Hello, 2016!

Why, hello world. I realize it has been a long time since I've last posted, so let me share how we are doing in a quick update.

Scott: Last year, we made a big decision to let Scott stay home and focus on school instead of work. He has been doing classes at UVU and is still doing flight training. We have switched his flight classes up to South Valley Regional Airport with a company called Leading Edge Aviation (which we love!). He is currently working on his Certified Flight Instructor (CFI) rating. Once he has his CFI, he can get a job as an instructor and start building up all those hours required for bigger and better jobs! It's been slower progress than we would have liked, but we are still optimistic and continue to push through!

Nancy: Because Scott stopped working last year, I changed my schedule to full-time. It has been tiring and very difficult at times, but we know it is what I need to be doing right now for our family. All of these big changes have been a blessing in disguise. Because Scott was not tied down with work all summer, we were able to do a lot of things/family outings that we normally would not have been able to do, least of all in the same summer! I really enjoyed our summer last year because we finally had a summer together. Likewise, Thanksgiving and Christmas were wonderful because Scott didn't have to work! This was the first time in 6 years that he had both holidays off!!

Hailey: Hailey can be described in a few words. Diva. Strong-willed. Chatter-box. And my, has she grown up! She somehow managed to go through a growth spurt last summer without us realizing until her clothes were all too small! She talks ALL the time. She is full of fire and energy. She LOVES pink. Anything pink. And anything princess. She will fight you on anything you tell her to do, but she will also love you unconditionally and give you the sweetest hugs.

Leo: Leo is a mama's boy. He loves to be held. He loves to snuggle. He is so sweet and gentle-natured. And boy, does he have a high-pitched scream! He started nursery and while he was hesitant at first, he loves it now and looks forward to going in each week! He has started to say more words and phrases, so it is getting really fun trying to communicate with him!

We are a busy family, but things are good and we're happy! We have a firm testimony of the Gospel and of Jesus Christ. The Spirit has blessed our lives this last year more than ever before! And hopefully I will try to post a little more often as this spring and summer rolls around and we start to do more fun things!

Happy Birthday, Hailey! {Feb 28}

You know what I love about celebrating Hailey's birthday? It means winter is almost over and spring is just around the corner. I love everything about the date of Hailey's birthday. Once Christmas is over, her birthday is not too far off, and after that, everything warms up. It brings hope and warmth and sunshine and of course, an adorable little girl that is one year older (...and wiser, too!).

This little baby is THREE years old now. Three years doesn't seem like a very long time, but it is really neat watching the development of a child in three years. I think back to when she was in the NICU, and when it took her 8 months to sit on her own and 16 months to walk. She was always a talker, and very bright and intelligent. And now she is three years old and knows so much! She is so smart, so quick to learn and remember. Not saying she is always perfect, but she is a pretty good little girl. I just love watching her turn into a little girl. She is no longer a baby.

She still eats like a bird, and is still very petite. She is fully potty trained, although she will have the occasional accident if she plays too much and holds it too long.

I still remember the day she was born with every single detail. I still remember every day going to the NICU, and pumping, and waking up so much in the night. Those feelings are still so fresh. I will always cherish those special memories of my first baby.

So Happy 3rd Birthday to this rambunctious, happy, smart, little girl!

And here's a message from her:
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Leo: 6 Months

I haven't been as diligent in posting monthly updates on Leo as I was on Hailey. I figure if anything, I ought to at least get his 6 month update in!

I love love love watching my little boy learn and grow. I have always loved watching my children grow and I never get sad when they learn a new milestone or "grow up too fast." Here are a few things about Leo at age 6 months:

Sleep: Leo's sleep habits are not picture perfect, but we're working on them. He has been very frustrating because he only catnaps (like, an average of 30-40 min naps) and lately, he has decided it is fun to stay up until midnight and play. I have very recently decided to brave the cry it out method (please, let me do it my way and you can do it your way) and what a difference it is already making! I think it is tougher on mommy than it is on baby, but I feel confident this will help us out immensely!

Eat: I've made it to my 6 month goal of breastfeeding! Leo has been getting a bottle/formula for a couple months now, but I have continued to nurse at home and pump at work these 6 months. It has been difficult but I feel really good about accomplishing my goal! We are now almost switched completely over to formula and I just nurse him at night when he wakes up. Leo just has a hearty appetite and I was never able to keep up with him while strictly nursing. Once I started supplementing, Leo just grew and was happy! So I feel really good about this switch as well.

We have also done some solids. He likes sweet potatoes and any little tiny pieces of bread or Cheerios that I give him. He doesn't like squash or rice cereal. I obviously haven't branched out yet and tried a ton of things yet. But he sure does eat a lot better than Hailey did so far and I am so happy about that!

Motor Skills: Leo has some pretty impressive hand-eye coordination. He can pick things up, bring them to his mouth, and even turn them around in his hands to get the end of his toy in his mouth. He likes to hold his bottle sometimes, too.

He likes to roll and roll and roll. He loves to spend time on his belly and is so close to crawling. Right now, he gets up on his hands and knees and then goes backwards. It makes him so mad! He can also sit on his own and he loves to sit and play with toys!

Diapers: We are still going strong with cloth diapers! We are not fully 100% anymore. He started peeing through his nighttime diaper when we started supplementing, so to be safe, I still put him in a disposable at night. I also keep disposables on hand in the diaper bag for when we go out, but I try to use cloth as much as I can! And yes, I absolutely love it!

Other: He loves to blow raspberries and coo. He loves to look at anyone in complete adoration and gives you the biggest smiles. He loves to reach up and touch your face. He LOVE his jumper and walker.

While Leo has been a very most difficult baby, I love him so much and feel a different relationship with him than I do with Hailey. Hailey was so independent as a baby and didn't need much attention or positive stimulation. Leo, however, requires a lot more attention and thus, I feel I have developed a special bond with him.

How fast these 6 months have flown and I look forward to see what these next 6 months have to bring for Leo and us!

Summer Recap: Hailey's Hospitalization

{DISCLAIMER: There may be photos or descriptions that are a bit graphic, so if you are squeamish, you might want to just skip over this post! This is also a very long post :)}

If you couldn't figure out in my last post's pictures, Hailey was not feeling well. She was trying her best to have fun, but you could just tell she was miserable. All she wanted to do was sleep on the couch. She had a fever off and on, and she wouldn't eat anything. Here is her story of what happened.

We decided to potty train Hailey near the beginning of June. I knew she was ready, so I just put panties on her one day and we never looked back since. Very shortly after we put new panties on her, though, I started noticing some pimply bumps on her bottom. I didn't think much about them because I had seen bumps like those on her bottom before and they went away just fine.

On Monday, June 9, Hailey's babysitter mentioned to me that Hailey was not acting her normal self. She seemed to get upset over the tiniest things and was crying a lot. On Tuesday, she wouldn't leave the couch and had a bit of a fever. Liz also mentioned that Hailey was not acting herself. On Wednesday, I opted to stay home with her and take her to the doctor's. But that morning, her fever was gone and she seemed to have more energy. Maybe she was OK and maybe I didn't need to take her to the doctor after all.

So that day, we decided to go swimming. Hailey had a fun time, but when we got her into her carseat, she was just crying and crying in pain. I started to think that maybe her bum was bothering her more than we thought. That night, Hailey was standing on one of the kitchen chairs. She took a step and lost her balance, making her fall off and bump the other chair. She was hysterical with pain and started asking to go to the bathroom. I thought she was being a little dramatic, but I took her into the bathroom helped pull down her underwear. Inside, her panties were covered in blood and puss. I looked at her bum and saw that her fall had caused one of the "pimples" to burst. There was much more inside and I squeezed out as much as I could, but Hailey was in so much pain that I just had to stop. I knew then that she needed to see the doctor.

Thursday morning, I took Hailey to the dr's office. I was a bit disappointed with the visit and the only reason I felt the only thing that was worthwhile from the visit was a prescription for antibiotics. I told the doctor that I had tested positive for MRSA a couple months earlier, but he didn't bother to swab Hailey. He didn't even lift the bandaid to see what the actual sore/boil looked like. He just said it very obviously looked like staph and here's your prescription. I wasn't very happy, but oh well. We had our medicine.

The pharmacist said to make sure she takes it with food. The only problem was, Hailey wasn't eating! We gave her some fruit snacks because we figured she'd at least want those, but when we gave her the medicine, she threw everything up and refused to take any more medicine (Tylenol included) or food. I was upset and stressed and worried that this infection would get worse because she couldn't keep her antibiotics down.

Friday morning, I still had to go to work. The sitter still took her and to my surprise, even said she got Hailey to eat her breakfast and take the medicine! (Come to find out later, they had to use two people and really force her to take it). When I went to pick Hailey up, she wasn't eating again and only wanted to be held. Which of course made it difficult because you also couldn't touch her bum. Try holding a child without touching their bum!

Saturday morning, like I mentioned earlier, I decided to sacrifice going to see the hot air balloons because Hailey needed her sleep. She still wasn't eating, though. I figured she would at least drink juice, so I tried to slip some medicine in her juice. She must have known, because she barely touched her juice either. We were unable to both feed or medicate her and despite trying to have fun, she was just miserable. At the parade, she fell down backwards and just cried and cried from the pain.

Sunday morning, I didn't feel well and Hailey didn't feel well, so we stayed home from church. Scott helped her to the bathroom and I took one look at her bum and said, "That's it. We're taking her to the ER." It was so big and dark, it almost looked like a dark bruise. I knew there was a lot underneath the skin that needed drained and I would not do that at home. I also knew she needed antibiotics and since we couldn't give them orally, she was going to have to get them intravenously. Plus, we were going to hit and exceed our deductible anyway with Leo being born, so I don't care if we take her to the hospital. So we called my parents to meet us there, and off we went!

I am so grateful for our decision to take her to the hospital. They wanted a surgeon to look at her bum and they suggested they admit her overnight to get her started on IV-antibiotics. It was a hard decision at first, but I am glad we chose to stay. The hospitalist sent a picture to the pediatric surgeon. A short while later, he came back and said the surgeon took one look at the picture and was coming down that night to do the surgery! My baby was going to have surgery!

Dr Cook was an excellent surgeon and he removed 30ml (that's equivalent to 1 fl oz) of puss from her abscess. If you think about a child's little butt cheek, that's a heck of a lot of fluid!! He packed the wound and said they'd keep her at the hospital for a couple nights while they wait for the cultures and make sure she is getting antibiotics. Surprisingly, they said these types of abscesses are pretty common in kids Hailey's age. Hailey's just happened to be a pretty big one!

Hailey slept that night and had her wound repacked in the morning. Sedation is a funny thing on a 2 year old!

But boy was she just night and day different from last night! She was happy again! She only cried when they had to change her diaper because of the wound on her bum (and she wasn't happy about being back in diapers to begin with). But every time something hurt her, we'd just say "Bye bye, owies! Doctors nice! Nurses nice!" and that really seemed to help her out.

Hailey ended up staying at the hospital until Wednesday after they found out she had MRSA and made sure she was on the right antibiotics and that she would tolerate taking oral antibiotics at home. Which Scott had to force her to do it once and then we never had a problem again.

We joked that it would have been really convenient if I went into labor while Hailey was in the hospital because all I'd have to do would be to go up just one floor. In reality though, we were grateful that I didn't. Scott didn't need his wife and his daughter in the hospital at the same time.

This hospital experience was fun and good, and I was grateful it turned out to be so positive. But boy will this little girl end up costing us! First the NICU, now this. I'm not looking forward to what else she has in store for us!

Summer Recap: Art City Days and Summerfest

June 14 was a big day and I was looking forward to it for a long time. Since I knew I was going to be having a baby pretty close to the 4th of July (probably my favorite holiday after Halloween), and would thus miss out on the festivities around then, I had to make sure I was going to get some sort of parade/summertime fair fun! I even meticulously planned my weekend out to ensure that this would happen: Art City Days Fair Friday night, bake muffins, wake up early Saturday morning to watch the Hot Air Balloons and snuggle in blankets and eat muffins, then watch Art City Days Parade at 10:00am, then go up to Orem to finish out the evening at Summerfest and watch the parade and fireworks there. I just love parades and fair food and the whole atmosphere of fairs and crowds. I was so excited!

However, things didn't really go as planned. Hailey started getting sick earlier that week. She lost her energy and her appetite. All she wanted to do was sleep on the couch. Poor girl was miserable and wouldn't/couldn't even take her medicines.

We were able to make it out to the fair Friday night and have dinner. She decided she was well enough to play in the splash pad a little bit, so we let her do that. Saturday morning, I knew I needed to let her rest rather than try to wake her up for balloons. So I sacrificed the balloons that I was so looking forward to. Then my mom and Heather came down and we sat at the end of my street and all watched the parade together. It was fun, but you could tell Hailey really wasn't feeling well.

Scott went to work and we went up to Orem. We set up at our spot for the parade and got food for dinner. It was so much fun and I was so glad that I got to hang out with my family celebrating a tradition we have had every year since we were kids! And even Hailey, despite feeling awful, had fun too and even ate a lot of chicken!

 

 

After the parade was fireworks! We hauled all our stuff over to the baseball fields and set up camp and just hung out. It was a lot of fun! Scott was even able to join up with us!

She LOVES bubble gum and always makes this face when my mom blows bubbles!

Me and Oy. Yes, these are all phone pics. :)

So despite being 36 weeks pregnant and very swollen, I had a very enjoyable weekend and was able to enjoy one of my favorite summertime pastimes before I had the baby.