The Friend Family!

SUMMER 2010

2010-10-10T20:33:00.032-06:00

Wow! Look at me! I’m blogging! Truth be told, I’ve been INCREDIBLY bored all weekend! My house is clean (or clean enough anyway), I have very little homework to get done (and very little motivation to do it), and there is next to nothing on tv so…here I am. Blogging. Yay! Looks like I have quite a bit of time to catch up on (as usual) so I’ll just dive right in! Maddie finished up her softball season in June and to her extreme delight she earned a medal. Here she is at her last game posing in all her softball glory and showing off her hard earned medal.

Our little Bubba had a pretty rough August! He was sick 3 different times that month! Mostly, he just had fevers and mild colds. There was one night that we were up together until about 1:30 in the morning. He always sleeps about 12 hours at night so he slept in until 1:30 the next afternoon. I really missed my little buddy, but I let him sleep as much as he wanted and when he finally did wake up he was very happy!

All that sickness made me a little nervous for this winter! At his one year check up his doctor commented on how easy his first winter was in comparison to our expectation for his first flu season but, he said, the immunities that he had built up from the pregnancy and from being around us, are going to wear off at this point so he will be left with only his own immune system to rely on. With that in mind, August got me really worried for him but, luckily, he has been perfectly healthy every since! Here’s hoping for a uneventful winter!

Here are a few other random pictures of our little family this summer.

Our little Maddie cakes started kindergarten (tear) this August but her school offered a summer school program for new students. The goal was to get the new students acclimated to the curriculum and introduced to the school. Since Maddie is so painfully shy and nervous in new situations we figured it would be helpful to her to get to know her new classroom and a few of her fellow students during the summer when there were few other people around. We hoped that this would help her feel more comfortable for the start of the school year and it seems to have worked. By the second day of the regular school year she was begging me not to walk her into her classroom. Here are a few pictures of her on her first day of summer school. She’s dramatically posing, as usual.

The first grading period of the school year just ended for Maddie so she is enjoying a few days off. She just told me today, though, that she is excited to get back to school tomorrow. She is loving kindergarten and is learning SO much! WAY more than I learned in kindergarten! She’s been in school for 6 weeks now and she is already reading on her own! And to Ben’s delight (my chagrin) her favorite subject is math. She opens her homework folder everyday whispering, “Please be math, please be math…” Here are a few pictures of her on her first day of the school year.

Also this summer was Bubba’s first haircut (or, first two haircuts). The first one was a little hard for me so I had her cut off VERY little. In fact, when I told her how much I wanted off she replied, “Ok. I’ll PRETEND to cut your son’s hair.” Luckily, she’s my friend so it was a funny comment but she was right. Just a week or so later his hair was once again very long! We had a few questioning looks and a couple inquiries about his gender before I finally decided that it would be ok to chop off more than a centimeter. Luckily, his little curls survived the cut and now it is once again a constantly crazy mess! Here are a few pictures of his first hair cut…or pretend hair cut.

August is a pretty big month for us since both kid’s birthdays fall in the third week (Maddie on the 19th and Hayes on the 21st). This year we had three celebrations. One for Maddie on her birthday, one for Hayes on his birthday, and one in September when we could get some extra family over and extra money saved up for presents!

I can’t believe Maddie turned 6 this year! She is growing to be such a sweet, smart, cute(!), dramatic(!) little girl. She loves her brother and he absolutely adores her! We have found that she’s not a big fan of dogs (although we have two), she loves to write in her journal, and she rides her bike as much as she can (now without training wheels). Here are some pictures of Maddie’s 6th birthday!

Even more shocking to me is that our little Hayes is already 1! The last year has flown by but we can’t imagine life without our crazy little bubs. Hayes is all boy! He loves to run (or stumble around quickly), climb, yell, and throw everything! He has absolutely no stranger or separation anxiety and spends his days running circles through the house, often changing his course before he reaches his destination because he thinks of something else to get into before he can fulfill his original thought. He is mostly in a diaper because all that running around makes for one sweaty boy! For the past couple months I’ve been working with him on learning some sign language and so far he can sign “eat”, “drink”, “milk”, “night, night”, “please”, “more”, “all done”, and “banana”. It’s so fun to be able to communicate with him! Here are some pictures from Bubba’s 1st birthday last month.

And here are the pictures from their joint birthday party a few weeks later.

Another fun thing we did this summer was paint our apartment! We asked the apartment manager and she said that as long as we paint it back to white before we leave there would be no problem with us painting. We plan on being in this apartment for the next three years so I figured that was worth it. I did most of the painting myself but Ben did pitch in and help in the end since he saw that I was going to be up all night. In the end, we were both up all night! We finally headed to be around 4 am (after about 16 hours of painting) but we were glad to get it all done in 1 shot! We painted most of the living room a beige color. The smallest wall in the living room we painted a dark red, and the kitchen is painted dark brown. We love it! It makes it feel a bit more cozy in here, and definitely makes our apartment our own.

Okay, that’s all the pics for this update but I’ll end with a little word about what Ben and I have been up to. School! Of course, fall semester is upon us again so Ben and I are busy, busy, busy with classes. Ben is really enjoying this semester. He usually has one class that really stresses him out but it seems that he escaped that this semester. He says he has less homework but I haven’t noticed any less studying than any other semester. My classes are also going well. Taking three classes with two kids isn’t as crazy as I thought it would be and it has encouraged me to consider taking a full load next fall when Maddie starts going to school all day instead of half the day. That way I could graduate a semester earlier than planned. Wouldn’t that be nice?!?

Other than school, life is pretty mundane and routine around here. We are excited for the upcoming holidays (Maddie is planning on being a ballerina for Halloween)! So…that’s all for today. Talk to you in about 3 months or so (I’ve obviously given up all hope of regularly keeping up with this blog)!

Pancakes!

2010-06-12T22:15:00.003-06:00

So, since I've changed the way that I eat I've found this super healthy recipe for pancakes and thought I'd share it with you!

1 cup non-fat cottage cheese
1 cup egg whites (I usually use the boxed egg whites)
1 cup Quaker quick oats

Combine all 3 ingredients in a blender and blend until oats are finely chopped.

This will make your batter and you just cook them like you would normal pancakes. Don't be turned off if you don't like cottage cheese! You can't even taste it and it keeps the pancakes nice and moist. Ben actually prefers these to normal pancakes because they aren't so dry. I eat them plain but he and Maddie put butter and syrup on theirs. Lately I've been making a double batch and then putting them in a plastic sandwich bag in the fridge. When I want one I just pull it out and put it in the toaster for a quick snack. So yummy! Here's the nutrition information for anyone who is wondering.

1 serving = 1/4 cup batter
servings per batch = 9

Calories 62
Total Fat 0.6g
Sat. Fat 0.1g
Cholest. 1.1mg
Sodium 153.7mg
Carbs 7.6g
Fiber 0.9g
Sugars 1.1g
Protein 6g

Low on calories, fat, and sugar, and a good amount of protein. 1/4 cup of batter makes pancakes this size (that's a small plate)

I hope you try them and I hope you enjoy!!!

Maddie and Mama rocking out

2010-06-11T15:42:00.002-06:00

Ever since Maddie made her little music video the other day she has been wanting to rock out in front of the camera again. This time I joined her! =)

Maddie's first ball game!

2010-06-10T22:15:00.008-06:00

This past Wednesday was Maddie's very first ball game. She was so excited and had so much fun! Here are a few pictures from the evening.

Here's our little man waiting for the game to start.

Warming up!

We only had one chair so Ben sat in the stroller. His tiny little butt actually fit!

Play ball!

The boys on this team are so funny! They think they are playing football! Every time the other team hit the ball they would all run and dog pile on top of the ball and then fight each other for it. A couple of them got hurt before the coach made the stop. Maddie wanted no part of the rough housing so she just stood back and watched.

Running to first base!

Running to second!

Running home!

Chatting with her buddy.

Bubba's new game - we ask him how big he is and he puts his arms up in the air to indicate "SO big!"

Kisses for Mama's knee <3

Go Maddie!!!

Cardinals!

Good game!

Madeline "Hannah Montana" Kate

2010-06-10T21:48:00.004-06:00

This morning Maddie asked me to show her how to take a video on the camera. After a few minutes she came running out of her bedroom telling me to watch the video that she had taken. I thought it was so cute that I just had to share it with all of you. Here's our little rock star! P.S. PLEASE ignore the messy closet in the background!

Baseball!!!

2010-06-04T19:28:00.010-06:00

Tonight was Maddie’s first baseball practice. Ben has been working with her this week on catching, throwing, and hitting so she was really excited to get started! We got to the field and, of course, our little Madeline was a bit scared but she got right out there and made a friend – the only other girl on the team.

The first thing they did was get their t-shirts and hats. Maddie is number 3 which Ben was pretty excited about since that was his first baseball number.

Then they picked partners, lined up, and started practicing their catching and throwing. Some of those little boys can definitely chuck a ball! Within the first five minutes Maddie's little friend got hit in the face so she partnered up with someone else. Here she is throwing the ball!

Little Bubba had so much fun watching his big sister practice.

During the throwing and catching practice Maddie wasn’t paying attention to her partner when he threw the ball and she got hit, hard, right in the stomach. She collected herself and went to pick up the ball. Her coach asked her if she was okay and she said yes but Ben and I could both tell she was trying SO hard to not cry. After a minute Ben went over to her to check on her and as soon as he asked her if she was okay she started wailing! Loudly! He took her on his knee and talked to her for a minute…

…and then brought her over to me for a good hug. We explained to her that sometimes in sports people get hurt so she got a drink of water and got right back out there. Such a tough girl (SO far from what she is normally)! Next up was batting practice.

Here’s Maddie playing in the infield and chasing the ball.

After hitting the ball five times the kids were instructed to run down to first base. There was one little boy on the team who, for some reason, thought that he was playing football. As Maddie was running down to first base he felt the need to tackle her. Here he is en route (it’s the boy in the gray shirt).

Maddie went flying in the air and when she hit the ground she looked up at him like, “What the heck are you doing?!?” The boy got reprimanded by the coach and they moved on with practice but when it was that little boy’s turn to bat the coach asked, “Okay, what are we gonna do?” expecting the kids to tell him that they were going to throw the ball to first base but Maddie immediately yelled out, “Beat him up!”

In the end, Maddie had so much fun and is looking forward to her first game on Wednesday! Go Maddie!!!

Spring 2010

2010-05-29T13:14:00.031-06:00

Blog time! Here we go!!!!

Of course, it’s been almost five months since my last blog (did you expect anything less?!). That means that this blog is going to be pretty long since I have a lot to catch you all up on! That also means lots of pictures (just a reminder - if you want to enlarge a picture just click on it! I like to look at BIG pictures...maybe I'm the only one?)! I guess we’ll begin with Benjamin.

Ben

Ben made it through another tough semester in his engineering program. He is very excited, after completing linear algebra and differential equations, that he doesn’t have to take any more math classes! He is now down to only engineering classes so the countdown is on! 3 years until he gets his masters degree!!! He’s already completed two years since we’ve been here in Utah so another three doesn’t seem so bad! =) Ben is enjoying the summer off so far and is hoping to get some good fishing in before he starts his next 6 classes in August.

In February we celebrated “Ben Day”. That is the day that Ben was adopted. He is so grateful to his birth parents for loving him enough to give him a better life. His parents, Bill and Phyllis, are amazing people and love him more than anything (some of his siblings might even say he was the favorite)! =) Somehow neither Ben nor I can remember what we did for Ben Day (guess we’re not very big on celebrations) but I’m sure whatever we did was fun! =)

We just got back from a trip to Arkansas for the boy’s annual camping/fishing trip down the Buffalo River. Ben, our brother in law Mike (Chelsea’s husband), our brother in law Patrick (Hannah’s husband), Patrick’s little brother Caleb, Ben’s dad Bill, and two family friends Todd and Wally headed out in their canoes on a Thursday morning and drifted down the Buffalo River for a 3 day trip. They caught close to 200 fish the first day, over 100 the second day, and just a few the third day. When they got back on Saturday they were all pretty exhausted but had a great time! They really missed Sarah’s husband Eric (who had to work) but hope he’ll be able to join them next year!

Also, while we were in Arkansas Ben, Patrick, and Bill went to a Saint Louis Cardinals game. Ben was like a kid in a candy store! He loved it! Here’s few pictures he took at Busch Stadium.

Here's Ben standing in Busch Stadium during batting practice.

Pujols getting ready.

Foul ball!

Their seats were just behind home plate, about 15 rows up.

Julia

I’m recovering well from my thyroid surgery in January. As I said before, the doctor that did my surgery accidentally burned one of my voice nerves and thought it would take up to a year to come back but luckily one day in March I could suddenly talk again! Yay! My doctor was very happy to hear that! Now that my thyroid is out I am feeling better than ever. I suspected for a few years but never knew for sure that there was a problem with my thyroid but there have been so many changes in how I feel since my surgery. I have normal energy levels now (I was always exhausted before), I don’t require as much sleep to function (I used to need at least 9 hours of sleep every night), and my skin has cleared up dramatically (at 26 I still broke out daily whereas now it is very, very rare that I ever do). I’m loving not having a thyroid!

The semester has also ended for me and I am so grateful for the break!!! The past two semesters have been unusually busy and I’m very much enjoying the summer vacation so far! Although, it seems like every time I check something off my to do list, four more things get added. I guess a woman’s work is never done! I sat down and took a look at what I have left to do for my major and if I take 3 classes each semester then I will graduate the same semester as Ben with my bachelor’s degree in creative writing. =) I’m going to try really hard to get it done! 6 semesters to go! Next semester I’ll be taking sign language (so excited for that one), biology (boo!), and an english class (haven’t decided which one yet).

April 12th was my 27th birthday! Up until now I have still felt 19 or so but lately I have been feeling more my age. Is that how it works? Now I’ll feel 27 until I’m about 35 and then I’ll feel 35 until I’m 43 and so on? We went over to my mom’s and had a little birthday dinner – lasagna and cake! Here’s some pictures of that!

27!

Maddie and Mama (she stole my crown).

Me and my brother Tom.

My other brother Sean.

He wasn't paying attention. =)

Also in April we went down to Bountiful and got our friend Cameron to take some family pictures. Here are some of those (thanks again Cameron)!

April 25th Ben and I celebrated our 7th anniversary. It’s amazing what we’ve done in the past 7 years. I told Ben that looking back on all that we’ve come through I really feel like we could make it through anything. He agreed. =) It feels good to have that much faith in a relationship. I can definintely say that we are happier and more connected today than we have ever been. Here’s to another 7 years, and then another 7, and then another, and another…. <3 We were going to spend a night out on the town and then at Anniversary Inn but our babysitter’s brother died suddenly just a couple days before so she wasn’t able to watch the kids for us. We are planning on going within the next couple of weeks though so that should be fun! It is a much needed night for just the two of us!

In other news…..I did it! =) I lost 50 pounds! I have learned so, so much about the role of food in the body and have really gained a LOVE for working out over the past 7 months (especially running!). Now I just have to maintain! Usually I’ll take one meal a week off from my healthy eating and my routine meal has become a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and a pint (yes, a pint) of cookie dough ice cream. I never would have thought that those would be the foods I would miss the most! Here’s a before picture for you (obviously all the current pictures of me are the after pictures). My goal is to never weight that much again!!! (unless I’m 9 months pregnant)

This picture was taken the day Hayes came home from the hospital so it was two weeks after he was born.

This was taken on November 1st. I had lost about 10 pounds at this point.

Like I said, we just returned from our annual Arkansas trip and I also had a lot of fun! We miss our Arkansas family so much!!! While Ben was away on the boy’s camping trip all of the girls and kids got to head up to Branson to go shopping! Here are a few pictures from our trip.

And we're off! This picture was taken as we were driving to the gas station to top off the car before leaving Logan. This was the most organized that the car was the entire trip. Maddie made a mess back there!

Here's our little man a few hours into the trip. He did great the first day, and pretty good the second day but two and a half weeks later when we were making the drive back home he was not happy to be in the car! Sadly, he had to cry himself to sleep more than once. He better get used to road trips pretty quickly though because the rest of us love them!

Snacks!

Once we left Logan we headed to Lincoln, Nebraska. The first day was about 13 hours and we definitely felt like we could drive longer but Maddie was ready to get out of the car so we went ahead and stopped. The second day was about a 5 hour drive and we ended up in Springfield, Missouri at Ben's little sister, Sarah's house. We stayed there for two nights before heading down to Arkansas.

Daddy and Maddie on Eric's (Sarah's husband) four wheeler. She loved it!

Ice cream!

Twins! Sarah took me and Maddie garage saleing on Saturday morning and Maddie had so much fun! She loves to shop but usually can't get very much because we have a budget but when you're buying clothes for 50 cents you can pretty much get all you want. One of the things she found was this pink hoodie - just like Mama's!

Eric, Sarah, and their son Blake sitting around the fire.

Silly girl!

Ben's FIRST s'more!

Once we left Sarah and Eric's house we headed down to Rea Valley, Arkansas for a few days to spend time in the "jungle" with Little Pawpaw and Grandma Cookie (that's Ben's dad and step mom).

Maddie and Little Papaw making pancakes!

Here's Maddie sitting at the table "learning".

Bubba!

Here's Ben on our date. He really was having fun...despite the look on his face. =)

This is Ben hunting snakes down at the pond. He was on safari!

Bubba likes beer (well....the non-alcoholic kind)! Or maybe he just liked licking the bottle because it was empty. =)

Of course, we can't go to Arkansas without taking a day to go fishing! This was Hayes' first time on the boat so we were hoping he would like it (Maddie hated it at his age) and, I should have known, he absolutely loved it! Here's a few pictures from our day.

The first of Maddie's three fish. She wasn't scared of them this year. Yay!

He loves Dr. Pepper (just like his Memaw)! Don't worry, the can was empty.

Fishing is hard work!!!

After visiting the jungle for a few days the boys headed out on their annual camping trip and I took the kids into Mountain Home to stay with Ben's other sister Hannah for a few days.

This is one of Hannah's three kids. Matthew!

Cousins! Maddie and Rachel (Hannah's daughter) were practically inseperable! They pretended like they were "rock star sisters" the whole time we were there. I wish we lived closer so that they could grow up together and be best friends!

Hannah's kids, Matthew, Rachel, and Micah with Maddie and Hayes.

While the boys were gone the girls enjoyed a day of shopping in Branson. Here's our little group! Me, Sarah and Blake, Phyllis (Ben's mom)and little Maddie, Chelsea (another one of Ben's sisters)and her son Zane, and Hannah.

Chelsea and Maddie rocking out.

Little Zane!

Baby Blake!

Once the boys got home we headed over to Ben's mom's house for the last week of our trip. Here's some pictures that were taken while we were there.

This is Bubba's new favorite past time. Baths!!! Usually he takes a bath in the tub but since he still fits in the sink it's sometimes easier to let him take one there. Although when I do give him a bath in the sink I have to lay down a few towels because he loves to splash!!

Here's Maddie on Grandma's tree swing! She played on that for hours!

Look what we found in the garden! A worm!

Yummy!!!

I think this picture perfectly sums up our family. Here we have Maddie, Hayes, and Ben sitting on the couch. Maddie is dramatically screaming her head off, most likely about something very inconsequential. Hayes is eating Ben's pocket knife because he eats everything. And Ben is just sitting back laughing because there's not much else to do!

This little man loves bones! Chicken bones, rib bones, he's not picky.

This is Maddie as we are leaving town. She was so sad! It seems that our trip gets longer and longer each year. Pretty soon we'll be staying for a whole month! Or maybe we won't come back at all!

And the last things I’ll comment on in regards to me is that my older brother, Kenny, got married this week! Yay! He married a very sweet, pretty girl named Jessica at my mom’s house this past Friday. We are so excited for them!!! Here are a few pictures from their wedding.

The bride and groom.

Memaw and Big Papaw (my mom and step dad)

Us!

Daddy and Hayes

Blue eyes!

My little brother, Tom.

Our cousins Joey and Mikey.

Maddie cakes (with food in her mouth)!

Cousin Mikey came dressed in the same shirt as Victor so he quickly changed his pants and grabbed a doctor pepper. So hilarious!

Brothers! Tom, Kenny, and Sean.

Me and my brothers.

That's my mommy in the middle.

Victor walked Jessica down the isle.

Kenny, waiting for his bride.

I do.

"You may kiss the bride."

Exchanging rings.

Silly boys!

I love them!!!

My Tommy and Seaners!

Kisses for Mama!

Madeline

Our little Maddie cakes is starting kindergarten this fall!!! I have definitely become a more relaxed mother over the past few months. I’m not sure what happened but all of a sudden I’m very comfortable to let her play outside without my constant supervision and I’m actually really excited for her to be starting school. It’s going to be a really hard adjustment for me but I’m excited for her because she’s excited and she wants to learn so badly!!! We got her into a charter school just a couple miles up the road. Also, they have a summer program for kindergarteners and new students to attend. She’ll go to school for a week this summer so that they can introduce her to curriculum and such. She can’t wait to start!!

But before she does that she is playing her very first sport this summer! Ben and I were both athletes in school so we are very excited that she is old enough to play and can’t wait to go to her games and cheer her on! She’ll be playing softball this summer and her first game is June 9th. Ben got her a new bat and hung a softball from a string out on the back porch so she can practice batting. Her little batting stance is so cute. She sticks her little booty out there and swings as hard as she can! She wants to get a home run!

She has been practicing a lot since Ben put the ball up. This morning Ben and I were still laying in bed when Maddie came in and said, “I’m ready!” “Ready for what?!” we asked. “Ready to practice softball!” she said. The other night she even slept with her bat. I hope when she starts she likes it as much as she thinks she does!

Here’s a few pictures of our princess Maddie over the past couple months.

Easter morning!

One feat that we tackled this Spring was to perm Maddie's hair! When we lived in Arkansas and she was a baby it was so curly. I missed those little curls so we decided to try a perm. You would have thought it was the worst thing that ever happened to her! She hated all the water and solution dripping down onto her shoulders. Basically she screamed the entire time so we definitely won't be doing that again! The result was pretty cute though!

Maddie has recently been practicing the art of self portraits. Here is one of them!

Maddie and my little brother Sean coloring.

She learned to eat peanut butter like this from me. =)

Hayes

Little Bubba (we’re not sure where that very southern nickname came from but it has stuck and is what Hayes responds to the best so it’s just about all we call him) is getting crazier and crazier every day! He has become a professional at army crawling and I’m pretty sure that if there were army crawling races he would win every one. He gets those little legs and elbows going and is out of the room before I can even turn around. Consequently he is very difficult to keep under my thumb and is always eating something he shouldn’t. Plants, dog food, paper. I have learned that if it’s on the floor he WILL put it in his mouth! He is also pulling up on everything! It should just be a few more months until he is walking and then I will really be running after him all day! He is definitely a lot different than Maddie at this age. He keeps me on my toes in a way that she never did!

He is definitely a daddy’s boy but Maddie can still make him laugh harder than anyone else. He typically loves new people (especially grabbing their noses). He grunts a lot when he wants something. We’ve started teaching him the sign for “please”, although it will still be a little while before he catches on. The closest thing he has done so far is to rub my chest instead of his own. Close but…not quite. =) Maddie actually rubbed her leg to say please for a few months before she started rubbing her chest so if he improvises a little bit at first that will be fine. I think it took about 2 months with Maddie before she started signing it on her own to indicate that she wanted something. The only bad thing with teaching them only the sign for “please” is that they start crying and signing please and you have no idea what they are asking for! Maybe after my sign language class this semester I’ll start teaching the kids a lot more. That would be a fun family thing to learn! Little Hayes man also LOVES food! Especially ice cream. He just sees the pint of Ben and Jerry’s and goes crazy yelling and kicking until you give him a bite. And so far he gets excited to eat just about anything. He only has two teeth right now but it will be a happy day when he has a few more and I can give him some real food!

I’m not sure how much Hayes weighs our how long he is since it’s been a few months since his last checkup but we will be going back to the doctor next week so we will find out then. At his last appointment his doctor commented on how mild this winter ended up for him in comparison to how they thought it might be because of his lungs. We were very lucky that none of his colds or flues ended up there! He’s been growing well, feeling great, and his heart doctor says his heart looks wonderful so far. Yay for a happy, healthy baby boy!

It's hard to find a lot of pictures of Hayes because he changes so quickly but here are a few of my favorites from the past few months.

He loves these biter biscuits!

When he first starting crawling I walked around the corner to find this.

We were sitting in church one Sunday when the choir got up to sing. Hayes sat perfectly still just like this during the entire performance. We have found that he loves music!

New toy box!

Finally, here are a few pictures of the kids together and one of me and Benjamin!

We started going to a new grocery store (since we hate Walmart) and they have these car buggies (car carts - for those not raised in the south). Both the kids love them! Every time we go to the store Maddie shows me her imaginary buggy license so she can drive. As we turn down the isles I yell out "left....right" and Maddie thinks she's the one turning us. One time I accidentally crashed into something and she said, "let's pretend that didn't happen."

That’s about it for the past few months. Since I shouldn’t be as busy this summer as I have been lately I will try really hard to keep things up to date!

Fun with a box!

2010-03-16T20:40:00.002-06:00

Winter!

2010-01-14T22:02:00.015-07:00

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.

Hint

2009-11-03T23:48:00.000-07:00

For the full effect of each picture click on them and they will be enlarged.

October 2009

2009-11-03T21:40:00.036-07:00

Well, my list of things to include in our blog continues to get longer and longer so I figured I should go ahead and write it before the list gets too long and I can’t remember half the things on it. I’m thinking that this entry will be better broken up into parts. So we’ll start with….

Little Hayes is growing and growing (I guess babies do that)! There are some days that I wake up and can tell that he has grown overnight. Today was one of those days. At his last doctor appointment he weighed almost 11 pounds and was a little over 23 inches long. Since birth he has gained about 4 pounds and grown about 4 inches. He’s in the 50th percentile for his height and weight so he’s doing well! His next checkup is in December and by then he should weigh around 14 pounds.

We are getting to see more and more of his little personality which is fraught with smiles and even an occasional laugh. He is still a very content baby but despite his easy going personality he can be very picky. He hates having a dirty diaper. Sometimes, if he has a really full diaper I’ll lay him down to change it and he looks up at me with a big grin as if to say, “Thanks mama! I really needed that!” He also hates to be hot and he gets hot very easily! I never put socks on him and if I put a coat on him he’s burning up by the time we get out to the car. He also hates to be in a room alone. As soon as he realizes he’s alone he starts fussing until someone comes back into view. And finally he has to have a bottle at bedtime. All day long he goes to sleep with just a pacifier or even sometimes without but he knows that after his last bottle it’s time for bed and when he’s ready for bed he wants that bottle! Nothing else will satisfy him. He is also the biggest flirt! He loves new people and anytime someone new holds him he stares at their face for a few seconds and then flashes a big grin. I’m really hoping he develops at least a little bit of stranger anxiety! What’s really funny is that sometimes when he smiles he only smiles with one half of his face. I’ve decided that if he thinks you’re mildly amusing you get half a smile but if he thinks you’re really amusing you get the whole grin. Along with his smiles we get to see a lot of funny faces! Here's a few examples of his smiles and funny looks.

Yawn!

He's really good at raising one eyebrow. I didn't know babies could do that!

And here's a few pictures of Hayes doing what he does the most. Sleeping!

One part of Hayes's personality that Ben loves is that he really likes to watch sports. Seriously! He'll watch football and baseball for hours! I think its the different colors swirling around the screen...or maybe he's just truly Ben's son and is a huge sports fan (at 2 months old). Either way here they are watching football together.

He also loves to talk! Once you get him going he won’t stop. He just goes on and on and on and it’s as if he really believes that he is saying something to you. Even his doctor said that he talks a lot for his age. The other day I went to run some errands and when I got back I picked Hayes up and started talking to him. He started talking back and his eyes got all red and teary. It was as if he was telling me a sad story. Good thing his sister also likes to talk a lot. They should have lots of fun together! He has recently found his hands and now that he has a little control over them they are constantly in his mouth which is kind of funny because when I was pregnant and we went to my 20 week ultrasound he had his entire fist in there sucking on it. He is going to be one that I have to watch because he licks or sucks on anything that comes into close proximity of his mouth!

We took him to his first cardiology appointment last week and so far everything looks great. If you’ll remember he has what is called a bicuspid aortic valve. The aortic valve is a high pressure valve that pumps oxygenated blood to the body. It’s supposed to be made up of three flaps but his only has two. His is also mildly thickened. The complications with this is that because his valve only has two flaps it doesn’t close as effectively as it should, causing blood to leak back into his heart, which then makes his heart work harder to pump the extra blood back out. The cardiologist did an EKG and said that right now there is no leaking. She said that this is the most common birth defect effecting about 2% of people. They have no idea what causes it. Some think it’s genetic but they have found identical twins in which only one has the defect. About 2/3 of people with this defect experience some trouble with it at some point in their life. The most common times to have trouble are 1) in childhood when the child is growing so quickly that the valve sometimes can’t keep up or 2) in late adulthood when the heart has been working so hard for so long that it gets worn out. We will continue to monitor him every couple months for the first year of his life and then a couple times a year for the second and third years of his life and then at least once a year for the rest of his life after that. So far he has a nice loud click which means that the valve is closing effectively. The cardiologist said he should have no problem with sports (that should make Ben happy). Here's a picture of Hayes hooked up during his EKG.

Also last week we had a little bit of a scare and ended up in the emergency room with little Hayes. We were getting ready to go out of town for the day when he was acting a little fussy and felt a little warm. I took his temperature and it was 100. Because Maddie had come down with a head cold a couple days before I thought he might be getting that and decided to monitor him throughout the day and if his temperature went up anymore I would find an instacare where we were going and take him in. On the way out of town Hayes was asleep but hadn’t eaten in about 6 hours and wasn’t acting hungry. I called his pediatrician to ask if they thought I should wake him up to feed him or wait until he was acting hungry. After telling them that he had a temperature of 100 they were very concerned and told me I should take him to be seen while were out of town. We found a little after hours clinic (since it was a Saturday) where we were going and took him in. He saw a nurse practitioner who obviously had little if any experience with infants. His temperature had gone down to about 99.4 and after looking him over the nurse practitioner said that Hayes was teething. Ben and I left and Ben asked if I was satisfied with that explanation. An 8 week old baby teething? I don’t think so. I called his pediatrician back and they weren’t satisfied with that explanation either. They told me to get him to an emergency room right away. They didn’t even want me to wait until we would be home the next day. Ben’s mom Phyllis was in town visiting at the time so her and I went to the emergency room with little Hayes. When we got there his temperature was back down to normal but we proceeded to wait for four hours to get back into a room. Luckily the nurse that checked us in used to work in the NICU and had enough sense to put us in a separate waiting area by ourselves, away from all the coughing and puking people. After finally seeing a doctor we learned that they once did a study in Israel where a bunch of healthy people walked around for 24 hours with rectal probes taking their temperatures constantly. From that study they found that a normal healthy person can get a temperature up to 100.3 and not be sick. If his temperature had been 100.4 or higher they would have run a bunch of tests including a urine test, requiring that he have a catheter, blood tests, and also a spinal tap to check for meningitis. I cannot tell you how glad I am that he did not have a fever! After giving him a once over the doctor determined that he was fine and said to monitor him for the next couple days. We were finally free to go. An all day ordeal just to learn that a temperature of 100 degrees is not a fever. Here's little Hayes and his grandma hanging out in the emergency room together.

Sunday was a very special day for Hayes. He was blessed by Ben that morning at church. My mom Linda and step dad Victor, my brother Tommy, my brother Sean and his friend Mitchell, Ben’s dad Bill and step mom Vicky, Cameron Hayes (who little Hayes is named after), Larry and Gail Reaves (friends of the Friend family from Alabama), Ben’s friend from school Brandon Wilkins and his fiancé Alicia all came. Of those who were there Ben, Victor (my step dad), Bill (Ben’s dad), Cameron Hayes, Larry Reaves (friends of the family), and Brandon Wilkins (Ben’s friend from school), and Jake Nelson (a friend in the ward) all took part in the blessing. Ben did an amazing job blessing baby Hayes. He mentioned that Hayes has already shown us that he is a fighter and blessed him to continue with that spirit as he grows that he will be strong and healthy. He also mentioned that Hayes carries the names of two very important men (Hayes in honor of Ben’s friend Cameron Hayes and McClellan in honor of Ben’s dad Bill McClellan Friend) and that he should, throughout his life, remember those men and the impact that they have had on Ben. He also blessed Hayes that he would act in such a way throughout his life as to honor those men and make them proud. Ben blessed Hayes that he would someday serve an honorable mission for the church and that after that mission he would find a daughter of our Heavenly Father that he would take to the temple to married to for eternity. He blessed Hayes that he would have the opportunity to raise children and experience the joys that we have experienced so far in raising him and Maddie. After sacrament meeting everyone went to our apartment and enjoyed some yummy ice cream cake. Here's a picture of Hayes and all the men involved in the blessing (excluding Jake Nelson - he wasn't there).

Maddie has recently found her first best friend. She plays everyday with a little girl name Kaytee who lives in an apartment across from us. I remember my first best friend so it’s fun to see Maddie with hers.

When we took Hayes in for his 2 month checkup we also took Maddie in for her 5 year checkup. She weighs 39 pounds and is 43 inches tall. She proudly demonstrated that she can hop on one foot for more than 5 seconds and when the doctor thumped on her knees to check her reflexes she kicked each leg high in the air to show him just how good her reflexes are. She also spelled her name for him to demonstrate how well she knows her letters. She’s right on track developmentally and is in the 50th percentile for her height and weight (just like her little brother). I think that Maddie recently had a growth spurt. Not a physical one but a mental one. She is suddenly using a lot more facial expressions. She has become very animated in her speech. She has also been using words that are a bit bigger than the words she usually uses. This past week she used the words “possibly” and “destroyed” correctly in a sentence. Not only is she using bigger words these days but she seems to be forming more complex sentences as well. Also, this afternoon we were talking about the difference in age between her and Hayes. And this afternoon I asked her how old Hayes will be when she is six. She said, “One!” I asked her how old Hayes will be when she is seven. She said, “Two!” Then I asked her how old Hayes will be when she is ten. Without hesitation she said, “Five!” It’s apparent that she will be more than ready for kindergarten next year. Too bad her mama won’t be anywhere near ready!

Maddie has decided that she absolutely loves Hannah Montana, or as she says, Hannah Omtana. She has no idea that Hannah Montana and Miley Cyrus is the same person so the fact that Miley Cyrus isn’t the best role model for a young girl is not an issue. Maddie just loves her music. She convinced me recently to buy her a Hannah Omtana wig and when she puts it on she turns into someone else. Usually she gets embarrassed pretty easily. She doesn’t like to be the center of attention and if everyone is looking at her she gets really shy but when she puts on that wig, and puts her Hannah Omtana CD in her CD player she’ll dance and sing at the top of her lungs. She is so funny! She always wants to wear her Hannah Omtana wig out in public and when I say no she says, “But mom! Everyone will think I’m Hannah Omtana!” I think what she loves so much is the idea of being a rock star. That might mean trouble later in life! Here she is in her Hannah Omtana wig.

Last week Maddie got a little virus. She didn’t have a fever but at around 5 pm she started throwing up and continued to throw up every 20 minutes. After she threw up the first time I called the doctor to get her an after hours appointment. They had an opening at 7:40 that evening. As time went on she grew more and more lethargic and more and more pale. She felt so sick that she wouldn’t even talk to us. She threw up about 7 times before we finally got to the doctor. He prescribed an anti nausea medication that dissolves on the tongue. We got her home and I went to get her prescription. Finally, around 9:00 I got home (there were some real idiots in line at the pharmacy!) and gave her the medication. As soon as it was dissolved on her tongue she threw up again (her 10th time in 4 hours). Luckily the medication took effect pretty quickly and within about 15 minutes she was sitting up, talking, sipping water, and watching her new movie (there’s a rule in our house that if you are sick enough to be in bed you get a present so while I was waiting for her prescription to be filled I got her a My Little Pony movie). She slept through the night and by the time she woke up the next morning she was all better! That (and the cold she got last week) are the first sicknesses she’s gotten since she got her tonsils out last year. Thanks heavens!

Here's a few pictures of my babies together.

Watching cartoons together.

And here's a few pictures of Maddie and our doggies. Sometimes she loves them and other times they drive her crazy!

Maddie and the dogs wrestling.

Maddie and Lily!

Of course this past weekend was Halloween. Maddie dressed up as a cute bumble bee. We curled her hair, put on some pretty makeup, and headed out to trick or treat! We were out for about an hour and filled her little pumpkin bucket about half full. She had SO much fun! She was a little awkward at first. She would walk up to a door, ring the doorbell, say, “Trick or treat!” when they answered. She then chose her candy. But instead of leaving she would just stand there looking at the person at the door. Usually the person would say, “You can take another piece of candy.” Maddie would take another piece and then continue to stand there. The person would then say something like, “Aren’t you a cute little bumble bee?!” Maddie would reply, “Thanks!” and continue to stand there. Finally, the person would say, “Have a good night!” and Maddie would say, “Thank you!” then turn and leave. Finally I told her to take the candy say thank you and then leave. After that there were much fewer awkward moments. Hayes was dressed up as a monkey/dog/bear (we bought his costume at walmart which was supposed to be a monkey but had ears on the top of its head. Monkeys have ears on the sides of their heads so we decided to call the costume a dog costume even though the face didn’t really look like a dog. Finally I bought Hayes a winter fleece coat that has a hood with a bear face on it so we put that on him and called him a bear) and slept the whole time. Here's some Halloween pictures!

Maddie!

Makeup!

This painting was hanging on the garage door of a house we trick or treated at.

Hayes was mad because we woke him up to take pictures.

But then he fell back to sleep and slept the WHOLE time!

Here's some pictures of our pumpkins!

The first pumpkin is my brother Sean's (it's a peace sign made out of bones), then is Maddie's (a person in a bed hiding under the covers from a huge eye looking in the window), then Sean's friend Mitchell's (a mummy looking into a window through some blinds), then mine (a Marilyn Monroe witch), then Ben's (a pumpkin fire guy?), then Hayes's (it just says "trick or treat")

Benjamin is still plugging along in school. He is looking very forward to winter break! This semester has been a little more challenging as he is taking some classes that require some tedious homework. I have gotten used to him saying, “I have one more problem left.” An hour and a half and three pages later he is finally finished.

Ben turned 30 on Sunday (November 1st)! 30!!!!!! That makes me feel old.

Julia (I’m not going to talk in the third person). I enjoyed hosting Ben’s mom Phyllis in our home last week. She traveled here from Arkansas to meet her new grandson. She got here on a Wednesday and we kept very, very busy shopping, visiting friends that she knew from Alabama who now live here in Utah, going to Bear Lake to enjoy some yummy raspberry shakes, and carved pumpkins! We were sad to see her go but just a couple hours after her flight left Ben’s dad Bill and step mom Vicky flew in, also to meet Hayes. Since they have been here we have gone up to Bear Lake for raspberry shakes (again) and celebrated Hayes’s blessing and Ben’s birthday. They left this morning and we were sad to see them go!

I’m also still plugging along with school this semester and am enjoying my very easy classes!

Recently I woke up on a Saturday with a sore throat. At first I thought that breathing the cold, dry air in our bedroom all night might have made it sore but it continued to get worse and worse throughout the day until finally I could hardly swallow and definitely couldn’t talk. I went into instacare to see if I was sick. When the doctor came in I was sitting on the little table. She walked in looking at my chart. Before turning around to look at me she asked when the sore throat had started. I replied, “This morning when I woke up.” She turned to look at me and immediately came over and began feeling the front of my neck. She asked if that hurt. It didn’t. She then told me that my thyroid was enlarged. She examined me for the sore throat and decided to do a blood test to test for mono (a strep test had already come back negative) and also to see if my thyroid was functioning properly. The mono test came back right away. I didn’t have mono but my white blood cell count was high so she prescribed me some antibiotics. The thyroid test would be back the next day. One of the nurses called when the thyroid results came in and told me that it showed that my thyroid was functioning normally but that the doctor who examined me wanted me to follow up with my regular doctor. She suggested that I make an appointment right away. I called my doctor the next day and was finally able to get in for an appointment this past Friday. Ben and I went in together and my doctor (Dr. Hildahl) did a small exam (checking my throat, ears, etc.). He then felt my thyroid and said that it felt slightly enlarged on the right side. Since the blood test had come back normal he wanted me to get an ultrasound done so that we could rule out any masses or nodules on it. He said that if there was a nodule we would need to do a biopsy to determine if it was benign or malignant. He continued to talk about thyroid cancer saying that it can happen at any age. He said that thyroid cancer is not a “treat and wait” sort of cancer. There are a few different kinds and they are either always fatal or always not fatal. He seemed pretty confident though that the ultrasound would reveal nothing and we would just forget about the whole thing. Ben and I went over to the hospital that afternoon to get the ultrasound done and later that evening Dr. Hildahl called to tell me that they did find a nodule on my thyroid. I go in next Monday to have a biopsy done. With the guide of ultrasound they will put a needle in my neck (yay!) and remove a piece of the nodule for testing. Hopefully by the end of next week we’ll know if I have cancer or not. Needless to say I’m a little scared! Although, the more I read about it the better I feel since only about 10% of thyroid nodules are cancerous and of those only a small percentage are the “always fatal” kind. Typically this kind shows up only in people in their 60s and 70s. If they did find cancer there are several options including taking out the thyroid and any surrounding lymph nodes that the cancer may have spread to. There is also radiation therapy or medication that can be taken to kill the thyroid cells. Obviously we would only talk about this if the biopsy comes back malignant. Of course, I’m really, really praying that that is not the case!!!!!

It is officially winter in northern Utah. For those of you who know me well know that I HATE cold/snow/anything that has to do with winter but Maddie and Ben were in heaven when it snowed last week. I have to admit….the beauty of Logan under a blanket of snow makes the winters here worthwhile. Here are a few pictures of our beautiful Cache Valley.

After our first winter snow!

Dry Lake in Sardine Canyon

Bear Lake

6 weeks!

2009-10-05T11:13:00.007-06:00

Well, I just sat down, got halfway through my breakfast, and logged on to post a new blog. Immediately I hear Hayes's "I'm hungry" sounds over the monitor. A mother's work is never done. Be right back!

Five hours later and I am almost done with my to do list (this being one of the items on it) but have not showered yet and am expecting Hayes to wake up any minute to eat. I better make this quick!

Our little bundle is now 6 weeks old!! Can you believe it?! I certainly can't. It feels like we just got home with him yesterday! I have to say that the experience of going from one child to two has been light years easier than going from no children to one. There were a few things that really concerned me while I was pregnant with Hayes. The first was that I honestly wasn't sure if I could love him as much as I loved Maddie. When Ben and I first got married we sat down and decided that, for us, it would be best and most desireable to start having kids right away. Seven agonizing months later we were finally cooking little Maddie in my oven. I wanted her so badly I would've given my right arm to have her. And that's saying something because I'm right handed! When I found out I was pregnant I instantly loved her with all my heart. I had no idea who she was, what she looked like, or that she was even a girl. I was constantly sick and exhausted but I loved her more than anything! When she finally arrived that love only increased with each second that I gazed at her. I had never loved anything so much!!! What I felt for my new baby was absolutely unequivocal and completely unconditional. Fast forward to five years later and things in life had definitely shifted. Ben and I had absolutely no luck getting pregnant for YEARS! We both had come to the conclusion that perhaps it just wasn't possible for us. We talked a lot about adopting and planned to do so in the future but in the mean time I had educational goals, a job, and a very self sufficient child just two years away from kindergarten. We certainly weren't trying to get pregnant at that point because we had simply given up. This pregnancy was less than planned and therefore more than a surprise! It was a total shock. Our plans for the future, certainly my plans for the future, were completely derailed and although I was absolutely thrilled, ecstatic, beyond the moon excited that I was pregnant I was also a little put off at first. A baby?!? A baby?!? I hadn't changed a diaper in years and I hadn't been woken up in the middle night in even more years. Of course, this pregnancy was not a bad thing in any way but it was certainly a bump in our perfectly paved road. So, here was my concern: after falling completely head over heels in love at first sight with Maddie and at first feeling a little put off by being pregnant I was really worried that I wouldn't love this child as much as I did my first. It really scared me actually. Because Ben and I had decided on adoption in the future and because my life was on a different path at the time I probably wouldn't have given my right arm to be pregnant so I didn't adore this baby from the second I saw those two pink lines. As time went on and I was more and more umcomfortable I just wanted this thing out of me BUT how would I feel when it was? My other concern stemmed from my experience with Maddie as well. My pregnancy with her was fairly uneventful. Typical nauseau, heartburn, achiness, exhaustion (oh the joys!). My emotions and hormones were extremely normal...normal for a non-pregnant woman. I never got cranky (well, unless I was hungry) or snappy or angry....until she was born. And then I was a royal mess! I was so depressed all the time and for no reason at all! I had a beautiful baby that I completely adored. A great, hard working husband. Life was good but I couldn't stop crying. There were two instances that stick out in my memory of that time. One came just a couple weeks after Maddie was born. We wanted to move some furniture from the basement of the house we were living in to the living room upstairs. Ben called a good friend of ours over to help him and when he came to our house that evening I sat on the couch crying. I have no idea why I was crying but crying I was. And I had no shame about it. How uncomfortable for him to walk in and see me sitting there crying. Ben was not in the room so he nervously asked where he was. Through my tears I pointed to the door that led downstairs. He awkwardly asked if I was ok to which I nodded my head yes and he left. Probably very gladly! What a mess! I should have at least gone in the other room! But my hormones and emotions were so out of whack that I didn't even have the sense to do that. The other instance came many times in the first weeks of Maddie's life. Because Ben worked all day and I was able to stay at home with Maddie and therefore nap whenever I wanted I took on all the responsibility of getting up with Maddie in the middle of the night. Because of this I absolutely dreaded the night! There was one evening in particular that sticks out to me. I was standing in the kitchen washing the dishes. It had been a very good day. I was feeling well, happy, energetic. I turned around to walk out of the room and caught a gilmpse out of a west facing window. I could see the sun sinking closer to the horizon and the sky was lit up with orange and pink. Dusk. Oh no. I lost it. I broke down crying right then because I honestly didn't think I could live through another night. Needless to say, the transition to being a first time mother was a very difficult one for me! I was so concerned that that experience would be repeated with this baby.

Now, 6 (almost 7) weeks after Hayes's birth I am very happy to report that neither of those concerns have proved valid. I love Hayes with all my heart. He is the sweetest, cutest little boy I have ever seen. I still cannot stop kissing him! Everytime I hold him he gets mauled because I just want to squeeze him and love on him constantly! I feel every bit of emotion for him that I did for Maddie. And even better, he is so much easier than Maddie was (I thought, at the time, that Maddie was a great baby but Hayes is a GREAT baby!) so I don't have any of the frustrations with sleeping and such that I did with her. Or maybe it's just that with her I had no idea what I was doing. I had never taken care of an infant before. With him I am stress free, relaxed, calm, and completely in love. What a great combination of emotions! I remember when Maddie turned 6 weeks old and I was driving somewhere with Ben's mom. I related to her that I didn't know how mothers go back to work after 6 weeks. Things were just starting to get fun with Maddie. I was just starting to really enjoy her. With Hayes I have enjoyed him since day 1. Maybe it's because his stay in the hospital was so taxing that I just wanted him home! I was willing to do the middle of the night feedings and the endless diaper changes and the crying just to be held becuase I just wanted my baby. Whatever the reason, it is heavenly to have him here healthy and happy. I love this little boy!

We are definitely getting to see a bit of Hayes's personality as he gets older. And he certainly has some strong opinions for such a little guy! Just about every morning around 7:30 he gets a bit fussy in his bed so I usually bring him to bed with me for some cuddling time. I lay with my arm under his head and our bodies facing eachother so that I am on my right side and he is on his left side. For three mornings in a row he would fuss and kick and squirm after I laid down with him. Finally I figured out that if I would roll us both over so that I was laying on my left side and he was on his right he would immedietly calm down and go back to sleep. Who knew a month old baby could be so picky and which side they sleep on! Two of those mornings he woke up about an hour into our cuddling time and again started fussing and squirming. I found that if I unswaddled his arms he would instantly relax and go right back to sleep. What a silly little baby! One day last week Hayes woke up and decided that that would be the day he would start smiling (he had given us little grins here and there before but I mean real, intentual smiling) and cooing. He has been doing both ever since. Mostly he smiles at Maddie. I love the look he gets on his face when he hears her first thing in the morning. The other day I gave them a bath together and it was so fun to see his reaction! I put him in first and when he realized that she was getting in also his whole face lit up and he just stared at her the entire time. I can't wait to see what the dynamics of their relationship will be. I have two younger brothers. One who is 6 years and another who is 7 years younger than me. Growing up they were absolutely my best friends. There is no good memory of my childhood that doesn't involve them. And as adults we are all still very close. I pray that Maddie and Hayes will have this same relationship as they grow.

Maddie has transitioned so well into the role of older sister. She loves to talk to, kiss on, and spend time with her little buddy but not to the point that I have to tell her to leave him alone. She is ecstatic to have him here and is very understanding of his demands on my time. My favorite part of the day is first thing in the morning when the three of us snuggle in bed together talking and laughing. I wish my babies could stay babies FOREVER!

In other news, Ben's mom Phyllis is making her way out here in two weeks and we are so excited to have her coming! The day she leaves Ben's dad and step mom will be arriving so we will have house guests for two weeks straight. We are so excited for them to meet our new addition, spend time with Maddie, and maybe let Ben and I sneak away for a little date night! =)

Here are a few pictures of our time with little Hayes the past couple weeks. I lost my camera (booooo!) so these are from my cell phone.

Sleepy baby!

I <3 morning grins.

Crazy hair!

He can already do the one eyebrow raise.

Bath time!

Staring at Maddie.

Drifting off to sleep.

Talking

Happy Halloween!

Getting to know little Hayes

2009-09-05T17:51:00.003-06:00

We've all been home for 3 glorious days now! We are having a great (stress free!) time getting to know the newest member of our family. It looks like Ben and I lucked out and made another very mellow baby. Since Hayes has been born I have heard him cry (literally) about 4 times. No kidding. Even in the middle of the night when he wakes up hungry he just calls to me with little grunts and squeeks and I know it's time to eat! He doesn't require rocking or bouncing to get back to sleep either. I just lay him down after he eats and if he's not quite ready he looks around for a little while enthralled by his surroundings. When he gets tired he drifts off to dream land. Speaking of dream land - when he does dream he makes the cutest faces! He raises his little eyebrows, puckers his lips, grins, and sometimes even pouts. He's so funny! But the thing he does that makes me laugh the most happens when it's time to eat. The first thing I do after sitting down to feed him is put a burp rag under his chin (he's a dribbler). He then whips his little head to one side and tries to latch onto the burp rag. What a silly baby!

Here's a couple pictures that our little photographer Maddie took of him yesterday.

Our little Maddie keeps us laughing as well. I have no idea where she got this one but this morning Hayes was laying on his blanket on the living room floor. He started to wiggle around and fuss a little so Maddie came to me and said, "Mom, where's the babysitter?" In fact, she was asking about the pacifier.

We survived!

2009-09-04T12:29:00.013-06:00

Hayes is 2 weeks old today. Hooray! But even more exciting is that we are finally home!!!! Certainly Hayes's first two weeks have been filled with trauma and drama. Hopefully things will settle down from here. So far our time home has been very uneventful - just the way we like it!

Sorry, to those who follow our blog, for the week of silence. Thursday and Friday of last week were certainly the hardest of the past two weeks for me. Saturday and Sunday Ben was able to be in Bountiful with me and Maddie so we were busy trying to spend time with Hayes and cater to Maddie and each other as well. When Ben headed back to Logan on Monday he took the computer with him so I didn't have access to any of our pictures. Overall, I was really emotional and really busy so I am finally stealing a few minutes to update everyone on the past week.

As of last Wednesday things with Hayes were moving really slowly. He had the ventilator, chest tube, and umbilical catheder out for 2 days but was very, very sleepy and not eating much of anything from a bottle. They were having to use his feeding tube and trying to get him up to full feedings so they could get his IV out. Thursday was filled with much the same that Tuesday and Wednesday had been and Ben and I were getting very frustrated with the lack of progress. It looked like our hopes of having our family home together by the end of the weekend were not going to be realized. Here are a few pictures from our visit with little Hayes on Thursday the 29th.

Stretch!

We were trying to wake up him up to eat and he was not happy about it!

He had some serious suction on that bottle!

When I went to visit Hayes on Friday I found that he had been moved from room 1 to room 2. His nurse informed me that room 1 was considered the critical room so being moved out of that room was certainly an improvement. We found that Hayes's billirubin levels had gone down considerably since he had been under the bili lights for 12 or so hours. Luckily, he didn't have to be under the lights for the rest of his stay in the NICU. Friday, again was a very uneventful day and by the end of it I felt as if I had been pushed past my limit. I couldn't help but feel completely depressed as I looked at him with his oxygen, feeding tube, and the IV in his head. When I snuggled my nose into his little neck and breathed him in I completely lost it! I, like most people, don't like to cry in front of others (especially strangers) but this experience has certainly cured me of that discomfort. I can't even count the number of people who have seen my cry in the past two weeks! When we left him that evening I was very, very emotional. I cried all the way home and immedietly went to bed sobbing. I laid in bed that night and felt like I couldn 't possibly endure this another minute. I just wanted my baby! It literally felt like he would be in the NICU forever! I honestly have never prayed so hard in my life. I started out by thanking Heavenly Father for all the blessings that we had encountered so far. I was grateful that Hayes was alive at all. I was grateful that he had been well enough to move to room 2 (the baby in the incubator next to him in room 1 had been there since mid July!) I was grateful for the expert care that he was receiving. We had really liked all of the nurses and respiratory therapists that had worked with him. I was grateful that Hayes was not getting worse, and I was especially grateful for his smiles. I couldn't imagine the discomfort and pain he had gone through up to that point but he still offered up a smile everytime we went to visit him. Those smiles made my day! I was also grateful for Maddie's strength through all of this. She certainly was patient and understanding as we were gone most of the time and she waited for her little brother to get better. In the end this experience has made me so grateful for my own, Ben's, and Maddie's health. It's so frustrating and saddening being so out of control of something that most of the time is not thought of - the health of ourselves and the ones we love. I then pleaded and begged that Hayes would make some sort of progress. I couldn't bear to walk into that hospital another day and see him hooked up to all that stuff and be told that he wouldn't eat and that he wasn't breathing well. I fell asleep crying with puffy, red eyes and woke up the next morning the same way. I usually called in the morning before going up to the hospital to see how Hayes's night went but Saturday morning I felt that it was pointless. I didn't feel that I could handle being told the same thing that I had been told the last three mornings in a row. I got dressed and headed to the NICU still very frustrated and feeling defeated. I walked into room 2 and didn't see an incubator where Hayes's incubator usually sat. I walked around to find that he had been moved to an open bassinet. I rushed over to look at him and was absolutely amazed! He looked so good!!! His little face wasn't swollen anymore and his color looked so healthy and pink. I immedietly noticed that he didn't have an IV in anymore. It wasn't until I put my purse down that I realized that he wasn't wearing his oxygen cannula anymore either!!!! All he had was a feeding tube. I could actually pick him up without feeling like I was dancing with wires and tubes. He was even wearing clothes! He was almost like a real baby! I picked him up and was met with this:

How can you not love that little face?!?
Here he is in his new home.

And here he is hanging out in Mama's arms. He loved staring at the lights in the ceiling.

The whole of Saturday morning I was watching his respiration and oxygen levels. I was nervous because a couple days earlier I had called in the morning to find that Hayes had been off his oxygen for 8 hours through the night but later that day his oxygen levels had kept going down and he was put back on the cannula. I was scared that that would happen again. They didn't want his respirations to go above 60 (normal is 40-60) and his were averaging in the 80s. It's hard to tell exactly because they are so erratic. Sometimes they drop down to the 30s and sometimes they jump up into the 100s. Although his breathing rate was a little fast his oxygen levels looked great! For a baby his age (greater than 36 weeks gestation) they are comfortable with a range of 86%-98% but ideally would like his oxygen levels to be 92%-96%. His average was about 93%. When we went back that afternoon his average respirations had already gone down to an average of about 60 and his oxygen level average was around 96%. After the three stagnant days we had endured this was exactly what I needed! I felt renewed and hopeful again but also a little nervous that after a day full of so much progress we would have another 3 days of baby steps. I hoped that Hayes wouldn't be too worn out to keep up the good work! The only hurdle left to jump was his eating. When I went in to see him on Sunday morning his respirations and oxygen levels were continuoly getting better and better. His doctor laid out his eating expectations for us stating that he needed to eat 60mL (2oz) every 3 hours. She was hopeful that it wouldn't be much longer until he was getting his full feedings from a bottle instead of his feeding tube. She commented that he had taken twice as much from a bottle in the last 24 hours as the 24 hours before that. I expressed to her my concerns about the amount of food that he was being required to take in. Maddie didn't eat 2 oz at a time until she was almost a month old! Also, the nurses kept bringing up the fact that he was spitting up quite a bit. Obviously his little belly wasn't able to hold as much as they were giving him. She said that Maddie wasn't sick and didn't require the same calories as Hayes does. I felt frustrated because I felt at that point that his critical issues had been resolved. He was progressing each day and certainly it was obvious that he would continue to progress. The week before the dr. had told us that they wouldn't make Hayes get to 115%. That if he was at 98% and they knew he would get better they would go ahead and send him home. By Sunday he wasn't quite at 98% but they weren't even talking to us about discharge yet! She also told me that they were worried about him having a heart murmur and that they would get an echo in the morning to check on that. To make things worse Ben had to leave Sunday evening to go back to Logan for school. My support and comfort was leaving me.

When I went to see him on Monday morning I was met by his nurse who had his feeding all ready to go into his feeding tube. She told me that he just looked so tired and comfortable and that this time she was just going to go ahead and put his food in his tube. I told her that I wanted to try to wake him up and feed him with a bottle. She preceeded to tell me that that was fine but that she really didn't think he would wake up for me. I changed his diaper and he woke up right away. He then sucked down the entire bottle that I gave him. I was so mad! All we were waiting for at that point was for him to eat from a bottle. I understand if he's tired. We certainly didn't want to wear him out because at that point he could stop progressing altogether but he wasn't even being given the chance to eat from a bottle. And certainly he wasn't too tired to take a bottle at that feeding. As I sat there holding him there were two other babies in the room that were getting discharged. One was tiny and sent home straight out of an incubator. She had just gotten her IV out that morning! The other baby was sent home on multiple medications, oxygen, and monitors. I felt so upset that they would send home a baby who couldn't even breathe but they wouldn't send home Hayes because he wasn't eating every last mL they wanted him too. I didn't understand why they couldn't send us home and turn him over to the care of his pediatrician. I would go in every day to get him weighed if I had to! I would count every dirty diaper! Just let us go! After the experience with his nurse and seeing the other babies discharged who were, seemingly, much sicker at that point than Hayes I was just plain mad. I requested to talk to his doctor and expressed to her my frustrations. She said that she would tell the nurses on each shift to at least offer the bottle at each feeding to see if he would take it.

Tuesday morning I called to see what progress, if any, Hayes had made and was excited to find out that he had eaten like crazy through the night. Between 1am and 5am he had consumed 1/3 of the mL he needed in an entire day. They took out his feeding tube and his nurse felt like if he kept eating the way he was he could go home the next day. Hooray!!!! Finally! We had a discharge goal. I went to visit Hayes that morning and his nurse went over some discharge stuff with me. In order to go home the next day he had to meed his food goal and pass a carseat test. Infant carseats lower a baby's oxygen levels by about 1% so we had to sit him in his carseat for a continual hour and a half (as long as it would take us to get back to Logan) and make sure that his oxygen levels wouldn't drop below 86% or that if they did he would recover quickly. One of the neonatologists came in and talked to me about the results of Hayes's heart echo. It seems that he has what is called a bicuspid aortic valve. The aortic valve in the heart pumps oxygenated blood to the rest of your body. It is a high pressure valve and is made up of three flaps that open and close as your heart pumps the blood. Hayes's aortic valve is made up of only two flaps that are mildly thickened. This causes a problem because the valve can't close as effectively when it has only two flaps. That can cause some blood to leak back into the heart which in turn causes the heart to work harder to pump the leaking blood out. There are two outcomes of this. 1. the valve in his heart can grow well with him and he can not ever notice any side effects or have any problems or 2. the valve can not grow well with him and continue to thicken and he could end up (years down the road) needing surgery to correct it. We will go see a cardiologist every 6 months for the first couple years of his life and then once a year after that. We did find out that they aren't completely sure what causes a bicuspid aortic valve but that it is most likely genetic. We then learned that my uncle just had open heart surgery to correct this same problem. Tuesday evening I went back to see Hayes and LOVED his nurse! She was on a mission to get him home the next day! She told me that he was 8mL behind on his feedings but she assured me that we would get him caught up and keep him caught up. I fed him when I first got there and he took the extra 8mL then. After holding him for a bit we decided to do his carseat test. I had to leave for that because I didn't want to sit there for an hour and a half staring at his monitors and getting nervous everytime they went down. I went to get some dinner and was so nervous the whole time! But, when I got back his nurse was excited because he had passed with flying colors. Yay! I was so excited! Once the carseat test was over it was time to feed him again. He ate all but 10mL of his bottle and was falling asleep. Since I had been there that afternoon he had been given a bath, eaten, been held by me for 30 minutes and done his carseat test. He was exhausted! I decided to change his diaper in hopes of waking him up a little. That worked and he took the last 10mL of his bottle. His nurse wondered if we should try to even get him ahead a bit and offer him another 10mL. I thought we should go for it. She prepared the bottle for me and when I put it in his mouth he wasn't ready and gagged a bit on the nipple. Stimulating his gag reflex with such a full tummy was not good and he threw up about 1/2 an oz. His nurse came over to me and asked what had happened. He asked me if I thought he threw up because his belly was full or because I had accidently gagged him. I told her I thought it was because I gagged him and she leaned down and whispered, "that'll be our little secret then." She was supposed to chart how much he spit up and subtract the total from the total he had consumed but she decided not to. I was SO thankful because that could have kept us from going home! When I left him that night his nurse assured me that she would make him successful. As comforting as that was I was still a little nervous because her shift ended at 3:30am and rounds (in which they would decided if Hayes could go home or not) wasn't until 8:30am. Luckily, his nurse that morning was the same one from Tuesday morning who had begun our discharge papers so she knew we were on track to go home. I was hoping she would be as diligent in making him eat. I woke up around 4:30am and called to check on him. His nurse assured me that he was still on track for discharge. I woke up again at 7:30 and called to check his progress. His nurse told me that he had eaten more than expected. Yay! Surely they would clear him to go home. I headed up to the hospital at 9:15 and was walking out with my baby by 11:30! Finally! After 12 days in the NICU he was able to leave! Hayes and I headed back to Bountiful and waited for Ben and Maddie to come get us. Here are some pictures from that afternoon taken by Cameron.

Here's Maddie holding her baby brother for the first time.

Maddie has been such a great big sister so far and is handling having the baby at home very well. We have found however since being home that Maddie has outgrown her toddler bed. This is how we found her sleeping the other night.

Later that same night she fell out of bed completely. I'm thinking it's time to get a bigger bed!

In the end, we are all so happy to be home and finally together! Thank you again to all those who have offered many, many prayers in behalf of little Hayes and our family. I know that each and every one of those prayers was heard. We have experienced so many blessings through this experience and are eternally grateful for a loving Heavenly Father.

Another day of baby steps

2009-08-26T20:42:00.005-06:00

That's exactly what we had. Another day of baby steps. Little Hayes had quite a bit to eat today (at least in comparison to what he has been eating - which is nothing). They are trying to get him up to full feedings really fast probably because 1. we want to get him home! and 2. they are running out of places to put an IV. His poor little hands, forearms, head, and ankles are bruised. Yesterday his IV was set at 17mL an hour and today they had it turned down to 6mL an hour. About half of what he ate came from a bottle and the other half was put in his feeding tube. He's not sure what he thinks of the bottle just yet but hopefully he will get used to it quickly. They still had him on oxygen all day and he is still breathing a little too fast at times. He is also looking a little orange again so they are going to take his billirubin levels tonight and depending on the results of that they might put him under the lights again. I got to the hospital a little after 4:00 this afternoon and he was just laying awake in his incubator. I helped take his temperature, change his diaper, and weigh him. He was a little on the warm side (99.9) but the nurse said that his temperature probe wasn't on him very well so the incubator might have just been thinking he was a little cold and therefore making him too warm. Once again he peed all over his bed and today he still weighed in at 7lbs 5oz. Once all that stuff was done I sat down to hold my baby. The nurse gave him to me and within a minute he was fast asleep. Here he is sleeping soundly in his mama's arms.

After unsuccessfully trying to wake him up to feed him the nurse just decided to use his feeding tube. The last time he ate he spit up a little afterwards so they were worried that they were increasing his food too fast. They decided to go ahead and increase it again but give it to him over a longer period of time in hopes that it would be more gentle on his little tummy. If he did spit up this time they would keep him at that same amount for a few feedings to get him used to it and if he didn't spit up they would go up again next time. We were with him for an hour after he finished getting his food and he hadn't spit up yet so hopefully his food continues to stay down and we can get that IV out of him sometime tomorrow. Around 5:00 Ben arrived and we took turns holding Hayes until 7:00. He was completely out almost the entire time! I guess that's what a full tummy and being snuggled will do to you. Here are a few pictures from our two hours of heaven.

Look at that double chin!

I did take a video of him today but it is taking way too long to upload on here and I really need to go to bed. I'll try it again tomorrow.

This morning Maddie slept in a little bit and woke up kinda groggy. Her hair was matted down on one side and sticking up on the other. I thought she looked pretty funny so I took a picture. I love this girl!

Baby Hayes update

2009-08-26T08:56:00.009-06:00

I think the past 4 days have finally started to catch up with me. Last night when Ben and I left the hospital I was feeling very emotional, extremely tired, and even a little feverish. We came back to Bountiful and I spent some time with Maddie. Since we have been gone about 6 or 8 hours a day with Hayes she has been showing some hints of feeling a bit neglected. Yesterday afternoon we were at Walmart and I told her that we were going to go back to her friend's house and then Daddy and I were going to go back up to the hospital to see Hayes. She replied, "Poor Maddie." I said, "Why poor Maddie?" and she said, "Because you're leaving me again." That just about broke my heart! It's so hard to cater to two children, who both need you, when they are in two different places! When I'm at the hospital with Hayes I am feeling guilty and missing Maddie and when I'm home with Maddie I'm feeling guilty and missing Hayes. Luckily, he seems to be making great improvements everyday so we are hoping it won't be much longer before they let us take him home! This has absolutely been the longest 4 days of my life. I thought the days drug on when I was pregnant but that was nothing compared to this!

I'll start the update where I left off. We have dealt with a lot of nurses and respiratory threapists who have been caring for little Hayes and I have to say that so far all of them have been great with our baby and with us. When we first got to Ogden his nurse commented on how feisty Hayes is. We had heard this from the nurses in Logan as well. That might be a little bit of a bad thing later on but for now it's great. The feisty ones are the ones that make it! Hayes was admitted to the NICU in Ogden on Sunday morning and when we arrived Sunday afternoon they had not gotten any more air out of his chest tube. While we were there visiting him we were able to change his diaper. I had done it once before so I told Ben he could go ahead. Hayes gladly initiated Ben by peeing all over the bed. This was a great thing for us because that meant we had to change the bedding (that might be the one and only time I will ever be excited to change a bed full of pee). They broke down his incubator and Ben held up his chest tube and IV while I got to lift him off the bed. This was only the second time I had gotten to hold him. Of course I snuck in a few kisses.

At that point Hayes had been on morphine (because of the pain of his chest tube) since he got there so he was a little sleepy but he was trying really hard to stay awake while we were there.

Monday morning we had the chance to go to rounds with the doctors and nurses. They had quite a few lofty goals for him that day that included getting him off the ventilator, taking his chest tube out, and getting his umbilicus catheder out. We had a lot to accomplish! I hoped my little man would have the strength for it all. We went and visited him and found that he hadn't had any morphine since 10:00 the night before so he was obviously feeling better and seemed much more awake. Here I am giving him some love.

While we were there that morning they went ahead and took some blood gases which looked great so they decided to take him off the ventilator and put him on oxygen through a nasal canula. Here he is after they took the ventilator out!

They took the ventilator out at 10 am and when we left him at 11 am he was still awake. That entire time he just layed there peacefully and stared at us. It was amazing. When we went back Monday afternoon we had a little bit of a scare. The nurse said that the doctor had checked him around noon and decided to keep the chest tube in just a little bit longer because his breathing was a bit labored still. When we went to change his bedding to clean and warmer blankets Ben was able to hold him up and as he did that the respiratory therapist that was changing the bedding noticed some air come out of his chest tube. We thought that either some air had been accumulating and the tube got jostled around while changing his bed and caught the air pocket releasing the air or his pnuemothorax had opened back up. She said since there was now a constant flow of air coming out the chest tube would definitely have to stay in. I was devastated. Hayes was acting very ansy, arching up his back and fussing so I was really worried that the pnuemo had come back and he was in pain. I felt like we were starting all over! After a few minutes of talking with the other nurses the respiratory therapist came back and started inspecting Hayes's chest tube. She felt like maybe his lungs were fine and the chest tube had just been pulled out. The tip of the tube is perforated so if it had slid out of his chest cavity and was just resting under the skin it could be pulling air from the outside causing the constant air flow. They decided to do an x-ray to determine where the chest tube was. Sure enough it had slipped out and was sitting under his skin about half an inch in. No wonder he was so uncomfortable! They went ahead and pulled the chest tube out and he immedietly calmed down. After that whole ordeal we decided to give him an some time to rest so we kept ourselves busy in Ogden for about an hour and a half while he slept. When we got back it was obvious that he was feeling much better. There was a possiblity that would be able to hold him that night but he still had his umbilicus catheder in and we didn't want to risk that coming out since it is placed in an artery so we decided it would be fine to wait. We left him that night excited about all the progress he had made that day and hoping that we would finally get to hold our baby boy in the morning!

I woke up at 3 am on Tuesday morning and called to check on our little man. They had drawn some blood gases at 2 am and they looked great so they went ahead and pulled his umblicus catheder about half way out. They were just waiting a couple hours for it to clot before they pulled it the rest of the way out.

We headed up to the hospital Tuesday morning and were met with more good news. His catheder was gone and his pnuemonia (did I mention he had a little bit of pnuemonia?) was pretty much cleared up. That morning's x-ray showed no free air in his chest cavity but his billirubin levels were slightly elevated. He wasn't actually considered jaundice since his levels were just below the line but they decided to put him under the lights anyway so that it wouldn't get any worse. But before they did that we were able to hold him!!!!!

We tried to feed him but he wasn't quite ready to eat at that point. He was awake for a little while though giving us lots of big smiles. Whoever said that babies don't smile at this age didn't know what he was talking about. Hayes's little face is always lighting up when we go to visit him and when he dreams he smiles a lot! Ben even tickled his little ribs and got a big grin out of him. Through all of this he is certainly a happy little boy. When we left him that morning he was under the bili lights and sucking hard on his pacifier. We went back last night and were able to hold him some more but they didn't want him to be out from under the lights for too long so after about an hour they put him back and we, being exhausted to the max, decided to go home, cater to Maddie who was having a hard night, and let everybody get some much needed rest! Here are a couple more pictures that were taken of him yesterday. He looks just like a boy version of Maddie in her first few days of life.

Last night was very difficult for me. I felt like we had made so much progress on Monday and Tuesday was more like baby steps. We talked to the doctor before we left and he mentioned that now that the critical stuff is resolved we have transitioned into wondering when we take Hayes home. He said that three things need to happen first. 1. He needs to be eating on his own. When he starts eating they will begin lowering his IV based on the amount he ingests orally. Once he is taking full feedings and therefore completely off the IV for two days he will have met that requirement. 2. He needs to be stable in critical functions such as maintaining his weight (he has gained almost 3 oz since he was born so that's not a problem), and body temperature (this has never been a problem even when he is out of the incubator being held). Any infections need to be cleared up (they were going to talk today about getting him off his antibiotics now that his pnuemonia is looking cleared up), and his billirubin levels have to be normal. 3. He has to be breathing on his own without oxygen. He did mentions that if the other two things were taken care of and he was needing just a little help with his breathing they would be comfortable sending him home on oxygen. They are not going to make him get to 115%. If he's at 98% and they know he'll get better they will go ahead and send him home. I asked why if his pnuemothorax was cleared up and if his pnuemonia was gone was he still breathing a bit fast and a bit labored and he said that his lungs have been through so much between inhaling amniotic fluid at birth (which they think is the primary cause of all this) and all the trauma that has happened since that they are probably still a bit inflammed. It will take a little while for that inflammation to go down. When we heard all this it felt, to me, like a lot of obstacles left to overcome.

This morning Ben had to head back up to Logan for school but is coming down after classes. I decided to take the morning off and spend it with Maddie but will be headed back up to the hospital at 4:00 and Ben should get there shortly after that. I called first thing this morning and got a report. I think his nurse is a little weird because when I asked how Hayes was doing she said, "Well....he's doing pretty good." From this response I expected some bad news but she proceeded to tell me that he had been completely off his oxygen for 8 hours through the night and that he had eaten a full ounce this morning! Pretty good?!? That's amazing!!!! They took him off his oxygen at 11:00 last night and it was off until 7:00 this morning when the nurse noticed that his saturation levels were dipping every now and then and he looked like he was struggling to catch his breath. She put him back on the oxygen while she fed him since it's difficult for a newborn with breathing problems to suck, swallow, and breath at the same time. After he ate he was kept on the oxygen but just a teeny, tiny bit. His billirubin levels were back down this morning so they took him out from under the light and she wasn't sure what their plan for his antibiotics were since she hadn't been to rounds yet. So far today we are making great progress! Hopefully he will continue to be hungry and continue to breath well enough that he doesn't need his oxygen. It's just scary because last Saturday night when we left the NICU up in Logan Hayes's dr. was very optimistic and confident that he was getting better. We went to bed that night feeling like things were looking up and then by 4am he was being air lifted to Ogden so when he does well like this I get scared that the next report will be a bad one. Obviously he is feeling better though so hopefully he will continue to progress. The doctor we talked to yesterday felt like he would be able to go home "at the end of the weekend". I take that to be Sunday. He did say though that it's completely up to little Hayes. It could be as early as Thursday or as late as into next week. I'm praying for this weekend!!!!

Like I said, we are headed up to spend a few hours with Hayes this afternoon so I'll know more about how he's doing then. We will take some more pictures and if I remember I'll go ahead and take a little video of him. The pictures sometimes don't do him justice. He's such a sweet and happy little guy!

In other news Maddie has decided that she wants to be a doctor. She was in my hospital room with me all day Friday and Saturday so she got to see a little taste of what the nurses and doctors do. By Saturday night she was taking on the full roll of nurturer. She was playing a game on the computer while I laid in my bed and every 5 minutes or so she would come over to me and ask if I needed anything. What a sweet little girl!

Also, Ben's little sister Chelsea is having a baby today!!! Her water broke at about1:00 this morning. I just talked to Ben's mom and she is doing well. She just got an epidural and is much more comfortable now. We'll have a new nephew by the end of the day!!!! Good luck Chels!

Baby Hayes update

2009-08-23T08:22:00.007-06:00

Thanks to everyone for being so patient. I had planned on posting an update last night but by 8:30 I was exhausted, emotional, and in a lot of pain so I just went to bed. I will do my best to remember where I left off and all the things that have happened in between but at this point the last three days have run together in a seemingly neverending roller coaster of good news, bad news, and overwhelming emotions. Yesterday (Saturday) morning I called down to the NICU to check on Hayes and he was doing well. They had taken him off the ventilator in the middle of the night and put him back on the C-PAP. Dr. Schneider came up to talk to me around 9:30 and let me know that they had done some x-rays and found two pneumothoraces (noom-o-thoracees. pneumothorax is the singular) in his lungs. A pnuemothorax is a little hole that lets out air and fills his chest cavity. At that point they took him off the C-PAP because they didn't want to force air into his lungs as this could do more damage. They put him under a oxygen tent which looked like a little astronaut helmet and decided to let the pneumothorax resolve and heal on it's own. Yesterday morning he was put under the oxygen tent with 40% oxygen and throughout the day they were able to wean him down to 25%. They also took the tube out of his stomach (remember that it was there to suction out any air that got into his tummy as a result of the air being forced into his lungs). Since they weren't forcing air into his lungs anymore there was no need for it to be there. Ben and I went down yesterday afternoon and spent some time with him and he was stable at 25% oxygen for about 30 minutes. Then they went to give him some lipids through his IV and found that his IV had gone bad. The nurse said that they put calcium in with his line and it makes the veins a bit brittle so the IVs don't last very long. At that point he had had the IV once in both hands and once in his scalp. They tried to move it to the other side of his scalp but it didn't take. They then tried to put it in his forehead with the same results. Finally they were able to get it back into his hand. After that they took another x-ray to see if his pneumothorax was looking any better. At that point the x-ray looked really good. There was definitely less air in his lung cavity and his heart had moved back into the right place (when the lung cavity fills with air it puts a lot of pressure on the lungs and heart which not only causes a lot of discomfort but pushes the heart over further than it should be). Dr. Schneider was very optimistic about his condition. He ordered no more blood taken out of his umbilicus, no more x-rays, and a switch from the oxygen tent to the nasal canula. He felt that we could go ahead and start feeding him this morning which meant that we could possibly hold him. We went to bed feeling really good about his condition and excited for this morning. Then around 4:00 this morning I woke up thinking about him and wondering how he was doing. I called down to the NICU to check on him and his nurse put me on hold for a few minutes. When she came back on the phone she said, "Dr. Schneider will be up to talk to you in a few minutes." I knew that if his doctor was there at 4am on a Sunday something had to be wrong." Within 5 minutes Dr. Schneider was in my room explaining that at around 2:00 this morning Hayes had started fussing and they couldn't get him to calm down. They figured he was in some pain so they did a chest x-ray and found that the pneumothorax on his right side had gotten worse and there was quite a bit of air accumulated in his chest cavity. They put a catheder in and suctioned out about 50mL of air. After that he settled down and then again around 4am they noticed that his breathing had become very labored. The did another x-ray and found that his chest cavity had accumulated some more air. They suctioned out another 50mL and decided to air lift him down to McKay Dee hospital in Ogden. He had been collaborating on Hayes's care with Dr. Anderson, the neonatologist in Ogden so he felt comfortable that he would be taken good care of. Also, in Ogden the ventilator is much more gentle on the lungs than the one they have in Logan. He figured Hayes would need another round of surfactant and putting him on the ventilator would be necessary. He wanted to put a chest tube in to relieve the air that accumulated. He called Ben from my hospital room and then headed back down to the NICU to check on Hayes. I called my little brother (who usually goes to bed around 4am) and caught him just as he was dosing off to sleep. I asked him to go to our house and stay with Maddie while Ben came up to the hospital to see Hayes off. I then headed down to the NICU. After about 10 minutes Ben arrived and we both just sat with him while we waited for the life flight team to arrive. When they got there they gave him some fentanyl for pain, then made a small incision on the side of his chest. They took the tip of a pair of hemostats and punctured his pleura then inserted the chest tube. Immedietly his breathing slowed down and was much less labored. After getting him switched over from his bed to an incubator they wheeled him outside as we followed. They put him in the helicopter and he flew away. Sitting there watching our baby fly away in a helicopter was definitely the hardest thing we've had to do. We went back up to my hospital room, sat down on the bed and just cried together for a few minutes. Here are a few pictures from his departure.

Here you can see the chest tube stitched into his chest.

Here he is switched over to the incubator.

This is the incubator they transported him in.

Putting him in the helicopter.

Getting ready for take off.

There he goes.

Immedietly we began making plans to head down to Ogden. My nurse called my doctor to let him know what was going on and he told her to just let me go. We got our stuff together and headed home. We packed a bag and headed, with my mom down to Ogden. On our way down we called the NICU to check on him and were told that he was doing much better. When we got to Ogden (about an hour drive from Logan) we were very reassured. He is doing really well. He is very stable. He is on a ventilator but will be weened off within the next 24 to 48 hours. They did give him another dose of surfactant. He also has a feeding tube going into his nose now and they will try to start feeding him through that either tomorrow morning or this evening. He still has the catheder in his umbilicus so they can draw blood without poking his heel every time and the chest tube is still in place. His temperature is stable, his heart rate is stable, his blood pressure is stable, his oxygen levels are stable and his respiration is down from 100 to about 55 (They don't like it to be above 60). Last night when we talked to Dr. Schneider he said that his capillary refill was pretty slow especially in his lower body. He said that a baby's circulation is different in the uterus than it is outside of the uterus and sometimes, especially if there is stress at the birth it takes a baby's system a little bit longer to switch over. Physiologically his body doesn't want to switch over yet. I checked his capillary refill while we were there and it was a lot faster - probably normal. There is hardly any air coming out of his chest tube at this point. There is some fluid coming out which is completely normal. The nurse said that when there is trauma to the body fluid rushes to the area so that's what is leaking out. The pnuemothorax that was on the left side has resolved just in the 2 1/2 days since his birth and the neonatologist said that it usually takes 2-3 days for them to resolve. I think he is still a little drugged from the fentanyl because he was very, very asleep while we were there. At 8:30 tomorrow morning we are going to what they call "rounds" at the NICU. That happens every morning when all the doctors, nurses, dietecians, respitory therapists, etc. that work with the babies meet together to talk about the babies progress and plan of care. They invite the parents to sit in and ask any questions they have. We are staying with our friends in Bountiful. Ben has to head back up to school but will not do that until Tuesday. Maddie and I are going to stay down here until Hayes in released. Here are a couple pictures I took of him at the NICU in Ogden this afternoon. We are about to head back up there and stay for a few hours so I'll probably update again tomorrow afternoon or evening.

Thank you so much for all your thoughts and prayers. They are definitely being heard and providing us with a lot of much needed comfort. Please keep them coming!

Baby Hayes has arrived!!!!!

2009-08-21T21:33:00.003-06:00

Sorry to all of you who have been checking back for an update on our day. Things have gone a little differently than planned. We started out the morning at 4 am in order to shower and get ready to go to the hospital. We headed up and arrived at 5:30. The first thing I did was change into my hospital gown and a nurse came in to get an IV going. She stuck my left arm (the side of my wrist) with lidocaine and then tried and failed to stick the needle in my arm. Now, I'm not sure about anyone else but I'm pretty sure that when they are sticking your arm or hand it is absolutely pointless to use lidocaine to numb the area first. The lidocaine hurts! You're either going to feel pain from the lidocaine or pain from the IV so....what's the point?! Anyway, like I said, she tried and failed to stick me. She moved down to my left hand, again starting with the lidocaine. Unfortunately, the lidocaine not only hurt but didn't numb my skin so I felt the IV stick as well. Again, she stuck the needle through the vein and had to pull it out. At this point she called in a different nurse to try on my other arm. This nurse didn't use lidocaine (probably because it's pointless!) but as she attempted to stick my arm with the IV needle it wouldn't go in. She exclaimed, "Wow! Either this is a really dull needle or you have really tough skin!" Meanwhile she pushed harder and the needle finally went in at a snail's pace. That one hurt! So 3 sticks later my IV was up and running. After filling out a ton of paperwork the anesthesiologist came in. I told him about my previous experience with Maddie's c-section. For her I had an epidural and for Hayes I had a spinal so I wondered if my reaction would be the same. I told him about the throwing up, the horrible shakes, and the general out-of-it ness (sorry for the lack of eloquence. It's been a long day!)that I experienced with Maddie's c-section and he said that those are all common side effects and that they might happen again. Great. So, all to quickly the two hours of prep time flew by and it was time for my surgery. I was extremely nervous!!!!! They walked Ben and I back to the operating room and while he waited outside I sat myself on the table. As I hunched over the anesthesiologist gave me a shot of lidocaine. He then inserted the spinal needle and the only thing I could feel was a bit of pressure and some bubblyness (it's hard to explain) as he inserted the medication. He then gave me another shot of lidocaine and inserted another spinal needle. This time I felt a lot of pressure and a lot of pinching in my back. I indicated to him that that hurt and he promptly stopped, gave me some more lidocaine (which I barely felt) and inserted another spinal needle. This time I felt just a tiny bit of pressure. At that point he indicated that he was done and that it was a little bit more difficult because my back has a little bit of a curve to it. My anesthesiologist with Maddie said the same thing. By then my feet were starting to tingle and go numb so they laid me down on the table and got me hooked up to whatever monitors I was hooked up to. A few minutes later the lower 3/4 of my body were numb (horrible feeling!) and they began the surgery. By this time Ben had come in and was sitting at my head. I'm not sure what time they started but Ben said that it took about 6 minutes from the time they cut me to the time little Hayes was out. He was born at 7:58 this morning. They briefly showed him to me. Just enough for me to tell that he looked like a plump, healthy baby. Then they took him over to a little table and started doing whatever it is they do over there. They ended up having to give him oxygen because he wasn't breathing very well on his own. They gave him his shots and weighed and measured him. My doctor has talked about a study that was done that showed that between an ultrasound's measurements, the doctor's predictions, and the mother's predictions, the mother's predictions about the baby's size were most often right. I guessed he would weight 7lbs 2oz and he came out to 7lbs 3oz. Pretty cool. He is 19 inches long so he is 1/2 inch shorter and 5oz lighter than Maddie was. As I said in my last post I was expecting to get to hold baby Hayes in the operating room but after being in there for an hour I was all stitched up and they were still administering oxygen to him. They wheeled me to the recovery area which was just a little space right off of the operating room. There they checked my vitals and bleeding. After a few minutes there Ben came out of the operating room holding Hayes and brought him over to me with instructions that I was only to hold him for a minute because he was not breathing well and they needed to check him out some more. I literally held him for about 40 seconds. Just long enough to give him a couple kisses. Ben took him back to the pediatrician and together they took Hayes to the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU). My mom came into recovery with me after a few minutes and thank heavens she did! I was getting so lonely without my husband or baby! After being there for an hour Ben came back (without Hayes) and we all went up to my postpartum room. Hayes wasn't breathing well enough on his own because he had a lot of fluid in his lungs so they put him on a C-PAP which is a device that goes in his nose and forces oxygen into his lungs. They wanted to keep that on him for 4 hours and then see how he was doing. Ben went home and picked up Maddie (my little brother Tom had stayed there with her) and brought her up to the hospital. Because Hayes was in the NICU Maddie wasn't able to hold or see him which she was a bit bummed about. Once Maddie was in the room with me and settled down watching tv Ben went back down to the NICU to check on Hayes. Because he had the tubes in his nose, a tube in his throat (to suck out any air that went into his tummy), and an IV in he wasn't able to hold him but reported that they still didn't know much. The pediatrician (bless his heart! He came in on his day off to care for little Hayes all day) was a bit perplexed as to why this was happening since Hayes is a full term baby. He indicated that they were going to keep him on the monitor and watch him and that we would know more by about 4:00 when they were planning on doing a 2nd set of x-rays to see if the C-PAP had cleared any of the excessive amounts of fluid out of his lungs. Around 2:00 my spinal finally wore off and I was able to get up and go see him. He had so much stuff hooked up to him that I couldn't even see his little face. The C-PAP was stuck up his nose and strapped to his face, he had a hat on, and he was sucking on a huge pacifier. All I could do was hold my little baby's hand as he slept. I haven't cried so much in a long time! After visiting with him for about 30 minutes I headed back up to my room to wait for more news. At 4:30 the pediatrician came in and said that after taking another x-ray it was apparent that Hayes wasn't doing any better. He (his name is Dr. Schneider, by the way) wanted to intubate him and put some surfactnat in his lungs - something the baby should have been producing on his own for the past couple weeks. He also wanted to put a little catheder in an artery in his umbilical cord so that they wouldn't have to keep sticking his little heel everytime they wanted to check him. He felt that from start to finish this would all take a couple hours. So, we waited. Around 7:45 Dr. Schneider finally came in and let us know that everything had gone well. They had just put the surfactant in his lungs and would know within 12 hours if he needed another dose. He said that his blood vessels are very, very small and that this probably prevented him from getting much oxygen the past little while (that would probably explain the inactivity the past few weeks!)I asked if the lack of oxygen could cause problems later, as far as any learning disabilities or anything and he Dr. Schneider said no, that mentally he should be just fine. My mom came up to the hospital to sit with Maddie so that Ben and I could go down to the NICU together. We spent about an hour down there touching and stroking our little baby. He has two tubes down his throat. He is on a ventilator so one of the tubes goes into his lungs. The other tube goes into his stomach and suctions out air that gets pushed down there. It looks as though they cut his umbilical cord as short as it would go then cauterized it. There are stitches in it and I'm thinking that they are just holding the catheder in place. He still has an IV in his hand for antibiotics and other fluids and he has a little sensor wrapped around his foot to meaure his oxygen levels. The nurse stated that he is doing really well. He is very feisty, which she said is bad for her but good for him. The ventilator is only on 25% and room air is considered 21% however, it's not as simple as taking him off the ventilator when he reaches 21%. Dr. Schneider said that they will definitely not go from ventilator to room air. They will put him back on the C-PAP for a little bit before taking him off everything completely. He doesn't want to keep him on the ventilator any longer than absolutely necessary because it can damage the lungs and cause problems, such as asthma, later on. He was planning on doing more blood tests at 10:30 tonight and if the results of that looked good he would go ahead and extubate him. He felt that Hayes would not need another round of surfactnat but that if he did we would know by about 8:00 tomorrow morning. If he extubates him tonight and he ends up needing more surfactant in the morning they would have to intubate him again which he doesn't want to do so that is the only reason that he is a little apprehensive to go ahead and get him off the ventilator. He said he will be back around 9:30 tomorrow morning to let us know what is going on. I'm sure I'll be down in the NICU visiting Hayes before then so I should know a little better how he is doing first thing in the morning. As soon as he is breathing room air they will be able to take the tube out of his stomach and the catheder out of his umbilical cord and we will finally be able to hold our baby. He is on antibiotics right now, just for precaution, so even if his breathing stabelizes he will have to stay in the NICU until he has finished his antibiotics on Sunday afternoon. (Giving birth and then not having a baby to hold just feels wrong!) Ben and Maddie will be back up here as soon as they get up tomorrow. Maddie has been so good! She was here with us in my postpartum room for about 12 hours today and with the exception of a little excitement when my mom came to visit she has been so quiet and kept herself very busy. The poor thing still hasn't even seen her baby brother. She is very anxious to meet him!

Anyway, I think I remembered everything. It has been a very long day. I have been up for about 18 1/2 hours now so I'm going to try to get some rest. Thank you to everyone who has expressed their concern and offered their prayers. I will probably write again tomorrow night to let everyone know how he doing.

P.S. We thought Maddie looked just like Ben when she was born but she had nothing on little Hayes! I think we figured out that Maddie looks a lot like Ben does now but Hayes looks identical to Ben when Ben was a baby. It's a little strange carrying your husband's twin inside you for 9 months. Maybe Hayes will have my toes like Maddie does. We know he definately didn't inherit Ben's flat feet!

Oh, by the way, incase anyone was wondering how I am doing, I am recovering very well so far. I'm in a little pain but that's to be expected after surgery. I have been out of bed now for about 4 1/2 hours. It feels really good to be up and walking around. The nurses are impressed with my mobility but I have to say that my discomfort is the last thing on my mind right now. I was planning on trying to go home Sunday night but Ben and I have decided that it would probably be best for me to stay until Monday afternoon. Hopefully Hayes will be released from the NICU by then. Even if they release him Sunday afternoon we would like to be here as long as we can so that if anything goes wrong we are right here where he will get the best care he can as quickly as he can.

Here are a few pictures from the day. Neither one of us have held him for more than a minute so there are just a few.

Here's Ben all dressed up in his scrubs before we went back for surgery. I think it's funny that he's holding my IV bag.

Here's baby Hayes right after he came out of my belly. His skin was nice and pink but he wasn't breathing very well on his own.

Here's our little man with the least of what he has been hooked up to today.

Thanks again for all of your thoughts and prayers! I'll do my best to keep everyone posted.

August 2009

2009-08-20T14:55:00.014-06:00

So far this month has been filled with anticipation! We have been trying to keep busy the past three weeks as we await the arrival of little Hayes. A couple weeks ago Ben decided that he really, really wanted a new dog. He absolutely hates my dog, Lily, mostly because she absolutely hates him. She is always following him around the house growling and everytime he walks in the door she barks her head off. She bit him for the second time a couple weeks ago and as we talked about getting rid of her =( we also started talking about getting a new dog because we really want the kids to grow up with pets. In the end we decided to keep Lily and, despite my wanting to wait (we are having a baby!!!! And starting school this month!!!! Who has time for a new dog?!?), we went ahead and adopted a 2 year old, female, chocolate lab. I refused to deal with potty training and chewing with an infant to care for at the same time. Sadie has been a wonderful addition to our growing family. She is very sweet and very calm. She is completely potty trained and definitely out of the puppy stage so with Ben taking on the responsibility of taking her out to do her business and Maddie feeding her everyday I hardly even know she is here. She lived previously in a house with a four year old so she is very gentle and tolerant of Maddie. For some reason she is scared to death of boys but never showed any fear of Ben. In fact, I think it's safe to say that she loves Ben the most. She follows him around everywhere he goes! Even if it's just from room to room within the house. And Ben is loving her because he finally has a fishing buddy. He can't wait to take her out on the ice this winter. Here's a picture of our sweet little girl.

With Ben finished with summer class we have had a lot more time to spend fishing and swimming the past few weeks. We took Maddie up Logan canyon to second dam and out to Cutler Resevoir to fish and over to Hyrum to swim. Here's some pictures from our adventures.

This is a picture from our fishing spot at second dam.

Here's Ben fishing with Maddie's little pink princess fishing pole. He really just casts it out for her but it's funny to see him holding it as if he were fishing with it. =)

Here's Maddie fishing at Cutler Resevoir.

"I wanna go home!"

The only catch of the day. Maddie caught a little catfish. As you can see she still thinks that fish bite.

Here's Maddie and Sadie swimming in Hyrum. Sadie loves the water and Maddie thought it was hilarious when Sadie swam by her.

As you can see in this picture Lily hates the water while Sadie jumped in and brought that tennis ball back to shore about 30 times.

About a week and a half ago we had a little bit of a scare with baby Hayes. I had noticed over the weekend that he hadn't been moving as much as he usually does and while I've read that it's normal for babies to slow down their activity level as they get bigger and have less room in your belly I also heard that babies should really continue their level of activity right up until the end but with more rolls and squirms rather than kicks. With this conflicting information I wasn't sure what to do so Monday morning I called my doctor's office. The nurse said to go ahead and do a kick count by drinking something cold and sugary and then laying down on my left side. If he didn't move 6 times within an hour she suggested I go up to the hospital and get checked out. After that hour I had only felt 3 movements so we headed up to the hospital to make sure Hayes wasn't under any kind of stress. They hooked me up to a monitor to track his movements and heart rate. The nurse said that they like to see a lot of accelerations and decelerations in the baby's heart rate and that a straight line, or consistent heart rate, was not good. After about 20 minutes Hayes hadn't moved at all and his heart rate was consistently around 145. The nurse came back with a little contraption to scare the baby. She put it up to my belly and pushed a button that emitted a loud noise into my uterus. She said it was the equivalent of sneaking up behind someone and scaring them. Boy did it scare him! He immedietely jumped and his heart rate shot up to about 180. After two good movements he settled down again and fell back to a constant heart rate of about 150. After 20 minutes of that they decided to try to scare him again. The second time he really didn't care. He didn't move and his heart rate stayed the same. They kept me on the monitor for another 30 minutes and in that time he had 3 good movements on his own and his heart rate had gone up and down with each one so they decided that he must have just been a bit sleepy and I was fine to go home. That night as I layed in bed trying to sleep he decided to practice some acrobatics for about an hour which more than made up for the weekend of sluggishness. Since then he has had some active days and some slow days so we'll see which personality he decides to take on when he gets here!

Since it's been about 16 weeks since I last posted pictures of my belly I figured I should get in one more shot before this baby is born. I've been avoiding the camera a lot since the first thing to get chubby when I gain weight is my face but here I am yesterday at 38 1/2 weeks.

In the past month about 4 or 5 strangers have found out how far along I am and can't believe it. They all said that I look like I have a couple months to go. I don't know about anyone else but I think I look pretty pregnant!

Yesterday we celebrated Maddie's 5th birthday! I can still remember falling completely in love with her the first time I held her and again everyday since. We wanted to make this year extra special since in the years to come her and Hayes will have birthdays so close together and we might not be able to spoil her quite as much as we usually do. We started out the morning by getting her all dressed up in her princess outfit complete with little heels and a crown. She is always asking me if she can put makeup on to which I am always saying no so I thought it would be a good day to let her get all dolled up.

After she was all ready I baked her princess cake, blew up 25 balloons (anyone who has ever been 9 months pregnant knows what a feat that is!), made and hung a banner, and set out her presents.

We were all ready for her party. My mom and step dad (Memaw and Papaw), and one of my little brothers (Uncle Tom) came over to celebrate with us. First she sat in her birthday chair and opened presents.

Sadie and Lily got her a new CD with songs from Disney movies.

Baby Hayes got her a piggy bank so she has somewhere to put her 300 pennies.

Uncle Tom got her a Littlest Pet Shop puzzle

Grandma (Ben's mom) got her a horse to go with her barbies.

She has been talking for a while about wanting to listen to music in her room while she plays so Ben and I got her a CD player.

These next few pictures are Maddie opening the present that her Memaw and Papaw (my mom and step dad) got her. She was a bit confused at first since she pulled out a set of baby doll clothes, then a little pink bear, and then a box with baby doll bibs and diapers. It took her a minute to understand why she was being given baby doll accessories but doesn't have a baby doll.

She finally got to the bottom of the bag and it all clicked. She loves this doll! It really sucks on a bottle, calls her mama, burps, hiccups, cries, laughs, and snores.

"Happy birthday to you!"

After her party Maddie went to play with all her new toys while I cleaned up. For dinner we went to Chili's which is Maddie's favorite resturaunt and we haven't been out to eat since our anniversary in April. She told the waiter it was her birthday and he spoiled her! He brought her 2 blackberry cream sprites, a big chocolate milkshake, and a bunch of cherries for free. She was definitely happy!

After our meal we took her to the movie theater to watch Up. In the end it was a great birthday and I hope she really enjoyed it. She has made our life so worthwhile the past 5 years. I hope she will always know how much we love her!

Now for a preview of what is to come. Tomorrow morning at 5:30 Ben and I will head up to the hospital in preperation for my c-section. I can't believe the day is finally here. It has been almost 32 weeks since we found out that what we thought was impossible was suddenly very possible. The days have, at times flown by and at other times drug on as we have waited for the arrival of our little boy. Overall I have been much more comfortable this pregnancy than I was with Maddie's so while I am absolutely ready to get this baby out of me it also seems like I should be made to suffer just a little bit more before it's really time. Nevertheless, the day is finally here and we are so excited! Well, I have a lot of nervousness mixed in with my excitment and Ben keeps commenting that it doesn't feel real to him yet. Of course not, he hasn't been kicked in the ribs, suffered horrible heartburn and nausea, and been completely unable to get comfortable the past few months. Hopefully my nervousness will go away. I just need to keep my eye on the prize! I remember going through my c-section with Maddie. I threw up twice in the operating room and had horrible shakes from the anesthesia. I was really out of it and hardly remember the surgery at all but the first time I held Maddie and looked into her sweet little face I felt like I could do it all over again. It was more than worth it. If I can just remember that moment and know that it's coming again then maybe I can keep the excitement up and the nervousness down. At any rate, we will arrive at the hospital at 5:30. I'll get changed into a lovely hospital gown, they will start my IV, take blood, monitor the baby, I'll meet with the anesthesiologist, blah, blah, blah. My surgery will start at 7:30 and they anticipate that it will be over by 8:30 or 8:45. Once Hayes is out they will let me hold him for a minute or two while they stitch me back up and then he and Ben will be off to the nursery for his first bath, shots, and footprints. After my surgery they will transfer me to a recovery room where they will check my vital signs once and as long as everything looks good they will bring Ben and Hayes to me for a bit of bonding time. We will be in recovery for about an hour or hour and a half at which time they will transfer us all to a postpartum room and Maddie will be able to come in and meet her new little brother. My doctor has assured me that there is a very good chance I will be able to go home Sunday night so we are hoping for a short hospital stay! I will have the computer at the hospital with me so I will do my best to get some pictures up tomorrow afternoon. I'm sure either I or Ben will do it so check back then!

May and June...and July!

2009-06-25T16:16:00.033-06:00

Wow! What a busy few months we’ve had! I know that I won’t possibly be able to remember everything but I’ll try my best to hit the high points.
The first two weeks of May were filled with homework! Ben and I had finals and thankfully did very well. As soon as our tests were taken we packed up and headed to Arkansas!

The last time we saw Ben’s family was before we moved to Utah last summer so we were all very excited to spend time with them again. We pulled out of our apartment around 8am on Tuesday, May 12th.

We headed out of Logan, down through Ogden, and northeast through Wyoming. Boy was it windy! There were 45+ mile per hour winds through the entire state of Wyoming and Nebraska. We made pretty good time our first day and stopped after 12 hours of driving in Kearney, Nebraska. It was so stinkin humid!!!! We stopped at our motel, got the cat and dog situated (yes, we took both animals with us), had a little snack, and headed to bed. The next morning we got up and ate a yummy breakfast then hit the road a little after 8am. We made excellent time on our second day, beating mapquest by an hour and a half! By Wednesday at 2:30pm we had arrived at our first destination. Ben’s sister Sarah and her husband Eric, welcomed us to their home for the first couple nights of our trip. Our first evening there Sarah made us hamburgers on the grill.

As awful as they look they were honestly the best burgers I’ve ever had! After sitting in a car and eating nothing but junky snacks for two days straight they definitely hit the spot! The next day we all went skeet shooting at Eric’s parent’s house. Maddie designated a pair of pink tenni-shoes her “shootin shoes”, drove Eric’s truck (very slowly on the property), and had a blast pulling the rope to release the skeet.

Eric let Maddie borrow his sling shot so she could try to shoot frogs in the pond but her little arms weren’t quite strong enough to pull the sling shot back. Either way she had a blast. She even found a big rock. For some reason she really likes rocks so she thought it was great!

The next morning we said goodbye to Sarah and Eric, and goodbye to Springfield. We were off to Mountain Home, Arkansas to visit with Ben’s mom! After spending some time with her we headed out to Rea Valley to stay with Ben’s dad, Little Papa, and step mom, Grandma Cookie. The first exciting thing that happened while there was watching Ben shoot a 7 foot black snake. Little Papa went to walk out the front door and just as he got ready to step onto the stairs he let out a "choice word", walked backwards back into the house and shut the door. Both he and Ben ran and got a gun. Little Papa jumped up on the roof of the cab of his truck while Ben took aim from the front steps. A few minutes and 5 bullets later the snake was finally dead.

Maddie had a lot of fun gathering and saving the "snails" from the guns.

The next thing we did was head over to Ben’s other sister’s house. Hannah and Patrick have three kids. Rachel is 8 months older than Maddie and the twin boys, Micah and Matthew, are 8 months younger than Maddie. They had a great time jumping on the trampoline and then we headed down the street to a little pond with lots of ducks! The kids loved seeing the fuzzy little ducklings.

Micah was so funny! He found a stick about twice the size of his own body and began chasing the ducks around with it. When he saw this duck that had been hit by a car he declared, “We need to eat it!” What a funny little kid.

We stayed most of the time at Little Papa and Grandma Cookie's house. There's no tv there so Maddie got a little silly keeping herself entertained. Here she is modeling for us on the back porch.

And here she is helping Ben get ready for some fishing!

Then we headed out for the river! Maddie caught 10 fish that night! She took home the prizes for the first caught, the most caught, the biggest caught, the smallest caught, and the most variety. She even hooked about a 28in trout all by herself. Once she started reeling it in she quickly handed the pole to me because the fish was so strong. As she handed me the fishing pole the fish jumped up out of the water. After holding the rod for 2 seconds I realized that this fish was too big for me to reel up also so I then handed the pole over to Ben. After a big struggle Ben got the fish about a foot away from the boat when the line suddenly snapped. Dangit! Here's some of the other fish that she caught. She was really excited to catch them, not so excited to stand next to them.

We went fishing a couple other times in the two and a half weeks that we were there so here’s a compilation of fishing pictures from our trips on the river.

This is what I got for not putting sunscreen on right away!

Also during our trip Hannah’s husband Patrick brought the kids out to Little Papa and Grandma Cookie's and we had a bonfire dinner down by the pond on the property. Hot dogs, cake, and lots of fire!

Maddie and I also enjoyed spending some shopping time in Branson with Ben's mom and other sister Chelsea while Ben and all the guys went on a 3 day fishing/canoeing/camping trip down the Buffalo River. After a great two and a half weeks it was time to head back to Utah. We left Arkansas on Saturday May 30th at about 8:30am and this time we headed through Oklahoma and into Denver. After being on the road for over 14 hours I was WAY past my limit! My ankles looked like an elephant’s and I was exhausted! We stopped at our motel and went straight to bed. The next morning we got up and headed out, again, around 8am. We finally pulled into our apartment at 5:30 that evening and I was so exhausted that I sat on the couch while Ben unloaded the whole car by himself. What a great husband!

We had one day to rest before going to my youngest brother, Sean’s, high school graduation. We got to see my dad for the first time in almost 3 years!

One highlight of the week after we got home was that Maddie got her first pair of roller blades. She strapped them on and proved to us that she is definitely not quite ready for them!

July has been pretty uneventful. Ben is in school 3 days a week trying to master calculus 2 and doing very well so far. He has 2 class periods left and then his final. I have reached 35 weeks in my pregnancy and have 27 days until my c-section! So close, yet so far. This little guy has definitely outgrown his home! I am constantly shifting in whatever seat I'm trying to sit in. I sleep very sporadically at night and I can't sleep past 8am. I am plagued with more and more heartburn everyday. And boy can he kick! I have yelped out in pain on more than one occassion! He has definitely settled into the head down position and should now be somewhere around 5 lbs. 4 oz. and about 18.5 inches long. All his organs are mature and ready for use. For the next 27 days he'll just be busy putting on weight and probably a little length. At our last doctor appointment we discussed the c-section. My doctor said that we won't find out until 3 days before the surgery what time it will be scheduled for but he knows it will either be 7:30am, 8:45am, or noon. I'm really hoping it's 7:30 since I can't eat after midnight the night before! Until then, we are looking forward to Maddie's 5th birthday on August 19th and just trying to relax and get some good rest before things get crazy!

April!

2009-04-26T20:07:00.024-06:00

Hey everybody! Sorry for the long silence. Things have been pretty busy around here the past couple weeks. We are all settled in to our new apartment…well, with the exception of a few pictures that Ben still hasn’t hung for me. Maybe (hopefully) he’ll get around to it after finals week. Here’s a picture of Maddie posing the day we moved in.

This month was a pretty big month as we had a few different things to celebrate. First, on the 12th, came my 26th birthday and Easter. We headed down to Goshen to spend some time with our surrogate family, The Reaves. Ben grew up with them in Alabama and since we have moved here to Utah we have frequently traveled the two hours south to spend some weekends with them, just like we would do with Ben’s family when we lived in Missouri. We had a great weekend complete with a birthday cake with my name on it (I don’t think I’ve ever had a cake with my name on it), an Easter egg hunt, and of course, lots of yummy food! Here’s a picture of Maddie finding an Easter egg during the hunt.

Two days after we got back from Goshen we went in for my 20 week ultrasound. Our little Hayes looks great! The ultrasound tech did confirm that it’s a boy so that was a relief. From his profile picture she said that he will probably look just like Maddie. I got out her ultrasound pictures and they do look quite similar. I guess we’ll find out when he’s born. If he does look like Maddie, and therefore, like Ben I guess we’ll know who has the dominant genes in this twosome. We almost didn’t get to confirm his gender because for most of the ultrasound he would not uncross his little legs. He also yawned and stuck half of his hand into his mouth! We just can’t wait to meet this little guy! Here’s a couple pictures we got from the ultrasound.

This picture is a profile shot. You can see his spine at the bottom of the picture. That dark thing going into his stomach is his umbilical cord and just below that are his little boy parts.

Then this past Friday we had another doctor appointment. I had previously talked to our doctor about attempting a VBAC (vaginal birth after cesarean – remember that Maddie was breach) but ever since I had made that decision I felt really unsettled about it. I was constantly wondering if I was making the right choice because, unfortunately, there are risks to both a VBAC and a repeat c-section. I just felt very uneasy and unsure. Finally, after A LOT of thought I decided to change my mind. I wanted to have another c-section. Since then I have felt very comfortable, very settled, and overall very peaceful about that decision. So, while we were at the doctor I told him that I had changed my mind. He took note of my due date which was September 4th and then noted that in all 3 of my ultrasounds the baby has been consistently measuring about 6 days ahead so he moved my due date to August 28th. When planning a c-section they schedule it for a week before your due date so we are set to welcome Hayes into the world on August 21st! Since he moved my due date up I am now 22 weeks. Little Hayes is about 11 inches long and weighs in at almost a pound. His fingernails have reached the ends of his fingers. His taste buds are starting to form, and he can clearly hear sounds from outside the womb. And here’s an interesting fact – if born now he would have a chance of surviving. This is what a 22 week old fetus looks like.

And here is a picture of my 22 week belly. I was looking back at the last belly shot I put up – what a difference 6 weeks can make!

Pregnant? (Maybe my chubby pregnancy cheeks give it away)

Pregnant!

So, here in Logan it has snowed a few times in the past week. Yes, snowed (yuck!). However, a couple weeks ago we had a few really nice days. One of those days we decided to go up to First Dam which is a little area of the Logan River at the mouth of Logan Canyon. There were lots of people feeding the ducks and birds, walking their dogs, playing guitars, and even a girl laying out in her bikini (it wasn’t THAT warm!). Maddie and Ben got out a ball and glove and played some catch. She’s still needs a little practice but is definitely getting better! At this point she throws much better than she catches.

This past weekend was our 6 year anniversary. I feel like the past 6 years have gone by so fast but we have also done so much! Certainly making the decision to spend our lives together was the best choice we ever made. This year’s anniversary was pretty uneventful. I really wanted to do something all together as a family because I think Maddie is just one of the many things that we have accomplished in our time together. How could we exclude her from our celebration? Friday night we went out to dinner and then headed to the movie theater to see Monsters vs. Aliens. It was a really cute movie and a really great night. Yesterday, which was our actual anniversary started out pretty quiet until I decided that I really wanted a cat. A couple weeks ago we took Maddie to visit the Humane Society just because we didn’t really have anything else to do. We walked through and saw the dogs but Maddie was much more interested in the cats. There was one there that she particularly liked. He was smaller and younger than the rest which tugged on Maddie’s little heart strings. “Awwww! Did he lose his mommy and daddy?” she asked. I told her that he had and she answered saying, “I can be his mommy!” We left there, much to Maddie’s disappointment, without a new kitty. But we went back yesterday to look again. After looking we found three different cats that we would choose from. We went home to get Lily to see which cat she would get along with the best…or rather, which cat she would not get along with the least. Two of the kitties, including the one that Maddie has wanted, were terrified of Lily and did nothing but hide the entire time. The third kitty just looked at her like she was crazy (which she is). Perfect! He’s a 6 month old orange cat. They picked him up as a stray when he was just 4 months old! Poor little thing! We brought him home last night and he has been amazing! Of course, he has no problem going potty in his litter box. I was sure I would wake up this morning to find slash marks in our leather sofa, or all the dirt dug out of my plants but he was just sleeping soundly behind the couch. He doesn’t let Lily intimidate him, which she tries very hard to do. He is just the right mix of independent and loving. And, the best part, he lets Maddie carry him around everywhere. He’s almost as long as she is so this is quiet an awkward feat! She picks him up under his front legs and he just goes limp in her arms until she puts him down. Even when Maddie gets his little squeaky mouse out to play with him he bats at it without using his claws. We named him Tico after Bon Jovi’s drummer. Here he is hanging out in the living room.

The flash was hurting his eyes.

A few days ago I bought Maddie some sponge curlers. I curled her hair last Halloween and it took an hour! As cute as it is, I (and she) cannot sit for an hour just to curl her hair. Sponge curlers are much easier! The night that we got them she took a bath and I put them in her hair.

The next morning the curls were very tight! But I brushed them out with my fingers and didn’t put any hairspray in them so that they would fall and about half way through the day they looked much better.

Well, that about sums up our April. Ben has finals this week while I still have two weeks of school left. The next exciting thing in our life? Our May trip to Arkansas! Woohoo!

F is for Friend

2009-04-07T13:12:00.005-06:00

The past week has certainly been exciting. After 9 months of living in my parent's basement we finally have an apartment of our own! While we are grateful for my parent's generousity in allowing us to live with them until an apartment opened up in the complex we wanted, our living situation certainly took its toll on everyone. As we were walking through the apartment after getting approved I almost started to cry. Especially when I walked into the kitchen. It will be so nice to have our own kitchen again! Once we got our new keys we went and got a few necessities from the house and then stopped by the grocery store for a couple days worth of food. As we were pulling back in to our apartment Maddie was noting the letters on the buildings. She asked Ben which letter was on our building and he responded, "F. F for Friend." Maddie replied, "Awwww! Because we're in love with each other! All three of us...oh, I mean all four of us." What a perfectly sweet ending to a very exciting day.

In other thoughts...it's amazing how many minute characteristics can be genetic. I often wake up in the middle of the night to find Ben sleeping on his back with his hands under his head as if he's getting ready to do a sit up (in fact, I've even been elbowed in the face a couple times). Maddie is definitely a back sleeper as well and it is not rare that I find her in the morning sleeping with her hands behind her head as well. Who knew that preferred sleeping position could be inherited. Here's the little booger taking after her daddy.

And a close up just because she's so pretty. =)

It's a .......

2009-03-31T22:24:00.005-06:00

Well, you're gonna have to wait a few minutes if you are here to find out what gender our baby is. First, you have to read about Maddie's latest doctor's visit. As I talked about in my last post, Maddie has had an unusual sensitivity to sound lately. I made an appointment with her ear, nose, and throat doctor, Dr. Keyser. He's the one that took her tonsils out last October. We got in there, he looked in her little ears, and said that they looked just fine. He said that very often they get kids her age in there complaining of sensitivity to sound. Some kids even say that very quiet things like the dishwasher hurts their ears (for Maddie it's the toilet flushing). He wanted to check her hearing because there is a chance that she could have what's called hypercusis. That happens when there is nerve damage to the ear and therefore a degree of hearing loss but also an increased sensitivity to some sounds and frequencies. If she didn't do well on the hearing test he would want to look into it further but if she passed he would advise that we wait a year or two and the problem should correct itself. He has never seen a child complaining of sensitivity, pass the hearing test, and come back with worsening symptoms. So, Dr. Keyser took us to Diane who would be doing the hearing test. She put me and Maddie in a tiny, dark booth. She indicated that Maddie should sit in the chair in the middle of the room and I should sit on the stool in the corner. Very helpfully, Maddie went over to the stool, patted its top a few times and said, "right here Mama." She then went over and sat in the big chair. Her feet barely hung down over the edge. Diane put some earphones in her ears and told her that when she heard the little birdies chirp she was to raise her hand as high as she could. Diane then left the booth and sat down at the computer on the other side of the wall. A glass window separated her from Maddie. Of course, I couldn't hear anything but every few seconds Maddie would stretch her arm up as far as possible and smile proudly as Diane said, "good listening!" in her earphones. Towards the end she got a little bored and started clicking her tongue, squeaking her shoes together, and even raised her hand when there was no bird chirping. In the end, she passed with flying colors. All looks well and Maddie is just one of the many kids that experience sound sensitivity for no apparent reason. Here's a picture Ben took of her on his cell phone during the test. She looks a bit stiff because, even though she was not told she had to, she was trying really hard to sit perfectly still.

Okay, now for the exciting part! =) The past few days have been almost unbearable for me. Almost all I could think about was how many more days we would have to wait for our 20 week ultrasound and to find out if we are having a boy or girl. Our ultrasound is scheduled for two weeks from today. The suspense has been killing me! My mom laughs at me because when she was having babies people had to wait 9 months to find out if they were having a boy or a girl. There's no way I could possibly go the entire 9 months! Anyway, as I was laying in bed wide awake around 2:00 this morning I suddenly and completely out of the blue remembered that the last time I was down in the Provo mall they had a little studio where you could go in and get an ultrasound done. I got online and did a little research. The ultrasounds cost about $80 and they'll tell you the gender. I told Ben about it this morning and we headed down this afternoon hoping that today was the day. We found out that we wouldn't have to go all the way down to Provo after all because there is also a studio in one of the malls in Salt Lake. We called on our way down and made an appointment for 6:00. As I said a few posts back I have felt really strongly that this baby is a boy. Maddie has insisted since the beginning that we are having a boy, and poor Ben who has been surrounded by estrogen his entire life, has been hoping for a little boy for years! We recently thought that perhaps we should at least entertain the idea that we could be having a little girl so yesterday we picked out a girl's name. I have also been trying to coax Maddie into accepting the idea that we might have a little girl. We went out to dinner before the appointment and while we were there I asked her what she would think if our baby was a girl. Without hesitation she said, "we should send her back." She absolutely does not want a sister! (Oh, the anticipation!) We went into our appointment this evening and met the guy who would be doing the ultrasound. He was a very nice OBGYN from Europe. I laid down on the table and was amazed at the setup they had in there. The guy had his own monitor, straight in front of me on the wall was my own tv with the same picture, and on the wall in front of Ben and Maddie was their own big widescreen tv. He started the ultrasound and our baby's big head was there on the screens. The baby was all balled up and sleeping soundly. We got a couple profile shots, then heard the heartbeat, and then headed down south to find the boy or girl parts. Right away the Dr. said, "Oh! I see some testicles!" but Ben and I were looking at the same thing he was and didn't see anything even remotely resembling testicles. I was highly doubtful at this point. Like I said the little booger was sleeping soundly in a little ball so the Dr. couldn't get the between the legs, money shot. After a few more tries he started poking and prodding my belly in an attempt to get Baby Friend to move around a bit. That was not received well! The baby got very mad at that point and started thrashing around. It kicked me really hard, many, many times. But, it did the trick. We were all anxiously looking at our screens when suddenly Ben shouted out, "there it is!" The Dr. paused the screen, backed up a couple frames, and da-da-da-daaaaa! The money shot! There on the screen were the testicles that the Dr. had seen and all that goes along with them. It's a boy!! We are all really excited to meet little Hayes McClellan Friend at the end of August. Like I said, we have our official ultrasound on April 14th so look for a confirmation picture of the little boy parts. In the mean time here's a couple pictures we got at today's ultrasound.

Music and the Dentist

2009-03-24T15:34:00.005-06:00

Maddie has still not given up on her dreams of being a rock star. For Christmas Ben and I decided to get her a "Kidz Bopz" CD (for those who don't know, these are CDs full of popular adult songs sung by kids. Adults like them because they have songs that are currently played on the radio and kids like them because they are sung by kids. It's works out great!) I was a bit tired of listening to Disney Princess songs and the ABCs so I went and picked out a CD that had a few songs that I like. Check out this video of our little star singing Rihanna's "Don't Stop the Music".

Ben and I took Maddie to her very first dental appointment today! I told her yesterday that we would be going and even though she's never been to a dentist she was really scared! She didn't want them to use the "sharp thing". After much coaxing she was finally convinced that they would not hurt her, and by this morning she was really excited. We walked in and she immediately ran over to the toys and played while we waited. When it was our turn they took us back and started by taking some x-rays. She complied very well and we were then led over to her chair. Luckily, the fish tank was right there so she was kept busy looking at Nemo and Dory while we waited. While they polished her teeth she got to lay down and watch "Horton Hears a Who" on the tv that was in the ceiling. She loved that! Towards the end she started getting a little antsy but she patiently let the dentist examine her. We took a look at her x-rays which was really weird because you could see her permanent teeth under her baby teeth! Her top front teeth are set to come in very crooked! They are going to come in exactly like mine did actually so she is definitely going to need braces! Poor kid. Here's hoping the next one will get Ben's perfectly straight teeth. In the end we were told she has no cavities and after collecting her prize we walked out. As we were making our way back to the front desk Maddie declared, "Mama. That wasn't so bad." Hopefully, she'll do just as well when we take her back in October! And by then we'll have a new baby in tow! =) Here's our sweet little girl showing off her pearly whites.

15 weeks and counting!

2009-03-14T21:27:00.005-06:00

Maddie, Ben, and I went to our second doctor's appointment yesterday. We took Maddie with us to this one because the more I thought about her role in all of this I realized that she is certainly old enough to understand what is going on. She has really enjoyed knowing all about the baby so far so I decided it would be really fun for her to go with us to our doctor appointments. Hopefully the more she is involved in the pregnancy the smoother the transition will be when the baby gets here! As soon as they took us back they sat me down on a little bench to take my blood pressure. Maddie promptly sat next to me, very lovingly put one hand on my shoulder and the other hand on my arm, and whispered, "it's ok mama. Sit very still." What a sweet little nurturer we have! Now, I had been getting really nervous the week or so before my appointment because I have been feeling so much more normal lately (not constantly nauseous and exhausted) but I wasn't feeling the baby move yet so it was hard to believe that there really is a little nugget in there. It has taken us four and a half years to get this baby so I get a little consumed in thinking that there could be something wrong and maybe I shouldn't get my hopes up. Maybe I need to try concentrating my energy on just being thankful! Anyway, I was DYING to hear the heartbeat! The doctor and nurse walked in together and immediately the doctor started talking to me while the nurse laid me down and lifted my shirt to put the doppler on my belly. As I was answering the doctor's question the heartbeat came through. Quickly the nurse was satisfied and put the doppler away. As we were walking out I had to verify with Ben "we heard the heartbeat right?" He assured me that we had. Maddie confirmed saying "it was too loud!" By the way, I know it's a source of concern if your child is hard of hearing but is it a source of concern if your child has extra sensitive hearing? Maddie is always, always saying things are too loud and covering her ears. The other day she got on the computer to play a game and the volume was up a bit. She suddenly started SCREAMING like she was really hurt. I ran in ready to kiss a pinched finger or a bumped head and found her covering her ears with tears rolling down her cheeks screaming "it's too loud! It hurts my ears!" It was barely louder than an overzealous conversation. And when watching tv she turns it down until it's barely audible (now, that I don't mind so much!). Anyway, anybody know anything about hearing that I don't?!? Okay, back to the baby. So, the doctor and I talked a bit more about VBAC (vaginal birth after cesarean - for those who aren't caught up on birth lingo) vs. c-section and decided that I will attempt a VBAC but if my due date approaches and nothing is happening we will go ahead and schedule a second c-section. For those who aren't aware, I had to have a c-section with Maddie because she was stubbornly breach! After the appointment they took 3 1/2 viles of blood which Maddie was happy to watch and declare that it was gross. We see our doctor again on April 10th and have the much anticipated ultrasound on April 14th! Following is a picture of my 15 week belly and a picture of what our little Friend looks like this week! He (or she) has grown to 4 inches and weighs in at around 2 ounces. Oh! That reminds me! We weighed Maddie at the doctor's office today. For the past two years or so she has consistently grown taller but consistently stayed the same weight....until now. She has gone from 35 pounds to 33 pounds. Yes, people she has LOST weight! What the heck?!? Shouldn't she be gaining weight? I was curious to see how tall she was so Ben got out the measuring tape and she is a 3 feet and 4.75 inches. According to two different height predictors she will grow to be whopping 5'3".

Crazy little thing called Maddie

2009-03-09T20:14:00.003-06:00

I have found recently that when I stop concentrating on my life's discomforts it's a lot easier to see the good things in life, including how crazy our funny little Maddie is. While walking through Wal-mart today she suddenly said, "Mama, should I be a rock star? I won't be shy." I replied, "If you want to." She then very logically pointed out, "Well, you better get me some rock star clothes so I can rock and roll!" Pretty outstanding coming from a little girl with such stranger anxiety. Later this evening we were talking about the baby. Maddie, despite her preference of having a sister, has always been insistent that this baby is a boy. She leans in putting her ear to my belly and says "what baby boy?" and after a few seconds starts laughing as if the baby just said something hysterical. We asked her what she thought the name should be if it is a boy and, after thinking for a bit, said, "Conner." We're a bit unsure where she got that since we don't know anybody named Conner. We then asked what she thought the name should be if it's a girl and she said, "But it's a boy!" After a bit of coaxing she conceded and told us we should name her "Girly Girl." I personally think that's an excellent name. Girly Girl Friend. Perfect!

Showing our age

2009-02-25T21:31:00.002-07:00

Last night Maddie was playing in her playroom when she came out and said, "I need some music!" Ben pulled up AOL music on his phone (for those who don't know it is comparable to having xm or sirius radio. You pick a genre - in this case Ben picked the kids station - and they continuously play songs). She graciously took the phone and disappeared back into her playroom. This evening she was again playing and asked Ben if he could turn on "the Spongebob song". He tried to explain to her that he doesn't actually have the music on his phone and that she wouldn't be able to hear it again. She wasn't quite getting it so I said, "You can't hear it right now because it's not on daddy's phone it was on the radio." With that her little wheels began to turn, she put her pointer finger to her chin, and thoughtfully said, "hmmmm." She obviously has no idea what a radio is.

Little bunny

2009-02-23T16:29:00.003-07:00

About a week ago I was rummaging through some boxes and found a few old Halloween costumes that belonged to my brothers and I when we were little. The one that I wore was a little bunny outfit. I put Maddie in it and she transformed into a "hopping bunny" for the rest of the night. Here she is in action.

Make a Smilebox slideshow

Bun in the oven!

2009-02-13T19:03:00.005-07:00

Hi everybody! I’m sure all of you know at this point that Ben, Maddie, and I are expecting a new addition to our little family! Surprise! (At least it was to us) We have been trying to get pregnant for a few years now with absolutely no success. Recently there came a time when we just gave up. We figured sometime soon (probably later this year) we would start the adoption process and then have another one of our own when Ben is done with school and we would have the money to go to a doctor and try to figure out exactly what is wrong. That was the plan until I woke up at 4am on January 12th and threw up. I knew it wasn’t something I had eaten because there was no food in my stomach. I got really mad because I thought I had the flu and I had just gotten over being really sick. I managed to finally go back to sleep and when I woke up the next morning I felt a bit better. When I realized I wasn’t going to throw up again I decided it couldn’t be the flu and that I had better take a pregnancy test. As I lay on my bed waiting the 3 minutes for the results to show up I thought back over the past few years and contemplated how I would feel if I saw two lines instead of just one.

A few months ago I had definitely succumb to the idea that I may never be pregnant again which was certainly a source of sadness. I don’t know how many times I’ve cried just looking at a baby! Eventually I convinced myself ( in order to block out the sadness) that it was so much easier having just one child. I get to spoil Maddie and spend as much time with her as I want, it’s easy to just pick up and go to a movie or go out to dinner, and I don’t have to feed her or change her diaper. She’s so simple! Even laying there waiting for the test my mind was racing in an effort to prepare myself for a negative result. If somehow I could want the test to be negative then it would be a relief rather than a let down. “I really don’t want to have morning sickness all the time! I need to lose weight before I get pregnant again! I’m working a little bit to help Ben get through school and I don’t want to work with a newborn at home so that would put more pressure on Ben. I’m trying to go to school at this point in my life and a new baby would definitely interrupt those plans!”

Despite my talents at convincing myself that I don’t want something that I actually do want, I was ecstatic when I went into the bathroom and saw two lines instead of one. My entire body started shaking. I was hyperventilating. I was crying. I was a mess! I literally sprinted upstairs, burst into my mom’s room, woke her up, handed her the stick and asked her to confirm that I wasn’t seeing things. The first few days brought utter shock and disbelief, but in the past weeks those emotions have changed to complete excitement.
I went to my first doctor’s appointment today where they did an ultrasound. The baby was jumping around like crazy and even waved at us!

For some reason I really feel like it’s a boy this time but we won’t find out for sure until mid April. The baby’s measurements put me at 12 weeks so we are expecting our little bundle of joy sometime in late August or early September. As of right now this is what he looks like

That little thing is snuggled up in my 12 week belly.

We’ll keep everyone posted as the baby and my belly continue to grow!