If you are a parent, you know that your children are always a good source of stories to share. Here are a few of mine from the past few days:

Tea Party Gone Bad

While Andrew took a nap recently, Ella and I were in the living room playing with her Disney Princess Barbie dolls. She brought me the Mulan Barbie and she had her Moana Barbie. She sat them both across from each other and then grabbed a tea pot and tea cups. She set them in front of each doll. She then brought over this mushroom/muffin looking toy (she obviously thought they looked more like muffins). This is when things went awry!

I started to make Mulan (who she had given to me) drink her tea. I made slurping sounds and then did a loud fake burp. This made her laugh. Then I did it again. More laughter. Then I made really loud slurping sounds and the cup ended up on Mulan’s head. She started to do the same thing to her Moana. I was laughing just as hard as she was, especially when she was making her fake burp sounds.

Pausing Pap

Andrew has been using CPAP for over a week. Here’s the thing, it is supposed to help him sleep better. However, because of his age and the limited masks that he can use, the one he has works – when it stays on. Basically, mom and dad are the ones who aren’t sleeping now. Sam and I find ourselves pulling it back on his head or fighting him to get it back on. It is a struggle.

We e-mailed his doctor about it and we’re gonna take a break for a day or two to see if that helps. The good thing is that his apnea is mild, and we were only anticipating him wearing it for less than a year. The doc told us, if he lets us put it on – use it. If not – don’t.

All in all, whether he is rested or not, he is still giving us plenty of smiles!

Toddler Vocabulary Lesson

Ella did the cutest thing the other day. We had misplaced the TV remote and I asked her to help me find it. She reached he hand up to her eyes like she was looking through binoculars and said:

“Daddy, I can’t find the remote. I will have to use my ‘oculars’ and look for it!”

Hardest Part of Parenting

As a father of four children, I have taken each of them in for shots more times than I can count. There is always that look of, “How could you let them hurt me like that, Daddy?” after they get poked. It kills me every time.

Last week, Ella had her three year old well visit. We noticed that she is bruising very easily. She jumps around a lot and (as most toddlers do) bumps into just about everything. The bruising concerns us a bit, so her primary doc wanted to run some bloodwork to make sure she is ok. Sam was with her at that appointment and she was told she could just go next door to the lab to get the blood draw.

Ella was extremely scared and voiced that numerous times. I guess they poked her a couple times and could not get the draw. They were going to try to do the other arm and Sam said, “No, we’ll do it another day.” Ella had been through enough. So, today, it was my turn to take her to get it done.

I had picked out a short sleeve short for her, but she wanted to wear a dress. There were no sleeves on it and so the tourniquet the wrapped on her arm bothered her a lot. She sat in my lap and said she was scared. I did what I could to keep her calm, but after the first poke, she moved and wound up blowing the vein. The tech decided to try the other arm. In my head, I decided I would let them try one time and if they didn’t get it, we’d leave.

They found a good vein, got the poke and Ella and I took deep breaths and counted to 5 (over and over). That helped a lot! Once they were done and pulled the needle out, she was still crying, but she looked at the techs who did the draw and said, “Thank you.” They offered her a pack of graham crackers, and she was all better.

Hopefully, the test results will be normal.

Heavenly Visitor?

I’ve never been one to believe in supernatural stuff, but today something happened that made the hair on my neck stand up. I’m still scratching my head over it.

When I woke up for work today, Sam asked me what my oldest son called my mom (he is the only one of my kids who knew my mom before she passed away). I told her that he always called her “grandma.” She asked further, “Did he ever call her Grammy?” He didn’t. My ex’s mom was “Grammy,” but my mom was always “Grandma.”

I asked her why she wanted to know. She proceeded to tell me that Ella had said something to her today and when Sam asked her where she heard it (or maybe it was who told her that), she replied, “My Grammie in heaven.” So this peaked my curiosity and I asked her what else she had told her. She said something about princesses, but Sam and I think she was just talking about the princesses that we got for that Tonie.

The longer I sat in the living room drinking my first cup of coffee, the more I wondered about what she said. I have no pictures of my mom hanging in the house. I don’t have photo albums that we can look through. All the physical photos I do have are in a box and the rest are digital. For some reason, this really bugged me. So I took it a step farther.

I grabbed my phone and opened up my Facebook page. I went to the photo albums and found one that contains pictures of my mom. I pulled up one from before she got sick and opened it on my phone. I showed Ella this picture:

It had been a few minutes and I was sure she had already forgotten our mention of my mom. I asked her, “Ella, who is this?” Without missing a beat, she said, “My Grammie in heaven.” I was dumbfounded. I truly don’t know that Ella has seen but one or two pictures of my mom, yet she recognized her immediately.

When we found out that we were going to have a baby, my wife bought a special onesie that brought me to tears.

Who am I to question whether or not mom and Ella still talk?