Ah! I Have a Teenager!

I'm a bit late on posting this (which seems to be the story of my blog lately), but about two weeks ago, Jimmy turned 13.  Yep, I am the proud parent of a teenager now.  He didn't get a big party this year.  He planned one and decided to cancel it when he saw the forecast showed that it would be cold and stormy.  Instead he went with a friend to Boondocks and had a good time.  I made him a cheesecake that he ate all by himself.  Kind of planned on that and actually made a second cheesecake and a regular cake for everyone else.  What can I say?  My sweet tooth was acting up.

So even though it's belated, happy birthday Jimmy!  I hope this coming year is a great one for you.  And I still need to get around to telling you about the day you were born, don't I.

*By the way, he said he hates this picture of himself.  Which he wanted me to mention.  And so I did.

Playing Catch-Up

Yes, I realize I am way behind on my blog. I blame that (at least partially) on not having a working camera. Thanksgiving, Christmas? No working camera, no pictures. Well, I suppose I have a working camera with my cell phone, but it really isn't a good camera. Yet it's better than nothing at all. Which is why I am including a couple of pictures in catching up. Even one relating to Christmas.

The holiday season was a nice one.  We spent Thanksgiving with Russ' family.  It was one of the few years that all of his brothers and sisters were there.  We had some family pictures taken, which I'd include but I didn't find them quickly and am feeling a bit lazy to search more for them. I may post them at a later time.

Christmas was nice as well.  We always spend Christmas Eve with Russ' family and did so again this year.  On Christmas we went to my parent's house and had a nice dinner with them.  Both of my sisters who live nearby went on vacation over Christmas so it was just us.

We have a tradition of opening up new pajamas on Christmas Eve.  Used to just  be to open a present, but it's become opening pajamas.  Jimmy made presents for his sisters and brother (except for Rachel because she is a bit young for it) and we also let them open the gift from him then too.  He made them each pillows.  Did most of the sewing for it himself.    This is a picture taken that night in their new pajamas and with their pillows. 

Later I took this picture of the kids.  Not all were thrilled to have it taken.

We drove up to Boise over New Year's weekend to visit my sister.  Her son got baptized that weekend.  We had fun going up and visiting.  I didn't get a single picture that weekend. 

The next weekend, Rachel was playing with her sister and tripped and hit the bridge of her nose along the edge of the tile and cut it nicely.  I took her to the instacare even though I figured it wouldn't need to be stitched.  They did put glue on the cut because she had some loose skin and it would keep it protected and safe from infection.  She still has a ridge on her nose from the loose skin and how it refused.  I'm sure she will have a scar from it.  This picture was taken shortly after she hit it and after we wiped away some of the blood.  She had nice black circles under her eyes for a while.

As I've mentioned before, the week of Feb 7 to Feb 14 is National Congenital Heart Defect Awareness week.  I helped with Intermountain Healing Hearts to make sure we could still have a banner hung on the parking garage for Primary Children's Medical Center and we had a table set up on the 3rd floor of the hospital with cupcakes, fliers, and other things to help spread awareness.  A.Rae, the historian/angel liaison on the governing board for IHH was very nice and made some pictures for use on Facebook for some of us who have children with heart defects.  She made this one for me:

I also went with Brytten to Capitol Hill during CHD week. We were representing IHH at Non-Profit Day on the Hill.  We had a chance to talk to some of the representatives up there about IHH and what we do and a little about pulse-ox testing of newborns.  I think it turned out well and we were able to talk to several people.  They wanted one person to go take notes to the representatives and to speak with them and the other to stay at the table we were given to use to talk to anyone who might come by.  I stayed at the table.  My representative for where I live happened to walk by the table so I was able to talk to him.  We basically had our table there set up like we had the table set up at the hospital, only we also had the posters IHH uses at events.

 While we were both sitting at the table waiting for things to get started, we had a visitor from another non-profit come by to visit us.  Only she wasn't supposed to and it startled us when she came.  Something about the flapping of wings by your head when you aren't expecting anything.  She was a toucan from Tracy Aviary.  Later they had a golden eagle.  I commented I was glad it wasn't that one that "attacked" us.  The last two pictures are of the bird and of Brytten at our table.

And now I'm basically caught up.  Well, except for mentioning the big wind storm we had at the beginning of December that caused some damage to our house and knocked down branches from a couple of trees and caused our neighbor's tree to fall through the fence.  It also caused us to go without power for nearly 36 hours.  But I won't go into that.  I think this post is long enough.

Happy 10th Birthday Emma!

Today is Emma's 10th birthday, which means she no longer belongs to the single digit club. I think she's had a good day. She has been very excited about her birthday, partially because she also had her party today. 

Everyone seemed to have a good time at her party, especially with the amount of candy that came out of the pinata once it finally broke apart.  Emma had told me she wanted a cake with a puppy jumping out of a present but we compromised and I did puppies with cupcakes.  Made the one for her the biggest and made smaller ones to easily fit on the cupcakes.  Didn't take my time to make them look very good, but Emma loved them.  First thing she wanted to do when anyone showed up for her party was show them the cupcakes.  She invited six girls and one called right away to tell her she would be out of town so couldn't make it.  All but one other came.  But the best part?  It's over and I don't have to worry about it anymore. :)

Here's a picture of the cupcakes.

Happy birthday, Emma!

Dylan's (non-heart) Surgery

Wednesday Dylan had his surgery that I had written about in an earlier post.  I was almost surprised that he was actually well enough to have it.  He had been sick the week before and had a hard time getting better.  At one point in the car he had even sighed and said, "It's hard to get well."  Where I'm sure Dylan wouldn't have complained to have the surgery postponed, I really didn't want to have to wait even longer for it.

While it isn't nearly as scary as open heart surgery, I found myself getting a little nervous for his surgery.  I really think more because I was afraid he would wake up that morning sick.  But once we were on our way, I was fine.  Dylan was surprisingly good before his surgery.  He was happy and even answered the nurses when they would ask him a few questions.  I think it helped that they planned on waiting until they had him asleep to start an IV.  They also gave him some medicine to help him feel calm and a little sleepy.

They brought out a wagon for him and let him take along a toy he had been playing with and wheeled him off to surgery.  About an hour and a half later, his doctor found me in the waiting room and told me he did well.  Said the hydrocele repair went just as planned.  Said the other part didn't quite go as planned.  There wasn't as much flexibility as there should have been plus there was an interesting growth that he nor the two associates he pulled in had ever seen (making a combination of about 60 year's experience).  But it's nothing harmful and should be fine (they did send it off to pathology to make sure).  Of course, his telling me that brought back memories of meeting with Dr. Hawkins the night before Dylan's open heart surgery and being told that in all his years as a heart surgeon, he had only seen truncus with a coarctation one other time.  I'm not sure I like Dylan being quite so unique.  Ah well.

Dylan woke up from surgery really unhappy.  He didn't like the pulse/ox or the IV.  He cried that he wanted them out and he wanted to go home.  After a while I got him to take two sips of apple juice and the nurse took everything off and I got him dressed to go home.  He cried the whole time.  Only stopped when we were heading out the door of the recovery room.

He has done pretty well.  Walks a little funny, but that's expected.  This morning he woke up showing more pain than he has since having the surgery.  It has been the only time that I haven't had to fight him to take pain medicine.  But it worked nicely and he's back to running around and playing like nothing is wrong. 

Molly's Baptism

Saturday Molly was baptized.  She was very excited about it and had a hard time waiting for the day to come.  She was baptized with her cousin, Rebecca.  And two days later I realized we never took a picture of the two of them together.  (Dang it!)  I thought it turned out really nice (even with several people trying to help Russ when he asked a simple question and telling him wrong so made for some lovely entertainment). 

We tried to get a new family picture right after the baptism since we were all dressed up.  The two pictures taken with my camera weren't great so unless the ones my dad got were better, I still need to get a new family picture.  The one on my wall was taken two years ago at Emma's baptism.  Really need to get a new one up there.

Anyway, here's a picture of Russ and Molly just before she was baptized in the baptism clothes.

Here's Molly in her dress she got for her baptism.  She felt very beautiful in it and for good reason, if you ask me.

I wasn't going to but decided to go ahead and post one of the two family pictures from Saturday.  Not the greatest, but hey, it has everyone in it.

Doctors and Illness

I realize that I never posted about Dylan's urology appointment he had last week. But that was largely due to Rachel being very sick with strep throat. She was sick for his appointment and luckily my mom was able to watch her while I took him in.

Dylan was surprisingly good for his doctor appointment. I explained to him what they would do and that he definitely would not get an iv poke. He was very happy and had a good time going. At least playing with all of the toys they have there.

The doctor came in and examined him and said he does need surgery to correct his hydrocele and his undescended testicle. He will have that surgery done in the first part of November. The tricky part will be to keep him well during that time. Especially with how much we have all been sick so far, which brings me back to Rachel.

She got a high fever the Sunday night before Dylan's appointment, which was about the time I was expecting her to get a fever from getting her mmr immunization. She was miserable. My happy girl who tries to be happy even when not feeling well wasn't happy at all. She cried when she wasn't asleep. And she slept as long as she was held.

The fever didn't go away when I thought it should. I gave her an extra day (mostly because I didn't feel like taking her to the pediatrician the day I took Dylan to the urologist. So on Wednesday I called and took her in. The doctor looked at her and saw that her throat looked very sore. He explained that it is really rare for kids as young as she is to get strep, but decided to do a throat culture anyway. They called on Thursday and said it was negative but would check again the next day. They called back on Friday and said it was positive. They called in a prescription for her. I was actually very glad they found something because she just wasn't feeling well.

I called them back yesterday though because she still isn't feeling well, even after almost a week on antibiotics. But today I've decided that's just because she's lucky enough to have managed to catch a cold. Makes me tempted to have Dylan go visit his grandparents for a while. If he would. Which he wouldn't do. I'll just have to make sure he washes his hands a lot and uses hand sanitizer and it seems kind of pointless to put a sign on the door asking people to please not come in if they are sick or have been around anyone who is sick at all when people here are sick.

I have a feeling it's going to be a long winter.

Rachel and Dylan Well Checks

Earlier this week I took Rachel and Dylan for their yearly well checks.  Decided that they are close enough in age that I might as well save a trip and take them together. 

Rachel is growing well.  She kept saying "hi" to the doctor and stole his stethoscope.  She didn't like the 4 shots she got (one of which was the flu shot...a must in a household with a heart kid), but who does?  She has stayed at the high end of the percentile scale for height but is going down a little in weight, which is normal.  She was a little sick before going to the doctor and hurled in the car on the way there.  Which was the one time I was glad to have a broken washing machine.  I happened to have laundry in my car to do after the doctor so was able to change her quickly.

Dylan is understandably nervous about going to the doctor lately.  I told him as we were going that as long as he doesn't get sick, he won't have to go to the doctor again for at least 6 months after this one.  Which apparently I shouldn't have told him.  He's doing really well.  He even went up in the percentile range, which is great for a heart kid.  He even went up so he's in the above average range.  His problem is that he has a hydrocele and likely an undescended testicle.  Which means that he needs to see a urologist.  He goes next week.  He's not going to be happy about it because it's at PCMC, which is where he goes for his cardiology appointments.  And it will likely mean some more surgery for him.  Poor kid is really going to hate doctor appointments after this.  He also failed the hearing test in his right ear, but that was likely due to large amounts of wax in his ear and the fact that Rachel chose that time to yell loudly.