Preston's 21 Months Old

It's crazy to think that Preston is so close to turning two!  He's been growing up so fast the past couple of months, he's a regular little boy now.  He loves playing with friends, knows all of their names, and remembers and talks about what the did with them.  He is also constantly asking to go to a friends house.  He's now sleeping in his big boy bed and is talking up a storm.  He repeats and remembers everything we tell him.  He knows his colors and a lot of the shapes.  He loves trains, trucks, tractors, baseball, basketball, football, golf, Nemo, all fish, horses, and about every kind of animal.  He loves singing songs along with us, he recognizes a few letters in the alphabet, and can even count to 21 which is funny because that's how many months old he is.  One day I was counting the snaps as I snapped up his pants and he started counting along, and then ahead of me.  At random times he'll just start counting all the way to 21.  It's just funny because he misses a few numbers every time... at least he has the idea.  I guess that just shows that he's been in timeout a little too much lately, where he sits until I'm done counting to 60.  The terrible two's have started already!

Preston also loves wearing hats and dressing up in anything he can find.  This chinese hat is supposed to be a decoration in our living room.

Here he's wearing his fourth of July hat from last year that's way too small, and Gabe's wonderful bright blue boeing vest that looks more like a dress.  He loves being just like daddy.

He'll do anything for attention.  We were eating chili for dinner and I think someone mentioned the word nose.  Preston put his finger in his nose and I told him not to because it would make his nose spicy.  That started Gabe laughing so Preston put his other finger in his nose.

By this point we were all laughing really hard which probably isn't the best thing to do when you're trying to discourage your child to do something.

The worst part was when he started putting his fingers in his mouth.  he thought he was so funny!

Preston is also really into using his imagination.  He bites off pieces of his food until they look like planes, trains and boats.  This day in particular while I was laying on the couch as usual, Preston started moving around all of the chairs in the kitchen and calling it a choo choo train.  I have no idea where he comes up with this stuff.

Just this week a friend of mine let us borrow Peter Pan (we've been watching a lot of movies lately) and Preston absolutely loved the beginning especially since he recently discovered his shadow (more in a post to come).  When all of the kids started flying with the help of Pixie dust.  He stood up on the couch and kept saying over and over "Preston fly high sky too!"  He was very upset when he wasn't able to.  Luckily Gabe was home at the time, just upstairs.  So he came down and helped Preston fly high in the sky too.

He hasn't stopped talking about it since then.  Or about the fact that he now knows that his daddy "make planes at work."  Unfortunately I think he thinks Gabe makes them out of playdoh.  Maybe someday he'll realize that his daddy makes real planes. :)

I'm so glad to have my happy (most of the time), smart little boy!  I want to be able to remember all of the crazy things he does while he's keeping me entertained every day. :)

Keeping Busy

Not like Gabe needs to try to keep busy.  He has been working lots of over time, doing school, taking care of Preston and I, cooking and cleaning.  But on top of all of that he's been getting a lot done around the house like finishing Preston's room and pulling big heavy stumps out of the backyard.

These bushes have been back there since we moved in and are supposed to stay green year round.  This year the snow was more than they could handle.  We were planning on replacing them eventually but they decided for us that now is the time.  Gabe's been pulling them apart little by little and putting them in our yard waste bin every week.  He got that big stump out with just his shovel.  Pretty impressive huh?

Preston and his crazy bedhead had a good time watching daddy out the window too.

I kept him in his chair and gave him food to keep him occupied.

These pictures were taken before his surgery.  It's weird to see how turned in his eye was getting.  I'll have to take some pictures of how straight it is now, it's kind of weird.

Preston's New Room

Our house has four bedrooms, so when we first moved in and didn't have any kids yet (I was pregnant with Preston) so we got this desk for $10 off of craigslist and made this into my craft room.  One of the things we liked about our house was the fact that we wouldn't have to paint a lot because we already liked the colors and the previous owners were nice enough to leave all of the extra paint in the garage for us.  One of the first things I did was go around and patch all the holes in the walls and paint over them with the wall color.  Unfortunately I did this before I checked to make sure we had all of the paints.  We ended up not having any of the green from this room, and it had a LOT of holes that I had patched.  We didn't want to repaint the entire room right away so I took a flower stamp that I have and used the pink paint they had left in the garage and put flowers on the wall to cover up the mess I had made.  Gabe wasn't a big fan of the flowers but was okay with them because it was my room. :)

A few months later we were expecting Preston to come soon so we wanted to get beds for our parents to sleep in when they came to visit.  We ended up buying bunk beds on craigslist, planning for the future, and got mattresses at a mattress warehouse.  At this point we still had flowers and mismatching bedspreads.  This was back in June 2007.

That summer we found these pillows at a garage sale from a neighbor down the street.  I thought they were cute so we decided to use them as the theme to the room which one day would be Preston's once he moved out of the nursery... once again I was thinking ahead.

Soon after that we found bedspreads on clearance that had brown, tan, cream, and the exact same blue as the pillow so we thought they would go well with our theme.  We decided to keep the green on the walls that was already there (even though it isn't the same as the other) and just paint stripes to cover up the flowers and tie all of the colors together.  I don't know anything about painting so I'm grateful my friend Amy helped me tape for the first stripe and taught me a trick to make really smooth straight lines.  By the time we did this it was April 2008.

Of course Gabe's first goal was to cover up the flowers he hated so much. :)

This was back when I was allowed to paint, and sadly was the only stripe I was able to help with.

The brown stripe all finished.  We were pretty proud of ourselves.

Not too long after we finished painting the brown stripe I helped Gabe put the tape up for the next stripe and it stayed like that for months without us painting anything!  I don't know why I don't have a picture like that.  I think we had someone coming to visit so we moved everything back in the room and just never got back to painting.  The reason we finally did is because we want to move Preston into his room before the baby is born, and since I've been having issues with pre-term contractions I figure the sooner the better.  The only problem was that Gabe would have to do it all by himself this time.  One night he painted the entire blue stripe, and the next day he went up and taped the next line without me asking.  He was determined to get it done too!

Here he is working hard.

He's sealing the line with the base color so that when we painted it would make a nice clean line.

Then he painted the next color on that afternoon once the paint had dried.  Only one more stripe to go!

He's measuring and marking for the last line.  That night Gabe put up the tape and painted the last stripe.  It was the only color that needed two coats, so he put the second coat on the next day and "we" were finally finished!

Here's the finished product!  I can't believe how fast we were able to get it done once we decided to.  Thanks to the help of Gabe of course.  I put the vinyl lettering up though.

The door out of his room.  Notice the animals above the door frame.

I forgot to mention that Gabe built the bunk beds right after he finished painting the last stripe and got them up that day.  It was just my job to make the beds.

I made these picture frames last year as well.  I had wanted to do something like this and my friend Kim is the one that told me the frames were at the dollar store!  We borrowed a stamp set from another friend and worked together on this project.  I ended up painting the frames the tan color though.  They were just white to start with.

Lamps can get to be really expensive but I found this one at target for a good price and the blue was the right color.  The stand was white as well so I painted it the same tan color a long time ago.  We got this alligator as a shower gift before Preston was born so I just used a glue gun to attach it to the stand.

The bedspreads we got both came with bedskirts which you can't really use with this type of bed.  So I destroyed them and made them into curtains instead.  I had wanted buttons on the top part and wasn't able to find big ones like I wanted in the right colors, so I ended up spraypainting bright blue, red, and green ones to get the colors I wanted.

I bought a bunch of animal stuff in the dollar section at target too.  Preston loves giraffes!

We got these stuffed animals at a garage sale last summer.  They look like they've never been touched!  Preston loves the baby elephant!

Well I guess that's it!  I actually just remembered that I had started making more pillows for the beds with all of the different colors a long time ago.   Maybe I'll post about those if I ever get them finished. :)  We're excited to move Preston into his new room hopefully sometime next week after his bedrail comes in the mail.  I have become a master at online shopping lately. ;)

The Surgery

Preston finally ended up having his surgery yesterday after it had been postponed three times thanks to a runny nose or fever. They wouldn't go through with the surgery if he wasn't in perfect health because of the anasthesia. I'm so glad that it finally worked out this time!

We had an early start for the day.  Because Preston was the youngest patient, and he had to go without eating or drinking anything for eight hours before the surgery they scheduled him first thing in the morning.  We had to get there by 5:45 to check in and get everything set for the 7:00 time.  Since the hospital was kind of far away we had to leave our house by 5:00 in the pouring rain.  Preston didn't fall back to sleep in the car, he just acted tired, but luckily never asked for anything to eat or drink.  Here is is with his bedtime stuff after we finished checking in at the hospital, he was still trying to wake up.

We usually don't let him have his binky or other bedtime stuff when he's not sleeping, but we figured this was a special occasion.  His "ornge binky" is his favorite.  Do you like his rain boots?

When we got into his room, they checked his vitals to make sure he was in perfect health, we talked to the doctor and anasthesiologist (sp?), and then we got him changed into his little hospital gown.  Everyone commented on what a good/cute 20-month old he was.

While we were waiting he had fun playing with the "blocks" in the room with daddy.

He didn't quite understand how to make it work though.  They were magnets that moved with the little wand he's holding.

There was also this table with little trucks inside that were also moved by magnets from underneath the table.

He got frustrated that he couldn't get them out but liked pointing out everything.

Once we started moving them around he had fun too. :)  Right after this I put a gown over my clothes, a hat over my hair and booties over my shoes.  They let me walk back with him while they put him under.  He did just fine until the nurse lifted him onto the table, I obviously couldn't do that.  He hates doctor's tables though and started screaming and wouldn't calm down.  It probably didn't help that he was surrounded by people holding him down after that.  I think he would have been fine if they had given me the chance to tell him what was going on, but they wanted him to cry because he would take deeper breaths which means he would fall asleep easier.  It was crazy to see him crying and then all of a sudden go limp.  I think I would have been fine through the whole thing if it wasn't for all the doctor's and nurses around saying "it's always hard for the mom" and things like that.  They provoked me into crying, but I only shed a few tears and was fine as soon as I left the room.  One of the nurses even held my hand as she walked me back out, it was very nice. ;)

From that point Gabe and I went back to the waiting room, watched the news, and drank hot chocolate for about thirty minutes until they called us back to the recovery area.  When we walked toward our little area we could hear a child screaming and we knew it was ours.  We were well prepared about the affects anasthesia has on children especially and were told they don't know what they want and don't know what where they are.  I was ready for the worst so when he came out thrashing and screaming I figured it was just normal.  I wasn't able to hold him so Gabe had to stand up with him and literally hold him down for twenty minutes or so.  We had to make sure his head was supported too because they said it would be almost like a newborn's when he came out and he wouldn't have a lot of control.  This was hard because he kept throwing his head back.  He was also crying a lot and his tears were bloody (gross I know), so they gave me a towel to wipe them as much as I could without bothering him more.  He did not want his binky or his horse or anything.  Eventually he took his binky and his horse, but then he'd throw it down again after a while.  This happened three or four times.  He finally took it and calmed down enough for Gabe to sit down and rock him.  This picture was taken before the second round of craziness.  He looks so sad and confused.  After a shorter second round of crying and thrashing he did finally let Gabe sit down again.  He soon fell asleep and started snoring.  We had to wake him up to get him dressed, but by then everything was wearing off so he was just acting sick and tired.

It turns out that Preston's IV slipped out before they were able to put a calming drug in him that's supposed to help with the affects of the anasthetic, he also didn't get any pain medication because of this, and refused to take it orally.  When he woke up they were trying to wipe the blood off of him that was oozing from his IV site and he was REALLY not happy with that.  They told us that he actually did really well considering the situation, and they said some adults do the same type of thing when they don't get that calming drug in their systems.  Anyway, after it was all done and we had gone over the discharge instructions one of the nice nurses who knew our situation and knew I couldn't life Preston had Gabe go around and get the car, then put Preston in a little wheelchair and wheeled him out to the car while carrying all of my stuff.  At that point he still hadn't had anything to drink because he refused the juice and hospital he was offered.  On the way home he did start to perk up though and drank a lot of juice.  Gabe and I stopped at McDonald's and got some breakfast because it was still only 9:00 a.m.  Preston asked for hashbrown and egg and actually ate a pretty good amount.  We were surprised that he ate that much because they said to start with liquids and soups.  We were prepared in case he threw up, but he never did and just let us know when he was finished.  When we got him he wanted to go right now for a nap and slept for 3 hours.  While he was sleeping we went and picked up Bentley from our friends Matt and Holly who were nice enough to take him the night before.  He had so much fun at their house and apparantly never slept!  When he got home he just crashed on the couch for the rest of the night, didn't get up at 5:00 to go to the bathroom like he normally does, and still didn't want to get up at 8:00 the next morning.  Thanks again Matt and Holly, you made our lives a LOT easier! ;)

When Preston woke up from his nap (and we woke up from ours) he wasn't crying like I expected him to.  He was just in there talking.  He was actually jumping around in his crib when we went in to get him.  It was amazing how fast he got back to his normal happy self!  Overall, there was really only an hour or so that was hard.  I'm so glad that it was a good experience.  In this picture you can see him a few hours after he woke up from his nap, that whole time he was eating non-stop of course. ;)  If you look close you can see how red the inside of his eyes are (they did surgery on both eyes).  We were told they would look bloodshot for a few weeks but didn't know they would look THAT red.  It seems that they have gotten a little better in just two days though so I'm sure it will go away soon.

Here he is being crazy.  For some reason when he says the new baby's name it sounds just like "Baby Taco" and he thinks it's the funniest thing.

We figured out that's a good way to make him smile in pictures, but he also makes these funny faces when he's saying it.

I'm pretty sure he's saying "taco!" in this one.

Eventually he did get sick of me taking pictures of him, even in his happy state, so I decided to stop.  We're glad this is all over!  Except for the fact that we have to apply eye drops/ointment to his eyes five times a day for the next two weeks and he HATES it.  Oh well, it could be worse. :)  We're just glad to have our happy boy back!

30 Weeks

I promised another belly picture this week, so here I am with Preston...

and here I am at 30 weeks this time. I've gotten really big the last two weeks again, it seems to go in spurts. Hopefully I don't keep growing that fast from now until the end. :)

28 Weeks

First of all thank you to everyone for all of your support during this crazy time.  I appreciate all of your thoughts and prayers.

I have now hit the 28 week mark in my pregnancy which is a big step.  I'm now in my third trimester!  For some reason I never took a 28 week picture with Preston and just jumped ahead to 30 weeks, so you'll be seeing another picture comparison two weeks from now.

I feel like I changed a lot from week 20 to 24 and haven't gotten much bigger since then.  What do you think?  Here is my 24 week picture again.

So I guess I did still have a comparison picture even though I was comparing something different this time. :)  Oh, and by the way, this picture was taken the day I got home from the hospital and I was still suffering from kidney stones.  I just noticed how sickly I look.  That's why!

A Crazy Time...

Things have been really crazy around here since the beginning of my pregnancy, it seems. Sorry, you'll probably get a lot of details you don't want to hear, but you're welcome to skip over what ever you would like. A couple months into my pregnancy Gabe had left to work in the lab one night and right after I started having some cramping and bleeding. I of course was very scared, but went right to bed hoping it would get better. It did go away after about 10 or 15 minutes so it wasn't a big deal, but I was having a hard time and was afraid to do anything after that. Eactly two weeks later the same thing happened, and then it happened again two weeks later (on Halloween of all days). We had an ultrasound to see if there was anything wrong and luckily we found out that the baby was healthy and it was just a pocket of leftover blood there... or something I don't really understand. I still was trying to be careful, so I did my best to take it easy. Finally in December I started feeling better and felt like I could finally be myself again!

Meanwhile we found out we were going to Utah a few days before Thanksgiving and were really excited to go, so that was a week away from home where we were a little out of the loop. When we got home Preston started going to the eye doctor and got his glasses. Then we got ready for Christmas, had our own at home, and then left again to Utah for another 2 weeks. It was a lot of fun as always, but I was ready to get back home and start the new year. Our month was filled with doctor's appts, especially for Preston's eye, they changed his prescription and made us come in for weekly tests. The worst part is that his eye doctor is 45 minutes away, so it's kind of a pain to go there for a 10 minute appointment. Luckily they have toys in their waiting area, so I let him play for a while before leaving for home. They finally let us know that Preston needs surgery to help align his lazy eye, that was actually supposed to be scheduled for today, but he has a stuffy nose and he has to be in perfect health in order to have it. We rescheduled for next week. Our week will be filled with doctor's appts. then too.

At the end of January I started getting a twinge of pain in a weird spot in my back, not on the spine, next to it, under my ribs. After a couple of weeks the pain just kept getting worse and worse. Gabe even tried to rub my back for me and it was so tender he couldn't do more than gently brush it. I looked up the symptoms online to see what it could be and was afraid I might have had a kidney infection and I read that they could cause pre-term labor if not treated so I went to the walk-in clinic to get a urinalysis done. The doctor, who I've had before and wasn't impressed with, basicly made me feel stupid and told me it was a sore muscle. He proceeded to give me yoga stretches I should do to fix it. I tried but of course it didn't help and the pain kept getting worse so I decided to call my O.B.. I tried for 3 days to get an appointment or talk to a nurse and wasn't called by until I was literally on the phone crying because I was in pain and didn't know what do to.

By this time it was the Thursday before Valentine's day. I know because that was the day Gabe told me he had a suprise date planned. She told me to either go in and give a urine sample or go to the triage for pregnant women. First of all, I didn't realize you could go to triage unless you were in labor until she told me it's like an ER for pregnant women. I knew that I wouldn't have time for that if I wanted to make my date, so I told her I could go leave a sample. After dropping the boys off we went to the lab so I could leave the sample, which was luckily really close to the restaurant we were going to anyway. The next day I called the nurse trying to find out the results, she told me I could call whenever I wanted. At that point she told me I didn't have a kidney infection, which I already knew, and that I should go in to triage. I dropped Preston off at a friends' house and Gabe met me there from work. They did all kinds of tests, including for pre-term labor, which I knew obviously wasn't the problem, and eventually told me they were pretty sure I had kidney stones but weren't positive. The doctor gave me vicadin and sent me home telling me to come back in two days if it wasn't helping. I wasn't planning on going back because I never even take Tylenol for anything, but I tried one and it didn't help, so I tried two, and it barely helped.

Two days later, on Sunday, I went to church to play my flute with the choir. After Sacrament Meeting Gabe took me home and went back for the rest of the meetings. Preston fell asleep on the way home from church so we waited until he woke up, then Gabe dropped me off at triage. I ended up getting sent to the regular E.R. for an ultrasound to check for kidney stones. It was kind of weird being wheeled in a wheelchair when I was capable to walk. It was nice though, because they got me in fast, and they have cable in the E.R. rooms. They weren't able to find anything in the ultrasound but they said the stones could just be too small to see. I did get some cool 3-D ultrasound pictures of the baby though. Gabe found sitters for Preston and Bentley and came to join me by that time. I was admitted to the area of the hospital for pregnant women and got to my room by 2:00 or 3:00 a.m. They ended up having to move my IV because the ER didn't do a good job putting it in so I had to get poked twice, but it ended up being a good thing. They had me on morphine for the pain, so I was really out of it, I seriously couldn't keep my eyes open and kept falling asleep in the middle of conversations, it was weird. The really sad thing is that the morphine didn't make the pain go away either, but it was much more manageable. I did enjoy having my meals brought to me and the fact that I could sleep as much as I wanted and watch cable which we don't have at home. I did miss Preston a lot though, even though Gabe brought him over as much as he could. We even left his booster seat in my room so he could eat his meals with me. Gabe had to take time off work too, so he could stay home and take care of Preston. Luckily some of our good friends took the dog the entire time so Gabe didn't have to worry about taking care of him.

After a few days they switched me over to a strong oral medication to see how I handled it because I was getting plenty of fluids in me so I didn't have a need for an IV anymore. The pain was worse with the oral medicines, but I knew if I could handle it I would be able to go home, which I was ready to do. While I was in the hospital we were also lucky enough to have Gabe's mom fly out to help so that he could go back to work. It worked out well for her too, because Gabe's dad was going on a business trip to Asia for a week, so she was able to stay with us during that time and not be home alone. His dad was also able to come visit for a few days going to and from because he used Seattle as a layover, it was fun to have him here, even though I guess it would have been more fun if I wasn't hurting. After about a week and a half I finally passed some stones, they were small, almost like sand, which is why they couldn't see them in the ultrasound. After a few days the inflamation was going down and I was starting to feel better.

Then the next problem struck. I started feeling a lot of pressure in my abdomen and my lower back started hurting. I was afraid that now I maybe did have a urinary tract infection. I was told to go back to triage if I had any more problems, so that's where I went. This time they told me my uterus was being irritable and I had a contraction every hour or so. They checked my cervix and it was almost at a one. They did a test to make sure I wasn't going to go into labor any time in the next two weeks and it was luckily negative (that two weeks is almost up though). They gave me a shot while I was there and gave me a prescription for a muscle relaxer (which ended up costing WAY too much). I was told to continue to drink plenty of fluids because dehydration can cause pre-term labor. They also told me to go back if things got any worse.

Of course they did. Five days later I went to our Relief Society Stake Enrichment and ended up having to leave early because I was so uncomfortable. I went home and was having contractions 3-5 minutes apart and they were starting to hurt. I was also having more discharge so I was afraid my water broke since that can make contractions worse. Gabe's dad had just gotten in to town, but his parents were nice enough to stay home and babysit while Gabe took me in once again. This time my contractions were showing up a lot more, and were very frequent, but not regular, and this was even with the muscle relaxer in me. They checked my cervix and it was now a definate one, not a lot of progress, but still some which isn't good. They gave me another shot and told me this time that I could go home but if it got any worse than that to come in again, they made sure I had an appointment with my doctor for the next week too.

I had an upset stomach all week, still do. On Tuesday I started getting contractions like that again but I couldn't tell if they were worse or not so I decided to tough it out until my appointment on Thursday. I almost made Gabe take me in a couple of times though. I'm glad I didn't because it would have been a waste of time. On Thursday morning, they had slowed down and became much more manageable. When I went to see my doctor he told me that I need to be on bed rest (with light activity) and that I'm not supposed to leave the house for anything other than doctor's appts. He was concerned about my upset stomach, and the fact that I had several contractions while sitting in his office so he told me to come in every week from now on (yay, more doctor's appts!) and that he was sending me down to triage right then. I thought it was kind of ridiculous since I was doing MUCH better than the couple of days before that, but he said it's better to go 100 times and make sure the baby is safe, than to not go at all. Of course I only had a few contractions in the 40 min. or so I was there, so they let me go and sent me over to get my glucose test done and an ultrasound. The ultrasound was to check on the baby, don't worry he's going to be a big one and is completely healthy. He also wanted to check my cervical length, but I still don't know what the outcome of that was, I have an appointment in a few days so I'm sure he'll let me know then.

The goal for now is to make it to at least 32 weeks, but preferably 36 weeks. At that time I get to go off of my ridiculously expensive medication that I have to take every six hours on the dot, even at night, and move around like normal again. After all this I think I'll be really mad if I'm pretty much in labor this entire time and the baby still doesn't decide to come out until it's due date. I guess that's better than having him too early though.

On top of all of this Gabe is working a lot of overtime and trying to keep up with two classes for his master's program. I also have to finish my religion class by the end of this week (a lesson and a half to go) and my statistics class by the end of April. Maybe it's a good thing I'm not supposed to do anything. Luckily my mother-in-law has been here this entire time and isn't leaving until this Wednesday. It's been amazing to have her here cooking us meals, cleaning my house, and changing Preston's diapers, even though I do feel a little lazy. She has even cooked a ton of meals and put them in the freezer for us so we have one less thing to worry about.

Anyway, sorry if I haven't seen much of anyone lately, and sorry for the extremely long post, just thought you might like to know what's been going on with us. If you're ever bored we'd love to have visitors. It's pretty bad when your 19 month old gets excited to go to the doctor to see the Nemo fish even though he had never even seen the movie, he just heard a little girl call him that. Luckily a friend did let us borrow that, so now he has seen it, and loves it. Oh, and here are a few pictures to liven up my depressing post.

Gabe and Preston taught Grandma how to use the Wii. She's become a pro at the Wii Fit and Preston loves watching it. He'll probably go through withdrawals after she leaves. ;)

Preston wearing his eye patch for the first time, he actually likes it and asks to wear his patch. It covers his good eye which is supposed to make his bad eye work, he doesn't use it most of the time. can you see my hot pad on the couch in the background?

I'm lucky to have such a happy little boy! He sure needs a haircut though.

We actually were out taking Preston to the pediatrican for his surgery pre-op appointment when the snow hit last week, this is what it looked like when we finally got back an hour and a half later.

Bentley had his first experience with real snow, it was as tall as him!

It did make it tricky for him to go to the bathroom though.

Well, sorry again for the long post. I hope the few pictures I've taken the past month or so helped it seem a little happier. :)