a grammie birthday

We celebrated my mom’s birthday at the beginning of the month. My dad planned dinner at their house. We gave her gifts and ate cake and played Heads Up to celebrate.

My mom tries hard to be an amazing grandma. She loves each of my kids and tries hard to get to know them and connect with them. And they love her. 

I am so grateful for my mom’s example of love and priorities and creativity and fun. I am especially grateful for her choice to join the church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints when she was 18 years. Her baptism, dedication to the gospel, and teachings have brought me the greatest joy to my life. One person’s decisions effect many, many others. And her decisions and example has blessed me and my family immensely. I’m so glad she was born and we got to celebrate her as a family.

I didn’t get any pictures, but the day after her birthday we had a girls afternoon to celebrate her. Jacqui, Macie, Layla, and I took her to lunch and then to see “the greatest showman” (my third time seeing it in the theater!). 

Happy birthday, grammie!

7 days in the hospital

My goal has always been to blog at least once a week, but sometimes life happens. And life happened hard this last week. 

Our baby girl got really sick last Monday. She was breathing too rapidly. I took her to the dr and we tried albuterol treatments. It seemed to help a little bit. But she had a rough night and by the morning the albuterol didn’t seem to be helping anymore, she had a fever, and I couldn’t get her to eat anything. We went to the dr again and that led us to an ambulance ride to the hospital.

Sick babies are the saddest. She was so lethargic and miserable. We spent all afternoon in the ER until they were able to admit us and get us into a room.

All of the initial testing for everything came back negative, but early Wednesday morning the longer test for RSV was positive and so we had a diagnosis. 

Eric and I traded off back and forth taking care of our kids at home and our sick baby at the hospital. I spent the first three nights in the hospital. Then Eric spent two of the weekend nights there. And then I stayed for her sixth night. And then we were so ready to break out of there! We were both exhausted mentally, emotionally, and physically. It was my first time in the hospital and now I understand what it’s like and I have so much more empathy for anyone who has to spend time in the hospital. It is rough.

Baby was on oxygen and an iv for the first few days. Once her breathing was less rapid we weaned her off of the oxygen. But then she had to go back on. And then off. And then on. And then off for good. Our biggest challenge at the end of the week was the fact that the sweet stinker would not eat. When we were finally released (we were practically begging to go home) we understood that if we couldn’t keep her hydrated we would be right back at the hospital.

B was such a trooper. She was poked and suctioned and given nose drops and deep suctioned so many times. I was certain she was traumatized. Sometimes when they were doing their routine checks with their stethoscopes she would cry just because she was afraid something was going to happen. But through it all she still managed to give a few of the nurses smiles. Daddy and I could get a few smiles, too.

I took the other kids for a short visit at the hospital Friday evening. Baby B lit up!! She was smiling and laughing and it was the happiest I had seen her all week. These siblings have a deep bond and love for each other. 

I spent so many hours in that hospital room. While B was sleeping, I watched a lot of psych episodes and I read the book “The Other Side of Heaven”. I’ve seen parts of the movie before, but that was the first time I read the book. I loved it! Maybe something about being in the hospital and having so much time to think contributed to my feelings, but I found it inspiring, interesting, comforting, and filled with so much truth about life. 

I just have to say that I am so grateful to the good nurses who took of her (not so much the one bad nurse who was belittling and made a scary poor decision about her care so I had to fire her) and all of the drs and aides and room cleaners. And we were especially blessed to have so many friends checking in on us and bringing us meals and family helping out that my heart was so full and their love and prayers meant so much to us. 

We brought B home Monday night. I think it was almost 9pm when we got home with her. I did not get a single picture, but it was the sweetest reunion in the whole world. Just like when the kids visited in the hospital, baby just glowed and laughed and there was so much joy as we gathered into Perry’s room with everyone. It was such a relief to have everyone under the same roof again.

this girl is on fire

We went on a walk the other day and the sky was on fire. Breathtaking sunset!

Do you know who else is on fire? Layla. This girl is a firecracker. She is sweet and shy and then she explodes with emotion and joy and ideas.

Her most recent adventure involved a green marker in her bed at night. We checked on her way past her bedtime and she was covered in green marker (including her armpits and feet!) and she had baby powder on her forehead. I didn’t get a picture that night, but took one the next day of her armpit (??!!).

Most arguments she is involved in around here have to do with her wanting to hold and snuggle her baby sister. As soon as one of the boys has baby, Layla calls it out as not fair that they have more time with her (they don’t). But I’m glad she loves her so much. Layla is trying to be a really good listener so that baby can be moved into her room. 

Layla asked for a game out of the closet. Not to follow the directions and play, but to use the playing pieces to tell stories and play house. She has always had an imagination like this.

Oh how we love this girl and her imagination and emotions and antics and all!

Yo ho

We had family home evening tonight. Perry conducted. And because he was conducting he got to pick our opening song (and in this case our closing song, too). This is probably the first family home evening that we (or probably anybody) have sung “yo ho yo ho drink up me hearties yo ho” as part of our opening song. Perry has the theme to the Pirates movies down acapalla style, so for our opening song he insisted we sing it. We sang along to this version of a Pirates of the Caribbean medley. Then after Layla’s lesson he led us in singing it once more. Children are the best!

Nemo piñata

Kyler came home from his Spanish class with the assignment to make a piñata from scratch. If it was my assignment, I would’ve probably made a sloppy sun. But Kyler has a vision and an artistic ability much superior to me and he created Nemo. It started as a balloon that he put paper machete on. He added cardboard fins etc and then crepe paper for the color. The final product looked amazing!

His only glitch, which he was well aware of, was that when putting it together he accidentally put Nemo’s small fin on the wrong side. But that is easily overlooked I’d say!

My kitchen was covered in paper machete and mess for a week while he worked on the project in between soccer and school. Perry took a bunch of random pictures one day so you can see a little bit of it here.

I’d say the mess was worth the reward. I’m going to have to hire him to make me a piñata next time we have a birthday party!