Happy Birthday

One year ago this sweet boy joined our little family. I will never be able to imagine our lives without him.

Love you Buster.

Just me and my Dad

Matt had the very fun idea of having a backyard camp out with Eliza Friday night. She has been SO excited the entire week. Finally the big day arrived! She helped dad set up the tent then they were off to the store to get "supplies." Those supplies included a Tinker Bell sleeping bag, graham crackers, marshmallows, and a Hershey's bar. Then we packed her backpack with everything she would need and took it out to the tent.

Keep in mind that we usually put Eliza to bed between 7:00-7:30 at night. I knew there was NO way she would fall asleep that early. It doesn't start to get dark until 9:30. So they had their s'mores and she played outside for a while. 8:30 rolled around and I thought she may be tired enough to fall asleep even with it still being light outside. No luck. It was noisy and just way too many distractions going on on top of her excitement of being on her first camp out.

I went outside around 10:00 to check on the campers and Eliza was still wide awake. So we decided that it would be just as fun to camp in the family room! We got her all set up on the floor and I sang her one more song and she fell asleep almost instantly. This is how we found her this morning.

So the camp out didn't go exactly as planned but she loved it anyway. Thanks Matt for being such a cute dad who loves to do fun things with your little buddy.

Jackson's big day

It started at 6:00 this morning with mom rudely waking him from a peaceful night's sleep. We were the first case of the day which was wonderful. If we have to withhold food from Jackson, it's best to do it first thing in the morning. But eventually he did remember that he hadn't been fed and was still a little sleepy. Overall, he was great. We got him dressed in his little gown, had our visits with the doctor, nurse, and anesthesiologist and off he went! By the way, the anesthesiologist was so cute with Jackson. The nurse told us that he is great with kids and loves to hold them until they are asleep. That made me feel so much better. He was in very good hands. I know ear tubes aren't that big of a deal and I am very grateful that that's all we were there for but I was still anxious. 15 minutes later, Dr. Meads was back to tell us it was all done and Jackson did great.

The little boy that they brought back to us was NOT a happy one, however. I'm glad we had been warned of this. It's understandable that the anesthesia would make him feel all out of sorts. He was so sad! Inconsolable for quite a while but eventually he settled down at home and was able to have a nice nap and then some food!

We've got another antibiotic to give him for 10 days and some ear drops but I'm hopeful that once that is all done, our sweet happy boy will be back to normal! I'd love him either way but he is made to smile. It makes my heart happy to see him happy. Love this boy!

A HUGE thank you to Grandma McCann for getting up at crack of dawn to be at our house when Eliza woke up, which also happened to be at the crack of dawn. Sorry about that...

Here's some pictures of our adventure.

This is after the surgery. Look at that sad face! Poor little guy.

This is a few hours later. Happy boy again!

Dad's work

On Saturday, Eliza got to see where exactly dad goes every morning. It was ALL she could talk about on Friday and she hasn't stopped talking about it since. Hey, anytime Matt wants to take her to work, it's fine by me! Some of the highlights were - riding up in the "alligator" (elevator), finding the balloons with candy bowls attached, sitting in dad's chair, spinning the wheel to win a prize, the echo in the underground parking lot, lunch afterwards with dad at the food court. She's pretty easy to please.

I can't figure out how to make the picture not look like that. It's off of Matt's phone. We were doing pretty good to get it uploaded to the computer at all. :)

The big 3-1

Happy birthday to Matt!

Thank you to grandma for watching the kiddos for a couple of hours. I've forgotten how nice it is to go out to eat without children.

Matt is such a wonderful dad. Eliza and Jackson miss him when he's at work during the day and Matt never disappoints when he gets home. There's always lots of hugging, kissing, tickling, squealing, and giggling. Those are the best sounds in the world!

Love you!

Swimming

Good news for the kids, bad news for the grown-ups...it's swimsuit season. We took the kids to the Kearns rec center on Saturday for a swim. They loved it and Matt and I actually had a pretty good time, too. I don't think Jackson's legs stopped kicking the whole time! Eliza was such a big girl and went down the slide all by herself. But only once. :) Oh, and she decided she wanted to wear last year's swimming suit right before we left so that's why it's different in the pictures.

Jackson update

A week ago I took Jackson back into the doctor and guess what? His ears were both infected again. Or still infected...I'm not sure which. I know, it's a shocker. So our doctor said to go ahead and make an appointment with an ENT to look at getting tubes. He also prescribed another antibiotic (that's five, if you're keeping track) in a last ditch effort to get the infection cleared up before the procedure. The pharmacy didn't even have Erythromycin in stock (is that a bad sign?) so we didn't get him started on it until Monday. It's not so fun. Tuesday we were able to get Jackson in with an ENT who looked at his ears and said neither was infected but there was some fluid in both. They tested his hearing and since that was not being affected at all, he recommended holding off on ear tubes since it seemed like this antibiotic was working. I'm glad that he wasn't all gung-ho about doing the surgery but I have a feeling that as soon as this antibiotic is done, we'll be right back where we started in March. Dr. Hunter (the ENT) wants to see us back in two months for a follow-up but I can pretty much guarantee that we'll never make it that long without another infection. I'm hoping for the best but as our pediatrician said, "the writing may be on the wall." We're hoping that if Jackson's ears get bad again. we will be able to get the procedure scheduled as soon as possible. Dr. Hunter told us he'll be gone for two weeks in June at Scout Camp (ick) so knowing our luck, it will happen then and we'll have to wait.

The part that makes me feel the worst is that I think Jackson has just gotten used to his ears hurting. He actually sleeps pretty well at night and isn't as grumpy as I would expect. Poor thing. I'm sorry buster, hang in there and we'll get those sweet ears figured out soon, I promise!