Tuesday, May 28, 2013

Road Trip!

Last week Nate and I packed up half our house and road tripped all the way to Orange County.  I almost gave myself an ulcer worrying about it and came close to backing out about ten times, but everything went great and I'm so glad we went.
 
Nate and I drove down with my dad and he spent pretty much the whole time watching Blues Clues and talking about all the different trucks on the road.  Easiest six hours I've ever spent with Nate.
 
 
Nate was so excited to see his cousins when we got there.  He just kept following Mack around like a puppy and saying, "How's it going, Mack?  Hi, Mack-Attack!  Hi, Macky-Do!" over and over.  Jonah showered him with attention and was a great swimming buddy and friend, as usual.  So sad these guys live all the way in Texas. 
 


While Nate and Carrie watched a video together he slipped his arm around her.  Boy was it adorable.
 
 
We stayed at my Grandma Bell's house which was awesome because I have so many happy memories there from when I was a kid.  One of my favorites was always seeing Grandpa Bell sitting in this green recliner reading the paper in the morning.  Nate spent a lot of time in "Grandpa Bell's chair" during the trip.
 

 

My grandpa built this house when my mom was little and it is just as cool now as it was in the 60's.  Nate had a blast exploring.
 
 
The house has an attic bedroom that is only accessible from a wooden ladder in a tiny closet.  Clearly Grandpa was not planning on having any disabled grandkids who wanted to go on his roof.  I am sort of scared to get myself up there but Nate really wanted to see it so ya know, we made it happen.  I should mention that Scott flew down to meet us on the second day.  Nate never would have made it up here without those muscles.
 
 
Once when we were kids, my brother and I put an egg out on this roof to see if it would cook on a hot day.  It did not.
 

My Grandma and Grandpa Lowe live just a few blocks away from Grandma Bell.  They have a pool and it was an instant hit for Nate this year.  We swam with cousins everyday. 


 
One morning we went to the arboretum at the state college.  They had this funny dome house that Nate thought was a real volcano.
 


We were so busy the whole trip that he only managed to get one bath, but don't you love his post-bath hair?  I do.  Nate told me these chairs were "baskety".

 
The last day we went to Newport Beach and rode the ferry over to Balboa Island.  This was a huge highlight for Nate.  Too bad the ride is only four minutes long.



I love these boys. 
 



As we were leaving, Nate said he really wanted to go to the beach.  We hadn't taken him to the actual beach since we can't really push his stroller on it and he can't play in sand anyway, but he wanted to go so bad that Scott decided to just carry him.  I've never seen Scott so sweaty as he was when they finally got back.  Nate insisted on going all the way to the water to dip his feet in, and Scott obliged.  If that's not love, I don't know what is.  Nate is really heavy these days.


It was so great to be in Fullerton and to see so much family and especially to spend time with my grandparents.  Even though I came back from the trip even more tired than usual, it was totally worth it.  It was also really nice to see that we can in fact travel with Nate and the world will keep rotating on its axis. 
 


Monday, May 13, 2013

Happy Mother's Day to me!

Yesterday morning I was awakened by this little boy rolling into my room with a tray of yummy breakfast that he helped Daddy make while he shouted "Happy Mother's Day!!" over and over again.  It was pretty great.  Scott and Nate were awesome all day long.


I can hardly believe that this was the fourth Mother's Day I've spent as a mother (although one year was spent in the hospital which is like a black hole of space, time, and happiness so it doesn't really count).  I love being Nate's mom.  

What the heck?!!

Nate has been doing a decent job with potty training.  I know you're probably not interested in all the sordid details so I will spare you, but for the sake of my story I will say that he still has a small accident in his diaper once or twice a day.  At this point we don't really know how much of this has to do with his disease and how much is just him being a stinker, but the fact that he wakes up with a dry diaper every morning makes me wonder sometimes if he is just having too much fun in life to bother telling me he needs to go potty.  Anyway, when we discover he's had an accident we'll usually say something along the lines of, "Nate, you wet your diaper!  You need to remember to tell us when you have to go."  And until last week he would always admit fault and promise to do better next time, but now he has changed tactics.  Now when we say, "Nate, you wet your diaper!" he will give us this totally incensed look like he's every bit as surprised and appalled as we are and then give us one of these choice replies:

"What??!!  What??!  What is going on here??!!"
"What?!!  Is that bad or something?"
"I don't know what peeping is.  What does peeping mean?!" (He calls wetting himself "peeping".)
Or my personal favorite, "What the HECK!??!"