Fisher

My baby boy is 6 months old. He gets cuter every day. He has adorable pouty lips, the softest skin, and cute little fuzzy hair on his head, and he smells amazing. I'm enjoying my boys :)

My Big Boy and My Baby Boy

Life has been happening lately, which is why I haven't been blogging much. Poor Fisher gets a lot less camera time than Jackson did at his age. So this morning I decided to snap a quick picture of each of them, just for the sake of record keeping. I'm going to get better at pictures and video soon. Tyler got me a present and I'm hoping it will help me break the habit of non-picture-taking. Sadly, the present is going to take a few weeks to get here, so until then, here are a couple of cute pictures to hold you over.

Fisher - 5 1/2 months old. His feet are his new favorite toys. I love watching him figure it out. He tries so hard to grab his foot, and when he finally gets it, he gets so excited that he kicks really hard, loses his grip on the foot, and has to start all over. And of course this whole thing is very confusing to him. He's going to be thrilled when he figures out that he is the one controlling that foot that keeps escaping.

Jackson is 3.5 years old. I can't believe he'll be 4 this summer. He seems so old lately, and although I occassionaly miss baby Jackson, I am REALLY enjoying watching him grow up. I can't even describe what's its like when he gets in one of his moods where he has a long, serious conversation with me. Are all 3 year olds so insightful? I wish I could get transcripts of all the conversations we have.

Happy I Love You Day

Happy Valentine's Day

My friend Rendy set up this photoshoot for all the kids living nearby. It was pretty fun. I wish I had realized I had those bright green socks on...

 I rarely get to do Tyler quotes; he's not as funny as Jackson. But I have a good one and it's V-Day related. Stick with me people, I promise it's G-rated :)

Jamie: Is it too late to add something to my Valentine wish list for tomorrow?

Tyler: Probably, but go ahead and give it a shot.

Jamie: I want a leg and...

Tyler (cutting me off mid-sentence): Nope. Out of the question.

Jamie (I finished the sentence anyway): a leg and foot massage.

Tyler: Oh yeah, I could do that. Sorry, I thought you were going to say "legos".

Jackson: "I'm so photogenic. Watch me give the smouldering eyes look."
Fisher: "Really? The 3 year-old is holding me up? I'm going to tip over. I know it."

Jackson: "Haha, I love my little brother."
Fisher: "Yup. Here I go. I'm tipping over. Thanks a lot, mom."

January 2012

Fisher's new trick

We enjoyed 3 snow days, which included Tyler's school being cancelled and my work being cancelled. It was great, although by the end of it I was feeling a little stir crazy.

At one point, this snowman was standing up straight and had 2 eyes. Over the 3 days, he kept leaning further and further until he finally collapsed. For the record, I wouldn't recommend using mandarin oranges for eyes; it was creepy, especially at night when he was just staring into our back window.

Thanks to the generosity of a lady on Craiglist, we received this desk for free, along with a very nice free Kenmore dryer, since ours broke. Do you like the Fisher cubby spot? For the record, I'm not a fan of Bumbos on any kind of raised surface, but it was just a cute spot to stick him for a few pictures.

The desk also doubles as a quick-to-make fort. And yes, Fisher is still there, but I promise it's not a regular thing.

 The adorable faces of Fisher.

Last week Tyler and Jackson went to a Motocross show together. Jackson had the time of his life.

Just for the record, this was not supposed to be a set up photo shoot or anything like that. I realize there are about 50 different colors/textures/patterns going on here. He was just playing on his blanket on the floor and looked so cute and smiley that I had to snap a few.

My Boys Are Awesome

We have the cutest boys. Here are some pictures from the first few weeks of 2012.

Love

Tyler was in Texas for 2 weeks after Christmas. My amazing sister Lindsay came to stay with me and help with the kids and spend a week relaxing. It was fabulous to have her here. Jackson cried when she left... I might have too.

I love that babies can sleep anywhere in any position

Seattle Christmas 2011

As usual, Santa visited us early this year due to lack of suitcase space for our flight home from Idaho. It's fun to celebrate the holiday more than once though. Jackson loved the 3 weeks of Christmas he got to enjoy this year. Every time we would do something Christmasy, that night he would say, "I'm just sad that Christmas is over" and I would say, "That's the great thing, Jackson. Christmas isn't over yet." Once it was actually over, we were sad. I didn't take my camera to Idaho so I'm working on getting pictures from sisters. Until then, here's a peak at our Seattle Christmas.

Christmas morning... so  excited!

Tyler got me a pancake pen. It's exactly what it sounds like, which is why my pancake is shaped like my name... awesome.

Enjoying Christmas breakfast with the display of Jackson's first Lite Brite picture. It's a transformer.

Making gingerbread houses

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.