Trip to Portland

We went down to Portland last weekend, both to visit Aunt Karyn and then to have a procedure down with a doctor down there, for Nate.

We headed down on Saturday, with 9 (NINE!) bags in tow, not counting the baby carrier:

The car trip went really well, both boys passed out for the first 90 minutes or so and then just hung out for the rest of the ride. We stopped for snacks and once to run around at a rest stop and overall, it was a great trip!

We got to Aunt Karyn's house, where we would be staying...actually, she gave us her whole place for the 2 nights we were there, which was such a help. The boys got to meet Fluffer...

And we all met Fernando for the first time and then headed over to a nearby park to play for a while. When we got back, we still had some time before dinner and it was pretty hot out, so Fernando got the hose out and played with the boys outside.

 Karyn and Fernando made a delicious dinner on the BBQ, and Bevin came over to eat with us and meet the boys. After dinner the boys got in their jammies and then headed to bed...and they actually went down fairly easily; Nate was in Karyn's bed and Simon on an air mattress in the second bedroom.

After a birthday cake for Matt that Karyn had ready, Matt and I each headed to bed and slept with one of the boys, and we all got pretty good sleep!

On Sunday, the boys were up bright and early, as usual, and Matt took them out for some coffee (well, for Matt) and a drive around town. We had a relaxed morning and then Nate and Matt went down for a midday nap.

Karyn, Fernando and I went back to the playground for a while...

...walked around a farmer's market, and then got some ice cream.

That afternoon we headed over to the Portland Children's Museum and had a lot of fun! Simon put on some rock climbing gear:



He also really enjoyed playing vet and helping animals feel better:

Both boys enjoyed the waterworks area:

 And Nate brought a fake flower with him everywhere he went:

Both boys asked for a ride on the way out:

 We had a pizza dinner that night, said goodbye to Aunt Karyn and got another pretty good night of sleep.

The next morning we had an appointment for Nate to have his upper lip tie lasered. Quick background: he had a tongue tie when he was born that made nursing difficult and we had it clipped when he was tiny. They didn't notice the lip tie at the time, but as his teeth have been coming in it's been very apparent that his is severe, as far as lip ties go. This is what his looked like:

It actually connected all the way from his lip through his teeth to his palate. Aside from potential teeth spacing issues and the likelihood this would need to be dealt with when he was older anyway, with this thick and tight a lip tie, tooth decay in the front can become a serious problem quickly. So we found a ENT doctor in Portland who was trained to use laser to revise it.

Matt and I were both really nervous, but it all went really smoothly. They weighed Nate, and then gave him some Versed, which is in the Valium family, to calm him down. Calm was one word for it...but if I'm being honest, Nate was high as a kite for a while. He was being silly, he could barely walk and generally was just a relaxed little dude. Yes, I took a quick video.

The doctor came in and thoroughly checked out his mouth. It turns out that his tongue tie grew back, but we left that as it's not likely to cause problems for him. Once Nate was fully medicated, they took him back to the laser room (we legally couldn't be in the room because of the laser) and brought him back within about 4 minutes. He clearly wasn't happy, but he wasn't crying when he got back, which was great!

We headed right out of town and both boys passed out in the car for almost 2 hours. After that we stopped for lunch and got this cute (and still a little dopey) smile from the patient!

All in all, it was a great trip! Everything went really smoothly and Aunt Karyn's hospitality and her great, comfortable apartment made everything so much easier. Thank you Karyn!!

PS. I don't know how it's possible, but I don't have any pictures of you, Karyn, from the weekend! So just for fun, here's one of my favorites of you with Simon. :)