Flanagan Clan

St. Patrick’s Day ’09

And, for fun, last year’s attempt at a St. Patty’s Day picture with three boys:

Happy Irish Day, Everyone!

Patrick has been very excited about St. Patrick’s Day this year. We have our little shamrock window clings on several windows, I’ve been making shamrock embroidered diapers and purchasing new Irish shirts for the boys, and we have some shamrock cookies to make this afternoon. Patrick is very proud to be Irish, and you can’t even hint to him that he might have a little bit of German in there, too. Nope, Sammy is German and he and Ethan are IRISH.

Life is going fairly well here. I came down with a cold on Sunday, but the boys and Andrew all seem fine. Ethan is doing great. He hasn’t had any tylonal since Sunday and he’s just as active as ever. The only thing that isn’t quite the same about him is that he’s become really fussy about not wanting to drink all his milk in the morning. He’ll take some, but we’ve been wasting a lot of milk lately. I’m not sure why- maybe he got a taste for pedialyte while he was on clear liquids? I’m not sure, but he just doesn’t want his milk anymore.

For anyone interested, we got an e-mail from my parents on Sunday telling us that they had arrived safely in Bangladesh. We haven’t heard anything else from them, so I assume their internet access is probably fairly limited. I know my mom is pretty bummed that she’ll probably be one of the last people to find out the gender of Baby #4, but what can you do?

Well, not much else to mention- I’m just hoping that this cold goes away soon. Every time I sneeze or cough I get a sharp shooting pain in my round ligaments- definitely not fun having a cold while being pregnant. I am grately, though, because it seems like overall this winter we were a lot less sick than we were last year. This actually surprised me since I heard that often times when families started sending their kids to preschool they’d come down with a lot more illnesses. Patrick has been remarkably healthy this winter- I guess the preschool parents just do a very good job of keeping the sick kids at home!

Éirinn go Brách!

This afternoon I turned around and the next moment Ethan was covered in milk. I ran to see what had happened. Patrick informed me that Sammy spilled. I looked at Sammy and told him to be more careful. Patrick looked at me very seriously and said, “Mommy, accidents happen”. Under my breath I replied, “Yes, maybe a little too often…” Someone is getting a little too smart.

My parents left for Bangladesh to help work in a mission hospital yesterday. I got a call from my mom from an airport in NY to tell me that they were preparing to board a plane to Qatar. It’s so weird that they’ll be gone for a whole ten weeks, and we’re not sure what sort of communication they’ll have while they’re gone. Our whole family would appreciate prayers for their safety while they are there.

Ethan seems to be doing fine. Yesterday he went back to solid foods and attempted to play with his brothers. However, the older two were a little rough with him and so after several warnings to the older boys and several very active attempts to play on the part of Ethan, I decided it was better for Ethan to play in his pack ‘n play. He didn’t like the idea too much, but he ended up falling asleep so it turned out alright. He did sleep quite a bit of the day yesterday, and I have been giving him the tylonal with codeine to help keep the pain away. He seems to be doing fairly well though- except for a couple times when he looked like he was trying to exert himself and put too much pressure on the incision site, I haven’t felt like he has been in too much pain. I just don’t want him to try to over-extend himself though, so depending how he does today I may or may not take him to church tomorrow.

And, lastly, this week we find out the gender hopefully!!! If you haven’t voted in our gender guessing game and would like to, now is the time. I go back and forth on thinking that maybe it’s a boy or a girl. I guess, in truth, I just don’t know. I’ve never been good at guessing things like this anyways. So, we’ll see…  We haven’t quite decided on a boy’s name yet- well, I had one, but then Andrew came up with a different idea, so who knows. It would be nice to use the girls name we’ve had for a while, but if we can’t, I know of a certain sister who said she’d love to use it if she ever had babies!!!

Ethan had surgery this morning at 8 AM. He was actually scheduled for 9, but the person scheduled for 8 cancelled due to illness, so we were bumped up. The surgery went well, but Ethan has not been the happiest little man since coming out of anesthesia. He’s been very upset and grouchy. He doesn’t seem to be in too much pain, just annoyed at his current state in life. The doctor did send us home with tylonal with codeine, which we haven’t given him yet, but which should keep the pain tolerable and knock him out a little, too. My main concern is just keeping my very active little man from being too active for the next few days as he recovers. He’s slept most of the day, and is just now waking up a little bit and taking an interest in some fruit-flavored pedialyte. I can tell that this recovery will be a lot harder than the first time since Ethan is so active and determined to do his own things, but I’m hoping that it will be quick overall…

That’s about it for now!