Stop Talking, Mom

Grace is growing up at an alarming rate!

She says more complex things everyday.

She definitely listens to and usually repeats EVERYTHING we say.

We are for sure past having conversations in front of her that we don't want her knowing what we're talking about, cause she understands so much.

She's kind of hilarious though.

I love seeing how different she is from other kids.

Many times 2 year olds can be pretty flighty and not care about adult things.  Most 2 year olds will just go play by themselves or won't want to be in on what is happening with adult conversations.

Not Grace.

She is ALLLLL about knowing exactly what is what.

She wants to be in on everything.

She's SO observant,  it's crazy.

She definitely gets that from Jeff.

A month or so ago she started telling us "STOP TALKING!"

Jeff and I laughed whenever she'd say that,  but we were also kinda like what the heck,  Grace?

Why is she saying that?

This demand for us to stop talking slowly evolved and one day I told Jeff: "I think she tells us to stop talking,  because she can't keep up with our adult conversation,  and she wants to know what we're saying."

As time went on it became more obvious that this was the case.

We'd be eating dinner together and Jeff and I would be jabbering about who knows what to each other.  Grace would randomly interrupt us and say: "Talk....Paw Patrol,  Mommy...."

Me: "You want to talk about Paw Patrol?"

Grace: "Yeah,  please,  Mommy."

She does this all the time now.  If we are having a conversation that's going over her head she'll ask to talk about Paw Patrol.

Hahaha, it's actually really cute.

She just doesn't want to be left out.

Last night we all went to the school by our house to play on the playground (quite the endeavor right now with a newborn on oxygen).

As we were walking home,  I was pushing Hunter in one stroller and Jeff was pushing Grace in another.

Apparently Jeff and I are really good at talking because we started doing it again.....we started talking about something Grace didn't understand.

In the sweetest little voice,  all of a sudden,  we heard Grace say: "What are you talking bout, Mommy?"

Again she wanted in on our conversation.

I explained that we were talking about Hunter and his upcoming doctors appointments.

That little girl.  Oh man,  she melts my heart.

I love the look on her face when she's concentrating really hard and is learning new things.

She loves learning.

That's pretty evident though by her want of knowing what is being said at all times.

So we've been talking about Paw Patrol a lot lately,  but I don't mind.  It makes her happy,  which makes me happy.

The other day when we were discussing Paw Patrol (it gets pretty deep sometimes....) I started asking her if she knew which ones were the girl dogs.

And she did!

I started asking boy or girl with the Paw Patrol characters and she got all of them right.

I then moved on to family members and she got all of those right too! Well,  minus one uncle who she said girl, which made Jeff and I laugh really hard.

She surprises me all the time knowing concepts that I think she shouldn't know yet.

Love this sweet girl!

Wait

Looking at my sweet babies is making me emotional today.

Yeah,  I know I'm still in the newly post partum part of all this still,  so I'm sure my hormones are all over the place.....

But today I started thinking about 4 years ago.

4 years ago I was diagnosed with polycystic ovarian syndrome, which pretty much means I have chronic cysts and that usually makes it hard to get pregnant.

After I was diagnosed it took us a year to get pregnant with Grace.

Honestly, a year of infertility is nothing compared to what many struggle with.

For us,  and especially for me, though,  it was an eternity.

I cried so much during that year.

People would unknowingly say things about the supposed babies that they thought I should already have and I'd just grimace to their face, but secretly be angry and sad.

Looking back I think this song sums up how I feel about that year....

 https://youtu.be/xyX-I-um5Kk

I'll post the lyrics too, if you don't want to watch/listen to it:

"I had it all mapped out in front of me,
Knew just where I wanted to go.
But life decided to change my plans
And I found a mountain in the middle of my road.
I knew there was no way to move it,
So I searched for a way around
Broken hearted I started climbing
And at the top I found.
Every fear,  every doubt,  all the pain I went through
Was the price that I paid to see this view
And now that I'm here, I would never change
The grace that I feel and the faith that I find
Through the bitter sweet tears and the sleepless nights
I used to pray He'd take it all away,
But instead it became
A beautiful heart break.

I never dreamed my heart would make it
And I thought about turning around
But heaven has shown me miracles
I never would have seen from the ground
Now I take the rain with the sunshine
Cause there's one thing that I know
He picks up the pieces along each broken road.
Every fear,  every doubt,  all the pain I went through
Was the price that I paid to see this view
And now that I'm here, I would never change
The grace that I feel and the faith that I find
Through the bitter sweet tears and the sleepless nights
I used to pray He'd take it all away
But instead it became
A beautiful heart break."

You never know how great the blessing is going to be until you're on the other end of things.

And much like that song says, I would never change how I got here.

Through all the events that have happened and all we've gone through,  I can see why our babies needed to come when they did.

And man,  are they cute!

They were worth the wait.

Hunter's Birth and NICU Story

We have a baby!!

Well, actually we have two babies now, but as of last week we have a brand new tiny baby!

Last Thursday, August 11th I woke up early in the morning feeling really sick. I was 36 weeks, 6 days pregnant, so we'll just cheat and say I was 37 weeks.

I wasn't going to be induced for two more weeks, but waking up that morning I just knew I would have my baby that day.

I felt super nauseous and was having contractions about every ten minutes.

I tried to play it off like it was nothing, because I had been having contractions (nothing regular or close together though) for a couple months at that point. I tried really hard to tell myself it was nothing, so I let Jeff go to work and told him I'd let him know if anything changed.

Well, I guess I should have known better than to let him go, because I ended up throwing up several times that morning.

Side note: I NEVER throw up.

Morning sickness......

Not a thing for me.

Get the flu.....

Nothin.

I never throw up.

Seriously never!

Ha ha ha ha.

So throwing up all morning turned into me calling my OB's office and they told me I needed to go to labor and delivery.

Lucky us (not), Jeff was doing an audit down in West Valley (45 minutes away, ha ha) that day, so we called my mom and she came and rescued me and Grace.

My mom, Grace, and I went up to the hospital and got all checked in.

It wasn't even a question of if I should stay at that point....the nurses checked me and I was still dilated to a 4 (I had been dilated to a 4 for a couple weeks), plus my contractions were closer to 5 minutes apart.

I was staying.....I was going to have a baby!

Pre birth pic, yay for epidurals!

Jeff came home from work and by the time he got to the hospital I had gotten my epidural and was hooked up to all the lovely things they hook you up to in labor and delivery.

I was group B strep positive (look it up if you don't know what that means, ha ha) so I had to have 4 hours of antibiotics pumped through me before baby could be born.

I guess I was never meant to be a natural birth kind of person.

Cause if they wouldn't have given me the epidural and slowed down my labor to get those antibiotics through me, I'm sure I would have had him A LOT quicker!

Since we had to wait for several hours though, we knew he'd be born more in the evening.

If I've re-learned anything over the past week since Hunter was born it's that we have the most amazing and willing family.

Seriously, we would not have been able to do what we had to do this past week without our moms, Jeff's sisters, and our sister-in-law. We have a really good family!

AND....I need to mention, that I'm SO grateful that Grace feels so comfortable with all of these family members. It gives me so much peace of mind that she feels comfortable being taken care of by all of her aunts, and actually that she really just adores all of them too. If we ever say she's going to be watched by any of them she'll happily say "Okay!!" and then usually will start listing off their children's names that she'll get to play with, ha ha.

So Jeff's mom came and took Grace to one of his sisters and after that it was pretty much just a waiting game till we were clear from the antibiotics.

It was kind of nice that the Olympics were happening, cause we could just sit and watch those all day! Ha ha

Around 4:00 in the afternoon they started pitocin and a little after that they broke my water.

Once all of that happened I was on the verge of being dilated to a 5....but I quickly jumped up to 10!

I was pretty determined not to over do my epidural medication, because I knew if I could feel a little bit of what was going on I'd be able to push him out easier and faster.

As I progressed I started feeling lots and lots of pressure. Towards the end I was in quite a bit of pain.

I'm sure my epidural was still working to some extent....but I definitely felt a lot more pain than if I would have kept it running at full and total numbness.

I felt a huge urge to push every time I had a contraction. I was almost afraid the doctors wouldn't get there fast enough before I just couldn't help but push him out, ha ha. They got all set up pretty fast though and before I knew it I was having my baby!

It only took three contractions of pushing and he was out!

The main thing I was concerned about was that I wanted him to cry when he was born. Grace didn't cry for the first half hour of her life (super scary experience), so I just hoped and hoped that he would. I wanted that "normal" kind of birth where the baby comes out and cries and gets laid on the mom. I didn't get that with Grace and it has always made me sad.

At 8:06 PM Hunter Jeffrey was born and he cried!!

Hooray!! We were so happy to hear that cry!

Newborn cries are the cutest.

They wiped him off while he was on my chest and then we were able to do skin to skin for a little bit.

That was a dream come true for me. To have that sweet little baby on me and know he was okay and he was safe in my arms. I'll always remember and cherish those moments.

One of the first things I thought of right after he was born was "oh my gosh, he's SO little!"

Fighting diabetes hard for 9 months of pregnancy and keeping that boy healthy was such a draining thing.

I mean.....I guess I fight diabetes even when I'm not pregnant.....but when you have a sweet little soul growing inside you, I think it ups the motivation to maintain good control by a million fold.

One of my biggest fears was that he'd end up huge or unhealthy/suffer from any complications that can happen from my diabetes. So when he came out so small it was kind of shocking!

He was 5 pounds 8 ounces and 18 inches long when he was born. Such a tiny little baby!

After we did skin to skin and they took him over to weigh/measure him they started to realize that he was having a hard time breathing.

Deja vu started to sink in!

They wanted to take him to the transitional nursery to check him out and decide what to do with him.

We had already experienced that with Grace, so we were like.....okay....it won't be that bad, see you in a little bit baby!

We got moved to post partum and were told to wait to hear what they were going to do with Hunter.

Three or so hours went by and we kept not hearing anything. Our nurse was finally like....okay, how about we just walk down there and see what's going on?

As we rounded the corner going into the transitional nursery we could see the NICU doctor in full on surgical scrubs using instruments on our baby that was covered with surgery blankets on a little bed.

We were like.....WHAT IN THE WORLD!?

The doctor was putting an IV type thing in Hunter's umbilical chord. It ran all the way up to his heart. It was mostly used to draw blood and things like that. We had no idea about any of this though, so we were pretty concerned.

After they explained about a million things that mostly went over my head it was determined that Hunter needed to be in the NICU.

The biggest thing was his breathing problem. He had to be on a ventilator for several days and slowly got weaned off of it so he could learn how to breathe on his own.

Another issue was they were worried he had an infection.

They ended up telling us that they think that's why I went into labor and had him early was because he had an infection and both of our bodies decided he needed to get out of there!

Aren't our bodies just amazing things? To just naturally go through that process?

So that night we ended up going back to our hospital room without our baby. :(

It's really hard having absolutely no control over your own baby -- having no say in what's happening. Even though obviously the medical professionals know what is best in that situation, whereas I have no clue...it's still really hard.

The next morning we were told that he was doing way better than they thought he would do. His risk for infection was gone and they were just giving him lots of fluids and antibiotics in an IV that they stuck in his head.

Oh my goodness....I hated that thing. It looked SO sad!!

The next couple of days were the saddest. He had two IVs, his oxygen in his nose, a feeding tube, all of his wires to measure his vitals, bandaids all over to cover pricks and pokes they had to do, tags with his name and my name on his little ankles....

He had a lot going on.

 He has this look on his face a lot. He opens his little left eye a tiny bit while the right stays closed.

 Sweet baby

 Baby toes!

 His horrible IV got moved from the front of his head to the side! Still looked so sad. :( 

Grace came and met him on Friday, the day after he was born.

Jeff's mom brought her up to the hospital and it was the SWEETEST thing of my whole life when she saw me and Jeff.

We were walking down to the NICU from our hospital room and Grace was waiting at the entrance with Jeff's mom. I yelled down to Grace from a ways down the hall and when she saw it was us she started full on sprinting as fast as her two year old legs could go to us.

That little scene will forever be a special memory for me.

She was SO happy to see us. I could tell she knew a lot was changing and a lot of new things were about to happen.

She ran up to me and fell into my arms. She put her head on my shoulder and didn't want me to put her down.

I love that sweet girl. It's amazing how special of a bond we have. She's my best friend.

I've had quite a bit of guilt this week as we've been gone up at the NICU so much. Grace has definitely had a hard time and we've all cried over it multiple times. She's tried to be really understanding, especially for a two year old, but it's just been hard on all of us.

I was worried that she'd have a hard time when we took her in to see Hunter for the first time, because he was hooked up to so many things, but honestly, I don't think she even noticed any of it. She focused solely on the baby.

We took her in to the room at the NICU and I think that was the most overwhelming part for her. She said her classic escape phrase "I go this way!!", asking us to take her out, but we tried to keep her calm and we took her over to his bed.

At this point we weren't able to hold him, because of the IV that was in his umbilical chord. Because it was threaded up to his heart it was extremely sensitive and if it was messed up at all it could have made him bleed a lot and fast.

So that day Grace, along with the rest of us, just got to look at him in his little box.

She got excited and thought he was really cute. She squealed and giggled a couple times which was super adorable.

The next day she came back up and was able to see him out of the box! She got pretty shy and didn't really know what to do. She mostly just tried to play with all of the buttons and chords everywhere, ha ha ha. We finally got her to come over to the baby though, and tickle his feet. She thought that was super funny. She loved looking at his little fingers and toes.

Over the next couple of days he continued to get better. He slowly started losing chords and monitors and as you can see from those pictures, we got to hold him after that IV came out of his umbilical chord.

First outfit/onesie!

He was finally able to attempt breastfeeding on Sunday, when he was 3 days old.

Overall, he's actually done really well with breastfeeding, considering his not so great start at everything else!

He's tongue tied, which one nurse discovered not too long into our feeding journey.

Grace was also tongue tied, but we didn't figure that out till she was 2 months old and after we suffered through 2 months of not being able to feed her like we wanted to.

So in some ways the NICU was maybe a blessing for us?

I got tons and tons of help on feeding and was able to talk to several lactation specialists, many nurses who helped, and nurse practitioners who had professional opinions on things.

Tender mercies.

I think it's possible to find the good in everything that happens.

When it's all said and done, I guess Jeff and I just make tongue tied babies who don't like to breathe.

Ha ha ha ha....

Oh man....they are worth it though. Every little bit worth it!

By Monday he was completely done having IVs and from then on we were just working on getting him to eat well and turning down his oxygen a little at a time.

So many monitors!

My view for days and days. This was when he was moved to an open crib. The first several days he was in the sad little box.

He also had a little episode of jaundice, but that's pretty typical in situations like this. I felt bad he had to have his little glasses on his eyes! Poor baby!

So Monday through Friday I was up at the hospital, pretty much constantly because I was determined to do everything I could to get him out of there, which pretty much meant I was feeding him all the time.

I truly think doing skin to skin and me holding him helped him SO much.

Whenever I would hold him his oxygen needs went down significantly. I honestly think he got out of there faster because I was there so much.

One of the nights I was there I had been in the room with him for several hours, but I was going to take a break to go get some dinner. The receptionist ladies were telling me goodbye and I kind of laughed and said "Oh, I'm actually coming back in an hour!"

One of the ladies looked at me and said pretty seriously "Make sure to take time for yourself."

When she said that I thought it was sweet....and I knew it was true, I needed to make sure I was okay.

Honestly, it was one of the hardest weeks of my life.

Being SO out of control of everything going on, was really difficult.

Going back and forth between the hospital and home, feeling bad about leaving Grace, and just overall being sad that my baby had to have such special care was all really hard.

We made it through though, and he was able to come home yesterday on Friday!

 Dressed to go home!

Ready!

He's on oxygen still, but it's a very low flow. He's barely needing the tiniest bit, so I'm thinking it won't last long.

It was a little nerve wracking bringing him home on the oxygen. They gave us a little pulse machine to measure his oxygen and heart rate, also.

We boarded with him in a room by ourselves the night before we brought him home just to see if we'd be okay taking him home like that. That was a stressful night! Jeff didn't sleep at all. I only slept because I was too exhausted not to. Whenever the alarm would go off on the pulse machine we'd get stressed out. We kind of know now that it's a little touchy and it's okay to go off every now and then.

So he's official home and has a lot of baggage with him! He can't be moved around very much, because of his oxygen chords.

He was eight days old when we brought him home and is still SO tiny.

When we got home Grace had a little bit of a hard time, but I don't think that really had a lot to do with him. I think it had everything to do with mine and Jeff's lack of attention ever since Hunter was born.

She cried for a bit and just wanted us to hold her.

She eventually warmed up to what was going on and went and sat by him while he was in his carseat.

She's been doing a lot better ever since.

She thinks he's really fun and loves just watching him. She likes to sit with me when I hold him. She'll bring him all of his toys and just set them next to him, ha ha.

If he ever makes a noise (which he rarely does....he's a very content baby) she'll smile so big and run over to see what's happening.

It's definitely been a whirl wind, but we are home!

Seriously, that's all that matters to me right now.

My stress levels have gone from sky high to almost nothing since we carried him through the door.

I am so happy he's here, safe with us.

And like I said, so far he's a rockstar baby. He eats really well for a newborn, and I know he'll just get better and better. He sleeps all the time, like most any new baby. He smiles all the time (I know....probably not TRUE smiling yet... :) ) and makes the sweetest noises. His little squeals and grunts are adorable.

We really really love him!

The next little while is going to be really interesting.

Since he was in the NICU and was born early we have to be a lot more strict with him than we ever were with Grace.

We were told not to take him places for about 3 months.

My heart kind of sank when they told us that.

I'm the kind of mom that loves going places. I love taking Grace places and giving her lots of experiences.

That's not going to be how it is for a while though. Cause really....3 months will put us into November, then after that it's cold and flu season. So we may be on lock down till the spring!

I want what's best for Hunter though. I'm sure we'll still get out and do things. I don't think we'll be completely isolated, it'll just be a lot more than ever before.

I should also mention, that my blood sugar has done amazing through all of this. Stress can raise blood sugar levels very easily, but overall my blood has been top notch! It was excellent through all of labor and delivery too. It stayed right between 90 and 120 the whole time!

This is from the other day, which is kind of amazing cause I was so worried and stressed out!

Jeff has been so supportive and nice through all of this. I think he's worried about me just as much as he's worried about Hunter, which is saying a lot. He's been the cutest dad with him. I can already tell they'll be best buddies! 

I don't know what I'd do without his support. I think I'd be a complete basket case! He's definitely my better half and always will be. He makes hard situations easier. 

Heart eyes!

I sincerely know that I have a Father in Heaven who has looked out for me through all of this.

We are so blessed to have this precious little baby in our family. The miracle of life and birth is amazing to me! I know without a doubt that God lives and is caring for me and my family every day.

Gracie to the Goo

Grace only has 4 more weeks as an only child! Talk about craziness.

For a long time I was really nervous about introducing her to a new baby. Over the past couple weeks she's eased those worries for me a little bit. She's been excelling at all things independent and has been a lot less clingy.

I think she'll still have a hard time in some ways, but she's been so happy about everything Baby Brother lately that I think she'll also do really well.

Today we had a pretty long conversation about what we'll do with Baby Brother when he comes home. I explained that he's going to come out of my tummy and then we'll bring him home from the doctor (she doesn't understand what 'hospital' means). Her eyes got all wide and then for the rest of the afternoon she kept saying things like "Baby Brudda come home doctor, Mommy! Doctor Baby Brudda, Mommy!"

We set up Baby's corner in Mom and Dad's room last weekend, which pretty much is just the pack-n-play with the tiny bassinet and changing table connected to it. Then we also have all of his tiny clothes, nursing things, baby toys, and other miscellaneous baby things set up on our bigger changing table next to that. That's the extent of a "nursery" for him for the time being! When we buy a house I plan on setting up a cute themed nursery for him. For now a corner with his couple pieces of furniture will suffice, ha ha.

We also put the baby bouncer out in the living room.

Grace has been SOOO excited since we set up all of these things. She'll go through his toys, play with his binkies, she'll threaten to undo all of the nicely folded tiny baby clothes (but I quickly stop her....pregnant lady problems.....too tired to refold clothes....jk I NEVER like refolding clothes! Ha ha)

She's been hitting a growth spurt I think, because she is nearly out of shoes that fit her. She particularly needs new church shoes. We went out the other day to find some cute white church shoes and we ended up at Burlington. I always have to go through the baby things no matter what store I go to, and this time we ended up getting Baby a little toy.

While we were looking through the toys I gave Grace the option to pick one of two things to get him.

Lately whenever I give Grace the option between two things she'll say to me: "One, two, Mommy! I want two, MOMMY!" (So many sentences ending in "MOMMY!!") She wants both....never just one, ha ha ha. This pretty much goes for any option, even sometimes options that she doesn't necessarily like.

Speaking of "one, two" she's getting pretty good at counting. She can at least count to four no problem. I haven't really tested her on it too much. She'll get shy sometimes and doesn't like to perform, so I try not to pressure her into doing it. Today while I was counting out loud she yelled "six!" right as I said six, so I'm guessing she knows up to ten pretty well?

Back to the toy story....

We finally picked ONE to take home and she was very happy about it. She loves new toys. Later as we were showing Daddy what we bought that day when he got home from work she asked me to open the toy. I opened it and told her she could play with it as long as she put it away in Baby Brother's bed when she was done.

She gets a very concentrated look on her face when she's getting instructions and is actually listening, so I figured she'd at least try to remember to follow through on what I was saying.

I went about the rest of the night forgetting I had said that. We put her to bed and later on a couple hours after she was asleep I went into my room to find the new toy and a couple binkies sitting in Baby Brother's bed! I went and asked Jeff if he did it and he said "no, Grace remembered you asked her to, so she did!"

My mommy pride swelled at that moment.

She's such a good girl.

I know that'd be a easy thing for a mom to expect of a little bit older child....but a two year old? She amazes me all the time.

Something else cute that I wanted to document about her, is that she's been labeling emotions a lot lately.

The other day we were laying on my bed and I was letting her play with some old jewelry of mine that I had found. One of the pieces was a ring that has two birds touching beaks. I told her: "They're kissing like mommy and daddy!" She then said: "Yeah, mommy and daddy birds! Happy!" I thought it was so cute how she said they were happy. And that she came to that conclusion all on her own.

We were drawing with chalk outside today and she told me she was going to draw Daddy and that "Daddy happy, Mom." Ha ha ha ha.

I love that girl.

She pays so much attention to details.

Also while drawing chalk outside she wanted to draw a dog from the Puppy Movie (The Secret Life of Pets). I talked her through it....I'd say "Okay, draw the head." And she actually drew an oval/circle! Then I said "now do the eyes" and she did a bunch of scribbles. Same for the ears. When I said to draw the mouth, she did a straight line across the head. And the tail she also did a straight line just under the "head". I thought it was pretty good for her age and skill level! She's definitely watched me draw things a couple times.

Ta da! Totally looks like a puppy, right? Ha ha ha. She was very intentional about it, I'm sure you'd see puppy if you were actually there to witness the step by step process. :)

I'll finish this post with a couple random pictures of our life lately. I'm always in awe of what a great life we have. We have so much to be grateful for. I'm glad I can have this sweet little family and learn from them everyday.

At the cabin a couple weeks ago. Just hanging out with Baby Brother and her favorite blankie!

Playing with cousins at a reunion!

Standing on Mommy is a favorite pass time

Swimming with Daddy! Jeff's eye is looking great, huh? Ha ha. Poor guy. :(

Too Many Doctors, Too Little Time

What a crazy week and a half we've had!

Last week Jeff's brother's family were here from Virginia and Jeff took the whole week off so we could go to the cabin and just spend time together as a family.

He literally hadn't taken a single day off since he started his job in January. So all through the busy season and long hours he's been working like crazy for months, and finally took a week off now that things have slowed down in the summer.

We went up to the cabin Tuesday night and then Jeff, his brother, and our brother-in-law went golfing Wednesday morning.

That morning Grace and I woke up and went upstairs to everyone else to find out that Jeff been hit in the eye with a golfball! I immediately went and called him, but they were just getting back and Jeff came and found me. I couldn't help myself, I immediately started crying when I saw him. I didn't know what else to do.

Poor guy. :( It looked so bad! His face was SO swollen and bruising really fast.

He was in a lot of pain, which made sense later when we found out that he had 4 broken (actually shattered) bones in his face. Oh my goodness, I felt so bad.

We went to the emergency room in Heber City and it was kinda funny, cause I walked in first and they started to say "how can I help you?" when Jeff came in right behind me and they panicked saying "Oh! Okay, right this way!" Ha ha.

He went and got a CT scan and it came back to say that he had the four badly broken bones in his face. They were going to transfer him to a different hospital that day to do surgery, but the plastic surgeon at the U thought that it'd be better to wait 4-5 days for the swelling to go down before doing anything like cutting his face open, so we ended up just going to an eye doctor to make sure his vision was okay.

We are SO lucky the ball didn't hit even a centimeter different, because he very easily could have gone blind.

So for those wondering how this actually happened, like I said Jeff was golfing. He was in the golf cart about 15 feet in front of his brother, but also about 25 feet off to the side. He thought he'd be okay that far away, especially if he ducked down in the golf cart a little bit, which is what he did. His brother ended up hitting the ball exactly sideways instead of forward and it literally went right between the metal pole of the golf cart and the golf clubs sitting in the cart RIGHT where Jeff's ducked down face was!

Like seriously, it was just a huge accident that never could ever be duplicated.

Right after it happened

In the ER

Gross redness! Ha ha. The pictures don't really do it justice for how swollen it got.

Even for being in an extreme amount of pain (can you imagine having that many broken bones in such a sensitive place like your face?) Jeff's kept such a positive attitude. He's joked with his family about it and been way more positive than I think most anyone would be.

He'll always just say "well, I can't do anything to change it, so why react any other way?"

He's handled the pain and everything really well.

So we stayed the week up at the cabin and Jeff pretty much just rested with ice on his face the whole time. I told him we could go home, but he's the nicest dad and wanted Grace to be able to stay and play with cousins at the cabin, so that's what we did. He kept saying that resting at home vs. at the cabin was the same to him, so he'd rather Grace have fun.

He's such a good daddy.

On Monday we went to the U to meet with the plastic surgeon and he for sure wanted to do surgery. He even was like "This happened on Wednesday? Why didn't we do this sooner?!" ..........uh....cause you said to let the swelling go down? Ha ha ha

Jeff then had surgery on Tuesday and the doctor popped his bones back into place. He made a small incision in his hair and tubed an instrument down inside his face to pop the bones back where they needed to be.

Doesn't that just make you feel all weird inside?

Just imagining an instrument swimming behind your face.

Ew.

Ha ha ha ha ha...

Let's get that visual out of our heads.

So the rest of this week he's just been home recovering. He was hoping to go back to work yesterday, but he's still in too much pain and just overall doesn't feel good. I don't blame him one bit! He's said that the pain post surgery actually hurts more than the couple of days last week right after the bones broke.

Ugh. I feel so bad for him.

We just have the worst luck with medical things it seems like.

We can't stay away from emergency rooms for some reason!

I've never really thought of us as weird sickly people who are always running to the ER...but for some strange reason we end up there more often than a lot of people we know!

I think we've been to the ER a total of 5 times now in our marriage.

And we've only been married 5 1/2 years! Ha ha ha....

Oh man.

I guess it just makes us that much more grateful for our health when it's good.

And honestly, most of the time it's very good. We definitely take care of ourselves, especially with having a chronic illness like I do....my whole life IS taking care of myself!

Speaking of that chronic illness.....

Sometimes I seriously take for granted how much Jeff knows, understands, and takes care of my diabetes.

I'm a part of several Type 1 groups on Facebook (have I said that before? Oh yeah, like a million times, ha ha) and I see SO many differing lives of how people are living with this disease. I've seen posts before about women needing advice because their significant other could care less about their diabetes. I've seen people who are looking for help because they are recently separated from their spouse and they are afraid of what might happen if their blood sugar goes too low in the middle of the night and no one is there to help them.

I've seen lots of posts pertaining to how spouses/significant others are either very much a part of the diabetes side of people's lives....or how they aren't.

I am SO fortunate to say that Jeff is my biggest advocate.

He's my biggest supporter.

He knows almost as much about my diabetes as I do, and that's saying something!

He understands what numbers are good, which ones are bad. If I eat a certain thing what my sugar will look like in a couple hours.

Some times I call him the blood police, because he's more on top of what I need to be doing than I am, ha ha ha.

The highs and lows of my blood sugar can be just as frustrating for him as they are for me, and really that says everything about how much he cares about me. If he didn't care he would never ask me about it or check in on me.

He knows the ins and outs of Type 1 Diabetes and how demanding it is.

I'm really lucky that he cares to know so much about it. It has really helped me to stay as healthy as I am.

I've been worried that the baby will come too early, purely because that's a thing with diabetes and pregnancy and Jeff's constantly the one who is saying he doesn't think that's the case. Or he doesn't think the baby will be big because of my diabetes. He's always so calm and reassuring about it.

Lastly, I just wanted to say how much Grace loves Jeff. Whenever he's home she's always concerned about what he's doing. She has to know exactly what Daddy is up to.

This morning I had a couple doctors appointments (yes, a couple...cause going to just one would be normal, ha ha) and Jeff stayed home with Grace. When I told her he was staying home with her she got SO excited and started chanting "HIDE N SEEK DADDY! HIDE N SEEK DADDY! HIDE N SEEK DADDY!!!!"

Right before I left I found them playing in her castle tent in her room. They were laying with some pillows and Grace was blabbering some story to him as I told them goodbye.

She loves that daddy of hers. She'll hug and kiss him way more often than she will anyone else. She loves cuddling up with him to watch movies.

Whenever we see anything that remotely has to do with sports she'll happily say "Daddy play that? Daddy soccer ball? Daddy soft ball?"

I'm excited to see Jeff with our little boy! It'll be fun watching him learn everything there is to know from his daddy.

We are lucky to have a husband, father, and best friend like Jeff. I love him so much!

All Over the Place Update

I haven't done an update on us lately, and I felt like I should!

I'll first talk about Grace, cause she's just hilarious and needs to be documented.

She's talking SOOO much.

She just blabbers and rattles on about who knows what ALL the time! She's constantly talking! The other night at dinner she was telling a story that we couldn't understand and Jeff just said... "I have a feeling when those sentences become intelligible we'll never be able to get her to stop!" Ha ha ha ha ha ha. I'm thinking he's right.

She's a little parrot. She repeats everything we say! I love it, cause I know it's her way of learning.

Being with her all day, she ends most of her sentences with "Mommy?"

"I go this way, Mommy?"

"I play my room, Mommy?"

"Clean up, Mommy?"

"Daddy come home, Mommy?"

"We go Grandma's house, Mommy?"

"I go water, Mommy? I play water, MOMMY!!!"

Earlier today she completely out of the blue said: "Fireworks, Mommy?"

I said: "Yeah, did we watch fireworks the other day?"

A lot of times when she brings something up, she's referring to a memory of it. She likes talking about things that have already happened, so many times I know instead of taking it as 'oh, she wants to go see fireworks/she's asking for fireworks', I know she's actually just referring to a memory.

She then responded with: "Yeah, Grandma's house.....Grandma. And Liza. ........Liza....eyes."

It took me a minute, but I realized she was talking about how Liza was scared of the fireworks and laid on Grandma with her eyes closed! Ha ha.

I thought it was so cute how she remembered all of that.

She's a sweet girl.

She says "thank you/thanks" and "please" all the time without being prompted to now.

She'll say "thanks, Mom." to the simplest and cutest things.

The other day I was chasing her (she LOVES being chased or to play hide and seek) and if I got close to her I'd kind of tickle or poke her. One of the times I accidentally poked her a little harder than normal and she said "ow, my back!". I apologized to her and then gave her a hug and kiss. She smiled and said "thanks, Mom."

It was so cute to me that she said thanks for me apologizing, ha ha.

She's a smart girl. Just being around her for a little bit people can tell that she knows a lot!

Sometimes she's almost too smart. She's quickly turning into a manipulator, which is very common for her age....but still....it's hard!

I'm a huge believer in follow through, so a lot times Grace and I will butt heads, cause I won't give in.

I could probably write a whole long blog about follow through...........

How important it is...

How parents now-a-days don't do it near enough!

But ya know....if you read this blog regularly you already get enough of my soap box....so we'll just move on. :) Ha ha ha

Other news for our family...

We got a new car this week!!

It's soooooo nice!

Like....sometimes I feel unworthy driving it kind of nice.

We've always just had small older cars that always seem to have problems, especially mine. My old car should have died a fiery death years ago. Somehow I managed to keep it going for 7 years though! Kind of a miracle.

So to have a really nice car now is such a treat for us!

It's a 2012 Hyundai Santa Fe.

So it's not BRAND new....but seriously....4 years old......totally like new.

It's in perfect shape and is just shiny and beautiful, ha ha.

I love it.

Grace loves it too!

"I go white car, Mommy! I go new white car.....MOMMY!...I go!"

Basically she wants to go way more than ever before....and before was already enough going, ha ha.

Other life things....

We've pretty much decided to wait till after the baby is born to really seriously consider buying a house.

A couple weeks ago (maybe even a month ago? ....this summer is flying by) we put in offers on two houses. I think that makes our offer total up to 4 now? 5?

Who knows...

And neither of those worked out.

At this point if we did get an offer accepted we'd be moving in right when I'll be having the baby....and that sounds like no fun!

Especially since I'm sort of, not really, but kind of a control freak and I don't think I could handle just letting a big thing like a move be thrown into other people's hands.

Ha ha ha....

Maybe I'm dumb....but I like things the way I like them.

Speaking of having a baby....

That's going to be a thing pretty soon!

Oh my goodness......

I'm so much more stressed about all of it than I ever was with Grace.

Maybe I was just naive and uneducated with Grace and just trusted that everything would go how it was supposed to?

OR maybe I have Type 1 Diabetes now and my whole life is that much more risky?

Probably both of those things.

I'm a part of a couple type 1 and pregnancy groups on Facebook and they are WONDERFUL, huge amounts of help/reassurance/assistance, a place where I feel safe to go ask questions.....

BUT....they also cause me some grief.

I'm constantly seeing women on there who are suffering from diabetes complications during pregnancy....are delivering way sooner than anyone ever wants to....tons of little babies going to NICU's for whatever reasons....

The reality of it all is a lot to handle sometimes.

Looking at all of these women's stories and how many of them delivered their babies around 34...35 weeks. That's only a couple weeks away for me!

I think the advantages of those groups definitely out weigh the stress though. They are groups of women who actually really understand what I go through every single day. They 100% get it. There's absolutely no judgement by any of them and they are all very supportive, because they deal with the same things.

It helps me a lot to know I'm not alone in that aspect, especially when I'm having a hard diabetes day.

Like today!

Some days just weigh you down. I woke up from a horrible night of blood sugars and have had a hard time recovering from it today.

I'm usually so positive! Like 99% of the time I'm very positive and upbeat about living with this disease.

People ask me about it and I just can't bring myself to be a huge downer about it, although I have every right to be, truthfully.

It's my whole life. And it's an exhausting life!

I sincerely have the hardest time telling people about my struggles. Maybe I don't want them to feel uncomfortable or feel bad for me. Maybe I know I'm not articulate enough to really explain it all. Whatever it is....I'm the queen of telling people I'm doing good and like I said 99% of the time my positive attitude keeps me there.

So maybe I deserve to have a day every now and then to wallow in self pity? Ha ha ha.....

Especially when my blood is sooooooooooooooo dumb.

My insulin needs have been going up and up and up, which is totally normal for pregnant diabetics.

It's probably normal for pregnant anyones....but all of you normal functioning people just have bodies that tell yourselves to give you more insulin naturally.

Having to up and up and up my insulin all the time is draining. Nobody wants to feel like they have to keep giving them self more and more and more medicine just to function.

We've been cleaning out our apartment and getting everything set up for Baby Brother, as we call him. I've been washing all of his clothes today! We got all of our baby stuff out of storage last night. The past couple weeks we've been rearranging things so our changing table and pack n play can be set up next to our bed.

I think Grace is slowly understanding the whole Baby Brother thing. We talk about him all the time. She knows where he's located - Mommy's tummy. She loves going through all the baby things that will be his. She likes carrying around articles of clothing that will be his. We pray for him every night and when Grace says prayers we have her pray for him too.

"Heavly Fader, peese bess Baby Brudder"

She has the cutest voice when she prays.

Something we've been trying to do lately is family home evening.

My family never really did family home evening growing up, but I've always thought it's a really important thing to do! I finally feel like Grace is at an age where she'd actually listen to a lesson a little bit....so we started doing one once a week about a month ago.

Grace gets SO into it, it's really cute! She very intently listens when we're giving the lesson, you can tell she's trying to understand it all.

This week I did a lesson on things that make us happy and sad. I talked about how Heavenly Father wants us all to be happy and that's why we are here on this earth to learn and have joy!

We made a list of things that make us happy and sad. Grace didn't really want to offer a lot of input....she was being pretty shy about it...but at one point  Jeff said: "I know what makes Grace happy...Grandma and Grandpa!" (it's true, she does love all 6 of her grandma/grandpas) Grace immediately smiled and said: "Ajojos!?!?!?" So we put Josie on her list of what makes her happy, ha ha.

On the sad list Jeff put that Grace crying makes him sad, so now whenever anyone says the word "sad" Grace will say: "Daddy....sad Grace cry!" I think for some reason that made her happy to know that her crying makes Daddy sad, ha ha.

She's a diva, but in the cutest way. Ha ha

To end I'll post some recent pictures of us!

7 more weeks till Baby Brother's deadline! Until then I'll be at the hospital 3 or so times a week to make sure he's looking happy and healthy!

 Selfie time!

Camping with Ajojos. She really does make Grace very happy! 

 Love this guy!

Grace's birthday party was Winnie the Pooh themed per her request! I made these pom poms. They were really fun to make! 

 She was SOOOO happy about all of her presents! Our family really knows her,  cause she got toys from every show she loves! Haha :)

 I had big plans for this cake.  It ended up like this! Hahahaha. I guess that's what happens when you run out of time.  It's still cute though! And it turned everyone's mouths green and blue.....so I guess that was cool and unexpected too!

 Blowing out her candles like a pro! I can't believe she's 2!

More of my decorations,  including Piglet Punch and Tigger Tails! Almost every day since that day she's asked if she can have another Pooh Party. (This was 2 weeks ago,  haha) "I go Pooh Party, Mommy? Cake?"

 Grace got this pool from me and Jeff for her birthday and LOVES it. "I play new water toy, Mommy! New water...TOY!"

My sister is moved all the way to Washington DC now! This was the week before she left we went down to City Creek for the day. We're going to miss that girl, or as Grace would say "MY Chelsea!"