Mama Bwoke a Twee Down...

Tuesday morning Coen followed me into my bedroom and noticed a toy train he'd left on our bedside table.  He walked over happily, picked it up and began to scream. For a moment I thought he'd gotten an electric shock from our alarm clock, but when I swooped him up he was grabbing at his neck and when I pulled his little fingers away a squashed wasp fell to the floor.  His pinky and his neck began to swell. And he cried. It was awful.  I held him and snuggled him and he called daddy on my phone.

He said: "Daddy, make you feel better?"  It was heartbreaking.


Things improved when he went down for a nap.  It was his first in days and an extra long one--probably due to all the wasp venom.  He woke up refreshed and the swelling from his stings had subsided.  We all happily went outside to play.

While they played in puddles I walked over to check out a tree.  It had red leaves and pink blossoms and was lovely save for a gnarled, dead branch that looked barely attached.  Yet when I yanked it, to my utter surprise, the whole tree came crashing down.

Someone screamed and I spun around.  Coen, my little shadow, was under the tree.  My heart stopped.

Miraculously he was unscathed save for a few, faint scratches on the side of his face. He stood right in the middle of the canopy but, somehow, the heavier branches had missed him completely.

Pat arrived home from work minutes after it happened while I was still snuggling and consoling the little munchkin.  The tree was lying across the driveway, straddling a plastic flowerpot that marked where Coen had been.  With the little guy crying on my lap it did not take much for Pat to decipher what had happened.  But Coen quickly cleared it up for him anyway:

"Mama bwoke a twee down and it scwatch you!" He sniffled.  "Daddy make you feel better?"

 Yep that's a robin's nest. As though I didn't feel guilty enough! :(

BraveCoen

So Coen is a one year old. He's huge. He's walking. He's so not a baby anymore. But he will always be my itty bitty baby.

His first birthday party was a blast. The weather was perfect. Everyone was happy and the day couldn't have been better.

Since Coen didn't seem to have a preference about cake decorations I turned to his older brother for suggestions. Fintan was sure Coen needed a toad cake, but we settled on a frog cake and lily pad cupcakes.

Coen loved his squishy frog cake.

Just loved it.

Doesn't he look like he loved it?

Flash forward a few years and he'll be saving Scotland.

But he will still be my itty bitty baby.

Happy 1st Birthday, Coen!

Coen is 1 year old today!

He's more of a walker than a talker but he says "Dada", "Daddy", and "hiss" when you ask him what a snake says.

Tonight he had a cupcake for the first time. We lit a candle on it and then Pat said it was time to sing for Coen. So Fintan started: "This land is your land! This land is my land...!"

Happy Birthday from all of us sweet boy! We love you!

Love. It is, it is

I keep waiting....

For someone to comment about how my baby apparently owns only one garment. I'm starting to wonder if that's not the case myself!

Coen is ALL boy

I like to sing to the boys while they eat their meals, just to keep us all entertained. This morning Fintan was a bit surly so I was trying to lighten the mood by singing him a song he usually finds funny. Today he didn't find it at all amusing. But look who did:

Six months and growing...

Coen had his six month well-visit this morning. The boy is enormous. He is 18 lbs. 15.5 oz. and 28 inches tall. Fintan was 18 lbs. 11 oz. and 26 1/2 inches at his six month appointment. Here are my two little bigguns this morning before we left for the appointment:

Thirteen stairs

So, the evening started out well. Fintan and Coen were both happy. Fintan was eating his dinner (grilled fish, crackers, and sliced tomatoes) and Coen was watching him and not crying. So I felt industrious all of the sudden and decided to make Irish brown bread for Pat. It's a "quick" bread so you just have to mix it up and bake it for 50 minutes. No kneading. No problem. I could whip it up in 10 minutes and then put it in to bake just before taking the boys up to have their bath--which I could surely do in 50 minutes.

The bread came together fairly quickly--except that I didn't have enough buttermilk. The ingredients stated 1 3/4 cup so I thought I had plenty, but I hadn't read the recipe carefully enough and it said to continue adding buttermilk until it was the consistency of thick brownie batter that you would then pour into a loaf pan. Mine was the consistency of chunky peanut butter. Great. But the recipe also said that you could limit the amount of buttermilk and make a "free form" loaf. Perfect! So I free-formed it and put it in the oven. As I was setting the timer I realized that with less buttermilk the bread would probably need less time to cook so I set the timer for 35 minutes. The boys would just have to have a quick bath.

As soon as something needs to be done quickly everything slows down. I kept forgetting things (like, um, jammies and diapers....towels) but eventually everything was ready. I put Fintan in the tub first and then undressed Coen. I picked up that cute little nekkid boy and gave him a big ol' kiss on his round cheek. He's so irresistable! Then as I lifted him a bit higher to transfer him into his little tub inside the big tub, I heard "tttthhhhhbt" coming from the general direction of his bottom....and a warm sensation spread slowly across my thighs.

Breastmilk poo. Ew. And then some more....and then some more...and then just a little bit more.

Okay. I remained calm. I couldn't leave the room because Fintan was already in the tub, and we were dripping poo as well. But that's okay, I had wipes, everything was okay. I grabbed one wipe after another and cleaned my baby's tiny bottom and his legs, and his feet, and his back and his...just kidding, that's all. Then I put him into his little bathtub. Then I got up to survey the personal damage. It was bad. I stripped off my jeans and wrapped them up in the bath mat that had taken its fair share of the of the mess and shoved them both in the washer (which is within arm's reach of the bathtub). I cleaned my legs up with baby wipes and then, of course, I bathed the boys in my skivvies because I couldn't leave the room to get fresh pants. Fine.

By this point I'd forgotten about the bread in the oven....but it hadn't forgotten about me. The boys had both been thoroughly cleaned, but were still in the tub, when I heard the timer go off. I quickly, but carefully got Coen out of the tub, dried him, diapered him, jammied him, and moved him aside to start on Fintan. Every 10 seconds the timer went off. I pictured my brown bread shriveling up in the oven and bursting into flames. I g0t Fintan dried and jammied quickly and then scooped up Coen and we started to head downstairs at the achingly slow pace of two-year-old Fintan Patrick.

You might think that knowing my house was lit gloriously from within would give me pause in heading downstairs pantsless on a dark night with curtainless windows. But it didn't. My bread was burning, people! We headed down the stairs. Fintan scooting down on his bottom and Coen and I walking ahead, as usual, in case he took a tumble. Now, the underwear I happened to be wearing was, ahem, (pardon me for saying) a g-string that was held together in back by a small circle of metal. Fintan happens to LOVE little circles of metal (think, coins which he calls "caps"). So the whole way down the stairs I heard:

"What's that on your bottom, Mama?" thump
"What's that on your bottom, Mama?" thump
"What's that on your bottom, Mama? thump

For thirteen stairs he asked me that. And for thirteen stairs I answered:

"They're called panties, sweetie."
"They're called panties, sweetie."
"It's part of my panties, sweetie."

Then I laid Coen down on the rug in the living room and raced to the kitchen with Fintan padding after me in his footies. I stood in front of the picture window and checked the bread. It was brown and poofy and sounded hollow when I thumped it. Perfect. The bread was saved. My PRIDE however may never be.

And what's the deal with all the poo and the underwear-at-the-window events happening at my house? I think we're developing a theme here.

I guess the moral of the story is: Cover your eyes when you turn up my driveway. A call ahead might be prudent. And if you pinch your nose when you walk through the door, I won't be offended. I'll just offer you a clothespin.

My little optimist

About two hours after I took this video Coen and I headed to the doctor's office where he was diagnosed with bronchitis and started on antibiotics. Also, he only slept for 15 minutes total today. What a guy, no?

A night of sleep

Well, I have to commemorate a certain event. Coen did a big thing last night. He slept for almost 10 hours straight. He has come nowhere near that amount before. He doesn't often get that much sleep in one day. I am almost certain we will not have a repeat performance any time soon, so I want this date to go down in history.

If you're the finger-crossing type, please cross a few for us.

Snuggle buggle

Gay rights

I'm always posting about Fintan, but there is another little man at our house, now, and he deserves some attention.

Coen is just sweet as sugar. He's a little snuggle buggle who nurses a lot and sleeps a little (more than Fintan did, but less than we wish). He smiles a lot and giggles a little. He's growing so fast you can practically see it happening. His head is warm and fuzzy and I like to rub my lips across it. He likes when I bounce him on my legs and sing "This is the way the ladies ride..."

He's precocious, too. He's already talking, of course. In addition to the classic "goo" and "gah", I've quite frequently and distinctly heard the words "gay" and "guy" spoken--even shouted. They have not yet come together to form a sentence. But I'm pretty confident that when they do the word "rights" will come next.

*Sniff* my open-minded little man. Makes a mommy proud.