With less than 2 months to go until baby brother arrives, I've been soaking in time with my firstborn.  Beckham is 2, and being pregnant with a toddler is definitely a challenge, as he is getting faster and stronger and I am getting slower and more prone to huffing and puffing. Last pregnancy, I felt borderline guilty for taking naps; this time I fully embrace it and am just grateful I have the chance. Though I should probably go to bed earlier, one of my favorite parts of the day is in the evenings when I relax on the couch to watch a show and feel baby kick and hiccup. 

I was surprised how quickly Beckham picked up on the concept of a baby in my tummy. If I talk about "mommy's baby," he immediately tugs my shirt up to see my belly and will often squeal and blow raspberries against my stomach.  I've explained to him that the baby is growing and needs to stay in my tummy till after Christmas, so now he'll say, "No come yet. After Christmas." A small mishap yesterday happened when I told him the baby was kicking my tummy and tried to have Beckham feel the kicks, but instead my playful little Beckham started trying to kick my stomach too (luckily not hard, and I stopped it very quickly). 

More on Being Two

Beckham talks SO much. When he's mad, his go-to phrases are, "Hey that's mine," "Go away," or "Let go," (including telling the child-proof latch on the cabinet to let go).  But he's also picked up some cute and funny things, such as talking himself up with, "I can do it," while climbing the most difficult things he could choose to climb at the playground; politely saying, "No thank you"; using "uh-uh" for a casual no; or responding, "Of course," when I say thank you.  He is incredibly good at remembering people's names. He sings all the time and is ALWAYS requesting a full playlist of songs to either play on the radio or for me to sing. 

The "binkie fairy" came this week and left streamers, a present, and a note telling him he was a big boy now and didn't need his binkie anymore.  He was beyond excited to open a of Thomas the Train set and was immediately able to name 4/5 characters included. We're on our third night without his "bee-bee," and I've been amazed at how quickly he accepted that a binkie is no longer a part of his life now that he is a big boy and has his train set. Bedtime has taken a bit more effort, but ultimately it all has gone way better than I  anticipated, especially for a kid who regularly freaked out if he didn't have his binkie before. 

nothing more magical that seeing the real train in the distance while riding the kid train

convinced him to wear the beanie just long enough to say "cheese"

I am very paranoid about apples. Obviously, they are a choking hazard, so when he eats them I peel th skin, make sure the bites are small, and make sure he is seated.  Shortly after he told me he was all done eating, I took him out of his high chair only for him to swoop the remaining apple off the counter, take a bite, and start coughing and sputtering before projectile vomiting everything he had just eaten. 20 minutes later, I heard slight rasping while he was breathing lying down, but it resolved very quickly.  2 hours after that, as we were playing, his breath became concerningly noisy. It didn't last long, but I immediately caught it on film and sent the video to our power-couple-ER-nurse-and-doctor family members Danielle and Matt, who called us back to assess the situation and recommended we take him to the ER because of the chance that Beckham had aspirated a part of the apple. This would put him at risk for aspiration pneumonia or other lung health dangers that could very quickly affect his oxygen (which is why we could not wait till morning). 

Why do medical mishaps always have to happen at bedtime? 

We drove to the children's hospital and found a waiting room full of families. We knew we were in for a long night, and we ended up being there from 9 pm until 6:30 am, during which time Beckham mostly stayed awake.  I was glad I had the video, because each of the different providers who came in the room over the course of the night read "noisy breathing" on the charts asked if Beckham was maybe just sick...but then as soon as they saw the video they each agreed that we needed to assess for a foreign body. They performed an X-ray (Beckham was NOT a fan), and then later they performed another X-ray, and after that showed no foreign bodies they performed a CT scan (with Beckham on loopy medication after we told them there was no way he would hold still otherwise).  I could not observe due to radiation risk with pregnancy, but Dallin reported that the CT machine was designed like a pirate ship and drugged-up Beckham thought the spinning was the coolest thing ever.  Finally, the results came back clear.  The doctors explained that what had likely happened is that Beckham had either cleared the piece of apple on his own while at the ER (they had originally heard noisy breathing on the stethoscope but this resolved later in the visit), or he had only aspirated juice. Either way, they explained what symptoms to look for and when to come back to the ER in case a foreign body had been missed on the scans and an infection started to crop up. 

All's well that ends well, yeah?!

My cousin Paige and I had our boys about two weeks apart, so we decided to throw a combined birthday party for them.  The theme was Chugga Chugga Two Two! and when Beckham woke up from his nap to find the house and backyard decorated, complete with a bounce house, he was ecstatic! 

Beckham with half a dozen train tattoos from his birthday party

Two-year-old Beckham is a HOOT. Some funny things at this age:

• He likes to make sure the cats get timeout like he does.  If they get on the table, which is something that he does that merits a time-out, then he shouts, "UH-OH! Me-mout!" which is his pronunciation of time-out. 
• He loves vehicles.  At least once a day I'll hear him say, "Beep beep, vroom vroom!" 
• He loves singing and can frequently be heard singing nursery rhymes to himself. 
• He is figuring out his speech sounds, and for some reason right now he uses a lot of non-English guttural sounds. When he was younger, he "fronted" everything (e.g. K turned to T), and then this evolved into his backing everything (e.g. T turned to K) and then it evolved into the guttural sound, most commonly for the T in the word train.  It reminds me of the German CH sound.  Beckham also currently has a frontal lisp (he sticks his tongue out for S and similar sounds). As for his language, his vocabulary has EXPLODED in the last little while.  Sometimes, though, he will just be so cutely and confidently wrong about a word.  For example, Beckham saw a picture of a coconut and shouted, "Bumble bee!" Can you tell I'm a speech therapist who is quite intrigued by my child's speech and language development? 
• If I am ever or crouching sitting on the ground, he suddenly ambushes me with, "Monkey monkey!" and jumps on my back. He loves horse-playing with Dallin, too; I just have to be extra cautious with Beckham because he does not always understand the concept of a baby in my tummy. 

Beckham blowing out Dallin's birthday candles

This was the second time Beckham had shoved anything up his nose.  The first time, a month or more prior, he had shoved a frozen pea up his nose, saying "Oh gosh!" but I was easily able to push it down and out.  This time, when Beckham shoved a frozen corn kernel up his nose, (and Dallin realized because Beckham kept pointing to his nose and whining), I laughed at first. So did Beckham. Did that make the corn get sucked up higher? Dallin thought so, and he was not happy with me.  I had thought I could easily get it out, like I did the pea.  But after attempting to push it down and out, and after multiple attempts of the "mother's kiss" method of sealing off his mouth with mine, plugging the other nostril and giving a quick burst of air, the corn was still stuck.  Unfortunately, Beckham had shoved his finger up his nose, forcing it much higher up so that it was only visible with a flashlight and if he wasn't crying.  

At this point, we began to panic a little bit and decided to head to the only open urgent care in the area. We thought it would be an easy trip. But after wrapping him up in a sheet like a screaming burrito and failing to extract the corn with medical tweezers, the urgent care doc cancelled the cost of our visit and told us to head to the children's emergency room. You've got to be kidding me.

At the emergency room,  the lobby was packed with an entire football team and multiple of the players' parents and siblings due to an apparent accident with two boys and a golf cart.  Beckham's 8:00 bedtime had been 20 minutes after he shoved the corn up his nose, but he was being a trooper. At last he was able to be seen.  The nurses wrapped him up like a burrito and tried to suction the corn out, but it was stuck. They left, came back a while later and tried again.  Beckham was completely hysterical and so tired at this point. They consulted with the doctor and then with an ENT over the phone.  The doctor came in and said she could put him under briefly and extract the corn that way, but looking up his nose herself she seemed incredibly hesitant and said there was only a 50-50 chance she could get it.  Even just looking in his nose with a phone flashlight was enough to make Beckham start screaming. The doctor made it sound like the better option would be to go home and wait for a call from the ENT in the other hospital in the morning.   We were discharged around 2 am. We were instructed to not give him any solids until after the surgery. I was unclear on whether he was allowed to drink anything; I gave him a bottle as I laid him down in bed and then thought he couldn't have any liquids in the morning.

That next morning, I awaited a call while Beckham begged for food and tried to lap up water from a puddle in the backyard.  I called them, making sure they knew that we had been given instructions not to let my toddler eat or drink and that he was very upset. They said they would call me back.  Someone eventually told me he could have water until an hour or whatever it was before we went in, and the time to go in was eventually set to 10:45 am.  We arrived, and they put us in a room with the surgery time 12:15 written on the whiteboard.  It took an additional hour for that to actually happen, with random staff coming in here and there and an exhausted Beckham losing his mind trying to get into the diaper bag for food and drink.  At long last, they took him kicking and screaming to surgery after confirming that the nasal passages were too swollen for them to be willing to extract the corn while he was awake.  Dallin and I were sent to a waiting room. We were only there for 15 minutes or so before they brought the corn kernel for us to see.  Another 15 minutes or so and they brought us back to see Beckham, who was awake in a crib sipping his slushy as happy as could be! 

After that whole fiasco, for the next couple days Beckham kept asking to eat corn. Respectfully, I said no.