Wednesday, October 8, 2014

Operation:FATTY and Sophie's big 2!

This adorable little miss of mine turned TWO last week! I can't believe it! Before we get to the ode to Sophie here are her stats from her Doc apt. Ready? Here we go!
 Length: 33.07 inches = 38%
Weight: 22.05 lb=3%
head 46 cm = 15%
 Doc was pretty ecstatic about her weight because she is now officially on the chart! awesome! Everything else about her check up was great!

Birthday Day!
her birthday was last Saturday, Sept 27. We are having a family party squished in with Landon's blessing this Sunday so we didn't have a huge party. But she still had lots of fun I think. We were going to do fun family things outside...but then it decided to dump cats and dogs all over the place THE WHOLE DAY so we ended up having a cozy crazy day inside.
Birthday breakfast! yummy yum.
Present time!
She got a new pink "ruff"
and a NEW BIKE! Which sadly she is a little small for. we thought she'd be ok since it was for 18m-4 years. Guess she's not 18 month size yet! maybe in the spring! But she still loved it and she can straddle the bar and kind of touch the ground.

She also got the movie Frozen.

She kept on laughing while she was trying to blow out her candles so she had a little help.


 
Ode to Sophie
I never realized it before looking back at pictures but Soph has changed so much this past year! So here are about a million and one pictures of her from this last year.
Halloween 2013. She couldn't even walk yet. but she was close!
November 2013
December 2013


Feb. 2014
First piggy tails
The day after we found out Landon was a BOY.
March 2014
First day of nursery


April 2014
 
May 2014

 
June 2014
 
July 2014

Aug 2014

 
Sept 2014
She accessorized herself! she did a pretty good job!
 

Here are some things I know about this little girl....

She can say a bunch of words. mama, dada, quack (duck), fruff (dog), sches (Shoes, cheese, or fish depending on the context) Ca-ca (Conner) cook (cookie), treat, baby, poot (poop) and a whole bunch more but I don't want to bore you.

She sure loves her daddy! if she had any choice in the world of people to hang out with it would be him.
She is such a little mommy! She is always taking care of her dolls, and changing their bums, telling us to be quiet when they are sleeping, etc. It is so cute!
and her hair is forever and always in her face like this if I don't clip it back. Good thing she loves bows!

 
She loves walking around in my heels. I have had to start putting them up high so that she can't get to them and they aren't strewn all over the house.


Which leads me to my next point that she is such a GIRL! She loves all things pink or purple (every time she picks out her plate to eat on it is one of these colors) she loves necklaces and bows and Hello Kitty. "that" as she calls her. because she used to point to Hello Kitty and say "that" because she liked her and it just stuck I guess.

She loves fish.

this is her most favorite book in the world. We barrowed it from the library and went through all of our renews before finally ordering it online. We read it every night.


While she is such a girly girl she still loves to play with Conner's trucks and boy things. Conner doesn't love it so much though...
while she is mostly sweet, she sure is getting a temper! She is very opinionated about what she wears (mostly she wants to wear her church dresses everyday. it's kind of our daily battle) Must be the 2 year old talking.
Happy Birthday to my sweet terribly two year old! Love you baby girl!


Tuesday, September 23, 2014

Operation: ALLERGY

We've always known that little Conner has allergies. Not sure where he got them from since there is hardly any family history (at least immediate fam) of any food allergies but He's been known to be allergic to peanuts from the day after his first b-day and we gave some to him and ended up with hives and swelling and wheezing all over the place. (so scary!) and egg whites came back positive during a blood test that was done when he was about 16 months old. Which when we cut eggs out he magically stopped throwing up ALL the time. Which was really nice. But I've never known what else he was allergic to. I was pretty sure he was allergic to dogs because every time one licks him he breaks out in hives in a tongue shaped red blob and he always breaks out and gets swollen eyes when he's around hay/weeds. But I never knew what else. I've  always been scared to give him foods and I kind of wanted to be in front of an emergency room whenever we tried something new.
So anyway, last week, after being on a waiting list for like 2 1/2 months we finally got in to see the allergist to do some testing!! hooray! Conner was the biggest trooper ever during the test and never complained! except to say that he was tired of sitting still. (15 min) I'm sot sure I've ever seen him in one place for so long! :)

So there's his sad little scratch test. Thankfully only like 2 or 3 of the big scary looking ones are food. Most are environmental things.
Here's what we learned:
He is, no surprise, allergic to peanuts. that was the biggest one at 20/40 (not sure what the measurement means but that's what it was!)
Pecans came in at 15/30. so another biggie
Almonds was 7/15
and he's slightly allergic to walnuts and hazelnuts, wheat and soy (those ones not so much that we need to cut them out. they were like 2 or 3/somethings)
Good thing I hate nuts in general so it's not like a sacrifice to take them out of our diet!
and not allergic at all to brazil nuts, cashew's and pistachio's! and he's thankfully not allergic to milk and magically grew out of his egg allergy! which makes me SO excited!

Unfortunately he was allergic to everything that they tested for environmental. with those they measure different than foods on a scale of 1-5, 5 being the most allergic.
3+ trees
5+ timothy grass (whatever the heck that is)
5+ weeds (sagebrush, ragweed, etc)
3+ cats
5+ dogs
5+ horses

So anyway, there's my allergic boy :( I'm glad that he's not allergic to more food though. I was worried about having some gluten thing that seems to be all the rage with kiddos these days. Doc said that if we bring the other kids to his next appointment he'll check them, free of charge, for the peanut allergy to just ease my mind. so nice!

We also talked a lot about his eczema that he's had since 2 months. Doc said that while most people think it is associated with allergies really has nothing to do with them! It is a disease of this skin where these is no cure, just management. But yay! most kids grow mostly out of it! It is skin that is kind of missing some element to keep moisture in and bacteria and junk out. He explained it as being like a brick wall without any mortar. He said that if we took a culture of C's skin it would probably grow some sort of staph bacteria. awesome. So he prescribed some antibiotics to kill that icky stuff and we are now on a new regiment of taking three 30 min bleach baths (bath water with some bleach and a ton of salt) a week and are trying a new lotion (cera ve) in addition to his steroid creams. So far it seems to be working!

We also will be talking at later appointments about asthma. woo hoo! the list keeps growing! He doesn't have it bad, but it seems like whenever he gets a cold or is being one with nature in a lot of weeds he gets really wheezy.
Aside from the peanuts (which he will probably never outgrow) hopefully he will outgrow lots of these, or at least get better as he gets older.
It breaks my little mommy heart to see his have to go through all of this but C is such a little champ! I don't know if it's because he sadly doesn't know any different, but he never complains about all of his little problems and always has such a happy attitude! love you Conner bud!

Thursday, August 28, 2014

The last 9 weeks of my life

9 weeks! Has it really been 9 weeks since this baby has been out of my belly? And also it feels a lot like "has it ONLY been 9 weeks? hasn't he just always been here?" I can honestly say the past weeks have been a blur, or a fog, basically something that I'm sure in the future will be blocked out from my memory completely because seriously? 3 kids is NUTS! Don't get me wrong, I wouldn't trade Landon for anything. He fits in our family like he's always just been here. After only 2 months I really can't imagine life without him. But man am I tired! It hasn't helped that he was born at the prime time peak of summer fun season. In his short little life he has been to 2 parades,  2 family reunions, the county fair, and gotten one nasty sunburn.

Lets start off with him being born. His birthing was completely uneventful, other than it resulted in the cutest lil baby boy that is!

It was a rainy day in June...
view out of our delivery room window
Friday, June 27th We got to the hospital at 7:00AM to check in. (As we all know I was scheduled to be induced at 39 weeks in hopes of not developing pre-eclampsia) The Lady at the check in desk looked up my name and said "Oh, you're scheduled for tomorrow" excuse me? umm...pretty sure that's wrong. I had just had my last OB apt the day before and my doc said "see ya tomorrow!" I had checked and double checked everything, they even sent me a letter in the mail with that date on it which I immediately took out and showed to them. Tomorrow my butootie! The head nurse, who obviously had just gotten off of an all night shift, either that or was just a bad word I don't say, said "I guess we can accommodate you" gee thanks lady. Turns out there was another patient named MaryAnne who was originally scheduled for today but needed it changed for tomorrow but in the computer they changed me instead of her. Awesome.
After they took me back to my "accommodations" I got all ready and about an hour after I got there they started to Pitocin. Me and Rusty just sort of hung out. watched the rain. stuff like that. Not so long story even shorter they started the meds around 8:00. 9:00 I got my lovely epidural. A little after 10 The nurse had told me she would be back to check me at 11. By 10:20 I was feeling (slightly since the epidural takes all the edge off) the urge to push and I was pretty sure Rusty would be delivering a baby by himself if we waited till 11 for the nurse to come back and check. I called her and she checked and said "Oh my, well lets call the doctor! We're having a baby now!"I Doc came around 10:45. The nurse said jokingly "we might have this before 11!" Yeah right. 15 min.? ha! and the doc still had to do some prep! But since Little Landon was so corporative and only needed 2 pushes, the first for his head and the second for everything else, he came at exactly 11:00 on the dot. good boy!   just to help with the math that's a 3 hour labor. A personal best above Sophie's 4 hour one! I'll take it!
He was 5lb 10.5 oz, 19 inches long and perfect! (the exact size of Conner, just FYI) I couldn't believe how tiny he was. They handed him to me right away and asked Rusty if he wanted to cut the cord. Funny husband never remembers if wants to or not which is a good thing because he's done it every time after every time he says "That's so weird! I'm never doing that again!" Must be his form of the amnesia I guess. So he cut the cord and I got to cuddle with my new little lovey for a few minutes before they took him to get all checked out and cleaned off. While Rusty was cutting the cord the doc commented on how small the cord was (remember he had a single artery umbilical cord so we knew it would be smaller. apparently it was small even for that) and Scary/weird thing, when I was delivering the placenta the umbilical cord just, like, detached and so doc had to get all up in my business to get it out and the placenta was coming out in pieces. Not so normal. It's scary to think that the cord came off so easily. If we hadn't delivered when we did...it problaby would have been fine. but it maybe have not... but it DID turn out just fine so we won't dwell on anything!


 
A few hours after he was born they did an ultrasound on his kidneys (remember, in his ultrasounds in my belly they were slightly dilated) and they were still a little bigger than they should be. So when he's 3 months we will do an ultrasound again and see how things are going and if we need to go to primary Children's for further testing. As for now he's on an itty bitty daily dose of amoxicillin. 
 
Meeting the sibs
My parents were awesome enough to watch Conner and Sophie for us and brought them later that day to meet their new little bro.


Soph was a little obsessed with his nose

And with making sure everyone was quiet. She kept shussing everyone and saying "baby"


 
Here are the big kids al ready for church while we were in the hospital! So cute!


 
I don't know if it was just because it was #3 and we are non-stress crazy parent pros, or the fact that everything went so well and we didn't have to go to lockdown prison rooms (remember Conner's birth story? Sheesh!) or what but this hospital stay was so much more relaxing and awesome. We just hung out and rested and had no cares whatsoever while there.  Anyway, On Saturday, the next day, Rusty and I "celebrated" (as much as you can celebrate in the hospital) our 8th wedding anniversary! Go us! Who'da thunk 8 years ago exactly we'd be in the hospital with #3? crazy! we didn't do much. I slept through most of it, and Rusty watched movies. Pretty awesome! Later Rusty's fam came to visit which was pretty trooper of them because they had all just gotten back from Trek like 3 hours before and where falling over tired. Thanks for coming guys!!
 
 On Sunday we were able to go home! yay! Although that meant real life would begin. Bring it!


 
First 4th of July
Exactly one week after Landon was born was the 4th of july, AKA his due date! We were brave and went up to Oakley for the parade and day o' fun with Rusty's fam. Later that night Rusty took the kiddos to the Rodeo. As much fun as it sounded to sit on a hard stadium bench for 3 hours one week after giving birth I had to respectfully decline.
Landon's first parade!
Not planned at all but look at it compared to last year's 4th pic. Crazy! Before Landon was even a twinkle in our eyes...


C's suuuper excited about his parade loot.

Soph just chillin' eating her sucker


For the 24th of july we went to a family reunion for my side of the family at my uncles yurt ( a round tent/cabin thing) up by Heber. The kiddos had a blast!

Conner helping great grandma make ice-cream old school!

grandma cuddles


 The Sibs
These kiddos love their little brother. They have both adjusted so well! And Landon tolerates them as best as can be expected...

Sophie's such a little mommy to him. She's always putting blankets, even when it's 100 degrees out, and shushing everyone, even when he's not sleeping. She just really loves him. Conner is just excited for him to be big and play trucks with him. He keeps asking me if Landon's big enough to do stuff yet. Nope bud, not yet.
 
When Landon was 2 weeks old (well 2 weeks and 2 days) I woke up with a 104.6 degree fever. Whaaat? It was crazy! I've never had anything like that so we ended up going to insta care (since it was a Sunday) and nobody could figure out what was wrong. It was assumed that I had some sort of infection...somewhere. The doc said it was most likely a urinary tract infection, but from what I've heard I think I would probably know if it was that. And I didn't know so... anyway, the doc put me on antibiotics and since baby things are not his specialty and he wasn't for sure what was infected and since I had just had a baby he put me on super duper strong antibiotics just to make sure it got anything that might be causing the fever and long story short I couldn't nurse while on it! lame! Landon HATES binkys so I knew this was going to be fun. So after an $80 trip to the store to get bottles, formula, and binkys we went home for a fun week of making bottles in the middle of the night and pumping and dumping to keep up the supply for when there was a demand. At first he was like "what the crap is this crap!?" but as the week went on he got used to it and by the end he almost liked his binky! awesome!
sleeping with the bink...notice how it's still not actually in his mouth? that's because like 3 days after he started nursing again it was bye bye bink. And once again he hates it :(
 During this fun week of no nursing was Lamb Day! (Rusty's annual family reunion in Fountain Green.) Let me tell ya though that camping (well, me and Landon didn't really camp) and going to an all day carnival thing at a park while having to pump is so not a fun thing. I'm so glad that this was just a week thing and not forever! My hat goes off to people who do it full time. Anyway, Landon went to his second parade during there but I got absolutely no pictures of the event dang it! but I do have an after pic of the nice little sunburn poor little baby got. First official  mommy fail for this one.

 
Here's a preview of his newborn pictures. Can't show them all before his announcement comes out! What would be the point of an announcement? but here's a taste (it will be soon. infact it's done! I just need to get it printed. Cut me some slack, I'm lucky if my children get dressed for the day most days...oh wait...)


 
Since the world hasnt' stopped for the two bigger kiddos we've been entertaining them a lot with some backyard pooling. One thing I've learned about having more than one kid, and it gets more true the more you have, is that they they force you back into society so much faster. I personally would be ok vegetating and sleeping for the first 4 months but noooo. These kids think they want to have fun. weird.




Landon got a new swing so he can have fun (mostly sleep) while I help the big kids have fun!



way photogenic kids

awesome.

Here are some of Landon's second month pictures. awe...

Nothing like the perfect shot being photo bombed by a 4 year old eating gogurt. sigh...
Landon's new crib
At about 6 weeks Landon got a new room. Those who see my posts on facebook know that his new space is my closet. I've actually weirdly had a lot of people very interested in this and wonder how it works. so tada! here you go...
After a few weeks of this closet thing going so well I decided to make things a little more permanent and last week I hung curtains! Cute! Now we can go to the bathroom in the middle of the night and not worry about waking babe up!
 
Speaking of bathrooms, Sophie is thinking this is a good idea. ugggg. I so don't want to do this with a newborn again. Just wait a little longer sis. I don't mind changing you I promise! Luckily she's  just playing with the idea and not full fledged into it yet. Probably because I'm not being all that supportive.
about 2 weeks ago (when L was 7 weeks)  the county fair was in town! and it was Rusty's probably last weekend of not working until Sept 15 and it was lots of fun! They had an elephant show that we went to and the kids loved it! Even though we were cheap and didn't let them go on a $8 2 minute ride. Rude parents.


Petting zoo. Not a great pic. C really did have fun!

Sophie loved her giant snowcone!

Soph was not corporative.

"'sup"

They had this tent with these vacuum tubes that kids could put balls in and it carried them all along the roof. Conner serisusuly played in here for an hour. and then he cried an cried when we told him it was time to go home. "But I have too much energy to go home!" he cried.


Proof that I was there!
 
Remember Sophie's little pink blanket that she loves so much? I decided to be Martha Stewart and make Landon one yesterday! He didn't really seem to care so I think I won't really give it to him until he's out of the spit up phase

So there you have it, that has been our whirlwind last 9 weeks. This last week had it's own fun of everyone getting sick with the cold and the water heater going out. Always an adventure around these parts!
My house almost always looks like Toy's R Us and a laundry mat threw up all over it and I'm about 60% tired, 50% cranky (sorry kiddos!) and obviously so brain dead that I can't do simple math. But slowly things are getting back to normal, or at least we're finding our new normal. Landon has been sleeping awesome since he moved into the closet and that has helped a TON! He only wakes up twice to eat. Unless you consider 5:30 an acceptable time to start your day (which I sure as heck don't) then it's only once.  But I love seeing all the kids playing together, well Landon laying there and not being stepped on by the other kids playing together. Sometimes (ahem, most times) it's hard and there have been moments where all four of us are all crying at the same time, but I'm really trying to enjoy every little moment because I know they won't be little for long and I'm supposedly going to look back and miss it all. And really, knowing me, I probably will!