Preston's 2nd Easter

Last year Preston and I were in Utah for Easter, so this was Preston's first Easter at home with Mommy and Daddy.  I've had a hard time doing a lot to celebrate holidays the past few months since I'm not supposed to leave the house, and especially can't walk around the hard floors in stores.  Luckily we had Gabe's little Easter bucket I got a few years ago from the dollar store that we could use as Preston's basket (last year he used one at my parent's house), and we had bought a bag of unopened eggs at a garage sale two summers ago so we were set in that department.  I told Gabe to buy some of my favorite Easter candy, and to pick out some of his favorites while he was out grocery shopping for us.  Luckily it all turned out well, and Preston seemed to have a really good time.  He was VERY excited when we told him to find the eggs that Gabe had done so well hiding.  Can you see it in this picture?

 

Preston found it and promptly yelled out "purple egg!"  I think he'd mid-word here.

He wanted to get them all at once.  He would see one and on his way and get distracted and start going after another yelling out the colors along the way.

He found the one on the chair and was getting very frustrated when he couldn't get it out through the slots.  Eventually he figured it out... Unfortunataly, before I could get a better picture.

He liked putting all the eggs in the bag after he found them.

Bentley was very excited about the whole thing too and tried to go after the eggs.  I think one had just rolled under the couch.

Here Preston's checking out his stash.

Finally he gets to see what's inside.  It's pretty sad that he was that excited about just the eggs even before he knew there was candy in them!

Yum!  Jellybeans, or "canning" as Preston calls it... I don't know where he gets that from.

After a sample, he checked out his Easter basket...

and read the book Grandma sent him in the mail, while his mouth was still full.

After an egg half full of jellybeans Preston asked for another but then announced that he was done after only eating a few.  We tried to give him his marshmallow bunny too but after a nibble he was finished with that.  He really does like sweets, but we made sure he ate a full breakfast before the candy. :)

Here's a picture of Preston and I right before church.  I wanted a picture of us together on Easter, unfortunately I didn't shower and get dressed until right before church and since I only go to Sacrament meeting, I knew by the time Preston and Gabe got home Preston would be asleep, and I would be back in my sweats.  So that is why my hair is wet and I have no makeup on.  I put it on as we were driving to church because we were late as usual.  I blame it on the fact that I can't move very fast. ;)  At least Preston is kind of smiling, right?

Overall, we had a fun Easter, thanks to all of Gabe's help!

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. :)