Mistle toe

Tay: Dad, there's something I'm sorry about. I knocked the thing off that was hanging on the light by the front door.
Jeff: What is that you knocked off? (He looked around for something out of place and couldn't see anything.)
Tay: It looks kinda like a ball but a lot like Mistle toe. :)

All about Christmas?

I guess it's traditional to do a great big blog post about what we did this Christmas. We do the same thing every year so I should just write it, then next year link back to it so I don't have to do it again. :) Right now that just sounds overwhelming so I'll keep it simple.

Here's the highlights.

• Emmie's doll that sucks on her bottle, then burps and goes to sleep. ( I've played with it as much as she has. Really I have.)
• Brigham wearing sparkly star sun glasses that he won from the ball of fun on Christmas Eve.
• The thank you note that Aly wrote to Jeff and I for Christmas. (Seriously so sweet. She wasn't even required to write it in primary or anything. She said she was thankful that Jeff got to baptize her and that I take care of her.)
  
• Tayson's bad reaction to the sweater from Grandma and Grandpa. Think Christmas Story. I thought he was going to cry. :)
  
• Emmie's Christmas Day concert. It lasted for a half an hour and she only actually sang 1 song. The rest of the time was her with her hands on her hips dancing around saying "Okay! Ready?" It was hilarious.
• Aly being baptized
• Michael Buble tickets
• My awesome prank on Kimi. :) She asked me to make a card for my sister who she had for the gift exchange and she told me to sign it from "Your Favorite Sister" So I signed it "Your second favorite sister." She didn't think it was funny. It probably wasn't as funny as I thought it was but it was still funny. :)
• Candy bar game at the Southwick family party. My kids made out like bandits. Afterward Karilynn was trying to get Tayson to trade a Milky way for a nutroll and he wasn't going for it. She pulled the nut roll out of his bag and put the Milky Way into his. Then he said that he wanted his nutroll so she said give me my Milky way back. He looked into his bag and said: "I don't have a Milky Way!"
  
• Tayson Checking out everyone else's presents first before checking out his own on Christmas morning.
• Aly roller blading through the house. She's as graceful as me.
  
• Brigham playing & filling his piggy bank over and over, and trying to steal Emmie's doll at every opportunity.
• Brigham's courtesy laughs.
  
• Reading the Christmas Story with the kids
• Being with our families

We had an awesome holidays. Minus the neighbor gift fiasco. We had ruined pumpkin bread, and ruined brownies and I kinda gave up. If you didn't get a neighbor gift this year. . . you're welcome. We were doing you a favor by saving space in your garbage can. (You could still smell charred pumpkin bread even after the oven was off and the loaves had cooled. :( It was that bad.) If I get ambitious I may still show up on your doorstep with something in hand. Maybe... My oven still shudders in terror whenever I walk by it.

My husband is

THE BEST!!!!!!

I have two words for you:

Michael.

Buble.

Tuesday Dresses

Emmie loves to dress up. She loves the frilly girly lacey pretty sunday dresses and wants to wear them EVERYWHERE: Sandbox, grocery store, preschool and anywhere else you can think of. Whenever she tries to where her sunday dresses to one of these inappropriate places I tell her sorry these are "Sunday dresses". Which led to this conversation this morning:

Emmie: Mom?
Me: Yeah?
Emmie: What day is today?
Me: It's Tuesday today.
Emmie: Oh....okay

at this point she walks out of the room and in a second is back with a dress.

Emmie: Mom?
Me: Yeah?
Emmie: This is a Tuesday dress.

She said it with so much authority in her voice that I figured she must be right. It must be a "Tuesday dress" so I helped her majesty put it on so that she could continue on with her busy day.

Thankful

Emmie had Thanksgiving dinner at school today. She told me that she told Miss Jackie what she was thankful for: Her orange kitty.

So thinking this was a good teaching moment I asked her what else she was thankful for. She just sat there for a minute then trying to be helpful I asked her: "Are you thankful for your family?" To which she responded as if I was really slow, "Noooooooo! Just my kitty!"

On the way to Grammy's house

We have the best conversations in the car. On the way there Tay was talking about this site we showed him from forever ago that my friend emailed me. Check it out my kids love it: Puppy Clean

He asked how I got the puppy in the computer, then Jeff asked him if he wanted a computer dog and he said "Yeah! I want a real computer!" :) Seriously, this kid! I know most of my stories are about him but he gives us so much to work with!!

Our other kids do way cute stuff too. Emmie has been going around telling us who's great and who's the best. She'll come up to me or Jeff and say Mama's Great and you're the best! Then she beams at us like she granted us our one true wish. Aly made a lost sign. She drew pictures of her Hannah Montana notebook and a couple of other little things she lost and hung it up. :) Aren't kids hilarous? Love em.

Love this

"I don't want to drive up to the pearly gates in a shiny sports car, wearing beautifully, tailored clothes, my hair expertly coiffed, and with long, perfectly manicured fingernails.
I want to drive up in a station wagon that has mud on the wheels from taking kids to scout camp.
I want to be there with a smudge of peanut butter on my shirt from making sandwiches for a sick neighbors children.
I want to be there with a little dirt under my fingernails from helping to weed someone's garden.
I want to be there with children's sticky kisses on my cheeks and the tears of a friend on my shoulder.
I want the Lord to know I was really here and that I really lived."
— Marjorie Pay Hinckley

Mini Conversations

They're the best aren't they? Today I dropped Tay off at school and we had this one:

Me: "Bye Tay!"
Tay: "Bye Mom!"
Me: "Have a good day."
Tay: "Ok, you too. Bye and Drive home safe!"

I don't whether or not that says anything about my driving skills that my 6 year old reminds me to drive safe, but even if it does it's way cute.

A year later

I've been asked by lots of people what exactly happened in the NICU, what kept us there and what the timeline was. It's taken a long time for me to be able to read this through and add the things that we were feeling at the time. (I originally just laid out the facts and the smallest bit of what it felt like.) A friend of mine told me to get this down and post it when I was ready. (Thanks RaeAnne! I really am glad I did it.) I did most of this about a month after Brig came home and am finally ready to post it. I'm mainly posted it so we would remember ourselves so if you don't want to read it I won't feel bad. :) It's not necessarily a fun read. :) Just a warning, it's kinda long. :)

By the way, I don't know why the picture don't look clear, (I'm sure you can imagine how much this bugs me.) but they ARE in focus! I was worn out when I took them but not that bad!!!! (They look clearer if you click on them. Just don't click the one of me.)

Our NICU timeline:

Nov. 16 Birth

For the last 2 weeks I had been having pain in my incision site. It had been getting steadily worse and worse and every time I mentioned it to the Dr. She said if it gets any worse to go to the hospital and we'd do the c-section. It was a hard decision to make. I didn't know how much worse it should be before making a decision like that. I didn't want to go in too early for Brig and I was still able to handle the pain so I kept putting it off. Finally Saturday the 15th I had had a bunch more pain. Some of it bad enough that I felt like I was tearing, so Sunday morning we packed up early and headed up to the hospital. They called the Dr. and we were all scheduled to go in and deliver our sweet baby boy at noon. Everything seemed to be fine. Brigham was a little early but only 2 weeks.

During the C-section I was loopy and out of it. There was a ton of blood and fluid (Way more than usual), Jeff said they had to keep getting more containers to deal with it. We were told later that the scar tissue was tearing and that every time they touched anything it would start tearing more. Later when we talked she said it would have been bad news if I had waited any longer to come in. She was surprised that I had been able to handle the pain as well as I had.

Brigham seemed normal at first. We didn't realize anything was wrong. I got my quick glance expecting to see him in about a half an hour and sent Jeff off to stay with him in the transition nursery.

Apparently transition wasn't as smooth as I thought it would be. He was having a hard time breathing. He had breathed in some of the fluid during birth and it made it hard for him. Usually the babies are able to work through it and the fluid will dry out on it's own, but Brig had breathed in too much. Because he was having a hard time breathing he was screaming and Mad. There was so much strain put on his little lungs from the fluid, screaming and breathing that he tore a little hole in his lungs. (pnuemothorax) (When they have a hole in their lungs the lung collapses and the air escapes into their chest cavity and it pushes organs from where they're supposed to be. I was told it wasn't that uncommon. It healed up almost immediately and they were able to aspirate the air in his chest with a needle.

Breathing at this point was still very very hard for our little guy. Every breath was a struggle because of that fluid.

While all that had been going on I had no clue. They had put me back together and put me in a room and kept telling me they'd be bringing my baby in soon. Pretty soon an hour had gone by, then and hour and a half then 2. I still didn't know anything. The nurses didn't know what to tell me they kept saying they'd check and then never come back and Jeff still hadn't come back. (He didn't want to leave Brigham.) Finally I got a call from Brigham's Dr. It scared me to death he hadn't realized that I didn't know anything. He said he'd heard what had happened and was so sorry and was there anything he could do. I of course not knowing anything panicked a bit and asked what had been going on. He felt so bad for scaring me and he told me what was going on and would likely happen from there.

Jeff finally came back and told me what had been going on. I begged the nurses to let me go down there but they put me off. They kept telling me to give it a little while because I didn't want to see him like that. Jeff agreed.

3-4:00 pm The decision was made to intubate (sp?) Brigham (put him on a ventilator) and send him to the NICU. They said the ventilator would help him breathe and also help dry his lungs out faster.

The nurses told me they would take me to see him after he was intubated. They didn't want me anywhere near for that part. They said no mom should have to see that. Once he was intubated they were still putting me off from going down there. They must had been busy.

5:00 Uncle Paul came up to help Daddy give Brigham a blessing.

5:30 Nurses had a shift change and so I got forgotten about. I finally called the nurses station and told them I was going to walk down there myself because I couldn't wait any longer. They decided they better hurry. (To all you nurses who have had to deal with patients like me, sorry.)

6:00 I finally got to see him for the first time since the glance in the OR. Kind of anyway. He had the ventilator in so it was hard to see what he looked like, and they wouldn't let me hold him.

9:00 pm He threw a tantrum and tore another hole in his lung. We didn't realize it until morning.

Nov. 17th Nurses found the hole and a chest tube was put in because they weren't able to aspirate the air with a needle this time. The hole hadn't healed and it was likely too big, but the fluid in the lungs dried out and he started being able to breath easier and grow stronger. x-ray showed air on the other side of his chest too, so second chest tube was put in.

Nov. 18th Was switched to the oscillating ventilator (gave him tiny little puffs of air instead of breaths. Made him vibrate kinda) with the hopes that it would help his lungs heal faster. (Supposedly a little easier on the lungs. ) That evening we were told that his chest tube stopped taking air. (We'd been waiting for that) and that if all looked good in the morning they would take the chest tube out.

Nov. 19th I was woken at 5am. with the news that Brigham needed a blood transfusion, (Now he had 2 IV sites) and they were thinking that his chest tube was clogged and that's why it had stopped taking air and would have to be re-put in. (They were right it was clogged) Jeff wasn't there and I didn't take the bad new well. Every time we'd get our hopes up it seemed like there was a setback. Found out that boarding would not be possible and that I would have to go home the next day without my baby. Up to this point we were still hoping that he would miraculously be able to go home with us still. Hard day.

Nov. 20th. Go home day. One of the hardest days of my life. We never imagined walking out of the hospital just to leave our baby behind. Not much change for Brigham. We thought the chest tube had slowed in pulling air for awhile but they realized that is was just because of how he was positioned. Feels like we're on a roller coaster of emotions. We think we've made progress then find out we didn't We were just waiting.

Nov. 21st. 2nd chest tube was accidentally pulled out buy careless x-ray technician. Nurse was MAD. :) But it hadn't been taking air for about 12 hours before that and so they decided to see how he did. The x-ray showed the air did NOT re-accumulate so it was left out. YAAAAAY! Later that night They were able to take Brigham off the ventilator!! :) They decided that because the old chest tube wasn't working as effectively as it should be they needed to replace it with a bigger one. So they put a bigger stiff one in that would hopefully be more effective in pulling the air out. They also increased his drugs because they said the new one was painful.

Nov. 22nd The main chest tube finally stopped taking air around noon. So the waiting game was on to see if it would last. They started slowly slowly weaning the oxygen and pain meds.

Nov. 23rd. Chest tube was pulled out. YAY!!!!! Mom got to hold him for the first time. He was very lethargic all day. He was switched to a less supportive isolette. YAY. Tried nursing. He was too tired. Started having withdrawals from being weaned from pain meds. It looked scary. He would just shake, like he was having seizures. Kept weaning him off oxygen slowly.

Nov. 24th Nurses called to say he woke up and he was Angry and Hungry. He'd been given a bottle at 4 am (First meal by mouth) and could I be there by 10 to try to breastfeed him. Jeff met me there and we successfully breastfed for the first time. He also was taken off the oxygen in the evening. Started boarding so we could begin the process of getting him approved to go home.

Nov. 25th He was weaned off of his oxygen, and his IV was taken out. he was moved into a big boy bed. :) Nursing was going well. They told us to bring his car seat so we could do a car seat test. ( we didn't do it that day because we couldn't figure out how to make it small enough for him.) We were told that if all continued to go well we could go home the next day.

Nov. 26th Billiruben level shot up to 18.3 overnight. Nurses put him on double photo-therapy. Dr's said that if it didn't come down to below 15 by 1:00 that afternoon he wouldn't be going home. I was kicked out of my room at 9 am that morning and had an emotional breakdown in the very public NICU waiting room. 1:00 test was done, results were rushed and we got the news that his Billi had dropped to 14.1. We were going home! All that was left was to make sure he could maintain his oxygen levels in his car seat. That afternoon at about 5:30 pm our favorite NICU nurse Becky walked us all out to our van and we brought him home to meet his brother and sisters for the first time.

All in all it had been 10 days. They were the longest and most emotional 10 days of my life. The doctors would tell us one thing and Brig would do the other. He was determined not to follow the usual way of doing things. The nurses and doctors were AMAZING. I can't say enough good things about those who held our hands though all of this. The nurses cared about what they were doing with these babies. You could see it. They went to bat for my little guy. One nurse ripped a poor x-ray tech. up and down for not being more careful. :) They took care of us too, talked us through some crazy emotions.

The poor kids had a rough time being shuttled from person to person but we're so appreciative to all those who helped. The hardest part of all of this was balancing the kids at home with what was going on at the hospital. Emmie would cry and beg us not to go every time we left to go up there. We made it though. And we had a happy ending to our story. We have a very healthy and happy baby boy (He hardly ever cries. :) I wonder if it's just because he's so glad not to have tubes, medication, ventilators and pain as a part of him anymore that he doesn't feel the need to cry too much) It could also be because I tend to drop everything when he wants to be held. That's one thing I learned though, it's worth it. I've been given a little grief over creating a monster that wants to be held all the time but after being told I couldn't hold him for so long it's hard to say no when he wants me to just because I need to do dishes. :)

We were blessed so much. There were so many angels though all of this. Friends and family who help with the kids, ward members who went above and beyond the call of duty bringing meals in, sweet emails and phone calls and of course the prayers. We felt every last prayer said in our behalf. I learned an amazing amount about myself and my relationship with my Heavenly Father. I've never felt so carried as I did through this. I'm just thankful that I had a relationship with him that helped me to feel his love through this. I knew through this entire experience that Heavenly Father was looking out for us. I'm so thankful he was.

$300

$300 is a magic number to my son. In his mind it's how much money we need to buy a wii, how much money we need to get a batman car that you can really drive like his friends and how much you need to buy a freaking large electronic remote control dinosaur. (FYI-If there's no way we're going to get it, we just tell him it's $300.) So for months he had been very interested in what exactly $300 was. He asked questions like "If I do 300 chores then can I have $300 dollars?" and I would respond with, "Sure you can." and like any good mom, arm him with at least 2 chores to start with. Half way through the first chore he would always decide that $300 wasn't worth the trouble and forget about it until the next time he wanted a wii.

So one morning I was editing and minding my own business when Tayson comes up to me at the computer and demands: "Mom! Why did you steal my $300?"

So I'm thinking: Hmmm, interesting tactic. I'll go with it and see what happens. So I say "I didn't take your $300. I didn't even know you had $300."

Tayson looks at me like I'm an escaped convict at this point and I'm starting to squirm while conteplating his future as an interregator.

Still squirming I'm thinking at this point that he's lost his bank and all $3 that he had in it. So I say "Where did you leave it last?"

"It was on the fridge, I know you took it. Give it back to me!"

At this point everything becomes clear and it clicks into place. On the fridge was an envelope with a down payment for wedding pictures in it. 3 days before Tayson had asked me what was in the envelope. And I told him $300. Apparently he must've heard "Your $300" or at least that's the only thing I can figure because he seemed sincerly upset and annoyed with me.

So I did my best to explain who's money that was and why it was on the fridge and why is was now in my bank account. He listened but I don't think he bought it. For weeks after the fact he still occasionally burst out mournfully, "Mom! Why did you steal my $300? I want my $300." This took place at home as well as while were standing in line at the grocery store with a horrified grandma type looking on. He still looks at me suspiciously every so often. Which always. . . makes me squirm.

Summer Fun

Well we made it. I swear we've camped all summer but we've finally made it through. Thank goodness! :)

I just wanted to pose a couple of pictures of Aly and Tay this summer. We go to Bear Lake every year with friends and this year both Aly and Tay Skied. They did awesome! I was so proud of them. Tay didn't even fall. He got right up on the first try and the boat took him around and finally they dummped him. He was awesome. Aly had a little harder time at first because the skis were tied wrong but once they got them right she got right up too!

Aly:

Tay:
I zoomed in on their faces in photoshop and it cracked me up, Tayson was just dead serious, he didn't really look like he was having a good time. Aly looked scared. :) Love it. They crack me up.

Snowed In!

Hey everybody!!! Just wanted to pop on here quick. I haven't had much time to myself to be on the computer so the old blog is dusty. :) We're doing good, just normal stuff. Brig is healthy and soooo chubby. :) We just had to buy a new car. I hate it when those things go out but it's kinda fun to have something so new to drive. I've been crafty lately. I made a couple of hat's. Brig is modeling the teddybear hat! :) He loves it, you just can't tell because he cries when he wears it.

The other one is a gift for a friend who just had a baby. I'm making one to use on newborns in my photography too. I thought it would be adorable in a picture. I'm excited to be back into the swing of things photography wise. I was so overwhelmed last fall I thought I wouldn't get back into it too soon after Brig was born but I'm itchin to get going. I'm thinking about a couple of different marketing options. I'm really excited to do newborns again. That's my real love.

Well I better get back to things but just wanted to post something at least. I need to do a post telling about our holidays and stuff. Sounds overwhelming to back track. I guess that's why I should be better and keeping this thing up. :)