Another haircut and the reassembly of Green Daddy

I thought Joey's world had come to an end when he had to witness Thor and Lars tear Green Daddy's arm from his cute, green and fuzzy body. Joey handled it surprisingly well. He yelled at Thor to stop, which didn't help, and when I finally got it out of Thor's mouth and Joey saw what happened, he repeated my scolding to Thor ("Bad Dog!"), with the finger pointing and everything.


I told Joey I would fix it, but I couldn't find my needle and thread. So we had to go to the store to buy the stuff to fix Green Daddy. Joey stays pretty calm and patient till I finally finished.


Also, before going to the gym one morning, I was going to trim Joey's mohawk. Just trim it. It was getting too long. But I put the wrong size guards on the clippers and cut it too short...you couldn't even really tell it was a mohawk anymore. :-( So I had to just shave it off. Broke my heart. I think it really fit his wild and crazy and fun personality. I know some people didn't like it, but if you spent just a few minutes with Joey while he had that hairstyle, you would see it fit him well. Anyhow, I really planned on keeping the mohawk until Earl got home to see it in person, but now it's gone. We'll do it again sometime.





Now he's just my little baldy, like his dad.




He made me buy the biggest balloon in the Food Lion check out.

My repairs of Green Daddy went pretty easy, but didn't turn out as well as I had hoped. Who knew that just because it looks right when you start sewing, doesn't mean it will stay right. The arm twists backwards and gets sewn too close to the neck and the chest. He's a little deformed.

The arm doesn't just hang down like it's supposed to either.

But Joey loves him just the same! :-) Thank goodness Earl is bringing an extra Green Daddy from Iraq. We will probably need it sooner rather than later. Maybe you should buy 2, Earl. (Love you honey, see you in a couple weeks!!!)

Happier times

As promised, here are some photos of Joey and his friends before the Great Ant Disaster of 2008. :-)

Joey is much better, waking up extra early and extra happy. I checked him over and turns out, he only had about 11 bites, on his legs and arms, all the other bumps I thought were bites on the rest of his body were just where he broke out into hives.





We didn't get into the Sesame Street show on base because it filled up long before showtime. Instead we went to the park.




Mandy told Kori to clean her feet off before putting her shoes back on, so Kori came and wiped her feet on Mandy's jeans. Ha.

We had a little wives get-together for our unit--the last before the guys come home. This is where Joey got his ant bites.

This is just moments before the ant attack. One second they were playing happy in the grass, the next they were under a tree in the middle of an ant colony.

I have more pictures, but don't know when I'll get around to uploading them...I wanted to go ahead and get these posted because Earl is so busy, not sure when he gets a chance to get the blog, and i want to make sure there are new pictures there for when he does. His replacements are taking over now, so he's busy with them. Only a couple more weeks till he gets home! yay!

First Trip to the ER...

Joey is fine now. But today he had his first trip to the ER. I will post more happy, healthy pictures tomorrow of the first part of his day, but this is how we ended the night. He found some fire ants in a field on base while playing with his friends. They really devoured him. He had a big reaction. They bit him all over his legs and stomach, in his diaper, and his back and neck, but then he also broke out everywhere else, including his face, because of the bites. This is right afterwards, as I'm getting some benedryl at the store (which didn't have any, so I had to go to a friend of a friend's house anyway).



He's crying because I won't let him go into the store with me. My friend Angela is parked next to us, so that I can run in and out. You can see around his mouth some of the rash.


He got these little bumps all over at first. You can see his eye swelling up.


Thanks Angela for the lollipop! It helped! Poor fella. Look at that face!!!

Breaks my heart. My little baby. I got a few of those bites while I was undressing Joey, and they were sooo painful. I can't imagine the pain he felt with bites all over his body!

This is when we first got to the ER. They put a bandage on Green Daddy, too, to make Joey feel better. But it really just ticked him off. He made me take it off as soon as the nurses left the room.


They said he did awesome when getting the IV put in. He didn't cry, just watched. He did better than most all their kid patients, even 5 year olds! :-) And they loved his haircut there!



Little Joey in the big hospital bed. (He let me put Green Daddy's bandage on his ankle for a minute).



They monitored his pulse on his big toe. :-) You can imagine how long that stayed in place. Ha.

He wouldn't lay back against the bed. Just sat up.

Getting his first dose of medicine. He was such a brave boy! (You would have been so proud, and impressed, Earl!--We know you do NOT act this brave when it comes to needles!)



He asked the nurse, "Take this off?"


I found some fruit snacks in my purse, and he ate all of them.

Already looking much better! ^

His first dose of benedryl that I gave him before going to the ER kicked in and took away a lot of the swelling before they even gave him medicine. Then their meds took the rest of the swelling away.






The nurse also put the hospital bracelet on Green Daddy instead of Joey (He also made me remove that).


They didn't really make a big deal about him having such a severe reaction there. They just kept saying how bad fire ants are. He never had breathing problems, so they knew he'd be fine from the start, but didn't like that his face had swollen and broken out. They gave me some steriods and anti-histimines to give him for the next few days to keep the rash away.
We probably got to the ER by 6. He was asleep a little after 7pm in my arms. We didnt get to check out until around 8pm (a burn victim came in and they got distracted--go figure--he he. I'm teasing. I didn't mind.) I put him to bed when we got home at about 8:30pm. They want me to give him some more benedryl at midnight tonight. He is really all better. He looks 100% better than he did when he first broke out. That was scary.
So that was the last half of our exciting day. I took a million pictures of Joey and his friends from BEFORE the great ant raid, so I'll post them tomorrow, while Joey sleeps off the benedryl. Ha!

Hanging Around

We've had this computer desk a long time, but it wasn't put together until Jenny and Merritt came for a visit and Merritt did it for me:


I should have waited till it was clean, but that will never happen.


I like that it closes where you can't see the mess, and Joey can't get in there.




We recieved the trunks you mailed home from Iraq. Don't worry, they are getting a lot of use, without even being open. Joey loves climbing on them.






He watches TV on them, too.













Watching TV this morning with (freshly washed) Green Daddy.













We're off to see a Sesame Street show today on base, so will hopefully have new pictures from that tonight or tomorrow.






At this very minute, Joey is on the kitchen floor with Thor, petting him and trying to touch his nose.

Thor turned his head and Joey said "What's the matter, Thorzy? You need to go night night?" It was so funny. Everytime he pets him and Thor kisses Joey in return, Joey giggles and says "I got you Thor!" I wish I had my memory card in my camera so I could have caught that on video, but nope, I've got it in the computer updating the blog instead. :-)