The weekend of memorial

This memorial weekend was busy busy busy! We were planning on just staying home all weekend to complete my miiiile long honey-DO list but ended up last minute going to Oakley on Saturday to visit Rusty's fam. It was lots of fun. We got to take Sophie's 8 month pictures (YES 8 months! As of Monday!) They turned out pretty cute!

 

Awe man sorry. I always tell myself that I'm not going to overwhelm the world with pictures, especially since everyone but me probably thinks they all look the same, but I just keep adding them. oh well.

 

Ye haw!

Then Conner got to go for a ride on the mules (the horsies if you ask C) and had a blast. Except for the part where his eyes got all swollen and red. Apparently he's allergic to them...or grass...or both. dang it! Another thing to add to that darn allergy list. But he still had fun!

 







 Soph and grammy watching the boys.



Then we had a BBQ and when Conner was good and ornery and tired we went home!


Memorial Day
The great wall of Hansen!
For actual memorial day we just worked and worked. After all, I still had my giant list-o-stuff to do and one less day to do it all! My flower bed (Ha "flower bed"! more like dirt pile of weeds) in the front is GIANT and I wasn't' sure how to fill the whole thing up with plants that I don't know how to keep alive. So we decided to build a little retaining wall to break things up and give the space some levels. I think it turned out quite nicely!

The wall!!! Look at us being handy.

And the top so you can see the shape. Lucky for us some nicey nice neighbors just happened to be digging a giant hole in their back yard for an in ground tramp and shared some of their dirt. Other wise we would have had to buy, like, 50 bags of dirt in a bag and thus ended up spending more $ on dirt than the actual wall. That would have not been cool. Yay for free dirt! Thanks friends!

Out with the White
We also bought paint to paint my boring white walls. If you have come to my house in the last 2 months there have been swatches and swatches of paint colors stuck all over my walls. I have been painstakingly trying to find the perfect shade of gray. And after months of looking and squinting and imagining and making giant swatches from poster board I think I found it! "Wood smoke" by Glidden is the winner winner chicken dinner!

I originally had settled on the top really light one ("Stone" by better homes and garden) but Rusty wanted it reeeeally darker (the second one..."drift wood gray" by glidden,) so we compromised on the big giant bottom one and ya know? I think I like it best anyway!

Here is the color in a different spot!

We'll probably be painting in the next weekish which is really exciting! I'll keep you posted!

 

Snippety snip

I also gave Conner a hair cut on this fine memorial day! As cute as he is always I'll admit it was getting a little shaggy.

before

during. we have to take turns, otherwise I would never get near his head.

 



after! Sorry it's a crazy picture. He really wanted to cut off my leg and arm with his saw while I was taking the picture and this is the best one I could get.

So there was our memorial weekend. it was jam packed! I'm not sure we could have done more if we wanted to. Which Conner sure didn't want to. He came inside at the end of the day and plopped down on the floor to take his shoes off and said very seriously "that was a hard day."


ZOO-be doo be do

We had planned to go to the zoo a few days after T-day but then the weather was not awesome so we decided to go the next week but Rusty decided to sprain his ankle to black and blue while playing soccer (seriously! this guy needs to stop playing sports! ha like that will happen.) So  a little over 2 weeks ago we FINALLY went to the zoo. Conner was SO excited. Partly because we had been psyching him out that we were going to go for the past month, but mostly because he really wanted to see the dragons. hummm. I couldn't find it in my heart to break the news to him so I just said "Awesome!"  So off we went! and it was so so fun!

In the parking lot getting ready to go in. Bam!

This was C's FAV attraction. The Lego polar bear. They had a bunch of life sized lego sculptures and a booklet that had pictures of them in it and Conner had so much fun finding them all. This one was by far the favorite of the trip. I think we had to go back and see it about 7 times. We'd ask where he wanted to go next and he'd say "The big white polar bear with legos!"

And family picture. I'm really excited that the only kid looking at the camera is the random little girl in the bottom right corner.

Looking at....something.

during lunch. Silly kiddos!

Oh and this was a pretty exciting attraction too. Gotta stop and see the big "eckabator" Apparently they're building a splash pad here and it should be open in June! not that we're going again this year...Should be fun though!

 

"Hey conner, do you wanna smile maybe?"

"Oh, yup, that's better"

We got to see them giving the elephants a bath. It was pretty crazy!

 

 

So tired.

about 10 minutes into the ride home.

funny how similar it looks to last years return from the zoo...

So there's the zoo this year! It was a little sad because there was a TON on construction (not that Conner minded) and there was no train! Conner's been a little into trains this year and I thought it would be fun to go for a ride. Oh well. I hear it should be back next year though! And luckily he had so much fun seeing all the other animals that he didn't notice the lack of dragons.

 

These Little Piggies

Awe, here's cute little Conner when he was just 9 months old. Aint he cute? Lots of you who follow this blog have seen this picture before, but I bet you never looked super close at it. If you do you'll notice something is missing....

 

What?!? you ask! Where are his toe nails!?!

Here's the story...
After the crazy ordeal of Conner's birth the nurses took him to be weighed and measured, blah de dah, and then went to clean him off. As my Doc finished up with me the and the nurses tended to Conner across the room I heard one of the nurses say "Oh my, he's missing a fingernail....and he doesn't have any toe nails " Come again? My mind was so foggy and tired that that didn't really register exactly what that meant. Rusty rushed over to see what they were talking about and I just sat there stuck to my bed trying to wrap my mind around this new package of information I had received. At first I thought that they were joking. They had to be right? They brought Conner over shortly for me to hold and sure enough his cute little toes were about half the size of a regular babies toes and all except for both of his pinky toes were missing the nails and the tip of his pointer finger on his right hand was missing: no nail there either. My first natural thought was "will they grow ever?" I didn't voice that thought because as soon as I thought it I knew the answer. I asked if they knew why and they said "Sometimes these things just happen" aka "we have no clue."

As a mother you want your baby to be perfect. You picture this flawless little person growing inside of you, so you can imagine my shock when I found out that my sweet baby was not exactly like everybody else. The nurses were nice about it, even making it lighter by saying "It's a good thing he's not a girl so he won't be sad he can't paint his toe nails!" and Rusty joked that now we wouldn't have to worry about accidentally taking home the wrong baby. We all laughed a little and as I held my little baby it didn't matter. I loved him so much, nails or not, but I still felt a little sense of loss. Not for me, I knew that I would love my baby no matter what, but I couldn't help but think of how he would feel about it when he got older. Would kids at school make fun of him? Would it be hard for him to walk? and so many more questions of how it would affect (or effect? I never know) came to mind.

The next day when we were still in the hospital Conner's new pediatrician Dr. Horkley (HIIIIGHLY recommended for you Logan peeps who need a new ped) came in to talk to us and asked if we had any questions. Obviously we did. He said that it's not a very common thing but the diagnosis that he thought fit best was "Amniotic Banding Syndrome"  (which will henceforth be know as ABS because it is a giant name and takes a long time to type)

 

 

Here is a picture of his feet in my belly. not that you can see anything. They gave nothing away. but they're still cute:)

"What is ABS?" you ask? It occurs in about 1 in 1200 births. It's basically when really thin strips of the amniotic sac strip off to create what are called bands and the baby gets tangled up in them restricting blood flow usually causing the place that it is wrapped around to be amputated. Think of like a rubber band wrapped tight around your finger. If you left it on long enough your finger would probably turn purple from restricted blood flow and eventually fall off. It's even more likely to if the person it is wrapped around is growing at an alarmingly fast rate like a fetus. It has been know to cause complete limb amputations and is also a cause of clef lip if a band gets on the face. interesting.

here's a picture!!!
 

Aaaanyway, this is probably what happened to little Conner. While it's rare, it's not unheard of in the slightest. In fact my last night in the hospital a nurse came in to visit and show me that her finger was the same way! She had a beautiful set of manicured nails except for one pointer finger, just like Conner. She said that she heard about C and she wanted to see her baby hand twin. I thought it was really nice of her to come visit.
Since something had to go wrong I am SO glad that we got this instead of something much more severe. It never required a NICU stay, it doesn't require and additional doctor visits. It's purely cosmetic. I feel so blessed that his case is as mild as it is. just the toe tips and one finger. And if you know Conner you know that it for sure hasn't hindered his walking/running ability. And if it has I shudder to think about how fast and crazy  he would be with full sized toes! Oh and this is not genetic, just a complete fluke of nature and unless I plan on having 1201 kids (which I don't) it probably won't happen again (Sophie has no problems with this)

I hardly ever even notice Conner's little piggies and finger any more because it is just...Conner. The only times I notice it is when I have to trace his hand to make a turkey for Thanksgiving, or when he comes to me with an enormous booger on that finger and I'm impressed that he got that out without a finger nail, but lately I've been thinking about it a lot. For the past few months Conner's been coming into my room in the middle of the night for various random stuff. Sometimes he needs to go potty, sometimes his hands are cold, sometimes he has a booger he needs to wipe on a tissue. Fun things like that. A few weeks ago he came in and I thought "what is it this time?" But he was crying and seemed to be really distressed about something. I turned on the light and pulled him up onto the bed with me (this was during busy season and Rusty wasn't home yet so it was just me) and I asked him what was wrong. He was holding his hand and to hide his fingers and just cried.
"it's boken mommy."
 "What's broken?" I asked.
"My finer is boken." I tried to get him to let me see but he wouldn't let me. I knew instantly what he was hiding. After a minute he finally showed me his nail-less pointer finger and said, crying "my finer need to get a nail. Fix it mommy. fix my finer."
Well if that doesn't break a mommy's heart I don't know what will! It was the first time I had ever cried because of his finger and toes. I just hugged him and kissed the tip of his finger and told him that there was nothing wrong with it and it was how Heavenly Father made him and it was perfect.

He hasn't brought it up since but I know it's coming.  Probably when he starts school and other kids start asking him about it. It's hard to know exactly how to handle it. It's definitely uncharted territory for us. I don't know. I guess if he doesn't understand why we can just say that that he accidently ate his toes on his first birthday. oopsies!

So what does this mean for Conner in the future? Not a whole lot. We'll just watch him close. I don't know what we're watching for, but with all of our moving he's had a lot of ped's and they all  (well all except for the one who pretty much though I was on drugs while I was pregnant. gurrr) were not too concerned but said "we'll watch him" and make sure his feet don't blow up or something I guess? which so far hasn't happened. He seems like he is leaning more and more to being left handed. I'm not sure if it's just easier for him to do things with his left or if he was always going to be a lefty left. We'll never know. But one thing is for sure this has not caused any problems whatsoever in his life. He is super normal and super awesome and we love him super lots!