Longest Week Ever

My poor little man has been SICK for a week!  He started throwing up Monday night and didn't quit all week.  I have never done so much laundry in my life!
Our insurance doesn't cover us anywhere besides Utah (thanks Fidelity), but we finally went to the doctor on Thursday and then to urgent care on Saturday (SO expensive!).  One of the doctors we saw was really great and I'd love to see her again if we're still here when our insurance changes over.  Anyways, she thinks it's just some virus he has.
We are all completely exhausted around here.  To make it 10x more fun, Neil has been sick since Friday!  Luckily, he's still been able to help clean up the mountains of puke.

Here's my boys at the urgent care facility.

We took Bear out for a walk to get him out of the house.  I know you can't tell by the picture, but he really enjoyed being outside and looked adorable in his jacket :)  The fact that he's not smiling even a little bit should alert you that something is seriously wrong!

He's been on nothing but Pedialyte for a few days now and he feels like he weighs nothing at all!  He didn't throw up at all today though so fingers are crossed that he's finally getting over it!!  If he doesn't continue to get better, we'll be on a plane to Utah to see our own doctors and let the insurance pay for anything he needs!


On the plus side, it sounds like Shelley is really doing better.  She's unhooked from all her IVs and last I heard was keeping down water and chicken broth and feeling really good!

Shelley Part 3

Here's the latest with my sister.  At least, this is the latest of what I know.

Like I mentioned before (scroll down a bit if you don't know what I'm talking about), Shelley was transferred to St. Mark's last week.  When she got there, they did the endoscopy and were able to get the scope through the obstruction in her small intestine.  Since they could get the scope through, I guess they felt they didn't need to remove anything or insert anything. They also removed the NG tube that was going through her nose and down her throat because it was causing ulcers in her throat.  They'll do a biopsy of the tissue and test for different things like Chron's disease or IBS, etc.  
Sunday she was throwing up bile again.  Since then, she's been throwing up bile occasionally and dry heaving pretty often too.  She's very nauseous and super super weak.  She's lost a lot of muscle too so she just has no strength to do anything. 
Monday they did a cat scan and found that the small intestine (I think the same spot that was causing trouble last week) was swollen and I guess not letting anything through.
I don't know what the docs are waiting for, but at some point, they're going to decide if they need to do surgery again and remove that part of the bowel.  My opinion is that they just need to hurry and do it so she can start getting better, but I'm kind of out of the loop here in Texas, so I'm sure there's plenty that I don't know!
My mom says she thinks Shelley is improving. Today (day 20 of her hospital stay) she's getting 2 ounces of water every hour and keeping that down. Hopefully the bowel swelling and stricture are beginning to resolve. We will know more this weekend as they try to ramp up her intake.

I'll keep ya'll (I do live in Texas, after all) updated when I know more info.
Thanks for being so concerned!  She's been very lucky to have so many friends, neighbors, ward members, and family members to help with everything!

1st Haircut

On Sunday, Neil and I decided it was time for Bear to get his first haircut.  Don't get too excited or sad or whatever your feelings about his current hair may be, we only trimmed around his ears so the rest of his hair is still as fluffy and crazy as ever :)  If I weren't documenting that he got a haircut, you'd never know he did!

We thought Baby Mozart would hold his attention since we don't let him watch TV.  It helped, but he was definitely more curious about what we were doing.

Both Neil and I took turns cutting his hair.

He still looks like my baby- I couldn't handle him having a big boy haircut yet!

Texas Fam

We headed to Plano, Texas on Saturday to go spend some time with my cousin Greg and his family who have lived there for about 2 1/2 years.  The idea was to go to the Plano Balloon Festival that day but we got there too late to see the hot air balloons launch in the morning and left to early to see them launch at night.  Oh well, we still had a great time with our family!  We went out to lunch at a place called Chuy's and had some Tex Mex food.  

There's me, Suzy, Louisa, Henry, Henry's friend Jack, Greg, Neil, and Barrett.  They also have a daughter named Elsa, but she was playing at a friends.

On the way from Chuy's to Greg and Suzy's house, we kept seeing these signs for McCall Elementary so I made Neil follow them.  I was disappointed when we got there that the school was called David McCall, Jr. Elementary instead of just McCall Elementary like the signs suggested.  Nonetheless, I like things with my name on them so I took a picture :)

It's nice to have family so close- we'll definitely be hanging out again!

Barrett loves when he has the chance to play with Dad!

Update on Shelley

Things aren't getting much better for Shelley, in fact, they've actually gotten worse.  When she finally was allowed to start eating (chicken broth, applesauce, stuff like that) she started throwing up a lot.  She's been throwing up since Saturday night so they took more x rays and found that there is another bowel obstruction right where her stomach empties into her intestines.  It's been almost 2 weeks since she's been able to eat or drink anything!

On Tuesday, they put in a tube that will keep her stomach completely empty so she would hopefully stop throwing up; it's emptying liters and liters of bile every day.  The doctor thought the obstruction might clear itself up if it didn't have anything weighing down on it.   Shelley is really hating that tube because it's killing her throat, but she still needs it at this point.

Davis Hospital has been great, but they've done all they can do for Shelley and she needs more help.  She was taken by ambulance today to St. Mark's hospital to see a g.i. specialist and a bariatric surgeon. They are going to do an endoscopy tomorrow and hopefully get far enough to be able to see what the blockage is all about.  While they're in there, they have a few possible procedures they'll do.  They could remove the obstruction, place a stint in the small intestine, or remove part of the small intestine.  They don't know what they'll find in there, so they don't have a firm plan yet.

She's in good hands at St. Marks, but if you pray, hope, wish, or anything else, we'd appreciate any of those things directed Shelley's way so she can finally get better and get home to her little family :)

Back To Our Boring Life in Texas

We made it back to Texas and we're back to our regular boring life again.  We had a great time in Utah and can't wait to go back in a month!

Bear is such a good crawler now!

Bear and Pops playing on the phones

Ali and Bear

Liv is so sweet to share her American Girl doll with Barrett- he loves that doll!

We got to see Papa and Grandma a couple of times in between their trips.

Barrett liked playing trains with the triplets

He got some good cuddles from Grandma CC

We went to play at Kelsey's with Tyce, Camri, Macie, and Rylee.

Bear is loving stuffed (and real) animals right now and really loved this bunny puppet!

Pops feeding baby Bear

Jill found this cute little sunglasses in her car that fit Barrett perfectly!  You can't tell very well in the picture but they have pink tulips on them :)

While we were in Utah, Barrett turned into a very busy boy!  He has always been really relaxed and super clean, but that is a thing of the past.  Now he wants to be moving nonstop; he won't hold still so I can change his diaper, he rarely lets me just sit and hold him for ANY reason, nursing has turned into wrestling, he pulls his bib off, and he grabs his food and spoon and makes huge messes!
He's the opposite of everything he was a month ago!

Berrie and nakie Bear

Poor little guy got really sick while we were there and we were glad it happened while we were in Utah so he could go to the doctors we like.  He doesn't look sick in this first picture but he had the worst cold, a fever, a cough, was throwing up, and not sleeping or eating.  We were all miserable!  When I say "we", I mean me, Barrett, and my mom; we were all exhausted.  It was seriously awful.  And to top it all off, he got a flu shot (my bad) and broke his first 2 molars through too so he was just feeling horrible!  He now has 10 teeth at 9 1/2 months!  

I thought being cuddled up outside might help him calm down enough to go to sleep. The ONLY good thing about a sick baby is all the cuddles you get.

It's hard to come home to a mostly empty house (Neil works a lot!) but Bear was very excited to see his daddy and we only have a month til our next trip!

The Boxcar Child

This little man loves playing with boxes.

Shelley's Story

Shelley's been in the hospital the whole time we've been here in Utah.  You may remember from this post that she was in the hospital only 15 months ago and 15 months before that too (no post to refresh your memory for that visit). Between hips breaking and emergency surgeries, this girl needs her own suite in Davis Hospital! 

Here's the story about this year's visit...

Friday night around 10 pm, she called my mom to take her to the ER because she had been in terrible pain and was so sick.

They got her in quite quickly and discovered that she had an obstructed bowel.  She has a lot of scar tissue on her insides because she's had so many surgeries throughout her life (they started when she was only 3) and some of the scar tissue had adhered to her intestines and made the intestine kink basically.  They were hoping it would unkink itself but that wasn't the case.  They did surgery on Sunday and luckily didn't have to remove any of her bowel.  She's in the hospital for probably 7-10 days.

 

Here's Shelley a few days after surgery with some of her favorite visitors.

 

And this is Jill ratting Shelley's hair.  This story goes back to when Jill had Tink (or maybe Reagan?), and she kept ratting her own hair higher and higher every time someone wanted to take a picture.  The funny things people do on drugs (legal drugs of course).

We are really hoping she'll get feeling better soon and can start recovering in her own bed!

Kindermusik

I signed me and Barrett up for a Kindermusik class last week to see if he would like it.  I don't know why I thought he wouldn't, I can't think of anything he doesn't like!

He really had so much fun. I haven't decided if we'll go again though because it's kind of far away from our house and we'll be in Utah for the majority of the next 3 months.

Coming Home

Yesterday, Barrett and I took a flight home to Utah.  It was our first flight by ourselves and it was surprisingly awesome (only a couple mishaps, which I'll get to shortly).

 

Here's me and Barrett.  I should have had Neil take a picture of me and my baby Bear when we were all ready to go through security. Next time...

 

Saying goodbye to Daddy.

First I'll tell you why the flight was fantastic and then I'll get to the things I could've done without.

At DFW, you go through security only with your own area.  Like, since our gate was E-13, only people who were leaving out of E gates went through our same security.  This was great because I wasn't rushed or stressed.

Then, we got upgraded to the Economy Comfort seats and were on the very front row (right behind 1st class) so we had TONS of room.  It was great!

Bear sat and played on the floor for a while and had a blast.

Then I sat on the floor for a while and Bear had a blast in my seat.

We were sitting by the greatest people too.  The lady next to me was really nice but she was sleeping most the time, but the couple across the aisle played with Barrett the entire time.  They were so sweet with him and even held him while I put on the baby bjorn.  Super helpful.

Plus, my beautiful boy is just so freaking happy and sweet that even when he misses 2 naps, he's just plain wonderful.  How did I get so lucky!?

On to the mishaps... The first one is kind of long but it's funny- you should read it anyways!

Like I said, I wish I would've had Neil take a picture of what we looked like going through security.  I wore the baby bjorn instead of bringing the stroller and I had 2 massive carry ons.  All these things were ridiculously heavy - Barrett is like 20 lbs or so now and honestly my bags were just as heavy, so I got uncomfortable quick!  Anyways, on the way to the airport, I was telling Neil that I literally was not going to be able to go to the bathroom since I had no one to watch Barrett while I went.  I purposely dehydrated myself to help avoid this problem.  When we had a few minutes before we were boarding, I figured since the airport bathrooms were obviously bigger than the plane bathrooms, I should at least try to go while I had a better chance of figuring something out (and more space).  So I head to the handicap stall, hang up my bags, leave Barrett on me and pull my pants down.  Just as I'm about to sit, the door swings all the way open- keep in mind that since I went in the nice big handicap stall, I wasn't even close to the door AND it swung away from me!  So, I hurry and stand up, pants literally around my ankles, still wearing my baby, and start waddling forward trying to catch the door.  Meanwhile a lady walks RIGHT past me, looks at me and instead of swinging the door my direction, just keeps walking- Thanks lady!  Eventually, I got the door, shut it again, tried to make sure it was locked nice and tight and went to the bathroom even though I didn't really need to (remember, I dehydrated myself).

The other minor mishap happened as soon as we were about to take off.  Barrett pooped.  Not a big deal as he does this all the time, but it was almost an hour before I was able to get to the miserably tiny bathroom and change his bum.  It was a smelly hour and his poor bum got red :(  Then probably 10 minutes after I changed his diaper, he pooped again. We had to use that tiny, disgusting shelf thing twice.  YUCK! 

Nevermind the mishaps, it was a great flight.  And honestly, the bathroom door thing only made the trip more memorable :)

It Won't Be Long Now

Barrett has been relatively immobile up until just recently.  I could sit him in one spot, go get/do something, and I knew I'd find him in just about the same place when I came back.  

I hold him most of the day and he just hasn't had a desire to get around on his own.  I mean, he could roll and scoot to get things he wanted, but he generally has been content enough to just sit and play with the things I've put in front of him.  It's only been in the last couple of weeks that he's started to get interested in crawling.  He's really started army crawling a lot more and he'll get up on his hands and knees and do the rocking thing.  

As I've mentioned before, we obviously spend a lot of time in our jammies...

It is so fun to watch him, but I haven't been pushing him too hard because I know everything is going to be different (#harder) once he's really moving.

PS he started crawling (more than just 1 or 2 scoots at a time) the day after I posted this!

My Maids

Let me start this post by stating that I really like having maids and I'm so grateful that we get them and especially that we don't have to pay for them.  Keep that in mind if you continue reading this post...

Oh and no, my maids don't actually wear cute little maid outfits.  That's probably because they (the outfits not the people) are not very practical and probably even more because the ladies that come to my house are from Mexico, not France.

So, as I've mentioned before, Fidelity hired us some maids to come every week and clean our house.  I've been especially pleased about that because I didn't bring (and haven't bought) any cleaning supplies at all.  The nice ladies are supposed to come every Monday but for some reason they are showing up all the time (and only once it's been on a Monday)!  Don't get me wrong, anytime someone wants to come and clean my house for free is a good time.  But allow me to explain the reasons I even care about this (there's a few, but feel free to quit reading when you think I'm an ungrateful brat)

1. They show up unannounced and knock as they're walking through the door.  I've always been kind of a nudist, so I'm left scrambling to get something on before they notice me.  

2. Sometimes (#mostofthetime), if I'm clothed, I'm lounging around in my leopard pj pants that I've had since high school and my "Got Implants?" t-shirt.  I'm looking like a hard working stay at home mom!  Which brings me to my next point...

3. I'm pretty sure they'll be bringing my mother of the year plaque next time they come. Last time they came, I had just put Barrett down for a nap and he wasn't going down easily.  He cried for about 30 minutes while the maids were trying to work and I'm sitting on the couch with the iPad.  I'm sure they appreciated the background noise and thought very highly of me as a mother at that point.

4. If/When they come on Mondays, I can pick up certain things before they get here that I don't want them touching.  For instance, I don't like strangers touchin on my blankey.  I like to put it away so it doesn't accidentally get taken away with the sheets and towels.  I also don't like people touching my breastpump/nursing stuff, my clean dishes that are (still) on the counter to dry, my bras and swimsuits that are hanging in the shower and on every doorknob to dry, or my medicines that I get out so I won't forget to take them with my lunch.  Not to mention Bear's toys that are all over the floor.  I feel like an idiot when they come and they can't even do their job because I didn't do mine.

Okay, you get it.  
I love having free maids (and I'm very appreciative of them even if it doesn't seem like it), but I am a schedule and routine person and just WISH they could help me out by sticking to one.
That is all.

Labor Day Weekend

We had a great Labor Day weekend (aren't all long weekends great though!?)  I was so confused on Tuesday morning when I heard the shower running, I couldn't figure out why Neil was up and getting ready.  Eventually I remembered that weekends don't last forever and Neil had to go back to work :(  Super glad he has a job though!

Anyways, we went swimming every day.

It was a lot more crowded than I've ever seen it, but Bear really liked the people watching.

We went for a little hike on a trail next to Grapevine Lake.  (I know Bear's hat is flipped all funny in these pictures, but I couldn't see his face at the time so don't blame me.)
Family picture attempt on the trail.

 

Me and Bear by the lake.  We plan to go back sometime soon and go to the beach part of the lake.

Another family picture attempt.

After our trip to the lake, we went to a friends house for more swimming.  Barrett has never seen cats before and he LOVED John and Carrie's cats.  He just squealed and laughed anytime he saw them!  They were nice cats so I let him touch them a few times and he really loved that!

Down by the pool. I didn't even plan for Bear and I to be matching in tie dye.  Poor Neil, we'll have to get some tie dye for him too!

Barrett had even more fun in their pool than in ours.  The water is warmer and John brought out this big ball for him to play with.

John, Carrie, Neil, Me, and Barrett.  Carrie and Neil went to Thunderbird together, so that's how they know each other.  It's such a great coincidence that we live just a few miles away!  Bear really liked Carrie even though it doesn't look like it in this picture!