The Brown Brick Road

Capturing our adventures one photo at a time...

Snow fun!

Wednesday was a true snow day.  The city of Birmingham was basically shut down.  It’s been a major disaster around here and I’m just so thankful that my little family was safe and warm at home.  Susan finally made it home at 3:30 yesterday afternoon after leaving our house at 10:30 am on Tuesday! There are so, so many stories of people being stranded, walking home and much worse.  Snow is fun but only when you’re at home!  Not surprisingly, Spencer’s tube surgery was cancelled for tomorrow and will likely be next Thursday.  My brother’s back surgery is still on for today though so keep him in your thoughts if you don’t mind. UPDATE – surgery went great!  thank goodness!

We did get out and play in the snow and I snapped a bunch of pictures.  I hope you like pictures of babies playing in the snow – because you’re about to get a lot!  🙂

snow days

snow days

snow days

snow days

snow days

snow days

snow days

snow days

snow days

snow days

snow days

snow days

snow days

snow days

snow days

snow days

snow days

snow days

snow days

It was cold and fun!  Yay for snow days that only come once every few years!  🙂

snow days

Snowpocalypse

So…Tuesday. Oh, Tuesday.  The day started normally with a weather forecast for cold temps and maybe a “light dusting” of snow.  The flurries started at 9:00 – so fun! – but then it just kept coming.  Susan had taken the boys to the library but then came home early when the weather started to get bad.  By 10:40 she was on her way home and Robert left his office as well.  That’s when the adventure began!  The roads got really bad, really fast.  Robert’s office is at the top of a hill and he didn’t even make it down the hill before slipping and sliding everywhere and eventually getting rear-ended. He then got into the parking lot of Target at Brookwood Mall, bought some boots, gloves and a hat and took off on foot.  An hour and approximately 4 snowy miles later we were VERY glad to see this coming up the driveway…

snow

Go USA and go Dad!

snow

Unfortunately, many were not as lucky as Robert and didn’t make it home – Susan included!  As I’m typing this Monday night, Susan is stranded at the Birmingham Country Club!  From the reports I have read on Facebook it’s been a total snowpocalypse – cars abandoned on the side of the roads, wrecks everywhere, people sitting on interstates for hours, children stranded at the junior high and high school.  What a mess!  The main problem was that the meteorologist didn’t predict this so no one was prepared.  Kids went to school this morning and then, at 10:30, they announced school was closing at 10:45.  By that point, the roads were already virtually impassable.  By 2:00 we had 3 inches of snow on the ground and everything looked like a (dangerous!) winter wonderland!

snow day

I am just so grateful that Robert made it home, fender bender or not!  I’m also so, so grateful that I ended up taking Maxwell up to the doctor on Monday so I wasn’t either trying to get him up to the doctor yesterday or stuck at home with a super sick kid and no way to get medicine for him.  I will say, after only 2 days on amoxicillin he’s already feeling worlds better.  Yay!

With everyone happily safe at home, we all bundled up and got out to play in the snow!

snow

snow

snow day

snow day

I took tons of pics with my real camera so will get those up soon.  It was a stressful, eventful and ultimately fun day!

Monday Monday

So…Monday.  Oh, Monday.  I had an appointment to take Spencer to the ENT yesterday to discuss the possibility of getting tubes.  He’s had enough ear infections to warrant a discussion.  Plus, I don’t want to him to have to continue to take so many antibiotics and, also, a part of me is wondering if his ears have anything to do with the fact that he’s not really talking yet.  Maxwell should have been at school while I took Spencer but he started complaining of a sore throat on Sunday afternoon.  By Sunday night he was miserable – and told me so with screaming tears throughout the night at 11:00, 1:00, 3:30 and 5:00.  So, not only did I need to take Spencer to the doc Monday morning, but I had to take Maxwell as well.

I should have known the day was not going to be great when I had them all dressed and ready to walk out the door only to see that Spencer had managed to crawl a hole through the knee of his pants…

pants

1 point for Monday.

(ps – that’s my finger poking through the hole,not a footless leg. I had already taken the pants off when I took the picture.)

After a quick pant change, we went to the ENT and the doctor confirmed that he would recommend tubes for Spencer.  In medical terms, he basically said there is so little downside that it can only be a good thing for him.  No more antibiotics, no more fluid in his ears, etc.  We got the surgery scheduled for Thursday – no time like the present, I guess!

ent

2 points for Monday.

While at the ENT, I also had him look in Maxwell’s throat.  He said it looked red but couldn’t tell yet if the small white patches were going to be a virus or bacterial infection or anything at all.  He recommended waiting another day until going to see the pediatrician to see what was really going to develop on his throat.  Well, I already had the appointment with Dr. Walley and we were already out so I just decided to go on up there anyway.  I’m very glad I did.  Maxwell felt about this good…

dr walley

Dr. Walley looked in his throat and said that was a pretty clear cut case of strep.  The strep test confirmed it 10 minutes later.  Ugh.  Poor, poor guy.  Cue up the amoxicillin.

3 points for Monday.

I already had an appointment in the calendar to take Spencer up to Dr. Walley on Wednesday of this week to get his 15 month shots that he wasn’t able to get last week at his check-up because he had an ear infection.  While we were up there I asked if they could just go on and do them and they could!  yay!  Well, yay for me…not so yay for this sleeping dude…

sleeping baby

He had a very rude awakening about 2 minutes later.

4 points for Monday.

I then learned that my brother has to have back surgery on Thursday for a herniated disk.  Not fun, not fun at all.

5 points for Monday.

So, I ended Monday with strep, shots and 2 surgeries.  Phew. Well played, Monday. Well played.  Is it Friday yet?

Circus!!

On Sunday we headed over to see The Greatest Show on Earth and it was…well…great!  🙂  Maxwell was super excited to see some elephants.  We let him have his pick of all the toys there and he didn’t want any of the cool flashing, light up things.  Nope, he wanted an elephant!

circus

Happy boy!

circus

Like last year, we only stayed until intermission but it was more than enough stimulation for both boys…

circus

They both kept clapping for everything – even Spencer – it was really cute.

circus

Plus, we got to see the elephants do their thing.  Awesome!

circus elephants

Family fun!

circus

Imagination

Maxwell’s imagination is exploding these days. Just yesterday he was telling me all about his other house that he has in Naples where he has a baby elephant with tusks and also a panda.  He has a cage for the elephant so it won’t run away.  He also has 4 stuffed monkeys but 3 are ripped and stay in the closet.  The house also has a big bedroom with 3 big boy beds – one for him, James and Lila. And no grownups are allowed.  🙂

I just love to hear him make up his stories and the way he talks about them as if they are REALLY real.  One story that went on for a long time was the Christmas party he made up.  Way back before Christmas he started talking about a Christmas party that he was going to have at his friend’s Jack’s house.  All of his friends were coming and it was going to be lots of fun. He would usually start talking about it around dinner time and saying that the party started at 9:00 and that we needed to take him over to Jack’s house instead of putting him to bed.  ha!

Well, the Christmas party talked died down until last week when, out of the blue, Maxwell decided it was party day.  He packed his monkey backpack with books and an extra coat, looked at his pretend watch and told me that it was time for the party to start because his watch said “29” which was when the party started.

imagination

He told me he needed a ride but I told him that I think he needed to just walk to Jack’s house if he really wanted to go.  Well, he wanted to go!  He took off down the driveway and then came back for his coat and to ask for a ride one more time. I told him again that if he wanted to go, he needed to just walk over there.  Off he went again…

imagination

imagination

imagination

He made it about halfway down the driveway before coming back up and saying that he thought I needed to go with him to hold his hand on the sidewalk.  Melt my heart.  I then had to convince him that the Christmas party at Jack’s wasn’t really happening (I honestly think he was convinced it was real!) and that maybe we could just invite Jack over one afternoon to play at our house instead.  He finally agreed and took off his coat.  Hilarious.

imagination

I just love to listen to his stories and am amazed at how his little brain works. Hope you all have a great weekend!