Busy month!

May was a ridiculously busy month for us. We kicked off the month with a trip to Georgia to visit my sister in law, Jennifer, who had a baby- coincidentally on Jacen's birthday!- and for his blessing, and then we headed down to Orlando to spend a few days at Disney World! We had such a good time in Georgia visiting Elijah's dad's side of the family and got to be with Grandma and Grandpa Caswell. Grandpa Caswell is about to pass away, which makes that trip extra special for us.

The boys had such a great time at Disney World! It was hot and humid, which is why I have no comment on the matter. BUT I did enjoy the food and being with the family :) We had never been on vacation where it was just us so that was definitely a cool thing to experience.

Jacen had such a blast. He nearly had a coronary when he saw Mickey Mouse for the first time. I unfortunately do not have all the pics with my camera so I have to upload more from Elijah's camera. I will get them on here as soon as possible. But anyway. He LOVED meeting all the characters and getting their autographs on his autograph book. He and Andrew got Mickey ears with their names embroidered on them as their big souveniers. We're not big souvenier people but I wanted something that he could look at and retrieve all the fun memories. As for Andrew... that's just for him to know he really was at Disney World heehee

When we got back from our trip we got busy with me going back to school... which backfired and I ended up dropping my classes. I just didn't have enough time to study like I wanted to, which makes me very sad. I really love school, but I also love my boys enough to not leave them with a babysitter for 40 hrs/week. So I'm undecided as to whether or not I'll be going back to school. It's a very heartbreaking decision for me. But in the mean time, I get to take pictures of the 3 year old, who decides to wear fireman rain boots with shorts, and sunglasses. What he is holding is the shaft of a plastic golf club, which was a gun that day. The day before it was a sword. He even makes markers turn into guns and swords. He's such a crack up.

And... sweet little Andrew. Awww, how I love him :) The little man is 5 months old already. He is reaching for toys and loves to blow out his diapers. There are no diapers in this world that can withstand the power his poops have on their way out. He definitely has learned some things from his brother and dad! He is so precious. He rolls to one side or the other, and learned to blow bubbles with his mouth. He's constantly smiling, and for the most part, a pretty laid back kid. He started eating solids shortly after we came back from vacation, and although he did great with it, he quit taking his bottles. Then a couple weeks later he stopped eating solids. We can't figure out why all he wants to do is nurse. Elijah has been going crazy at home during the nights I work because Andrew will scream his head off but won't take a bottle, nor will he eat food. *sigh* What a battle. His projectile vomiting has kind of gotten under control, but now when he vomits, it's like a broken sprinkler head- just keeps gushing out. Poor kid :( But he is so cute and we love him so much. Big brother Jacen loves to caress his head and give him kisses. They're so cute together.

He's getting so big I can hardly believe it... when I blink again, he'll be crawling. I know it, because it happened with Jacen. Now all I wish for is for Andrew to start sleeping long stretches of time. That would really help out tremendously. Do you think babies can grant their mommies' wishes?

4 months!

Ahh... how they grow fast. This is from the kids on Easter. Jacen was shoving as much candy as he could into his mouth before dinner. Somedays you just pick your battles with that kid, and that day was the only day he could eat candy before dinner. Plus I had gotten a bout of mastitis (again) that day and I wasn't about to start fighting over food.

Poor Andrew zonked out after dinner. He is so cute! We can't get enough of him.

Then these are his 4 month old pics. I couldn't decide which one was the cutest, so I put them all on here. He now weighs 16lbs 4oz, and measures 25 3/4 inches long. He's 80th percentile for both height and weight- he's trying to catch up with his brother! He smiles a lot (more than I remember Jacen smiling at this age), and he loves to hang out with everyone. He's started reaching for objects and tries to play with things. He rolls to his side but flat out refuses to be on his stomach because of his vomitting issues.

Speaking of which, he's still having issues with his projectile vomiting. He had switched from Zantac (which quit working) to Prevacid (which helped how "far" his vomitting went), but the pediatrician just wants to stop the meds altogether to see how he reacts without it. He stills arches and cries right before he's about to projectile, but we wonder if the meds are making him that way. He also mentioned that if we started giving him rice cereal, he would quit spitting up. So that's our plan for when we get back from vacation: stop the Prevacid and start the rice cereal. I hope it works because I'm tired of cleaning puke off the carpet!

Although he's got quite the gastrointestinal issues, overall he's a happy little man.

We sure love him to pieces :)

3 months!

This last month was so busy, I was kind of a slacker on updating this thing. Oh well. I guess that's what happens when I'm not in school: I become completely disorganized. Hopefully I'll get back on track in May, which is when I'm going back to school. It's the final run before I take the MCAT! Yikes!

Anyway. Elijah and I had our 6 year anniversary on March 5th and we couldn't do anything on that day because we had family come from out of town for Andrew's blessing. We heard that Blue Collar Comedy (Bill Engvall, Jeff Foxworthy, and Larry the Cable Guy) was coming to town and we couldn't pass it up- we had already missed out on Jerry Seinfeld when he came, and there was no way we were not going to attend this one! So we bought tickets, and went on the 25th. We had such a blast. I attempted taking pictures with my iPhone, but couldn't figure out how to zoom the camera, so the pictures are awful, but at least we have a couple of them to share.



That is Larry the Cable Guy. We were sitting way close, but you can't tell :P

And this is all of them at the end of the show doing some Q & A with the host (I don't know his name).

Then after the show we headed to Tucanos at the Gateway (the show was at the ESA) for some yummy Brazilian food. Dinner ended up being at 10:30PM, which was awesome! I loved being out on the town that late at night. I'm definitely an urban kind of girl :D

Then... Andrew turned 3 months old on the 31st! That kid is growing so fast. On his 3-month birthday, he giggled for the first time and also moved up from size 2 to size 3 diapers. I got tired of cleaning up blow out after blow out, but he still manages to do that with size 3 diapers, so I think his BM's are more like torpedoes... They come with such force!

He's so cute, I can't stop kissing him :)

Bouquet, baby blessing, and belly button!

So I totally forgot to post about Valentine's Day. Elijah went out of his way and bought me a very pricey bouquet. If any of you know, I HATE getting flowers because they die fast... therefore, he got me edible flowers. They were AMAZING!!! I usually don't eat pineapple, but the ones on there (they're the ones shaped like flowers) were so sweet and juicy, it was like eating candy. And I can't say enough about the strawberries and apples dipped in chocolate.

Then March 6th, Andrew had his baby blessing! We had lots of friends and family come over and I could actually hear the blessing this time (last time with Jacen, I was having a nasty gallbladder attack during the blessing and I was in so much pain I couldn't concentrate or hear what was being said). Thanks to all of those who helped make it a special day for us :)

And for tradition's sake, Sadie and I had to have pics taken together. We had one taken at Jacen's blessing as well with her newborn (only 18 days apart)- and I can't find it, one of these days I'll post it on here. Now we have kids with birthdays 25 days apart. And our pregnancies are identical, with all the same problems occurring at the same times, which makes us twins... from different mothers. I love that girl!

Little did we know that Andrew would be having surgery so soon after his blessing. Two days later we headed in to Primary Children's Outpatient extension at Riverton to have the surgery done. We had met with the surgeon the previous day and he decided to go ahead and do it before it got any bigger. I was slightly nervous, but the staff was really good at telling me exactly what was going to happen next, but I knew he would be fine. Here is his belly button before:

 

Here's him in pre-op, dressed in the little gown, or "pajamas" as they call it. The socks were anti-slip socks, I thought they were hilarious!

And here's Andrew in post-op. The surgery had gone great, but in post-op his vital signs started to look bad (low sats, high blood pressure). But all he needed was a few extra hours of recovery and we were able to take him home without any extra problems.

The day after surgery he had some pain management issues, which was really sad. The next day he started to smile a lot more and became happier. We were able to take off his bandages two days ago, and here's his new belly button:

 It looks kinda funny, but he has a follow-up appointment with the surgeon next week and I'll ask him to see if it'll be this way... well, forever. I'll definitely keep you all posted! We're glad he has a new belly button!

And now the poor kid has conjunctivitis in his right eye, so we had to put him on antibiotic drops for it. Andrew can't seem to catch a break these days :(

Andrew's 2 months old!

 Holy moly, how time flies! Before I opened my eyes from blinking, Andrew turned into a 2 month old! He learned to smile at us, although he doesn't do it often. He seems to mostly do it when he's tooting- he learned it from his dad, haha! He's a whopping 12 lbs 14 oz (that's a jump from 37th percentile to 79th), and he measures 23 inches long (55th percentile).
We wish we could say he was perfectly healthy, but he isn't. The poor kid projectile vomitted and so at his pediatrician's appointment this week, I brought it up to the doctor's attention and he got put on Zantac. Good night, I wish I had taken him to the doctor earlier! He feels so much better. He can finally sleep on a flat surface instead of in the swing or on the bouncer. The other thing is that the little one also has a herniated belly button, which will need surgery. At first the doctors kept saying it wasn't big enough and that he would outgrow it eventually, but when the doctor saw it this week he said that was too big and that it would continue to grow if we didn't have it repaired. Stay tuned for before and after pictures once surgery is done and over with.

In other news, Jacen ADORES his baby brother. The other day I was feeding Andrew and Jacen was sitting next to me, and he started to pat Andrew's head and said, "He's a nice broder". He always wants to help, although he hasn't asked to hold his "broder" lately. But Jacen had a setback when his brother arrived: his perfect potty trainingness went caput. He totally regressed and the kid is back to peeing and pooping his diapers. Yeah, I know it's normal, but it's still mind boggling to me that they can go from fully going potty by themselves to needing a diaper. It's truly a "WTF (pardon my french) situation". He did announce to me, however, that he wanted to go to medical school and be a doctor. I asked if he wanted to work in the hospital like mommy, and he said "I want to work in the hostible." I gave him lots of praise for that! He uses a turkey baster as a stethoscope to check mommy's belly. The kid is a genius.

The rest of the fam-dam is great. Daddy loves his job and just recently started to write for his work as well, which added a nice promotion and a raise to his salary. Mommy really loves that daddy is so happy with his job! Mommy is still trying to get adjusted to two kids but she thinks the dust has settled, although she has her days when she just wants to throw in the towel and quit. Mommy just got mastitis which developed into an abscess so she's trying to deal with that at the moment. All sorts of fun, right?

I love our family!

PS: Happy anniversary, honey! 6 years! Got married and got busy!