Tis the season. . .

. . . for an update. Overall life has been pretty low-key (well, for us anyway), which is nice. In October Callum celebrated four years old, and had a grand time with his party and Lego cake. I was busy with the party and relied on others to take pictures, which I just now realize I still need to get.  This year was the first year he asked for anything specific, and he wanted to take a friend from preschool to the Children's Museum. Since Scott happened to work with the friend's mom and we have a museum pass, this made for an easy party. This is really the first playdate of this type that Callum's ever had, and he had a blast. Sadly, the family had to move to New Jersey in November, which seems just our luck.

Star Wars and Legos--his two most favorite things

 

Starting to become more helpful,

but is still quite silly.

At four, Callum continues to amaze us daily, and usually in a good way. He loves Legos, Star Wars, reading, listening to music, food, Phineas and Ferb, and talking. He's extremely friendly and loves to be in charge. He is absolutely amazing big brother and has always looked out for Declan (Well, almost always. He still refuses to do anything with diapers, and now that Declan is getting into toys more, Callum is starting to get irritated with him at times).  He still loves his new preschool. We've been through a couple rounds of age-typical behavior issues where he has really pushed and tested his boundaries, but his teacher has handled it well and worked really hard with us to improve the behaviors positively.

We also had Halloween. Callum was a weenie and refused to help scrape out the pumpkin, but loved dressing up and getting candy. We went to our church's Trunk or Treat and went to a few houses. As per tradition, Grammy made the costumes and made them pajama friendly.

Declan overall has been doing really well. He started speech therapy last month, which now brings his weekly therapies up to three and then has monthly nutrition. Older kids' social lives have nothing on this kiddo, especially adding in the appointments! We just started working with a gait trainer a couple of weeks ago, and he's already really enjoying propelling himself down the hall and into the kitchen cabinets.

Don't worry, he can still fall asleep anywhere

Health wise, Declan went through another round of RSV and breathing treatments right before Halloween, which then brought on more ear fluid. This time he was nice enough to share the virus with Callum, who then also ended up with an ear infection. We found out about the fluid after a second attempt at a hearing test. Antibiotics didn't clear it up and we've been dealing with the fluid for a long time, so he's now set to get tubes put in on Tuesday. Other than having to be at the hospital at 6 a.m. in predicted single digit temperatures, it should be a relatively minor procedure. We hope this helps his hearing as well as solve yet another piece of the eating issue puzzle we've battled off and on since birth.

 This week we had the first major snow of the season, and it was warm and sunny enough today that Callum spent a lot of time outside in it. Declan doesn't fully have the proper gear and still gets cold easily, so he wasn't out for very long, but he seemed to enjoy it as much as Callum.