It was another long day, mixed with fun and tantrums. Brendan is not making any progress on his illness. He is fairly active and wants to crawl and play and do everything he normally does, but his sats are low and he is still on 5L of oxygen. We are going to try to get him in to see his pediatrician in the morning to make sure that he is not brewing a secondary infection like in his ears again.

Bill and Granddaddy woke up super early this morning to go do some shooting and then they did some sightseeing at the mines. I tried to keep Brendan relaxing and Trevor occupied.
I initially wanted to have a “no sitting/climbing on the train table” rule, but all that was shot when there is one of me and two of them. Besides, they played so nicely together with the trains that way. They really enjoyed themselves.
I watched with an eagle eye for signs of Trevor hitting and Brendan biting and stopped it before it had a chance to happen. I wasn’t always successful but things were better today. I am just wiped out.

They let the train go around and around so many times, but the temptation to pull everything apart finally got the best of them

I pulled out a few more pieces and made a second giant loop on the floor so each boy could have his own set. I barely made a dent in the pile of pieces we have to work with.

Brendanzilla strikes the bridge

All through the day, if we had a spare moment we went in to the soon-to-be-playroom room and took things out of bins and put it into sorted piles. I printed the parts lists for the big sets that I could identify. It is a deep pile!

I have to say, this has been a lot more exciting that just buying a new playset. It is fun to sort and search and discover what all we got. We pulled out two complete large sets so far, a Pixar Cars Grand Prix and the Grand Central Station. Once we had all the parts, we took them outside to wash them up. Trevor loves to have that job.

Brendan could not bear for everyone else to be outside without him. He pitched a fit until he could come play in the hose too.

Poor Brendan just wants to play, he really should be taking it easy. Trevor had a rough night and was up several times crying, but today he seemed to be back to Trevor-spazz.

Brendan finished the freshly washed Grand Central Station kit. It is only missing two trivial pieces, they won’t affect the functionality.

We did have some fun today. Bill has already had to take apart several of the engines to clean and tune them to work or work better. He fixed a non-functional Tow Mater and is looking for spare parts for some other cars.

All of that is under a shadow as we wait for Brendan’s health to return. I just hate not knowing what we could be doing to help him.

I don’t dwell on the negative stuff in the blog, else there would be tomes of rants and whines and pity parties. But I have to say today pretty much sucked. We have two sick boys AND two sick men. Patience is short, as is sleep. There was a ton of screaming, fighting, throwing, and just plain stress. We had good intentions and nothing we wanted to do seemed possible because of toddler tantrums and medical needs.
Brendan is a little better, but not great. Trevor is worse. Bill and Granddaddy have the stuffed noses and sore throats. I am exhausted. There was lots of vomit.

That aside, lets get back to the cute, funny and positive.

Granddaddy brought with him a couple of old train sets that were mine and Aunt Heather’s when we were kids. He did a lot of work to restore them and we bought some new tracks. We got it all set up on the kitchen table and made sure it all worked. Trevor immediately made it clear that he was far too young for these real train sets so we packed it all right back up to store for later.

After being disappointed with the toy stores, I thought I would try Craigslist to see if I could get them a more age appropriate train toy to use with Granddaddy. I never expected to come upon the deal of the century! We bought stuff from two different people. The first was a couple that had a Geotrax train table set like what cousin Caleb has, new in the box for a huge discount. The second was a family that had collected the Geotrax sets for years and was trying to unload their whole dusty collection from the garage. There were four giant plastic totes and three garbage bags full of buildings, tracks, cars, and more, including several Pixar Cars sets that cost more than what I paid for the whole thing. It was amazing! It all needs some TLC and cleaning, but there is easily more than $600 worth of toys for a fraction of the cost.

Brendan ponders the box

We thought we had actually succeeded in stopping the tantrums for a while. The boys were very interested in all the new stuff

I loved seeing the boys both eager to “help”!

“Where do we begin?”

I was so frustrated when I found a piece that I thought was broken plastic from the toys. Already! Turns out it was just a dessicated mac and cheese noodle. All hope was not lost.

Out of the whole day, we did have a few hours of nice play time. Trevor spent an hour or more on the front porch with Bill using the garden hose to wash some of the pieces. We had to separate the boys because Trevor was grabbing Brendan’s cheek, digging in his nails and twisting. Then he was grabbing Brendan’s head and pulling him over.
They can be so good though. Briefly. It is so hard to deal with the aggression.

I hate desperately watching the clock hoping that bedtime would come quickly. I just wanted today to be over. I haven’t even looked in most of the tubs and bags of the cool new stuff. We have enough to make a Geotrax city to cover the entire living room floor and then some.
I hope tomorrow we can enjoy it and that everyone will feel better.

We probably celebrated Brendan getting better a little too soon. He had a good night, but a pretty rough and miserable morning. We had no nurse today so it was extra tough managing a very cranky and stuffy-nosed Trevor too. The house was loud and chaotic to say the least.

Because Brendan was on his vent, he had a very short length of tube to work with. Because Trevor wanted to attack him (he has moved on from hitting and now grabs Brendan by the head and tries to do a headlock or dig his fingers in to Brendan’s arms), I kept Brendan in his crib and let him play with the ipad. I tried to keep him happy.

Keeping Trevor in baby jail requires a lot of extra energy so we decided to do a massive clean and sort “Undo” game. Trevor generally likes that. He is good at mopping.

He likes to dump the whole toybox too

We found all the pieces to everything, even all the letters. The only thing missing is an orange whiffle ball! It wasn’t enough for Trevor though, he still went crazy. We had to move outside and let him do lots of cleaning there too.

For a short time after napping, the boys were in good moods. Brendan was feeling a little better this afternoon and was able to get on his mist collar and play. They played nice!

Then Brendan got a phone call on the garbage truck

I wish it was the city calling to tell us their pickup schedule. We have been missing the truck often because it is so random now

Monster trucks!

I used everything I could find to try to make a fort with the couch. Trevor was loving playing peek-a-boo

A little silliness from today…

It looks like tons of fun, but today was very stressful and I am super tired. I am hoping Brendan sleeps well. Everyone needs to feel better in the morning.