Specifics

I have had a lot of people asking me what specifically they can pray for regarding the baby's upcoming surgery so I decided to post them here...

1. That they will be able to draw enough blood before the procedure to get her blood type. In chubby babies it can be difficult to get the blood that they need. If they are unable to get it they will have to get it when she is under anesthesia which will add 1-2 hours that she will have to be under. The labs are to make sure the correct type of blood is brought into the room in case of hemorrhaging.
2. That she will not hemorrhage. There is a risk of it happening during the procedure if a vessel is ruptured or after from the incision site.
3. That she will be calm after after waking up. If she is too upset and not laying still enough they will knock her out again in the ICU. She has to lay pretty still for about 6 hours:(
4. That her defect will not be too large to fix with this type of procedure. Because I do not want to have to go through this again!
5. That the boys will do fine without my hubby and I as they do not want to be away from us and are worried about the baby.
6. That the 3 hours will go by very quickly!

That is everything I can think of right now:)

Mobile

On the same day she learned to pull herself up and to crawl! She is all over the place now. She can only pull herself up on lower items but when she does it she is so proud of herself!

Only 10 more days until her surgery:( We had our last appointment with the Dr last week and everything is set to go. She will be in surgery for about 3 hours and the Dr is pretty confident he will be able to fix her defect. He did caution me that her defect now sounds pretty large and that if it is too large he may not be able to fix it and she will have to have a more invasive type of surgery. So, we are really hoping it is not too big because I really want this all to be done with!

Dropout

I withdrew Big Man from his school this morning and we went bowling instead. When hubby and I were looking at schools for him we knew we wanted very small class sizes, like 10-15 kids max. This year the school we signed him up for had a record number of 21 kids in the class and that was just too many for us. My sister, a former public school teacher, just laughs at me because I think it is too many! I felt horrible going there today to tell his teacher and the Principal. His teacher was tearing up even though I tried to be so nice and reassured her many times that it was nothing to do with her. She told me how very sad she was because he is such a good kid and one of her best students (hopefully she wasn't just saying that since she will never see him again!)

We enrolled him in the school that we have always wanted him to go to but didn't choose it this year because I wanted half day Kindergarten. Since that didn't work out we are going back to our original choice. Luckily that school wasn't starting until Monday so he won't have to go in after it starts. He is pretty excited since there are only 8 kids in the class. Unfortunately his new school is about 3x as expensive as the old one, but we think it is worth it and thankfully we got a lot of it paid for in tax credits. It makes me a little nauseous thinking about the cost of three kids in private school and I've all ready told hubby he may need to get another job to pay for it:)

She All Ready Loves Dolls

I just can't get over how cute she is, and that she is all mine!

Not Such A Baby Anymore

She is 7 1/2 months old now and is learning new tricks about every day. She can lift her hands when she wants to be picked up, can go from laying on her stomach to sitting, can crawl a couple of feet randomly when she gets her legs synchronized and tries so hard to pull herself up but only manages to pull herself up far enough to make it hurt when she falls. She is going to be way to mobile soon and is going to keep me on my toes trying to keep track of her!

She still has her pretty blue eyes, but I'm not going to be too sure that they are going to stay until she is a year old, though. Little Man's eyes were blue for so long and then changed so we will see.
She had a check-up yesterday and she weighs 19 lbs and 4 oz, which puts her in the 75-90%. Her height was in the 25-50% and her head was in the above 95% range.

Her heart still has a murmur and in the Pediatrician's words sounds totally freaky! She has a follow-up appointment with the Cardiologist and an ultrasound of her heart next week to prepare for the repair which will take place in 3 weeks. It's a good thing I am incredibly busy right now so I have no time to dwell on it:)

One Down

179 more to go until summer. When I look at this picture all I see is my little brother as this is how I remember him looking in Kindergarten!

He was so excited this morning when he was getting ready. On the way to school he told me that he wasn't sure if he was going to be able to smile at school until he got use to it and that today he was just going to look around anxiously. His use of vocabulary cracks me up sometimes. When we got to school he was a little nervous I could tell. Hubby and I walked him to his class and then we walked out onto the playground until the bell rang and then he said he was fine and that we didn't need to stay so I just took one more picture and left.
No matter how hard I tried I couldn't get him to smile again. On Wednesday mornings they have Chapel first thing and he has an 8th grade chapel buddy who he sits with and who shows him how to act and what to do. Big Man thought it was pretty cool that a big kid was talking to him.

When I picked him up he was all smiles and said: I had so much fun and can't wait to go back tomorrow, but I didn't learn to read yet:)

Goodbye Xandie

It has been weeks it feels like since the party but I'm only now getting around to blogging about it! It was nice to get to see everyone in real life instead of just reading their blogs. I can't say that I'm thrilled about Xandie moving away but at least I'll have a cool place to visit:) Looking at this picture I only thought my baby was pretty big, but if you compare her to Lise's baby they are pretty similar in size and he is only 3 months!! He is such a sweetie too. There we so many kids there and the boys had a lot of fun playing with them. I think Christine's son Mickey stole Taylor's heart right away.

Unfortunately he had to go and whack her when she wanted to play with his ball and then she refused to sit with him for the rest of the evening. It was really hilarious:)
So Xandie & Marissa, maybe Christine, can you guys believe it was over 7 years ago that we would go to the Monastery and talk about getting pregnant and having kids! Time has gone so fast and it is so fun to see your kids as they grow up:) Now enough time on the computer I have to go get everything ready for Big Man since tomorrow is his first day of school! I keep pretending to cry when he tells me how excited he is and I joke around and tell him how sad I am that he is going to be gone at school and he keeps telling me to stop it. Then tonight he was very serious and said Your not really going to cry at school in front of everyone are you, because I would not like that at all. So...I guess I will have to try and keep my emotions in check until I'm in the car!!

Last Trip Of The Summer

We went on one last camping trip before school starts up to Payson with my Hubby's family. The kids had such a fun time playing with their cousins. The first day they played with the remote control trucks and made ramps for the trucks and their bikes.

He couldn't quite get the momentum to get over it like his brother.
Far away Grandma planned a treasure hunt for the kids and

she got GrandMarc to draw a neat treasure map. Looking at the map for guidance...

The skull and crossbones!

There it is.

Where they ever excited to find the treasure.
It was filled with all sorts of fun things.

They are still playing pirates and the only books they wanted me to read to them today were about pirates.

Also in the treasure box were wooden ships that they (well mostly GrandMarc) put together the next day and painted.

The day after that we spent some time at the lake where the kids froze but had a great time playing in the water.

Then we went back and gave the kids some owl pellets to disect. I wasn't sure if they would really get into them, but they thought it was pretty cool digging out all of the bones and trying ti determine what kind of animal the owl ate!

The bone collection.

We think this was a rat jaw. Chomp chomp!

It was a fun time and I think we are going to make it a yearly event!

Baby Dedication

The baby and my nephew were dedicated at Church last weekend. It was a fun time and of course all five of the kids had to have matching outfits! My Aunt came to the service and took some really good pictures of all of us.

When they were announcing her she would not stop eating her shoe. The entire congregation was laughing at her. We would pull it out and she would put it back. Aren't those shoes just the cutest! I wasn't sure I was going to find something for her to wear them with and was glad when I realized they matched the dress.

Here is my sister, her hubby and my nephew.