Catching up on the week (with pictures and a video!)

Kamu is doing much better, thank goodness. I brought him to his pediatrician on Tuesday and there was no sound of any wheezing. We've slowly weaned him off the nebulizer treatments over the week and he is doing just fine now. He's back to playful and laughing--this is a video from dinner last night, and you can hear his wonderful laugh in the first few seconds. And see how messy it is...

Holy cow, that took a long time to publish. Better make this a little shorter than I was otherwise planning.

Kamu has put on almost 2 lbs in the 5 weeks that he has been home. He is a little bruiser, a very solidly-built little boy. The other day, he trapped Patrick in the laundry basket. He was a little shy to wrestle with Jason and Patrick at first, but now he's right in the thick of it, laughing and crowing his victories! We often refer to the kids as "the little boy" and "the big boy", but Jason pointed out this morning that we're probably going to have to revise that to "the younger boy" and "the older boy" as, at this rate, Melkamu will overtake Patrick in weight within a couple of years. Patrick is about 37/38 pounds at 4 years and 4 months, while Melkamu is 24 pounds at 1 year and 5 months. We're thinking football might be his sport, if he continues to grow like this. He's already got the aim--that boy can hit anything he aims at, particularly if he's throwing it at one of us while protesting being in his crib.

Patrick had his first sleepover the other night. His friend Daniel and Daniel's family came over for dinner, and then Daniel got to stay for the night. It was a very exciting week for Patrick--his loft bed finally came in (and even made it up the stairs, though the Ro*oms to Go deliverymen were insistent that it wouldn't fit), he got to pick out new sheets for his new mattress (Spider Man and Transformers), and his friend slept over. They didn't go to sleep until about 11:30 p.m. and were up before 7 a.m. the next morning. I don't know how any of us made it through the next day.

I'll post a picture of the boys' room soon, since it changed a lot when the loft bed was put in. We've now got the crib next to the door, Melkamu's dresser on the other wall next to the door, and Patrick's enormous loft bed (which has a dresser built in) along the back wall. It works well. There's not a lot of extra room, but there's enough for them to have room to play--and the "cave" under the loft bed is a huge hit already.

A couple of pictures:

Patrick has a fondness for Hawaiian shirts that probably makes his Grandpa Gallagher very proud.

Here are all of my boys--well, all of them except for the dogs. Have I ever mentioned just how outnumbered I am as a female in this house?