The Dude-a-Man get's down

So the last post was all about Haley, in fairness, it was time to put one up of just Kale. Lately the kid has really wanted to dance, and when that urge comes up, it's hard to suppress it. It's okay buddy, we understand. So, here is some choppy video of that. Also, every time we have a camera out, he thinks it's time to pose so you'll see some video of him "Cheesing" - there's no doubt, it's the cutest thing on the face of the planet. Like I said, it's choppy, but, I'm sparing you some Dramamine needing footage, some screaming children, and other kinds of useless-cute only to parents-debauchery, you should thank me. Enjoy!

Cross that off the bucket list... oh, wait!

One thing that I've always wanted to do was run a triathlon, now, we're not talking anything about the Iron Man, that's just madness, who would really want to swim 2 miles, then bike over 100, and then, just for good measure, run a marathon! Really! But the sprint ones are always something I thought I could do if I could only get into running. Well about 4 months ago I ran a whole mile for the first time since, oh, about 5th grade. Game on! This month our gym hosted an indoor one and I finally had a goal. I managed to pick myself up a training buddy, Ashley (a friend that we knew when we lived in California and happened to run into again out here, who, coincidentally has run a few of these before), and off we went. For about two months I hit the gym daily, doing rotations of biking and running, swimming, and Pilates (because I want my stomach to be flat one day).

Saturday was the big day and I had big goals! The swimming was only 200 yards so I was hoping for a 2:15, then there was a 10 mile bike that I wanted to do in 30 minutes and the 3 mile run that I wanted to do in 35 minutes, I also had goals of placing in swimming and running the entire run (walking is for wusses).

I am proud to say that, while I didn't make my goal time (as you can see in the picture above I did a 2:45), I did win the women's swimming by 26 seconds... Ya'll TWENTY SIX SECONDS!! That's no small amount of time when you're talking about just 200 yards. It's nice to know that competitive swimmer is still in there somewhere. After swimming we hit the bikes for 10 miles. I had a good lead in my heat but my transition was less than stellar (it's no small feat to put workout pants on wet legs, plus get your shoes and socks on.

Again, I missed my time goal on the bike, and did about 32 minutes for 10 miles, not fantastic but a really good starting point. And now I know where my weakness is and am implementing a few spin classes into my routine. Live and learn right?

After the bikes it was on to the treadmill for 3 miles. I ran a pretty steady 5.5 mph and finished it in 32 minutes, three minutes under my goal time, and I'm proud that I was able run the entire three miles.
Ashley, my training buddy and I with the final times. I pulled in a total of 1:15, Ashley was 1:13 and we took 11th and 9th place. Not too shabby!

Now, onto the next goal. For sure (as of right now) the Tri for the Cure August 1st (a 750 swim, 13 mile bike and a 5k), and I'm also hoping to be able to hit the Seattle Rock n Roll half marathon. Oh, and the Briargate Turkey Trot on Thanksgiving morning, and by next summer we will have shirted in the Jack Quinn's Running Club, we only have 2 more left till we meet the requisite 10 5ks. GO ME!!

Haley

Today on our way to Kale's doctor appointment I made a stop by Starbucks for my seasonal favorite (peppermint mocha with soy), and decided that at almost three Haley was plenty big enough for a drink of her own, and a chance to share in what has become known as Red Cup Joy! She got a gingerbread warm steamed milk and really enjoyed drinking "coffee" with mommy. Just another example of how my little girl is getting bigger and bigger every day.

A couple of days ago she was being silly for the camera, and this is what we captured.

Her "cheese" face (with a little bit of laughing).

One of my new favorite pictures of her, I think she looks like such a beautiful little girl here.

And our goofball Haley. She's learned to "look at her nose" and this is the silliness that we get. I love it!

Happy Halloween!

Halloween is lots of fun when you have two kids big enough to trick-or-treat! We took them to the Boo at the Zoo last week and they had fun practicing - Haley loved to go up to people and tell them "Trick-or-treatin'" like she needed to announce what she was doing and then they would give her candy. But by tonight she had the whole thing down. Since we're still working on getting a consistent MaMa or DaDa out of Kale, we just let him walk around with his pumpkin, and hold it out to people - they knew what to do.

Haley decided to go as her current (as of the day we went shopping, and luckily today also) favorite princess; Belle. She got to have her hair curled and had a pretty headband to wear just like the real deal. I think we are in for a few years worth of princess costumes.

Love Kale's costume?! Yeah me too... I made it, all by myself! I even put a zipper in it and stuffed the junk out of the tail and spikes. One thing about Colorado is that you never know what the weather is going to be, but this time of year you can bet on either cold or wind (sometimes both), so I wanted to know that he would be warm. the entire thing is made of fleece and I think it turned out pretty great. He loved wearing his costume, even the hood (but wouldn't you love to walk around in a fleece one piece outfit).

This is the pumpkin I made. A couple of years ago we found little glass beads that you could inset in the pumpkin and now all of my pumpkins use them. It makes them glow beautifully. I also scraped some of the skin off to make the name glow.

Jeff's pumpkin, classic and cute.

The kids' pumpkins. Kale's says boo (yes, that's the one he was trying to pick up at the end of the last post), and Haley decided that she wanted polka dots on hers. She has a real fear this year of lots of things associated with Halloween and most of the regular Jack-o-lantern faces fall in that category. We tried to find something that would be on her "good" list and that pretty much always includes things with polka dots on them, oh and we added "squirrels" (or swirls) to it too.

One of my pumpkin lanterns out front of the house. I had four of them all lit up along my walkway. Hope your Halloween was as happy as ours!

The Robersons go to the Pumpkin Patch

So far our Colorado fall has been erratic to say the least. We've had snow, wind and sun, and all in the same week. We lucked out the weekend before last and had a nice (only a little bit windy) day and decided to Carpe Diem and get ourselves out to the Pumpkin Patch. We went to Shooting Star Ranch in Black Forest (less than 15 miles from our house), and they had everything! There was a great petting zoo, pony rides, a hay slide, a train, a mountain of hay bales, a corn kernel box, hay rides, and pumpkins (imagine that). Guys, they even had a camel! They also has a few great photo opportunities too. We spent the entire morning there getting the kids some much needed (already) fresh air and our Jack-o-Lantern's to be. We didn't make it down the driveway before Kale was passed out and the only reason Haley made it home was because she had some kettle corn. With that... Bring on the pictures!

Loving the hay ride!

Also loving the hay ride.

Checking out the bunnies.

I think this pig is part Roberson... He's sleeping with his tongue out.

There were some great boulders on the property and the kids thought they were mountains put there just for them to climb.

Haley: "There's a camel where?"

Camel: "There's a Haley where?"

Playing his new most favorite game: Peek-a-boo! From the corn kernel bin.

Haley playing the same game, at greater than 2 1/2, this game was so last year.

My little farm boy. It's like he was meant to be there.

Haley was having fun jumping off the hay bales.

He was so funny trying to pick up his pumpkin. He would grunt and heave and grunt and it wouldn't go anywhere.

The day of the surgery

Today was the day of Kale's ear tubes surgery, and man are we all tired! Jeff and I woke up at about 5:30 to get the kids out the door on time, which isn't bad considering we had to have Haley to the Burich's and Kale to the hospital across town by 6:30. It helped that we didn't have to dress either kid, just take them straight in their pj's.

Once again let me tell you that we are so lucky to have such great friends so close to us. Haley got to go spend the morning with Crystal, Grandma Krissy, Caden and Hailey Madison at a farm ("with animals mommy") with Caden's preschool. She had a ball picking out a pumpkin and was super tired by the time they brought her home at 10 (which worked out perfect because we all got to take a nap later on).

Anyway, back to the subject of the post. We got to the hospital at 6:30 on the button and were taken right back to his room to wait. We saw about 6 different nurses (all of which remarked on how beautiful his eyes were as they took his temperature), a couple of anesthesiologists, and the doctor who would be doing the surgery. By 7:25 we were handing the little man off, and by we, I mean Jeff - there was no way he was going to leave my arms to go with anyone wearing one of those sets of teal scrubs, plus there would have likely been some tears on my part.

No sooner had I completed about three quarters of a row on the blanket that I've been working on for Kale since before he was born, was the doctor back to tell us it wall all over and it went really well. He said that there was no fluid or infection in either of his ears (a first since June), so we really caught a good window for optimal healing. Additionally, he mentioned that one of his ears was a little thicker and was probably a sign of prolonged fluid build up (further affirmation that we were making the right choice to do this surgery).

Then it was time for one of us (like there was a choice) to go back to recovery and hold him while he woke up. Now that sounds really peaceful. I imagined me holding my little man all knocked out and being the first thing he saw as he slowly opened his groggy little eyes. WWE Smack Down would have been a better comparison to what I got. He was ANGRY that he was waking up and was going to let me, the nurse, and the housekeeping lady know it. There was about 45 minutes of screaming, throwing himself backwards from my arms and all kinds of tantrums. I have never seen my mild mannered little man behave like this. My body was physically tired from this and even several hours later is still very sore (no need to feel guilt about missing the gym today, and thank God for my persistent trips there and all the weight lifting).

They took us out of recovery and down the hall (presumably because there was someone else coming out of surgery who didn't want to listen to a screaming child as they woke up), in any case there were plenty other people to hear his screaming from our room. He didn't let them take his pulse/oxygen or temperature and wasn't about to fall for their ploy of watching cartoons and eating Popsicles while he hung out. Nor was he going to allow anybody wearing a set of those damn teal scrubs any where near him. In his Kale way he would turn his body toward whichever one of us was holding him and say "NO". He didn't even want them in the room with him. He finally gave them 2 post op temperature readings and 2 pulse/oxygen readings and that was enough for them to suggest that maybe we should just go home. No sooner did we get to the car was our little man right back to his normal happy self.

I'm happy to report that as of this afternoon, less than 12 hours after the surgery, he is running around the house, tormenting and being tormented by his sister, eating and drinking like normal.

Kale's ears

I know lots of you have been wondering what's up with the Dude-a-Man's ears, so here's our basic rundown. When we were home in June for Andy and Katie's wedding, I took Kale into the urgent care where he was diagnosed with an ear infection (his official 2nd one). Since June we have been bouncing back and forth between actual infections and just having fluid in one or both ears. Since we have not been able to clear this up we started the tubes conversation about a month and a half ago. The final decision was made today and on Thursday, early in the morning we will head in and have them put in.

We made this decision after only having him off of antibiotics for a grand total of less than a month (since June). The rounds have been made from Amoxicillin to Omnicef, to Zithromax and back around to Amoxicillin again and a daily regimen of Zyrtec. One major concern is that he could possibly become antibiotic resistant. Probably our highest concern is his speech development. At his 12 month well baby, he was about 1 word behind where they consider normal (he had 4 out of 5), while this isn't huge, it could become an issue. We took him last week to an audiologist for an evaluation and found that at the time (with a double ear infection - since he'd been off antibiotics for 4 days) that he was hearing at about 25 decibels (15 is normal, anything above 35 is considered deaf), they called him borderline. We will re-evaluate this 4 weeks after tubes to see if he's made any improvement and I will make the call to begin Early Intervention for speech therapy evaluation. It's pretty likely that once tubes are put in we'll begin speech therapy for him just to keep him on track.

The surgery will take only about 15 minutes to complete and he will only be put out with a mask (no IV required). It will all be done at the Air Force Academy hospital by the Ear Nose and Throat doctor. He said that if all goes well we should be on our way home by 9:00am. The tubes should last about a year before they fall out and the doctor believes that we will likely have to do this at least one more time before his ears properly mature (I think it's hilarious that my HUGE baby boy has tiny ears). There will be ENT checks at 1 month and 6 months to make sure the tubes are functioning properly and haven't fallen out, and also by the pediatrician at any well baby check ups. If you feel you'd like to know way more than any person (aside from the doctor) should know about this you can look here or here. Prayers that all goes well with the surgery and recovery are very appreciated (and also for his mom's peace of mind since I'm about to lose it worrying about him and this whole thing).