Happy Birthday, Jared!

I really can't believe that Jared is already one year old. I always watch their first bath on their birthday and it's so fun to see how much they've grown. He is just so darn adorable. We let him open a couple presents before the sister woke up to take them away. He had a great time opening them and knew exactly what to do.

To celebrate, I wanted to do something boyish, so we went to the BYU Paleontology Museum and it was FUN! It was very small, but Claire was in love with all of the "scary dinosaurs"! She really loved it. Jared? Not so much. He was so tired all day and wouldn't take a nap, so he was a little ornery. When I'd show him a dinosaur, he'd scowl. 

Later I took the kids to Kangaroo Zoo. Although I wasn't super impressed with the place, they had a blast and didn't want to leave. Jared was more interested in getting off the inflatables and walking around. He's really getting into this walking business!

Opening his last present for the day. I was right in letting him open the other without Claire because she took right over and the screaming from angry Jared was almost non-stop. They were both very excited to get a new Weebleville!

Since we are celebrating his birthday with our family on Saturday, we didn't do cake, but we did let him have ice cream. He was disgusting by the end and I had to mop the entire kitchen.

Happy Birthday, little guy! We love you so much!

Family Videos

Nothing tells you that you've neglected the education of your second child quite like family videos do.

Last night, we watched movies of Claire when she was a little over a year old. She was walking, talking, and clapping at everything she did. She knew where your nose was, and she knew what hugs were. She was so happy and so adorable and SO fat! My goodness! If obese America needed a poster child to illustrate the direction of the nation, she would have been it. And I loved it.

Both kids sat on the couch happy. Claire was excited to see herself in a mini form and Jared watched like it was the most interesting thing in the world. He sat on the couch, naked (because most of the time my kids are), with his hand on his knee  and a puzzled look on his face. Who could have that darling, sweet, and quiet child be? That COULDN'T, just couldn't be that girl who pushes him over every day, right? I can see where his confusion was lingering.

That being said, it's fun to see their different personalities. Claire really was such a spunky and sweet little baby. She was talkative and explorative. Jared likes to explore alright, but he does it as if he knows he's going to get caught and get in trouble. He's quiet and doesn't like sitting through books unless they have something to touch. He doesn't care where my nose is and hugs are a necessary part of getting his hands in my hair.

It's so fun to be a mom!

Also, it's Jared's Birthday today. Boy does it go too fast!

Surgery

We had to be at the hospital at 6:20 am, so we were very grateful for my parents house being so close to the Riverton Hospital!  We spent the night there and I could not sleep. When the hospital called to tell me procedure stuff, they emphasized that she could NOT eat past 4:20 am. "Clean out her car seat because even if she finds a half of a cheerio, you will be sent home."  I had all these dreams that she ate teddy grahams and wasn't able to have surgery because she wasn't fasting. I barely slept. We obviously had her sedated so she would be too scared going back to the OR without us and we got some fun footage of her being super loopy. I'm pretty sure the sedative  made her relax maybe a little too much because she was SOAKED in urine after a short time of being out of it. Covered. I'm talking from chest to toes. I had to go back and change everything, so she posed a couple of times for me.

She tried so hard to smile in this picture. :)

Giving Mommy and Daddy Kisses before she went back. I really had to lay one on her to get a picture of it.

Her surgery was one of the longest out of everyone we saw there since we were the last to leave. Total it was about an hour and a half, so quicker than the 2 hours they thought it would take. Brian and I played a video game while we waited and then I got to go back to the post op room when she woke up. They did cystoscopic surgery on her right side where they put Deflux in the Ureter, which just causes a bump to form and allow the bladder to close when it fills up. On the left side, her grade 4, they had to do open surgery.

I had never been to Primary Children's in Salt Lake until her urology appointment. It is such a magical place! I was glad to see that they did the same thing for the Riverton Center.

Post-anesthesia Claire was quite awful. I was so sad that she was hurting so badly and/or scared. She didn't really calm down until they put more pain meds in her IV, but she was still pretty ornery until we left the hospital. We sat in recovery for about an hour, where she just slept. She would wake up to whine a little and then go right back to sleep. It made me really sad to see her in so much pain. I was nervous about going home and taking care of her wound, but she really has did great since we left the hospital. She has been super super snuggly since surgery, which I'm not complaining about, and she had been having nightmares. She'd start screaming, "not my tummy" and then drift off after a while. She slept a lot, hasn't eaten very much and is being a stubborn drinker, so we're bribing her with m&m's again. 

It's now been a week since surgery and she's doing awesome! She still tells us about her "ouchies in her diaper", but she's started using it as a bargaining chip. I put her in time-out yesterday and she started screaming about her "ouchies" so I would let her out. Oh boy. Her incision is healing well. We took her "bandaid" off a few days ago and it's looking even better since then. We have to wait for her steri-strips to peel off, and then we'll really see what it looks like.