A Whirlwind Weekend

So, Courtland and I are back from a whirlwind quick trip to Portland this weekend to surprise my sister, Michelle, for the blessing of her new little baby girl, Elizabeth “Lizzie” Faun Conde, who is only a week old. We had an eventful weekend, actually. Before we left, Dick and Debbie came to town and we spent Thursday and Friday with them, which was a lot of fun. On Friday morning Courtland had his doctor’s appointment where we found that he had gained 10 ounces (Wow!) since Tuesday and now weighs 8 pounds 2 ounces, which is even more than we guessed he could have gained. That is very good news, so we are continuing with the high-calorie formula for now, but trying to gradually increase the breastfeeding again, so that hopefully we won’t have to give up on that entirely (which will all depend on if he continues to gain weight well after we increase the breastfeeding and decrease the bottle feedings, I suppose). I can see that his little cheeks are starting to fill in a bit now, and he is obviously feeling much better – he has been sleeping well most nights (his record so far is 8 ½ hours at a time), but the biggest news is that he doesn’t insist on being held in my arms all night long in order to sleep anymore. He has started to sleep in his baby swing at night, which is nice for me to be able to get some deeper sleep. So, we are pleased with the progress he is making. After the doctor’s appointment, we went down to Lehi and all spent the day together at Mel and Christian’s with Annette and Michael’s parents, and got to get some photos of the cousins together with Courtland. While we were there, I got a ticket to go to Portland (we had to wait until the last minute to make the reservations because we knew we wouldn’t be able to make the trip if Courtland hadn’t gained weight by his appointment Friday morning). Luckily we found an affordable flight and rental car, and I got all packed that night. We headed out the next morning and Michelle was very surprised to see us there when we arrived along with Grandma Faun. We had fun holding each others’ babies and spending time with Michelle’s husband, Jake, Grandma, and my parents. Michelle had a C-section a week ago Saturday, and she is still recovering from that. Mom worked on Lizzie’s amazing blessing dress up until the day before her blessing, and it turned out amazing – you’ll have to look closely at the pictures of her in her dress – the fabric down the whole front of the dress is actually individual strips of lace all sewn together and the stitching really turned out beautiful! On Sunday morning Michelle went to the ER because she was having a lot of pain from her C-section incision, and they think that she must have popped some of the internal stitches. Because of how Michelle was feeling, they decided to have Lizzie’s blessing at their apartment rather than at the church. Jake’s parents, two brothers, one of his sisters-in-law, and one of his nieces all got to attend the blessing along with our family. We took lots of pictures, including several of Lizzie with Courtland, and some of them both with Jake and Michelle’s other little niece, Jennie Conde, who is 2 months old. Later on that day I had to make a little trip back to our hotel room to change and shower because Courtland spit up all down my dress. It was really awful – I guess that’s one downside to the bottle feedings is that they seem to increase the spitting up. Oh well. We spent the rest of the day at their apartment and then after Michelle and Jake went to bed for the night Mom came with me and Grandma to our hotel room and Mom held Courtland all night. I fell asleep on the couch for a few hours, but we had to get up at 4am for our flight anyways, so we stayed up and talked and took pictures of Courtland until it was time to head to the airport. The flight home went well – Courtland, Grandma, and I all slept through the entire flight and got home this morning in time for Michael to go into work. And today has gone pretty well so far, with unpacking, doing laundry, making several phone calls, rescheduling the boys’ photo appointment that we had for this afternoon because the three little boys all have pretty bad colds they are still getting over, picking Kolby up from preschool, feeding the boys lunch, making up a batch of barley soup (haven’t tried this recipe before, so hopefully it will turn out well), getting a bunch of pictures saved on the computer, and feeding the baby, and writing this. Now the boys are getting ready to get up from their naps, so I’d better hurry and try to get this and some photos posted before they are all up.

Grandpa Dick and Grandma Debbie

with the Mealey cousins:

Michelle and I with our February babies:

Lizzie and Courtland:

Lizzie wearing one of the hairbows I made for her:

Nana was so excited that her broken arm is healing enough to be able to hold the baby:

Lizzie's beautiful blessing dress:

Jake, Lizzie, and Michelle:

And I hope that we got a better shot of the two of them on Dad's camera, because these are the best that I got before my camera battery ran out:

Staying up all night at the hotel with Nana:

Two Weeks Old

Well, we’ve had a busy, but good week this week. After Michael had his week off of work when Courtland was born, he had to make up the time he had off and was scheduled a very busy week this week – he was on call for 30-hour shifts overnight just about every other day this week. He told me that I should probably write the blog post this week, since if he were to write it he would just say that he was tired of working an 80 hour work week. Luckily, we have one more week of surgery before he gets to start his dermatopathology rotation next Monday, which we have heard will have a much better schedule.

So, Michael went back to work on Friday last week, and my parents and brothers were able to come here on Saturday night last weekend. It was not only nice to have my family here to spend time with them, but it was nice to have all the extra help they gave me with the new baby and the boys, especially since Michael was on call this week on Sunday, Wednesday, and Friday. Luckily this upcoming week he only has to be on call one more time before this rotation is over.

This week we had a lot of fun. On Tuesday it was the intern ski day – one of the few nice perks we got since Michael has been working here. All of the interns in his program got the day off of work to go up to Snowbird for an all-expense paid day of nice food, relaxing, and our choice of skiing or a massage. Michael chose skiing (which I would have chosen too, had I not just had a baby), and my brothers were able to go up and ski with Michael too, which was really nice. I took Courtland with me, and Mom and Grandma were kind enough to watch the other boys for us. There was a lot of beautiful powder and the snow was coming down in big, soft flakes for most of the day. After a few hours it was time for the massage, and the other ladies there offered to hold Courtland for me while I went for that. It was very nice and relaxing, and I have to say that it was even better than the massage I got when we celebrated our anniversary last month, if only because now that I’m not pregnant anymore I was able to lay on my stomach and they could use a little more pressure. When I came back to the group’s room afterwards, I was surprised to see everyone back inside from skiing. The mountain had been shut down because of avalanche hazards, and an avalanche had shut down the road up to the resort too. There were little signs posted by the doors that it was illegal to go outside before they were no longer concerned about the avalanche dangers. Luckily for Michael and my brothers they got to go back out before too long, especially since they’d only had a chance to ski two runs up until that time. We had a nice relaxing day, and although Michael and the boys were worn out afterwards, they had a nice ski day with some really great runs.

Although we didn’t end up taking any pictures at the ski day, here is a cute shot of Eli wearing my ski helmet when we got out all the ski gear:

The rest of the week we just got to hang out with the family. My mom and I got some shopping in, and she was able to get a lot of work done on the blessing dress for my sister’s baby girl, Lizzie, who was due a couple of days ago and will be induced by the end of the week if she hasn’t come on her own yet by then. They are planning on blessing Lizzie next month, so Mom was working really hard to try to get the dress done, even with her broken arm. (We are thinking of blessing Courtland the second week in April, but will let you all know an exact date when we decide for sure). Oh, and yesterday we also went and looked at some really cute little headbands and hair bows for Lizzie, and Mom ended up getting one of the little headbands to use as a pattern to make more. They are cute because you can attach any bow or flower on a hair clip to the headband, and make it match any different outfit you want. I came home and pulled out some ribbon to try to make a couple of bows like the ones we had seen, since they were a little different than the kinds I had made before. I think they turned out pretty cute. So, I sent those and several more I had already made with Mom to give to Michelle when she has her baby.

This week we’ve also been just a little concerned about Courtland. On Thursday we went for his 2-week check-up, (when healthy babies are supposed to have gotten back up to their birth weight after loosing some weight after birth), and Courtland was exactly 1 pound under his birth weight at that time. The doctor had us recalibrate the scale and weigh him again, but it was the same the second time too. So, she ordered several labs to make sure that he didn’t have any metabolic problems, since he has been nursing well and hasn’t seemed to be sick at all, so she didn’t know why he would be loosing weight. She said that it was possible that his weight just dipped later than normal, for some unknown reason, and would come up soon, but she wanted to rule out any other problems. When I went to the lab downstairs that usually does the bloodwork when it is needed for the kids, they turned off the light in the room and put a little red light under his hands and elbows to shine through and show his veins, and said that he was too small and they couldn’t do the labs there. So, I went back up to the pediatrician and she sent us to Primary Children’s Hospital, where they would have more experience drawing blood for several different labs from a newborn. We got there, and a big redhead man with a high-pitched voice was the lab assistant to draw Courtland’s blood. First he tried one arm, then the other arm, then he called in another person who tried it on one of his hands, before they finally decided to make two little pricks right next to each other on his heal and fill the five little vials from there. After a lot of crying from Courtland (and apologizing from the lab worker that the baby had to go through all that), they got it done. We talked to the doctor that night, and she said that all the labs had come back normal, except that his biliruben level hadn’t gone down since the week before, but that’s not too concerning since it isn’t at a high enough level to be concerned about. So, the doctor said to come back on Monday and have his weight checked again. We went in today and he was up to 7 pounds 8 ounces (he had gained 2 ounces since Thursday), so even though that’s not a lot, it is good that he’s gaining and not loosing. Since his labs were normal and he is eating fine, and not acting sick, we are just going to go back in in another week to check him again, and let the doctor know if we notice anything abnormal in his behavior. So, things look like they are going well with that.

I didn’t really realize how thin Courtland looked, after loosing that weight, but comparing the photos of him this week to the ones that we took of him right after he was born, he sure looks like a different baby – his face is much thinner now than in those first photos. But he sure is adorable!

Another thing that has been really nice the last 4 days is that his sleeping at night has gotten a lot better. Before that, he was having a hard time most nights, often crying for 1 to 3 hours at a time in the night before calming down and sleeping in the early morning hours. I have never had a baby do that before, so it was getting a little wearing (even with all the help I’ve gotten from family to be able to rest during the daytime). But recently he has started to do much better. He has slept for about a 6-hour stretch at a time during the night these last four days. That makes a big difference. Three of these last four nights we have taken him in the shower, dressed him up in a fuzzy warm outfit, and fed him right before bed, which seems to help him calm down a lot before he goes to sleep.

So, also this week Kolby got to go to his piano lesson with his Uncle Aaron, who also plays the piano, which was fun for him. And he got to go on Friday afternoon to Justin Owens’ birthday party, which he was really excited about. And Kolby, Eli, and Camden all got to go to the store and pick out some cute fabrics to sew something with Nana (they wanted to try sewing when they saw her sewing the blessing dress). So, they each made a cute little pouch, kind of like a mini pillow case, that they can carry things in. They have been carrying around books and toys in their “pockets” since then. And yesterday morning my mom went with me to our ward enrichment activity, a demo class at a food storage store called Kitchen Kneads. We learned some interesting info about grains, got some good recipes, and Mom was nice enough to get me some different kinds of grains that they had for sale there, which should be nice to try out. And then on Saturday night we went and got new cell phones. So, for our family members and the few friends who call us on our cell phone, just so you know, my cell phone number is the same number, but it is now an AT&T phone and not a Verizon phone anymore. So, if you don’t have AT&T, please try to avoid calling my cell phone (except on nights and weekends). Michael’s new cell phone is Verizon, though, so you are welcome to use that number if you have a Verizon plan. (So, if you need either of our cell phone numbers, just e-mail and we’d be glad to give those to you). Oh, and I just finished a book today, called Three Cups of Tea – it’s about a man who builds schools in rural Pakistan towns. I thought it was a pretty good book, and would recomend it to others.

So, yesterday was Michael’s day off. My family left in the morning. Then we bathed the boys and they went with Michael to church. Michael said Eli had a fit and wouldn’t go to his primary class (which is unusual for him), and he ended up going with Michael to the adult class until Michael had to teach the lesson the last hour, so Eli went into his old nursery class. Luckily he said that he would go back to his primary class next week, so we’ll see how that goes. Hopefully there won't be any more problems.

I went with Grandma last night to a viewing for a girl in our ward who died this week, she had health problems due to her Down Syndrome. At our church there is a program called “visiting teaching,” where each woman in the ward has a few other women who she tries to make regular monthly trips to visit with them and share a gospel lesson. Melissa, the girl who passed away, was the daughter of one of the ladies who I visit teach. Actually, since Courtland was born just over two weeks ago, that is the second one of my visiting teaching sisters who has passed away. The other one was a lady who had recently become one of our visiting teaching sisters a couple months ago, but because of some health issues and other problems had rescheduled our two appointments from the last couple months, so we hadn’t even had a chance to meet her yet. She had Multiple Schlurosis, and I believe her death was related to that health condition too. I feel really bad that I’ve had so much going on with having the new baby that I haven’t been very helpful to the families of these sisters, although the women from church have helped them out with food, so I’m not sure what I really could have done.

Well, our week was busy but fun. I was really sad to see my family go, although we are toying with the idea of visiting them in a couple of months when Michael has a week off work, and taking the kids for a trip to Disney Land. So that would be fun – especially if Michelle and Jake are there then with their new baby. And we are also looking forward to the next time that we will get to see Michael’s family. We have made plans for a trip out to Rochester in March, and Debbie and Mindy have been kind enough to say they will come and help watch the boys for us while we go to find a house, which is so nice of them! I keep thinking that if I’ll just allow myself to stop stressing out about finding a house, that this Rochester trip might end up being kind of a fun little vacation – especially since it will just be Michael, Courtland, and I (since the airplanes only have so many extra oxygen masks for each row of seats, it has been quite some time since Michael and I have even been able to sit on the same row on an airplane together with all of our little kids, let alone actually be able to sit on two seats right next to each other – what a luxury!) But I have been looking this week at ratings (based on test scores) of school districts and specific elementary schools in Monroe County, NY, and have been surprised that some are rated much higher or much lower than I expected based off of the recommendations we have been getting for various school districts in the Rochester area. The districts in that county range from one in Pittsfield, NY that is rated 14th out of 694 districts in the state; down to the Rochester City district that is rated 672nd out of 694. That is a big difference. There is just so much more that we have to consider in finding a place to live now that our family has grown up a bit. I guess it will all work out in the end, though (it had better work out, since living in a card-board bow on the side of the road isn’t really an option with 5 kids).

Well, I’m trying to include some cute pictures of Courtland. Although I haven’t gotten any really adorable shots of him yet (I realized, as I looked through the pictures last night, that none of them really show just how cute he is, so I’m going to have to try to get some good ones one of these days, but these will have to do for now). Oh, and here are a couple pictures of the homemade Valentine’s cards that Kolby and Eli made for their preschool class. For anyone who happened to be wondering, this is what 42 Valentine’s look like. :)

Hope you all have a good week, and we’ll keep you updated with all that is going on with us, although I’m afraid it may not be too exciting for a little while – I have to admit that I’m a little overwhelmed with baby number 5 and all these little boys, even though with living with Grandma we have even more help now than ever before. So we may not venture out for a while, except for things that we really have to get done. Maybe after Michael starts his next rotation, though, and he is around to help a little more, I might become a little more brave. We’ll see.

Oh, and here is a cute clip that I just had to include of Kolby “playing” the piano (one of the digital piano’s demo songs), and the other three boys dancing around to the music, from last weekend. How cute!

Make an on-line slideshow at www.OneTrueMedia.com

Another Long Post

So, we’ve had a nice Thanksgiving week. Last Saturday night my parents and my brothers got into town and it was really nice to have them here. On Sunday we made up a big dinner and the Barkers came over to enjoy it with us. We had fun talking and the kids enjoyed running around the house and playing together. Kolby and Eli had no preschool this week for the holiday, and Kolby’s piano teacher was out of town so his next lesson will be this upcoming Wednesday. He has been practicing the piano almost every day and does really well at it (when he’s not in too much of a goofy mood). I asked him to practice this morning while I was collecting all of the boys’ Sunday clothes before church, and he came downstairs a little later, very excited to tell me that the second time he plaid “Up on the House Top” he didn’t look at his book and played it all from memory. How cute!

So, this week we got to do a lot of fun activities with my family here. On Monday we found out that my sister, Michelle, is having a little girl. They are going to name her Elizabeth Faun Conde, and call her Lizzie, so that is exciting. And then on Monday evening my mom and I went to several Christmas stores just to look at things, we ate at a fun little German deli downtown where my mom and sister had eaten once before Jenn left on her mission, and then we ended up going to a mall and my mom got these cute little outfits for each of the boys for their Christmas gifts. And then on Tuesday morning my brother Matthew had a tour at BYU in Provo. We all drove down and while my parents and brothers went on the tour, Grandma and the boys and I searched out my favorite old BYU professor, Brother Minert, and we were lucky enough to find him in his office when we showed up. I knew he would remember me, because he is the kind of teacher that really gets involved with his students and invites them and their families over to his home for a dinner with the whole class, but he and his wife also came to Kolby’s baby blessing at church when we lived in Provo, and last year they were on a trip in Milwaukee and stopped by our apartment to visit. But I was so impressed when I showed up, and Brother Minert introduced me to his office assistant, and started telling her all about how we lived in Milwaukee and we were here in Salt Lake for the year and then moving next year for Michael’s residency – have you ever had a college teacher who remembered you so well? Anyways, that just felt nice. It was fun to see him for a few minutes, until the boys got too rowdy and we had to say goodbye. Then we met up with my family in the bookstore. My mom wanted to make a slideshow presentation for her ward’s Christmas Enrichment activity with pictures of Christ that went along with the song, “Mary, Did You Know?,” so she was looking for little prints of pictures and a CD that we could use for that. She also found a nice Christmas book for the boys – they get one for them each year. Then we headed over to Hogi Yogi for lunch – I don’t know why, but it seems like all the Hogi Yogi’s in Utah are gone except the one near the BYU campus – too bad, we always enjoyed their food. After leaving Provo, we drove up to Heber to take a look at my grandpa’s house. The people who were renting it have recently finished building their home and moved out, so my parents are looking in to selling it. We spent a while going through some boxes of old papers and stuff in the house, and then stopped for a quick visit to Grandpa’s old friend, Dee, before heading back to Salt Lake.

On Wednesday Michael had an early day, so it was nice for him to be home with us too. After he finished working, he called us and we all went and met him at the hospital so he could give us a short tour of where he works. Then Dad and Grandma Faun went to Costco, Michael, Matthew, Aaron, and the boys headed home, and Mom and I went to the grocery store to get all the Thanksgiving foods. We got home that evening and prepared food for several hours. We ended up with three batches of Grandma Moore’s jello salad with the bananas and 7-Up in it (my favorite Thanksgiving dish), a bowl of mom’s layered green salad with the red onions, pees, and bacon, a triple-batch of Mamaw’s fruit salad with the marshmallows, and about 9 plates of turkey cookies that the kids helped decorate after dinner. (I’ll have to get the pictures from my camera and post them later – the older three boys had fun decorating, and Isaac had fun munching on cookies while we did that).

On Thursday morning Michael and I got to sleep in, and then we got all ready and headed to Grandma Bradshaw’s house for Thanksgiving with Michael’s family. Michael was lucky enough to get the day off of work, which we were glad because he thought he might miss his family being in town if he had ended up having to work that day. We were disappointed that Alan and Jenn and Jennie and Dalin didn’t come. (Happy Birthday to Dalin, by the way – his birthday was the day after Thanksgiving). We got over to Grandma Bradshaw’s house around 10:30 in the morning, and after a long day of eating good food and pies, the boys playing ball in the back yard with Daddy, plenty of video games, a game of Apples to Apples, and a fun game of Ticket to Ride, we headed home around 11:30pm. It was nice to be able to spend the day with Michael’s family, and I think the boys did quite well for being at someone else’s house all day long.

On Friday morning Matthew and Aaron watched the boys while I went with Mom, Dad, and Grandma Faun to Heber to finish up at Grandpa’s house. We got the entire garage organized, made a trip to the dumpster, and took a few things back with us. So, now the house is pretty much ready to sell. We also drove up to the Lake Creek property to take a look around (the person who owns property downhill from Grandpa’s property doesn’t have water rights, and Grandpa did have the water rights, I guess, and so this other man has been breaking up the pipes and stuff that go from the ponds on Grandpa’s property to divert the water down to his land. I guess this man had been doing this even before my Grandpa died, but now there is no one to do anything about it, so the upper pond has been drained quite a bit). Anyways, we walked around both ponds – and I found that I wore the wrong shoes to go trudging through the snow in. Then we headed back to Salt Lake, picked up my brothers and the boys, and went straight to the movie theater to meet Dick and Debbie and the rest of the family. (Grandma Faun was nice enough to stay home with Isaac, which made it so we could actually stay inside the theater for the entire movie). We saw the new Disney movie, Bolt, about a dog. Kolby and Eli enjoyed it, and Camden sat still and watched for about 30 minutes or so, and then it lost his attention and he spent the rest of the time climbing up and down from all of our different laps, but did pretty good at not disrupting people around us – I think he did well for his first movie in a theater. Afterwards the boys enjoyed running around in the hallway with their cousin, Jaden, for a while before we had to leave. After we got home, Michael got home too and we ate a late dinner and put the boys down for bed. Michael fell asleep on the couch, and I went upstairs to help Mom work on that slideshow for her Enrichment activity. While we were working on that, Mom and Dad were helping Matthew try to cut down the word count for his college application essays, and he finally got that all finished and submitted around midnight. (It’s a good thing he got that finished, because he was using my Grandma’s computer to type them up, and her computer ended up crashing later on that night and hasn’t turned on since then, so we were glad that he didn’t lose all of his work before he was able to submit his application). Mom and I ended up staying up very late that night trying to finish that slideshow. I was proud of Mom – she has become more computer savvy over the last year or so, and when I showed her how to scan the pictures for the slideshow she learned how to use the scanner and adjust the custom settings for higher resolutions and everything. She had scanned all the photos earlier in the week, so we worked on getting them all on the slideshow and deciding which ones to use and what order to use them in so they coordinated with the words in the song. We were up until 4am working on that, and in the morning I worked on it for a couple more hours and got it all finished up (I had some pictures that needed to be edited in Photoshop, and I added the music and adjusted the timing of each slide to go with the music). I was very pleased with how it turned out (I really wanted to post it on the blog, but I’m afraid of copyright infringement – my dad was saying that even though my mom paid for the prints of the pictures that we used, we didn’t have permission to make a slideshow out of it, so I guess I’ll leave it off. Better safe than sorry). So my family got all packed up and cleaned up the house and headed out around 3:00pm yesterday. I’m glad that it sounds like they got home safely. We haven’t heard from Michael’s parents yet, but hopefully their drive back to Boise yesterday was also uneventful.

Today was Michael’s short day, so he had to be at the hospital during church, but he just got home while I was writing this, so that’ll be nice to have him here this evening. Church was pretty long today. Isaac especially had a hard time. He was very happy when we walked into church this morning, but as soon as I tried to walk into my classroom he started screaming. I went back in the hall and he was just fine. So I tried again, and he did the same thing. We tried about 6 times with the same results. I tried putting him in the stroller, carrying him in my arms, holding his hand and letting him walk in, and going in and sitting down and letting him crawl in after me – none of these different ways of getting into the classroom worked. Someone even got a chair for me and set it right outside the classroom door, and he cried most every time I sat down in that chair too (there were a couple times I sat down in the chair by the door and he wasn’t sad, but he started playing with the bulletin board that was on the wall just outside the classroom and making such loud noises that he was distracting people in the class). So, we spent that entire hour out in the hallway. When the people started walking out when the class was over, Isaac seemed ok going in finally, so we went into the second class. After about 15 minutes of moving around in the back of the classroom, trying to keep Isaac from taking peoples’ papers and being noisy, I just took him out. We picked up the other boys at the end of their classes and went to Sacrament meeting, and after a few minutes Isaac and I were out in the hall again. Near the end of the meeting I was in the hall with Camden and Isaac on my lap, and Isaac finally fell asleep (and then I had to wake him up when I put him in the stroller to go home at the end of church). Oh well. I guess there must be some kind of special blessings for parents who endure going to church with ornery little ones (even when they can’t get much out of it).

So, we had a nice Thanksgiving week, and I hope that all of you did too. This upcoming week should be pretty nice – when I flipped the calendar to December, it was nice to see a lot of blank days that haven’t filled up with busy days (yet). We are looking forward to a Christmas party for Michael and the other interns on Tuesday (the first time we have had an intern activity with everyone since the orientation in June). And a ward Christmas movie night on Friday night should be fun, since Michael should have a short day at work that day.

And then I have another doctor’s appointment coming up in not too long – I can’t believe that I’ll hit 30 weeks tomorrow. I have to say – with my first three pregnancies, by the time that I got to about this point in the pregnancy I was ready to be done, and once I hit the last few weeks I was absolutely ready for that baby to come. But with the last pregnancy and with this one, I have been more patient (although I did feel like I was ready when it got to the last week or so with Isaac). But I guess I know enough now to know that when this baby comes it will be more work and less sleep, so I’m ok with waiting for it to happen when it should. I guess the thing that keeps running through my head is something that I wondered about after Isaac was born and he was in the NICU. I remember then having a thought that maybe that whole experience with Isaac was some kind of preparation for Michael and I, like maybe our next baby would be premature and have to be in the hospital even longer than Isaac was. And I have to tell you, that when Isaac was in the hospital, that was probably the worst part of my life so far – even though the doctors all reassured us that he would be fine and that after he recovered from his surgery there would be no further issued and that Michael and I would be the only ones who even really remembered all that happening – I still had a really hard time with going back and forth between the hospital and home without him for 2 ½ weeks, and in my head I still worried about him dying, even though everything told me that wasn’t logical. But it was quite a trial for me, and I remember thinking that maybe it was some kind of preparation for something that would happen later on in our lives. And even though I never really felt like our family was “finished” with our four boys, I discussed with Michael after we had Isaac possibly not having another baby, because what if something where to go wrong and we had to go through something worse than all that? We decided that we shouldn’t change our plans for our family just because of the possibility that something might go wrong, but that thought has been in my head during this pregnancy. (Not that I feel like something is going to be wrong with this baby or like I’m having any kind of premonition or anything, but I’ve just had the memory of wondering about that possibility after Isaac was born). So, I was glad to pass the point in this pregnancy when a baby can still be delivered and can make it, even if they are premature, and I’m glad to be coming up on 30 weeks now. I’m sure that since I’ve been thinking about the possibility of this baby coming early, it will all back-fire on me and he will be a week late (as long as he’s not born on Valentine’s Day). It’s kind of fun – the baby started moving a lot when I started to write this about him. Well, I’m sure that everything will turn out just fine, and that, like all of my other pregnancies, I will have a full-term, extra large, healthy, adorable little boy. It will be so fun to have our five little boys to complete our family!

Oh, and I have been thinking lately that I need to write our Christmas letter sometime here before too long. I know that I don’t have everyone’s current e-mail addresses, so if you’d like to get our Christmas letter this year, please send me your address. Thanks!