Joy

Friday, May 27, 2016

Staycation at Nana's


This past week has been a lot of fun for me and the girls.   Josh had to go out of town for a few days so we spent 4 nights over at my parent's house - just for fun.   We kept busy thrift-storing, swimming, going to Ikea (on Tuesday cause kids eat free!) and we drove up to Anthem to watch cousins TJ and Josiah.  
 My brother, Steve, kept our old Nintendo that we got from Santa when I was 10.  He taught TJ how to play it and Tj showed my girls. 
 
 Oh my goodness, Claire is hooked.  As a former, expert of Mario 3, I can tell you that watching a first timer play is torturous.  

My mom and I took all the kids to a little park nearby - thank goodness for double strollers!  The weather was warm but amazing considering it is the end of May.




 Claire was a little bored.  She is quite a bit older than everyone else.  
We had a 0, 1, 2, 3, and 4 year old..... and almost 8 year old Claire.

We ate lunch and mostly the kids complained that they wanted to go home to play more Nintendo.  Sheesh.
When we were packing up an inch worm blew out of a tree and landed on Jack.  We had fun watching it move.  So weird!

 On the way home from Anthem my van got a flat tire.  Praise the Lord that it happened just a few miles from home and not way up in the Boonies.  We were able to safely get off the freeway before it went completely flat so that is a bonus.  Regrettably I had never learned to change a tire so we had to call my dad who also was close by.  I watched carefully and am confident that I can do it next time, it is way easier than I imagined it would be.  Next on my list of things to learn is how to jump-start my van. I drive long distances and have 4 little kids, I need to be self-reliant.

The next day I was able to get a new tire and wait for it while my mom stayed with all the kids. 
 Then I picked up cousin Norah and she brought her over for another day of cousin time.   
We again went to the park.
 ate lunch and looked at the ducks.

 Jack doesn't really like the stroller - especially if he is tired and needs to sleep.  He can ONLY sleep on his tummy.  I tried laying him down like this and within seconds he went from screaming to completely out.
So sweet. 

Wednesday, May 4, 2016

Poor Jack - Lip Tie

Poor Jack.

He has had a rough first two months.

When he was born Josh and I noticed right away that he was tongue tied.   Claire and Paige were also tongue tied so we knew to look for it.  The hospital never checks for that which is annoying.  It was a really bad tie so thankfully when the Dr. was doing his circumcision, she also cut his tongue.  No big deal.

After so long of him eating every two hours my sister-in-law suggested that maybe he was lip-tied.  Sure enough he was and it was a pretty bad one.  This isn't him but this is what his mouth looked like.
Seriously, can we not have a kid without mouth malformations?
So we made an appt with a pediatric dentist (cause you know, I was hoping to throw another $300 out the window) and they performed "laser surgery" on it. I have a hard time calling it surgery because it took all of ten minutes and he was awake the whole time.

He did great and was a little cranky that evening.  I was surprised how large the "cut" is in his mouth.  The white triangle shape is all healing mouth flesh.   Ouch. I have to be careful when I hold him up on my shoulder because he loves to lift his head up and look around and bob it all over the place - however, when his neck muscles give out, he face-plants onto my shoulder bone, hitting him right in the mouth and he screams.


6 times a day we have to stretch his lip up to keep it from growing back together and rub coconut oil on it.  This is a super fun activity that always ends in ear splitting screams.

Now, the day he had his surgery I also for some reason decided to try eating dairy again - the first time in 5 months.  I had Costco pizza... so good. Well that evening he was extra fussy but we thought it was because of his lip.  Three days went by of him being absolutely horrible, fussing, crying, and not sleeping which we were still not sure if it was the lip or dairy. It wasn't until he started spitting up constantly with lots of projectile vomiting that I knew it was from the dairy.  His poops were green too which apparently is a pretty good sign of dairy problems. 

This is him thinking about how much his tummy and mouth hurt
and how mad he is that he has to wear such an uncomfortable shirt.

I immediately swore off dairy once again and after 2 days he is back to his good old self.  Except now he is smiling finally!  

I am smiling too because he has been only waking me up once in middle of the night.