One more day closer to healthiness for all. I am bothered by a new cough I have, I really hope it is nothing. Otherwise, everyone seems to be feeling better. Brendan is back on full formula at full speed and he only had two small vomits today. Hopefully he will be totally back to normal tomorrow.

Quinn had his evaluation today and it went well. Tomorrow, the couple that met him today will be driving him out to meet the new family. We have to keep our fingers crossed that this all works out. If they don’t take him, it will get very tricky.

Trevor’s face is doing well. It just needs time and it should all disappear like all the rest of the big bonks and bruises that he has had.

Trevor is showing how he can have two “fafas” at once. I think fafa came from him saying pacifafa instead of pacifier. So that is what they are called in this house.

Brendan likes to watch Bill play xbox.

Twin attack

Trevor has not been much of a talker until recently. He has suddenly burst forth with rapid language development and it cracks me up every day. He repeats everything in his own Trevor accent, but he comes out with these crazy full sentences and very silly thoughts.
He just started singing songs too. I love it.
I tried to put him down for a nap today. He didn’t fight much but when I put him in bed and left, he was talking up a storm. Here’s some highlights. I have captioned the video to help understand him. There is a white noise machine running and the ceiling fan is on so there is a lot of static and such.

I am anxious for things to work tomorrow. It would make things easier on everyone.

Things are starting to finally “normalize” with the boys. It will be abnormal in the house for a while as we adjust to Quinn being gone.

We are ultimately hopeful that our plans with Quinn go smoothly this weekend. Bev from the dog rescue has been amazing and jumped in to action immediately despite the busy holidays. We have had a lot of communication today and want badly for these plans to work. A friend of the rescue is going to pick him up tomorrow and spend the afternoon evaluating him and his personality. If he “passes”, she will then take him to meet a potential family on Sunday. This is not just any family, they currently own his look-a-like littermate.
We would feel wonderful if we knew that Quinn could be reunited with his pup-sister, and be in a loving home. He just has to do well!
Bill had to get him to the vet this afternoon for a full exam and updates to vaccines and that all went well.
This is still very emotional and challenging, but this is encouraging.

Trevor’s face was better today than I expected. I keep applying neosporin and it is healing fast. He doesn’t notice it, although he did have a small black eye.

We didn’t have any day nurse today, so we did the “keep the boys busy toy sort” thing again. This time, I pulled out a giant box of babyish toys that they have outgrown to make room for some new Christmas things. Amazon gift cards from Christmas will mean fun packages.

Trevor found a blanket and tried to spread it out and said “picnic!” I helped them with the blanket and the two of them sat and played for a while. They were doing peek-a-boo with each other.

This must be some twin language. I can decipher about half of it.

Then they sorted money in to pigs.

They lounged and watched some TV.

Trevor performed an auto-appendectomy

With all of the phone calls and work to do and the garbage truck coming on an off day because of the holiday, the boys’ nap time was a total nap fail for both of them. This was Trevor’s nap:

We are extremely grateful to Bailey for keeping Quinn for us for now. It is possible he could go to his new home as early as Sunday, but even if things go OK, they may not be ready for him right away. We will have work to do. We hope for the best! We are ready to put 2013 behind us and move forward.

This will be a long post because it was an incredibly long and painful day for our family. I will ramble because that is where my head is right now. I don’t want to leave out the good stuff, because we tried our best to make the most of a tough week.

It started at 1:16am. I woke up to Trevor crying hard. I went in to get him and he was sitting up in his bed, very upset. For the next three hours, I tried to get him back to sleep, but he was very scared, panicky, and wanting to leave his room. I thought maybe he had a nightmare.
After failing to rock him to sleep, I tried to just walk out and let him cry it out. He raced to his door and opened it and came out in to the hall screaming and woke up Brendan.
I tried everything. He had warm milk, we walked around, I tried to take him in to my bed. He was so wide awake and if I tried to put him down, he would cling to me.
When he finally fell asleep, he would pop right up any time I would try to put him down.
Just before 5am, I finally got him in to his crib.
He woke up at 7:15am, crabby but not like I expected.
Getting him to nap was a battle. He fought and did NOT want to be put in bed. I finally got him to sleep after an hour of trying.
When I sat down and finally checked my email, I had this from the motion alert on his spy cam at 1:16am.

He must have fallen hard and he missed the crash mattress. He was rattled with adrenaline I am sure. Poor kid. If I had known that in the night, maybe my approach could have been different. I have totally reworked the pool noodle barrier to help prevent this again. I am shopping for Trevor’s new larger bed too. I really needed that sleep.

Brendan didn’t do well switching to full formula, so he is still “eating” some diluted formula mixed with pedialyte. We should be able to get him back to normal tomorrow. Bill worked today and is feeling much better.

Brendan tried some cheese puffs. He actually licked one so much that he ended up eating all but a tiny little gooey smudge.

“Was anyone looking?”

This melt down was because he wanted the sunglasses that I pulled out for Trevor.

See? All better.

Maniacal laugh

Trevor spent the afternoon outside sweeping leaves

Finding sticks

Digging trenches

And playing with lawn ornaments

I thought that things were going to be OK. We just needed more rest, but we had it handled.
Then in a blink while we were folding laundry in my bedroom, Trevor fell on the dog. I was two feet away and still am not sure if it was intentional or accidental on Trevor’s part. But Quinn whipped around and snapped and snarled.
I chased Quinn from the room with a fury of foul language and threats and bent down to get Trevor and only then did I realize that Quinn had actually bitten him on his cheek.
I can not describe how painful this is to us, because we have a zero tolerance policy when it comes to dog bites, especially where babies are concerned.

Trevor is OK. The bite was not severe and we will make sure to get him treated if there are any signs of infection. He bled a little and has more scratches than cuts or punctures. But it is terrifying to me how close it is to his eye.

This situation could have been severe. We don’t condemn a dog for its potential to harm and we have done our best over 9 years with Quinn to train him. We do our best every day with the boys to teach them to respect the animals, specifically to prevent this issue. We love our animals and hoped that this day would never come to pass. I would never be the person that swears that their beloved family pet could never harm a child. I knew the risk and hoped we had taken the proper steps. I was wrong. I feel guilt, and sadness and sorrow. I am grateful that Trevor will be just fine. He most likely will not even have any scars.
I fear for what will become of Quinn, because he is not able to continue to live with us.

I have contacted the dog rescue from where he was adopted. Their contract states that they want to regain custody of any dog that can not stay with their adoptive homes. I just know that some agencies can not rehome dogs that have bitten someone.

It hurts to lose a long time member of the family this way. The dog lover in me wants to rationalize his behavior and find a way to continue to take care of him. The mom in me completely overrides that feeling and knows that one bite is too many. He has to go. I only hope that he goes to a new home.

This sucks beyond words.

Quinn is spending the night at Bailey’s tonight while we try to figure out what to do.

This is Trevor’s little face.

I took him on a bike ride to try to get fresh air to clear both our minds, and so he could see Christmas lights before they were all gone. Other than the initial reaction to the incident, Trevor hardly seems to know he is hurt. He was more offended by the ointment than the injury.
He liked his ride and he liked his new gloves.

He went to bed without a problem, albeit late tonight.

When you are doubled over from a hard punch in the gut, life is ready to give you a swift kick in the teeth.