And the vacation ends :(

Well, I am now back to work. I started last week on June 1st. It has felt like I haven't been off for the past 12 weeks. A lot has happened since I last blogged.
Johnny has been very colicky. At 6 weeks of age we had to purchase a swing from Kid to Kid. We have named it the "Magic Swing". We would (and still do) put him in it at night to sleep/calm him down. At 2 months of age (May 17th-ish), I took Johnny to the pediatrician for his well baby check up. He had gained 4 pounds in 1 month time. he definitely doesn't have problems with eating (takes after his mom ;) ). We had switched him to a different formula for sensitive bellies and started putting rice cereal in his bottles. The world had changed. The fussing calmed down. The spitting up has drastically calmed down. The rice cereal was then termed "Magic Cereal".
Since then, we have seen so many smiles and now cooing coming from John. We also have seen how different he is from when Catie was his age. He is tracking objects and looking everywhere, where as Cate had big troubles with it. He is loving the dragonfly attached to his carseat and the Winnie the Pooh mobile attached to the crib.
Memorial day weekend, Barrie's family came into town. Amelia, Ben and the boys came from Olympia, Washington and stayed with us. Barrie and Cathy came in from New York. We had such a fun time. We had Johnny blessed and given a name on Saturday May 29th, with a birthday BBQ for Cate after.
I can not believe Cate is 3 years old now. She has seemed, in my eyes, to have grown up so much since we brought John home. She is talking much more -still is behind a bit, but talks nonstop. She now has a white cane that the blind and visually impaired use to help him/her walk. She does a tremendous job with it. The confidence she has when she is outside in unfamiliar places with her cane is amazing. She is copying everything we do too. It is so funny. The lastest was she wanted to change John's diaper. We let her, with help of course. Barrie showed her how to unsnap his overalls between the legs along with the onsie underneith. She undid the velcro tabs on his diaper and looked inside. Her first comment was "Oooooo". She then grabbed the wipe container and pulled out a wipe. She started to wipe his genital area, stops., looks at it closer, then states "Ewwww, yuckie!!" then starts wiping it again. I was laughing so hard. I kept waiting the whole time to for John to pee on Cate. Bad thought, but for those that have been peed on by a baby boy, you know exactly why I thought that. Barrie then showed her how to put the clean diaper on.
Earlier in May, we had a placement meeting on transitioning from Early Intervention to Preschool. In the meeting, we all agreed that the best school for Cate to go to now is the Utah School for the Blind. There she will go to preschool 4 days a week for 6 hours a day - long I know, but it will be worth it. She will be going from prebraille learning to reading braille. The representative from USB said that it is their goal to have all blind/visually impaired children reading at the same rate as their sighted peers by 3rd grade, so that is learning uncontracted braille where all the words are spelled out letter by letter to contracted braille where the words are shortened down to make reading faster. We are so excited for her. Cate now loves to have us read books to her or to look/feel the pages to see what is on them. She is just so amazing.

Saturday June 5th, Barrie and I wrote down all the home improvements that we want to do with the house. That day, we conquered a bunch of them. We finished staining our fence that we put up and partially stained 3 yrs ago. We weede the flower beds in the front of the house and put fresh barch chips out. It smells so wonderful out there now. We purchased a wooden swingset for Catie so she can play in the backyard and also strengthen her legs to walk better and hopefully eventually run. We started to put it together - we are about 2/3 of the way though. We did get the swing beam up with the swings on it. Both the kids love to sit on the swings and be pushed. We need to finish the small house on top, attach the slide and put the rock wall together.

As I mentioned earlier, I am now back to work. I am still doing Ultrasounds for Utah Imaging Associates. It has been nice to be amongst adults again. I am still only part time, liking the 8-5pm hours. I get super excited though when 5pm comes, to run on over to daycare to pick up my Bug and Buddy.

I haven't had any patients this afternoon, hence all long blog. What I did figure out though, is I can copy and paste my blogs to Word and then print them out. Now I can put them in a journal, and save them. so much nicer than sitting down to write in the book. Don't get me wrong. I do like to write and I am not trying to be lazy. It seems to be much quicker and more legible to type thoughts and or events that have happened than to sit and write them out.

March/April 2010

So I have been a slacker since bringing John home from the hospital. Ok, not really slacking, just trying to stay a float with lack of sleep, house chores, and splitting my time between two little urchins.
Catie has been such a huge helper since John has been home. She is quick to grab a diaper/take it to the garbage. She loves to help feed John, though we have to tell her to be gentile. She loves to hold him the most!



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Catie and John both met the Easter bunny at the mall. Johnny wasn't so interested. Cate on the other hand was frightfully interested. She had her hands over her ears, afraid it was going to make a loud noise. She refused to sit next to him, not to mention on his lap. I had to sit in the picture and hold her hands down on her lap. We decided to take the kids' picture off to the side of the bunny where there was cute eggs and flowers. Cate still kept eying the freaky rabbit with her hands over her ears.
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Catie and I decorated eggs this year. We had so much fun. Catie did a great job.
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We had fun on Easter Sunday. Even though it snowed the night before, it melted by the afternoon to have an egg hunt in the back yard. Cate had so much fun and did a GREAT job with walking in the back yard.

Day 1 - John comes home :)

Sorry for the delay in my post. We brought John home yesterday at 12 noon. Can I tell you how nice it was to come home and for the most part stay home, especially in the evening when we would usually run to the 8pm feeding, spend an hour with him, go pick up Cate then get her home and in bed at a late hour. 2 wks of that was enough. Catie was so excited to have him home. She was constantly wanting to hold him. She loved getting his diapers and wipes when we needed them and then throwing the diapers in the "barbage". Bed time was interesting. Cate was in bed by her usual time 730pm. She fell asleep. Well, John has decided that 8-11 will be his fussy time. It was in the hospital, why not at home. Cate ended up waking up, crying because he was crying. So everyone was up until 1030/11pm. John ate until 1045, rocked with Barrie for 15 minutes and was out. Catie was up singing in her bed until after 11 sometime.
Once everyone was asleep, it was great. I set my alarm for 3, thinking Jon would wake up at 2 for his normal hospital feeding. Nope. I had to wake him up at 3. He ate and fell back to sleep. I set my alarm for 7 thinking ok, he will wake me up at 6 for his next 3 hour feeding. The alarm went off, and he was still asleep. I fell back to sleep for an hour and heard him squirming in the bassenette. Crazy. I was able to get a 4 hour and 5 hour block of sleep. It was great. Not sure how long this will last but, it was nice. Anyway, well, I must get back to my little peanuts. I will try to keep a daily update, but we shall see now that John is home and Cate is starting to get more clingy. Thanks again everyone for all your prayers and thoughts. I know for a fact that they were all heard and answered!!

AAAAHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I just talked to the NICU doctor. She said that Johnny can come home tomorrow!!!! She said he has been doing awesome off his oxygen and eating super well. Oh my goodness.... I feel like screaming I am so excited!!! I know the good night sleeps are going to be shortened to night sleeps but who cares. We will be able to get Catie back on her normal schedule without interruptions. I won't be such a hysterical freak with needing to be at the hospital to see him, and feeling like I am neglecting my Catie and Ben. Ok, so I need to calm my excitement down until tomorrow morning. Please keep John in your prayers tonight so he can have an awesome night and come home tomorrow!! Thanks so much for all your support and prayers so far. I know that Heavenly Father has heard all of them so far and has answered all of them!!

We have a count down going on

We are almost there!!!! I hope this post doesn't jinx anything. Johnny has been off oxygen for 23 hours now. We have 25 more to go before we take him home. Yeaaaaa!! He is still eating like a champ and maintaining his temperature which he has been doing all along. We are so proud of his hard work and determination. He is just like his big sister in that aspect. Prayers and fingers crossed for the next 25 hours.

Are we up or are we down?

Ok bummer of a night. So I went to feed Johnny this evening. I asked his nurse how he was doing with the oxygen. She told me that he was on 110 cc's. I asked her what happened because he was on 40 cc's this am. She kept talking in circles but never really saying anything except that that amount was the equivalent to what he was on in the level 2 NICU. I had asked her why he wasnt just put on that in the beginning. She couldnt answer me, just kept saying that was what he was on before. I am a bit pissed. Since he has been moved from level 2 to level 1 the nursing staff has seemed to become dumber and when asked questions just repeat themselves and dont answer the question. I will have to wait till the morning to talk to the neonatologist to actually have my questions answered.

Wahooooo!! Go Johnny Go Go Go!!

We got awesome new this morning. First we get a phone call at 7am from the NICU. They said they moved Johnny out of the level 2&3 NICU care into the level 1 NICU care. So awesome. Here is where little ones still need a little bit of help, but are on their way to coming home. They also dropped his oxygen amount down. It went from 200cc's from what Ben explained to me down to 40cc's - so just a little puff of air in essence. When he was in the Level 2 and 3 they had him on a mixed flow where they were constantly pumping oxygen into him to keep his lungs expanded. Now he is off that, on straight oxygen and doing great. We have been able to start breast feeding him again now that he is off the vent and doing great. He is eating like a champ. He has surpassed his birth weight. He originally lost about 5 oz- not bad for being sick. As of last night when they weighed him he is now 7# 8oz (7# 7oz at birth).
It was so nice to get good news this morning. Hopefully the crying roller coaster that I havent been able to get off of since coming home will not start up today. I have had a nap already - and going to start another one here shortly while Catie is down for one. Thank you all so much for your prayers and thoughts. They are definitely being listened to!!! You all mean so much to us!!