NH Jaunt with Janse & Penn

We are up in NH for a few days with the two littlest of the Melder boys.  I hate being separated as a family, but it's a blessing to get away with the little guys to see my mom and dad.  I wish I could share all 4 with them this trip, but since that wasn't feasible, I'll take what I can get and enjoy a few days with P & J up in NH.

We flew on Wednesday.  These boys are pros on a plane.  Here they are hanging in the Kidsport like they own the place.

Then on the plane they were total troopers and looked adorable relaxing and enjoying the ride.

Penn fell asleep on the car ride from Boston to my parents' place.  He was wiped from the adventure!  I held Jansen off and then he had a big afternoon nap after we arrived home.

I delivered Tavin's homemade Valentine to Gramma.  We took this picture for him.  He was very pleased, grinned ear to ear.

After nap Jansen set about getting used to Gramma and Grampa's.  The last time he was here, he wasn't even crawling yet.  So there's a lot for him to explore!

On Thursday it was super mild and I got in a huge, woodsy walk while Jansen took his morning nap and Penn hung out with Gramma and Grampa.  Then we woke Janse up for a trip to the library.  Penn likes to go and check out a ton of books for his time at Gramma and Grampa's.  It was Jansen's first visit to the library.  He enjoyed himself!

Penn couldn't wait to get back home to start reading.  I think Penn revels in the fact he has so much attention with only 2 of the 4 here!!

After we got back to the house, we had lunch, but then we got right back outside.  It was almost 60 degrees!  Penn was having a blast playing in the woods in the slush and melted snow puddled up everywhere.  

Jansen joined us for part of the time.  Had to take a selfie with my sweetie!

I had another walk with my mom in the afternoon on Thursday.  Such a treat to be with one of my best friends walking along the woodsy road.  I cherish moments like that!  Friday was cold and windy, so we spent less time outside (although I did take a brisk walk, the air is so good up here and my mom affords me the time for it, how can I pass that up?).  I neglected to take pictures of much of anything we did (which was mostly hanging out inside) except for this pic of Jansen peeking in on Grampa practicing piano.  He's quite intrigued by his Grampa!

We did have a little outing to the mall to get Penn some new jeans (I cannot keep these kids in jeans without holes, Gramma treated to a few new pairs!).  On Saturday, the little guys enjoyed a lot of quality time with Gramma and Grampa.  It was less windy, but still pretty cold.  Grampa and Penn did some outdoor work and split a lot of wood in the basement.  Penn loves being Grampa's right hand man.  It is so special for me to see!!  And I know it brings back memories for my dad of Tav, Koen and especially my brother.  In the afternoon, Grampa took Penn to the firehouse to get a fire permit.  They got to check out the engines and Penn got a fireman hat!!  Penn was thrilled (although you can't really tell from the picture).

They had gone to get a permit because my dad had the fun idea of having a "little" fire in the evening.  When gathering up the sticks though he got a little carried away and it turned into quite an impressive fire!  Penn really enjoyed it (especially chucking sticks into the fire).

While Penn was outside, Janse was inside, helping Gramma with the dishes.  

He was in a fantastic mood babbling and crawling and cruising around.  Mom and I were just soaking it up.  I had to force myself to take him up to bath.  We were having too much fun enjoying him and chatting while he entertained himself (and us).  Well, that's it for the pictures this trip.  We head home today (Sunday) after church.  I'm sure I'll take a few cute pics on the plane, but I think we've seen a lot of those over the years on the blog with these traveling troopers!!  Thanks to Gramma and Grampa for a sweet visit.  I love sharing my boys with you (and I love being home!).

Penn Rye Swims

Penn has been making great progress in the few weeks he's been in swim lessons.  He is probably a week away from graduating from the first class level, Minnow, to Turtle 1, where he will learn strokes.  Amazing!  He is bold and obedient with the instructor, but has struggled with being quite a baby while he sits and waits his turn.  It gives him a chance to turn and look at me and cry and say he wants to go home.  Then hilariously, it's like he flips a switch and he does exactly what the instructor says when it's his turn and does it with excellence and courage.  So bizarre!  But at least we are getting somewhere despite the tears!  Doug took him today and got a few videos of his latest skills.  The whole point of Minnow is that a child can jump in the water and on their own can navigate to floating on their backs and then float there for 10 seconds and do this skill repeatedly.  Penn did it completely on his own once today, so if he repeats it next week a few times, he's off to Turtle 1!  Great job, Penn.  You are amazing!

Inside/Outside Fun

On Friday, the little guys (that's Penn and Janse) and I had an impromptu playdate at the Carnegie Science Center with Deborah and her kids after Penn's speech therapy appointment.  It was such a fun visit.  And it was Jansen's first time really getting to "play' there (oops, I might tear up if I think about how he's growing up so fast!).

Here's Penn and his pal (or if you asked him, "best friend"), Hazel.  They are watching a robot throw basketballs into a hoop - fascinating.

The museum was PACKED that day with older kids, but this museum has an amazing section for kids age 6 and under that is protected from all the big kids and school trips.  It was a perfect sanctuary for safe and fun play.  Here's Penn with Claire and Hazel at the water tables.

Jansen ate his lunch for awhile, but when he was done with that, he LOVED crawling through the blue blocks, it was quite the baby obstacle course and he was up for the task.

Claire played peekaboo with him and he loved it. So cute!  He's so social and easy-going.  He even let Deborah hold him and tickle him til he was laughing out loud (some of my kids would've never allowed that at this age!).

As the weekend went on, the weather got quite warm (especially for February!).  On Saturday we had the boys out for hours.  Here are a few pics I grabbed when I took them out after Jansen's afternoon nap (have I mentioned that Penn has officially dropped his nap?!?!...it's true!).  Here's Koen working on his kite.  It was a blustery day, so it ended up being crazy frustrating, but it got him some great exercise!

Tav and Penn are such buds right now.  Here are the pair on the slide playing some ridiculous climbing game (that yes, ended in tears a few times).

The adorable Janse-man, along for the ride, eating his dinner on the go yet again so that brothers can get some exercise and fresh air.  Such a good sport (and too cute!).

We also got outside on Sunday with our classic post-church playtime with the Troxells at a local playground.  But the adult conversation was so good, not to mention the lunchtime craziness, that I forgot to get a few photos.  Anyways, it was a fun weekend of hanging out with friends both indoors and out.  So thankful for these Spring-like breaks this Winter, especially when they happen on the weekend!

New Buddy

Today Jansen and I got to visit with my friend, Genna, while Penn was at preschool.  Genna has a four month old sweet baby girl, Emory.  The little ones napped for a bit, but then they both were up at the same time and we had so much fun watching them interact.  There were some even better pics to be had, but they just move too quickly!  Here are the two I got that are worth sharing.

Thanks for a much-needed morning out of my house (a bit of cabin fever lately) with some wonderful conversation and sweet snuggles with our babies.  Blessed to be your friend, Genna!

Cart-Full

Jansen had his first ride in the front of a grocery cart yesterday!  Yeah, we have super big things going on over here.  =)  He thought it was interesting.  Perplexing at first, but then he got used to it.  Here he is at Aldi (big bro in the background of course)...

Then at Target (so funny they are both looking the same way.  I think it was the shoe section and they were having a sale?)...

Well, that's it for the blog post on this topic.  Just a mini-milestone, but gotta try to keep up for those loved ones near and far that care about even the little things!  =)

Jansen Has Milk for the First Time

Today we tried something new and fun.  Jansen had whole cow's milk for the first time.  He loves drinking water out of a sippy cup and he's been very attentive to Penn drinking his milk out of a similar sippy (he just recently transitioned from sippy cup to normal cup).  When I gave it to him today he was thrilled, a little surprised and just wanted more, more, more.  We'll see how this continues to go.  I remember from the other boys that sometimes their first reaction is a positive one and then they push back later on.  Here's hoping it's a smooth transition for Jansen.  I'm still nursing him while he gets to this new milk, so we have time to adjust.  Here's the cutie trying it out!

Week in Review: Friends, Jansen, Nana and more!

This was a pretty regular week (well, minus the big Children's visit for Jansen on Tuesday).  I snapped a photo here or there, so I thought I would do a quick post to update.

Last Saturday we had a quick stopby visit by my friend, Taylor, and her son, Fitz. Fitz is exactly 6 months younger than Janse (although because of each of them recently having well check-ups, we know they are only an ounce apart in weight!).

That evening I caught a cute picture of Koen playing with Jansen (pretty much Koen's favorite thing to do).

Jansen pays close attention to his brothers playing.  He's been mocking their plane noises when he picks up a plane "zoom" and making the car noise "vroom" when playing with cars.  This week he started pushing cars around under his palm on the hardwood floor just like the brothers love to do (much to my chagrin and the fact we will definitely be refinishing these floors some day!).  Here are a few pictures of the littlest Melder "playing" car tracks with Penn.

I'm so excited I finally caught Jansen's "uh-oh" face!!

Thursday night Tav has swim lessons.  Doug texted me this photo.  It's too priceless not to share.  All the boys are such hard workers with their swim lessons.  It's so exciting and I'm so happy they are learning this important skill.  Looking good, Tav!

On Friday, Jansen and I took Penn to speech therapy.  Penn did an excellent job working on his words with Miss Christal. He is great at reproducing most sounds (and they are specifically working on final consonant sounds on words) in isolated words, but as his language increases and his sentences get longer his intelligibility is temporarily tanking.  I'm always so encouraged to hear him working with Miss Christal.  It reminds of the good progress and how it will all come together eventually.  Good job, Penn.  Here's Janse crawling around in the observation room.

After Miss Christal's we squeezed in a quick visit to the library before lunchtime.  Jansen loved it.  He is so active and on the go (and everything goes in his mouth).  Quite the pose here, Janse!

Friday afternoon to Saturday morning we had a lovely visit from Nana!  We had a fun Friday evening at home with her.  My favorite was family dinner, the boys did really well at the table and it was so nice to get to share that family time with Nana.  In the morning I remembered to get my camera out and get a few photos.  Here's the crew at breakfast (well, Koen is camera-shy, so he's hiding!)...

After breakfast, the boys were all over the place emotionally and physically, we eventually got them settled down in the living room with some Hot Wheels tracks and Koen and I played a game with Nana.  Phew!

Thanks for coming to visit Nana, it was a great way to end our week and start our long Presidents' Day weekend.  Come back soon!

Well, that's the week in a teeny, tiny nutshell.  It would be a novel to right out all the details and I just don't have time for that.  Lucky you, you get the abridged version via pictures. =)

Snaggletooth No More

Jansen has been lovingly referred to as "Snaggletooth" or "Snaggletooth Monster" over the past few months, ever since his second upper front tooth came in misshaped and pointy.  Here's an example from early January...

Then last week at his one year appointment, I asked the pediatrician about it and he suggested to take Jansen to a pediatric dentist just to be cautious.  Well, then just two days later (while I was waiting for a callback for an appointment at the dentist), I noticed that a portion of the misshaped tooth had fallen off and now there was an obvious red line exposed.  I quickly chatted with my sweet dentist friends and family and realized that the red mark was probably an exposed nerve which at the least causes a lot of sensitivity and at the most could leave Jansen very susceptible to infection, even abscess.  Here are my pictures from trying to share the look with my dentist loved ones...

 So, I called the pediatric dental specialist back and made it clear that this was more of an ASAP situation.  They got us in next day (today).  I figured they might need to fill it or do a root canal or something, but very quickly the appointment went a different direction.  Janse was amazing.  He even let them do an x-ray with very little fussing and crying.  But the x-ray revealed what the dentist thought was obvious from the normal view as well, the tooth would not be able to be capped or filled and there wasn't even enough normal-shaped tooth to work with for a successful root canal...the poor baby's tooth would have to be ripped out!  I was not prepared for this.  I was emotional, but contained.  It's just sooooo difficult to allow your child to experience pain, to knowingly put them in a scary, difficult and painful situation.  The dentist knew I was sad at the news (ok, there were some tears), so they encouraged me not to be present for the actual procedure.  Due to Jansen's age, they didn't put him under general anesthesia and they didn't want to give him anything oral either, so they just used some topical numbing meds.  First though he was strapped into a baby straight jacket.  It was terrible!  Then I kissed him on the forehead and was escorted out.  Ugh.  You might as well have ripped my heart out.  Thankfully it was a super quick procedure and the dentist and her attendant were so kind and sweet with Jansen.  The dentist herself brought Jansen to me in the recovery room in her arms.  He was red, sweaty and trembling.  But he quickly bounced back and before we left he was already flirting with the nurses at checkout with smiles and waves.  What a sweet trooper!  I, on the other hand, was totally emotionally drained and felt like I could call it a day and go to bed when I got home!  Here are some pictures of the extracted tooth, you can see how misshaped it was and how very exposed the nerve must have been.

Jansen had a fabulous rest of the day with a good appetite at lunch, a super long nap after such an ordeal, a great dinner appetite and lots of loves and sympathy from his caring brothers.  I got a picture of him just to prove he was happy and OK, it's not a great pic of his tooth situation, but I wasn't about to force the kid for a photo shoot!

After bathtime, he was playing peekaboo with a blanket, so I had to take a video.  He has such a sweet little disposition.  So happy even after such a day!

Jansen, I'm so proud of you and thankful for your joyful spirit.  I loved your snaggletooth smile, but I love you know matter what look you sport and I know I will love this new view just as much as the old.  You are blessing to me from your outward expressions to your inward personality, it's all a treasure to me.  Good job today, buddy.

Jansen with a Mohawk

Koen loves to bathe with Jansen.  They are hilarious in there together.  Jansen goes nuts splashing and Koen makes him laugh and thinks everything he does is funny (liking trying to drink the bath water out of all the bath toys).  Lately Koen has gotten creative and has been styling Jansen's hair.  The Mohawk is most popular and most funny.  I had to share...

Jansen has the most hair of all my babies, so much that his mohawk can go all the way down the back of his head.  That's something!

That's it...just some silly bathtime photos.  You can never get tired of those, right?

Jansen's One Year Appointment

I think this is the most timely well-check-up appointment I've ever scheduled.  4th time around is the charm maybe?  Ha!  Poor Penn Rye, his 1 year appointment was two months late!!

Jansen still had his cold and cough to show off to the doctor, but his ears were clear and he was sweet and happy (until he got his 3 shots of course).  Here are the pics I took while waiting for the doctor.  

Oh my goodness, the cuteness.  Anyways, of course I need to share the stats on J, here's a blog post with the other boys' weights and heights.  Jansen is my smallest baby for sure (well, tough to tell on weight I guess since Penn's appointment was late).  Jansen weighed 18 lbs., 13 oz., the 13th percentile.  He was 29 and 1/2 inches long, the 36th percentile.  All I can say is I love every inch and ounce of you, Janse.  So thankful for your healthy checkup and your wonderful first year.  The only other little thing that came out of his check-up was that he needs to see a pediatric dental specialist regarding his snaggletooth.  Our pediatrician is pretty sure his interesting front tooth is no big deal, but we will just make sure by visiting Children's Hospital in the near future.  We were overdue for a visit there anyways, it's been a healthy winter. =)