Catch Up

With two trips to Utah, a week-long hospital stay, and a 9th birthday party, November was crazy.  But I think I got mostly caught up with this blog today.  I have a bunch of pictures from Lia's first birthday, but they will have to wait since six posts in one day is enough for me. :)

Lia

Lia is 1!  Her birthday was on December 10th.  I missed writing her 11 month post - November totally got away from me.  So here are some new things Lia has started doing in the past two months.

• She waves at you when you tell her hi.  She'll also wave when we are leaving somewhere and telling people bye.  Sometimes she'll even say "ba ba" (like bye bye) as she's waving and we're leaving.
• She's learned "no no."  She'll keep saying "na na na na" over and over again if she's not happy about something that's happening.
• She likes to open drawers and pull everything out of them.  Her brothers' bottom dresser drawer is her favorite.  She goes in their room and pulls all of their pajamas out of their bottom drawer.
• She also likes to pull all of the toilet paper off the roll.  One of my nicknames for her is Busy because she is constantly moving and looking for something to get into or a mess to make.
• My other nickname for her is Dolly because she has looked like a doll to me since the day she was born.
• She still loves to go up the stairs.  She's gotten a little better at going down the stairs backwards, but she's still not quite mastered it.
• She has stood by herself a few times, but she has not tried to take a step on her own yet.
• She likes to use bar stools as her walkers:

Here she is having the time of her life after Rebecca's birthday party with the couch pushed out of her way.

• We got her a push toy from Sam's Club for her birthday, and she enjoys pushing it and being pushed on it:

• She's very snuggly and prefers to be held most of the time.

My baby is one, and time went by so fast!  But I knew it would just like it did the other three, so I'm glad I took the time to enjoy her as a baby.

Braden

Braden is a hoot!  This kid cracks me up every day.  Here are some things he's done lately that I need to write down and remember.

Over the summer, I went with my mom and sister up to Salt Lake to pick up some overhead projectors for my sister's school.  While we were there we took the kids to Temple Square.  Braden DID NOT want to go to Temple Square and protested the entire time walking there from the parking lot saying, "I don't want to go to the Temple."  We walked into the Tabernacle, and all of the young readers in our group read the sign outside out loud that says, "Visitors Welcome."  And Braden said in his most grumpy tone, "No, it says the Temple is closed!"

He likes to do this with his shirt all the time:

He reminds me of Beavis and Butthead.  "I am the great cornholio!"

He is the only kid who sits in the third row of our car, and he likes it that way.  We tried making either of the older two kids sit back there, but they got lonely.  I think he finally asked if he could sit in the very back by himself, and he's never complained.  On the way to taking William and Rebecca to school on Monday, he asked for a blanket.  I got him one, and when I looked back at him during our drive, he looked like this:

I had Rebecca snap a picture.

He adds an s to possessive pronouns.  When talking about Lia, he'll say something like, "Lia needs hers bottle."  I don't correct him because I think it's adorable. 

I didn't put him in preschool this year, and I was offered to join a Joy School co-op, but I declined.  I want to enjoy the little time I have left with him before he goes to kindergarten next year.  He's stubborn and grumpy, but I totally get him because he's just like me.  I've loved being home and being around him all the time.

William

William spent a week in the hospital during November.  My visiting teachers came over, so I sent the kids out to play on the trampoline.  He came back in crying, but I thought he was just trying to get out of finishing his homework.  He kept crying so I sent him to bed.  In his bed he started screaming in pain, and he got up and threw up, so I called Kevin.  Kevin came home from work early and took William to the emergency room.

The CT scan showed that William had a lacerated kidney.  The hospital transported him to Sunrise Hospital in an ambulance because with their new children's wing, they could better treat his injury.

When we told doctors that his injury happened on the trampoline, they didn't believe that a trampoline was enough to do the damage that was caused to his kidney.  We had been in Utah the previous weekend, and William had a minor accident on my parents' ATV, so we're thinking that's what caused the injury and the trampoline just aggravated it.

I have to say, for being our valley's children's hospital, I was very disappointed with Sunrise.  We were there to make sure he had no internal bleeding.  I guess the kidney is encapsulated, so it should heal on it's own as long as he wasn't bleeding out of it.  They found out right away that he had no internal bleeding, so I thought we should be able to go home and have him take it easy for a while.  But we had some surgeon come in and tell us that he thought that they needed to take care of his constipation before we left. ???  If he's not bleeding internally, then constipation is something I can take care of at home.  Constipation isn't something that needs to be treated at a hospital, in my opinion, and with all of the medicines they kept giving him there, I'm pretty sure they caused the constipation.

As we had him there taking more medications to clean him out, he started to get more sick.  I could tell he was in a lot of pain and morphine wasn't working to ease it, and he started to get short of breath.  With the residents who were there, I probably saw 15 different doctors in the span of a few days.  We never had the same doctor twice.  I started to feel like I was playing a giant game of telephone with these people.  Each came in with a different version of what was going on with William according to what they had heard from a previous doctor. And instead of working together with a plan to help him get better, each new doctor came in with a new plan.  It was so frustrating to watch my son get worse and to see this mess of doctors who weren't doing a thing to help him.  Kevin called it a case of too many chiefs and not enough indians, and that's exactly what it was.  Not to mention that he was being starved since they couldn't decide whether or not they wanted him to have surgery, but they had to keep his belly empty just in case they decided at the last second to take him to the OR.  By Tuesday, after being there since Thursday night, I was angry and in tears.  I even had the thought that my son was going to die under the care of this incompetent hospital.  By then he was taking really short breaths, and his lungs and stomach were full of water.

They finally moved him back up to the pediatric ICU where he could get more intense treatment.  As soon as he was moved up there, his doctor noticed the amount of IV fluid he was getting and halved the amount saying, "He doesn't need that much fluid."  After about an hour, I could instantly see a difference in William.  He was breathing better and he was not in as much pain.  With the 15 doctors we saw downstairs, none of them noticed that they were giving him way too much IV fluid that was filling his lungs to the point where he couldn't breath.  And the saddest part of this is that Kevin mentioned to one of his nurses that she should stop the IV (this was when they were letting him eat).  Obviously she ignored him.

As soon as he was stable in the ICU, they asked if we wanted him moved back down to general pediatrics where we had been.  We said no.  He was discharged directly from the ICU a day later.

I will never go to Sunrise ever again.  I could probably even sue them for malpractice if I wanted to, but I'm just going to stay away from there and tell my friends to do the same.  I was prepared to drive to St. George next time I need hospital care for my kids, but two friends have told me that Summerlin has a wonderful children's hospital, so we will go the next time.

on his way home after being in the hospital for a week

I'm glad this is over, and my William is home. Hopefully we won't have to deal with hospitals again any time soon.

Rebecca

Rebecca turned 9 on November 22.  She's been asking for a Monster High party all year long, so we had one for her this year.  We actually sent out her invitations the day William went to the hospital.  The thought crossed my mind that we should cancel the party, but I knew we couldn't do that to her.  We had a plan just in case William was still in the hospital for her party, but he ended up coming home right before, so everything worked out okay.

We started the party with musical chairs and pizza.  While the girls ate pizza, we let them decorate their cupcakes.

Here are two cupcakes that Kevin decorated to match the Monster High theme.  If he wanted to, he could seriously decorate cakes for a living.

We had an indoor piñata since it was raining outside.  And then Rebecca opened her presents.

My mom had been at our house since Wednesday helping with kids so that Kevin and I could stay at the hospital.  She stayed for the party and then went home to southern Utah right after the party ended.  It was so nice to have her here to help all week.

handsome boys

A few things about Rebecca.

• She is in third grade and loves her teacher Ms. McCullough.
• She started taking gymnastics at Mirabelli Community Center this year, and she loves it.  Her cousin Jessie teaches the other class that is held during the same time as Rebecca's class, so she gets to see her every week.
• She is an AWESOME big sister.  She always wants to help with Lia.
• She has been taking piano lessons (from me), and she finished her primer level books.  She just started level one books.  Practicing is not one of her favorite things to do right now, but I have a reminder in my phone to make her practice every night.  I always tell her that she will be glad as an adult that I made her play the piano when she was young.
• She loves everything Monster High right now.  Kevin and I think the dolls are really weird, but if we don't buy them for her, she buys them using her own money.  I guess there are worse things she could be into.
• She finally got her ears pierced last month.  We were at the mall and decided while we were there, she could get them pierced for her birthday.
• She loves her dog Guillermo (she claims he's hers).  Here she is with him and his cousin Beans (my brother's chihuahua):

We're so happy to have this spunky girl around.  Happy 9th Birthday, Rebecca!!

Halloween

We had a fun Halloween this year.  It started out with a party at my sister-in-law Emily's house on Tuesday before Halloween.  Kevin and I were shark attack victims to match Braden's shark costume.  Since I had a wet suit on, I had no pockets to hold a camera, so we don't have any pictures from the party.

The day of Halloween, the kids had a costume parade at school.

That night we went to my brother's Halloween party.

Rebecca was Frankie Stein from Monster High, and Lia was Piglet.

William was Spiderman and Braden was a shark.

my nieces Kennedy, Avery, and Abbey with Lia

Hailey, Jessie, Brooke, and Whitney in their super hero onesies.  I can't believe how old these girls are all of a sudden!

I love Halloween every year.  I hope everyone else had a fun Halloween this year!

Jessica's Wedding

As stated previously, Kevin and I got to go to Puerto Vallarta, Mexico last month without the kids to see my friend Jessica get married.

I have to admit - Mexcio made me nervous.  Being in a place where I've heard rumors of kidnappings scared me, especially since neither Kevin nor I speak Spanish.  This fear was compounded when Jessica sent me an email a few days before our trip letting me know that 30+ men in official looking uniforms would aggressively approach us at the airport telling us that they were our ride to the resort and trying to get us to go with them.  Awesome.  I'm so glad she warned us about this beforehand because it happened just as she described after we got through customs.  One guy in the mob asked us what transportation company we were looking for, and Kevin told him.  The guy then lied to us, told us that that was his company, and directed us to another guy at a counter.  When I saw that the guy at the counter had a badge that didn't match the company we were looking for, I turned around and kept walking.  We were out the door when another guy asked us who we were looking for, and we told him.  He also said, "That's us!"  His badge also didn't match the company name.  I was seriously ready to book a flight back to the U.S. at that point, but this guy turned his badge over to show us the name of the company we were looking for.  I was still a little skeptical until he went to his partner and came back to us with a piece of paper that had our names on it.  After all of that, I was very edgy during the cab ride to our resort.  

When we arrived at our resort and I realized our cab driver was not going to take us to a dark alley and hand us off to some kidnappers, I finally started to relax.  I probably should have never watched the movie Taken.  It's really messed me up.

The resort was beautiful.  It had its own private beach blocked by rocky cliffs on both sides.  The two buildings with the hotel rooms were built so that every room had an ocean view.  We kept the slider to our room open the whole time we were there so we could always hear the ocean.  Here are some awesome pictures from Kevin:

view from our room

We spent most of our time at the beach.

the happy couple

The ceremony on the beach:

Jessica's sister Ingrid

The beautiful bride with her mom who doesn't seem to age

Jessica and Kyle

The reception:

Jessica is still quite the dancer, and she requested that all of her female friends and family members join her in a dance performance to Beyonce's song Love on Top.  It's been a long time since I've done a dance routine, but everyone else was doing it, so I joined in.  Kevin got the whole thing on video.  Jessica's cousin choreographed our dance to a condensed version of the song, but the DJ played the regular version.  That's why we all seem a little confused about what to do next a few minutes into the performance. :)

We had such a fun week!  I'm so glad we could be part of Jessica's special day.

10 Months

Lia is ten months old today, and she's grown up a lot in the past month:

• I got her out of her crib a couple of weeks ago, and as I did she said her first word to me, which was "bum bum."  You can imagine the laughs she gets from her three older siblings whenever she says "bum bum."
• Since that day she has also said "mama."  She says "uh oh" when she crawls near the books on the bookshelf, probably because that's what I say to her when she gets close to the books.  Kevin went to put her down for a nap, and she looked at her crib and said, "uh uh."  And she beams with delight whenever she says any of these four things and we recognize that she said something we understand.  
• She had one tooth for a while, and she looked like a little hillbilly.  Her second tooth finally popped through recently.
• She pulls herself up wherever she can.  She loves walking along the couch and the lower shelves on the bookshelf.
• She also loves to climb the stairs.  This week I could hear her crawling around by me in the kitchen and then all of a sudden the downstairs got very quiet.  When I went to find her, she was about four stairs up.  So the next thing we'll be trying to teach her is how to go back down the stairs.
• She's completely bottle fed now, and she refuses to hold her own bottle.  She totally can, but she won't.  I don't mind too much because pretty soon she won't let me hold her anymore, so I'm going to enjoy holding her and feeding her while I can.
• She's back to taking a binky.  As soon as I quit nursing her, she started sucking her thumb again, so I bought her some new binkies that she loves.  She is a lot easier to soothe now that she takes a binky.
• And she naps now!!  When I nursed her, she would sleep through the night but be up for most of the day.  Now she takes a long nap in the morning, and a short nap in the afternoon.  Hallelujah!!

I'm amazed at how much she has grown up over the past month.  We love this silly girl.  

So......

Our seats for Dancing with the Stars were a little better this time than they were last time. Here's how the camera picked us up last time:

Yep. You can't even tell that's us. 

Here's how the camera picked us up this time:

Can you see me on the left? We were basically on camera every time they showed the judges on tv.  

I had a lot of fun last time we went, and I felt so blessed just to be there, but this visit to Dancing with the Stars blew our last visit out of the water.  What you can't see is that all of the stars and dancers are sitting on couches to the judges left.  They were just ten feet away from us.  Mark Ballas' mom and some friends of Val were sitting behind us, so Mark and Val would come and hang out in the row behind us during commercial breaks.  No big deal!  Carrie Ann's boyfriend was sitting in front of us with his daughter, and after she talked to him during one break, she came to our row and talked to us.  She said, "You guys sure got some great seats!"  No joke!

It was so amazing!  I felt like I was in shock during the whole two hour show!  Watching it on tv, I noticed that my mouth was open most of the time.  

Some celebrities we saw in the audience that night were Jennifer Lopez and her young boyfriend, Kym Johnson, Shawn Robinson from Access Hollywood, the entire cast of Glee, and Ozzy and Sharon Osbourne.  Since it was the season premier, we got to see all of the stars.  This season there's: Jack Osbourne, Elizabeth Berkley, Christina Milian, Bill Nye, Bill Engvall, Snooki, Brant Daugherty (not sure who this guy is), Leah Remini, Corbin Bleu, Keyshawn Johnson (football player), Valerie Harper, and Amber Riley, who I think is going to win this season.

Kevin will start working Mondays so that he can have Sundays off soon, so this is probably the last time I'll be able to go down to Hollywood for DWTS.  He was supposed to start his new schedule the day we went down for the show, but some mix up happened, and he won't start working Mondays until next month.  Lucky for me!  If that was the last show I get to see live, I ended on a great note! 

9 Months Old

This little chicky is nine months old.

A few new things about Lia this month:

• She started crawling about 2 weeks ago. 
• She is currently being weened to a bottle because this cute lady is getting married in Mexico next month:

Kevin and I will be gone for five days for Jessica's wedding, so I want her to be used to having a bottle all the time for my Mom's and Mother-in-law's sakes.

• She has one tooth.  I only see it when she cries, so I don't have a good picture of her with her one tooth yet.

And that's all that's new with baby Lia this month!

The kids' first day of school...

...did not turn out as planned this year. I got a call Sunday before the first day of school letting me know that the kids' new school location did not have a certificate of occupancy and would not be able to open the next day. I had a million questions, like "well when will it be open?" But I politely said "okay" and let the office lady continue to make her calls to unsuspecting parents. I'm sure this poor messenger got some backlash from parents for what she was calling to tell them. It didn't help for me to contribute to that even though I was pretty upset about the news.

We waited all day Monday for a phone call or email update and didn't hear anything until 8:30 pm. I was a wreck that whole day! The phone call let us know the school still did not have what they needed to open Tuesday, and they were shooting for Wednesday. Then Tuesday they called to say they weren't ready for Wednesday, so now they would try to be open Thursday.

The hardest part for me at this point was that I had spent the entire summer deciding if I wanted to keep them at this charter school they had attended last year or if I wanted to enroll them at their public school. The new location for the charter school had moved farther away from our house, but I also hated the thought of having Rebecca in three different schools in three years. I ultimately decided to make the drive and keep them at the charter school, and all of this starting late business had me seriously doubting that I had made the right choice.

We got a call Wednesday afternoon letting us know that the school had what they needed and would be ready for the first day of school on Thursday.

Here they are all ready for their first day of 3rd grade and 1st grade. They love their teachers Ms. McCullough and Mrs. Howard. Looking back, it was nice to have them for a few unexpected days. I even took them on a tour of the California Pizza Kitchen on Wednesday I had signed Braden up for. They are happy to be back in school with their friends, and I'm happy to have a routine each weekday again. Hopefully there won't be any more surprises. :)

8 Months Old

And such a happy girl still. William took this picture of me and her last Sunday.

Lia's had a fun month! A couple weeks ago we took a quick trip to Spanish Fork for my Mom's family reunion. We stopped in Salt Lake for a few hours to pick up some used school supplies for my sister's school. While we were there we toured Temple Square and City Creek Center mall.

Lia was a happy tag-along.

After our trip, she got to spend some time with her cousin/future bestie Avery.

A few new things about 8-month-old Lia:

• Just today she started pushing herself up to hands and knees position. From here she likes to push herself back to sitting up. She's not quite crawling, but she rocks on her hands and knees, so I think she's close. 
• She finally rolls from her back to her belly and vice versa. I've caught her sleeping on her belly a couple times this month, which is new.
• She still has no teeth. With her drool and some uncharacteristic crankiness, I've thought for the past three months that she'd have a tooth poke through, but we still haven't seen one.
• She likes to pick up her puffs and put them in her mouth by herself.
• She loves to stand up.

The kids propped her up on the couch, and she loved standing there by herself (she's not leaning on William).

I love this age when she'll start to do a lot more things in a short amount of time.

First Lost Tooth

William lost his first tooth a few weeks ago.

"Mom, get a picture of me sticking my tongue through my lost tooth."

It's hard to tell that that's what he's doing, but it's still a cute picture. Luckily dad is willing to be the tooth fairy now days. When I do it, the tooth fairy forgets to do her job. :)