Franklin turns 1!

Oh man, I have never been sad that my child had a birthday.  But I really had some emotional moments the last few days.  My baby is one.  A toddler.  He doesn't want to be swaddled or held for long, he wants to be off on his own.  He wants to explore and squirm away from my lap.  He's a big boy.
Having his birthday on Cinco de Mayo is just fun.  I could eat tacos every day.  We did- for about 4 meals in a row.  The girls have been counting on a pinata for a year now, so we invited some older kids and friends over to enjoy that.  It was a perfect afternoon with friends and food and toys.  He loved it and did not cry all afternoon.  HERE is the photo link.
Here is an update on Franklin:  His favorite foods are cheese and oranges, cherry tomatoes, blueberries and strawberries are close behind.  He loves having a small desert fork to himself to stab pieces of food and put in his mouth.
He loves anything with wheels (check out the birthday photo album).

 He loves books, really loves them although being a 3rd child, he doesn't get read to as much as the girls did.  Poor thing. His favorite of course were the touch and feel, especially Usborne "That's Not My . . . ." series.  He also loves Barnyard Dance by Sandra Boynton.  The girls are really good to read to him.  His favorite song is "Give Said the Little Stream" and when we are all in the car and he gets crankie, we all start singing it to him.  Franklin does love to be rocked to sleep and still doesn't go to sleep well on his own, but that is also due to sharing a room with his sisters.  He started sleeping on his tummy as soon as he could roll over, which is unlike my girls.    He can say "Hi" and "Daddy" and "baaaa" for all animals.  He can wave bye and hi and sign "more" when he's really motivated.  He gets really excited when he hasn't seen you for a while.  When I come home from something in the evening, he crawls super fast down the hall shouting "Hi! Hi! Hi! Hi!" with each step.  He LOVES his daddy, would almost prefer him to me often when Stephen is home.  I love that, a lot.  He also says "uh" part of "uh-oh" when I say it.  So cute.  He's loud when he wants to be and doesn't say much most of the time.  On the night of his birthday, the girls took a bath and he always gets SUPER excited and splashes in their water while leaning over the tub, so I thought "what the heck" and put him too.  This one will be great to crack out when the boyfriends and girlfriends come over.

Phrases you never want to hear

Monday was my birthday and Ada was still not better, so I took her in to the Dr.  I suspected what she actually had might be a UTI.  Turns out it is probably a kidney infection.  Not sure how they determine one vs the other, but since she had been sick for 6 days and the nature of her symptoms, her Dr thought it had advanced up to her kidney.  So she told me she wanted to give her IV fluids and antibiotics to get a real jump on it.
"Plan on being here for at least 2 hours" she said.  Ack.  Odessa had to be picked up from school, I had Franklin with me who is in the most tiresome stage of wanting to be moving everywhere, but only being able to crawl- so he can't crawl out in public places like the floors of the medical clinic!
2 hours later, they had tried to get IVs in both arms and failed.  I had been kept waiting forever at the pharmacy for her oral antibiotics, Franklin was DONE and I had steam blowing out both ears and my eyeballs too probably.  Ada looked so sick and sad and forlorn sitting in all those waiting room chairs.  The momma bear in me was raging.  It wasn't that we had to wait so much as a show of incompetence by some of the staff.  I have worked enough in the medical field- you can peg them right away.

So we went home and tried to make something of a fun evening of my birthday, but Ada threw up her dinner and we were worried she should go in to the Urgent Care at the hospital instead of messing around at a clinic.  She took her antibiotic after throwing up though and went to sleep.
Tuesday she did not eat all day but took her antibiotic in the A.M.after a lot of convincing and some gagging. Come evening, she couldn't take them- threw them right up and gagged every time I tried to have her take them.
So, in to the Urgent Care we went last night at 8pm.  She got the IV antibiotics and home with a different oral kind and anti-nausea medicine.  She seems a bit better this morning and after trying unsuccessfully to get her to eat anything, she wandered into the kitchen later and said some of the sweetest words:
"Mom, do you think I could have some Cheerios?"

As for other phrases you never want to hear?
I went out Saturday afternoon to return something and got absorbed in a clearance rack.  Stephen was home with the kids and doing some yard work.  When I walked in the door, Stephen said:
"Well, pretty much your worst nightmare came true today".  How awesome is it to come home to that??  It killed my clearance rack buzz pretty quick.
Turns out Stephen had let Franklin crawl around in the lawn and once when he looked over at him, Franklin was munching away on something.  Franklin puts everything in his mouth.  This is so different than our girls, we still aren't as vigilant as we should be.  Well, you may have guessed.  Or you may never imagine something so horrific.  Yes.  He was munching on some old chicken poop.  I nearly lost my lunch.  Stephen nearly drowned Franklin with the hose apparently while frantically cleaning out his mouth.  I have to say I have been pretty consumed with Ada and forgot to worry about any lasting effects from the incident.  Franklin never got sick, so I guess we can count our blessings for that.  The kid seems to be a fortress.