Memorial Day

I realize it’s been a while since our last post. With Memorial Day weekend come and gone, summer is now in full swing, and man are the days racing by. We had a busy, if uneventful, weekend. We got the boys out for their first official hike in the mountains, at a place called Meyer Ranch park just outside the metro area. We hiked for 2 miles, and had a picnic lunch. Both boys handled it quite well for their ages. There was of course a bit of whining, which had more to do with wanting to eat or wanting to get to the choo-choo (see next paragraph), so we’re hopeful that we’ll be able to do more in the future.

After the hike, we went to “Tiny Town”, which is really a gimicky tourist trap set up for parents of small children. Its a collection of miniature buildings, arranged as a small town. The main attraction is the train. There are a couple of small scale trains that run a little loop around the town. That is the choo-choo that the boys were so keen on. They had a blast, and OK, so did Lara and I.

There is one picture that probably needs a little backstory. While in the playground at Tiny Town, Alex decided he wanted to bring home some of the rocks. He’s often stuffing things in his pockets (yes, we have to watch him closely in stores), but this time he decided to put them in his hat. He would then try to put his hat on, but he couldn’t keep the rocks from falling out. He was actually getting pretty annoyed, and at one point started yelling “mine!” It was one of those moments that after the fact we wished we had the video camera running for, but at least we managed to get this photo…

As you can also see in the pictures, Bacchus joined us on our excursion. He is doing quite well with his treatments. He has put on much of the weight (back to 70 lbs as of Wednesday), and has a lot of his old energy back. He had a bit of a tough time the last day or so. He’s thrown up three times, although none of it appears as serious as what he went through this winter. We’re hoping he just swallowed something that disagreed with him, but we’ll see.

The boys continue to develop in leaps and bounds. Alex is really working on words, and is starting to string more and more together. It isn’t what I would call sentences yet, or even full words for that matter, but he’s getting his point across. The morning we went to Tiny Town, he said “Me, mama, daddy, Da (Evan), car, park, choo choo.” Considering where he’s been, we consider that major progress.

Evan is really working on his behavioral issues. He had a very rough couple of weeks at school, including being sent home one morning, and I believe he was on the edge of being expelled. He’s coming back around now, with a pretty good week this past week. This weekend, after getting very upset about something at breakfast, he pounded the table and yelled “I’m angry! I need to go in the other room and calm down!” He then proceeded to climb out of his chair and walk into the living room for a minute. When he came back, he was indeed calm. Lara and I almost cried.

Outside of that, not much new to report. We have a couple of additional grandparent visits starting to get scheduled over the next couple of months, and our first camping trip planned in June. We’ll certainly get more pictures out as soon as we have them.