Flanagan Clan

So, I just realized today that I have owned this blog for 5 years. I didn’t really do much with it at first, but I’m impressed all the same! So much has happened since March 2005, and our whole family has changed in so many ways. It will be interesting to see what this blog looks like in 2015 🙂

Things have been pretty busy around here lately. We threw a HUGE St. Patrick’s Day party a few weeks ago, and we had a record FOURTY people at our house!!! I have never had that many people under our roof before, but we managed to pull it off…. somehow. Over half the people here were kids, so it was a little chaotic, but no one got seriously injured, nothing was broken and thanks to a couple friends helping with the dishes, the aftermath of the party was very slight 🙂 I didn’t manage to get many pictures during the party because things were soooo crazy, but I did get a few shots of Liam and some of the food I made.

Green Oreo Truffles

White Oreo Truffles

A rainbow fruit tray

The appetizer table (what you don’t see is all the other food I made! There was  TONS!!!)

Liam enjoying his first St. Pat’s Day party

One of the other desserts I made where these:

Which, I thought, were really fun, though somewhat labor-intensive for cupcakes

I love rainbows!

Now that St. Patrick’s Day is over, I’ve started preparing for Easter. I am in charge of making jello and dessert for our Easter feast at my parents’ house, and I have some fun ideas up my sleeves. I’ll try to remember to take pictures this time! I am so excited for Easter- I gave up all candy and desserts for Lent and it’s not been easy with my sweet tooth. I’m almost there…

Things have been going pretty well with the boys. We signed Patrick up for school at the local public elementary school. We thought and prayed about this for a long time. We also explored a lot of different options. We finally decided, with everything that is going on, that it would make the most sense to send him to Hunt. The school bus will come to the little park next to our house and pick him up and drop him off every day. He’ll be doing half days on Monday, Tuesday, Thursday and Friday and every other Wednesday. We do not intend to keep him in the public school forever, and if this doesn’t work, we can always yank him out and go with something else.

Sammy has been sick lately. We had a really big scare him him on Wednesday. He had gotten sick and was having a hard time breathing. He would start coughing and be unable to catch his breath. So we took him in to see the doctor, to find out that his oxygen levels were low. They started him on albuterol using a nebulizer and that didn’t help so they gave him two more treatments of albuterol plus some steriods to help build his oxygen levels up. Even after that, he was still hovering at a 91, and the doctor wanted to send him to the hospital, but our primary care doctor, Dr. Grubb, gave us the go ahead to take him home and watch him carefully. We returned the next day for a follow up, to find that his oxygen levels were still low, so now we have a steriod inhaler that we need to give him twice a day, in addition to albuterol in the nebulizer. Oh, and I forgot… he tested positive for the flu at  the appointment, so he’s on anti-viral medication as well. Ethan seemed like he was coming down with something last night, so I think he caught it too. Thankfully, this flu strain doesn’t seem like it’s the vomiting type, because other than Sammy throwing up after having the three nebulizer treatments, we haven’t had any throwing up. That I am thankful for.

Ethan is doing pretty well. I’m starting to see signs of getting ready to potty train, so I think we might try to encourage him this summer. If we can get him to potty train, it will be the first time I have only one kid in diapers since the time Sammy was born! But, we’ll see. I’m definitely not going to push him if he isn’t ready. Ethan is also beginning to talk… he’s trying to be more vocal. Sometimes if he’s trying to say something, he will make a humming sound with the correct number of syllables as what he’s trying to say. So, if he wants to say “Ethan” he’ll say “HUM hum”. It’s not perfect, but it’s definitely better than what he was doing a couple months ago, which was whining every time he wanted something.

Liam has been doing really well, too. He’s finally starting to sit up (yes, at the age of 8 months! I blame myself for babying him!). He’s been a really sweetheart. He’s so happy and I wish I had more time to play with him, because he’s been such a delight to our family. He’s still not eating solid foods yet, but that’s alright. I’m not pushing him at all, although I suppose at some point he’s going to have to grow up and not be a baby anymore 🙂

My other baby, my business, has been keeping me pretty busy. I’m still in the process of diaper testing, and I think I’m just about done with that. I’ve had a lot of really positive reviews of my newborn diapers, and I’m feeling pretty confident about everything. I am having labels with my new name and logo being woven right now, and pretty soon I’ll be ready to introduce a finished product. I’m pretty excited about that! My only problem is that I have much more demand than I have time for, and maybe it would help to get some extra help, but I’m not exactly sure how that would work, so I’m taking things slowly… It’s been a lot of fun, though and it’s been a great excuse to build up my fabric stash!

Well, I think that’s it for now. Sorry for being so bad about blogging lately. One of these days life is going to slow down… I’m just not sure when that will be though!