My Kitchen

Almost four years after moving into our house, I am finally satisfied enough with my kitchen enough to post before and after pictures.Here is what the dining area looked like before. 

And here is is now: (The apple was painted by my niece, Taraya. I absolutely love it!)

 Before:

After:

 Here is the kitchen area before:

 Here it is now! I LOVE the color. My mom started getting these green dishes for me a long time ago, and I loved it so much I decided to go crazy. It is probably the happiest room in my house.

Here's what we did: TONS of painting. The cabinets were a little bit pink before and they are snow white now. I re-glued and grouted about 12 of the tiles that had completely come loose. We replaced the faucet, had cabinets installed all the way around the fridge, got a new counter top, put in a dishwasher and a garbage disposal, replaced the window, and made curtains.

Easter 2013

I didn't get many pictures this Easter for some reason. We did color eggs and the Easter Bunny brought baskets of goodies, but mostly I was just excited to take my whole family to church for the first time in seven months. 

Here are the kids after church.

Here is my handsome boy in his little suit. At church he acted exactly as I expected him to, scowling at all of the strangers sitting around us (he has some pretty serious stranger anxiety, but he warms up quickly). He also danced every time we sang a hymn. I don't think I stopped smiling the entire time. It was wonderful!

Things have been very good at our house lately. Shannon is excited to perform in a cultural celebration at her school. Her first grade class is doing a Colombian dance. I'm not going to lie, I'm really excited to see it.
Leah is a great helper at home. She usually cleans when I ask her to, and she has learned to write all of her letters and even spell some words.
Christopher, at 17 months, is now a whopping 17 pounds! He is army crawling, sitting by himself, eating everything (all day long), and he talks all the time. He probably has 15 words of English and just babbles the rest. Spring has brought a slight illness in our home (the girls have runny noses and Shannon has a cough, but they are otherwise fine), and Christopher has developed croup again. He will have another bronchoscopy in May to dilate his larynx again and pop any cysts that may have come back. He is still on oxygen, but I take it off when he's really active so that he doesn't get so tangled in it. We also have a cardiology appointment at the end of the month, and I will be sure to update then.

A Couple of Surgeries

Christopher finally stayed healthy long enough to have a few procedures done. He had his left tear duct probed and flushed because it was clogged, he had a bronchoscopy to see why he keeps getting croup, and he was circumcised. Here he is in the cutest little hospital gown, as happy as can be.

  One last shot of the goopy eye. (Yes, I munch on those cheeks all day long)

The bronchoscopy showed why he was having problems with croup. He had a few cysts that had formed and what's called subglottic stenosis (an abnormal narrowing right below his vocal folds). The doctor said his airway was the size of a newborn. This is pretty normal since he was intubated for two weeks after his first surgery. He will have to have this procedure done again in a few weeks to make sure the cysts don't come back.

Here are some shots of his airway. The top left is a picture of his vocal chords. You can see that the left one is in a closed position, and is pretty much paralyzed like that. The next two show the cysts just below his vocal chords, and the last one is a picture of his bronchi (where the trachea branches off to the lungs).

Top left is just another shot of the narrowed airway, then a shot of the balloon they used to dilate the airway and pop the cysts. The bottom picture is his airway after the procedure. Quite a big difference!

 Here he is just a few days after the surgery. No more goopy eye! He reaches for me like this all the time, and I can't resist.

Leah's turn! When she was born she had a pretty good sized umbilical hernia, as you can see here:

 She was pretty excited to have her own day at the hospital and get some attention. Here she is all dressed and ready to go.

 Daddy got her a present to open after she woke up. She carried it the whole time.

 They give kids the option of walking back, riding a tricycle, or riding in a wagon. She chose the wagon and the doctor gave her a Tangled book. We told her that the doctor would put a mask on her face just like her nebulizer and she would just fall asleep. She didn't seem nervous at all! She even got to choose the scent of the gas they would give her. She chose strawberry.

 She was very happy when she woke up. She just gave me a big hug and wanted her slurpee. Then she opened her present from her dad. She got a Star Sapphire action figure! She actually asked for this. For those of you who aren't total nerds, Star Sapphire is a character in the Green Lantern comics.

 A sleepy smile. She went home soon after waking up and stayed in our bed for the rest of the day. I had her sleep on her mattress on our floor that night because I thought she would wake up needing pain meds, but she didn't! The next day she didn't do much, either, but by the third day she was back to her normal activity. They let her keep the gas mask that still smells like strawberry, and she shows it to everyone.

Christmas 2012

A few days before Christmas we braved the cold and went to see the lights at Temple Square. It was beautiful!

Matt's mom came up for Christmas Eve. Both Matt and Christopher spent the morning at the doctor. Matt needed a prescription refill and Chris had another case of croup that he needed some steroids for. We almost took him to the hospital, but decided to give him another day on the steroids to see if he could get over it, and he did! The weather was terrible, so it was a nice day to stay in the house, listen to Christmas music, play, and eat. After dinner the girls did their program:

And here they are Christmas morning:

 Ready to open presents!

 These are the Hello Kitty hats that I made them. I'm not sure why Shannon has crazy eyes.

 It was another perfect Christmas!

Leah Turns Four

For some reason, I neglected to take a single picture of our Thanksgiving. I must have been distracted by all of the fun we had! We drove up to my sister's house in Mountain Home, ID, and sang, played games, and ate to excess. It was a really fun Thanksgiving!

Leah had a great birthday party. We had several family members come over and we had a big dinner, then she opened her presents.

 She wanted a Batgirl cake, so I caved and used fondant (blech!). Luckily, she thought it tasted good and she actually ate it, so that was good. I made it blue because I couldn't fathom using enough food coloring to make it black, and blue is her favorite color. She loved it, and that's all that matters, right?

Here is some of the chaos of opening presents:

And here is the birthday song and her blowing out the candles. I was funny and decided to pan the room to get a shot of all of the people who were there, but missed the moment of her actually blowing the candles out. Oh well!

Halloween 2012

Halloween was so much fun this year! It all started with a trip to the pumpkin patch:

I had to throw this picture in as well, because Leah cracks me up.

Dad and Leah perusing the pumpkins. 

 Dad is so happy to be at the pumpkin patch.

 Leah was a pumpkin cleaning beast! She got right in there and did all of the work.

 The pumpkin carving party:

 Shannon was disgusted and didn't want to clean it out, so Dad had to help her.

 Leah was a cute kitty.

 Ready to go! For once it was actually decent weather and we didn't have to wear coats or anything!

 I did the Hello, Kitty (but only finished it halfway because there just wasn't time), Nanny did the painted one in the middle, and the one on the right is Shannon's.

 I didn't really intend for all of them to be in black, but it was cute! Christopher is wearing the onesie that he got when he was in the hospital the day after being born last year. It's a 0-3 month and it fit perfectly!

 "I'm a mean old witch with a hat, and I ride on my broom with my cat!"

My Birthday Boy

Guess who turned 1!

Yes, his cake was a heart. I couldn't resist.

 Not quite sure what to think.

 "I guess I'll try some."

 "This feels really weird."

He did ok with the first little piece, but gagged and threw up the second. Oh well! We tried!

I was driving home from Primary Childrens Medical Center the other day after one of Christopher’s appointments and the trees everywhere had changed to the beautiful fall colors. It gave me a strange feeling that took me a few minutes to pinpoint. I realized that the last time I saw autumn was right before Christopher was born. I can’t believe how much has changed since then. I can’t believe how much I have changed since then. Things that used to matter just don’t anymore.

I told Matt about this and he said that this birthday would be a good time for us to do some reflecting. I don’t ever want to dwell on hard things in the past, but sometimes I think it’s healthy to look back and see what we've come through.

I remember the 20 week ultrasound as if it was yesterday. I was watching very carefully to see if it was a boy or girl, and I saw that it was a boy and about jumped up from the table. I yelled, “That’s a boy!” Matt looked up and said, “What?!” Then he heaved a huge sigh of relief. Finally, he was going to have a son. We went to the waiting room and during the hour we waited to see the doctor we called everyone we could think of to tell them the happy news. Then the doctor sat us down and was very unconcerned, but he looked at the pictures and said he couldn't see all 4 chambers of the heart. I immediately thought, “Please don’t let it be hypoplastic left heart.” I asked him if it was a ventricle or an atrium that couldn't be seen, and he told me he thought it was an atrium. I let that calm my fears and for the next week I was pretty sure that the baby’s position just wasn't quite right to see all four chambers and that he was going to be just fine.

Exactly one week later I went alone to the fetal echo and left Matt with the girls. The echo took a really long time, but finally the cardiologist took me to the exam room and handed me all of the information and told me about the diagnosis. I just couldn't believe it. Right away it was obvious to me how little I actually knew about the syndrome. The option to have 3 open heart surgeries performed on my child seemed horrific, but it was the only option that was even remotely acceptable in my mind.

The rest of the pregnancy went by really quickly. I loved feeling him kick and wiggle (and he was a VERY wiggly baby). Since it was summer I was able to sit in my garden and weed for hours and just think.  I was able to come to terms with things and move forward with faith and hope that we would be able to bring our baby home.

I didn't get anything ready for a new baby. I felt guilty anytime someone asked me if I had everything ready, because I didn't have clothes out, a crib set up, or a car seat. I knew that I would have time to do that later while he was recovering from surgery, and I didn't want to have everything ready if he wasn't going to come home. I still felt guilty for doing that, though. I felt like I wasn't showing any faith. My twin sister put it best, though, when she told me that when we get in a car we have faith that we won’t get in an accident, but we still wear a seat belt  That really helped me.

Christopher was born at 10:00 at night and I didn't get to really see him until about 3:00 in the morning. By then I was so drugged and so tired that it felt like a dream. The next day I got to hold him and kiss him, but I was still exhausted and in a daze. I was discharged that night and as I drove away from my son all I could think was “this is so wrong!” That phrase was running through my head for months! You aren't supposed to sleep ½ hour away from your newborn baby! There were several times when I left the hospital and I told the nurses, “I have to go take care of my kids,” then I would stop myself and say “My other kids.” I felt detached from my baby—as though he belonged to the hospital and not to me. Don’t get me wrong, I still loved him very much. Everything during that time was so surreal and it just didn't make any sense. When I look back at pictures of Christopher after his surgeries I get emotional. I remember sitting in the room with him, holding his tiny hand for hours on end, but in my memory it doesn't feel like that was me. I feel like I’m watching that girl, looking at her tiny, sick baby, and I feel sorry for her.

Then he came home. Before he was born I naively thought that he would have his surgeries, come home, and we would live normal lives again. When he came home I had to spend so much time taking care of him that I became swallowed up in it. The first six months of his life are a blur of feeding tubes, ER visits, re-admissions, vomiting, medications, and oxygen. By about the 4^th month I decided to join the support group that I had been avoiding. I didn't want to join because it would just be more “heart stuff,” and I wanted our lives to be as normal as possible.

There is a group of women in the Intermountain area that call themselves “heart moms.” They are mothers of children with all different kinds of heart defects. They have been through it all. I asked a question on the Facebook page and had 3 answers within about 5 minutes. They continued to answer all of my questions. I found an excellent pediatrician who works with heart kids because of these ladies. They taught me how to be an advocate for my child. I never would have had the guts to do some of the things I've done without their help.

I have often worried about the impact all of this would have on my daughters. I have always wanted them to have the magical childhood that I had. This is another realization that I had to come to. Their brother will never be “normal,” and that’s ok. They know all about oxygen, feeding tubes, and Leah could take you on a complete tour of the hospital, but it’s ok! I have realized that their childhood won’t be exactly like mine, but it will still be wonderful. They have learned to pray earnestly. They have seen that Heavenly Father does answer prayers. They will be just fine.

After all we've been through the last year, we are finally settling into our new “normal.” Christopher hasn't been in the hospital since August (the longest we've ever gone), and he is absolutely thriving now. He’s rolling all over the floor and getting stronger every day. He still gags a lot on anything more solid than pudding, but he is making progress. We can’t take him out where there are lots of people because he gets sick so easily, but I love my home, so that’s usually not a problem, either. He talks all the time (just gibberish, but he does say “da-da”) and he ADORES his sisters. Shannon can always make him laugh.

What a year! I've learned so much, and I know I have a lot more to learn. I have a lot more compassion than I have ever had. I will admit, I still roll my eyes sometimes when I hear a mom complaining that her baby has to have tubes put in his ears or something else minor like that, but then I remember that for them, it is traumatic! It’s hard to see kids suffer, no matter what it is.

We have been so blessed! Matt’s principal has been very understanding and he was able to take his sick days last year without any problems. We have great insurance that has allowed us to not be financially burdened by all of the hospital stays. We have wonderful friends, family, and neighbors who have made it possible for us to do a lot of things. We really couldn't ask for more.

I gave a talk in church a few weeks ago on how trials can bring us closer to Christ. While I prepared that talk I came to realize that the best way to survive a trial is to be ready for it. We have to expect trials in our lives, and we need to pray and develop the necessary faith before they come. I am sure we will have plenty of hard days ahead, but for now we will enjoy the peace, we will be grateful for everything that we have, and we will continue to pray for the faith to weather whatever may come.

Life is good!