Last weekend

Last week, my mom's sister, her husband, and their five younger children (ages 20, 17, 14, 10, and 7 -- they also have two older sons, a daughter-in-law, and a grandson-on-the-way) were in town from Utah, so I took a couple days off from my babysitting job and we went to visit with family. We haven't seen them since we moved back from Utah more than a year ago, and it's been a while since they were in NC -- my aunt and uncle came for our wedding, but my cousins haven't been here since the 17-year-old was a baby! So only two of these five have ever been here, and they were too young to remember.

It was a fun weekend. Saturday was also my sister Anna's 15th birthday, so we ended up going hiking down to some waterfalls. My camera was (oh-so-typically) dead, so the only pictures I have are ones my dad took with his phone. Most of them are of Jeric!

I don't know why, but I labelled all the pictures in Paint. Maybe you won't even be able to read the font size, but at least the brightly colored arrows will show who is a part of our group!

******IMPORTANT: To our wonderful nephew Lathen, who turned 7 on the 6th and had his birthday party the same day as this hike, we are so sorry we didn't make it! We wanted to and it just didn't work out. But we will come and see you (at your new house!) very very soon. We love you!

And now, the pictures:

Yes, I know it has been more than two months. Again.

Last week.

Anybody out there? Probably gave up on me a long, long time ago. I don't know why I have such a hard time blogging consistently.

A few things:

1. Jeric is a nut and he makes me giggle.
2. Husband is glad it's summer break from school.
3. I have had two gray hairs in the last week. Blah.



And now, some pictures from my phone (ok, so not all of them are from my phone; a few are from my dad's or my brother's).

I apologize for several things about the pictures:

1. They are extremely fuzzy and poor-quality.
2. They are mostly reverse-order, and often without-order.
3. I cannot get blogger to let me put the first picture under the writing. I don't know what is up with that and I'm too lazy to try for another 5 minutes to get it to work.
4. Lack of captions, or even dates for the pictures.
5. My ridiculous son, who really is a very cute boy, refuses to smile for the camera. Instead, we get this weird grimace-y thing. We're working on it.

Hey, at least I posted!

This is my father-in-law's mother, who is not doing well at all. She has Alzheimer's Disease and is in a nursing home. We took Jeric to meet her recently. He did SO well being there and was calm and happy and talked to her. She doesn't talk much anymore and has no idea who anyone is, but she seemed to enjoy watching Jeric -- her eyes lit up and she focused on him as long as he was in her range of vision.

A general update

J-dawg's language development continues to astound me since the placement of his ear tubes last month. He is communicating verbally more and more each day. Sometimes he makes two-word or a word-and-sign sentence (for example saying more while signing food). There are a few things we are working on, like he'll only say the first sound of a word but not the ending sound (sock is sssss), that are probably due to his hearing loss with his infections but that my speech therapist friend is sure will correct themselves with time as long as he frequently hears words pronounced clearly. So I try to be especially clear when I'm talking to him. So far it seems to be helping.

Jeric's language development continues to astound me since the placement of his ear tubes last month. He is communicating verbally more and more each day. Sometimes he makes two-word or a word-and-sign sentence (for example saying more while signing food). There are a few things we are working on, like he'll only say the first sound of a word but not the ending sound (sock is sssss), that are probably due to his hearing loss with his infections but that my speech therapist friend is sure will correct themselves with time as long as he frequently hears words pronounced clearly. So I try to be especially clear when I'm talking to him. So far it seems to be helping.

He turned 18 months at the beginning of March and officially began attending the nursery at church. LOVES IT. I'm glad. It definitely makes things easier for me and Husband with our callings. I also took him for his 18-month check-up a couple of weeks ago. He is still healthy and growing! He weighs about 26 pounds and is around 32.5 or 32.75 inches tall. He's grown a couple of inches since Christmas! My sister-in-law just loaned me some clothes and I'm looking at them thinking they're going to be a bit long but NOPE they fit (size 2T). Ugh! He is growing so fast. He nearly gave me a heart attack the other day when he walked down the stairs, forward facing while holding a sippy cup in both hands (the reason he didn't want to turn around). It took all my willpower but I didn't freak out and grab him, I just stood by ready to catch him if he fell. And he made it! I was so proud of him, and of me for letting him do it by himself. :)

A couple of weeks ago we left Jeric with my parents (he had a blast at the stake youth basketball tournament) and went to the Raleigh temple with Husband's brother Kevin, his wife Joni, and her brother Ammon and his wife Jess. Confused yet? It had been several months since Husband and I got to go, so it was a great day!

After the temple, we went geocaching with the others -- it's one of Ammon and Jess's favorite hobbies. For those who don't know what it's all about, it's like a high-tech scavenger hunt. People create "caches" (some are large containers that people can put things in, others are as small as a button and contain only a list of those people who have found the hiding place in the past) and post the GPS coordinates on the website. Then other people can go and find the cache and sign their name to the roll or put stuff in the container if there is one. It's pretty cool. I will have to try it again in the future because most of the ones we found were in the woods and I was having a highly allergic kind of day, so I couldn't participate much. Sorry for being a bummer, y'all! But I did have fun. There are a few pictures on Jess's blog -- here's a link to it. You'll have to scroll down a bit to find the pictures from that day.

And yes, we did climb down into that huge water-drain-pipe-thing in search of a cache (which we never found) that was (supposedly) hidden under the road someplace. I still can't believe I did it -- I am SO not the adventurous type -- but everyone else wanted to and I certainly didn't want to spoil their fun.

Husband is still just working hard at school. He has a few classes this semester that are frustrating because the teachers are incompetent (I'm being completely serious here; it's terrible), but he's doing ok still. I know he'll be glad when it's over!

He spent a lot of time the last couple of weeks helping some friends with some renovation work in the house they just bought. They removed the popcorn from the ceilings, tore out the carpet, cut out some doorways in walls, reconfigured the kitchen a bit (it won't get completely redone for a year or so), did some electrical work, painted the walls and molding, waited for the new carpet to be laid in the bedrooms, and began installing the hardwood floor in the rest of the house. Then they moved all their stuff in. There is still more work to be done but it looks AWESOME and we are so excited for them that they finally have the room their family needs! They are about our age but have two older foster children they are adopting, as well as a boy about 5 months younger than Jeric, and she's expecting another boy in June. I know that Husband has really enjoyed getting to help out so much with the work they needed done.

As for me, I'm having a birthday tomorrow.

I'm glad I turned my facebook back on because if I hadn't I wouldn't have seen this

I hope the writing is clear enough.

I am related to some weird/awesome people. Clearly, as Robert says, we have a ridiculous sister. But if Anna made me chuckle, Parley (a second cousin of ours) made me laugh out loud!

Miraculous, really

The placement of Jeric’s ear tubes on Friday went very well. Because of his young age, he was first on the schedule for the day (Friday is kids’ day, and they do the littlest ones first). We arrived at about 6:40, registered and waited a little while, and they took him back at about 7:20. They called about 5 minutes later and said it was done! We waited for the ENT and spoke with him about it briefly, and about 15-20 minutes after they let us know he was done, he was awake and we went back to recovery to be with him. He was not a happy baby! I sat down and rocked him and nursed him for a while and then he wanted Daddy, then he wanted me and to nurse more, then he wanted Daddy, and back and forth. Poor thing was so disoriented.

After discussing what we needed to know about caring for Jeric’s ears with tubes, we left for home at about 8. I gave Jeric some children’s Motrin and we all went straight back to bed. We slept about 3 hours. Jeric woke up in a good mood and stayed that way! After a while he pointed to his ears and said “ow,” so I gave him some more Motrin and that was the last he needed of it.

When we took Jeric to the doctor 2 weeks ago, he said that both ears were infected but the left was worse. On the day of the tube placement, the opposite was apparently true — the doctor said Jeric’s right ear was really bad. He said the two ears had probably been going back and forth like that for months and that for all that time, Jeric had probably been hearing like he was under water or like everyone was talking into their hands.

Within half a day of the tubes being put in, Jeric was pronouncing words he had already known much more clearly. He said several new words that day, and has continued that pattern in the three days since. He wasn’t behind verbally for his age, but apparently he was quite a bit behind where he could have been, because his speech has just exploded! He was always one to jabber about things that caught his interest, and  it was clear that he was trying to say something and we just didn’t understand, but he didn’t do a lot of repeating words after I said them. It seemed to take him a while to be able to say a new word. Now, he follows me around repeating everything I say.

He is a happier little boy. From the first ear infection, he hadn’t been the same — I’m sure some of it is because he’s getting older and testing boundaries and all that — but the last few days he has been more like he was before, just older and more capable. He hasn’t pitched as many fits, he has been more patient, he doesn’t squeal as much. It’s amazing. He has also started sleeping through the night again instead of waking up in pain at 2 or 3 am.

I am so thrilled with the results of this procedure already! I was nervous, but it has been really good for my boy. We have a follow-up appointment in a month.

Other good news: he doesn’t have to wear ear plugs — no restrictions on bathing, swimming, or showering!