nick is more and more interested in sitting up.  He is not always content leaning up in the boppy or in his bouncy seat.  So I got Wyatt's old "exersaucer" chair from the basement to try out.  It has an infant seat in it that is similar to a bumbo seat (an chair that allows infants to sit up as long as they can hold their heads up).  I have not yet attached the toys and trays to it, but this was a good start.  He seems happy about it!

DaU excellent babysitter!

Now that we have a "real" baby, Zachary and Wyatt are often playing a game where they have their own babies.  Mostly this game involves them bringing me the babies and giving me instructions on what to do while I babysit them.  When to go to bed, when to eat dinner (these times never match with real life), what to do if they are crying etc.  Cute game, and fun for me too, bc I get a little glimpse into what they must think I say and do.

Today however, Art got the chance to be the babysitter while Zach and Wyatt went off to save people (they are always superheroes!).

Art with our real baby and Zach and Wyatt's babies - you can even see Zach's hand as he tries to hand Art more babies to babysit.  He's a great babysitter! :)

Baby Things!

Just a few little pics for our baby Nick!

Our happy baby!

Taking a little evening nap on DaU, in bed

Hanging out with Dexter

In his favorite place, curled up on DaU

Our active little guy!  It is fun to watch those arms and legs go wild with no control!

Yannick awake time

Here is a short little post.  Just some pics of Yannick awake and alert.  Spending time with the boys propped up on my knees in bed has always been a favorite of mine, with all 3 boys.

Amazing how different angles and different faces can make the same child look so very different!

A little video to go along w/ the pics.

Little Nick just doing his thing