The Scoop

Books vs. Ebooks

2011-12-28T22:11:00.001-08:00

I posted this on facebook earlier, so sorry for the repeat. Just looking for more input before my 14 days of ability to return for a refund expire.So I got a kindle for Christmas and after a few days of using it I am considering returning it. Here are my thoughts on the matter. Am I missing something here? Aren't ebooks supposed to be better? Are they? I like it because:1. It is kind of exciting - a whole world of books/magazines is at my fingertips and downloadable anywhere in the house or anyplace with Wifi at any time within seconds (seriously - 5 seconds or less!)2. It is convenient to only have one "book" to carry around.3. I can read in the dark (accomplish-able with just a reading light, of course)4. The classics, for the most part, are free.5. Most books are cheaper than buying retail/new.6. I can get new books whenever I want (ie. Once we had to drive 25 minutes out of our way just to get a book we wanted to read on the road. We were lucky they had it!)7. It holds my place in a bunch of different books without me needing to use a book mark or deface the book.8. It will stay "open" on a treadmill, unlike hard copies of books. I don't feel like it is worth the money because:1. I cannot see the setup of the book the way it is because all the pages are formatted for kindle. For instance, when I am reading Ivanhoe I cannot see where the footnotes go to because they are not necessarily differentiated from the rest of the text. Chapters start in the middle of the "page" and I can't necessarily tell what sections there are (ie. Introduction, Prologue, etc, which may or may not be an essential part of the text) and how they fit in or who they are written by, thus making it harder for me to determine whether or not to read them or from what point of view they are told, or if they are truthful or fiction!)2. Suppose I just want to finish my chapter (often the case) - I have to flip through all the pages until the next chapter (which starts in the middle of a page) to see how far I have to go, and my place is not held while I do so. So I have to remember where I am in the book while I go searching around. Sometimes I like to look ahead in the book too, just to see what is coming - does anyone else do this?? If I am holding a physical copy of the book, I just hold my page with a finger.3. There is just something about being able to flip through a book and tell how far you have read etc that is just impossible with a kindle. I mean, they have a little percentage on the bottom that will tell how far, but it is not the same as being able to feel it. Plus, they include all the pages in the book in their page count, not just the content of the book that I would actually end up reading (they include the notes and intros and everything, which does not make it a very good indicator of where you really are in your reading).4. I would love for our kids to be in a reading mood and just go to our little home library and pick out a quality book. I am not sure how likely that is, and obviously it will be awhile before they start reading my kind of books, but in order for this to be a possibility, we have to physically have the books, not just digitally. Now, at least with the Nook I believe, you could share digital copies of the book. But that is not the same as being able to see how big a book is and read the back and see what kind of vocabulary level it is etc.5. I am nervous about using it in the bathroom, kitchen, near the pool, etc for obvious reasons.6. For some reason, perhaps intangible, I am finding it harder to "get into" the books I have got than I think it would be if I had a physical copy. I often read books that I think are page-turners that don't start out that way.7. I could continue checking out books at the library or buying them used on amazon for less than the kindle copy. Please tell me what you guys think!

Walking

2011-12-07T19:37:00.001-08:00

It is only fitting that the day after I finished my "running" post, Boo would...LEARN HOW TO WALK!!!!!!! I can't even believe I am typing this. I have dreamed of this day for so long, both literally and figuratively speaking (for those who know my kinds of dreams!). I have so much to do right now, since I have spent the bulk of my day either helping him to start walking (he needs help starting out and then he takes it from there) or announcing the good news, so I do not have time to tell the whole story. We will just say this - THANK YOU to our Shriner's hospital physical therapist, for now our little speed-crawler who, prior to this day had never in his life taken an independent step, has taken a record of 28 consecutive independent steps without stopping. Even our PT didn't expect this! (Today was the first day we saw him). That's all for now. Hopefully I can capture this on video soon.

Running

2011-12-06T09:07:00.000-08:00

So this year was a big one for me, exercise-ically speaking. I have taken up running! Again. Ever since my mission (2004) I have run off and on and enjoyed it. I started running again in Feb of this year for the first time since CeeCee was born. My goal was to run a half marathon by the end of the summer. Luckily, I have a great neighbor down the street who also happens to be a personal trainer and who also happened to be in need of a running partner. We ran together, starting short and slow, in the mornings in February, March, and most of April. Then we had to part ways as things began coming up in our lives such that we could not consistently run together.

Sometime between February and April, I somehow was convinced, albeit not wholeheartedly, that I could actually run a FULL marathon. Crazy? Yes, I think so. I mean, I was always the last person to finish the mile run in middle and high school, walking most of the way because I could not breathe, with 20 minutes being a good time for me. I have struggled with sports-induced asthma basically my whole life, and I have sometimes needed an inhaler, or struggled big time without one. I always thought there must be something wrong with people who run. What is chasing them? Plus, I didn't really know any runners growing up - running wasn't a big activity in my hometown.

On my mission, out of necessity (due to my companion being an avid runner who, of course, needed me to be with her while she ran every morning), I came up with breathing exercises that made running for more than a minute or two possible for me. They still work for me now, even though I don't usually need to use them anymore.

Long story short, I started training for, not a half marathon as I had originally planned, but a full - 26.2 miles. After my personal trainer friend and I stopped running together, I found a marathon training plan on the internet and decided to go for it, but without my whole heart and soul. At one point, after an extremely exhausting 14 mile Saturday run, S asked if I really thought I could run 26.2 miles, since I had so much trouble with 14. I told him, no, at that point I did not think I could run 26.2 miles - that is why I was training. Silly S. Essentially, I just stuck to the plan like glue until I got within about 5-6 weeks of finishing, and then I figured that I needed to sign up for one - of course, by then I had to pay a late registration fee, but I didn't want to pay at all until I knew I could do it!

The week before my marathon, I decided to take the kids to the finish line of another marathon nearby and cheer for the runners (even though we didn't know any). All runners know how nice it is to have even strangers cheering for them. Anyway, it's way silly I know, but it was definitely an emotional experience watching all the people cross the finish line and accomplish such a lofty goal. I was there at around the time I figured it would take me to finish, and I was pleased to discover there were still many people finishing at that time. I knew I would finish, but I had been worried about possibly being the last. Of course, finishing last was still a possibility, since the marathon I signed up for had about 1/10 of the runners that the marathon I watched did. But I didn't mind finishing last anyway, I just wanted to finish, and preferably within my time goal.

Can I tell you that my first marathon was one of the greatest experiences of my life? I chose seriously one of the most beautiful marathons I could have chosen (email me if you are interested) and at the end of July, I ran it! I felt totally great for the first half, and I even ran faster than the pace I expected (I had not been accurately timing myself during training, but my trainer/friend lent me her Garmin watch for the marathon). In fact, I felt great for the first 20 miles. Then I started to slow down a little, about 1 min/mile slower. I still felt great though. At mile 23, the farthest I had run during training, I felt pretty good, but about a half a mile later I really started slowing down. Like 1-2 min/miles slower. I was able to pick up the pace a little bit around mile 25, and a little bit more around mile 26, but I definitely crossed the finish line quite a bit slower than I was running at mile 20. But I finished! 42nd out of 65!

S was volunteering at the finish line and my trainer/friend, who had run most of the last half along with me, ran ahead and took some pictures of me crossing the finish line. Ultimately, I have only two pictures of the whole thing, but I am glad to have even those because we had a lost camera scare which I am glad to forget. :) It is a beautiful thing to discover that my body is capable of doing so much more than I ever imagined!

The marathon recovery period lasted from Saturday to the following Tuesday, after which I would never have known that I ran a marathon by the way I felt. In fact, just hours after running a marathon, I found myself at home with my husband, children, brother, and sister, with all of the adults sleeping but me, leaving me with my sore little body to chase the babies around. That night, we went to a tourist site about an hour away and walked around. I was pretty tired, but, again, surprised and thrilled that my body was handling all of this.

Now, nearly 5 months later, it all seems like a dream. Isn't life just like that? I still look at people who have run marathons and think they must be crazy - only now I am one of them! Ha. Here are my only two pictures:

Some Cute Things

2011-07-17T21:57:00.001-07:00

To preface: I have misplaced my USB cords, so no pictures this time. Sorry!

CeeCee and Boo have been so cute lately. Not that they haven't always been cute, of course. They never cease to amaze me with their latest and greatest accomplishments of magnitudes great and small. Here is a list, in no particular order:

1. CeeCee's place - Lately I have noticed CeeCee's frequent appearances in a special place in our house. Right next to the sliding glass door, which is on the south end of our house, is a vent. Being that we have a little one (Boo) who, historically, has not expressed discomfort with extremes in temperature, we have our air conditioner set at a comfortable 70 degrees all summer long. Therefore, our vents have cool air blowing through them more often than not, or so it would seem. CeeCee has found one of the unique spots in our house where she can sit on a vent, having the wind blowing through her hair, and get blasted by the sun next to a window that spans the height of floor to ceiling. It is quite the spot. The only thing I can ascertain from this is that she must share my love for the sensation of being hot and cold simultaneously. One time I was standing there, inadvertently of course, and she became quite distraught until I left "her place" so she could go there.

2. Boo and ice cream - This is a long story. I will try to be brief. Boo has made extremely slow progress in feeding therapy ever since we restarted towards the end of last year. Don't get me wrong - progress is progress! But it has been very slow. Most recently (prior to the last month or so), the most progress we have made toward our final (quite distant) goal of Boo being an oral feeder, is having him play with food at the table while we eat. Not much, but more than what he has done in the past! Anyway, the therapist and I recently decided, thanks to his success in coming to enjoy horseback riding as well as dance class, that we can push a little harder. So we decided to start bringing things to his mouth. This was upsetting to him at first, but as with so many other things recently, he got over it after a few times. He still resists by fighting with his arms, but he knows he is expected to "kiss" each piece of his food after every meal and he will even do it himself sometimes. The best part is that the last few days I have been able to give him miniscule amounts of ice cream and pudding in his mouth and he didn't cry, in fact he was laughing - it has been a fun game for him! I think things are looking up, even though we still have an extremely long feeding battle ahead of us. :)

3. Climbing the stairs together - Often if Boo notices that CeeCee is following him he will wait for her so they can climb the stairs together. I love to see their little heads pop up at the same time. She is getting pretty fast at crawling, but is still no match for our speedy man Boo!

4. Monkey bars at dance class - Boo attends a little dance class on Saturdays called "Dancers with Disabilities". He is not the only boy, in case you wondered. I would never have thought of or considered putting him in a dance class, except that his personality is BEGGING for structure, which leaves me to seek diligently after any kind of class he can join which will meet his structural needs. (Did I mention that we/Boo can't wait for school to start again?) And so we have dance class, which has actually been quite fun. Except for the "Monkey Bars" part (really a ballet barre). He cries and cries when the children, all aged 3-6 years, must pretend to be monkeys and sit on the bar and fall asleep and wake up to the music. It is really horrible, I assure you. Anyway, this past Saturday I had to bring CeeCee along, which is usually not a good thing when I have to focus on Boo. But such is life, and along she came. One of the students there was willing to hold her for me and she got to somewhat participate in the class, which was so much fun for her. When we got to the Monkey Bars part, Boo started in and had already cried a few elephant tears by the time he got seated. Then CeeCee (brought by the student) came to sit by him and suddenly everything was OK! He leaned over to give CeeCee a forehead kiss (which she does now too, by the way!) and then they were both happy for the rest of the Monkey Bar part.

As a side note: I don't think anyone around me at the time could have witnessed this miracle, but I call it a miracle because that is totally how I would describe their relationship right now - miraculous. CeeCee seems to have a stabilizing effect on Boo that S and I don't necessarily have. I am so glad we decided to have her because she has been such an influence for good in Boo's life - things are happier, particularly for Boo, when she is near. All I can say is, far from being an extra burden (as I once feared another baby would be), CeeCee has HELPED Boo in ways I could not have foreseen and she is a huge blessing in all of our lives. It is a pleasure to raise her.

5. Boo and his blankets - Boo is so funny when he goes to bed. I "sneeze" his blankets onto him to make him laugh, and he proceeds to wiggle his body back and forth and use his arms to tuck his blankets underneath him on both sides. Maybe you can picture this? It is super cute, and it is a nightly occurrence.

6. CeeCee's feeding antics - My sister, H, recently put together and into words something I have long noticed about CeeCee when we give her her bottle. She LOVES to play with hair - even short hair like S's - and if you turn your head or lift it up so she cannot reach it, she will push your head, not so gently, back into her preferred position so she can play with your hair. Such a funny little girl.

7. Falling into the laundry basket - CeeCee LOVES laundry. Which is good, since it frequently appears in our family room, waiting for me to get around to it! More than once, CeeCee has fallen into the laundry basket headfirst, while trying to pick up some desirable item of clothing. It is too funny to see that little bum in the air, body folded almost completely in half, all to acquire some piece of laundry. I have not yet taken a picture of this, as my camera has always been too far away for me to justify leaving her like that long enough to go get it. One of these times though!

8. Sitting and laying on the coffee table - We recently made a trip to my parents' house and Boo quickly discovered the height of their coffee table to be optimal for scaling. He climbed right on top! Now mind you, he has never climbed on top of anything. I have always assumed he lacks the upper body strength, which I still think he does, but now I know that the height of all our furniture is also a factor in the equation. He got really fast at it too, so we would turn around for a second while he was laying on the floor and turn back to discover him sitting on top of the table "rolling a ball in his fingers". This was a particularly enjoyable aspect of the vacation for him, and he did it often while we were there.

9. Sleep training - It is, perhaps, too early to call CeeCee "sleep-trained". It has now been five days - 10 minutes of crying the first night, 3 the second, 1 the third, less than 1 the fourth, and now 3 on the fifth. Trained? I don't know. But I am really happy with how it has been going, compared with how it HAD been going! She has always slept through the night though (except on vacation...) since she was only a few weeks old. I think I am blessed. :)

10. Bathtub imitation - Recently, Boo has learned some tricks from CeeCee. Notably, crawling in the bathtub and standing up in the bathtub. Not that he couldn't have done these things before, he just hadn't considered it. Now that the idea has been introduced to him, he does it too. I enjoy seeing those two learn from each other.

11. Dishwasher and piano - would you believe that the babies come running (crawl-running) the second the dishwasher is opened or the piano is played? They do. CeeCee loves to climb into the dishwasher and Boo loves to throw things inside of it. As far as the piano goes, they both love to play (Boo plays individual keys and CeeCee bangs), and they also both want me to surrender the bench, the books, and the keyboard. So if ever I start, I soon have to stop. And, as always, they hate the flute. So we don't even go there except on extremely rare occasions during which I must be willing to tolerate my babies in hysterics.

So glad to be the Mama to such super cute and fun kids!

First and Last Day of Preschool

2011-05-20T08:27:00.000-07:00

OK, pictures first. For some reason, when I post pictures lately, I don't see them on my draft, I see the html version. And since I have no idea where one "picture" ends and the next begins, I will just have them all at the beginning in a big clump. Anyone know how to fix this?

Contrary to what the title of this post suggests, Boo's first and last day of preschool were not on the same day. The pictures from his first day are the ones with his short sleeved shirt. The red sweatshirt is from his last day (yesterday). He was in preschool for a total of three weeks, one of which he was out sick.

Boo loved preschool. I don't know what I am going to do this summer to keep him entertained! He loves structure, and so do I for that matter, but I am not good at providing it. Especially now that I have two children, and CeeCee is entirely unpredictable.

Boo attended preschool (and will attend in the fall also) at our local elementary school in a special needs classroom. It so happens that all the children in his class had genetic syndromes, as he also likely has. Some of the children could walk, some were in wheelchairs. I don't think any of them talked, but they all seemed to have a few signs. Super cute kids. They attended from 12:30-3pm Monday through Thursday. In class, Boo loved to play with two little girls, A and I. They were the two who walked. Boo, of course, walked in his walker or crawled or back-scooted.

On the last day, his teacher threw a little party for family members. We congratulated the graduates (most of the kids in his class were 5 and heading to kindergarten in the fall) and everyone got an award. Boo got the award for "Best Ball Player". He loves balls. Apparently he was never happier for them than when he was in the ball pit. He and the little girls would throw balls at each other and laugh. His teacher also talked about how one day they had a school assembly to watch the dancers from a nearby university. Boo walked all the way to the auditorium, amongst all the other children in the hallway no less. And he paid attention for the entire 45 minute assembly, after which he walked back to his classroom (on the other end of the school). No wonder he gets so excited when I tell him he's going to school!

Admittedly, the pictures are nothing to brag about. It is hard to take pictures with a grabby baby in your arms. Speaking of grabby, CeeCee was not very attentive during the end-of-the-year party slideshow. She kept grabbing a balloon from the girl standing next to us (a little sister of a boy in Boo's class). Then she started grabbing her hair! CeeCee! All the students had to sit in the front row in their special seats for the entire party, which most of them were not thrilled with, since their parents were sitting right behind them and they wanted to sit on laps! Boo did pretty good, but he kept reaching back to me and signing "all done". He did not cry though. CeeCee did that for him. :) Boo did a good job of clapping at appropriate times and then he was very excited to leave at the end of it all. Of course, neither of my children are into snacks, and I am still trying to lose/maintain weight, so we skipped the snacks, thanked the teachers, and were the first ones out of there.

It has been sure wild to send our baby boy to school! I never cried, and neither did he, but we sure missed him at home. He was mainly happy all day every day at school, just like at home. It is especially strange to not see what he is doing and not get much by way of a report at the end of the day. I mean, I would pick him up (all the other kids are bussed, since they live far away) and the teacher would say a few things, but not much. Just "He had a good day. He sure loves balls." - that sort of report. Much different from Early Intervention and private therapy and all the medical reports I get. Oh well. I suppose this is the same for every parent. I mean, I don't remember my mom talking to my teachers at the end of every day. Mainly just Parent-Teacher Conferences I think. It is an interesting transition for us. Now we get the whole summer to have fun - riding horses, swimming lessons (maybe...), and dance class. And some trips and walks and maybe even camping this year, since Boo is off oxygen! And hopefully a little structure in there too, so Boo and I do not go crazy. :)

As Heard From the Mouth of S

2011-02-18T16:26:00.001-08:00

"What if I'm in a car crash and I become a vegetarian?"
-said in all seriousness while discussing life insurance/estate planning

Dear Dishwasher

2011-02-10T19:14:00.000-08:00

Dear Dishwasher,
I love having you in our family. You make my life easier and allow me to spend valuable time doing other things besides dishes, dishes, dishes. I even appreciate the fact that you are now taking your own initiative in turning yourself on and off and judging for yourself whether the dishes inside of you need the "heated dry" option or not. But the fact of the matter is: you have a thing or two (or six) to learn before you start making those kinds of judgment calls. Let me tell you how it is.
1. Washing the dishes does absolutely no good if there is no soap in the dispenser. No good. Even if you run the cycle four times a day. No good. And who puts the soap in? Me. After I put the soap in, THEN you can run a cycle. Once.
2. The dishes always need to be dried. Always. If not, I am really not saving any valuable time by putting you to use, since I pretty much wash everything before I put it in, and if you do not use "heated dry", then I have to dry everything when I take it out. Do you see how this leaves you as an unnecessary step in the process?
3. I really would have liked a warm shower the other night. Much more than I liked rinsed and re-rinsed dishes. Just sayin'.
4. When I accidentally bump into you (thus closing the door that was intentionally propped open to save the dishes from yet another unwarranted cycle), it is not your cue to spray water all over the dishes again! Please!
5. I know we have hard water, and I hope someday we will have soft water, but I always buy that really expensive Dishwasher Magic and Lemi Shine just for you! And it is wasted when you continually rinse the dishes without drying them. This could mean your demise, you know.
6. Speaking of expense, heating up all that water is not cheap ya know!
In short, if you do not kindly comply with my wishes (as indicated by the buttons I push) rather than doing your own thing, you could be replaced! And soon! At the very least, expect a visit from a local Maytag serviceman in the near future.
Love,
Your Owner

Christmas Thoughts

2010-12-05T20:53:00.000-08:00

On Saturday we had a ward (church) Christmas party/breakfast. I got up early, thinking I would get a bunch of stuff done (which I did!), the kids woke up around 7:30 at the same time (like they always do), and S took care of them while I went grocery shopping. When I got back from the grocery store, the party had already been going on for five minutes and S had done only a few of the multitudinous "getting ready" things with the kids. I wasn't too set on going to the party in the first place, especially not late, but since S really wanted to go, we hurried and got the kids and ourselves ready and got there 45 minutes late. (Sheesh!)

We brought Boo's walker along with us, since we have discovered that our home was not designed for kids learning how to walk (too many levels and stairs) and the church is only one level with lots of walking space. When we walked in the door, we put Boo in his walker and he immediately took off. We steered him in the direction of the party, only to discover that we were entering through a door at the front of the party instead of the back (which I had hoped for). The place was packed and we entered right in the middle of a piano performance (Sorry!!!). Needless to say, it was a "grand entrance" that I would never have intended!

Boo didn't notice that anything was amiss. He walked right in in his walker and smiled at everyone he passed. Every now and again I had to steer him away from people's legs and such as he plowed right through the crowd of tables and people sitting at them. Being discreet was not an option at this point. After all, this was a crowd of people who have been fasting and praying for him ever since he was born. Tons of people commented to us about how cute he is in his walker (Agreed!), how good he is at it, how impressed they were at his walking (especially when he had only had the walker for four days), how much it warms their hearts to see him out and especially walking (since we have mainly stayed in the house or the hospital his whole life), etc. Some people teared up when they saw him, and the bishop shared the experience in his testimony today. We had him walk around the church a ton, and he mostly stayed out of everyone's way (except when they were trying to put the tables away when it was over and he kept wanting to close the closet doors for them! Boo and his doors...). He did great and he smiled the whole time.

Later that day, we S and I were talking about comments we had received, and it occurred to me that Boo is kind of like everyone's Tiny Tim. Honestly, I can't think of any dissimilarities except that Tiny Tim talks and eats... :) We happened to watch Muppet Christmas Carol that day as well, coincidentally. At one point in the movie, Mrs. Cratchit asks Bob how Tiny Tim did at church that day. I should probably go look up an exact quote, but I am afraid if I go upstairs to look for it I will wake up Cee-Cee - bad idea at this point! - but essentially he said the following:
Tiny Tim did good at church. He was happy. He said that he hoped that the people at church would see him and that he was happy and that they would remember at Christmas time that the Savior made the blind man see and the lame man walk.

This touched my heart! Boo is our little miracle baby. He is living, breathing proof that God answers prayers, that miracles do happen, that life is good, and so many other things I cannot enumerate. How blessed we are to have him in our family as a constant reminder. How grateful I am for the Savior who DID live, DID heal the sick, make the blind man see, make the lame man walk, and perform many other miracles. How grateful I am for the same Savior, Jesus Christ, who DOES live still, who WILL come again, who LOVES us, and who WILL one day heal us all of all things that ail us, physical as well as emotional. Like Tiny Tim, I hope that people who see Boo will remember the Savior and all that He has done and will do for each of us.

I might post again before Christmas, but I might not. You never know around here just what I am going to get done in any given day. May you all have a Merry Christmas and enjoy the wonderful spirit that accompanies this season!

Boo in his Walker

2010-12-04T14:46:00.000-08:00

Boo got this walker four days ago. Here is what he has been up to.

Five Random Thoughts

2010-11-30T20:55:00.000-08:00

1. My key to weight loss: Chewing gum.
2. My new goal to make my house cleaner (In no way should this be construed to mean CLEAN. CleanER.): Do a minimum of one chore per day. That is, above and beyond what is necessary to sustain my sanity.
3. In the past few days, I think I have heard both of my children say "Mama". I know that neither of them is yet cognitively aware enough to derive meaning out of these two sweetest of syllables, but it is still gratifying and exciting and fun and heart-melting to hear them. Of course, I could just be imagining things. But still...
4. You should have seen little Boo in his walker for the first time ever today in Physical Therapy! Holy Run-for-your-lives - Here he comes! He is also starting to kneel without kneeling against anything.
5. A note on my children's relationship: Boo is so funny with Cee-Cee - he always wants to be wherever she is (or wherever I am, depending on his mood - he even follows me all the way up the stairs!). He "gives" her many kisses (aka he puts his head on her head/torso for HER to give HIM a kiss while I make a kissing sound) and he loves to just be near her and touch her clothes and the top of her head. He is very interested in her toys and the things she is interested in. They also both feel a great deal of empathy one towards another, as when one cries the other is quick to join! They are so stinkin cute.

My Babies - The Latest

2010-11-05T09:07:00.000-07:00

Boo:

Laughs so hard at so many things, including CeeCee
Sleeps like a champ at night (12+ hours)
Great traveler and shopping partner
Blows kisses from his eye
Crawls backwards super fast (and forwards, for that matter)
Signs "more" and "help", usually in succession
"Washes his hands" when we use Germ-X
Comes to visit and climb up on us when he wants to be played with or needs a little attention
Does tummy time with CeeCee (they face each other)
Colors pictures and then throws the crayons, all while I sing "Pop Goes the Weasel"
"Eats" breakfast with Mom (=watches Mom eat while sitting on her lap and unwittingly touching her food)
Sings songs when he wakes up and throughout the day
Pounds on his crib happily when he is ready to get out of bed -don't get him out too soon though!
Carries his toys (including his ride-on car!), balls, and Mom's pans to throw them under the desk, down the stairs, in the garage, outside, etc.
Closes the doors when asked (and any other time), but cries after he closes the outside doors. He also loves to open and close any kind of door (particularly cupboards), and pound on them with his feet.
Has many a hiding place for his balls, including under the desk, behind the printer, under our cars, outside, in the cupboards, in the drawer under the oven, under the recliner, and probably more places I haven't discovered yet!
Is ticklish, especially on his neck
Has lost 2 hats now, after throwing them out of the stroller, catching Mom unawares (although I am usually NOT unawares, as I have grown used to picking up his hat off the sidewalk....argh!)
Loves Baby Signing Time and his music class
Almost always turns the pages correctly when reading books
Has been letting some other people hold him
Can sit up just fine, but wishes we wouldn't make him do that!
Could tell when the carpet got cleaned and didn't want to touch it for awhile
Loves to watch the cars go by on walks, and finds it particularly amusing to see cars go in reverse
Sits up and hangs out of his stroller
Likes the park, mainly the baby swings
Finds some way to keep the rhythm to any number of songs (ie. clapping, kicking, rolling a ball, coughing, hitting his head or some other object, etc)
Plays "Peek-a-Boo" by covering his face with his hands or some item of clothing and laughs hysterically while we search high and low for him
Provides entertainment in the form of his crazy crawling and banging on things during church for all those who might be bored, and rarely gets upset during all three hours!
Laughs when CeeCee sits on his tummy or when he gets to hold her
Can push himself backwards on his Lightning McQueen ride-on car
Goes up and down the stairs frequently and independently (he has only fallen down them 3 times, and that was a long time ago!)
Is back to doing everything that he did pre-surgery, including pulling himself up to standing against the furniture
Does not need oxygen during the day or night for about a month now! (Notice the empty space by the couch where the oxygen equipment once resided)
Loves balls more than any other toy by far, and he will play with them endlessly
Is starting to enjoy being chased
Sucks his thumb, but NOTHING else!
Likes to touch CeeCee's head softly (usually...) and immediately run away, as though she were a hot potato

CeeCee:

smiles really big when she wakes up
Loves to be told she is pretty and a "lady" (I call her my Lady of the Morning)
Coordinates her kicking and arm movements
Holds her head up and sits up very well, especially on a lap or in her bumbo seat
Still doesn't like tummy time much, but tolerates it well for a minute or two.
Loves to be sang to.
Is not a big eater, but is growing well
Sleeps like a champ at night (8+ hours)
Loves to sit on her brother's tummy and be held by him
Loves her swing and frequently naps in it
Would be glad to watch TV if Mom would let her
Loves her toys and keeps a death grip on them, particularly on her activity mat - she has been known to lift the whole thing up if she is holding on to it when we pick her up!
Likes to be carried while on walks
Usually has a bow in her hair
Is called "Fisty" because she eats her fists
Loves her brother and frequently smiles at him, unsolicited even
Tries to sit up while laying down and successfully gets her head and shoulders off the ground!
Sleeps during church
Mainly just wants to be held on a lap all day long
Loves to be entertained and most definitely knows when she is not getting the attention she merits!
Has a shy smile at times
Is a homebody, and definitely does not prefer shopping in spite of what her onesie might declare...

Could there be anything better than being a mom??? I submit there could not. I just love these two.

2010-09-08T20:28:00.000-07:00

Life with two

2010-08-30T15:41:00.000-07:00

OK Readership, sorry for the delay in updates. And sorry that this post is picture-less - I can't seem to get it to work right now... A few days ago, I could have just as easily entitled this post "Craziness", as I truly felt that to be synonymous with "Life with two". Things have calmed down a bit here. I do find plenty of vacant time slots in my days, but they are usually not to be filled with anything of note, since Boo is staying in pre-surgery and it is really quite difficult to take them both anywhere. And that has nothing to do with the amount of stuff I have to lug around - it is because CeeCee is particular about her feedings occurring on demand and while Boo is not, we must keep on top of our every-three-hour feeding schedule or else pay for it by staying up with the feeding pump all hours of the night. So we are a bit tied down, and while at times I lament this fact, it is really nice to have down time to play with my babies and read and snuggle and occasionally get something done.

Really the craziness of it all is the rigid schedule we must keep with the feedings and diaper changes. Also, since CeeCee does not breastfeed (we will save that issue for another post - check back in a few days), I am pumping. Back to life as a cow - the life I lived for a year after Boo was born. I am really lucky/glad to have a good milk supply, so I really only need to pump every 6-8 hours or so. This is a huge blessing.

We have finally learned to trust CeeCee to known when and approximately how much she needs to eat. This has been an interesting adjustment for us. Boo has never told us much of anything by way of his survival needs. He doesn't care about food, diaper changes, or even teething. So we calculate out with our dietitian and cardiologist exactly how much of what "food" (infant formula still) he needs and when and give it to him, whether he likes it or not (he doesn't), on a regular schedule. She is so easy in comparison. Her crying for food is like an alarm clock I do not need to set, and that is wonderful. That being said, I do think she is a bit more demanding of time and attention than Boo, which is fine.

CeeCee is also a major snuggle bug. I am SO glad for this! I honestly have been praying to have a snuggly baby and here she is. Boo used to be a snuggler too, but after his second heart surgery he did not want anything to do with snuggling. (That was back when he was on a medication for several months that made him sick and all he did was cry, eat a little from a bottle, and spit up a TON.) We can't hardly blame him. He will sort of snuggle every now and then - more like tolerate being held... Oh well. CeeCee fills my every snuggly need, except spousal of course. ;)

As for Boo and CeeCee's relationship - it is interesting. At first, Boo completely ignored her very existence and went about his business as usual. For the most part, he still acts that way. But, a few times he has gotten himself to a standing position against the couch while I am feeding or snuggling CeeCee, just to see what is going on. He does not get upset about her or anything she does. He just seems curious. And he is afraid of her - as in, I could (but don't) hold her at arm's length and chase him with her because he totally scoots away super fast when she is placed near to him. This aspect of their interesting relationship is beginning to fade however. Boo also loves to bounce his ball and other toys off of her bouncy seat and infant carrier, causing her to bounce as well. Neither of them seem bothered by this, but I try to keep him from doing it whenever possible. Last night they took their first bath together - that was fun. They didn't seem to care that each other was sharing the tub. The best thing about their relationship is the following: Boo claps or yells (happily, but yelling nonetheless) in time to CeeCee's crying!

For anyone who doesn't know Boo, he LOVES rhythm. He claps or kicks or hits or does any number of other things in rhythm to music, books, rhymes, and now CeeCee's crying. For instance, she cries like this: ah-WA ah-WA ah-WA, and Boo goes like this: (a)-*clap* (a)-*clap* (a)-*clap*. Not sure if that is understandable... Well it is simply hilarious. I would ordinarily almost feel my blood pressure rise after a couple of those intense CeeCee cries, but Boo keeps me sane with his happy yells and his claps. (As a side note on Boo's musical ability, he has now added pitch to his list of musical talents. He "sings" - pitch and rhythm, no syllables - "Frere Jacque", "Blue Danube" and any number of other songs from his toys. Every now and again I even do hear him sing "Ba ba ba" to these tunes. He is truly a character - delayed in every other skill but advanced in music. Must be his mother's son...)

As far as CeeCee's development and habits - I don't really have anyone to compare her to, since Boo is his own man. She was born with the ability to hold her head up for several seconds at a time, and has only gotten better. She always cries when she needs something, and her cry is pretty strong. When she cried upon being born, I thought aloud: "Wow, she is louder than Boo already!" This is true. I do not use our baby monitor, even when she is alone upstairs, because I ALWAYS hear her. CeeCee is a good little sleeper. She has already gone from waking up 3 times a night to sleeping a full eight hours last night for the first time! If she had her way (which she sometimes has had on accident!), she would sleep on her tummy on my or S's chest. She is a good little sleeper for the most part in her bassinet/pack-and-play on her back, particularly when she has a nice binky to suck on that stays in her mouth! She also gave us her first smiles a couple of days ago and has been smiling intermittently ever since! I think she is ticklish on her neck and her cheeks, so sometimes I solicit these smiles... :) At her 2 week doctor's appointment, she weighed in at 7lbs 8oz (8oz more than her birthweight). She is 25 percentile for weight and 50-75 percentile for height. Weight vs. height is 5th percentile, although that will probably change with time. "Long and lean," the doctor said.

CeeCee and Boo have both been wonderful and have not shown any signs of maladjustment to this massive overhaul of our lives (at least for S and I!). We are so super glad to have them. They are special and sweet and our days pass, though sometimes boringly, with pleasure in our associations together. As I said in the beginning, the "craziness" that I thought equivalent to "life with two" is not so anymore. It is still tougher and more time consuming than life with one, but it is a doable and fun challenge. As Dickens wrote: "It is no small thing when they who are so fresh from God love us." Isn't that the truth!

Baby Cee Cee's arrival

2010-07-29T10:22:00.001-07:00

Yesterday (July 28) Cee Cee arrived at 9:57 AM after a short 8 hrs of labor. She is 7 lbs and 20 inches long. She has no indications of any health problems. Several nurses and the pediactrician indicated that she is an unusually cute baby.

I Will Treasure These Moments (And Others Like Them) Always

2010-07-11T15:25:00.000-07:00

Boo Update

2010-07-09T18:52:00.000-07:00

For those who are interested, Boo has a carepage on the website carepages.com. I update this with his most recent health information. With his surgery coming up, I expect to keep the updates coming solely from his carepage and not on this blog. If you would like to follow on Boo's carepage, just let me know and I will send you a link or tell you how to get on it.

Pregnant and Lovin' it

2010-06-27T20:18:00.000-07:00

I must say, I have had some difficulties in the past with both pregnancies, and maybe I am speaking too soon or jinxing it or something, but I truly am "pregnant and lovin' it". :)

This picture was taken on Sunday. I am now 36 weeks!

*OK, so I started writing this post on Saturday night, and on Sunday and Monday I had REALLY tough days... The title is back to being true, however, as yesterday and today I have been feeling great again. :)

When we were first married, S saw a book titled "Pregnant and Lovin' It" and joked that he was going to buy it for me. Then, when I was pregnant with Boo and having a hard time, he still said he was going to buy that book for me (GRRR....). Now that I AM pregnant and lovin' it, he STILL jokes that he is going to buy that book for me. I just have to learn to ignore these jokes... :) As a side note, he also always jokes about buying me a tote bag that says "Relief Society" on it and I told him I will NOT carry such a bag! But the joke persists.

When we first started telling people that I am pregnant and due in July, so many people thought I was "going to die" because of the heat, etc when I am nine months pregnant. Well, to those nay-sayers, I am now 9 months pregnant and yet alive, and in fact, I have very little discomfort to complain of! Yay! Don't get me wrong, the whole pregnancy has not been this way. I couldn't hardly walk down the street mid-second trimester, but for the last 6-8 weeks Boo and I have been walking 0.5-2 hours per day! I used to get really bad heartburn all the time, but now I just get it occasionally and Zantac makes it all go away. My back pain is no more than the usual discomfort I have in regular non-pregnant life. And I can still carry Boo around and up and down our stairs just fine (one of my big worries before we decided to have another baby). I must be getting SERIOUSLY blessed here, and believe me, I am enjoying it while I can!

We are SO super excited for little Cee-Cee to join us. (Except for Boo, who seems to be getting more attention-demanding... They will get used to each other eventually.) And we are also SO excited that everything points to her being totally healthy and full term (just one more week until that is certain!). Now if the nesting instinct could just kick in and make me put together her little room, that would be good... :)

Upcoming Surgery

2010-06-13T16:56:00.000-07:00

Boo's surgery is finally scheduled! It will be on July 8th. I will be 37 weeks along then, so we are hoping and praying that, if it would work out best for all of us, our hospitalizations will not overlap and that Boo will have his surgery and subsequent recovery over and done with before the baby and I start ours! We think it will work out best this way, but Heavenly Father's plan is undoubtedly superior to ours, so we will defer to Him. :)

To be honest, I am feeling a lot better about the surgery now, having had some time to digest the initial shock of it all. (I wrote the last post about it the day after I heard the news...). Now, although I do still have my bouts of sadness/nervousness about the whole thing, I mainly either ignore the whole situation (easy to do when you've got: 1. a baby to take care of, who is totally acting like himself plus some, and 2. a copy of "Pride and Prejudice" and now "Emma") or I feel gratitude for the following:

1. Boo was born at a time when he can have the surgery and it is not a new thing. Actually, we had one doctor tell us that if Boo was born 5 years earlier, he would not have survived with all of his difficulties, and being so small and all. That is seriously something to be grateful for, and I am.

2. We live in a country where these procedures are done regularly and where doctors and nurses are able to get appropriate training to save these fragile little lives.

3. We have good insurance and do not have financial stress on top of all this...

4. We have tons of people, both in the immediate vicinity as well as all over the country, who care about Boo, who pray for him, and who are there to support us and help us out.

5. Besides his heart (granted, that is an important body part...), Boo is much healthier and bigger, and his lungs have gotten better since his last surgery. We hope this means fewer complications than last time and a shorter recovery.

6. Boo is more communicative now than he ever was in the past, especially considering that his last hospitalization was a year ago. He still doesn't talk or sign, but he knows what we are saying and he responds well to us. We think this will help his anxiety this time around.

7. I know Heavenly Father is watching out for our family. He will not take Boo unless it is Boo's time, and that is comforting. And I know He will help us all through any difficulties that may pop up (for all we know, this could be a super simple thing... I will be extremely grateful to know that all the times I have been sad/nervous have been in vain! :)

Lest You Think...

2010-06-03T10:17:00.003-07:00

from the last post that Boo has lost all his smilies...

Boo's Extended Second Birthday Party

2010-05-27T08:52:00.000-07:00

So my original intent for our little celebration on May 1st (open house for S's graduation and Boo's second birthday) was to have everyone over and visiting throughout the afternoon and then when everyone (or at least mostly everyone) was gone, to help Boo open his presents and see what he did with his little train cake we bought for him. Here are some pictures of our open house before it started. (I was too busy playing hostess to take pictures during the actual party). I am not much of a decorator, but we went for some ASU colors of tablecloths, cakes, balloons, napkins, and plates. My sister, S, helped out a TON - she is the one cutting the cake. Thanks so much to everyone who attended! We had a great turnout and a great time - even our anxious little Boo smiled and played the whole time. He particularly liked to watch his cousins throw the balloons around.

Well, where there is a "baby-two-year-old" involved, things don't always go as planned! :) May 1st ended up being our stake's Priesthood Meeting, so S left with his friend K to go to that right after the open house. Which left an exhausted Mama and a surprisingly exhausted Boo together to clean up and get ready for bed. We cleaned up as much as could be expected and went straight to bed, Boo around 7pm! So much for our little family part of the party! The next day, we got out the little train cake and I will let the pictures tell the story of the proceeding events.

Yep, it was about as disasterous an experience as I could have possibly dreamed. I knew he would not eat the cake, of course, but I did not anticipate that he would think the cake was actually a toy train and be completely horrified/traumatized upon touching it! I felt so terrible! He cried a different sort of cry than his usual "I'm upset/tired" and it was too sad. After taking only a few pictures, we scooped him up and tried to cheer him up on his way upstairs to bed. I don't ever want to hurt that poor little guy's feelings again!

So obviously we did not open presents that night. We were busy with other things on the next few evenings, so we did not get to it then either. Finally, on May 6th, we got around to the present opening segment of his prolonged birthday party. Here are some pictures of that:

"OK, I am ready to get this started."

"You want me to hold this?"

"Wait, isn't that my old friend, the Big Green Ball?"

"What? Smile for the camera?"

"Again? Can I go play now?"

"Finally!" (Can you see Boo blended in with the couch, happily hitting his big green ball?)

It is so fun to see Boo's little personality come out and see him gain a little confidence to interact with other people. He isn't much for opening presents or new toys (he will get used to them eventually - it is part of his developmental stage and also his general anxiety towards the unfamiliar - people, places, things...), and he CERTAINLY isn't much for cake, but he is SOOO much fun and such a complete joy to have in our home. We are so grateful he could celebrate his birthday with us at home, and we are just so glad to have him in our family. We love you Boo!!!!!

A Very Long Cardiac Update on Boo

2010-05-26T08:53:00.004-07:00

I have a TON of catching up to do on this blog! At least I have written titles for every post I have yet to write about the past month or so. I have been so busy with graduation/trip stuff, and now that all that is over, I have not felt much like writing. These last couple of days I have a lot on my mind. I hope this post is not too depressing or anything.

The truth is, we have thought Boo has been doing very well. Our last cardiology appointment (beginning of April) did not go so well though. The tech who checked all his vital signs did not do a good job at all (it didn't help that Boo was screaming and thrashing the whole time, but you don't write down THOSE numbers!) and then our doctor said that he just isn't sure why Boo isn't getting better (ie. why he still needs diuretics and oxygen). He also said that Boo looked the best he'd ever seen him. Contradictory? I think so. Anyway, I called him on it and he said that things don't look good with him, but Boo looks good for Boo, essentially. We decided to do an MRI to look at his heart better and I decided to mess with his oxygen when we got home to see if he really needed it (I had been waiting for our cardiology appointment, naively supposing their measurements would be better than ours). When we got home, we were thrilled to discover that in fact Boo did not need oxygen (at least during his waking hours)! He has not needed it for over a month during the day, and while we were in AZ he did not need it at all (thank you low altitude).

The MRI was this past Thursday, and it was scheduled with a brain MRI as well that the neurologist wanted to get. (The brain scan showed nothing of note.) That morning, Boo woke up with a runny nose. That is strange for him. Sometimes he is congested in the morning, but never runny... But, after his pre-sedation assessment, they determined he was fine and we went ahead with the sedation and MRIs. He took quite awhile to wake up afterwards, but once I held him and started singing a lullaby, he started clapping (even while asleep) to the beat and I knew he would wake up soon. :) It was super cute. He didn't fully come out of the drugged state until the next afternoon though. And he had to come home on quite a bit more oxygen than he usually needs, supposedly since the sedatives decrease respiratory drive. While this is true, it is not the only reason he needed oxygen. Friday morning he woke up with a fever (100.3) and throughout the night he was requiring much MORE oxygen (not what you would expect when the drugs are wearing off...). After a visit to the pediatrician, it was determined that he has a cold. A common cold. He was checked out again on Monday and his lungs have stayed clear throughout this whole thing (thank goodness!) so we are no longer worried about pneumonia or other yucky things that would mean hospitalization.

Since Monday, Boo has been feeling a lot better. I give him tylenol once or twice a day. He really doesn't do a lot to express that he doesn't feel well, so sometimes it is difficult for me to know. On Monday afternoon, the cardiologist called with his MRI results. Understand that S and I have thought that Boo is doing great, off oxygen, just had a cold, slowly getting bigger and not requiring more diuretics than before, etc. He has been making great developmental strides and has a ton of energy. So the news from the cardiologist was a HUGE blow: Boo needs surgery very soon. It doesn't look good.

For interested parties, here is what is going on, as I understand it. Boo has lived without a pulmonary valve since his last heart surgery. We always knew it would need to be replaced (or placed, as it were), but the hope has been that he would be very big by that time. As in about 20 years old. Most children and even teenagers are able to live just fine without this valve, although it eventually needs to be replaced. And once it is replaced, it will need to be replaced time and time again throughout life, because they only last about 5-7 years, and less if the patient is small. In Boo's case, his lung disease has probably made things worse and that is why he would need the surgery so soon. Thankfully, his lung disease has gotten a lot better, which is why he has been able to be off oxygen. But, not having a pulmonary valve has increase the dilation of his right ventricle and caused greater leakage across his tricuspid valve. A normal right ventricle is size 80-100, surgery is needed when it gets to 140, and Boo's is around 200! Because his ventricle is so much bigger than we thought, he may actually need more than a pulmonary valve replacement. He may need a smaller patch over his pulmonary artery (part of his last surgery) and some reconstruction of his tricuspid valve as well. This is not good. It means more time on the heart-lung machine, which means more fluid retention and more "risk". I don't ever ask what "risk" means. The hope in all of this is that we are not too late - the cardiologist still believes the surgery can be done (if the right ventricle gets too big, it cannot be done anymore and the condition must just be lived with and controlled with heart function meds). So within the next week or two, we will have a surgery date.

So what is going through my head? Here is a list, not in any particular order:

1. I can't stand the thought of losing my little Boo. He is my best little buddy and we do everything together. He loves me so unconditionally and is so happy and teaches me so much. Is it Heavenly Father's will that Boo meet his baby sister? I hope so. The thought just eats at me, even though I know this surgery is not a death sentence. I just know how close we have come to that with past surgeries and I fear for his life this time - heart surgery #3, all the complications, all the scar tissue from past surgeries...maybe I don't need to elaborate. Fear is the opposite of faith though, and I am determined to be a woman of faith. I need it.

2. Assuming we make it past #1, I am so worried about how much ground we will lose. Boo has come such a long way and learned so many things with so much difficulty that other children learn quickly and with ease. He doesn't eat at all, so I don't think that can get any worse. :) But will he be able to sit up and dance and walk along the furniture, and make his baby sounds, and climb up the stairs? Will he have an even flatter head? (Post-helmet therapy his head has gone a little bit flat again, since he still spends a great deal of time on his back). Will his super-bad anxiety come back with a vengeance, as it did with his last surgery when he wouldn't even look at or play with us (his parents!) for a week afterwards? All of this depends on the recovery time and difficulty. It could be short (Boo's little friend made it through and home in four days!) or long (Boo's last surgery resulted in a month and a half long hospital stay with many ups and downs).

3. I have to keep Boo healthy now, big time. His life could very well depend on it, since if he gets sick, we have to wait another six weeks for surgery and that could be too late. My paranoia is in overdrive now.

4. I HATE to see Boo get hurt! I would hate even more to see him slowly pass away, but I seriously wonder how much MY heart can take, watching my little boy go through so much and not understanding why. I can't know all that he feels, but I feel like his pain must be magnified in mine. And just when we were starting to make a little headway with his anxiety problems... Incidentally, this thought has strengthened my faith in Heavenly Father and how His thoughts (and understanding) are higher than our thoughts and how He, even the Almighty, feels pain when we feel pain and why He allows bad things to happen even to good people. He understands infinitely more than we do and His only object is for us to return to Him having done everything we can to become like Him. Brigham Young once said that "Every trial and experience you have passed through is necessary for your salvation."(See article by James E. Faust). In this sense, I am grateful for my trials, but that does not mean they are not difficult and heart-wrenching at times.

5. If you look to the right, you will see that this surgery is cutting it close as far as interfering with the grand entrance of our baby girl. I would be lying if I said this does not worry me. Of course, if I go into labor while sitting at Boo's bedside, I will not be far from our chosen delivery hospital. :) But I don't want that. I want to be there for Boo when he needs me and I want to be there/have to be there for our baby when she is born. I know this will all work out, but it is a bit troubling. And how can I control my stress level so the baby isn't harmed by it? Any ideas?

OK, now that I have unloaded all that onto my public blog...! It feels really good to write though. Honestly, the whole reason this blog is public is so that other people in similar situations might be able to find it, hopefully find comfort in it, and at least know that someone else has been there and felt the same way. It is usually remarkably easy for me to put aside my true feelings and put on a happy face and all (I do have tons of happy things happening in my life to write about too!), but I do not think that is always the right thing to do. Right now, it is not. I feel stressed, nervous, scared, worried, and sad. But I also feel hope, love for my family, and love for my Father in heaven who knows exactly what will happen and that somehow it will all be for our ultimate benefit, even if it is hard now.

I Can't Believe My Baby is TWO!

2010-05-01T18:55:00.001-07:00

I am way too exhausted to post pictures right now so sorry... Today has been a BIG day! We had an open house for Boo's birthday and S's graduation. It was so much fun and I was really surprised with how well Boo handled all the people and noise and attention he received. He did so well and only had one meltdown at the beginning. And I guess it wore him out because he was asleep by 7:30pm, and that is after having taken a two hour nap today!

This day feels sort of sentimental for me. In preparation for the open house, I looked through all the pictures we have taken of Boo, choosing some to put in a slide show and some to print and frame (one for each month of his life). There were about 2000 pictures of Boo in total. I narrowed the slide show down to 329. :) It was 11 minutes long. Nobody but Mama would want to sit and watch that, I suppose, but he is just too cute and I can't resist.

It is remarkable how much this little boy of ours has been through. He was so little - and so sick! Now he is a big boy, although he is still quite short for his age (still less than fifth percentile...). He is such a happy boy too. I have so much to learn from him! I am happy because he is happy, even though circumstances in his life sometimes make me sad. But he is happy (90% of the time - he is about 10% two-year-old at this point), and when he is happy, I have no choice! Isn't that a blessing?!?

I am so grateful for little Boo in my life. I couldn't possibly enumerate all ways and things he has taught me in the past two plus years (even during his pregnancy!), but having him here with S and I has been one of the greatest possible joys and learning experiences of my life.

Bingo

2010-03-21T17:36:00.000-07:00

I have been meaning to record this for a long time. This kid has rhythm! :) (He sometimes gets excited and claps more or forgets a clap, but he really knows how to clap to this song!)

DONE!!!

2010-03-18T09:49:00.001-07:00

Can I just tell you about my amazing husband? He has been working on his Master's degree for the past ~5 years. This has included all of our dating and married life and more. On more than one occasion, he has been threatened with being kicked out of school due to having received a "C" grade (barely passing for grad students) in a class in 2006. Because of this "academic probation", he has had to work extra hard to pull his grades up in his classes, all the while fighting the removal with appeal after appeal and working full-time (not to mention all that has gone on with Boo and I over the past two years!).

He finally got two "A" grades and was able to get off academic probation for good. He finished his coursework in December, after which he had to take a comprehensive Master's exam - over all his classes. 6 years worth of studies!! Well, he worked super hard and PASSED the exam on the first go (one only really gets one try, but one could, in theory, appeal to take it again) on Feb. 26, 2010!

Now we get to take our long awaited trip to Tempe for his graduation. We are going to stock up on ASU alum paraphernalia. :) This is like a dream come true - and a hardly likely outcome, considering all that was going on with his schooling last year at this time. Having him free of study demands has afforded us liberties we have never known. Like being able to go places all day on Saturdays or Fridays off. Or having Dada help out with Boo's bath - something I always felt guilty asking for before, since he really needed to study. Or having him help with much of anything for that matter (even though he always found time to help out with things I REALLY needed). Now we can finish painting our house and get tile our kitchen and dining floors, and take care of our lawn (which I think is suffering from pink snow mold...), and do everything else we always talk about but never do for time's sake.

And did I mention we get to go to Arizona? Yeah, I know I did. :) I am SO looking forward to the warm or hot weather, be what it may. And not worrying about Boo getting sick (assuming there is not much sickness going around in mid-May...). And a LONG road trip (Boo cannot fly very easily with oxygen) - seriously, I LOVE road trips. And spending time with family that we don't see very often/that I have never seen at all!

If S were to read this post as I am writing it, he would remind me to "take joy in the journey", as I am often reminded around here. Admittedly, I do get caught up in looking forward to the future quite a lot. But, I must also admit that life around here is going well, we are happy, spring is coming (oops, there goes the journey again...), Boo is learning and having fun and so am I. Lest anyone remain in doubt, we are not waiting until this much-awaited graduation ceremony to be happy. :) Here are some pictures to prove it (at least from Boo's perspective):

Our Little Teapot

2010-03-09T09:06:00.001-08:00

This video comes as a result of our physical therapist suggesting to me that I push Boo over on occasion (on a soft surface of course!) to get him used to falling and that it is OK to fall. We set the routine to music (like I do with every other routine) and then we practiced all day. By the next day, Boo was tipping HIMSELF over at the appropriate time! It is amazing to me how fast he catches on to things, especially when they involve music. This is one of our fun diaper routines (except at the end when he had too much time on camera...).

It's a girl!

2010-03-06T08:58:00.000-08:00

Yes, you heard me. :) We will welcome her into our family in the end of July (I actually think it will be early August). All the sickness I have been feeling (way worse than last pregnancy!) has finally mostly subsided. I don't think I will ever feel 100% during pregnancy, so I will just say that I am feeling good and leave it at that. The ultrasound was unremarkable in terms of problems. We will have a fetal echocardiogram at the end of the month to make sure the heart is free of defects. They did notice that the kidneys were holding the maximum volume they would allow without calling it "abnormal". So we will have another ultrasound in about 10 weeks to make sure that it is still normal. I am determined not to worry unless they tell me I should. :) And she is a little smaller than my due date would indicate. She is about 6 days behind schedule, but they do not worry about that discrepancy until it is 10 or more days off. So so far, so good. Anyway, we are SUPER excited! We have a room that has always been our future daughter's room (it was painted two-toned pink by the previous owner) and we are excited to have a use for the room. S is excited for our daughter to take a leadership role in the family with the rest of the future children. And I am excited to shop! :)

As a side note, we told our ultrasonographer about Boo's birth defect and his trouble that he had in the womb (part of my preeclampsia). She was very surprised that they at the University did not catch such an obvious birth defect as tetralogy of Fallot. She and the perinatologist went back and looked at his ultrasound records and discovered two things:
1. Boo's defect, even knowing what it was and looking for it specifically, was still undetectable on the ultrasound pictures.
2. SHE herself performed the ultrasound! I am pretty sure she felt terrible about that, and we probably wrecked her day by letting her know of all Boo's problems. But we were very clear and sincere - really and truly we do not assign blame for all the problems poor little Boo has had. It was actually a bit comforting to know, after wondering for quite some time, that Boo's defect was really not discernable and things could not have turned out differently.

What Boo Can Do

2010-02-09T09:23:00.000-08:00

Boo has been really funny lately. He is, of course, still quite behind on his development, but that does not keep him from frequently surprising us with his newfound skills! Here is a list, which is not meant to be comprehensive, of things that Boo can do:

1. Find his nose, his ears, Mama's nose, and Dada's nose, and his mouth. I had been trying to teach him this skill for several months, all to no avail. Or so I thought. I believe, although I cannot prove it, that he learned this skill very quickly and simply did not know how to show that he knew it. You see, he will not point to his nose or ears or anything else when asked. He needs to hold on to your finger and take you to it! Funny kid.

2. Army crawl. This is not his preferred method to get from here to there (rolling and back scooting have to take first place there!), but he will do it, both when encouraged and when on his own. (Notice the lack of hair on the back of his head, due to his preference of back scooting!).

3. Stay on all fours for 30ish seconds. He hates this, but it is a necessary evil. And it is exciting that we don't have to hold him up anymore because his arms have gotten stronger.

4. Spit. Raspberries, anyone?

5. Clap in time to "Bingo", as well as several other songs (some of them made up!). And I mean it...he knows exactly when to clap!

6. Play ball with Dada. Those two have all kinds of fun rolling the ball back and forth. He truly is "so glad when Daddy comes home".

7. Put things in a container (this has been a LONG time coming!). I even found my cell phone in his train the other day. This is all thanks to the $10 tree thing I got as an afterthought for Boo for Christmas.

8. Help brush his teeth.

9. Say "N-Teh". Strange, but true. He says it and he will also imitate it when I say it. This is the first thing he has ever imitated.

10. Turn off the lights. We do this every time we leave his room.

11. Give things to Mama when asked.

12. Turn pages in books at the right time (assuming he likes the particular page...). He does have his favorite pages, like the bear page in "We're Going on a Bear Hunt" and the horse page in "Who Says Moo?". (This to say nothing of his like for horses since he hates to go visit the horses at the end of our street. He cries big tears every time!).

13. Get 12+ teeth all at once and hardly act any different!! Who ever met a baby who cares so little about teething?!

14. Recognize himself in the mirror by jerking his arm around and making sure his reflection does the same.

15. "Give" Mama kisses (leans in for a kiss when asked). This is the best part. :)

16. Suck ALL his fingers (sometimes even all at the same time!). He used to suck only his right thumb, but he has chosen to branch out. He has even sucked on paper a few times.

17. Be off his oxygen for THREE WHOLE DAYS this past weekend!!! This is a first by far, since he has never been off of oxygen ever for even a short amount of time. During this time, he learned how to harvest his own boogies, since he usually has to share his nostrils with his nasal cannula. He caught his first boogie with his thumb! He is back on again now, but we got a taste of what it is to have a cordless baby, and we look very much forward to it again in the future!

Sorry for the weird pictures in this post. They are not the cutest, but they do illustrate my points. And I clearly need to be taking more pictures! Every now and again, as the mother of a developmentally delayed child, I dwell on the things that Boo cannot do yet, sadly. Fortunately, this is not usually the case. It is fun to watch Boo grow up in an unconventional way, doing all the things, expected and unexpected, that he CAN do. And he can do a LOT! We love you, Boo!!!

Boo and the cups

2009-12-25T10:11:00.000-08:00

Family Christmas Card, written by S

2009-12-24T14:35:00.000-08:00

I would like to honor BYU in their bowl win. They have had a good run the last four years although I found myself a bit disappointed in some of the games.They beat Utah and besides putting everyone at work in a bad mood that was great.

I would also like to wish everyone a Merry Christmas. We didn't get Christmas cards out like we did last year but just so everyone knows we are doing good. I finished my last class to get my masters in electrical engineering and now I only need to pass a comprehensive masters exam which is set for the last week in February. It is strange to admit that just six months ago I was fantasizing what it would be like to be off of academic probation and worry about being expelled at any moment and now I will be graduating at the end of spring semester provided that I pass this exam.

From a facilities management perspective, we finished painting the front room and the kitchen from the original light blue to a brown, yellow, red and buff. The front entrance is a 16 ft high vaulted ceiling which required a lot of innovation on my part.

A is staying busy with Boo, He is now rolling which is a big development for him. He is 19 months old and he is always happy and smiling. He does laugh at anything Ashley does and very few things that I do. One thing funny about him is when we change his shirt, his hands are hidden from view for an interval of time and once either hand re-appears he always performs a full inspection of both hands checking his palm and back of both hands very carefully presumably to make sure all is still well with them. Also A plays a game where she pretends to be "getting Boo" and he curls up in a ball as a way to hide or protect himself from being "gotten." After watching this for a while, I determined that someone needed to stand up for Boo so I picked him up and started saying "Boo's going to get Mom" and A pretended to hide from Boo and he laughed very hard which was fun to see. It must have been nice to have the tables turned after so long. One other item about him is that if he is watching A unload the dishwasher he will laugh each time a cup is successfully placed in the cupboard but not when bowls or plates are placed. (Hence, the video). We hope to be able to learn why some day.

He is still on oxygen and is now on a constant feeding drip for 20 hrs a day. This has slowed A down a lot such that she must be basically only a few feet away from him at all times so that he doesn't roll too many times and disconnect his feeding tubes. We hope to be done with this constant drip after 4-6 months. We are on a basic quarantine again this winter so Boo doesn't leave the house except for doctor's apppointments. We do look forward to being able to entertain more friends and family after the season.

We did have a christmas miracle where we had an ultrasound performed the first week of December as a pre-surgery effort of Boo's heart in preparation for a pulmonary heart valve replacement surgery that we expected in Jan or Feb. At the appointment our cardiologist and A and I were very suprised to learn that Boo's heart was unchanged from September and that his surgery could be postponed. The cardiologist believes that Boo's lung disease is healing faster then his heart is getting worse to leave it unchanged. This is great news because it buys him more time to grow before this inevitable third open heart surgery. We attribute this as an answer to prayer.

Merry Christmas to you all, and enjoy the video in a post to be posted as soon as we can get it to work, taken just a few days ago.

Boo's Recent Mischief and More

2009-10-13T07:58:00.000-07:00

To start off, here are some semi-recent photos of Boo doing his thing. From above left: Boo and one of his favorite toys (the 60cc syringe) in his new stroller; Boo and Dad - can you tell what is missing? (p.s. this picture was taken as we were switching out nasal cannulas, he still does need oxygen 24/7); Boo being happily impatient for Mama to get his breakfast (ie. to put his tray over him so he could play with his toys. This little guy has no concept of hunger!).

Now for some contrasting photos...

1. Boo LOVES frosting! Thanks for buying Walmart cupcakes just for me to play in, Mama!

2. That's ENOUGH Mama! No more pictures. In fact, hand over that camera!

1. Cute little sleeping Boo-ty

2. Wild child. Who gave you permission to play Peek-A-Boo in the middle of the night?!

1. OK, Dada, give me your glasses and you can play with your Blackberry in peace.

2. OK, Dada, now hand over the Blackberry.

1. Nursing?????

2. Don't be fooled! :)

1. Boo worked himself into a corner and then cried because he couldn't get out. (He only knows how to move forward and side to side.)

2. After I so graciously removed him from his self-imposed time-out, he proceeded to scooch his little bum to him therapy board and erase it! Someone didn't want to do his assignments!

Happy Anniversary!

2009-09-21T10:40:00.000-07:00

It's been two years! And quite frankly, we both agree that it seems like it has actually been soooo much longer. This is not to say anything about the quality of the past two years, but it is to say a TON about the QUANTITY of happenings in the past two years. Our wedding day was so much fun. I love looking back at the pictures. We are obviously so happy to be wed and so in love.

I am happy to report that we are still happy and still in love, although much has changed. We used to lament that we did not marry during the "poor college years," because we imagined those years to be a wonderful time to "live on love" alone and grow close to each other. But, our "gravy days" did not last long. We have been welcomed in to the world of budgets and bills and mortgages and not being like Thomas Jefferson (who, according to John Adams, was never known to have denied himself anything). We love it. Hopefully someday we will be "loaded" (a prerequisite to our purchasing any number of things, according to S), but right now we are content (and when we are not, we remind ourselves that we are!). :)

It doesn't get much better than being married to such a thoughtful, caring, sympathetic, handsome, and humble husband as mine. I love him SOOO much and I am so glad to see him fill his fatherly role in our home. Boo couldn't ask for a better "da-da" (Boo's words!) either. Yay for our marriage! Yay for the temple! Yay for love! Yay for eternal families!

Happy Anniversary, Sweetheart!

This is the place...

2009-08-26T13:12:00.000-07:00

Where Boo lives. (It has been rearranged/significantly improved, especially considering that we have no changing table.)

Where Boo sleeps. He has taken to sleeping with some sort of cloth (no favorite blankie at this point) and sucking it with his thumb. This position is taken in his sleep, as well as before his sleep, so it is a sure indication that he is tired. He also manages to scoot himself up to the top of his bed during the night, thus becoming my "Scooty Boo-ty"!

Where our rose bushes (aka. eye sores) used to be. They are gone! Yay! (P.S. Thanks S!) :)

Where our new couches reside. (Ignore the mess, please). They were used, actually. We bought them off ksl.com, and we are so thrilled with our little purchase. They were a great deal, so there is no buyer's remorse here! Pretty much it is our dream couch. 2 recliners, a hide-a-bed, a little storage place for all of S's pocket items, and it's in good condition. I think we would have picked this color too, although considering the color we are painting our house, it may not have been my number one choice. We will just have to see how it looks. Then if anything goes, it will be the paint because we love our couches!

Boo's 'Cation

2009-08-18T20:31:00.000-07:00

I will comment on each of these pictures, starting at the bottom and moving up (just for confusion's sake...)

1. This is me, playing with my choo choo, all ready for my big cation!
2. Typing some emails while sitting in my pack and play in the hotel. This was my first hotel stay. Nothing much to speak of. I didn't even get to touch any surfaces of the hotel!
3. Me and Mom, looking at some cows at a rest area. This was a much needed break, as I was packed in the car tight and Mom was squashed!
4. Driver's seat made changing station. Thanks Dad!
5. Hard turn to the right!
6. A good driver in the making.
7. Final destination: Grammy and Grampy's house! (The grapes were not for me.)
8. Me and Grampy reading my favorite story.
9. Me and Dad kicking back at the Bandshell, listening to a nice concert in the park. By the way, this music was totally tolerable for me, but if my Mom gets out her flute or my Aunt H gets out her violin, watch out!!
10. Me and Aunt H
11. Me playing, my cousin O eating.
12. A crazy species bred only in Sioux City...
13. I really was packed in there like another piece of luggage. Mom and Dad are lucky that I am a good sport! I didn't cry but for about 5 minutes during the whole trip!

It was sure good to see everyone at Grammy and Grampy's house! We had a really fun trip. Thank you Grammy and Grampy for helping us have such a fun time. We love you!

Pat-A-Cake

2009-06-23T10:04:00.000-07:00

My turn to display a self-incriminating video of myself! :) Yes, I do all sorts of crazy things (voices, dances, jumps, faces, repeated and distorted words...you name it!) to entertain the little guy. We have fun.

The Wheels on the Bus

2009-06-15T15:08:00.000-07:00

Happy Birthday S!

2009-05-19T08:30:00.000-07:00

So I guess I didn't post about my Sweetheart's birthday. It was relatively uneventful...I mean, how does a 29-year-old's birthday compete with a 1-year-old's? :) We both packed on the pounds with ice cream cake and chocolate cheesecake bars. (I intended to give S the chocolate chip cheesecake bars to share with his coworkers, but I accidentally doubled the butter, so I had to make TWO pans instead of one. That meant, of course, that we kept one and home for ourselves!) I got him everything he needs to change the oil himself on both cars, assuming that he already had the ramps. Well, now we can't find the ramps, so I guess we will have to buy new ones. :( If anyone has them or knows anything of their whereabouts, if you would be so kind... We also took a little drive on Antelope Island. It is BEAUTIFUL, though it has its own beauty. We saw lots of bison and, of course, an antelope. We are excited to go there again sometime, as it is soooo big and we only had an hour.

We took our first family vacation with Boo this past weekend - Idaho Falls! It was fun to be with family again and it was really fun to take a road trip. Boo is an exceptional car seat baby. He sat in his little seat and talked to himself and made calls on his cell phone and slept the entire time. He didn't cry even once during the trip (3 hours each way), not even when he had a major blowout! Changing him in the front seat of the car was a new experience. :) He enjoyed the family quite a bit, and we were especially glad that he got to meet Great Grandma and Grandpa T, his namesake. Unfortunately, I did not take any pictures on the trip. What can I say, I am just not a camera person. It does make for somewhat of a boring post however...sorry.

Speaking of Boo, he has made a TON of progress this past week. The Early Intervention nurse is about to come over and I can't wait for her to see! He started sitting independently, bearing a lot more weight on his legs, grabbing things out of containers (surprisingly difficult for little ones), bending over to reach for things, and I even saw him roll from back to tum once! This is a lot to have accomplished in one week! I am hopeful that things will go smoothly during and after his surgery (June 1st) so that we can get right back on track developmentally. Who knows what will happen, but I am hopeful we will not regress too far for too long.

Saturday's Protege Passengers and Mother's Day

2009-05-09T20:21:00.000-07:00

Here is a list of Saturday's passengers in our Mazda Protege:

1. S - He wasn't sleeping in the car, just in the picture! :) He and Boo were great male cheerleaders for me at the race. Seriously, I got a second wind after I passed them cheering. :)

2. A - I raced for a cure (breast cancer) on Saturday! Yeah! It was a 5k and I did it in 33:55, including the time that it took to get to the starting line, since there were so many people and so many people walking. My goal was 35 minutes, so I was really happy about this. I am hoping to do a couple more 5k's and possibly a 10k this summer.

3. Boo (in his car seat of course) - We have started to take him to uncrowded public places, especially those that are big and/or not enclosed.

4. Old, broken toilet - S and H replaced our middle bathroom toilet a few weeks ago. Our new toilet is very nice. It got Home Depot's highest ratings. Apparently it is not too difficult to replace a toilet, at least not for these two! We were going to have the plumber come out and fix the problem or replace the toilet if need be, but it ended up that that would cost around 500-600 dollars at the very least! S told me that if I could wait a few days with a broken toilet, I could pick out whatever toilet I wanted and he would replace it. I couldn't resist the offer, so I picked out a somewhat higher end toilet from Home Depot with an elongated bowl (much better, by the way) and it is supposed to be able to flush 30 golf balls in one flush! (Not that we need to test out that feature!) Anyway, all this means is that our old toilet was sitting in the garage for all this time (since the beginning of April) and we have finally gotten rid of it. It fit into the Protege and was taken to the dump.

5. 2 destroyed studded tires - These were also in the Protege at the same time as the toilet. We had tried to put these tires back on for the winter, but the car place said they were worthless. We made it fine through the winter without any semblance of snow tires, so thank goodness for flat driveways!

6. A 10 ft tree - We purchased an Ash Patmore tree after some research. It is a really nice tree, and hopefully it will grow to be about 45 ft tall and 35 ft wide. We stuck it right in the middle of our front yard. We did manage to fit it in the Protege, through the sun roof. We got all kinds of funny looks and pointing fingers as we drove through the city, but we made it home in one piece, and now it is planted. Admitedly, it did look pretty funny and I laughed the whole time we were driving around with it (excluding the time I spend telling S to drive slower so the leaves wouldn't get wind-whipped). I think our transport was successful, but time will tell for sure.

7. 2 bottles of Germ-X - We never leave home without it!

8. A bunch of papers - For some reason, we can never get rid of all the papers that invade every area of our existence.

9. Diaper Bag

10. Water Bottles - I have still not given up on bottled water. You can get after me for not being "green", but I still cannot stand the taste of tap water. One of these days I will actually buy a water filter, but I have to taste that water first too. I still only like Kroger bottled water. I guess I am picky...

11. Stroller - Massive.

12. Infant Front-to-Back Carrier - Which Boo has not yet liked.

13. 5 disposable pillows - From the hospital. They should work nicely for guests, I hope.

14. First Aid Kit

15. 3 Stakes and a bag of rope - For the tree, which we have not ended up using, even though S expended a lot of strength cutting the wood with a saw at Home Depot.

16. 40 pound bag of red mulch - I really wanted the colored kind. It looks pretty bright in front of our house. Hopefully as we get some more things planted out there it will all look nice.

17. 2 oxygen tanks and a portable tank - I am so paranoid about always having enough oxygen with us. We have run out in the car more than once!

18. Feeding pump backpack - This is new, and fairly convenient, although it is much less accurate in volume delivery than when it is on an IV pole, as it is at home.

19. Oximeter - aka. Beeper

20. Chewy Chips Ahoy and grape juice

On a side note, Mother's Day was good for me this year. Looking back, last year I wasn't sure I would have another Mother's Day with little Boo. He was still less than 2 pounds then. I couldn't even imagine having him at home with us! This year was so much better. S said it was "my day", so I did not have to worry about feeding Boo. This is always the big stress in our house, as it involves thawing milk, making sure the pump has enough battery, and carrying the IV pole all around with us, wherever we take Boo in the house (up and down stairs many times, since his room is upstairs, but not any of his fun toys, which are too big for his room). I also got to sleep in.

We went to church all together, but Boo and I left after the sacrament because all I could hear was COUGHING! I am sure that mostly everyone was just clearing their throat, but coughing is not what you want to hear when you have a child who needs desperately to stay healthy. (We just got the bill from our influenza hospital stay which was 6 days long - $19,400!) Really, the money has nothing to do with why he has to stay healthy. If he gets sick, surgery will be pushed back another 4-6 weeks and he could very well need to be hospitalized again. I don't know if I could deal with that. Plus, who wants to be sick?!

We also went to Temple Square for Mother's Day to see all the flowers and the temple. Boo doesn't get out much, as I have already mentioned, so this was a fun trip for us. Unfortunately, when we took him out of his stroller in the Visitor's Center, he had VERY poopy pants (boopy bants), so we had to cut our visit just a little short. We walked around once and then we skedaddled. He was a very good sport.

Anyway, today S brought some beautiful roses home for me. That was very sweet. He knows I love flowers, yet he views them as so impractical as they are short-lived. So I am glad to have them. They have completely changed the feel in the kitchen!

I just love being a mother! I am so glad to have Boo and to be able to experience life with him. And I am so grateful for my good mother who raised me and is so kind and loving and caring. And I am glad that my husband has a good mother as well who cares about us very much. Hope everyone else had a good mother's day!

P.S. Boo learned how to give "High 5" on Sunday, so we have been having a lot of fun with this. I think this is the very first thing he has learned to do, in terms of on command and knowing what he is doing. So if anyone ever needs a "High 5", you know where to go!

ONE YEAR OLD!!!!

2009-05-03T14:39:00.000-07:00

Boo is ONE as of May 1st! This is a big milestone for our whole family - one that we hardly foresaw a year ago. Here is a quick run-down of the happenings of this weekend.

Opening Presents - Boo had almost zero interest in opening presents. It was really too hard for him. I bought Cars wrapping paper, since he is a "Car Baby" (a story for another day). I took about 45 minutes wrapping everything (I am NO good at this!) and then we peeled it off in about 5 minutes. I now know what it is like to be a parent, with respect to the present wrapping part. Kind of a bummer. As expected, Boo did enjoy the paper. Then we took all his presents out of the packaging and he liked them too. He acquired: baby keys, a baby cell phone, some outfits, a Bumbo (we are almost sitting independently, just not quite...), a baby laptop, and some sanitizing products. He is set to be grown-up, just like his parents! :) Sometimes we still feel like we are pretending to be grown-up.

Balloons bouncing off head - As I was wrapping his birthday presents, I blew up five blue balloons. He doesn't care about them at all. However, I tried handing him a balloon a couple of times. Of course, the balloons are too big for his hands, but they did hit his head, which was really funny. It seemed like they were really heavy and they pushed his head backwards. So cute.

Eating Frosting off cupcake - In lieu of buying a big birthday cake (since it is only the three of us and S doesn't like cake and Boo doesn't eat, I thought this wise), I bought six cupcakes. I love cake, so I ate 3. I put one on Boo's tray and he sort of dove right in! I was SHOCKED! He ordinarily will not touch anything resembling food. Anyway, he didn't willingly eat any, but since he is a "Sucky Thumby"...

Bath - We gave him a bath right after the cupcake scenario. It was all really very fun. We didn't care about getting anything messy. In fact, I saved another cupcake to do the whole thing again tomorrow! :) Unfortunately, the frosting was dark blue...probably NOT the best choice for a baby with a heart defect...

Turning Blue - We wouldn't have known if he had, because he was significantly blued with frosting! It was great to see food all over him and his high seat and especially on his face. He didn't seem to notice that there was frosting on his fingers when he sucked them, but he didn't care either, so that was encouraging.

Barbecue with family the next day - Boo's first extended family outing was to D and A's house for a barbecue. Since it was nice out, he got to stay outside in his stroller and see everyone, including the kids from a distance! Otherwise, we were going to go somewhere while S visited with the family. It was so nice to be there all together and to see most of S's siblings.

Blessing - Today was Boo's baby blessing at church! I thought this day would never come, especially since his surgery got postponed, thus lengthening the amount of time we have to seclude ourselves. (Surgery for G-tube and Nissen will be June 1st now, so we will have to keep him in until mid-June). S was nervous but he did a great job at his first baby blessing! Yeah, S!! It was a very emotional day. It didn't help that the bishopric changed in the same day. :)

Tuxedo - Instead of the traditional baby boy blessing rompers that go over baby's head, we got him a baby tux. (With all his tubeys etc, it is difficult to get things over his head). The tux was SOOOO cute! I had to buy a large (12 month), which I knew would be too big, but how else should I buy clothes for a guy that is 12 months wide and 9 months long? :) It was big, but not too big. It was still somewhat of a pain to get on him, mostly because we were in a hurry and trying to rush him through it.

Blessing Blank - My mom made a blanket for his blessing that she gave to us quite awhile ago (back when we thought we might bless him as a little guy...). Anyway, it is BEAUTIFUL! I got it out yesterday, and in an effort to get him excited, I squealed "It's your BLESSING BLANK!" and I threw it on top of him. He thought this was great fun, so we played the game over and over again yesterday and today. I am sure the humor of it all will wear off soon and I will have to think of some other crazy thing to do to make him laugh, as is usually the case.

Laughing - Speaking of laughing, he just started actually giggling just within the last couple of weeks. We LOVE it! He especially laughs when he gets his neck touched (or scrubbed) softly and today he laughed as I was putting his pants on. Come to find out, he is ticklish on his side. Oh man, it is fun to see him so happy.

Current Thoughts without a Current Update

2009-04-15T15:30:00.000-07:00

One of my current thoughts is about running. I joined a community education class called "Couch to 5k." Ha! I don't think I have been hanging out on my couch much, but since I started dating S (Feb. 2007), I have hardly run or done any kind of exercise at all. (Nevermind all that has happened since then!) Anyway, S has agreed to watch little Boo while I run 3 times a week and try to find some other kind of non-jolting exercise for 3 other days a week. So far, I have been doing pretty well in the class. In fact, I have already finished the "canned" running program!

I got an email from my teacher today, who said: "You are much more advanced than everyone else." In other words: "You should not have signed up for this class!"? Well, it just so happens that, as a sports-induced asthmatic, I can build up quite a bit of endurance, but I am painfully slow. I used to run for an hour on most days back in 2006, and I would get in about 5 miles, if that gives you any idea how slow I am. As it is, I have gone jogging with a number of people who have claimed to be slow and NONE of them have EVER been slower than me! So that should give you an idea of how "advanced" I am! I do really enjoy running though. Now my teacher is preparing a specific program for me to do "speed work" and the like. I think that will be VERY challenging for me.

On another note, I am currently marvelling at how much faster the songs on Boo's high seat toy go, now that I have changed the batteries. Ha! I have gotten so used to singing along slowly that it is now quite a challenge to keep up with the notes. :) And Boo is very entertained by my singing variations of his name to all of his tunes. I better get my tongue moving faster here!

As to what is REALLY on my mind (Boo's upcoming surgery)...I decline to write about it at the moment. I will update on this sometime soon, either here or on his carepage. Honestly, I have just repeated everything about it to so many different doctors and therapists lately that I just don't feel like typing it all out. Don't worry, it is not too serious, nor is it too soon (May 11, so far). I hope you all are well!

Review of the battles that Boo has won

2009-03-29T15:12:00.000-07:00

We have both wanted to give a review of some of the battles Boo has won because it helps us to remember the great things that God has done for us which are inexplicably easily forgotten when Boo faces any ongoing or new hurdles of lesser severity.

1. April 30, 2008. A didn’t feel Boo move during the day. It was such a minor thing that we didn’t want to go to the doctor and after praying about it we decided to call the on-call doctor who then directed us to go to the hospital for a checkup. Boo had irregular heart rate decelerations and A was diagnosed with severe preclampsia which is life threatening untreated. University doctors chose to deliver him immediately without waiting the 24-48 hrs to give him steroids/surfactant to be able to lubricate and prepare his lungs for their new role. The surgeon and I gave A a blessing. He was 3 months early and weighed 1 lb 13 oz (810 grams). His heart rate resolved itself once delivered. We felt that God inspired us to get to the hospital and that He was clearly in control of the events.

2. Day 2: Diagnosis of Tetralogy of Fallot, serious heart condition that would eventually require "intervention," (being surgery). The earliest that this intervention could occur was estimated to be at 1400 grams. Everyone’s primary objective and our prayers were to advance him to that target weight and beyond before he had a severe tetralogy of fallot spell.

3. Day 3: Grade 1: Brain Hemorrhage on left side. It was resolved by 30 days. They usually progress to more severe (grade 2 to 4) or can continue as is. Boo's disappeared. Grade 1's are mild.

4. By the end of first week, he was transferred to the children's hospital to be able to be near the pediatric cardiologists and the operating room. After two weeks, J, one of our primary nurses, convinces the medical team to not transfer Boo back because she liked him. This allowed him to stay under close supervision of cardiology team, which proved very important.

5. First full day at the children's hospital, A requests that V be one of his primary nurses. She is the cardiac specialist NICU nurse. Her last primary has just barely gone home. V's unparalleled experience and knowledge helped to properly diagnose de-saturation as either bronchospasms or basic lung prematurity. Some nurses would believe that he was undergoing a tetralogy of fallot spell but V would do other things first like listen to see if the heart murmur was the same and other techniques. J, another NICU nurse, said when a true tet spell occurs "you never forget it and you are running to the operating room." A misdiagnosis of tet spells could have encouraged the doctors to intervene sooner than was reasonable.

6. Bronchospasms. Boo had these often but has since overcome them post the shunt. Something in his lungs would seize up and his oxygen levels would desaturate a lot. He frequently need to “be bagged” where the nurse would manually force oxygen and pressure in to his lungs to make him breathe.

7. Subglottal stenosis: Boo is extubated (have the ventilator removed) three times but each time he needs to be reintubated because he cannot keep his blood oxygenated. The ventilator gives Boo lung disease by killing the lung cells charged with the responsibility of blood gas exchange due to the ventilator pressures needed to breathe for him. It is suspected that he has tracheal malacia, meaning that his airwaves collapse onto themselves without the ventilator tube present to keep him open. Study shows his subglottal area of the trachea to be heavily scarred and very sensitive (tracheal stenosis). A week later, when he was finally successfully extubated after his shunt surgery, another bronchoscopy showed the damaged area to be completely healed.

8. Shunt: Boo had to gain 600 grams before he would even be considered for a corrective surgery. Week of June 24, Boo reached 1400 grams after two months. He had had no reserve for a few days and was on almost 100% Oxygen. Any movements would cause him to quickly drop oxygen levels. Tuesday morning A and I decide to ask our families to fast for Matthew since he was not doing well. At about 8:30, he experiences a "tet spell"where the pulmonary artery "spasms" and blood to his lungs is restricted severely. V, who has Boo at least once a week, was his nurse on this crucial day. Boo is readied for emergency heart surgery to create a shunt to allow blood to his lung and bypass the restricted pulmonary artery. Pediatric cardiovascular surgeon Dr. K consults with us that this is the only option and it is high risk because Boo is only 1.4 kilos. One item of serious concern is the question of whether Dr. K will perform the surgery with Boo on heart and lung bypass or without.

The heart and lung bypass machine has the risk of brain hemorrhages (bleeds). He did decide to put him on heart and lung bypass because his oxygen was so unstable. I gave Boo a blessing with Dr. C and felt impressed to state that he would be fine. I also give A a blessing. We were very fortunate to have Dr. C as our attending physician, who was our attending neonatologist twice: when Boo needed the shunt and when we were discharged which we consider another tender mercy. Sister C stays with us during the surgery and provides the best company we could have asked for. Later we found out that Boo was the smallest infant to go on the heart and lung bypass machine at this children's hospital. At the end of the day, the surgery is deemed successful, as far as Dr. K could tell. After surgery, his oxygen saturations are stable for once! Later we confirm there were no complications from surgery. KSL does a special feature on him.

9. Boo is finally taken off the ventilator and A can now hold him. His ability to regulate temperature stabilizes and he graduates from his isolette to a crib.

10. Boo is diagnosed with urinary tract infection. Further investigation reveals bilateral urinary reflux. There is risk that he would need some corrective urinary surgery and after six months of taking antibiotics it is resolved.

11. Boo is discharged from the NICU Aug. 10. A and I notice that we can speak as loud as we want around Boo and we don’t wake him. The early intervention nurse confirms that he is deaf in his left ear. A later audiologist appointment states that it is possible that his deafness is only fluid build up. He later begins to hear and is woken up by the smallest sounds at night.

12. Boo is also diagnosed with kidney stones due to all of his diuretics/lasix. These have never bothered him and they will likely go away on their own.

13. Boo’s cry is very hoarse due to being on the ventilator for 2.5 months. Even after he arrives home in Sept he still has a very soft cry. His cry eventually became a normal baby’s cry.

14. Our first cardiology visit after Boo’s NICU discharge, Dr. G tells us to turn Matthew’s oxygen down to ½ from 1.5 ltr/min. This is bold move since we have needed to keep him here in order to keep his oxygen saturations between 65 and 85%. We turn him down and within an hour he is fine on 1/16 of a liter/min.

15. Oct.1, Boo undergoes full open heart surgery for his tetralogy of fallot repair. Shunts are generally good for twice the original size of the infant and now he is 3 times his original shunt weight. He is still small for a tetralogy of fallot repair. My brother, D, and I give Boo a blessing and felt to say that we wouldn’t have complications, something that I would forget but A did not ever forget.

The surgery takes one to two hours longer than expected. Dr. H reported that he had never performed such a difficult tetralogy of fallot surgery in his 18 yrs of heart surgeries. Tetralogy of Fallot heart surgeries have been performed since the 1940s. Boo’s right ventricle was so thick that he could not see where to sow to patch the hole between Boo’s right and left pumping chambers. The risk is that the electrical conduction lines, which are nearby, may be severed during the sewing of the patch and require Matthew to have a pacemaker for life. Boo had already been on heart/lung bypass for a long time and every minute was putting him in a worse condition of fluid build up and bodily stress. Dr. H decides to sow the patch blindly and he said he did have to pull harder then usual to do the stitches.

Dr. H reports that he accomplished everything he set in to do: take down the shunt, open up the pulmonary artery, and sew the VSD. After surgery, his heart needs to be paced with an external pacemaker. Dr. H said that he saw some evidence of his heart’s electrical recovery while still in the operating room so he says that we will wait two weeks before deciding on a permanent pacemaker and says that he has never had to put a pacemaker into a child after a tetralogy of fallot repair.

16. A and I learn there is somewhat of a lifestyle impact with a pacemaker including a list of electrical devices that need to be avoided. For several days, his heart needs an external pacemaker and gets worse in fact where he is “in complete heart block” meaning both ventricles and the atria needs to be paced. Almost all of the medical team believes that Boo will need a pacemaker after the first week, but Dr. H and one random cardiologist that A spoke to once still believe it could come back. On the 11^th day after surgery Boo’s heart electrical system begins functioning again.

17. After 3 three weeks, he is able to breathe without the ventilator so the lung disease is no longer getting worse, and he is able to breathe with nasal cannula, oxygen levels similar to pre surgery.

18. Post surgery, one of his battles was fluid retention from being on the heart and lung bypass machine. Fluid in the lungs decreases his ability to oxygenate himself. At one point he was on five different diuretics to get him to relieve himself of the fluid, which were the most diuretics that anyone ever knew of any child needing. While in the NICU, he had received several lasix/diuretics in order to keep the fluid out of his lungs so he could maintain his oxygen saturations, which made his kidneys fairly unresponsive to the diuretics. These diuretics had side effects like unbalancing his electrolytes, and his body countered by retaining CO2 to maintain a constant pH. It also pounded his kidneys.

19. After surgery they transitioned from feeding him through IV to through an NJ tube that was a constant drip feed that bypassed his stomach. They transitioned him later to an NG tube that delivered food to his stomach but brought with it the gastric reflux (spit up). He also had an oral aversion for quite awhile after surgery. When he was released from the hospital he had to receive his food via NG on a continuous drip. Since A and I had seen him pull out his NG tube during a feed and get milk in his lungs before, this was exhausting to make sure that he didn’t pull out his tube on a 24 hr basis during drip feeds. But gradually he was able to transition to a “bolus” feed where he eats once every three hours and it is not a continuous drip.

20. Narcotic withdrawals in NICU and at home characterized by severe agitation, fevers, and sweating. The wean schedule on the narcotic was very slow and we were at the end of the wean by giving him only 0.05 ml of methadone when we accidently put 0.5 ml instead of 0.05 ml of narcotic. We pumped Boo’s stomach through his NG. He was upset the next day but we did not dare give him even a small dose of narcotic out of concern that he already had overdosed.

21. Flat Head. His head is misshapen to the point where it is flat on the back and somewhat angled due to the time on his back. We finally decide to seek a medical helmet even though insurance wouldn’t cover it and now his head is shaped perfectly after 2 ½ months.

22. A special RSV prevention injection is given to any infant that was premature at birth, has lung disease or heart disease. Boo qualified with all three. His delicate situation required that we quarantine him from large groups of people (church & Walmart) and visitors that may be sick from November through April which is the end of RSV & rotavirus season.

Getting Stuff Done

2009-03-20T21:53:00.001-07:00

Warning: This post is extraordinarly long! I don't know what happened, but just so you know, I did not mean for it to be this way! :)

So basically this picture has nothing to do with the title. I just looked at our blog the other day and realized how sadly pictureless it is! So here is a picture of Boo saying: "Just because you give me a spoon to play with doesn't mean I will eat!" In answer to the big question, no, he is still not eating. It has gotten to the point that our occupational therapist told us to not even try to put anything to his mouth at all until Monday. Wow... Who knew that eating could be such a rough topic?! I guess as long as we are on the topic of eating: Boo has been getting 24 ounces a day of regular breast milk, via the tubey. Due to his inexplicable, yet consistent and excessive weight gain, our pediatrician recommended that we feed him roughly 21 ounces of breast milk per day and 3 ounces of pedialyte! We are doing anything we can to get him to lose weight (or at least to stop gaining), as it seems to be making his breathing worse. He is now back on his original amount of oxygen that he was on when he came home from the hospital in November, which is disappointing. So that makes three of us Steeds who are currently on diets, varying in our levels of commitment thereto.

Now to the title of the post. My life has completely changed! Little Boo now takes 1-2 naps for 3-5 hours per day! WOO HOO!!! (He used to just do twenty minute cat naps and stay up late and wake up early, all of which made for a somewhat less happy me.) One might ask what I do with these extra hours of me-time. I...GET THINGS DONE!! It has been awhile since I have been able to get much done. It was all I could do to make the bed and get dinner on the table, in between all of the things I was doing with or for Boo.

Here are some of the things I have gotten/am getting done.

1. Tonight I pruned the rose bushes. When we were in the process of buying our house, the previous owner mentioned to us that her rose bushes were "the talk of the neighborhood." Personally, I have heard no such talk, but certainly if the neighbors were inclined to talk about these sorts of things, they would not be mentioning OUR rose bushes! Last year we did not get around to pruning or taking care of them and they ran wild. I really wish I had taken a picture, as they were really quite embarassing. At one point, S made a half-baked attempt at pruning them in the fall, but it really was still a mess. Now, they are all at knee-height (just like I learned in my yardwork class). I was glad to have accomplished this at night, when I at least cannot see the spiders. (What I can't see can't hurt me, right?)

2. The other day I organized one of our cupboards (the one that has the cups and bowls and plates in it). I guess S and I have been miscommunicating all this time about this cupboard. Since sometimes he puts the dishes away and sometimes I do, things got disorganized really quickly. After awhile, S started thinking to himself: "I wonder when A is going to organize this cupboard; it looks terrible." I was thinking: "If I thought it would make any difference, I would organize this cupboard. But S puts things in the strangest places, and it would not stay organized long enough for me to justify the effort." Well the other day, S suggested to me that maybe we could organize the cupboard. I told him that I always want to organize the cupboards and I hate having them be so disorganized, but that he puts things in such random places... Anyway, he claimed to have put things in random places because they were so disorganized. And I claimed that things were so disorganized because he put things in random places. It's hard to know which came first, but needless to say, the cupboard nearest the sink is now organized and has remained that way even to this very moment.

3. Yesterday I cleaned the main floor. This did not take me quite as long as I had anticipated. It involved transferring a bunch of stuff (namely, the baby bathtub, the activity gym, and the pack and play) to Boo's room upstairs. He now gets to nap in there. (He took a three hour nap in there today and I shut the door and he slept so well! It was great!) Soon we will move him into it entirely, but we are waiting for Samuel's schoolwork to slow down a little first. Then I vacuumed (while Boo was mad, since it usually calms him). I put away a bunch of papers, organized our little baskets full of stuff, mopped the kitchen floor and cleaned all the surfaces of the kitchen (I usually do a decent job of keeping the kitchen clean. It is one area that really demotivates me if it is dirty). It took all my me-time, but it was worth it for the way Samuel and I have felt in a clean house.

4. I have finally started attacking the office. My goal is to get everything in all the rooms in order so that when my mom comes we will not feel compelled to do that kind of stuff. And we need to be able to fit a couple of beds in them! The office, I am sorry to report, looks even worse than before I started to mess with it. There are just too many papers!! S has put up a fight about getting rid of all his old engineering homework, random mission things and such, which has made my clean up fairly difficult. I have done a fine job of getting rid of his old love letters and the like. :) Certainly I have my own things that are a mess as well, but I am having an easier time parting with them. For now, I believe my only option to be huge containers with labels such as: "S - Engineering; S - Mission; A - College Notebooks (which I cannot seem to part with); A - Mission; etc. I hope that we can fit all this stuff in our crawl space so we don't have to see it ever unless we are looking for it! :)

5. I also got the upstairs bedrooms in working order. As I previously mentioned, Boo will be moving to his room soon, which has many of his things in it already. Our future daughter's room (no, this is not an announcement) looks GREAT! There is no random stuff in there anymore and the bed is made and the curtains are up. Now for the master bedroom (aka the clean clothes room, being where we dump out all our laundry baskets on the bed)... that will not be an easy or a quick one!

6. I have also finished filing all our papers. Well, except for the ones that have come in the mail in the past two weeks. It seems like papers just keep coming and never stop and never get thrown away either. Hopefully at some point here we will stop getting so many bills and statements, etc. All this filing has been driving me nuts! So it has been nice to have it pretty much done.

7. Lastly, yesterday and today I have been raking. Our yard is not that big really (0.19 acres), but for some reason it is completely SMASHED! If anyone has a good explanation as to why our yard is entirely smashed and everyone else's yard in our neighborhood looks normal, I would be happy to know of it. My current strategy is to rake, just like I did last year. It takes forever, but it is a decent workout (moreso last year when I was pregnant) and fun enough. I usually just take Boo for a little walk and he falls asleep, so I park his stroller in our driveway in the shade and I rake. Like I said, I actually kind of enjoy raking, but I just can't imagine why our yard is the only smashed one around!

It seems like there are always plenty of things for me to be doing. I suppose that will always be the case, which is actually a good thing. What would I do during Boo's naptime if nothing needed to get done? (I mean, besides read a book in a warm bubble bath, like I did for awhile this morning... Hmm, can relaxing be considered part of being productive? :) I will say this: it is SOOOO much fun to be a wife and mom and full-time homemaker!!!!!! It is so satisfying to get things done, no matter how big or small the task. Seeing progress is awesome. Being with Boo all day and hearing his little laugh and watching his eyes light up when he smiles and laughing at him when he jumps in his jumperoo (insert photos), and talking to him in a squeaky voice is the best! Having S to talk to every evening is also great. He is a wonderful husband and we always have good, interesting, and often humorous conversation. I wouldn't trade my life for anything!

Boo & the piano & corporate interface & other ensembles of steed life trivia

2009-02-22T13:22:00.000-08:00

Boo & piano:

Lately Boo will be busy eating or looking at A or playing with his rattle but when I begin to play the piano he seems fascinated by it and stops everything he is doing and just stares. I have told A several times that I think this is because one doesn't generally see male pianists so when one does it is more of a novelty. A denies with all of her heart that this is true but I still assert that this is the case. Perhaps he will be interested in playing the piano.

Corporate America & Small Business interface:

The month that Boo was born May 2008, we payed our credit card payment 1 week late and we were assessed a $40 fee. I called american express and asked them to rescind but they wouldn't. Then A called and they immediately agreed to remove the charges. That was a big moment for me. It gave me all of the ammunition that I needed to defer all of the bill paying to A because she was better then me. She has appealed several insurance company decisions and won. She has appealed the county's assessment of our house. She goes straight to the top when needed. The tradeoff here is the excessive cell phone minutes from being on hold. She does a good job of sticking to her guns when dealing with retailers. She went to a department store for a return last month and after spending several minutes with the clerk and then the clerk's boss the proper return was settled on after both the clerk and the boss had come up with 5 different refund values ranging from $6 to $114. They really struggled with the math but A helped them through it. Story problems have always been the most difficult for math students.

I will also admit that I do feel like I have a role as the automobile repair interface since A can be misled easily. In fact, while she was at the tire store, she watched a television show on car repair and then she suggested to the repairman that we needed new shocks and he said that we didn't because of the number of miles. There are other examples that I won't go into but basically I feel comfortable as the best automobile repair interface.

CHD (Congenital Heart Disease/Defect) Awareness

2009-02-15T00:15:00.000-08:00

Speaking of heart health...

I must mention CHD awareness week! I suppose it is over now (ended on Valentine's Day), but I must recognize it nonetheless. As many of you know, Boo was born with a congenital heart defect (heart problem from the womb). There are many kinds of defects, some more serious than others. Some children live for a long time without even knowing they have a heart problem. Other children have heart problems so severe that they require surgery almost immediately after birth. Boo was pretty much one of these children. He had his first open heart surgery at 1.5 months and his second at 5 months old. Now his heart is "fully repaired," although he will likely need valve replacements in the future. We are blessed in that Boo's heart defect is reparable, and that it is one of the defects that has been studied and had surgical procedures developed for a long time. Children with other defects are often not so lucky.

Honestly, I do not know very much about the purpose of CHD week, but I have been thinking about it all week and what it means to me. Here are some of the reasons I think it is important to be aware of the occurence of CHD:

1. Kids with CHD can have a variety of special needs, one of which is donated blood. This is something that most of us can do, and it really does save lives. Boo has received about 10 blood transfusions in his life.

2. Also, while Boo's defect has been well researched, there are many others that have not, and there is always more research to be done. So far, there are no known causes or ways to prevent CHD from occuring. We can donate money to help fund such research and to develop new procedures. Websites to visit include: http://www.childrensheartfoundation.org and www.intermountainhealinghearts.org. Were Boo to need his valve replaced right now, he would have to have another open heart surgery and he would have to have it replaced every 5-10 years for the rest of his life. But with the research they are doing now, this procedure could be done in the cath lab (without opening his chest - lower risk), and they are also working on getting valves that last longer. This could make a HUGE difference in our lives! The more surgeries Boo (or any other person, for that matter) has to endure, the worse. The worse on his lungs especially. So this is very important.

3. Finally, one of the most important reasons for all of us to be aware of the occurence of CHD (1 out of 100 babies born has a CHD), is that these families need support. Certainly our family has been blessed with GREAT support from family, friends, and church members. We also joined a support group for families of CHD kids and adults with CHD. Even with this support, it is very difficult to be a "heart mom." There are so many emotions involved and so much to learn. And so much worry and anxiety! And so much joy in the little things, often things you would never notice with any other child. And so many blessings. But yes, it is hard, and you do cry, and you do wonder about the future, and you do hope that you are doing what is best for the child without really knowing what that is, and you do put your child's life in the hands of competent medical professional strangers on numerous occasions and put all your heart and soul into praying that Heavenly Father will somehow take care of your little one when it seems impossible, and you do sit in the surgery waiting room while your child's heart is literally stopped thinking that your own heart might just stop too from all the stress, and you do always have the background stress of making sure your child always stays healthy since the smallest little cold could mean life or death. These are things that "heart moms" go through all the time. And certainly it is not just "heart moms" that need support, it is the whole family.

P.S. I am not currently in desperate need of support or anything. We are doing well and we expect this trend to continue. :) I share this point only to help others understand the stresses that come to families dealing with CHD on occasion (sometimes long occasions, sometimes short). But like I said, right now we are doing fine. (Although that getting-sick-background-stress stuff is VERY true for me! Please kindly keep your distance if there is any chance you may be sick. :)

Ultimately, I would like to say that I am VERY happy to be Boo's Mommy! I love him so much. I wish he did not have to go through so much pain, and I wish that I could experience it for him. I am glad, not that he has been so sick in his life, but that we could experience the great joy that comes as great difficulty and sadness and stress is overcome by miracle after miracle. Boo brings a joy to my life that I do not believe I would know otherwise. CHD is bitter, but life with Boo is so sweet.

So, Happy Valentine's Day and CHD Awareness Week everyone!!!! (Sorry this post is extraordinarly long and personal...)

Experiments

2009-02-14T23:01:00.000-08:00

For lack of anything better to say (besides everything on Boo's blog), I am writing about my latest time-consuming activity (I wouldn't call it a talent yet...) - cooking! I believe I have 5 cookbooks total, and I have been cooking a new recipe from one of them almost everyday for the past month! We have been enjoying a family dinner almost everyday (something I have not experienced since high school)! This is a real accomplishment, as I have never been proficient in the kitchen, nor do I have a history of enjoying any kitchen-related activities except licking batter/dough off bowls and spoons. :)

We have found some new family favorite meals, as well as some complete flops. Some of our favorite meals include:
Chicken Cashew Casserole
Zuppa Toscana (from Olive Garden)
Banana Coconut Muffins (I liked these, S did not)
Blond Chili
Meat Loaf with Barbecue Sauce

Some of the flops (most of which came from my American Heart Association cookbook) include:
Greek Lemon and Egg Soup (I couldn't even drink it!)
Artichoke - Tomato Pizza (We REALLY did not like the artichokes!)
Corn Casserole (after buying so much low-sodium stuff, this was a very unwelcome and unhealthy dose of salty yucks. I believe that children would enjoy this meal, however, as it is reminiscent of macaroni and cheese with hamburger helper. Unfortunately, I do not believe my children will ever enjoy it.)
Pepper Steak (I married a man, just like me, who does not prefer peppers)
Blackberry Muffins (They were supposed to be blueberry, but the cans in the store looked the same...this one tasted like medicine)
Caesar Brussel Sprouts (S gagged down a few bites. I liked it at first, but as left overs I gagged too!)
Hot Bacon Cheese Dip (tasted pasty and yucky all around. I can't really describe it, but it was not good and it will never find its way into my slow cooker again!)

I would be happy to share any of these recipes if anyone is interested. As for the American Heart Association cookbook...save your money. Spend it on anything else. Anything. For those like me who are seeking a more heart-healthy diet, buy stuff that is low sodium and low in saturated and trans fat, and just eat what you like. The recipes in the book are GROSS!!! We have yet to try anything from it that we like. They are either flavorless or have really yucky flavor. And they usually require random ingredients that we would never buy. Why do we keep trying it's recipes then? Because I have a system and I just like to follow my system. :) I must have some miniscule glimmer of hope that someday something good may come out of that cookbook. Luckily, many good and great things have come out of the others!

New Piano...um...USED Piano :)

2009-01-24T22:06:00.000-08:00

I guess the title says it all - we got a new-for-us piano a couple weeks ago. It is a 10-year-old Clavinova. I LOVE messing around with digital pianos. This one does not have a full keyboard (it only has 76 keys), but I love playing it and seeing what kinds of fun tones I can play my favorite songs with. I suppose these are the marks of a truly mediocre pianist. Oh well, I don't care. I love the thing. I am happy that we splurged pre-tax refund. :)

S also loves the piano. I had forgottten what it is like to live with him and a piano in the same house. (We used to have a piano in the house we were renting right after we got married). S's piano playing style reminds me of a cross between radio station remixes and CD collection infomercials.

As a kid, I used to love CD collection infomercials. I would hear one snipet of a song I liked and then I would leave the tv on that channel to see if there were more songs I liked, which there usually were. I never bought any music of course, but for some reason I was happy to be entertained by these infomercials. Well, now I have my own infomercial living in my home. S has between 4 and 6 songs that he has memorized over the years. Every now and again he will pull out a new one that I haven't heard, but for the most part they are all very familiar to me by now. They include: Canon in D, Sonata Pathetique, Jurassic Park, the song that is playing when they say "One Grecian Urn" in some movie, and perhaps one more. S will sit down at the piano and do something like this: He will start with Sonata Pathetique (which I LOVE), and right when I remember how much I love it, it will all of a sudden be Canon in D! And that will suddenly morph into Jurassic Park! He never plays more than 5-10 seconds of any one song without changing to the next. Fortunately, the songs repeat themselves without neglecting any one song or adding any other songs to the list. So I get used to it, right? :)

Also, S rarely plays any song at the composer's tempo - they go much faster. Canon in D is even jazzed up a bit with different rhythms and ornamentation. It is just like when radio stations try to play little bits and pieces of some popular songs all in the same tempo, even when the songs are not meant to be at that tempo, or when they make a hip-hop version of a country song. Really, his style just cracks me up. I am glad that he enjoys playing the piano. And I am glad that he wanted to get this piano for our family as much as I did. If only we could get Boo to take an interest... (he isn't even yet interested in his baby piano). :)

New Water Heater and other issues of relatively new homeowners

2009-01-03T13:36:00.000-08:00

We just purchased a new water heater!!! Actually, we are hoping that our home warranty company just purchased a new water heater for us, but either way, we have a new water heater and it is wonderful! We have put up with unreasonably quick showers for some time now, and I personally am glad to be able to take long hot luxurious baths. :) Strangely enough, that is not the only thing that has changed around here...

When we first moved in last February, the woman who lived here before did not have time to clean, so we were left with the grime. I noticed that both bathtubs were soiled with some kind of brown thick layer of something that was stuck to the sides and bottom. That sounds grosser than it was. So it was basically just some kind of scum layer that looked nasty. Anyway, I was thrilled to discover that it all came off with Magic Eraser! I figured that she just didn't clean very much and since I cleaned it it would be gone forever.

Not so. In less than a few weeks, the yellowish-brown grime was back. I got in the habit of cleaning it out every now and again, but it was definitely an annoyance. Then we began to notice that our bathwater and drinking water was discolored. Makes sense. So we determined that the city water supply must be a yucky color. (This sort of color came out of the faucets in Iowa sometimes when they cleaned out the fire hydrants and such). No big deal, right? We decided to ask one of our neighbors sometime if this was true for them as well. And being the go-getters that we are sometimes, we never asked anyone.

So last week, I had a plumber come out finally, since I cannot STAND to take 2 minute showers and I cannot stand even more to be cold. He came in and basically decided right away that our water heater was not even worth looking at (being 15 years old - water heaters are supposed to have a life of 10-12 years tops). We would need a new one. Hoping that the home warranty plan was not some sort of fraud, I agreed to buy a new one and have him install it right then and there. Don't get me wrong, I didn't do this blindly. He went through and showed me all of the clear problems with our water heater and how a water heater is supposed to work. It was all very informative.

A few days later, I went to make some hot cocoa for myself (something I do relatively often). I put a bunch of water in our hot cocoa maker and turned it on. After awhile, I noticed something different...the water was clear! Every other time I had made hot cocoa, the water looked like some kind of weak tea. Then later I took a bath...CLEAR water! Only then did I remember that the plumber had showed me how rusted out our water heater was, and the fact that we could see a bunch of rust from the outside meant that it was COMPLETELY rusted out on the inside! It is embarassing to report that...we had been drinking RUST!!!!!! I am just glad that Boo doesn't drink water and that I only drink Kroger bottled water (except with my hot cocoa...let's not even go there!).

Take home message: Don't EVER put up with unexplained discolored water, check your water heater for a lack of rust, and if the explanation for your discolored water IS rust, replace it IMMEDIATELY, WITHOUT QUESTION, NO MATTER THE COST!!!!!!!

As for the other household appliances, we have had some other very easy fixes that have improved our lives significantly. For example, after getting to the point of having to dry our clothes 3 times before they were dry, I finally called up Sears for some service. We had a warranty with the washer and dryer, so I figured we would just have someone come out and fix it. I rehearsed all our dryer troubles and asked for advice. He told me to go home and check the vents. Upon doing that, Samuel discovered that our dryer vent to the outside was COMPLETELY clogged! We are lucky there was no damage to the dryer or anything else for that matter. Also, our lint screen was full (which, incidentally, is my favorite part of doing laundry) due to its being in an obscure place. Problem...SOLVED! (Without spending a dime, might I add.)

The dishwasher has also gone berserk on us. It looks like such a fine appliance, but we got to the point a couple months ago of giving up and going back to handwashing, even after using a rinse aid consistently. It was at that point I decided to finally call Maytag. I told the man how disappointed I was in our once-clear-now-frosted glassware, the fact that things simply did not get clean, and in fact that things came out DIRTIER than going in, requiring handwashing eventually anyway! He told me to try washing the glass with white vinegar and seeing if all the frost came off. It did, so he recommended that I use dishwasher magic once or twice and that would probably clear out the buildup of phosphates due to our hard water. Problem...SOLVED! (Again, without spending a dime!...well, ok, maybe a dime or seven dollars...).

We are finally starting to realize that there are some very simple things we can fix in our lives that will make things SO MUCH BETTER for us! (This is true spiritually as well, of course). Even these two small and one big changes in our appliances have made our lives considerably easier and less stressful. Hard to believe that such a small effort could yield such great dividends. So in a broad way, that is my goal this year...to look for the small things I can do that will make a big difference and DO them!

Helmet Woes

2008-12-29T19:50:00.000-08:00

Here are the thoughts I have been having in my head lately, almost non-stop:

"I can't let my son grow up with a misshapen head his whole life when I am able to do something about it!"
"But I don't want to make him have one more piece of medical equipment to bug him."
"Maybe it's not that bad, maybe we can fix it ourselves."
"Even if I always lay him on his side, he will roll on his back and the pressure will never be put on the areas that need it."
"How will he feel when he looks at his baby pictures and sees a helmet?"
"How will he feel when he looks at his baby pictures and sees a head that needs a helmet?
"So-and-so thinks it's a good idea."
"So-and-so thinks it's a bad idea."
"So-and-so says helmets always work."
"So-and-so says helmets often do not work."
"So-and-so's baby got a helmet and they are SO glad they got it!"
"So-and-so's baby was recommended to get a helmet, but they chose not to and they are SO glad!"
"Kids grow out of flat heads. Flat heads are very common now, since babies are supposed to sleep on their backs, but you never see adults walking around with flat heads (never mind that when we adults were babies, our parents put us to sleep on our tummies!)"
"There is only a small window of time, age 7-8 months, when a helmet can be effective, because that is when babies have their head growth spurt." (I would love it if someone could PLEASE tell me how old Boo is...8 months technically, 6 months gestationally, and 5 months developmentally...). If a baby needs his head fixed after that time, the skull bones must be broken through a series of four laser surgeries and the helmet process is much more drawn out and significant."
"If insurance pays for it, it will come out of our medical equipment funds, which we will max out very quickly with all the medical equipment we have and we will end up having to pay a TON."
"If insurance does not pay for it, we have to pay $1800, $900 on the first appointment."
"If we wait another few weeks, we can see if we can make any progress on our own, without a helmet. Then we will be better informed as to whether we need it."
"If we wait another few weeks, he may already be hitting his head growth spurt."
"If we get a helmet, a lot of stress will be relieved in that we won't have to constantly be moving him to be on his side...he could sleep on his back again and spend however much time in his bouncy seat. The helmet would fix all of our problems."
"A helmet is the easy way out for those who are unwilling to be diligent and patient and long-suffering, and have all other attributes needed to be a good parent."
"Now is a great time for a helmet...it is winter and he has to stay in anyway!"
"Who wants to have a helmet?"

OK, so what did I choose? I still didn't have my mind made up as I was driving to our appointment with the helmet people this morning, but by the time I got there, I gave the woman my card and paid the $900. It's over, and remarkably, my stress is considerably diminished concerning the matter. In ten business days, Boo will have a helmet, which he will likely wear for the next 2-3 months. No big deal. I am not sure if this is the "right" thing to do, or if there is even a "right" thing, but I definitely feel OK about it now, and any decision at this point is a step in the right direction. I hope all our decisions are not this difficult!

Top Ten Reasons Why I Love S

2008-12-18T21:59:00.000-08:00

1. He is totally good and honest and easy to talk to and get along with.
2. He can successfully place an NG tube in Boo's nose, among the many other things that he has learned to do with Boo (things that lots of dads never even have to think about!)
3. He trusts in God and helps me to do the same. His faith is amazing and he always has been able to get me out of my doubts and fears.
4. He trusts me and encourages me to "follow my heart"
5. He knows what kinds of things I like and he makes the effort to give them to me (ie. a hot bath with a good book, time to go running after he gets home from work, Milky Ways, etc). Basically, he encourages me to take time for myself and do things that I like to do and he watches Boo while I do my thing!
6. He loves Boo and he gives him rides on his Boppy (which Boo LOVES)
7. He does 4am feedings and changes poopy diapers willingly, without any complaints ever!
8. In spite of the fact that I sometimes get after him about things, he NEVER gets after me about anything. And he takes all my issues in stride, never taking offence and always trying to make me feel good.
9. He likes my made-up songs and silliness, even in the middle of the night when I am totally ridiculous in my sleep!
10. Although he is definitely smarter than me in many ways, he takes time to explain things to me, talks to me about things that are sometimes over my head, and even listens to and values my thoughts and opinions!
11. He will drop anything to help me out when I need it (and I have needed it sometimes, LET me tell you!...) He would also drop anything to help anyone else in need...I have seen him do it time and again.
12. He leads with love in our home, NEVER with harshness.
13. He has incredible taste in movies and other forms of entertainment! (ie. "Happiest Millionaire", "Seven Brides for Seven Brothers," etc...never seen anything like this stuff!)

OK, that was 13...but that is not even all!! I can think of lots more reasons that I love my sweet husband, some of which I would not write on a public blog. Suffice it to say that I think I have one of the very most amazing men in the world as a spouse and I am SO glad that we got married, even after all we have been through in this short year-and-three-months...ESPECIALLY after all we have been through! I have the sweetest little son too, and I couldn't ask for anything more than the wonderful family that I have been blessed with.

All I Want For Christmas...

2008-12-05T18:07:00.001-08:00

The Best Mother's Day Present Ever!!!

2008-05-14T12:57:00.000-07:00

This is the first time that I got to hold Boo. It was his Mother's Day present to me. It will probably be awhile before this is able to happen again.

Welcome, Boo!

2008-05-12T15:33:00.000-07:00

Announcing the arrival of a brand new baby: Boo! He just arrived on May 1st at 2:37am. He weighed 1 pound 13 ounces, and was 14 inches long. For those unacquainted with normal baby weights, he is about 1/7 of the size of a full term baby. Boo came as a HUGE surprise to us...he was supposed to be born in late July! We feel extremely blessed to have this miracle baby. Pregnancy is supposed to last 40 weeks and Boo was supposed to be 29 weeks into it, but when he was born, the doctors pronounced him a "25 weeker." He is perfect, with every body part in perfect form (a blessing due to not having an emergency C-section, thus bypassing the trauma of the birth canal). He does have a heart defect. In fact, he did have two, but one of them was resolved in his first week of life. We are told that he is "fiesty," and at times a "wild child."

For those who are interested in the story, here goes. On Wed, April 30th, A didn't feel Boo move except in the morning. She also hadn't been feeling very well since
Monday, but she was not concerned since everyone told her she would be tired in the third trimester. When I got home that Wednesday night (early, believe it or not), I had already worked a full 40 hour work week. A and I were ready to spend a fun night together. I asked how the baby was doing, which was when A realized that she hadn't felt him all day. While I took a nap, A surfed the internet to find out about how often she should be feeling the baby. 9 out of 10 websites talked about how babies sometimes have quiet days, and not feeling him is totally normal. 1 out of 10 talked about a stillbirth. That, of course, was enough to send A into great nervousness, and she woke me up to talk about it and decide what to do.

After praying and discussing the issue and the websites, we decided to call the doctor. The doctor on call (it was about 9:30pm) told us to go to Labor and Delivery and have a "non-stress test." She said it was no big deal and that it wouldn't take very long. Once in the car, both of us felt much more calm, and we began laughing and joking like always, thinking that this would be a fun date for us.

In Labor and Delivery, it seemed that everything was normal. The baby had a normal heart rate, and it seemed that they would be sending us home soon. But, they later asked for a urine sample (after they said A didn't need one). Then, the resident came in and said that he wasn't sure if the baby was getting off the monitor and the monitor was picking up A's heart rate, or if the baby's heart rate was decreasing significantly. Then, the nurse came in with an oxygen mask for A, with 10 liters running per minute (that is a LOT of oxygen). Shortly after that, the doctor who we had talked to on the phone came in (the resident had called her), and said that things looked "crummy" and that they would need to deliver tonight. A needed to be transferred by ambulance to the University Hospital.

Once there, the entire resident team evaluated A, informed her of her extremely high blood pressures and proteins in her urine (both definite symptoms of a condition called "preclampsia"), and that they wanted to wait 48 hours to deliver so they could administer a steroid to help the baby's lungs develop. Then, the chief resident came in and said that there was no reason to give the steroid, because they needed to deliver tonight! I gave A a blessing, and they proceeded to the OR for A to get the local anesthetic and prepare for the emergency C-section. A was awake and holding my hand during the whole thing, and we shared our love story with the anesthesiologist during the surgery. A didn't feel a thing.

In the end, A spent 4 days at the hospital recovering (and taking horrible medications that made her somewhat loopy), and Boo will spend at least until the end of July in the newborn intensive care unit. This time has not been easy...it has been and will continue to be a huge roller coaster with more ups and downs than we ever wanted, but Boo is so worth it and we love him so much. Pictures are on the way. We really appreciate all the phone calls and thoughts and prayers!

Conference Weekend

2008-04-06T13:48:00.000-07:00

Conference Weekend this year was really fun for us. I was feeling good (the second trimester is the best! This is my most recent pregnant pictures...25 weeks!) and S was able to get away from work (mostly...see the picture of him with the Blackberry). =) Sometimes the most fun time we spend together is just that...time together. It seems to be a bit of a rarity at times, since we both work (he works until around 7pm Monday through Friday, and oftentimes on Saturday too, and she works Mondays and Thursdays from 3pm-11pm, which is long past his bedtime). We didn't go anywhere on conference weekend, or do anything other than watch conference on our laptop and spend time together at home. That was probably what made it special. Here are some of our highlights.

The baby and I are eternally hungry, or so it seems. We decide that we want to eat

something, and we have to eat it. Luckily, our appetites normally coincide with foods that we already have or that are easy and inexpensive to obtain. On Saturday night, the baby and I really wanted chocolate covered strawberries. Ordinarily, I would make these and take some to her visiting teach-ee's (a tradition that began in her college days), but seeing as I didn't have any visiting teach-ees at the time...the baby and I gobbled up all two packages of strawberries that I covered in chocolate! S was embarrassed for me, but the way I see it, it was a service to the baby! Recently, we have discovered that the baby is very particular about the water he and I consume. For awhile now, he and I have been intolerant of tap water, but now, the baby has decided that the only bottled water that will do is "Kroger." (Everything else makes me throw up). S's brother H suggested that we call him "Kroger," since we still haven't thought of a name. Hopefully we will think of something a little less conducive to teasing as time goes on!

S did actually have a lot of work to do, but thankfully he has a Blackberry. One of our favorite pasttimes is checking the Blackberry for "Read Receipts" and getting rid of them as they come. He does his best to check the Blackberry for real emails at appropriate times and places.

Here am I with the baby blanket I finished making on Sunday. I learned how to crochet from S's mom over Easter weekend (when we went on another vacation to Idaho Falls). It is for the baby to cover up with and snuggle and play peek-a-boo. S has finally warmed up to the idea of the baby having a crocheted blanket. At first, he thought it would be too small, and then he thought it would be cold and useless, since it has holes in it. Now, he is proud of his wife's newly-acquired talent and he thinks it is "cute."

Mission Reunion

2008-04-04T13:05:00.000-07:00

Today was the second reunion of the Uruguay Montevideo West Mission that I have been to. (I have now been home for two years). My mission president was called as an area seventy in the church last year, so now he gets to come to Salt Lake from Chile every year for April conference. It is really fun to see him. This year, he spoke to us at Elder B's house. We were are very large group, and since S and I got there late, we couldn't see him at all while he was speaking. He reminded us that we need to be studying our scriptures daily and doing our best with moving forward in our families. He also talked about how we need to pay attention to the needs of our fellow missionaries, and that if there is a need, make sure to include him, so he can write a letter or give a call to the missionary in need. He told us that we need to stay worthy of our converts. I always love to hear him speak. He speaks with such authority, even now that we are not technically under his stewardship anymore. It is the Spirit. Anyway, the mission reunion was fun. There were plenty of friends/companions around, and lots of people I did not recognize as well. These pictures are of all the hermanas in attendance, and again with Presidente. I am in the middle, freezing cold.

New House

2008-02-23T11:13:00.000-08:00

On 23 Feb 2008, we moved into our new home! (Big thanks to the many family members who helped us!) It was quite the learning process, and also quite the stress, getting ourselves locked into thirty years of mortgage payments, but we are mainly settled now and we are happy here. (S is finally getting used to the freeway noise, which is fairly constant since we live seven houses from the freeway. He is quite excited for the freeway sound wall, which the Utah Department of Transportation is in the process of building.) The house is 15 years old, and we bought it from the original owner, so it is in pretty good condition. However, the pictures will showcase some interesting events that have occurred in these past two months.

On our first day here, S's brother D took us to buy a new washer and dryer, with which we have ultimately been very pleased. Here is a picture of the pure exhaustion S felt after he and D carried both appliances into the basement themselves. We were both excited to hook them up and watch the new front-loader washer spin around really fast. So, we got all the cords in line and started to plug things in. Unfortunately, I, knowing nothing about electricity, plugged the dryer cord into the wall before the dryer plugs were separated and plugged into the dryer themselves. Thus, we both saw one of the biggest sparks in history, and the entire house lost all signs of electrical activity.

Luckily, S is an electrical engineer. Oh wait, that's not the same as an electrician. He went over to the fuse box (excuse my use of incorrect terminology, if it is indeed incorrect), and found the fuse that goes to the washer and dryer. He jimmied it a few times, and nothing happened. He then tried to brainstorm what could be done to get electricity, all the time needing to comfort me, who thought I had broken the brand new dryer! :) Eventually, he thought to go outside and see if there were any kind of electrical things out there. Fortunately, there was an 100 amp breaker out there that had been flipped. Apparently pulling 100 amps is a big deal (although I wouldn't know)! The problem was very easily fixed by flipping the breaker, thus restoring power to the house, and replacing the washer/dryer fuse in the basement.

Then, a few weeks ago while I was at work, S managed to push the dead bolt too far into the front door (if that makes any sense). He confessed upon my return, and I accepted the fact that the dead blot was broken and would need to be replaced. Eventually, we went to Home Depot and found a dead bolt that we thought would fit. This past week, however, while S was on a business trip, I messed with the dead bolt for awhile and got it to lock again! When S returned, I announced the dead bolt to be "fixed." An easy win, I thought. Until Sunday, when some church members stopped by to deliver the stake newsletter and we discovered that we were locked in our house for good! After repeated tries to open the door, S finally went out by way of the garage. Then followed a comical scene, in which both of us exited the garage, and unwittingly closed the garage door, completely forgetting that we could not get in the front. Luckily, we have a garage door code. So now, once again, fixing the dead bolt is "on the list" of honey-do's for S.

Lastly, apparently the previous owner was into some strange plants. It took us awhile to put our finger on it, but we discovered that the big ivy bush that was growing on and creeping all over our porch really bothered us. So, on the Saturday before Spring Cleanup (when they come once a year to pick up anything that you leave on the curb), S finally tore it down. We also pulled some other strange things out of our yard, and we are all the happier for it. (Yes, S did perform all these tasks while wearing "business casual").

The rest are some pictures of our house when we first moved in (thus there is nothing on the walls and the items on the floor are in disarray). We now have more furniture and a number of decorations, but we are still not done yet. Eventually, we would like to replace all the carpet (it is all light blue), and paint almost all the rooms (they are almost all light blue as well). But, these are things for later, and right now, we are really enjoying the house and doing our best to make it our home!

From top to bottom, the pictures include: the kitchen, the front room, the family room, the guest bathroom, our future daughter C's room, the office, the baby's room, the Master bedroom, the Master closet, the Master bathroom, and another view of the front room. Not pictured are the unfinished basement, the dining room, and the rest of the closets and halls.

Choke Cherry Deer

2008-01-30T12:47:00.000-08:00

These are pictures from our old house on Choke Cherry. We lived way up on the mountain, about as high as you can go and still have a house on the East Bench of Salt Lake City. It was a beautiful view, but we have both decided that we can do without the proverbial "house on the hill" for the rest of our lives. Besides the view, another perk of living way up there was the wildlife that was so frequently seen. Unfortunately, we did not get more pictures of the deer, but there were many that came around in the short period of time that we lived there. Here is one that was just sitting in the snow, before it noticed me and my camera.

One morning, while we were mildly awake at 4am, we started hearing creepy noises from the house. That is saying something, because, although the house was built in the 1960's, it NEVER makes noises! So of course we stayed under the covers and discussed the possibility of purchasing a baseball bat, in case we needed to fight off any enemies. The next morning, however, we heard the same noises at around the same time. I suggested that we look outside to see if there were any deer around. S got up and looked out the glass door...and saw no less than FORTY deer, all in our backyard (which is a big deal, since the backyard was very little and had almost no grass)!! There were even a few 5 point bucks! We watched them in awe, and figured that their combined weight must have been making the foundation of the house creek. We didn't get any pictures, since it was dark and going outside would have caused a stampede, possibly at the expense of our lives. Needless to say, in spite of the fact that we have no desire to live on the side of a mountain again, we have some really cool memories.

Idaho Falls Vacation

2008-01-27T12:27:00.000-08:00

I loves to go on vacation. To me, any trip that requires one or more hours in the car (or plane, etc) is a vacation. S does not consider going to Idaho Falls a "vacation," but it makes it all the more exciting for him that I do! So, I soak up every possible invitation to go on "vacation," and S, of course, goes along for the ride. These are pictures of our trip to Idaho Falls this January. We went so I could play my flute in Stake Conference in S's parents ward, thus helping out the stake choir. I don't seem to get very many performance opportunities these days, so I was thrilled to be invited, and of course, go on vacation.

Here is S. See what a helper he is!

This was also a special chance for us to see Grandma and Grandpa T (S's maternal grandparents).