A 100th Do-Over

I apparently had a drafted post that never made it to the blog- so this is my 100th Do-Over.
I want to show you why the past 10 months of my life have been so full of Joy. Here are 21 Pictures that for which I am Grateful.

He is the best Birthday Present I have ever received- even though he was 11 hours to late for my birthday party.

March

I am grateful for a Teeny Tiny Baby Boy..... Who makes funny faces, puts his hand to his face like he is on the phone and already has an affinity for Baseball (you can kind of see it there on the blanket.)

April, I am grateful for a boy who has a good right hook! and plenty of loving, soft and cuddly friends.

I am grateful for May! That is when Baby first Smiled at me.

May is also when I got really tired of the blowouts and decided that the baby didn't need clothes.

June is when the eczema got really really bad, I am grateful for Topical Steroids

And for more and more really big, gummy smiles.

August brought plenty to be thankful for.

Cuddles, cuddles and more cuddles.






And Babies first Solid Food.

September, I am grateful that my baby is so full of love, even if his first girlfriend was the lizard on his play saucer.

September was also full of Squeals of Joy!









In October, Baby got Stuck. Between a Toy, and a Soft place.

And he decided that noses were yummy.

October made me grateful for sleep.

And, eternally grateful, for beautiful, loving eyes.

November gave me my sidekick, I am grateful to have been followed around- ALL DAY LONG.

And to have discovered the joy of a Toy Bin, sometimes mommy needs a little time by herself.

December, The Baby thought that everything was his toy bin- either that or he was becoming a really good purse thief, we may never know.

I am grateful for My Babies First Christmas- and he is grateful for his very first, very own, Remote Control.

It is now January, I am grateful for Laundry Baskets too- they are not just to sit in you know.

Froggy pajamas and a bucket, What more could a boy ask for?

In less than two months it will be my birthday again............

.......I wonder what I am going to get this year.

The 100th Smile

So this is my 100th post- Maybe for the 200th I will come up with something really fun to share, but today I have something special to share. My Babies Smile.

Today is recovery day 2, and it has gone pretty well so far. He woke up needing some Ibuprofen around 4 am, and then needed some help getting back to sleep about an hour after that, (He has remembered that he likes to stand up in his crib, but is having a harder time sitting back down). But all in all he slept 12 hours with only two very very short wake ups. Maybe tonight we will all get to sleep all night! Today he has not acted like he is having much discomfort at all, which is amazing because his surgery site looks amazingly painful and very uncomfortable.

But the Smile says it all. He is happy, he doesn't hold anything against us for giving him to strangers with knives.

I am grateful to have this blogging outlet- sometimes it is really nice just to say what is on my mind, and it has been amazing to see how many people actually care and appreciate what is on my mind.

So here is to you all at the end of Toast to my 100th Post, Thank you, You are amazing and wonderful and fun- Even those of you who I have never met! May your day be wonderful and your life be blessed.

Recovery Day 1

As we went to bed last night I did some quick math in my head. They had given a baby a nerve block during his surgery, we were told that it would probably last about 12 hours. So that meant that sometime between 12 and 2 AM baby would need some medication. Sure enough, at 12:09 I heard a baby cry. "Oh, it is Sunday" I thought. My next thought was "What? Sunday? Huh?" and then I realized what was really going on, My baby was crying, and it was his pain cry.

The Surgeon had given us instructions and prescriptions (Start with Ibuprofen and supplement for the first 48 hours with Lortab). We were prepared. So we thought. We started with Ibuprofen. The baby took it greedily, but continued to scream and squirm. Every few minutes he, or we, would find a comfortable position for him and he would calm down for a few seconds, but much too soon he would start screaming again. Ice packs, Juice, Milk, nothing seemed to help.

After 35 minutes the pain killers started to work, the baby calmed down and within minutes was asleep in my arms. I wanted to hold him all night, but eventually I needed to sleep too, and so baby was laid in his bed and Mom and Dad went back to bed too.

At 5 AM we were awakened by the baby again. This time he was given Lortab (who knew they made liquid lortab for babies), and then his Dad fed him a bottle. The baby and his Dad were soon back in their beds. Dad woke up on his own at 7 and Baby and I slept until 8. Other than the 35 minutes of pain at midnight, it was a pretty successful night.

Following the every 8 hour rule for the Ibuprofen and giving the lortab 4-6 hours after the ibuprofen (when baby started to seem a little cranky and or in pain) worked really well and our family had a wonderful day.

Here are a few pictures from this morning. The baby was smiling from the time we got him out of bed, but quite abnormally, when the camera would turn on, the smile would turn off.

I wanted to show how he was up to his old tricks, but when he heard the ding of the camera, he took his hands off the TV, and turned to see what Mom was doing- and the smile went away too.

The smile would peek out quite often, but somehow he always seemed to hide it from the camera, in this photo from when he first woke up, he used his foot. Finally, Proof that our Baby still loves us!

Yeah, our sweet little baby was back, and up to his same old mischief.

One Heck of a Week, and it is only Tuesday

This is what the baby looked like this morning. He didn't question us when we fed him Grape Flavored Pedialite for breakfast, instead of oatmeal. He didn't bat an eye when his next meal was apple juice. He didn't seem to know what was coming. We left for the Hospital to have his Surgery (Hypospadias Repair- for a longer explanation see post from early January titled "Calling all Angels") at 10 AM, he fell asleep in the car. When we checked in at 10:45 he was so happy and smiley that all the clerks at Same Day Surgery had to look at him. They like kids who smile.

"No photos, Please" he said to the "Pop"arazzi as he was changed into his Hospital Pajamas. He was so affable when the Nurse was doing his presurgery exam that she decided that he wouldn't need any extra medication to calm him down before his surgery, apparently a lot of kids do.

The doctor came and saw us, he expected the surgery to take about 1 hour and 15 minutes. The Anesthesiologist came by a few minutes later to take the baby back to the OR. We introduced him to the new Doctor, handed him over, gave goodbye kisses and then watched our extremely happy baby be walked away. As he went down the long hallway he continued to smile at the Doctor, and then he started to checkout his surroundings- the smile on his face got even bigger. An hour into his surgery I suddenly had the impression that it wasn't his surroundings that he was smiling at, it was his angel friends who had come to help him- and me- through this day.

The Surgery ended up taking 2 hours. About 15 minutes after meeting with the Surgeon, I was allowed into the Post Anesthesia Care Unit (PACU). When I arrived at the babies bed he was surrounded by adoring nurses and the Anesthesiologist. They had some scary news for me. Yes the Surgery had gone well, but Recovery was not going as planned. The baby had an adverse reaction to the Anesthesia and was not breathing well. At the time he arrived in the PACU he was actually turning blue, his Oxygen level was in the 40's, they gave him oxygen and it quickly rose to the high 80's, but it would not stay up unless the oxygen mask was near by. He could not go home until his Oxygen level was above 90% and stayed that way with out the oxygen mask. There was a good chance that he would need to be observed overnight if this didn't happen in the the next two hours.

It took about 1 and a half hours to get the oxygen levels above 90 without the mask. You can see the mask on Ken's lap as he holds the baby, we kept moving it farther and farther away until we knew his levels had stabilized without it. He slept in our arms for most of that time. He also had to prove to the nurse that he could keep clear liquids down. He didn't want anything to do with the apple juice the nurses had given him and it took a while, but eventually the nurse let us feed him some formula (not a clear liquid). He inhaled the formula- he was hungry! Twenty minutes later, as the nurse was preparing to discharge him, he threw up all the formula, (I wished I had brought myself an extra set of clothes). About an half hour later he decided that maybe juice wasn't so bad, especially if it was in his bottle and not the hospital bottle that he had been given to start with. He kept that down for a half an hour and we were discharged home. He started to act like his old self, escaping while we changed his diaper and put his clothes on- the nurse thought that was a hoot. But as you can see from this picture- he was still quite medicated.We got home at 6:45 PM. Glad not to have to spend the night at Primary Children's. Grateful for Angels who entertain and calm our baby- He didn't cry, Seriously, as several of the nurses put it, he was "Mellow". Now the fun starts, Recovery! He will be Cranky for a couple of days and will be bruised and swollen for a week or more. I am certain his parents will be sleep deprived for a couple of days, but in the end, all will be well.

Thanks for your prayers and support, your love and care for our family means so much to us. We are lucky to have such great friends and family. I will Post a picture of My Sweet Babies Smile again, as soon as I take one!

Oreo's so good, you want to SCREAM!

So this morning, I was checking my email with the news on.

The baby had taken up his normal spot- trying to kiss the TV Screen.

The 100 Calorie Pack Oreo Mini Cacksters Comercial Came on. I hear a woman scream, and then I heard the baby scream......Twice. It was Hillarious, almost like he really really really wanted an Oreo Mini Cakster too.

What I Need

My apologies to those of you who only stop by to see pictures of the baby. But I have felt like talking lately and during the day- this is my outlet. Maybe I will hide some pictures of the baby inside the post- you will just have to read and see. (No Fair just scrolling down looking for pictures, but if you need a baby fix that badly, I guess I won’t hold it against you.)

So here goes.

I have a little problem. I sing, Loudly, At the most inappropriate moments. I think it might be because I spend so much of my time around a person who doesn’t talk. Well that is a lie, I have done this my whole life- I remember being in the 1st or 2nd grade and walking around school singing to myself. In the 5th grade I was accused of having a radio in my desk- I guess I sounded pretty good if they thought I had a radio. The most recent incident was at the Draper Temple Open House. I spent 75% of the time singing (as quietly as I could, after all it was the temple). What was I singing? It was a song from “The Forgotten Carols”.

I don’t know if I am singing the correct words to the song, but I do know that- for me- they are the right words. This is what I sing to myself-

“All I ever wanted, All I ever dreamed of, Everything I am and all I ever hoped for, Couldn’t hold a candle to what I’ve been given. I’ve been given what I need.

Even when I didn’t understand, when I thought you had no heart. (La la laa la la la la la laaaa), Always giving me the better part.

All I ever wanted…………” and it just goes on and on, those same two lines over and over again, it wasn’t until I started typing it out that I realized I don’t even know the words to one part, I just la la la through it every time. HA.
So anyway, that is how I feel lately. I look back over my Adult Life, and I haven’t been given what I asked for, I have been given what I need. To tell you the truth, thinking about it now, I am pretty sure I would be currently miserable if I had been given everything that I asked for. Looking back, I can truly say that what I have been given is so much better than what I ever thought I wanted or needed.

So thank you Mr. Michael McLean! Thank you for your songs.

(And Thank you Mr. Baby for your willingness to be dressed up oddly and placed on tables so we can take pictures of you dressed up oddly.)

Now on to the real reason I have been telling you about my problem. It is because my problem has led to another problem. Since Christmas, (when we watched the DVD of the Forgotten Carols that got the song stuck in my head to begin with) I have been thinking about branching out, trying something I haven’t done in a long time. Performing…. in the Forgotten Carols. I know, I am odd, but I really have been thinking about writing to Michael McLean and asking how one goes about getting into one of his shows.

I figure that maybe, just maybe, he might remember a girl who fell off her riser (me and my chair) during the final dress rehearsal of the show in Logan in December of 1995. And even if he didn’t, maybe I will get a response saying, “Yes we are always willing to audition spectacularly funny and talented people, especially people with amazingly cute hair, such as yours”. You just never know unless you try, right? I would love to be the Nurse in the show, and be able to sing the song that has so recently touched my heart.

So what do you say? Should I try?

Babies Big Day!

Hi, its me! Baby J!
Uncle Steve got married on Saturday and I got to party all day long. Mom wanted me to take a nap a couple of times but I said "No, I will miss all the fun" Here are a few of my favorite memories.

Here are my Wheeler Aunts and Uncles. They are all married now, Grandma and Grandpa Wheeler are very happy about that. And it looks like their 8 kids are pretty happy too.
Aren't my Mommy and Daddy Cute! I just love them. They take pretty good care of me, I can tell that they don't really know what they are doing but they try hard, and that is good enough for me. Do you like my mommy's new hair cut? Her dress, necklace and earrings are pretty cute too.

Here are my Dads Brothers, from Youngest- Steve, the Groom at the bottom, to oldest.

My Parents like me a lot, they are always kissing on me, it makes me smile. Can you see my two top teeth? I got them special for the weeding!

Grandpa Wheeler and I spent some special time together, he told me all about Life, the Universe and Everything! I like him because he was wearing a suit with a vest, just like me.

I had a really great day.

Change is a Good Thing

When we bought our home the furnishings in our front room, consisted of a Couch, Love Seat, TV and a cute set of Coffee and End Tables. I put up pictures- they were very well placed, centered on walls and above large pieces of Furniture. Two years ago we added a Piano- it fit perfectly below the Picture shelves. Then we had a baby and Ken finally gave into my constant nagging about having the computer in an open area of our home- and that is where the problem began.

The computer pushed both the Couch and the Piano out off center. The pictures suddenly made no sense, but I had no idea how to make it all work again. Until Christmas- When Ken conspired with my Sister in Law Tiff to get me a wonderful Present. Can you see it here on my new picture wall? Hint- it has to do with Vinyl Lettering.

So, Instead of focusing on Centering- I focused on Love, and people I love. Ken noticed that there are more pictures of the Baby by himself then there are of us, but that is OK because we love the Baby- so it works.

I then took on the Picture shelves, which at one point were beautifully Centered above the Piano. Now I say "Centered Shmentered!" Well kind of centered shmentered, I did move the big clock (also a present given to me by Ken and made by Tiff- that Tiff is amazing!), so anyway, the big clock is pretty much centered above the piano, and everything else is just stuff I love, arranged in a nice way.

So I am happy- Change is a Good Thing- especially when it doesn't take too long to do. I started planning the rearranging at about 7 pm last night, and I was completely done by 10 (I didn't spend an entire 3 hours moving things around- I was distracted at times by Family Scripture Study, American Idol (why do people have such good self images- I would never ever ever feel comfortable doing that!!!!), and a PBS Special of Billy Crystal being given the Mark Twain award for Comedy. This morning (at 2:50 when I was comforting my baby who has a double ear infection and possibly a sinus infection) I kept looking at my wall and thinking. "I love it, I love it". If you want to see it in person- you are welcome to come visit. Then you can love it too.

Oh yeah, I had 22 things on my to do list this week. Rearrange pictures was one of them. As of today I have crossed off 14 of those items!

I need to Vacuum

What a Morning! It started at 3am. The Baby had a hard time staying asleep between 3 and 4:30 this morning, and I didn't sleep at all during that time. When Ken left for work at 6:30 I felt like I had died and been reanimated (and as Dumbledore will tell you in "the Tales of Beedle the Bard", Reanimated Corpses are just not the same people as they had been when they were truly living). So I was able to go back to sleep this morning but I had horrible dreams. They all had to do with the first task of the day, which was to go get my hair cut. At first in the dreams I had long hair and I was amazed at how much it had grown, and then the dream took a horrible turn starting with my forgetting to pick up my Friend who was also in need of a hair cut, then my leaving Jared in the Car, then my driving on the wrong side of the road and getting pulled over and finally ending with my hair being shaved off! Shaved off is not the look I was going for.

So the Baby woke up at 7:30, he was happy, I was not quite ready to wake up and so I put a pillow over my head and asked my body and Heavenly father if I could keep sleeping until 8. My wish was granted, at 8 the baby gave his happy little "BAAAAA" which means "I am ready to get out of my crib now" and I got out of bed feeling slightly more refreshed.

I needed to pick up my friend at 8:45, and I spent the entire 45 minutes making sure I would remember to pick her up and trying not to be late. At 8:40 I picked up the baby to put him in the car, he was stinky, I changed him. As he lay there on the changing table I could tell he had something in his mouth but he wouldn't show me, he then started to make little chocking noises. By this point he was changed and dressed and so I decided that I would hold him in a position that would allow whatever he had in his mouth to fall out (it has worked several times before).

Well I got my coat on, got the diaper bag, opened the door, and suddenly there were gagging and vomiting sounds. My Shoes- Direct Hit. The Diaper bag- Very Well Splashed. Rug by front door- Covered. "8:44, I have got to go, I have got to go" Baby- not a drop on him, in fact he was smiling- and in the pool of vomit on the floor there was a little hard piece of bread (leftover, perhaps even hidden for a future day, from yesterdays snack). Baby was smiling, I grabbed some new clothes for him, put the essentials in a different diaper bag and headed out the door.

I didn't forget to pick up my friend and we arrived at the salon only 3 minutes late (strangely at the same time I realized that I had forgotten my friend in the horrible dream). I love Dollar cuts because it cost $10 to get your hair cut- that is if you wash your hair at home and you don't want to have it styled. Well today I woke up late, so I asked to have my hair washed ($3) and then I decided that I had had a horrible morning and I deserved to have beautifully styled hair ($5). My $10 cut turned into an $18 dollar cut- (I also splurged on some product so that I could have cuter hair every day). But it was all for good, I spent more than I had planned, but the experience was nice- having your hair cut by a friend and with another friend there to add to the fun conversation- totally worth the $35 it cost me in the end. (Before I was married I would routinely spend $40-80 just on the hair cut and/or color)

When I got home I had forgotten about the mess just inside the front door that I had to clean up. So the Moral of the story is this- I knew my house was a mess, I knew that I needed to vacuum, in fact Vacuum Carpets is the very first thing on the list of Household chores to do this week. But I didn't do it yesterday. If I had, the baby wouldn't have choked on a piece of yesterdays bread and I wouldn't have to wash my shoes, diaper bag and throw rug. But would I also have not had my hair styled, would I have had as much fun talking about my horrible dreams and not so great first hour of the morning with my friends as I got a mini makeover? I don't think so. The floors will be vacuumed today- but I will always have the memories of my horrible morning to keep me warm.

The Little Things

It is 11:40 on Sunday Morning. I feel really good about my day so far, I feel like I have accomplished a lot! I don’t usually accomplish much on Sunday, after all it is Sunday and it must be kept Holy. As such, I don’t clean or do any really chores on Sunday, I do watch TV, but I keep it to spiritual or uplifting material (at least until after church, hehehe). But today I have discovered the joy of the little things.

I am the Primary Chorister. Because I don’t like to feel like I only think about my calling on Sundays, I try to plan the music for each Sunday before going to bed on Saturday. This was absolutely necessary when church started at 8:30, but this year church starts at 12:30 and so I have loads of extra time in the morning (especially when the baby actually naps from 10-12 on Sunday mornings, I feel so blessed!). So what do I do with all my extra time?

Well, I could have made myself an amazing breakfast, but I am currently drinking Kirkland Weight Loss Shakes for Breakfast and Lunch, and that only takes 5 minutes to make and drink. Ken has meetings starting each Sunday at 7 am, so I can not make him breakfast, I could but it would be very cold at 4 pm when he got home from all his meetings. Poor Ken. But we are not talking about Ken, we are talking about all I accomplished today.

So here it is.

Last week was the first Sunday of the Year, and as a new Primary Chorister I was excited to start learning all the new songs that the kids need to learn for this years Primary Program in September. Last week after Church I almost, I truly almost believed that the children would never ever ever learn all the songs we need to learn. We have 3 classes of Sunbeams (3-4 year olds), the older kids know 2 of the 8 songs we will be singing, but the Sunbeams, and I dare say two or three of the older classes, know none of them. It feels like we are starting from scratch.

This morning I made a schedule of the next 8 months, week by week, listing what we need to learn. If we are able to learn the sections of each song assigned to each week, the children will know every verse of all 8 songs. But Wait! There is More! I was easily able to arrange the order of verses to be taught for each song. It was amazing- I am pretty sure I was getting heavenly help. So for our first song “The Family is of God” we are learning the 1st and 4th verses first and then the 2nd and 3rd, I figured that if it takes too long to learn the 1st and 4th we could get the teachers to learn the second and third which focus on the roles of fathers and mothers respectively. Another song “Beautiful Savior” we are learning backwards. I have asked a small group of the older girls (the activity day girls) to learn the descant that is sung on the third verse of this song. This is going to take a lot of my good singers away from the Melody of the song during this verse and I had the impression that if we learned this verse first we would know it the best and the kids would sing really loud and make up for the fact that there are less of them singing. We will then learn the 2nd and then the 1st verses, just in case we don’t learn the 1st verse very well I am also going to teach it to the Activity Day Girls, so if needed they can sing that verse by themselves, then have the rest of the Primary join them on the 2nd and 3rd verses. There were several other little things that I remembered or came up with while I was typing up the schedule. When I was done- It felt so good, I was able to give a copy my assistant, who was also feeling slightly overwhelmed wondering how we were going to make it all work. I was also able to give a copy to Counselor in the Primary Presidency who writes our Primary Program and our Pianist will get a copy too so that she will know what our major music needs will be each week.

I also created a Scripture Reading Schedule for myself. I love to read the Book of Mormon. I love to time my reading so that at the end of the year I am also finishing reading the Book of Mormon. Two years ago I made a resolution to read the Book of Mormon completely through 4 times during the year. 531x4=2124 pages, 2124/365=5.8 pages per day. I think I read 5 pages a weekday and 6 each day on the weekend, in December I had to do my Math again to figure out how to finish on the 31st. It was fun, I Kept my resolution, I read each day. I felt the spirit so much in my life that year, I loved it. This last year I had a new baby and couldn’t find the time to read 5 pages per day, I read the entire book once and felt great that I was able to do that. This year my plan was to do the same, read the Book of Mormon once through. But I don’t have a lot of time on weekdays so I needed to figure out how many pages to read on the days that Ken is home to make up for reading less on the days that he is at work.

This is how I did it.

In Excel I placed a “1” in the first 365 cells of column “A”, in cell #366 I made a total. Using Cut and Paste made this very easy to do. Next I Bolded the start of each month and highlighted weekends. I then decided that I would read one page on days that Ken was gone and 2 on days that Ken was around, for the first few weeks I tweaked the amount of pages to read when Ken was around until the total at the bottom was 531. But Wait, There's More! I got to thinking, Why just read the book through once, when I could do it twice. So I copied Column A and Pasted it into Column C, (Column B was already taken up by my Months/Days) I then doubled everything and tweaked it a little more until the total at the bottom was 1062. I know that this type of thing doesn’t appeal to everyone, but as I said, I love to read, I love to finish reading on the 31st of December and to top it all off- I really love using Excel! I know, I am a big big nerd, but you love me anyway.

And Finally- I made myself a to do list for the week. Ken’s younger brother is getting married on Saturday and I have a lot to do to get ready for all the family and friends who will be visiting. (The Bachelor Party is at our house). It has been a while since I sat down and made a to do list, I loved it- I feel so calm about the coming week, I may do it every week.

All in All, I didn’t do anything amazing today, I did Little Things. But they were little things that made me happy. And the world could always use more happiness, don’t you think?

Music to My Ears

It is hard to believe that so much talent could be stuffed into such a little body!

This has been going on now for a few days, it is amazing how long the piano can actually hold the babies attention- a really fun toy will be played with for a few minutes and then he will move on, but the piano can be played with for a half hour or more. I also think that it is amazingly cute that he seems to need an audience- if you notice, he will stop and look around for me to make sure I am watching and then he will keep playing.

An Angelic Update

Well, we dealt with fevers rising and falling all weekend. The nurse told me on Friday that if by Monday the baby still had a fever, or cold, or cough or any type of congestion, we would need to reschedule. And so I was very interested to see what would happen this morning.

No fever, Good. No runny nose, Good. Big Cough, Bad. So I called the doctor to reschedule.

We did have a big blessing having to do with rescheduling. Ken works in a Payroll, and January is a very busy month for their department- it seems everyone wants their W-2's and other such tax documents. So there was only one week that would work for him in the near future. As luck would have it, the next available day the doctor had for surgery was in that same week that would work for Ken. (Was it really luck? Or did we just pick the wrong date to start with and so Heavenly Father helped us pick a new date. We may never know.) So now- I have 3 more weeks to prepare myself, (Mostly Mentally) and baby has 3 more weeks to get as healthy as possible.

Thank you for all your love, support and prayers- if you could remember us again 3 weeks from now- we would appreciate it.

Calling All Angels

I have one, sweet, kind and precious baby. The day he was born, while I recovered, his daddy followed him around the women’s center. It was a good thing too because he learned a lot about our little boy.

In the Nursery as the Doctors and Nurses checked out every inch of our baby they found something that wasn’t quite right. He has Hypospadias. According to the National Institutes of Health, “Hypospadias is a relatively common congenital (present from birth) defect in which the opening of the urethra is on the underside, rather than at the end, of the penis.” It occurs in 1 our of 350 male births. (While googling hypospadias to make sure I was spelling it right I also saw 1 in 100 and 1 in 200 as statistics).

When he was 3 weeks old we took our baby to a Pediatric Urologist, who told us that this condition is easily fixed, but would take surgery. During the surgery our baby would need to be put under General Anesthesia. Tiny Baby Lungs just are not ready for Anesthesia, slightly larger 6 month old lungs are. We were told that we would want to have the surgery prior to his first birthday so as to take advantage of babies short memory. We decided that we would have the surgery in January so that we could have a new year of flexible spending money i.e. so we could budget for the hit to the wallet we would take.

So now, here we are in January, my sweet little boy is going to have surgery next week. I won’t say that I am not scared, because I am. I know that they do this kind of surgery every day, that our doctor has preformed hundreds of them. But this is my Son, and he has never had surgery. The most he has ever had is shots! On top of that, I am of the opinion, that my baby is very smart. He is inquisitive. He seems to understand things. He knows where I am and wants to be near me (it melts my heart).How am I going to let him go with strangers, (strangers with knives?), he is going to be scared, he is going to need me.

I have been trying to do all that I can to prepare him, and I have been asking anyone I know with medical training what they think I should do. We have been playing with surgical masks- so that he knows that they are not scary, that people wearing masks can be fun. Hopefully the Angels he likes to talk to in the early hours of the morning will come to the hospital with us and keep him company while he waits for his surgery.

We actually might have to postpone the surgery. For the past few days the baby has had a cough and a runny nose, and last night he had a fever of 101.2. This morning he was fine at 98.6, and the nurse at this doctors office told us to watch him and see how he feels later today,(luckily our doctor is on call tomorrow if we need him). His fever has come back, not quite as high, 100.2 at 10 AM and 99.6 at Noon. He is playing and acting like his sweet normal self- as this picture I just took can prove.

I spoke to the Nurse at the Pediatric Urology Office and she said that we should do whatever we feel is necessary for him over the weekend and then on Monday, if he still has a Fever, Cough, Cold or any kind of Congestion we will have to reschedule the surgery. And so I am Calling all Angels, we need all the help and all the prayers we can get. So if you think of us while you are going about your day, if you could say a little prayer for Jared, that he will be healthy and strong and that everything will go well during his surgery next week, we would be grateful!