Happy Birthday Jamison!!!

My little boy has turned 3 years old today! I can't believe I already have a 3 year old. It honestly doesn't seem like it's been that long since I had him. And the interesting thing is that in my mind, I feel that he's done most of his growing up in the last 3 months. It wasn't until Gianna was born that I realized that Jamison isn't a baby anymore. Actually, until Gianna was born, I was still calling Jamison "Baby Butt", his nickname since he was a couple weeks old. But putting him next to a newborn really makes it obvious that he's a little boy now. Not even a toddler, but an actual little person. So, in honor of Jamison's birthday, I'd like to tell everyone (and by everyone, I mean the 2 people who read my blog!) about how lucky Jay and I are to have been blessed with Jamison. He is such a great little boy and such a cutie and we love him so much.

So, here's just a few interesting things about Jamison:

1) He is a terrible eater. Unfortunately, he seems to take after his mommy (and therefore Mickele) with his eating habits. From the very beginning, he has been picky. I nursed him for the first year of his life and for the first 4 months, I learned the true meaning of torture. Now, he enjoys mac & cheese (with pepper), hot dogs and pizza. He does not eat anything green. He does not like anything even remotely healthy. And, he does not like chicken nuggets. I thought ALL 3 year-olds liked chicken nuggets...

2) He's a good sleeper. This took a year of being up several times during the night, but finally at the age of 1, he turned into a good sleeper. IF I get him to bed on time, he'll sleep for about 10-11 hours a night and then take a 2 (or more) hour nap during the day. As someone who really values sleep, I appreciate this.

3) He was potty trained by the time he was 2. Okay, maybe not fully trained, but he was well on his way. We got extremely lucky with this since I've seen so many parents struggle with potty-training and I've heard that boys can be especially hard to train. I can honestly say that not counting Gianna, I have not changed a poopy diaper in at least 9 months. And, even though he no longer wears pull-ups or diapers to bed, I have not had to change the sheets on his bed yet due to a potty accident. And he's STILL pretty proud of his accomplishments. For example, today I received a call from one of our customer's from work and while I was discussing next week's software install with him, Jamison yelled proudly from the bathroom "mommy, I went poo poo and pee pee!". He's very professional.

4) He wears hearing aids. Due to being born with a hearing loss, Jamison was fitted with hearing aids at 3 months old. At 6 months old, he learned how to take them out, tear them apart and chew on the little tiny plastic pieces (including batteries). They've sometimes been a struggle... Anyone who's been around a 2-year old probably knows how hard it is to hand over a $2500 item and hope they don't lose it! :) But he's done very well with them so far.

5) He LOVES Thomas. And his friends. He sings Thomas songs all day long. Thomas is the first thing he talks about in the morning and the last thing he sings about at night. And since Thomas is a choo choo train (for anyone who doesn't know), he also loves trains. We took Jamison to Lagoon for his birthday and we went on the train ride over and over and over and over.... And when we get stopped by trains in the car, he cheers and then thanks them when they pass by. He really really likes Thomas.

6) He also loves bathtime and has since he was a baby. He really likes to splash and if he can get mommy or daddy wet in the process, all the better. He's had to take full tubs since the day he was born because he has a full head of hair to wash. That's another thing: he had more hair when he was born than ANY baby I've ever seen. Gianna's a close second though.....

7) He is incredibly sweet. He loves giving hugs and will hug just about anybody. And he also has two different levels: big hugs and little hugs. He gets very concerned if anybody is upset or sad. Even if Kody seems a little bothered, he'll ask him "Kody, are you okay?". Or he's constantly asking the cats "Kitty, why are you crying?".

8) He loves to help. He follows me around with his kid-sized Dyson while I vacuum. He follows Jay around with his own mower while he mows the lawn. He loves to sort and do laundry. He feeds Kody and the cats. He helps give Gianna baths and change her diaper. He can work all of our appliances, including the dishwasher and microwave. And he loves using the paper shredder, even for important papers that we'd really like to keep around.

9) He's a GREAT older brother. He loves Gianna and is so sweet with her. He'll come get me if she gets sad. If she cries, he'll lay down next to her and comfort her by patting her and saying "It's okay Gianna, Jamison's got you". He retrieves endless supplies for me (blankets, diapers, etc) when I need them. And he is so incredibly patient with me and her despite all the time she requires right now for feeding, etc.

10) He's funny. He also provides ample amounts of entertainment value. Especially in the last 6 months when his ability to speak just took him to whole new levels of humorous fun for us. He does and says so many funny things, I feel like I'm always laughing. Some of the things he comes up with are just so cute. Like when he's supposed to have dinner, but tries to negotiate ("Mommy, first candy then dinner, K?"). I love it!

So, sorry for the ultra-long post but HAPPY 3RD BIRTHDAY JAMISON!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I was *THAT* kind of mom

I think everyone knows someone like this. Someone who feels they have a concussion every time they bump their head. Or that every cold must be the start of pneumonia. And that every scrape probably requires stitches. Well, this week, I had the opportunity to participate in my own hypochondriac episode when Gianna was unfortunate enough to get stung twice. First I'll explain what happened, and then I'll explain how it happened in my own mind:

Jay had her outside while playing with Jamison and since it seems this year that our house has been quite the cozy living quarters for every wasp along the Wasatch Front, somehow Jay got stung once and Gianna ended up getting stung twice all at the same time. Whether it was a swarm or the same bee (don't they only sting once?), I don't know, but Jay didn't even get to see what happened. All of a sudden Gianna started screaming her head off. Jay brought her inside and stripped her down trying to find if she was stung since he felt like he was and there were two stings on her arm. Her arm was bright red and her arm was swollen around where the stings were. I called the pediatrician who said we needed to watch for difficulty breathing and abnormal swelling. She wore herself out completely from all the crying and fell asleep. Since I was unconvinced that we could monitor her breathing appropriately in her sleeping state, I tried to wake her up, but she was not having any of that. Despite Jay's assurance that all was well, I made us take Gianna in to InstaCare where they could reassure me that she was all right. By the time we arrived, she was peacefully sleeping in her car seat while they checked us in. When we went back into the exam room, she woke up and cheerfully kicked around and smiled at Jamison who was trying to talk to her. The doctor came in to this happy scene and when we tried to show him the stings on her arm, the swelling was completely gone, as was the bright redness of her arm and it looked like we were looking at two very small dots on her arm. Needless to say, I felt a little dumb and Jay has been mocking me ever since.

Now, for how the scene played out in my mind:

I was working downstairs on the computer when I suddenly heard murderous screams coming from my baby girl. I ran upstairs only slightly panicked and found Jay examining her. When he turned her over, we saw two HUGE stings that had completely swelled up her arm turning it bright red. I quickly called the pediatrician who told me that stings can be deadly when you don't know if they are allergic and that I needed to monitor her closely for difficulty breathing abnormal swelling which I took to mean signs of a deadly allergic reaction. Shortly after this, Gianna abruptly stops crying and her eyes roll back and she's out cold. Clearly this means she can't breathe and is probably unconscious so I rush to wake her up but she is so weak, she is unable to keep her eyes open or stay awake. I feel the only solution is probably to rush her to the Emergency Room, but my insensitive husband feels that she's just tired. As a compromise, he agrees to take her to InstaCare. We rush to the van and speed away at 30 mph towards the doctor. However, interestingly enough, by the time we get there, she has made a miraculous recovery and is pretty happy about her little world...

So, I'm hoping that this incident was a one-time thing and I can see future events much more clearly. :)

And for all of you waiting for pictures (yes I KNOW this was another post without pictures), I am working on them as we speak and they should be up soon!

***EDIT***
K, for all those who need pictures, I've added a bunch of pictures to my main site: www.jayandjaneal.com. Click on Pictures!

And we're back.

Well, I keep meaning to update, but for some reason I have been really lazy about getting the pictures off my camera and getting them posted, so I guess you will have to deal with just reading without pictures.... I promise to get them up soon.

So, we're back from our trip. It was a lot of fun and it was so great to see Jay's family. Jamison loved playing with his cousins and he's still talking about them all the time. Well, them and the water slide.... he REALLY liked the water slide. We had to sit on a mat together and go down it and he screamed with joy the entire way down. We must have gone down like 30 times, he liked it that much. Jay took him down once and injured himself...

The drive was pretty long though. We went slow anticipating that it might be tough with 2 kids and a dog and we were right. Although it did go much better than I thought. The hardest part was planning meals and stops and stuff since we couldn't all go in anywhere at once since we had Kody with us. Oh and our AC kept going out in the Durango which I really didn't like, but we figured out how to fix it (open and then slam hood) so it was better after that. Interestingly enough, we went all the way to the Mount Rushmore KOA but never did see Mount Rushmore. It was incredibly hot outside and I hated taking Gianna out in that heat for longer than a few minutes. And we ended up not being able to leave Kody alone so that made sightseeing a bit more difficult. We actually put Kody in his kennel inside the nice air-conditioned trailer while we all went swimming and Kody just freaked out. He has some separation anxiety when it comes to me and we knew this, but I had no idea it was this bad. He just panicked or something and decided that nothing was more important than coming to find me. If you've ever heard about wild animals chewing off their own limbs to escape traps, this is kind of what we were dealing with (don't worry, Kody's fine). We came back to the trailer to find the inside of the trailer looking close to a horrible murder scene. Fortunately, Kody was unable to escape, however the all metal dog kennel we just bought did not make it through so well. We were gone 1 hour..... Anyways, other than our crazy dog, it was a lot of fun. We learned a new game called Farkel and Jay is actually good at it. He's not so good at most card (or other) games so I think he liked it. On the trip home, we ended up skipping a day of travel because the kids were doing so well with the car ride and I really missed my own bed and shower.

Okay, I think this is probably enough to read right now with no pictures so I'll stop here and update some more later when I get some pictures. : )

*** EDIT ***
So I just re-read this post and realized that it MAY seem like I might be implying that anyone who might read my blog is unable to read anything above a picture-book level. So, if anyone was offended, I'm sorry, I really didn't mean for it to sound like that. I know it's only Jay who needs pictures in order to read! : ) (Just kidding Jay!!!)

Just a quick update

I just thought I'd mention that I did post some more pictures in the Pictures section last week. There's like 75 new pictures and after posting them, I did realize that they are almost all the same with a few outfit changes here and there so I apologize. But you should consider yourself lucky, I narrowed it down from the 370 that were on my camera. 370 pictures since July 3rd... That's a lot of pictures.

Things are going well, my time at home with Gianna and Jamison is going by way too fast. Gianna's already smiling and holding her head up pretty well. And I swear she's so close to laughing. Sometimes she'll get so excited when she smiles that she makes noise, but it's not exactly a laugh. And last night was wonderful. She slept from 10:00pm till about 6:00am. I don't expect it to continue, but I'll take that schedule anytime!

Well, on Friday we are attempting a road trip. We are taking Jamison and Gianna and Kody camping to the Black Hills in South Dakota. We're meeting Jay's family there and they haven't seen Gianna yet and it's been awhile since we've seen them so we're really excited. I've heard a lot of people tell me that we're crazy to go camping with a newborn, but I think it will be all right. It's not like we're really going to be 'roughing it'. We're staying at a KOA and we'll have our trailer so I think it will work out. I am a little worried about the drive though. I'm thinking Gianna will sleep most of the time, but Jamison's a little impatient when it comes to sitting in one place (especially strapped in) for extended periods of time. We'll be sure to pack lots of Thomas movies.

Hey, if anybody has had a little girl, what in the world am I supposed to do with Gianna's hair??? It's getting pretty long but it's all different lengths all over her head and I'm worried it's going to start looking a little mulletish if I don't do something about it. But I want to grow it out long so I don't really want to cut it. Any ideas?

1 month old

I can't believe a whole month has gone by since I had Gianna. It seems like I was in the hospital just a few days ago. And I definitely remember feeling pregnant like it was just yesterday! It's gone by so fast. And yet, even though it's been a whole month, we STILL are struggling with nursing. Oh well, it is going a bit better than it was so I'm happy about that. I've LOVED being home with Jamison and Gianna even though it's been a bit overwhelming sometimes (okay, most times...). I posted some more pictures up in my pictures section in case anyone's interested. :)

So, about once a week, Jay and Jamison have a little debate/argument about a picture we have in the kitchen:

Jamison is convinced that anything that is a partial circle is a moon so he thinks this is a picture of the moon. Jay thinks it is the sun. Jamison tells Jay every time "No Daddy, that's the moon". When daddy disagrees and says it's the sun, Jamison will get me and say "Mommy, tell Daddy that's the moon". I tell Jay that it is the moon, and when Jay still says it's the sun, Jamison says "Mommy, try again". We do this at least once a week. Well, a few days ago, I was unavailable to set Jay straight about the picture being the moon, so when Jay told Jamison it was the sun, Jamison said "No Daddy, I'll be back". He then went upstairs and retrieved a book from his bookcase (where we only keep the latest in educational literature of course):

He then opened the book to this page:

Then he told Jay, "Daddy, THIS is the sun. That (pointing to the first picture), is the moon." I think he proved his point. I mean, he did cite references. Jay, a college graduate, had no such references. Isn't he cute??? :)

More pictures :)

Here's some more pictures of little Gianna and Jamison. I finally got a picture of her and her daddy. And of her and Jamison together. He is such a good big brother. Gianna had her 2 week checkup last week and it went well. She had gained a full pound since her birth which doesn't surprise me by how often she likes to eat. The whole nursing thing is still not going as well as I'd hoped. It still is incredibly painful and due to the trouble we're having, she doesn't eat enough at each feeding which makes her want to eat again every hour and a half about. It's exhausting! Poor Jamison is really being a good boy despite the lack of attention he's been getting. He's been mostly potty trained for about 8 months now, but we haven't been able to work with him on naps or night-time yet. But I'm happy to say that for the last 3 weeks, he has not had a single accident during nap time and he's not even wearing a pull-up anymore. And he's also waking up dry in the morning a lot of the time now. I'm not brave enough to leave him in underwear overnight, but I think we're definately moving in the right direction. And he no longer needs my help at all with the process which is good since he usually has to go as soon as I start to feed Gianna. We are very proud of him. And Gianna is making progress too. She now smiles at us on purpose! :) I can't get her to do it enough to get a picture yet, but I'll keep trying. K, I think she's ready to eat again so I'm off. Enjoy the pictures! :)

Jamison got a little tired and fell asleep... :)

2 weeks old (almost)

I've posted some more pictures of Gianna and Jamison in the pictures section. I still need to get some pictures of them together though; for some reason we haven't gotten any of the two of them. Jamison is doing so well with adjusting to the new baby though. He tries to be so helpful. When I sit down to nurse Gianna, he picks up my feet, puts them on the chair, gets my boppy pillow and a bottled water. If Gianna cries, he pets her arm and says "It's okay Gianna". He constantly keeps me updated on her status (either "Gianna's night night", "Gianna's uppy", or "Gianna's sad"). And then the rest of his time is usually spent singing. For whatever reason, he has suddenly become an avid singer. Most of the time we can't understand the words, but I have caught Jackie, Bheg (which is Greg, his uncle) and Nanna's house (Grandma's house). He is such a cutie!!! Gianna still spends most of her time eating and sleeping.... usually both at the same time. Taking care of her is pretty painful right now and I'm really hoping that the pain goes away soon. It would be nice if she could eat a little more quickly since it takes about an hour to feed her with about 45 minutes in between feedings right now. Poor Jamison has been watching a lot of Thomas & Friends.

Well, here's a couple of pictures, but there's more in the Pictures section: