A Pinch of This, A Dash of That

Since I've gotten a little behind lately, this post will be a little hodge-podge. We'll go youngest to oldest. First, we'll start with a Brigham update:

A few weeks ago we had a consultation with a neonatologist at the hospital. The most important part of that consult was not necessarily talking with the doctor, however. We got to take a tour of the NICU. It's HUGE!! They have something like 100 beds.... On top of being huge, it's also extremely nice. Every patient (baby) has a private room. I'm really excited for this because that means while I'm "hanging out" with Brigham, I'll have some privacy and won't feel like I'm always in the way of the nurses.

Last week we met with the pediatric surgeons. Basically the few important points we got from that consult were:

-The surgery does not "fix the problem". It keeps it from getting any worse, but the real problem (what's going to keep him in the hospital for so long) is his limited lung development. Getting all the stomach and intestine back into his abdomen and patching the hole will allow his lungs room to grow and recover, with a lot of help from ventilators etc.

-Babies with diaphragmatic hernias are very very prone to "roller coaster rides". This means Brigham may appear to be doing great for a day or two at a time and then take an awful turn and seem like he's hanging by a thread, only to make another turn for the good. This is really really important to remember as I'll hopefully be updating often on his condition once he's born.

I had an appointment today, but no ultrasound, so sorry, no new pictures of the cutie. I'll have an ultrasound in two weeks and after that, my appointments will start to be weekly. He's almost here!

Next, the latest on Carrie. She's learning so fast it's crazy! I love the silly things she says. For example, she now says, "Wanna hold you..." and reaches up when she wants me to hold her. She loves waffles and calls them "faffles". She's as opinionated as ever and when I'm trying to figure out something she wants, it's not uncommon for me to hear, "no, put it back" a few times before I pick the right thing. She's learning how to do zippers (mostly on her jammies) and loves learning new words like "sock" and "pocket". This morning I was wearing fuzzy slippers around the house and when Carrie saw them she stopped, looked at the slippers, looked at me, back to the slippers.... thought for a second and then said, "kitty!" I guess the fuzziness reminded her of a kitty.... :)

We've loosely started potty training around here. Carrie has a little potty chair in the family room with a basket of books next to it. She's still totally in diapers and I'm not rushing into it or anything. A few times a day she'll sit on the potty, with or without clothes on and read a few books. For now I'm ok with her just getting used to the idea. She hasn't actually gone in the potty yet, but she's getting better at telling me right away when she needs to be changed. She's still really little, but I figured we'd take a crack at it before Brigham comes so she at least has a general idea when we really do it later.

On Saturday Carrie's friend Jake had his 2nd birthday party. We hung out for a couple hours eating cupcakes and playing in the giant bounce-house in the backyard. They had a blast!


Now on to me. There are some days when I feel so tired and uncomfortable by the time I go to bed I whine to Justin, "How much longer?" (meaning the pregnancy). Most days though, I try to remember that I'm extremely blessed with good pregnancies. I'm barely sick the first few weeks, and even that is mostly just nausea. I don't have high blood pressure, gestational diabetes, bedrest, or anything else like that that can make pregnancy miserable for some women. I'm 33 weeks along, stay at home with a 22 month old and (if I do say so myself) keep a pretty spiffy house. Of course I'm going to be tired by the end of the day!


My only real gripe is heartburn. Fortunately that's easily remedied with tums. I did give Justin quite a scare the other night because I woke up at 1am crying in pain. After a few seconds, I realized I was probably freaking him out, and hurried to explain, "It's a charlie horse in my ankle, I'm ok". After a few minutes of trying to stretch it and a few minutes of a heating pad, it relaxed and we were able to go back to sleep. It was awful though....

I finally got cold enough yesterday to turn on the heater in our house. When I woke up and it was 64 inside, I gave in and cranked up the heat all the way to 69 :) It was really nice though to open our electric bill a couple of days ago and see that it had dropped by about 150 dollars from last month (because we didn't have the air conditioner on anymore)! I love Arizona.... I didn't even touch the heater until two days before Thanksgiving.

Last night, my friends in my ward threw me a baby shower and it was awesome! As awkward as it always is to be the "guest of honor", I really enjoyed the party. My family and a few friends from high school were able to come too. The theme was "B is for boy", so everything there had to start with "B"; Bowtie pasta salad, brownies, blue cupcakes, etc. I'm so excited to dress Brigham in all the cute things I got for him! We took some pictures, but the flash was acting up and none of them turned out. If they weren't dark, they were totally blurry...

Last, by certainly not least, Justin. He's busier than ever, now that High School basketball has started this week. He's already done 3 games in the last 2 days. It's his first year as a varsity official and he's loving it! He's getting the opportunity to work with several Junior College officials and his name is getting pretty well known around the Phoenix area. He complains that he's too old because he's sore from his first few games, but I know he loves it anyways.

He's been working out on his lunch break at work for the last couple of months and is getting to be pretty buff :) He sets quite a high standard (by example) for hard work and good looks in this house. He's loving and helpful as always and is on an unprecedented good streak of loading dishes straight in to the dishwasher instead of leaving them in the sink.

On an end note, as we'll be celebrating Thanksgiving tomorrow, I think it would be more than appropriate to list a few things we're thankful for.

- Our house - Justin's job - Good friends - Bananas (Carrie's favorite) - Hobby Lobby - Fox Sports Arizona (go Suns and Coyotes!) - Two functioning cars - Playhouse Disney - Two loving families - Medical technology - The gospel (and everything amazing that comes along with it!)