In the blink of an eye - Happy 6th Birthday!

The Good, The Bad, The Ugly

Things that have been removed from my body in the past month:

7 pounds 10 ounces, 19 inches of a adorable little baby girl, 

18 inches of small intestines, 

1 inflamed appendix, 

a couple of inches of large intestines.

'The Good' 

Hazel Joan Betts

Born: January 31, 2013  2:14 pm

We arrived at the hospital at 11:00 am.  Joan and Weldon came down to babysit Maggie and Chloe for the day.  We got checked in and situated in our room.  My parents come to the hospital around noon, it was really nice to see them.  Around 1:00 pm the anesthesiologist came in to do the epidural.  Unfortunately it was the same Doctor that I had with Chloe.  My c-section with Chloe was horrible.  The epidural didn't take very well and I could feel way too much.  I told the anesthesiologist that my last epidural didn't go so well.  Even though I totally recognized him, I pretended that I didn't know what Doctor it was...of course he went and looked it up, I felt a little silly.  He promised me that he would get me good and numb this time, and boy, did he ever.  My legs were completely dead weight, I have never been so numb.  I have a history of getting REALLY low blood pressure while I have an epidural.  At one point my B.P. was 60/30.  The bad thing about low blood pressure is that it make me super nauseous and super dizzy.  With both Maggie and Chloe, I threw up a few times during the c-section, but amazingly I didn't throw up this time.  My Labor and Delivery nurse was determined to get me through it without throwing up and with the help of a ton of fluids, laying on my side and breathing deeply, and some good medication, we did it!

Close to 2:00 they wheeled me into the O.R.  I can't even believe how fast the c-section went.  The epidural was awesome and I didn't feel a thing.  It was by far the best one yet!  She came out screaming and pink.  They dropped the curtain, so I could see her coming out.  My first thought was 'she looks like Maggie'.  

WARNING!!!

This is the actual c-section.  It's not too gory, but if you get queasy from blood, you may not want to watch.

While they were getting me sown back up, they took Hazel into see my parents before they headed to the Nursery.  My recovery went well, it was so nice to have my parents there.  With the other 2, I had to sit in the room by myself while Dave went with the babies.  It was so nice to have company, the time went so much faster.  

Hazel had to spend some extra time in the nursery due to low blood sugar.  She had an I.V. put into her hand, but by day 2 her counts were all where they needed to be.  

As soon as we all got into our room at Mother/Baby, Dave called to have Joan and Weldon bring the girls to meet their sister.  This was one of my favourite moments.  As soon as they came in the room, they both exclaimed 'Happy Birthday, Hazel'.  They were so excited and so cute as they met their new baby sister.  

My recovery from the c-section was going awesome.  I was up walking around and Hazel was doing great.  Dr. Savage said that I could head home Sunday, Feb. 3rd.  Dave and the girls spent most of the day at the hospital on Saturday.  My parents headed to my great-aunt's birthday party.  Dave took the girls home and I had great plans to order a fantastic dinner and enjoy my last evening of cable T.V. and sending my baby to the nursery, so I could have one last chance to sleep through the night.  

'The Bad' 

As soon as I started to eat my supper I began to feel sick.  I felt like I was going to throw-up and the nurse assumed that I was getting sick from my pain killers.  I called Dave and told him that I wasn't doing so good and we figured I was just worn out from having the girls there all day.  Things continued to get worse very quickly.  I was throwing up and had horrible abdominal pain.  The nurse kept telling me that it was probably just gas pains from surgery and that it should pass.  I have never been in so much pain.  I called Dave around 1:00 or 2:00 am and told him to come to the hospital.  I thought I was going to to die.  Dave came quickly and gave me a blessing.  The nurse gave me a shot of morphine but it didn't seem to touch the pain.  We didn't get any sleep as I moaned and cried out through the night.  Dave was my rock and was so glad he was able to be there.  

Around 6:00 am they decided that I needed at C.T. scan to find out what was going on.  I somehow was able to drink the contrast and keep in down.  They took me down to do the scan and unfortunately the results were inconclusive.  There was a lot of swelling, but the doctors weren't sure what was going on.  I asked for my Dad to come and for him and Dave to give me another blessing with anointing.  I was in unbelievable pain.  

They kept me very drugged Sunday through the day and night.  I really don't remember much.  Dr. Savage came in a few times and she brought the obstetrician on call in for a consult.  It just happened to be Dr. Wolsey who grew up in Cardston and was in our last Provo ward.  He is such a nice man and really looked after me.  I also met Dr. Rasmussen, the surgeon on call.  

Early Monday morning they took me to have an x-ray on my abdomen.  Things started to move very quickly after that.  The x-ray showed that the contrast I had taken Sunday morning had not moved out of my small intestines.  It was completely blocked.  I called to tell Dave that I was going to have to have surgery.  My parents and my little family came to the hospital before they took me down to the O.R.  I don't really remember much, but I know we had a quick family prayer before they wheeled me away.  

'The Ugly'

Acute Intestinal Ischemia is not something I would wish on my worst enemy.  Dr. Rasmussen rushed me into surgery and was surprised at the amount of damage done to my small intestines.  A band of scar tissue from a previous surgery had gotten wrapped around my small intestine blocking it, as well as the blood flow to my intestine.  It had killed a lot of tissue, which had turned black and gangrene and septic.   It had caused a very dangerous and life-threatening situation.  They removed 18 inches of my small intestine, my appendix and a few inches of large intestine.  

I woke up in the I.C.U.  Everything is very foggy.  My blood pressure and O2 levels weren't coming up very easily, so I had to spend the night in the I.C.U.  I was very sad that I wasn't able to see my girls, I just wanted to snuggle them all and tell them that I was O.K.  

Tuesday morning they took me to the Critical Care floor, where I lived for a week.  Recovery was hard and painful.  I got discouraged when things weren't healing as fast as I wanted.  I didn't eat anything for 9 days, it just took a long time for my bowels to heal enough to start working.  I am beyond grateful to my amazing husband and wonderful parents who took care of my girls and were unbelievable support for me as I was in the hospital.   

I had great nurses and doctors taking care of me, they were all so concerned and all so caring.  This whole experience has made me realize how precious life is.  I am so blessed that everything turned out the way it did.  I am grateful that it happened while I was already in the hospital and was able to receive the care I needed so quickly.  I am grateful that my parents were able to be here and that they were so willing to stay as long as I needed them.  They took such good care of my babies, I was able to just focus on getting better cause I knew that my family was in the most capable hands with my Mom and Dad.  I am so grateful that the obstruction didn't happen while I was pregnant, it would have put Hazel in serious danger.  There are so many miracles that happened along the way.  

It's hard to believe that Hazel is now 4 weeks old.  She is beautiful and sweet and so good.  I have been so blessed to have such a good natured little girl as I have been healing.  I'm feeling really good and everyday I feel more and more like myself.  Dave has been unbelievable, I could not ask for a better husband and father.  He has taken such good care of me and I love him more than anything.   

Love of Language

There needs to be some documentation of the growth of our girls. The past year and a half has seen so many changes.

With language acquisition, Chloe was much different than Maggie. Maggie's marker for language progress was the birth of Chloe. When Chloe reached the same age of 16 months the word count for Chloe was probably a little higher than Maggie's, but Chloe's vocabulary was almost all signs: 70-ish words but only 10 or so were vocal. At her second birthday, Chloe was still a quiet girl, but she'd put a few two-word sentences together with signs. After her second birthday, Laura said that she felt like living with Chloe was like living with Lassie. Chloe would point, and grunt to get what she wanted. Chloe would display her satisfaction or dissatisfaction in grunts and gestures until she'd get what she wanted, and the rest of us modified our behavior to Chloe's actions.

At Christmas time (2011) Chloe was surprising us with short spoken sentences of two or three words together. You know you have a quiet child when they're almost 2 and a half and two words coming out of their mouth at the same time surprises you.

Now Chloe is almost a couple of months past her third birthday. Sadly the signs are almost completely lost. She has maintained her cuteness by saying 'W's for her 'L's, 'D's instead of 'G's, and 'T's instead of the hard 'C's. A "little guy" who is "so cute", ends up being a "wittow die" who is "so toot". She had us laughing the day she said "Oh, deez".

Chloe is still somewhat quiet, but you can really catch her talking when she has her dolls and toys. During play time you can hear some vocabulary, but it's all of the inflections and tones of voice that really display Chloe's character. Almost any toy gets put into the family, and when left alone Chloe will have whole conversations between "mommies", "daddies", "babies" and the occasional sibling. The babies seem to miss Mommy a lot, but Mommy is quite re-assuring that the babies will be okay.

Singing is another part of vocal play time for Chloe, and she will sing the “ABCs” or “Twinkle, Twinkle” in loops all throughout the day.

Maggie has had her own adventures in language. She continues her love of letters and words. It is fun to watch her mind work. A year ago or more, we were driving in the car and Maggie asked if we too could see the ".... flamingo?" Laura and I were stumped. Then we finally caught on. Flamingos are birds with long necks. Cranes are birds with long necks. We were diving past a series of 4 or 5 cranes doing construction on I-15. Case closed.

Laura and I haven't done anything spectacular with Maggie to help her read. We've just kept words and letters as games to play. Maggie was the one who decided that letters were fun and we got a few DVDs on the alphabet to help her out. Loving the letters has turned into reading, with the help of some picture books from the library. Sometimes I'm not sure how much Maggie is reading and how much she is recognizing word shapes, but I know she does both. She will read a few pages during reading time. If the book is a favorite (and not too long) she might read the whole book. Maggie will make a few mistakes, but if you point at the words she got wrong, she'll try again and then some of the reading kicks in. When I've tried to check out a picture book in Spanish, Maggie has gotten mad at me because she doesn't recognize the Spanish words. She only wants to read English.

The fun part about Maggie reading is that she just expects it to be part of the conversation. If there are words in front of her she will try and read. This is the same game she did with letter recognition, but now she’s trying whole words. I have received series of text messages of "maggie", "maggie", "daddy", "mommy", "coco", "love", etc. as she hunts and pecks at an open keyboard at home.

When I'd take her running, sometimes she'd get after me and I would have to go back so she could read the signs we had passed. She'd ask for help on some of the bigger words, but Maggie gives them a good effort first. Maggie has also surprised her primary teacher when she was reading the words as the teacher was writing on the board, "I can forgive others".

Another surprising example of Maggie reading was when I took the girls to see the primate skulls display in the hallway at UVU. I pointed at a label and told her that it said "chimpanzee". Maggie looked at the next label and read “orangutan” even though the label said “Pygmy Orangutan” – she was skipping the word she didn't know. The display only has skulls and labels. There are no pictures, so I was impressed. Then Maggie found “gorilla” and since she was on a roll she also tried to sound out “Gigantopithecus” (an extinct primate, larger than a gorilla). Maggie did pretty well. She got a couple of “g” sounds in and a “t” sound or two and a mumble to finish off the last syllables. This isn't a species I’d heard of before, and I still have a hard time saying it as well as Maggie did.

I know they've said more cute stuff than this, but I had to get at least a couple of things down. It is fun to live in a house with such bright little girls.

I may have to rename this blog "Faceterest" or "Pinbook" to see if either will help Laura to start posting again.

Conversations with Maggie

Me: I think you're cute.

Mags: I think you're cute.

Me: I think you're smart.

Mags: I think you're smart.

Me: I think you're funny.

Mags: I think you're funny.

Me: I think you're pretty.

Mags: I think you're pretty.

Me: I think you're silly.

Mags: I think you're ssss....grumpy.

Me: What?! Why do you think I'm grumpy?

Mags: Oh...because of your face...

hmmmm, I'm not sure how to take this.

Maggie's latest animal interest

Yesterday, Maggie was looking through my UVU bag to see what treasures she could find. She found plenty to play with, and she found a new animal to ask me about.

At first she thought it was a tiger. As you can see, the yellow on the edge of the mascot's face isn't hard to imagine as the stripes on the face of a tiger. Good dad that I am, I let her know that UVU's mascot is a wolverine, and then we googled some pictures so she could see what a real one looks like.

Maggie was very impressed with the little fur-ball. Looking at one picture, she said, "Like a bear." Then with next picture we looked at she said, "Like a skunk." You should be impressed with Maggie. One of the common names for the wolverine is "skunk bear". The wolverine is a carnivore like a bear, and part of the same family as skunks, the Mustelidae, which also has weasels, otters, badgers and such.

With Maggie's new-found enthusiasm, today Laura and I decided to take the girls up to campus as I ran a couple of errands to get ready for school. Even though this enthusiasm is probably short-lived - what did you expect from a three year-old? - I thought it'd be fun to show her some of the wolverine statues on campus. Between the few statues and the multitudinous logos, Maggie and copy-cat Chloe were busy pointing and exclaiming,

"Wurmereem!"

I never realized how many mascot logos were on campus. It was borderline sensory overload.

Even YOU can use Venn diagrams!

Dear Coco,

Daddy still loves you.

Entitlement Trap

I was able to attend a couple of days of Education Week this year. It was such an incredible experience. One of the classes that really touched me was done by Linda and Richard Eyre. They have so many wonderful parenting ideas and I was really impressed by the them. I was especially interested in the idea of building a family economy. My girls are both so young now, but I still worry about teaching them the right way to handle money and how to avoid them feeling like they are entitled to every new gadget or name-brand thing that comes along. I have been thinking about this for a while now. The class on 'Building a Family Economy' was exactly the answer I was looking for.

The Eyre's new book is The Entitlement Trap. It's not on sale yet, but if you pre-order you can get an awesome deal, and be entered in to win some unreal prizes. I'm passing this on cause I think they've got some excellent parenting tips available. I know I'm always looking for good suggestions.

To read more about the book and to pre-order go here.

Bear Lake with James and Jody's Family

We were lucky enough to get to go to Bear Lake again this summer. James and Jody invited us to come and spend a few days with them. They came to Utah for a Dental Conference so we got to hang out with them here, then we drove up to Bear Lake together on their way home. We had such a great time. The Condo that James rented was beautiful and the weather was perfect. Maggie and Chloe were spoiled with attention from their Aunt and Uncle and Cousins. It was absolutely wonderful. Maggie has asked about everyday since we got back when we can go back with Uncle Jamesy to Bear Lake....I'm wondering the same thing, hopefully soon!

Chloe and Davin.

Of course she is doing her typical 'smile'.

The aftermath of doing her 'smile' with sandy fingers.

Maggie was so excited to ride with James on his new Boat.

Last year in Waterton, James took her for a ride in the Kayak, she talked about it for an entire year. I think the SeaDoo make just as big of an impression.

I love this picture.

I think it's so cute that they are both matching with the red life jackets and sunglasses.

Just catching up on a little light reading. Dave has to teach from a new book next semester, so some of his vacation was spent reading his new text book...exciting, I know. At least Maggie loves biology books too. (Dave loves it when she tries to say "mitochondria".)

Hanging out on the beach.

I think this is such a cute picture. I think these 2 look so much alike. Chloe was in Heaven playing with her cousins. I love it when my girls get 'Cousin Time'.

Playing in the water.

Rylin, Chloe and Maren.

James, Davin and Jody getting ready to take Davin on the tube.

Playing in the Sand.

Maggie sometimes makes a funny face when I tell her to smile at the camera. This time I told her to smile and show her pretty teeth, it worked out pretty well.

This is Chloe's smile with her 'pretty teeth'.

It didn't work quite as well.

Me at Bear Lake.

I had to take this self-portrait as proof that I was really there.

When we went to Bear Lake in July, Maggie would not get in the water. There were lots of sticks and seaweed floating at the shore and she was a little freaked out. This time was much better. It took her a little bit to get used to being in the Lake, but after a while she LOVED it. Once she figured out the water was safe, Maggie spent the next twenty minutes just jumping up and down and splashing.

What a cute couple.

Chloe was probably in the tube for over an hour. The kids would bounce her and spin her, she thought it was the greatest.

Swimming around with Daddy and Maren. Maggie paused in her bounces long enough to look at the camera.

James and Jody on the beach after a SeaDoo ride.

Jamesy Baby

Check out his awesome hair...he's a little wind blown.

My Cute Momma!

I can't even tell you how much I love this woman, look at how cute she is. This is a picture from my parent's blog. She is on a boat crossing the Congo River, how cool is that. They are crossing between Brazzaville and Kinshasha with Elder Kola (an Area Seventy) and Brother Kubangila (Country Public Affairs Director). While they were in Brazzaville and Kinshasha they were able to meet with several of their Missionaries from when they served in Ivory Coast, It's been fun to hear names that I recognize from when I went to visit.

I'm so proud of my parents, I think they are pretty amazing. I love hearing about their adventures and the many, many miracles that they have been able to witness. The Church growth in Africa is unbelievable, the Church is True!

Their blog address is http://daphyafrica.blogspot.com/ if you would like to see more :)

Happy Birthday Coco!

It's hard to believe that it's been 2 years since our little Chloe Dee entered this world and came into our family. Oh how we love this little girl.

She is strong and athletic and fearless...I can hardly stand to watch her at the park because my heart is in my throat the entire time as she hangs off bars and climbs up things that she seems WAY too small for.

She is a wild little thing and has an amazing knack for breaking things that seem unbreakable.

She is a sweetheart and loves to give hugs and kisses. She has always been a Momma's girl so it's fun for me to be the recipient of so much love and affection.

She LOVES her baby dolls and is quite the caring little Momma, it's so cute to watch her rock and hush her little babies.

She is such a little clown and does anything to make Maggie laugh.

She brings so much joy into our and we love our Coco!

Playing with Picasa

I'm trying to figure out editing and blogging from Picasa. I was playing around with this picture and thought it turned out pretty cute.

Bear Lake

We had so much fun at Bear Lake with the Betts Family. We stayed at the KOA in Garden City and enjoyed the cute cabins, the train rides, the pool, the park, and I especially enjoyed the clean bathrooms and showers. We spent Saturday at the North Beach of Bear Lake and we all had a great time playing in the sand and just spending time with each other.

The girls were really well behaved and LOVED being with their cousins. Chloe has become especially attached to 'Tatie' (Katie, who is 11), and it was so cute to watch them together....it wasn't so cute when Chloe was crying for 'Tatie' and 2:00 in the morning.

The Train Ride

Every night the KOA hosts different activities. The kids enjoyed the train on Friday night and Sunday. Unfortunately, the Saturday night Hay Ride got rained out by a passing thunder storm.

Maggie and I enjoying the Campfire.

Waiting for some S'mores.

Chloe destroying my sand castle

Hard at work

My cute Hubby

Playing in the sand, so much fun.

Time out for a little lunch.

Chloe was hilarious in the sand. She loved how warm it was and kept laying down in it.

She was absolutely covered.

There were too many cute picture, I couldn't decide which ones to use, so I made this little collage.

I'll call it her Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Shoot.

All tuckered out after a busy day.

Maggie, Benjamin and Chloe.

Maggie, Caleb, Benjamin, and Chloe.

Our only family picture from the trip.

...mmmm...Raspberry Milkshakes.

The girls always hold hand when they are sitting in their car seats. I needed to get a picture to document this since in might not last too long.

I think it's the sweetest thing ever.