Let’s Talk about February

Given the current state of March being kind of messed up, I decided I’d give February its very own blog post and tackle other current events separately, in due time, from a minimum distance of 6 feet. Major February happenings in the Baxter household!

By far the biggest happening of February was the week we spent with my Dad holed up in our basement finishing a WONDERFUL basement family room for us. The vision for this room dated back to when we purchased this house in 2012. Spring of 2019 my dad spent several days framing, pulling wires, etc to get it ready for this finishing trip. He worked his a** off for us. He probably put in 6- 10+ hour days but we went from framed to finished with a 1-man crew in a week. I borrowed some tools, he mailed some of his own, and then we just left him down there for a week…sort of. Jason unfortunately got really tied up with work having a total meltdown, and I found that if I hung out with him it slowed the progress significantly, so we made sure he had 3 square meals a day and a steady stream of supplies and minded our own business. My dad came out for the better part of a week, and my mom joined at the end of the week for a long weekend. It was great to see them and the boys always love when they visit. The family room is more than we even hoped for. We furnished it with an entertainment center from the classifieds, an area rug, and 2 of our formerly upstairs couches. We bought a new leather couch for upstairs–it might be the first real piece of adult furniture we’ve purchased at full price! After some ribbing about our big entertainment center and relatively “tiny” TV, Jason’s co-worker Jamie even took pity on us and sold us a TV for a steal of a deal. The room is really beautiful and the kids are spending WAY more time hanging out down there.

Basement project week also happened to be Valentine’s Day week so we had a bit of a break in the action to have a little family get together with the cousins who happened to be in town. We fed everybody pizza and cake and enjoyed some visiting. Earlier in the week, the boys had fun putting together their Valentines assembly line style for school and daycare. Christopher had a very specific vision which included small gift bags filled with assorted goodies. I tried to come through for him and we made little bags with stickers, bubbles, and a couple pieces of candy. Additionally, he decided he wanted to give friendship bracelets to his friends so I spent a week making friendship bracelets like the crazy Mother I am. I haven’t made a friendship bracelet since probably middle school and I was cranking them out like it was my job.

William’s February brought with it not the best of luck. After a particularly busy week that found me camped out at parent teacher conferences and volunteering for our school book fair, William started complaining of a sore throat. I thought he was coming down with the proverbial “man cold” so I told him to buck up and went about business for another couple days. HOWEVER it was not a man cold and there was progressively more pain and crying not responding to the Tylenol/ibuprofen cocktail I was forcing into him. Finally we were all at our wits’ ends and I took him to Instacare. It was strep…of course it was, just no fever to speak of and no white blotchy throat spots. I felt pretty bad dragging it out so long. I also made sure to text all the class mom-friends as he was at school a half day with a sore throat. At least 2 other kids in his class got it, so it was definitely going around. He was finally perking up, and then at the end of his 2nd to last swimming lesson of the session a kid accidentally kicked him in the mouth. And knocked a baby tooth clean out! It was a bit of a panic mom moment, because I looked away for literally a second, and when I looked back they were hauling him out of the water crying and he was bleeding everywhere. Dude handed me a tooth with a brace bracket still attached. Moment of panic until I made sure it was a baby tooth and the rest of his mouth was perfectly intact. He may have gotten a chocolate shake and a play-date with friends to make my heart feel a little better about his bad week.

(Pictures below: Pre lost tooth, Post lost tooth, Lost tooth. )

The second session of winter swimming lessons went great for Christopher and not so great for Andrew. After going down the slide for the first time at the end of session 1, Andrew decided during session 2 that he was going to refuse to get in the water…period. Not exactly the outcome we were hoping for. We’re going to give it a break and try again in the summer. In brighter news, Christopher is ready to move up a level so at least we have that. (In Andrew’s picture below, his class is across the pool. 🙂 )