A new dentist

We tried out a new dentist for the kids, they did great and were rewarded with fun certificates and pictures.  Even Kate got a bit of a cleaning and did her best "ahhhhs,' pretty cute.

Healthy Kids Day

The local YMCAs had big Healthy Kids celebrations.  We attended the free event and the kids got to do different activities and had a bit of fun.  We will probably be joining the Y quite soon to also take advantage of some of their fun summer programs.  

What's a healthy kid without a s'more?  They loved it!

 

Bouncy house fun

Whoa, busy December!

December is always super busy and super fun for us!  I love the holidays and all that is involved with decorating and baking and spending lots of time with family.  Blogging time is not easy to come by since Jaydon stopped napping but here are a few updates from December.

Lily found Lucy's crib one day and was quite content to sleep on Lucy's 'pillow,' a burp cloth that we try and keep under her head still today just in case.  She is much less spitty but still manages to consume, either through me or by herself, things that don't agree with her system on occasion.

Sometimes this is the best way to try grabbing a shower and getting something accomplished.  Both kids trapped :)  Though Jaydon can really just climb in and out of Lucy's exersaucer he stayed put for quite a long time.

Self portrait!

Decorating the tree!

It was so awesome this year because Jaydon wanted to help, he put up many ornaments by himself and it was fun to look at the tree and know that while it may not have been exactly symmetrically arranged it was sure done with love and enjoyment of the holidays with the Christmas music playing in the background.

I don't even know what number this was for our annual cookie making extravaganza but it still produces insane amounts of goodies and a good time is had by all, albeit tiring.  

This year on cookie making day my sister was scheduled for an emergency gallbladder removal (she was sick for a couple days and after visiting urgent care on Saturday they realized it would need to be removed Sunday).  While it should have been a quick 45min-1 hour procedure I waited by the phone and kept waiting.  My sister's gallbladder was in such bad shape the liver had come down around it and the Dr. cut the bile duct, thus making for quite a bit bigger of an emergency involving a transfer to a different hospital for a specialist to repair it.  Two 4-5 hour surgeries later she was in recovery but had a long road ahead.  Hearing about this while at cookie making day I decided I needed to head south to visit so Jeremy helped pack the kids and we all headed out that night so I could get to the hospital before she was out of her last surgery about 11 at night.  The photo above is Jaydon pretending to play a game while trying to get some lunch before traveling to get back up to school for basketball. 

I am again coaching basketball and while my girls are working hard to improve we started out with many girls who have never played or only played a very limited amount of basketball which makes it very hard to be competitive with teams that have been playing together for years.  Jaydon and Lucy make some appearances with me at practice and the girls absolutely love seeing them.

Lucy and Higgins (and Jaydon) aren't too excited about me having to leave them every day with a babysitter for periods of time.  This self photo was taken after getting back one night early in the season from practice.  Lucy was crying, Higgins and Lucy decided they needed to be held and Jaydon was somewhere around my legs wanting comforting too.  

With all the business of travel, holiday festivities and basketball stuff Jaydon was worn out!  He doesn't really take naps anymore but he ended up falling asleep while watching a show this afternoon holding his milk.  It was cute, though when he does take a nap he wakes up very cranky and so it isn't really worth it to have him nap anymore.

Lucy trying some egg for the first time, thankfully she is handling it well so that has been added back into our diets!

This video does not do justice to the situation but I was trying to be a bit sneaky and capture how cute Jaydon was being.  He received an ornament from Nana and Grandpa when he was one that is a photo of them and a recording of their voices wishing him a Merry Christmas and telling him they love him.  He would play the ornament over and then start talking to it telling the ornament he loved them too.  It was super cute!  

And I just realized when looking at the calendar for selecting the date of this post that all of this stuff happened within the first week of December - CRAZY!  

Update

Well, I wanted to throw an update on here and thought I would add a couple pics of Lucy to keep people satisfied as it may be awhile before I can get back to really updating all the fun we had had the past couple weeks.  To add to my joy blogspot just changed their system so I have to learn what I am doing all over again and not being a computer programmer knowing all the html it is a challenge.  Please be sure to check back in awhile and scroll down because I will post updates from before today in chronological order and I would hate you to miss something.

Our friends Asia and Craig came up to visit and Asia took some great photos on her awesome camera.  Here is Lucy sleeping (I can't even figure out how to center my text grrr!)

Lucy and mama

If any of you know Jeremy this is totally for him, Lucy is already plotting, just as her brother did from a his first few days of birth.(check out his picture on the post about his first week back in September of 2009).

Now for the true update, it may be a bit graphic for some people so read with that warning: things have been crazy in our house and not in a good way.  Evidently I retained placenta after this c-section just as occurred after my first (very rare, shocking to have it happen twice with c-section deliveries).  Unfortunately, this time it became infected and I didn't realize that all the abdomin pain I had a couple weeks ago was an infection (because I had no other symptoms) instead of just gas/constipation/bloating from the c-section surgery.  So I went about my business and it improved (my body fought it but didn't win).  Then the sunday right after my birthday I woke up with cramping and had some major bleeding.  After talking with the dr. by phone I was ok to wait til Monday to see a dr. she referred me for an ultrasound which I had Tuesday morning and sure enough I had retaiend placenta.  They couldn't get me in for surgery until Friday (which was a big disappointment to have to wait so long) but the good news is the surgery on Friday went well and we have had tremendous family support (Jeremy's mom was in town, then my mom came back up, then my sister, and now my mom and Nancy are up again).  We were discharged right away and I was home no problem, I even told my sister I was fine and didn't need her to come up. Ooops, I guess I was wrong, thankfully she was able to come Friday night anyway and care for us, mostly my kids as I couldn't do it and Jeremy was caring for me.  On Friday late afternoon I developed a fever, we called the dr. and he prescribed some anti-biotics and said we would check in by phone Saturday morning.  Sat morning I had spiked to 102 but then decreased with Tylenol so he said I had one more chance to stay fever free. Unfortunately that didn't happen and around noon on Saturday I went back up to almost 103 and won a trip to the hospital.  Saturday afternoon was the worst in the hospital, I developed chills and fever and the chills would not go away for over an hour so I was really bundled which made my fever a bit artificially high at 104.5.  My true fever was probably more like 103.7 because that is what it dropped to when we got the extra warm blankets off of me.  I was told I had to be fever free for 24 hours to go home and my fever did break Saturday night. Unfortunately, Sat afternoon I also developed the really severe abdominal pain, I couldn't cough, roll over, or have anything on my tummy.  All day Sunday I had pretty severe pain but no fever.  The dr. came to talk that night and I had been fever free for 24 hours but since I was feeling so much pain we decided to wait to see what I was like Monday morning.  Good thing we stayed because I got a fever again Sunday around 10pm (not high but high enough to count and give me another 24 hours to stay).  Monday morning the pain was decreasing but still there so we did a CT scan that found gas in my uterus and some thicker lining but nothing to be too worried about.  I guess it will just have to work its way out and that is one of the side effects possible from the surgery.  This whole time I was on heavy anti-biotics and yet while my body had an infection my white blood cell count was normal.  What we have discovered is that the blood work was in the normal range because they had already tried elevating a couple weeks earlier to fight the infection and just ended up thinking my current state of infection was 'normal.'  So through Monday I did stay fever free and by Tuesday morning I was doing better, I am still not great, and it is so hard to not be well enough to care for my family but I am recovering. 

Another bad thing is that the whole family got colds and that in turn means that Lucy has developed her first good cold.  She was a tiny bit stuffy over my hospital stay (Jeremy would bring her to visit during the day on Sunday and Monday and then take her home at night) but when I arrived home Tuesday she has gotten a bit worse.  She is having a hard time sleeping which isn't great when I am supposed to be getting some additional sleep to recover.  We are on extra alert because she is so young but we are doing ok. I just feel bad for her but she is handling it as well as can be expected and I really hope we can avoid something more serious or another trip to the dr. 

Jeremy has been truly wonderful through this traveling back and forth from home to hospital to try caring for all of us.  He has developed the cold as well and unforutanately he has had to do quite a bit of work (his boss is with him today) and then he has some major school assignments due by Friday because it is the end of his semester this Friday.  He is burning the midnight oil and the dawn oil so I just hope he can manage to not get more sick and need help from us because we all still need help from him.

So there is our story, any prayers, positive thoughts or well wishes are appreciated.  We are on the road to recovery and I know this will pass but it sure has not been an easy period of time.  Thanks for reading and being part of our lives.  And yes, I will get more fun pictures of both kids posted sometime, not to mention getting out the birth announcements that have sat in my home for 2 weeks because I just haven't gotten around to addressing them and mailing them.  Soon, I hope!

D and C

The joys of this pregnancy/post-partum time continue for me. We are blessed with a healthy baby boy but my stuff has been weird. First the blasted granulomas, then the spike in blood pressure - induction - c-section delivery and now we get to follow that up with a D and C surgery yesterday to remove part of the placenta that was still stuck in my uterus. Of course that is so rare with a c-section but due to the bandl's ring not all of it was removed initially. What fun! I also am getting to enjoy some lovely post-partum skin irritations that are all over my body. Sorry for sharing what is probably more than some people wanted to know. Thank goodness for a healthy baby boy.