We celebrated Thanksgiving here in Orlando. It was just the four of us this year. After we ate Thanksgiving dinner (part 1 anyway), we put up our Christmas tree.

On Friday, November 20th, Aaron’s was in a Thanksgiving recital at his school. It was pretty short, but extremely cute! Aaron was very excited to see that Eli and I (daddy) came to see him sing with all of his classmates. Here are a couple of videos I shot of his performance.

I use Picasa to manage the pictures on my computer. I have recently started uploading them to picasaweb as well, in light of Google’s offer of 20GB for $5/year. I won’t be renewing my Flickr Pro account because of Google’s offer.

Since I don’t want all of my pictures viewable online but I do want an backup of them, I still upload pictures to my Facebook account. I found a button that you can add to your Picasa toolbar that will upload the picture(s) directly to Facebook.

Give it a try, it’s very nice!

Here is Eli speaking in his own gibberish speak. He likes to come up to Meri or I and have a conversation with us like this.

It has been fixed but fixing it damaged something else. For shame. I feel that the “something else” is beyond repair.

Eli had his first birthday yesterday!! He, uh, turned one! He got a small cake and a simple present. He will get more presents this weekend when we have a few people over to help us celebrate more.

The cake

The Eli

The touching…

The tasting…

The destruction…

The cake…has died.

This is the only present we gave Eli. Aaron picked it out for him. Meri’s parents have a very similar toy at their house and Eli (and Aaron) really LOVE to play with it.

Aaron, Eli and I have had our fair share of ear problems within the past 6 months or so. Aaron has had it the “easiest”, with the least amount of occurrences. I had quite a few rounds of problems. Eli had it the worst, as far as we could determine.

We finally went to see an ENT and it was decided that he should have tubes put in his ears. We had that procedure completed 2 days ago. The procedure lasted about 15-20min. The recovery time was minimal, maybe an hour. Eli was groggy most of the day, due to the anesthesia. That took about 10-12hrs to finally get out of his system. The tubes have already made a HUGE difference in our lives.

1. Eli has started playing on his own again whereas before, he would always cling to mommy. When we put him down, he quickly crawls to the playroom.
2. He hears better now too! He is starting to try to say new words (I got the first one – dada!)
3. The biggest improvement is that Eli is mostly sleeping through the night again! Over the past 2 nights since the procedure, he has woken up only once each night, at 4:40am Tues night/Wed morning and then at 3am Wed night/Thur morning. Over the past 6 months, he was waking up about 3-4 times a night, sometimes more!

I wish we would have had the procedure performed much earlier than we did! Eli was 10 months old when the tubes were put in, he is officially 11 months old today!

We’ve determined that Eli has spoken his first word! His first word was “dada”. I am extremely happy that despite all of the pain he’s caused my wife (many, many sleepless nights), he decided that “dada” was the best first word he could think of.

We were on the fence for a little while about it actually being a word since “dada” sounds like so many things that baby’s naturally say. He’s been saying it non-stop lately so it’s official, he loves me more! I tried to get him to say mama but he wanted no part of that! He was persistent in wanting dada to be his first word. Who am I to stop him?

In other Eli news, Meri and I are taking him to his ear tube pre-op appointment this afternoon. His “surgery” is scheduled for Feb 10th.  From what I’ve read and been told, recovery time is about an hour after the procedure. We are both very excited about the possibility of him beginning to sleep through the night again. He did for a while, but then the ear aches/pains/infections started.

Over the last 5 or 6 months, the boys and I have had major ear issues! We spent approximately $700 on office visits and medicine during November 2007 alone, with health insurance!

I’m on either my fourth or fifth ear issue, either a lot of fluid on behind my ear drum or an infection. I’ve been to my ENT’s office so many times over the past few months that I might as well put in an application there! Aaron and Eli have been just as bad as me.

Eli is on his fourth double ear infection and Aaron has had three. I’m not sure if it’s some sort of environmental issue with either at our house or at my job or at their schools. I’m thinking that if it is environmental, then it has to be at our house somewhere.

It’s truly maddening. I haven’t suffered from ear-related issues since I was a little kid. I had to have tubes in my ears three or four times back then. Skip ahead 20+ years and here I am again.

I’m facing the possibility of having tubes put back in my ears. We aren’t sure what routes we should even consider with the boys. Eli is going to see his pediatrician today around 3pm and Aaron will have a similar visit (although we’re hopeful that the doc will just look him over today at Eli’s appointment).

The last few months have been horrendous though. I can’t wait until we can figure out what the issue is.