Winter!

Well, I guess I’ve been busy…or lazy…or perhaps a little bit of both. Either way it’s been WAY too long since I’ve updated this blog and I really hate when I don’t keep up with it because then I have a whole ton of stuff to catch up on and inevitably something gets left out. Anyway, here we go! October’s update format worked quite well so I’ll be doing that again. We’ll start with the oldest member of our family – Benjamin!

Ben
Ben had a very relaxing winter break full of fishing (probably not enough if you ask him)! He went with a few different friends and caught over 30 fish each time! His best catch was an 18 inch rainbow trout. A few of the fish he caught were filled with perch. A couple of them had about 15 perch in their bellies, a couple in their digestive tracts, a couple in their mouths and they still bit Ben’s hook! Sadly for him, now that he is back in school he won’t be able to go fishing so often but I’m sure he’ll make time to fit it in every now and again.

As I said, Ben is back in school. Spring semester started this past Monday and so far everything is going well! He's definitely got a full load! He's taking numerical methods (a computer programming class), dynamics, thermodynamics, linear algebra/differential equations, and strengths of materials. Busy, busy, busy!

Julia
As for me, the last update included some information on my thyroid. For a quick recap – I had gone to instacare for a sore throat one Saturday and the doctor who saw me noticed that my neck looked swollen. She told me to follow up with my primary care doctor about my thyroid. My doctor took a look and sent me over for an ultrasound where they found what they thought was a nodule. A few weeks later I went in for a biopsy of the nodule (definitely not a fun experience!) and they decided that the nodule was actually a tumor. They were unable, with the small sample they had gotten, to determine definitively if it was cancer or not but my doctor felt that if we left the tumor alone it would absolutely turn into cancer eventually so he referred me to an ear, nose, and throat doctor (the same doctor that took Maddie’s tonsils out in October 2008). I went to see him (Dr. Keyser) early in December and he decided that the right side of my thyroid needed to come out so we set up surgery for January 5th. I went in early that morning with my mom and after waiting for about an hour and a half they took me back. Turns out my whole thyroid was huge! Dr. Keyser even had to make my incision bigger than usual because he couldn’t fit my thyroid out the incision he had originally made. Also, a person’s voice nerves run behind their thyroid so the doctor has to be very careful that he doesn’t touch them. Well, my voice nerve was pushed over a little since my thyroid was so swollen plus, instead of just peeling my thyroid off, he had to cauterize it away from the tissue and muscle a little bit. While doing that he accidentally touched my voice nerve with his cauterizing tool and was really worried that he had paralyzed the nerve which would have made me sound like an old man who had been smoking for the past 40 years for the rest of my life. Luckily, the day of surgery my voice sounded pretty normal so he wasn’t quite as concerned. However, I went in for my follow up appointment yesterday and my voice still sounds horrible! It gets tired and sore really easily and sounds like I’ve lost my voice. Most of the time I can hardly speak above a whisper. He took a look at my voice box and found that the right flap is a little weak. It isn’t closing all the way so he’s hoping that it strengthens again in the next little while. Also, he feels that he didn’t permanently damage my voice nerve because he didn’t break it or burn it all the way through but he’s thinking that the trauma to it from the cauterizing tool just put it to sleep for a little while and in a few months it should come back. But, it could take up to a year for my voice to return to close to normal. Here’s a picture of my healing neck. This is a week and a couple days after surgery. Looks good and I forget that it’s even there. Dr. Keyser said within about a year the scar should blend seamlessly into one of my “natural beauty lines” aka a neck wrinkle.



And by the way, they did a biopsy of my complete thyroid and that came back negative for cancer so I don’t have to have any further treatment. Thank heavens for that instacare doctor! I wouldn’t have noticed until maybe too late! Yikes!

In other news, I am still in school this semester. I’m really excited because I’m taking a writing class again. I wasn’t going to take any until next semester when Maddie would be in school and Hayes would be older so I would have more time to devote to writing well but pretty much the only other classes I have to take are science classes. Writing classes are much easier for me! I’m taking a poetry class and a perspectives in literature class. After reading the syllabus I realized that this poetry class is going to be intense! My professor is a very accomplished and published poet and expects quite a bit throughout the semester. I’ve already written my first poem (much easier than I expected) and I’m really excited to learn more about the art of poetry and about myself in the process! The perspectives in literature class seems like it will be cake! Just a lot of short story reading and no tests. Can’t beat that!

And the last endeavor I’m undertaking this semester is losing the last of this baby weight!! At 5’6” I should weigh about 130 pounds. Before Ben and I got married, and then after Maddie was born that’s what I weighed but over the holidays of 2007 I started gaining weight. Between November 2007 and February 2008 I had gained about 7 pounds and then from February to November of 2008 I randomly gained about 13 pounds. November of 2008 is when I got pregnant with Hayes and I started the pregnancy weighing 150 pounds. During my pregnancy I gained 50 pounds (at least that’s when I stopped keeping track. Six days before my c-section I weighed 200 pounds so I don’t know what I gained that last week). But since I started out 20 pounds heavier than I should have been I was 70 pounds over my ideal weight when I was 9 months pregnant. By the time Hayes was 6 weeks old I had lost about 25 pounds so I started out with just over 45 pounds to lose. I’ve been working out about 5 times a week and eating really healthy since the first of October so I’ve been at it for 12 weeks now (excluding the 2 weeks I was sick and the 1 week I was recovering from surgery) and I’ve lost 30 pounds. Woohoo! 30 down, 16 to go! Hopefully I’ll lose the last 16 just as quickly. I’m feeling so much better than I was a few months ago and ever since I got my thyroid out I’ve been feeling even better!

Maddie
The biggest thing to report for Maddie is Christmas!!! We put our tree up the day after Thanksgiving and Maddie named it Furrow. She often talked to him and loved plugging him in first thing every morning. She later named my mom's Christmas tree Blueberry and pretended that they were good friends. She was pretty sad when it was time to take Furrow down but I explained to her that Furrow had been standing and holding up the Christmas ornaments for a long time so he was ready to take a long nap and would come back out next year. Luckily, she was satisfied with that explanation. This Christmas was a bit…humble for us so turns out Maddie was the only one who got presents. Christmas was basically like her birthday this year which was fine with her and fine with us. I never thought I could get so much joy from watching someone else unwrap presents! Here are a few pictures of the Christmas festivities.

Here's our Maddie cakes on Christmas Eve morning


Baking cookies for Santa!


Christmas Eve present - new pajamas and slippers!


Memaw and Papaw's Christmas tree, Blueberry.


Earlier this day she said, "I hope I get some socks!" Looks like she got what she wanted.


Maddie on Christmas morning sitting with Furrow and all her presents.


Maddie in her new ballerina outfit.




Tiny dancer.


Putting together a puzzle. One of her favorite things to do!


Also, it seems that Maddie is having a lot of firsts lately. She has her first loose tooth right now (she thinks the tooth fairy should bring her $100. I said, “How about $1.” And she said, “How about $3?” Since when do kids bargain about their tooth money?! Maddie also had her first sleep over with her first best friend last night. They played, and watched cartoons until about 8:30 and then laid bed whispering and giggling until 10:30 when I had to separate them so they would go to sleep.

First sleep over!


Another first has been Maddie’s first experience changing Hayes’s diaper. She loves to change it and asks all the time if she can. She’s actually very good at it! I never have to correct her work.

Hayes
Our little man is growing like crazy! At his last check up he weighed almost 14 pounds, putting him in the 25th percentile for his weight and height. It sounds small but he is growing out of his clothes way faster than Maddie ever did! She was always so tiny! His thighs and belly are nice and chunky though so he’s looking good! At the appointment his pediatrician commented on his emergency room visit in early November and after telling him about the progression of his illness (and subsequently my illness) he felt confident that what we had was the swine flu. His next heart checkup is two weeks from today so they will do another EKG and make sure everything is growing well. He hasn’t had any of the symptoms of any problems so hopefully everything is will look good. Hayes has also recently started eating baby food. At first he was very, very picky, completely hating pretty much everything that I put in his mouth. Luckily he’s warming up to the new tastes and didn’t even make a yucky face when he ate sweet potatoes today.

Eating is messy when you're four months old!


He also recently found his toes and loves to play with them!



His most favorite thing to do is bounce in his jumper. He is in that about 90% of the time that he is awake. He finally discovered that there are toys on the front and is often enthralled by them, sometimes getting very frustrated that he doesn’t have the fine motor skills to move them the way he wants to. He also bounces so high that his whole body comes up out of the seat.



I’m convinced at this point that our little Hayes is going to be an adrenaline junkie. For me, a very overprotective mom, that is a nightmare! He is going to give me a heart attack one day! He loves to be thrown up in the air, spun around in circles, even hit in the face with a bit of force (courtesy of Maddie) by stuffed animals. I have a feeling we are in for a lot of hospital visits in Hayes’s childhood. Here are a few more pictures of our baby boy and also a few of the little nugget and Maddie together.

This picture just makes me smile.












Milky grin.






It's a rare occasion when his fingers are not in his mouth.


He loves that little elephant!


Laughing at Maddie.


Sweet dreams.


He was pulling on my ear. Ouch!


Handsome little man.

A boy and his bear.