Life just turned 180 degrees!

What a month! It flew by so fast. June was insane!
We first had my dad here from Brazil visiting for my brother's wedding, then my mom and brother came into town from Texas shortly after. My brother Victor and his cute wife Brooke got married on June 18th! They had a gorgeous Temple ceremony and a super cute reception at the backyard of her uncle's house. I'll post pictures when I get a chance to steal them from Facebook!
Also, it was my dad's first time meeting Andrew, and it was so adorable.

Then, after working for Intermountain Healthcare for seven years, I decided to quit. Life at home was getting crazy with Andrew not taking bottles anymore from daddy on the nights that I have to go to work. Jacen started to wake up during the night (again...) and so Elijah got really sick and tired of me working. And a new scheduling system came out and I was short half of my shifts and couldn't really get them. So I figured it was time to stop working. And when I put in my notice at work, I felt at peace and knew things would be okay. The only thing was that I had NO idea what was coming our way....
Four days later Elijah got called to talk to the owner of the company he works with and we took an offer to move to Louisville, KY at the end of August for him to open a new office for the company. Elijah is THRILLED! I am scared, nervous, happy, sad... all at the same time. I'm going to miss my family and friends so terribly. We don't know anyone there so it'll truly be an adventure! It's such a bummer to move from the house I LOVE. We'll be going to Louisville in a couple weeks to find a place to live. Hopefully we can find something decent!
And Andrew turned 6 months old. Happy half year birthday to him! He's so cute. Just last week he decided he wanted to learn to sit. We put him on his bouncer and that's what he did:

So I thought... maybe you want to sit on the floor? That look totally says, "Hmmm... excuse me?! I need to sit, please!" Then I put him on the floor.

He LOVES to sit.
And here are his 6 month-old pics. They were both too cute not to post one or the other.

Jacen is so loving with him. He's really learning to play with him well. He tickles Andrew's feet and loves to kiss his forehead. I know they'll be good buddies.
And last but not least... we had a blast on the 4th of July! I had to work, but we headed to Elijah's mom's house and hung out with our friends (which we consider family!) and ate some yummy food!

Here are the three dads, all holding their babies!

Jacen playing with his friends :)

Here are the grandpas...

... and the grandmas :)

We sure will miss celebrating the holidays with them. We always have so much fun!

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 :(