Eli's Birthday

We had a fun day on Eli’s birthday Saturday. In the morning the boys were very excited to have the chocolate milk that I had gotten as a special birthday breakfast item. And Eli surprised us by choosing to have cereal (what he has most every morning) for his birthday brunch, instead of the muffins we got.

After breakfast he opened his gift from us: several new animal toys.

Later that morning I cut Michael’s hair while the boys watched cartoons, and Isaac must have been pretty worn out from our game night the night before, because he fell asleep on the couch and napped for about half an hour.

Eli was excited to open his gifts from Nana and Papa that arrived in the mail right on time – he was excited about the new trains and asked if he could take them to bed with him later on.

Around noon we all met Grandma Bradshaw at Coldstone and she treated everyone to ice cream for Eli’s birthday. (I was such a kind Mommy – I let the boys choose whatever they wanted, not even worrying that Camden’s chocolate ice cream would likely leave a big mess or that Kolby’s peanut butter ice cream with gummy bears in it sounded like a rather unpleasant combination to me). [Actually, all the boys did end up being really clean and none of them spilled their ice cream at all, which was nice.]

After we got home, the boys took naps, and while they were napping Michael and I went to pick up his car from the mechanics. When we got home, we were glad to catch the Owens before they left – they unexpectedly showed up with a birthday gift for Eli – how thoughtful! The boys played together for a little while before we had to head out. Before leaving, Eli opened his gift from Grandma Faun, a fun book about a zebra that a friend of her had written – he also insisted on reading his new book later on that night and taking it to bed with him. We ended up going to Café Rio for dinner (did you know that if you dine in, you get free quesadillas for all of the kids?) Then we went to Toys’R’Us for Eli to pick out some gifts with his birthday money from Grandpa Dick and Grandma Debbie and from Grandma Faun. After the boys had fun shopping (and playing) in Toys’R’Us for a while, Eli ended up with quite a little stash of gifts: two new Disney movies (Wall-E and Sleeping Beauty), two new Eye-Spy puzzles, and three more of the plastic animals that go with his set. It did take a little explaining for him to understand that he was picking out what he wanted for his gifts (not looking for wrapped gifts at the store), but he was excited about what he got. We ended up putting together one of his new puzzles for family home evening last night, and the three older boys really enjoyed that activity.

Happy Birthday, Annette!

We decided to have Eli’s birthday party a little early, just in case the baby came early, so we planned it for January 22nd, which happens to be Michael’s sister, Annette’s, birthday. Luckily Annette was able to get the evening off work and make it for Eli’s party. And of course we had to stick a candle in her piece of cake (I was willing to just let her blow out her candle, but Michael had to be a big brother and make all of our friends sing “Happy Birthday” to her too. She only looks a little embarrassed, right?) Happy Birthday, Annette!

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Happy Birthday to Me!

Here are some photos from my birthday just over a week ago. I turned 27. I’m not one of those people who freaks out about being “old” when they turn a certain age, but I have felt that 27 seems a lot closer to 30 than 26 did. Oh well. I guess being married for several years, being done with college, and soon having 5 kids, it’s ok that I’m not 20 anymore (but with Michael still doing his medical training and us continuing to move all over the country, I do still feel like I relate to college students and don’t feel much like the majority of adults out there who have a house, a “real” job, and are really settled down).

Anyways, I had a great birthday this year. The boys and Michael brought me breakfast in bed and homemade birthday cards in the morning, I wore a cute new shirt and necklace that I had gotten with some Christmas money that week (and it’s always fun to wear new clothes), I got to open gifts in the morning, Michael and I enjoyed a comedy at a local theater in the afternoon, and later we had birthday cake with the boys before Michael and I went out to dinner with Miriam and Wayland Barker, and then we all came back to our place to enjoy dessert and a board game.

Kolby’s Birthday!

So, we had a little celebration in the morning on Halloween for Kolby’s birthday, since he is having his birthday party this Friday. He and I went out and he picked out a special birthday breakfast, and then he opened his gift – a set of Book of Mormon figurines – that he and the boys played with afterwards.

Later on this week something happened that made me realize how old Kolby is getting now. We got a call one evening from Kolby's friend, Kaitlyn's, mom, asking if Kolby could come play with Kaitlyn. They live around the corner from us, and Kaitlyn is 6 years old, so Kari asked if I was ok with Kaitlyn coming to pick Kolby up -- Kari watched Kaitlyn from her house as she walked here, and then I watched Kolby and Kaitlyn as they walked back to their house. Kolby said he had a lot of fun playing with Kaitlyn. I told him what time he needed to come home, and he was home right on time. It was just so strange to me -- with Kolby being our oldest, it had never occurred to me to just invite his friend to come over to play. I have been so used to the idea of having the mom and all the siblings all come over (which can be harder to schedule sometimes), that we haven't really had many friends come over to play since we've moved here. I just never thought of just inviting the child over for a play date. This opened up a whole new realm of possibilities for Kolby. He told me he wanted to have Kaitlyn come over and to have another girl from church, Brooke, come over to play, and that he wanted Kaitlyn and Brooke to come over at the same time sometime. Pretty cute. He's getting so big!

Aaron's Birthday

We had a fun night on Aaron’s 14th birthday. Kolby and Eli enjoyed helping Nana make brownies, and then Papa had the idea to have the dog, Makai, help clean the brownie mix off of Kolby’s face. (It was fun to see all of the boys, especially Kolby and Isaac, warm up to Makai over the course of our stay there, since they were all pretty nervous of her when we arrived. Kolby had lots of fun running around with Makai outside). And then the boys enjoyed watching Aaron open his birthday gifts that evening.

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Our Week

Ok, so I’ve not kept up as well as I should have with our “weekly family journal” [blog updates] since we got back from San Diego, and Michael’s work schedule has prevented him from writing lately too. I have been rather busy with making that blog for our Relief Society, trying to get in a little genealogy work on the new.familysearch.org site, and with family birthdays and Halloween celebrations lately, (let alone all the busy-ness of daily life with four little boys). I have prepared several slideshows of photos from our trip, and have several more sets of photos since we got back to Utah that I need to post. But I decided that I would tell what’s been going on with us lately and share some thoughts before I get to that.

So, this last week we had something planned every day. On Monday I spent a good portion of the day mixing up a big batch of my favorite soup – a chicken and vegetable recipe that my mom used to make. Then that evening Michael’s Dad and Grandma Bradshaw came for dinner and family home evening because Michael’s dad was in town for work this week. After dinner and desert, Michael did a family home evening lesson with the boys about prayer, and then we carved pumpkins for our activity. The boys had fun pulling the gunk out of the pumpkins, and I think they turned out pretty cute (pictures to come).

On Tuesday evening, after Michael went to work – Michael has been on one of the less-desirable ER shifts this week from 5pm to 2am. We really liked the 2pm to 11pm shift of last week, because he got to be home to enjoy some time with the kids during the day when they were awake, and he only missed out on dinner and bedtime with the family, but then he got off early enough that he wasn’t exhausted the next day. This shift until 2am made him tired during the days, so there was less fun time with the kids. But I think the next 4 days will be his worst ER shift as he starts tonight going in at 11pm and working until 7am, which just means that he gets to be home all day, but that he will have to sleep for most of that time. Too bad that his next two rotations for the months of November and December aren’t going to be a nice elective to get a little break. One month of internal medicine in September got long, and I can only imagine how long two months in a row will seem. Oh well. I was thinking about it, and we have been here for 5 months now – that’s going by pretty quick. Only about 8 more months to go. We’ve been told that the intern year is the worst of a doctor’s career, and then it should gradually start getting better from there on out (and once he gets into dermatology next year I am hoping that that will be an even better schedule than some other residents have). But we’ll just have to wait and see how that goes.

Anyways, on Tuesday night Brother Adamson from the ward came over and had me show him some of the features on Photoshop. I was excited to do that, because I love to use that program. It was a little frustrating that my computer was having such problems that it ran extremely slow while he was here, but I think that he hopefully still got something out of it.

On Wednesday Kolby had his first piano lesson with Emily Harker, a girl in our ward. I was very impressed with how well she explained the ideas of piano playing to a new learner and how she listened to him. I think that he did pretty well – he learned how to hold his hand, and which fingers go where, and they went over two different short songs that we have been practicing since then. He was excited to go to the lesson, and he likes to practice too, so that’s good. On Wednesday night I took Kolby, Eli, and Camden to a Halloween party at our church, where the kids got to trick-or-treat through the church hallways and get their faces painted. And Wednesday was also Grandpa Dick’s birthday – Happy Birthday!

On Thursday morning Dorene Lynch came over and we set up the Relief Society blog, and then I spent quite a bit of time getting that all put together the last few days. Today I need to add some more announcements to it, but mostly I think that the set-up is done and I will just need to keep up with new announcements and anything that people send me to post to that blog. The other fun thing we did on Thursday was that I took Kolby out for his night out, and we went to see the Disney movie about the robot, Wall-E, at the dollar theater. He enjoyed it, and I enjoyed going with him. He likes to sit on my lap when we go to a movie together, and he is such a sweetheart – it’s nice to see how each of our kids are on a one on one basis (as my mom said – she liked us kids a lot more individually than when we were together).

Friday was Kolby’s 5th birthday and Halloween. That morning he and I went to the grocery store together to get him a special birthday breakfast (since we are having his party next week so we didn’t have a cake that day). He picked out chocolate milk, donut holes, and cinnamon rolls, and we came home and enjoyed them together. And we gave Kolby his present – 7 new Book of Mormon character figurines. They are little plastic figurines of characters, such as Nephi and Moroni, from the Deseret Book store that the boys like to take in their “Sunday bag” to play with at church. We didn’t really want to get the “bad guys,” so we picked out almost all of the “good ones” (there were two others that we didn’t get, because they didn’t have them in the store when we went). Thank you, Grandma Debbie and Grandpa Dick – we used the birthday money that you sent for Kolby to pay for part of this gift. In the afternoon Michael had to go to work, and he helped me get the boys into their costumes before he left. We met at the Bentley’s house, along with at least 6 or 7 other families from the ward, to go trick-or-treating around the neighborhood together. It was fun to go as a group. I think that maybe going with just 2 or 3 families would probably be ideal, though, just because Kolby wanted to run ahead with the older kids and Camden was a lot more slow, so Kolby got 3 or 4 houses ahead of me at some times (there were plenty of adults in the group to supervise the kids in the front of the group and those in the back, but I would have rather had all my kids stick together with me – but I couldn’t really tell Kolby he had to stay with me instead of running with his friends). But either way, it was fun. I got some cute pictures of the boys, and Isaac ended up sleeping in his stroller most of the way. I was surprised when we had only gone a little over an hour and Kolby and Eli both decided they were done with the trick-or-treating. The rest of the group continued on, but we decided to stop when we passed our house. Then we got in the car and drove over to the hospital because Michael wanted to show off the kids in their cute costumes to the people at work. The boys each got a cup of water and ice from a water machine there, they said hello to lots of the doctors and nurses, Daddy took them into an empty patient room and showed them how he looks in patients’ mouths and ears and listens to their hearts, and a doctor gave them each a piece of candy. So that was fun for them. And then when we got home Kolby returned several birthday calls that we had missed while we were out trick-or-treating before going to bed.

And yesterday Michael had a day off. We decided to go on a date, and we ended up going downtown to the Joseph Smith Building to see the movie in the legacy theater about the life of Joseph Smith. We had seen it once before at the Mormon Battalion visitor center in San Diego, but at that time Eli was a baby and was being very noisy, so we kept taking turns with him outside the theater and missed most of the movie. We really enjoyed it this time. That will definitely be one worth getting when it becomes available. After that Michael surprised me and stopped at Leatherby’s for an ice cream. It was nice to go out without the kids.

And right now Michael and the boys are napping (Michael is trying to prepare for his upcoming night shift). So, we had a good (full) week. And looking at our calendar we have another full one coming up – with doctor’s appointments and flu shots for 3 of the boys, voting on Tuesday, piano lessons, family photos, Kolby and Isaac’s birthday party, and a primary program practice. Well, at least things don’t ever get too boring at our house. :)

Camden's 2nd Birthday Party

We had Camden’s birthday party on Thursday and it turned out to be really fun. After seeing that there was a 20% chance of rain for Thursday, we waited until later in the afternoon before deciding that the nice weather would hopefully hold out and putting up the decorations in the back yard. I was glad that it didn’t end up raining at all that evening, because I really didn’t want to have to move the party inside and then have to clean up cake and ice cream off the floors afterwards. If I’m counting right, we ended up with about 15 adults and 22 kids at the party. Michael’s sister and her husband, Mel and Christian, and Michael’s cousin and his wife, Joe and Heidi, and their kids came. Our friends, Emily and Lamar May and their boys were also able to come up from Pleasant Grove. And the Eccles, Mills, and Harkers from church made it too, so it was nice to have everyone come. I made an Elmo cake – really, just a cake with white frosting with red frosting dots (it sure takes a lot of red food coloring to turn white frosting red instead of just pink!), and a little plastic Elmo figure on top. Camden liked the cake (although he needed help blowing out the candles), and he has carried the little Elmo toy around with him since then, taking him to bed and having him sit at the table with him to watch him eat his dinner. :) After most everyone headed home, the family came inside and we got some cute pictures of all the cousins together. And then the next morning we gave Camden our birthday gift – some more animals to add to the boys’ collection that they love to play with so much. I was glad that we had such a fun time at Camden’s party and that we got to celebrate with Michael before leaving town next week. And I love this picture of Camden – it shows just how much he was enjoying himself at the party too. Enjoy the rest of these photos and videos:

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A few pregnancy thoughts

Well, I think there are several somewhat humorous things about pregnancy. For instance, I have never really preferred to sleep on my side before, but for most of my previous pregnancies I have done so for a good amount of the time – even if I would go to sleep on my back, I would almost always wake up on my side. But this pregnancy is different. I have always preferred to sleep either on my back or my front, and that has stayed the same so far throughout this pregnancy. If I try to sleep on my side, I can’t fall asleep and my arm gets sore. Actually, I can’t really sleep on my back much anymore either – if I fall asleep on my back, I almost always wake up on my stomach. And now that I am approaching the half-way point of this pregnancy and am starting to really get a pregnant-looking belly (I’m no longer really in that ‘is-she-pregnant-or-just-gaining-a-little-weight-lately?' stage), I am wondering how I am going to sleep in another month or two when I start to get really big and I can only sleep on my stomach??? I guess I’ll just have to wait and see – but I really hope I doesn’t mean that I won’t be able to sleep at all anymore.

On another note, I started to feel the baby moving last week, so that is always reassuring. Actually, (as with my last 2 pregnancies) most often it is more that I can just feel the baby than that I can feel the baby moving – like he just rolls over or moves in a certain direction, and I can feel some little baby body part just poking out. But I have felt him moving around in there too.

Another thing is the cravings. My latest thing is that I want a sandwich (I am never very big on sandwiches) with big, juicy slices of tomatoes, lots of feta cheese, and Italian dressing on top, all heated up. I’ve never made anything like that before. But it’s kind of nice that I’m past the morning sickness, because for a while there a lot of foods that I usually liked just tasted awful to me – including pasta, feta cheese, fresh spinach, etc. The only thing that is still bothering me is eggs. We often had eggs for a special Saturday morning breakfast when Michael was home, and we haven’t had them as often lately with Michael’s busy work schedule, but the few times he has made eggs over the last couple months I have felt sick after eating them (even though they tasted great when we ate). So I have resorted to steering clear of eggs for breakfast since then.

Well, I am planning on posting fun pictures from Camden’s birthday party on Thursday and our fun family trip to the Utah State Fair on Michael’s day off on Friday. I’ll get those posted before we head out to San Diego next week.

Another Invitation

So, I mentioned earlier that I enjoy making birthday part invitations for the boys. I finished Isaac’s tonight. Even though his birthday isn’t for a while and we don’t even really know when we’ll be celebrating his birthday, I just thought I’d share the invitation because I had fun making it.

Boise

We went up to Boise for the weekend of Michael's birthday and his 10-year high school reunion. Here are pictures from him opening his birthday gifts, some pictures with friends at the reunion, then some at a little preserve in the park that we walked through after the reunion with a few friends where the boys got to see lots of fish, some that Jennie and Dalin took with the boys while we went out for Michael's birthday dinner, and a nice shot of Michael wearing the special birthday fish hat at McGrath's seafood restaurant when Dick and Debbie took us out for his birthday. It was a fun weekend, but way too quick -- I wish it wasn't a 5 or 6 hour drive to get there, so it wouldn't be so tiring to go visit for a weekend.

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Feeding the Birds

We went to Sugarhouse Park in Salt Lake for a little family dinner Sunday evening to celebrate Grandma Bradshaw’s birthday. When we realized that the family was setting everything up just a few feet from the lake, we knew it would be hard to keep the kids dry. Camden stepped in first, and then slipped and fell in up to his neck (then he was walking around in just a diaper for the rest of the evening). Kolby later fell in when he was trying to throw bread to feed the birds (and he was walking around in his shirt and boxers the rest of the night). And later Camden fell in again (I think this time may have been an accident) while he was trying to feed the birds. Michael caught this last fall on tape. It was an eventful night and several of the family members thanked us for providing the entertainment for the evening. Happy Birthday, Grandma!

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A few more Photos from our Trip

Here are a few more photos from our San Diego trip.

Camden with his Aunt Jennifer before she went back to Hawaii:

My parents' friend, Melissa Deussen, reading to the boys:

Kolby brought me flowers for my birthday (with the help of Nana):

The boys playing ball out in the courtyard (yes, this is in January):

Having fun outside:

Giving kisses:

Cute Camden:

Kolby:

Eli:

Isaac sleeping in the sun:

Five Years

I came across this fun post on a friend’s blog, and thought it’d be nice to write one of my own. So, this last week Michael and I celebrated our 5-year wedding anniversary. Five years sounds like such a long time – it doesn’t seem like it’s been that long. Although I still feel like we are one of those newlywed couples, I guess we are really more like a “real family.” So, looking back now it is interesting to see what we’ve accomplished in the last five years:

We have lived in four different apartments: our first one south of campus at BYU, our second in Wymount married student housing at BYU, our third was our 2-bedroom apartment in Mayfair Manor apartments in Milwaukee, and our fourth (and current) apartment is our 3-bedroom place in the same complex in Milwaukee. (Maybe our next home will actually be a house – we’ll see).

We have had four boys (all born within four years of each other): Kolby, Eli, Camden, and Isaac. So, we have eight little shoes, forty little fingers and forty little toes, sometimes eight crying eyes at the same time, often four cute little smiles, and always several diapers to change each day.

We have had four jobs and two internships: When we met, Michael was working for BYU’s IT Services and I was working for The Museum of Peoples and Cultures on campus. When we lived in San Diego for a summer Michael had an internship with a company that produced skin grafts for burn victims and diabetes patients and I had a fun job working in a scrapbooking store. Before we moved to Milwaukee I had an internship at the family history library at BYU. And after Michael’s first year of medical school he had a summer research position conducting telephone surveys to pharmacies and eventually compiling his research in a paper.

We have been to eight places: Beside living in Provo, Utah and Milwaukee, Wisconsin, we lived at my parents’ house in San Diego, California for a summer after we were married (and we had a fun day trip down to Tijuana, Mexico while we were there). We have also enjoyed fun trips to visit family in Boise, Idaho and Salt Lake City, Utah. And monthly trips to the temple in Chicago, Illinois makes that destination quite familiar to us. Other than the states that we drove through on our move out to Milwaukee and the places Michael has flown to for recent residency interviews, the other location we have visited is Nauvoo, Illinois for a fun family vacation a couple years ago.

We have received three degrees: Although I attended Ricks College in Idaho before I met Michael, I was still finishing up the last couple courses at BYU that I needed to transfer in order to receive my associate’s degree in social sciences from Ricks. Michael and I both later graduated from BYU – I got my bachelor’s degree in genealogy and Michael got his in microbiology with a minor in Spanish. And we are anticipating Michael’s degree from medical school in May 2008!

We have had five cars: We used Michael’s little red Ford Tempo while we were in Utah and Wisconsin until it died on us a couple years ago. We also had a blue Buick for a little while that my Grandma gave us when we were at BYU. When our friends, the Gordons, graduated and left Milwaukee they gave us their old car which we were able to sell for a few hundred dollars. After the Tempo died on us, we got a green Mercury Villager minivan. And then last year when Michael needed a car to get to and from his different rotations, we got a little blue Toyota Tercel from the Johnson’s when they were getting ready to graduate.

We have gone through four baby strollers: In preparation for having our first baby we got a little umbrella stroller and a bigger stroller that a car seat could hook into. And my friend gave us a hand-me-down double stroller when we had our second baby. Later on, after the double stroller was damaged on an airplane ride and the airline eventually paid to replace it, we got a triple stroller.

We have gone through five baby car seats: We had an infant seat that we used for Kolby, but when we were hit by a car the insurance company replaced that infant seat for us (Isaac’s car seat). We have also had two convertible toddler seats (now used by Camden and Eli), and a booster seat (Kolby’s).

We have had four computers: I had a computer during college and Michael had his dad’s old laptop (which we set up on top of a book shelf so Kolby couldn’t reach it when he was a toddler and he grabbed the chord and pulled it down and shattered the screen). We got our pc a couple years ago and Michael recently took advantage of the school’s offer to extend student loans to cover the cost of a laptop.

We have celebrated 17 birthdays: five each for Michael and I, four for Kolby, two for Eli, and one for Camden.

And we have had hundreds of hours of laughing and fun, thousands of smiles, and lots of happy memories.

It’s been a great five years. Now we’ll just have to wait and see what the next five years have in store for us.

Another Week in the NICU

So, we’ve had a busy week. Michael and I have spent every day at the hospital with Isaac in the NICU. Since we last posted an update here, Isaac has been doing pretty well. On Monday he started eating from a bottle for the first time – I have been pumping, so we haven’t had to give him any formula. He took the bottle well. They have been keeping track of how much he is eating – he started on Monday taking 10 milliliters, and now he is up to 75 milliliters. He started nursing on Tuesday for the first time since the night he was born. They have a very sensitive scale that they weigh him on before and after he nurses so that they can continue to keep track of how much he is eating. They seem very pleased that he is eating so well, and the doctors are happy that he is able to nurse because that means that he can breath through his nose while his mouth is totally blocked, which shows that the stents in his nose are working to help him breath well.

On Tuesday (Isaac’s due date), they started him on a bili blanket to help with jaundice. He also got weaned off of the nasal cannula (the little tube that ran under his nose to provide a little oxygen flow) that day. It was nice to have that off – he is looking more and more like a normal, healthy baby as they gradually remove more and more of the tubes and wires that are all around his little crib in his NICU room.

Wednesday was Kolby’s 4th birthday and Halloween. My mom made cupcakes for Kolby to take to his preschool class at the YMCA, and he was so excited – he was bouncing off the walls all day. He got to wear his Halloween costume to his classes too, which was fun for him. After we dropped him off at the YMCA, Michael and I went to the hospital. I got a chance to nurse Isaac that morning, and then we dressed him up in the little teddy bear Halloween costume that Camden wore last year and took some fun photos. He was so cute! Then Michael and I attended an infant CPR class -- a requirement for parents before leaving the NICU. After that Michael had a quick meeting for a derm research project he is working on, and then he went home to pick up my mom and the boys. I nursed Isaac again and then walked over to the medical school to meet the rest of the family. The boys were excited to be all dressed up in their costumes and go trick-or-treating through the halls of the medical school at the annual MCW Halloween party. I have to say, I think we were in the company of the cutest Tigger, dinosaur, and lion in the whole building. After accumulating about 15 pounds of candy between the three boys, we went and got some dinner and put the boys down to bed.

Today Michael started his pediatric radiology rotation. His October rotation was an elective course and he had already finished most of the work for the rotation when Isaac went into the NICU, so they gave him the last few days off and just let him finish his last few projects in his own time. So it is weird now that he is starting a new rotation and can’t go with me to the NICU every day. Luckily his rotation this month is also in Children’s Hospital, just a few floors down from the NICU, so he could get there quickly if he needed to. Kolby had his 4-year-old check-up at the doctor’s office late this morning, so I waited to take him to that appointment before going into the hospital today. Kolby is healthy, and they did a hearing and vision test, which he did well on. He got several shots, and it was the first time that I ever felt kinda sad when one of my kids got shots, because Kolby is now old enough that he was saying things like, “No, Mommy, it hurts,” while the nurse was giving him the shots, instead of just crying. Luckily he calmed down a little when he got a sticker afterwards.

Shortly after I got to the hospital this afternoon, Michael arrived too. The doctor on his peds radiology rotation was nice and said that spending time with his baby was more important than anything he could teach him, so he let him leave around 2:00 today. Isaac had an IV in his foot that they weren’t using anymore, but they had left it in so that they wouldn’t have to put in a new one in case he ended up having a surgery this week to remove the stents from his nose. But last night I guess the IV fell out, so they have just left it out, and he didn’t end up needing it for surgery – so that’s one less tube hanging off of his body – one step closer to ‘normal.’ We were able to give Isaac a bath for the first time – the nurses had always done it up until now. And I brushed his hair all cute afterwards, which was fun. Isaac did ok with nursing today, and then Michael got to give him a bottle feeding too.

The ENT doctor came by to talk to us, and he gave us the option to have them do the surgery tomorrow to remove his stents or to try to wait another week. After discussing it with the doctor, we decided to try to wait another week and let his nose continue to heal before removing the stents. So, he has that surgery scheduled for next Thursday. The other big thing that the doctor told us was that we should prepare ourselves for the possibility that Isaac might have another breathing problem besides the nasal passageway. The only way to tell that is to remove the stents from his nose and give him time to recover from the surgery and then see if he is breathing normally. If not, then they will consider the possibility that he could have another problem, like possibly with his tongue falling back in his mouth all the time and blocking the airway or something else. Anyway, it sounds like he will not be coming home anytime soon. We know for sure now that they will be keeping him there through next Thursday for the surgery, and then he will probably need a few days to recover from that. Plus they told us originally that once he gets to the point where he is breathing and eating normally, he will still need to stay in the NICU for 48 to 72 hours for them to monitor him and make sure he is doing fine. So, as long as there are no further complications, it looks like it will still be at least a week and a half before he gets to come home.

A Long Week of Doctor's Visits

This was a pretty long week for our family. Kolby wasn’t feeling well last weekend and had fevers for a few days, so I took him in to the doctor on Monday and they called us back on Tuesday to tell us that Kolby had strep throat. I was glad that we found that out early on in the week, because with strep throat you need to take antibiotics for 24 hours before you are no longer contagious, and we had a little birthday party planned for Kolby for Friday night. I really didn’t want to have to cancel the party, because not only would Kolby be disappointed, but I really thought it would be easier to have a party before the baby comes. So, I was glad that we got the medicine for Kolby so that he was no longer contagious, and that his brothers were not showing signs of being sick, so maybe there was a chance that just Kolby would get it and no one else in the family. But I was wrong. Camden woke up in the night with a low fever and I took him in to the doctor on Wednesday. Because Kolby had strep, they didn’t wait to get the culture back before starting Camden on the antibiotics, so he got the medicine so that he wouldn’t be contagious (although they never called back about the culture, which means that it was negative and he didn’t actually have strep throat). When we were in the office on Wednesday, I had the doctor look at Eli just to check him, even though he hadn’t shown any signs of being sick, and Dr. Papp said that his throat wasn’t even red at all. So then on Thursday morning Michael had a really bad sore throat and went to his doctor. They said that he wouldn’t hear back until Monday to see if his strep test was positive or not, but they started him on the medicine anyway. So he stayed home from work Thursday and Friday – so it was nice to have him around, except it would have been nicer if he had been feeling well. On Thursday (the day after the doctor said that his throat looked fine) Eli started having fevers too, and I took him into the doctor’s office that evening. His rapid strep culture came back positive immediately, showing that he did have strep. Luckily he got the antibiotics early enough that he was no longer contagious by the time of the birthday party the next night, so we didn’t have to cancel it. So, we had 4 sick boys at our house this week, and four different doctor’s visits – maybe next time one of my kids gets a contagious sickness like this I’ll insist that they write me prescriptions for each of the children so that we don’t have to go back all week long when each one catches it. At least I am doing pretty well – I have had a cough for the last few weeks that I just can’t seem to get over, but luckily I have no signs of catching what the boys have had. Kolby has acted fine all week, and the other boys haven’t been acting like they felt too bad, so that’s nice. Michael is finally starting to feel better today, the last few days were pretty rough for him.

Since Kolby had roseola when Eli was born and Kolby and Eli had strep throat when Camden was born, I kept wondering if we would stick to our pattern of the older children have a contagious illness whenever I have a new baby, but Isaac seems to be holding out to arrive after everyone at the house is healthy. I have had a few times this week when I felt contractions, once when I wondered if it might lead to labor, but even though they were strong and pretty close together, it didn’t last for too long. Michael’s sister, Mel, had her baby boy, Kyler, on Friday (her due date was supposed to be 3 days before mine), and I thought maybe Isaac would come that day too, but was kind of disappointed when the contractions stopped. But it won’t be too much longer – from today, there are 9 more days until my due date (11 days until I will be induced, if it goes that long). I can handle that – I feel like I’ve been very patient with this pregnancy, unlike my pregnancies so far when I have gotten to the last month and just couldn’t wait to have the baby right away. But I am still crossing my fingers that it will somehow work out for me to have the baby early or late enough so that I can participate in the Halloween celebrations with the kids. I was telling Michael this morning that Halloween is a big holiday. As far as rating holidays on how important/fun they are for me to experience them with our children (and not taking into account how significant I think the reasons for the holidays are or how much I enjoy spending time with Michael or other family on those holidays), I think that Halloween would be tied with the 4th of July, right after Christmas. [I don’t know if that made much sense – Michael asked me about Thanksgiving when I told him that, and I said that Thanksgiving is important and the kids enjoy certain traditions we have like decorating cookies to look like turkeys, but it is a holiday that we have always spent our married life with friends, and Halloween is all about our kids and nothing else. So, not to make any other holidays seem less important, but I really love watching our kids dress up in their costumes, carve pumpkins, and trick-or-treat, so I hope I don’t have to miss that].

Well, let’s see, what else did we do this week? On Monday, after we did a family home evening lesson with the boys, we went to the Hymas’ house for Chelsey’s birthday party. We got her a wand, tiara, and feather boa so that she could be her favorite princess – I have fun buying girly gifts for our friends’ kids, since I don’t get to pick out cute pink things that often. On Wednesday night Kolby had his swimming lessons.

After Kolby’s lesson we dropped the boys off at the Hedgecock’s house and had a fun, inexpensive date night. We went over to the Hymas’ house, and they had already put their girls down to bed, and we played Nintendo Wii games. Michael’s parents told us that they would give us some money if there was anything specific we wanted for a Christmas gift for our family, and Michael has been talking about a Wii video game system, which I was not so sure about. I thought it sounded like more fun than normal video games, because you use the remotes like sports equipment to play the games – so you are standing and swinging your arms like you are playing tennis, bowling, golfing, etc. I think that games like that are better than ones that you just sit in front of, and I would prefer sports games to any kind of violent video games, but I am still not a big fan of most video games because of the time that can be spent on them, and the cost. So the Hymases invited us to come try it out, and it was a lot of fun. I enjoyed the tennis game the most, although I wasn’t the greatest at any of the games (and my arm was quite sore from swinging that remote for 3 days afterwards – I guess that shows how out of shape I am). But after playing that night, Michael said that he thought maybe we should choose something else for Christmas, because he thought a Wii might take up too much time, especially once he has a busier schedule when he starts his residency next year, and he hasn’t mentioned it since then. It was a really fun date night, though. I really don’t mind video games (the ones that aren’t violent), but I do prefer them at someone else’s house, so we can go and enjoy them, and then come home and not have the temptation of spending too much time playing them.

On Thursday afternoon I left the kids with Michael, since he was home sick, and went to my doctor’s appointment. [Hey if any of our friends here in Milwaukee are pregnant and looking for a good doctor, I would highly recommend Luverda Martin – she is a midwife at Froedtert Hospital. She has been great – I have had a different doctor or midwife with each pregnancy, and I will stick with Luverda from now on as long as we live here. When I first considered seeing a midwife, I wondered if it would be weird, but I thought I’d try it out and then just switch doctor’s if I didn’t like it. But my midwife is not weird at all – she has given me “normal” care like any doctor I’ve had – I’m not into herbal stuff or home remedies or things like water births, which I thought a midwife might suggest, and I was definitely not interested in someone who didn’t fully support my decision to have an epidural – and she has never suggested anything to me that seemed different than a normal doctor. She is very personable and she has always made herself easy to contact if I have any questions, and she has a couple young children of her own, so it doesn’t faze her at all when I bring all of my kids into the appointment with me. Anyway, I just think she’s great, so if anyone is looking for a good doctor, you have my recommendation.] Back to the point – I went in for my appointment on Thursday and all is well with the baby. I was measuring normal and she said that the baby’s heart rate is starting to go down a little, just like they would expect since the baby is preparing to be born. And I had her strip the membranes – which is supposed to help the baby come, if your body is ready for labor – I don’t know if I really think it helps or not. With Kolby they did it, and then he was induced a week later, so it didn’t seem to do anything. I don’t remember them doing it with Eli. And with Camden they did it and then he was born 2 days later (2 days before his due date). So, I figured it couldn’t hurt, but I haven’t gone into labor yet, so I guess it didn’t do much this time around. Oh well.

On Thursday night my friends threw me a little baby shower at Sandra Simon’s house. We had desserts and everyone just had fun socializing. I told them that I felt like we didn’t really need anything for the baby this time, so I didn’t need any gifts, but they decided to throw a “pamper Stephanie” party, and most people brought things like nice lotions and body washes and stuff like that, which was fun. It was really nice to get together with friends and have a fun night out, just talking, sharing stories about being a mother and wife, and laughing together.

On Friday Kolby got to go to school again after missing it all week because of his strep throat – he was really excited to go again. And that night we had the little birthday party for Kolby. Michael and I spent the whole day cleaning the house and preparing for the party – and I was pretty worn out by the end of the day (even though I know he felt pretty lousy with being sick, I’m glad Michael still found the energy to help me clean up, because it was a lot of work to get everything done that I wanted to, and it felt really nice after we had finished). Kolby was excited about his Tigger Halloween costume, and so when I asked him what he wanted for his party theme, he said Tigger. We took orange ribbons and curled them and hung them from the ceiling like bouncy Tigger tails, blew up balloons for the kids to play with, and played pin-the-tail-on-Tigger. I used half a container of yellow food coloring and half a container of red to turn the frosting for the cake a bright orange color like Kolby asked. And I got a little set of plastic Winnie the Pooh characters that I used to decorate the cake, and then the boys got to have them as toys afterwards. Kolby was so excited about his friends coming over and the gifts that he got. The one thing we forgot was to hand out the little goodie bags that the boys helped me make at the end of the party – so we still have a big bowl of goodie bags sitting out in our living room, I guess we will have to give the candy from the bags out to any trick-or-treaters that visit.

On Saturday morning I went to the church for our Super Saturday enrichment activity, and among other things I did a project where we etched our name on the bottom of our glass dishes. I think they turned out well, although I signed up to do 4 dishes when most other people just did 1, so it took me a lot longer than I had planned.

It was fun to go and see people there and do the fun projects. The rest of the day we spent at home. Michael was supposed to be in charge of a project at the church that morning to spread mulch in the landscaping areas, but he ended up having to ask some friends to take over for him on that because he was sick. And we were also planning on going to the temple with the Hedgecocks, but had to reschedule that too – we are now planning on going next Saturday, if I haven’t had the baby by then. When I got home, Michael checked the mail and found an invitation for his first dermatology interview at Texas A&M. He is waiting until tomorrow to hear back from them, and hoping for an interview date in the end of November. It was exciting to get a derm invitation already, because we had heard that they usually don’t start arriving until November, and today at church one of our friends who is a derm resident said that he only got 3 interviews before Thanksgiving, so it will probably be a while before he gets most of his invitations. But it was really exciting to get that first one for dermatology! And then we rented the movie Transformers and watched it after the boys went to bed last night. Michael liked it, and I liked it pretty well, except we thought there were some parts that they really didn’t need in the movie.

Church went pretty well. The boys did a good job. Camden has trouble because he gets so tired while we are at church – if we were at home he would just lay down in his crib and cry to sleep for a few minutes, but there is no place for that at church, so he kind of has a rough time. But what we heard of our lessons was good and Kolby’s and Eli’s teachers said that they both did well in their classes. Camden spit up a couple times at the end of church after he had his cup of milk – I am wondering if he has some kind of lactose intolerance. I mentioned to the doctor on Monday that he had started spitting up again for about a week, (which is strange because Camden spit up a lot with the formula, and then stopped entirely when we switched him to whole milk about 3 months ago). The doctor thought it might have something to do with him having a little cold or being sick this week (because milk can cause you to have more mucous when you have a cold), and suggested not giving him any milk for a few days to see if it stopped. I got a bottle of soy milk and he didn’t spit up once with that. But I figured that now since he is over his cold, he should be fine on whole milk again. I don’t know – I guess we’ll have to talk to the doctor about it and see what we need to do to find out if it is any kind of allergy or if it might be something else.

Well, there is a roast cooking for dinner and Michael is off home teaching right now. I can hear the boys in their rooms waking up from their naps. Tonight we are having a new family in the ward, the Gittins, over for dinner. They have a little boy and a little girl, so it should be fun for the kids to get together and for us to get to know them better. Hope you are all having a nice Sunday!

Bowling

Last night we went to the Hedgecock’s house to celebrate Jordan’s fourth birthday. After dinner, we went bowling. It was the first time that our family has ever gone bowling (neither Michael nor I had gone since before we met each other). We had lots of fun. And there were some pretty high scores – Peter even got 7 strikes in a row, which is amazing! After bowling we went back to their house and had cake and ice cream and Jordan opened his presents. It was a really fun night for all of us.

One More Week

Well, we’ve got one more week to go before we get through Michael’s Sub-I this month. Michael and I are both counting down the days. He added up the other day, and he will have worked just over 90 hours this week (even though they are not supposed to make you work over 80 hours in a week or over 30 consecutive hours – but Michael has done both several times this month). Michael and I are both pretty worn out after the long hours he has had this month, and really looking forward to a lighter schedule next month! Earlier this week Michael got home after being on call at the hospital for over 30 hours and only getting one hour of sleep in that time, and when he arrived home all the boys were down for their naps, so Michael fell asleep on the couch. Kolby woke up from his nap a little while later, and was so excited to see that Daddy was home, but I told him that Daddy really needed his sleep and not to wake him up. Kolby got a sad look on his face and just laid down on his blanket on the floor next to the couch where Michael was sleeping. Later on I looked over and saw that Kolby was rubbing Michael’s arm – trying to wake him up, I’m sure. It is pretty cute to see how much our boys love their Daddy. I guess we will all be relieved in October when we have more time to spend together as a whole family.

Well, this week went well. Kolby started his preschool classes again at the YMCA, and he is loving both of his classes. He goes on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays for 2½ hours each day. Also this week the boys started their swim lessons up again. Kolby has his on Wednesday nights and Eli on Thursday nights. They love swimming, and Kolby was excited that his friend from church, Isaac Anderson, is in his class. I went swimming with Eli (even though he really is ready for swim lessons by himself, they keep the kids in parent-child lessons until age 3 at the YMCA). He is amazing in the water – he loves to dunk his head under the water over and over and jump in to me from the edge, and the other night he kept trying to jump away from me and swim on his own. His teacher is the same teacher he had last session, and she commented that he will definitely be ready to take the swim lessons on his own when he is old enough.

Thursday was Camden’s 1st birthday. We had a little party for him the week before, so we didn’t do any big celebrations this week, but several family members called to tell him Happy Birthday, and he got to open a few gifts. That morning I also had my new visiting teachers come for the first time, which was fun. And then in the afternoon I had a doctor’s appointment for some pain I’ve been having in my foot. The doctor sent me upstairs and had an X-ray taken just to see if there might be anything in my foot, and she told me to soak it in warm water each night for a couple weeks and see if that helps. Hopefully that little problem will resolve itself quickly. And then on Friday night we watched Jordan and Carter so that Peter and Cynthia could go on a date, and when they came back they watched our boys while we went and got custard and rented a couple videos. When we came back, our boys were in bed and theirs fell asleep on their laps, and it was nice because they stayed for a bit and we got a chance to just sit and talk for a while.

And yesterday morning we went to the church and I dropped Kolby off for his primary program practice. Eli and Camden and I went and picked up a few things from the grocery store and came back. Kolby has been doing so well lately – he memorized a scripture and had a little line to say in the program, “In primary we learned that faith means trust.” He has been working on memorizing his part for about a month now, and at the program in church this morning he said it, and then gave a huge grin – everyone could tell that he was so proud of himself! Saturday evening we went to a birthday party for Ian Nielsen, who was born around the same time as Camden. At the party, Christina Nielsen, who is a photographer, also took cute pictures of all the kids Ian and Camden’s age and took a photo of all the moms holding their kids that age – we took one about a year ago when all of us were pregnant. She was talking about putting some of the photos she took in the medical school yearbook – too bad for me that all the other moms in the pictures looked nice and thin after a year of recovering from their pregnancies, and I looked huge pregnant still – oh well. We had fun at the Nielsen’s, and then we headed over to the Hymas’ house for a little birthday party for their daughter, Emily, who is turning 2. I gave Emily some of the bows I made for a gift, and she was wearing some at church today, so that was fun.

And church went well today. Michael was actually lucky enough to discharge his last patient of the day yesterday, so he asked his resident for permission to leave the hospital for one hour today to come to church for Kolby’s primary program, even though he is on overnight call again starting today, and his resident said yes. So even though he was in the hospital this morning, so I had to get all the kids ready for church by myself, he got there and was able to stay for Sacrament meeting, which was great for Kolby to have Michael there for his program, and it was also nice because Eli and especially Camden were a little wild and noisy in that meeting, so it was helpful to have him there to help me with them. He had to rush off to the hospital as soon as that meeting was over, and I haven’t heard from him yet today, so hopefully the day is going well for him.

The rest of church went well for me. With the help of a couple little bags of Cheerios and Honeycomb cereal, Camden actually stayed in the classroom with me for all of Sunday School and Relief Society (except for a few minutes when we had to go out because he was crying after he fell and hit his head on a chair leg). But it was nice to be able to stay in the classroom for the entire lesson, since he is starting to get to that age when kids are too old to just sit still for 3 hours of church, but not old enough yet to go into the 18-month-old nursery class, so many parents end up spending a lot of time out in the halls at church for those months. After church I went to choir practice, and the boys enjoyed playing at the choir nursery. And when we came home we took dinner over to the Hansens because they had a baby a few weeks ago, and I put the boys down for naps. Camden just got up, and the other two are still sleeping. Thank goodness for naptime. I think that even when Kolby outgrows naps, I will still insist on a minimum of a 2-hour “quite time” in his room while the younger boys nap. On days that I am frustrated with the kids or just days that seem especially long and I am tired, their naptime is very important for me to have a couple hours all to myself. Well, I hope you have all had a good week!

A Busy Week

Well, it is my turn to write out weekly letter. It has been kind of a long weekend – Michael was on call since early yesterday morning until around 2:00 this afternoon. On Saturday I went to a baby shower for Melanie Brumwell, a friend from Michael’s class who is having her first baby in December. That was fun to see several school friends that I haven’t seen for a while and to let all the kids play together. The baby shower was in the afternoon, and we got home pretty late, so instead of taking a really late nap around 4:00, the boys had an early dinner and went to bed early, which was nice for me. Kolby and Eli went to bed around 6:00 and Camden at 7:00, and they slept until I got them up to get ready for church this morning. So, as you can probably tell, I had plenty of time last night (with boys in bed early, Michael gone all night, and nothing good on tv) to update the blog with much of this past week’s goings-on. So, just look at the other posts below this one to see the ultrasound pictures I got last week, the pictures from Michael’s day off Monday when we took the kids to the Milwaukee Public Museum, my thoughts on the 6-year anniversary of September 11th on Tuesday, the good news I got at my doctor’s appointment on Thursday afternoon that my midwife will induce my by November 1st if this baby comes after his due date (October 30th), the video of Camden walking across the room for the first time on Thursday evening, and pictures of Camden scarfing down an entire cake at his first birthday party on Friday. That gives a pretty good summary of our week.

Other than that, I spent a lot of time this week getting all the fall and winter clothes ready for all of our boys. I keep storage bins full of boys’ clothes all divided by size, and I spent one night just sorting through all of those and trying things on the different boys to see what fit and what didn’t. Camden, our big boy, is now wearing 18-24 month sized clothes, even though he only turns 12 months old this week. Throughout the week I went to all of the different clothing stores that I shop at in our area and am finally feeling like we are pretty set for warm clothes for the upcoming seasons for all four boys. One store I really like is just up the street from us, Once Upon a Child, and they sell used kids clothes, but much of what they sell looks new and is still in style (as opposed to the other used kids stores around here that sometimes have a good deal, but mostly just sell worn out junk). Anyways, after spending probably two hours there the other day, picking out clothes and trying each item on the different boys, I purchased a large pile of jeans, long-sleeve shirts, and sweatshirts, etc. The lady who checked me out made some comment about how I was buying a lot of stuff, but I told her that I had really done a pretty good job to get good deals on the majority of winter clothes I needed for all four boys. Anyways, that’s one less thing that I need to do now before the baby is born, so it’s nice to have it done.

And there were just a few other things that happened this week that I should mention. On Wednesday morning I went to visit teach a new sister in my ward, Alicia Taylor, for the first time. We had a nice visit, even though the boys were a little distracting. Then I came home and babysat the Hymas girls while Amy went for an ultrasound. And then on Wednesday evening I got to go to a new service enrichment group where we planned a service project for the women at the META House downtown, a place for women with children who are recovering from addictions and trying to get back to normal life. The META House staff requested that we bring pumpkins and help the women have a fun night with carving jack-o-lanterns (since many of them have not had a chance to do that before), which sounds like it should be a fun activity, although I hope it is not too challenging to get donations of pumpkins, since one of the girls there mentioned that she heard the heavy rains of last month ruined many of the local pumpkin crops so pumpkins are expected to be expensive this year. On Thursday and Friday we cleaned the house in preparation for Camden’s birthday party Friday evening. And on Friday Michael had his last day off for the month, so we went down to Chicago in the morning to go to the temple. We usually go with our friends, the Hedgecocks, and trade off babysitting, but Michael’s call schedule made it so that we couldn’t go with them this month, so we just went on our own and traded off watching the boys. That was a good trip, and each of us was able to get about 10 initiatories done for family names. That night the Wellses and Amy Cortez and her kids came for Camden’s party, and we had fun watching him eat almost an entire cake by himself.

And Kolby will be starting his preschool classes again tomorrow. Michael is going to give him and Eli each a father’s blessing tonight, which should be a cool thing to do. And I will definitely have to take some back-to-school photos of Kolby in the morning. And both boys will start up their swim lessons again this week, which will be kind of busy for me for the next couple weeks because Michael won’t get home early enough so I’ll probably be taking all the kids by myself, but it will be good for them to start up their swimming again after the 2-week break between sessions. And on Thursday, September 20th, Camden will turn one year old. He’s getting to be such a big boy.

Camden's 1st Birthday Party

Camden gets Birthday Kisses from his Brothers:

We had a little birthday party for Camden last night (his birthday is on Thursday next week, but this was Michael’s last day off of the month). Amy and her kids, Christopher and Maria Teresa, came and so did our friends, Jana and Keith Wells. After the kids played Simon Says and Shoots and Ladders, we sang Happy Birthday to Camden and he got to eat his cake. We have a family tradition of letting our kids have their own cake on their first birthday, and both Kolby and Eli were pretty hesitant to eat their cakes on each of their first birthdays – they only ate about one piece each. Camden was a little hesitant at first with his cake, until he realized that it was food, and then he really went at it. He sat on the table for a long time, eating and playing in the cake – and by the time he was finished, he had probably eaten about half of the cake. We were surprised that he didn’t get sick afterwards. “Happy Birthday, Camden!”

Before:

After:

Camden Walking

So, Camden finally started walking on Thursday (he took a step almost a month ago, but hasn’t done much more until now). He started walking exactly one week before his first birthday. He just walked across the room a few times, and we were able to catch it on video. (Now I have some hope that he will be really walking on his own in the next month or so, so that I won’t have to carry two babies all the time).