Jon and Amber

We had Thanksgiving with Jon’s family this year and it was a wonderful, relaxed day with tons of delicious food and great company. Jeremy was pretty shy at first but eventually warmed up and had fun playing with Jon’s cousins, who helped him build some super impressive block towers, and Jon’s aunt, who had fun racing around on the floor with Jeremy! After we got home at the end of the night, I shared a slice of pumpkin pie with him, which he enjoyed a lot (as you can see at about 3:07 in the video below – sorry it’s so dark!)

Jeremy is almost 18 months old now, and chattering up a storm in his own unique toddler language. He has been especially verbal in the last few days, and seems a lot more interested in trying to say real words. This weekend my parents were visiting us and my mom and I were sharing an apple with Jeremy at snacktime. I was trying to get him to show her how he uses his sign language to sign “apple” but instead of signing it, he said APPLE! We were very impressed and he kept saying it several times, very clearly.

I think all our excitement is backfiring now, though. Jeremy seemed to notice we were very excited about him saying that word, and now he’s been calling EVERYTHING “apple” (although his pronunciation has degraded a little  bit and now it sounds more like “ab-boh”. Jeremy wants to read a book? He brings it to you and says “ab-boh.”) Jeremy pets the kitty? “Ab-boh!” Jeremy likes playing with his truck? “Ab-boh!” Part of me wishes he would move past the whole apple thing and say some other words, but it’s cute and once in a while he’s actually referring to an apple, so he does get it right sometimes!

Jon just called and said that the doctor is now saying he won’t be discharged until tomorrow morning – not this afternoon as we had been told before. Bummer. He’s getting a little bored, and the pain medicine makes it hard for him to browse the web or read anything on his laptop since he’s so tired and groggy. At least it won’t be much longer.

He used a walker for a bit this morning, and this afternoon he got some practice on the crutches. He said it was a little hard at first, but then he got the hang of it pretty quickly. It’s amazing that he can be up and moving about again, when just yesterday morning he was in such excruciating pain! The resiliency of the human body is an amazing thing.

Jon’s broken hip – I don’t know if we’ll get an X-Ray picture of it now that he has screws installed, but here’s how it looked before the surgery:

OUCH!

He’s in his hospital room, doing as well as can be expected, feeling pretty OK considering the circumstances. A little practice on crutches tomorrow and then he can come home

Surgery is done, went pretty well. Three screws were put in his hip. I should be able to see him in his room soon. They say he can still go home tomorrow. He’s going to be on crutches for 6 to 12 weeks. I guess I get to keep taking out the garbage and cleaning the litterbox (usually Jon’s chores) for a bit longer!

Jon got home last night at 8pm. It was great to see him! Jeremy was a little shy and quiet but visibly happy to see Dada again. I went to bed before Jon since I had work in the morning and he wanted to do some unpacking, plus he was over-caffeinated from the drive home. When he finally came to bed he had trouble sleeping soundly, and at 2am he started sleepwalking, looking for a bathroom. He was pretty disoriented being in his own room for the first time in almost 2 weeks, and seemed a little lost. I had to tell him to NOT go in Jeremy’s room, and when I told him the bathroom was behind him, he walked right past it and fell down the stairs! He landed square on his hip and was in a lot of pain. I called the nurse hotline and they told me to call 911 for an ambulance. The paramedics came and took him to the hospital in the town just north of us, and I stayed home with the still-sleeping baby. I slept a little and called the hospital at 6am. Jon was still in emergency, and told me that he had badly broken his hip and would be sent to the U of M for surgery to have pins put in.

I took Jeremy to daycare and met with Jon at the U, and he was taken in to surgery at 11:30. They said it should be a couple hours, so I’m still in the family surgery waiting room right now. If things go smoothly, he should be discharged tomorrow afternoon with crutches. I will try to update here when I get more info. And when Jon is u
able, he said he’d try to post a little about his trip to Burning Man last week.

Jon was at Burning Man all last week, and sent home this “postcard” which didn’t arrive until yesterday.

Here is the “front” of the postcard. It’s a chunk of cardboard from a Mountain Dew case, with duct tape for the address labels. Way to improvise, Jon!

The Burning Man logo on the postmark – cool!

It’s hard to see, bu the started writing the message in black ink, ran out, used red ink for a sentence, ran out again, and then switched to pencil, LOL!

The message says:
Amber: I hope all is well at home. I have tried calling a few times and though there was cell service before, it could never complete a call. And now there is jus tno service at all. Everything is great here. It is only Wednesday, but I have had 2 flat tires. Glad I have spares! My neighbors are awesome, and there is NO "keep you awake" party anywhere near so far. Give Jeremy hugs & kisses for me. My plan is to leave late on Monday. I will call when I get to i80. Love, Jon

He’s still on the road home today, but should be back by about 8:00pm tonight. Thank goodness! Jeremy and I miss him a lot!

I can’t believe I forgot to post this! Last month, Jeremy and I went to visit my parents while Jon was in Wisconsin for a car show (Dubs in the Valley – he won First Prize (Mark IV Jetta) for the wagon!) My mom had found this Wonder Horse for Jeremy, and he wasn’t sure about it at first, but once he figured out how to rock, he could have stayed on it all day long. Very cute! Gotta love the tiny little cowboy hat

Well, it’s that time of year again – BURNING MAN! Jon and I stayed home last year since we had a new baby, but this year Jon is going back on his own. I would like to go but I’m not comfortable with leaving Jeremy for so long yet, and I don’t think it would be very much fun for him to drive for 2 days straight just to camp in the desert for a week and then have to drive back home. So it’s just the 2 of us until September 9th or so.

Jon left at 7:00 am on Saturday morning, and when I carried Jeremy out to the front porch so we could kiss and hug Jon goodbye, I felt something squish under my slipper. I knew instantly what it was. One of our cats (Indy) has become a pretty prolific mouser, which is a good thing, but she likes to leave mice and half-eaten mice all around the front door as “gifts” for us, which is not such a great thing. We call it “Indy’s Killing Field” because some mornings we’ll find 3 or 4 mice all at once. Gross. So I knew, even without looking, that I had just stepped right on one of those dead mice. I lifted my foot and took the quickest glimpse I could, and I didn’t see much but I saw enough to be able to confirm that’s what it was. I kind of started hopping around and huffing and puffing a lot, and shrieked, “Jon I just stepped on a dead mouse! AAACK! ACK! AAAAACK!” He took a look and got a disgusted look on his face and I said, “I didn’t look closely, but that’s what it is, isn’t it?” And he just said, “Uh, yeah… you don’t want to see this…” Then he went and got the shovel and scraped the mouse off the patio, and threw it into the woods. A colorful smudge was left behind on the cement. My slipper was miraculously clean but I still felt ill.

After Jon put the shovel away, we did all the hugs and kisses over again and he got in the truck and drove off. I was sad to see him go, but excited to know he’s going to have a lot of fun!

The next day, I had planned on taking Jeremy to the library. We got in the car and went down the driveway to the gravel road that leads out to the highway, and I noticed the road sounded VERY loud even though I was going pretty slow. Then I noticed the car was pulling hard to one side. I got out to look, and sure enough I had a flat tire. Totally flat, like a pancake. And the hubcap had gotten a little bit chewed up. Ugh. I slowly drove back to the house, and our neighbor Eric helped me put my spare tire on. Then I went to WalMart to see if they could patch my tire, which they couldn’t. And they didn’t carry a tire that matched my others. I decided to try my luck at Tires Plus, and they didn’t have the right one either. (This part of the trip was a lot of fun for Jeremy, because they had a toybox FULL of trucks to play with!) He cried when we had to put them away and go home, but was happy again when we got in the car and I gave him his Truck book.

I called Jon, who was driving through Nevada at this point, and he told me to go to TireRack.com and order a replacement tire there. He told me that’s where he ordered the current set, and the price was good. I was able to request my tire be shipped to a shop near my office, so when it arrives on Wednesday or Thursday, I can go straight there to have it mounted. The spare should get me through until then.

This morning went pretty smoothly. Usually Jon drops Jeremy off at daycare, since he puts up a fuss when I drop him off, but today he did really well and went right for the trucks when we got into the room, no clinging or crying! I got to work on time, and nothing has gone wrong yet today… so far! I hope the rest of the week goes smoothly, and I hope the time goes quickly because I miss Jon a lot.