Sometimes you're so excited to see grandma that you forget to put your pants on

We're sitting at the airport ready to head to Idaho for Christmas. It took us a total of 10 minutes to check 4 bags, get boarding passes, and get through security with a toddler, a sleeping baby, a car seat, and 3 carry-on bags... AMAZING. So now we've got some time to kill and I have a great story to brighten your morning.

This morning, Jackson wakes up at 6am. The first thing he says is "I am so excited to see Grandma Hawkins and Grandma Trish!" So I tell him to get dressed, which is usually a 30 minute process with a lot of arguing. About 30 seconds later, I hear him call out, "Mom, I'm ready!" So I go in his room to find him wearing nothing but his Buzz Lightyear underwear and his socks and shoes on the wrong feet. I laugh and say, "Jackson, you're shoes are on the wrong feet, and I think you forgot your pants and your shirt." He looks down, looks a little embarrassed, and says "Oops. I better put them on."

So far things are going very smooth. I'm going to go back to enjoying my Qdoba Breakfast Burrito, which is really the only reason we do morning flights :) Merry Christmas everyone. Wish us luck with our 3 month old on our flight. See you soon!

Stockings... Just In Time

A few weeks ago, as I was decorating for Christmas, I realized we didn't have a stocking for Fisher. Then I looked at our sad little stockings (Tyler and I had matching $1 Walmart stockings with glittery swirls that I had stitched our names into. Jackson had a $3 blue velvet stocking which was purchased years later.) They were cheapy and ugly.

So my grandma makes the most amazing stockings. She made them for all of us grandkids, and I have always wanted to try to replicate them for my family. But with no sewing machine, I had to do a simplified version. We bought pre-made stockings, but we got the good kind this time. They were thick and soft, and we might have purchased six of them... just in case.

So it took a few weeks and a lot of stress, but I finally finished them yesterday, just in time too, since Santa arrived early this year and brought us presents last night. Today is Seattle Christmas, by the way (the holiday we celebrate BEFORE we travel to Idaho for Christmas, because we don't want to have to haul everything there and then haul it all back again). Merry Seattle Christmas!

I wasn't planning to have these done in time for Seattle Christmas, so yesterday when I realized I could finish them, I had exactly 60 minutes (during Jackson's preschool) to jog to Safeway with the stroller, purchase stocking stuffers, jog back home, wrap the stocking stuffers, and hide them. This Santa deal is a lot of work. And Santa is obviously not getting enough sleep these days, because he accidentally put all of Jackson's presents in Fisher's stocking. Whooops.

Here they are. I basically love them. Thanks to my Grandma Romney for inspiring these awesome stockings, although mine will never look as great as hers do.

 I wanted me and Tyler's to match, since my Grandma made my Mom & Dad matching stockings and I always thought that was so cute.

And I love the little animals I found for the boys' stockings. Look at the awesome little hats. I ordered these animals special from Amazon, then found the exact same animals right across the street at Safeway a few days later. Go figure. Sometimes Safeway has the most random, awesome things. Example? Fisher's banana costume also came from the Safeway across the street. I love our Safeway. I'm in there at least twice a week, usually more. The cashiers all know me by name. One of them even laughed at me when I tried to show him my driver's liscense to go with a check. "Oh Ms. Boyd. You don't need ID here. We see you daily." Random tanget...

 

Now for a few other projects we made this season that I never got around to blogging about.

Oreo turkeys from Our Best Bites.



Halloween bouquet made for our Relief Society Service Auction, inspired by the chocolate-dipped oreo bats from Our Best Bites.

They sounded like they would be a bit too rich for me, but they aren't
Chocolate-dipped oreos = delicious

Halloween 2011

I'm finally getting around to posting Halloween pictures, just in time for Thanksgiving.

Jackson getting ready for costume day at preschool

Playing with leftover dry ice after my work Halloween party

Our pumpkins. Tyler did Darth Vader. I did the lazy fake version of Spider Man. Jackson was Iron Man. And Fisher's was a simple fish, because at that point we were sick of carving pumpkins.

Gorilla and banana... loved it

Super heroes. I got criticized by several different people for saying that our costumes "go together" because Superman is DC Comics and Iron Man is Marvel. I also had an 8-year-old kid at my work Halloween party say to me, "Is that your costume? That's it? Seriously?"

Not a single one of us managed a normal facial expression for this picture... whoops.

Halloween in the Hospital

We spent Halloween night (and the two days that followed) in the hospital. It was a long couple of days, but we survived and Fisher is doing great. Because Jackson was under 10 years old and Fisher was considered in "isolation", Jackson wasn't allowed to visit at all. Which meant that while Tyler was at school all day and I was in the hospital with Fisher, Jackson had to bounce around from neighbor to neighbor for two days. We really appreciated all the support and help we received with babysitting, dinners, and prayers. We have amazing friends.

(All of the pictures in this post are after we got home from the hospital. We took a few pictures in the hospital, but they are sad and they're all on my phone and I can't figure out how to get them onto the computer.)

The night we brought Fisher home. Everyone was so excited to be together as a family again.

Around 3pm on Halloween we were working on dinner and preparing for an evening of intramural football and trick-or-treating. Fisher woke up from his afternoon nap crying, which is weird because he usually wakes up pretty happy. I tried to feed him and he wouldn't eat. He just kept crying. He felt a little warm but had been fine earlier in the day. I decided to take his temperature. It was 100.5. Our doctor told us 100.4 was the cut off for a newborn needing to see the doctor. He calmed down and ate a little so I was really hesitant to call the doctor's office because I didn't want to have to go in for nothing. After an hour we checked his temp again and it was 100.7. I decided to call since the office would be closing for the day soon and I wanted to know what to do if his temp continued going up. The nurse instructed us to take him to the hospital ER immediately and that she would let them know we were coming. I might be a terrible mom, but I kind of questioned this a bit and told the nurse he seemed like he was fine. She double-checked with the attending doctor and said that because he was only 6 weeks, he needed to go right to the hospital.

Fisher was so excited to be back home. I think he was mostly happy to be back in comfy clothing. He wasn't a fan of wearing nothing but a diaper and a big sock on his arm to cover up the IV.

Tyler offered to take him. He knows more about medical stuff, so I thought that sounded like a good idea. I sent Fisher and Daddy off with a bottle and started getting Jackson ready for trick-or-treating. Tyler called an hour later saying they were doing a spinal tap and Fisher would likely need to stay overnight. Jackson went to a neighbor's house and I headed to the hospital. The spinal tap was sad to watch, but Fisher did amazing. He actually fell asleep during it. The initial results came back a few hours later and the protein levels were abnormally high, so they said he would need to stay for 2 days on an IV with antibiotics and anti-viral medications.

Jackson was pretty excited to have his brother home.

 His fever eventually got as high as 102.3. So the next two days were filled with lots of tests, medication, even a cranial ultrasound, and lots of waiting for the cultures from the spinal tap. It was a long couple of days but the staff was amazing and Fisher was very well cared for. I stayed with him the whole time except for a few hours here and there when Tyler relieved me and I went home for a break with Jackson.

This is the beautiful blanket that Fisher was given when we were admitted. They have volunteers that make these blankets for all the babies who come to the hospital.

 Finally, on Wednesday night around 9pm as we were settling in for another long night, our nurse announced with a big grin, "Do you want to go home tonight?" He told me that all the tests were negative and since Fisher was eating well and his fever was gone, we could go home and just watch him closely there. I was thrilled. I called Tyler, who picked us up about 5 minutes later since we live right down the street from the Children's Hospital.

More of the beautiful blanket

So we survived and Fisher is fine. It was just a random fever and he's been doing great ever since. We are grateful to the staff at Children's Hospital who took such good care of us and to all of our friends that helped us out so much.

Loving Target

Target had thermal pajamas on sale from $5, sizes ranging from 6 months to 5T. Their first matching pajamas. I was way too excited!

This was my favorite. Jackson said "Let me see if they fit" and then he laid down like this. Hilarious.

Blessings & Engagements

We had a great weekend. Tyler's parents, brother Alex, and soon-to-be sister-in-law CassieAnn came to Seattle to meet Fisher. We had a great weekend including Pike's Place Market, the Pier 57 Arcade, an awesome indoor swimming park, game nights, and lots of great food. This weekend was also Fisher's baby blessing. It was great to have some of our family here for that.



It was pretty cold outside, so our attempt at a quick family picture didn't go that well.

Stretching



A classic Fisher facial expression. He's started to be a little nervous when Jackson is nearby.

shooting Spiderman webs



I loved his handsome little white onesie for the blessing.



Silly blogger keeps uploading this picture wrong. Anyone know how to fix this? Lots of these pictures were originally sideways. I turned them all, saved them like that, and for some reason, only this one keeps uploading sideways.

To make the weekend even more exciting, Tyler's brother, Alex, proposed to his girlfriend. We were in charge of secretly capturing the whole thing in pictures. It was night time and we were really far away, so the pictures didn't really turn out, but we got a some good ones afterwards.

A picture of the actual proposal. The 3 of us were crouched down behind a chain link fence watching. We weren't very good at being secretive. We set off the car alarm 3 times while we were all lying on the floor in the car trying to hide when they arrived at the park. CassieAnn swears she didn't know it was us, but I'd say we kind of failed.

The happy couple. Aren't they adorable? I have to admit that I teared up a little watching the proposal.

Re-enacting the proposal for the sake of a decent photograph

Thanks to the Boyds (and future Boyd) for driving all the way to Seattle to see us. We were really glad to have family here for our special weekend. And CassieAnn even put up with sharing a bunkbed with Jackson all weekend, so she's definately a keeper :)

4 weeks

My little baby is 4 weeks today, and what a fabulous 4 weeks it's been. He's growing too fast, but I guess everyone says that. Seriously though, I can't believe how big he is getting and how fast it's happening. I think I'd be willing to continue waking up in the middle of the night if he would stay a tiny newborn a little longer. I'm already feeling like I'm going to miss this phase when it ends.

My mom stayed with us for a week cooking, cleaning, and entertaining Jackson. It was great to have her help. We miss her a lot.

Jackson is an amazing big brother. I can't believe how sweet he is with Fisher. 

Sleeping...

sleeping...

and more sleeping.

Raising an eyebrow... so cute

Rainy Days

These rainy days are killing us. I love Seattle rain, but 3 year-old Jackson is even more energetic than he was as a 2 year-old last fall/winter, and I'm having a hard time keeping him entertained. Not to mention the 8 lb little bundle of joy that has to eat every 3 hours. I'm not a public breastfeeder. I don't think I ever will be. I'm not discrete enough and I'm not bold enough. So we've been a little homebound, enjoying only brief outings to parks/playgrounds/grocery stores when the rain lets up for a few minutes.

So on a particularly rainy day, we decided we needed a fresh batch of play dough, which Jackson enjoyed helping me make and then played with for hours. Look at that concentration.

We made our last batch about 6 months ago and Jackson's favorite shape to make at that time was a snowball. This time around, he is much more advanced. He informed me that he was making a snowman but he was having a hard time with the nose. I was pleasantly surprised when I examined his work.

School

Jackson started a preschool program yesterday. He looked so stinkin' cute with his backpack that I made him take a few pictures before we left. Fisher seems fairly unimpressed.

I asked Jackson what he learned. He said "Nothing, not letters or anything." Hmm... that's a normal response, right? I asked him who he played with and he said, "Nobody. Well, this one kid. His name was James or something." I love the casual tone he uses when he responds to questions like this. He's just hilarious.

Next Wednesday I am the classroom helper for his class. I'm excited to go see a little more what it's like.

Test Results & Smiles

Fisher had a follow-up hearing screening today. He had already failed the screening twice, and honestly, I was nervous. The first week he was pretty obviously not responding to any noises. Tyler made a few comments about how he'd be happy to learn sign language, which I'm sure were meant to comfort me, but I had a hard time worrying that my baby couldn't hear my voice. The past few days we thought he was responding to noises more, but I didn't want to get my hopes up in case it was just coincindence. But today he had another test at the audiology clinic and finally passed. I was relieved. I enjoyed talking to my sweet baby all day today and was very comforted to know that he could hear me.

We also got Tyler's test results back for the dental boards. He passed. He didn't just pass. He aced them. I'm allowed to say that since it wasn't me who took them, right? We're very proud of him and very relieved to have that all behind us.

And here is a cute little picture, because every post needs one. Look at that chubby smile and his relaxed little pose. What a stud.