ReBloom

For the last several years Andy has given me a potted orchid for Valentines Day.  It's been great because the blooms last so long (much longer than a bouquet of flowers) and the plant continues to live even when the blooms have faded away.  The only problem has been that I have never been able to get them to rebloom after the first blooms are gone.

Well, this year Andy came home with this...

because of this...

Yes, that's right, my orchid from last year is actually going to rebloom!  This little bud has been expanding for the last few weeks and I can't wait until it bursts open.  

By the way, I think what made the difference was that I moved it from my north facing kitchen window to my south facing front room window.

The only down side is that if I'm able to keep the ones I have blooming, Andy will probably stop giving them to me for V-Day...or, if he does still give them to me, we'll run out of room...unless I turn my front room into a greenhouse!

Various Valentine Visuals

Aren't these the cutest little plates?  I found them at Hobby Lobby.  I absolutely "love" them!

I delivered some cookies on them.  Of course the cookies were inspired by Pinterest.

 

My cute cousin, Sarah, came by last night and brought valentines for the kids. 

Doctor Cook was making a house call for Josh's foot at the time and so there's a couple extra kids sprinkled in there.

 

 Thanks Sarah...(and Becca...we missed seeing you as well but we know you were there in spirit :o)

 You made their day!

One of my good friends Katrina also came last night and brought over these adorable hot pads for me.

They are just too darling.

Thanks Trina!  You made my day!

As a child, one of the best parts of Valentine's Day was constructing the box/bag/what-have-you into which you would stuff all the goodies your classmates handed out.

As a mom, I have been deprived of that opportunity until this year.  Finally, one of the teachers was not making their box/bag/what-have-you in class.  Josh's "thing" was up to us.  Now, I say it's been denied me, but secretly, it's kind of nice not to have the extra stress of figuring out just the right design/style for you child.  Well, Pinterest to the rescue!

Aren't these so cute?  We modified a bit and came up with our own version.  I say "we" but it was mostly me showing Josh the idea and him approving it and then me doing the work because, hey, he was layed up on the couch and was super busy writing out the names on the Valentines and, as most things I do around here, it was a last minute project.  It was extremely easy and quick though so it worked out just fine.

(I need to figure out how to get rid of all my shadows in my pictures!)

Abby toted this along with all of Josh's valentines to school today.  Sadly though, we had a miscommunication and it didn't come back with all of his valentines in it after school.

A sweet neighbor of ours that is also in his class brought by a delightful get well card that she and another girl had put together for Josh during Art.  That was consoling and eased the disappointment of the lack of valentines.  Thanks Maleia!  You made his day!

Lastly, another very kind friend dropped by this morning and brought these:

I've spied these on Pinterest Tennille!  Is that where you got the idea?  You're probably just naturally clever and don't need Pinterest to come up with cute ideas like I do.

Well, let's just say that I ate more than my fair share of these.  They were absolutely delish!

Thanks Tennille!  You made my day!

And that my friends is a wrap up of my Various Valentine Visuals.

Hoping everyone had a lovely V-Day!

Puckers and Root Beer Floats

Josh has been in high spirits today.  Andy and I commented on how he seems to be more polite since his surgery.  He's always thanking us for doing things for him.  It's so pleasant to hear.

His spirits were especially high after a bath.  You should have seen it...(no pictures for obvious reasons) but try to imagine Josh, half sitting, half laying in the tub, Andy scrubbing him down with me sitting on the edge of the tub, a sleeping, postictal Ben in my left arm while I'm holding Josh's bandaged foot up out of the water with my right hand.  A sight to behold I'm sure.

 

 

 

 

Squeaky clean Josh

 Bedtime Smooches!

I love how Ben puckers up for kisses...it looks like I do a pretty good job too :o)

Josh and I enjoyed a root beer float (his favorite treat) together at the end of the day.

Photo courtesy: Matt

Pain and love

WARNING:  I am going to post some pictures of Josh's foot so if you're faint of heart, maybe skip this post.

Josh slept pretty well through his first night.  His anesthetic block began to wear off about 5:00 a.m. so we didn't mess around and started giving him his Lortab.

Grandpa Bryan helped Josh with his math homework.  Grandma Bryan helped with Ben and I was able to get a shower in!  Hooray!

Ben had been jerking quite a bit yesterday and the day before and so I was thinking we had a big one coming on.  Sure enough, while playing in his bedroom with Grandma, he started seizing.  It was one where he was immediately out of it...drooling...the whole bit.  It lasted five minutes.  We were just about to give him his medicine when he took a deep breath in and stopped convulsing.  

About that same time, Andy came home for lunch and Josh started feeling a whole lot of pain.  He was about 45 minutes away from his next dose of Lortab but he needed something fast.  He was in tears and crying quite hard.  We called Grandpa who had gone into town and he rushed some liquid ibuprofen home to us.  I hadn't been prepared with that to give in between his Lortab doses.  Now I know to have it on hand for next time.  We gave him the ibuprofen but of course it didn't kick in right away so he continued to have a hard time.

The home health aide came right in the middle of it all to change the dressing on his foot.  Couldn't have been worse timing!  He screamed pretty much the whole way through.  I felt so bad...for them both.

This is how it looked:

For some reason, I couldn't get a clear shot on the other side of his foot.  The doctor wrote his initials and "yes" on his foot before the surgery so he knew which one he was doing.

The home health aide was a cute woman from Germany.  She was so nice and gentle with Josh.  

When she had changed all the dressing and was just wrapping his foot back up he calmed down.  I think the Ibuprofen finally started to kick in.  She took his temperature and listened to his heart.

She might be coming back to see us again soon.

Josh has spent a lot of time like this lately...

He just covers up his head to get away from it all.  He hasn't been super sleepy as I had expected.  That's probably a good thing though so he can get all his homework done :)

  He's been a trooper about that.

The rest of the day was not bad at all.  We made sure we kept the medicine coming every two hours.

My in-laws let me get a nap in.  That was a blessing.  

Ben decided to end the day by throwing up and making our day even more medically interesting!

(I don't think he's sick...just an unsettled stomach.)

Dad helping Josh brush his teeth.

I wanted to mention that so many good friends, neighbors and family have done such nice things.  Cookies, cards, visits, baby sitting, phone calls and emails.  Thank you so much for making us feel loved...especially Josh.  We are so blessed to be surrounded by such wonderful people!

Evans Calcaneal Osteotomy, Cuneiform plantarflexory opening wedge osteotomy,Tightening of the Posterior Tibial Tendon, Achilles tendon-lengthening

Yah...so those are all the things Josh had done on his right foot yesterday.

I apologize right now if I get a little too wordy.  I am using this as my journal though so I don't want to leave out a whole bunch of stuff.  

 To give a little bit of background, we have to go back to me and Andy.  He has extremely flat feet and I have very pronated (rolling in) feet.  With our genetics combined our kids are doomed to have foot problems.  Josh seems to have received the worst of it.  Here are his feet a couple of weeks ago...flat, pronated and turning out.

 

His left one is definitely worse than his right but our good neighbor, who also happens to be a foot doctor, said they should probably both be fixed so Josh can have a better quality of life.  Currently he has a hard time running and they do give him pain occasionally.

Josh had received a very nice blessing the night before from Andy and my Dad.  And the night before that, we had a family home evening lesson on Joseph Smith's leg story and the power and role of the atonement in the pain and healing process in our lives.  We tried to prep him well.

We arrived at the hospital at 6:30 yesterday morning.  All went well checking him in and getting him situated.

The nurses were very nice and explained everything they were doing to Josh.

He got to wear some cute hospital clothes and we got our own little room which was very nice.  I was kind of expecting just having to wait in a regular waiting room.  This was so much better!

Josh loved his little, orange booties!

Handsome guy!

We had all kinds of people come in and talk to us before they wheeled him away.  I could tell he was a bit nervous but trying to be brave.  Bless his heart!

I knew I had about 2 1/2 hours of waiting so I tried to be productive and read a whole bunch of stuff.  I recently began the final book in the Fabelhaven series so it was fun to get deeper into that.  I'm also teaching Relief Society on Sunday and so it was good to have time to go through my lesson.  I also got in a couple of Conference talks.  Aside from why I was there, it was just so nice to have some quiet time to read to my heart's content.

I also went downstairs a couple of times...once to the cafeteria to get something to eat and then once to the gift shop.  I love the hospital gift shop!  There's always fun things in there.

At 10:30 Dr. Cook came in and said that all had gone well.  They did have a little surprise when they cut into the ankle and found a big hole...a cyst.  He said sometimes they do see that in older kids but not usually so young.  He was able to pack it with bone so it should fill in and heal nicely.  He showed me a picture he had taken of Josh's foot on his phone and explained to me again all four things they had done.

Josh came in about 30 minutes later...kind of "dizzy", pale and a little bit slow of speech but not too out of it.

He rested a bit and had some water and a little later some root beer and after a while felt like getting up and trying out the crutches.  We had bought some on Monday and he had been practicing a ton on them so he was confident when they had him try them out in the hospital.

After his short jaunt on the crutches they said we could get him ready to go home but then he lost his root beer all over and so they wanted him to stay longer.  He listened to some of my running tunes to pass the time.

  About 45 minutes later he got up on the crutches again.  All was well so I got him dressed and just as they were bringing the wheel chair to us he threw up again.  Poor guy.  He was so worried that we would have to wait longer and he really wanted to go home.  I changed his clothes and they were still willing to let us go so we were out of there.

That smile doesn't look fake at all does it?

We got him home and Grandma Jannie was there with the other two boys to welcome him.  He passed the rest of the day on the couch, continuing to not keep anything down...even with an anti nausea medicine.

He was pretty frustrated that he couldn't eat.  He was so hungry.  Finally, towards bed time he was able to eat a bit and it stayed down. Yeah!

Grandma and Grandpa Bryan came and ended up spending the night.  They were down in our guest room, Matt was in his room alone, Andy and Josh were in our bed and I slept on the trundle bed in Abby's room with her...and eventually Ben who woke up and wouldn't go back to sleep for a couple of hours.

It was a full day but it seemed to go really well for Josh.  His foot was still numb from the anesthesia so there was no complaining about pain.  We were just waiting to see what the next day would bring.

Old Hat...New Hat

This morning I got a phone call telling me that Ben's new helmet had arrived!  Even though I hadn't showered and had not planned on going anywhere today I made an appointment to go pick it up. 

Ben was so patient as the man at Rocky Mountain Artificial Limb and Joint tried on and adjusted the helmet several times.  It's the smallest hockey helmet he could find.  He still had to put in two layers of padding to make it fit tight enough.  

There's a chin strap on this one which he's still trying to get used to.  You have to attach three different things on this one as opposed to one on the old one which we're still trying to get used to.  The snaps are super tough to close together.  The man said they would get easier with use.  Hopefully it will work out okay though.  We're supposed to give it a week and let him know if we like it enough to order a second one to have on hand.  

Our experience today took me back to about a year ago when we got his first helmet.  

His myoclonic seizures had gotten to the point that we were so concerned about his safety every minute of the day.  He was constantly falling and crying.  He always had a new bump, bruise, bloody nose or black eye.  It was so hard on him physically and emotionally.  Often, I would start crying when he started crying because I felt so bad for him.  Our insurance case manager referred us to a place in Ogden to get our helmet.  I cringed when I saw it for the first time. 

It was so ugly...a beast of a helmet.  But if this was going to help him I would do it.

We had a helmet party that night with the family to help Ben feel more at ease about his new accessory.

 

We played helmet games and sang helmet songs...we had to really stretch some things, but we made it work.  I'm pretty sure Ben had a good time.  He never really fought it in the beginning.  It was amazing how well he took to it.  Of course there have been moments but he's been a trooper.

Well, it was just a few months before the foam started coming apart.  We took it back to Ogden and they glued it back together and said it should never come apart again.  I wish it could have been true but it continued to deteriorate...as a matter of fact, the face shield cracked a few weeks ago.

Back to our insurance case manager, which by the way, I love.  She's helped us through a lot and made things a lot easier than they probably would have been otherwise.  She told us that there was no limit to how many helmets we could order per year so we decided to order a new one.  The Ogden company told us that that was the only model they had and that if it was already falling apart maybe we needed to look elsewhere for a different helmet.  After a little searching, lo and behold, we found RMALandJ right here in Logan.  We liked Greg from the beginning.  He said that Ben's helmet looked much too medical and surely we could find something more "little boy" looking.  He was determined to find something that would work for us.  

Well, here it is and we'll keep you posted on how it turns out for us. 

A Hard Day for Me...A Hard Day for Them

A couple of nights ago Andy and I watched "17 Miracles" for the first time. 

I had heard that it was wonderful and also very sad.  I held out fine until almost the end and then the tears just started flowing.  The stories of these people are amazing.  The hardships they endured are incredible.  

It's interesting how things like this can change your perspective so dramatically.  

I mean, a hard day for me would include one of the children spilling their milk at breakfast and having to clean it up, seeing that I've gained a pound or two on the scale during my regular morning weigh in, having Ben be extra clingy and wanting attention all day so that I felt like I couldn't get anything done, not getting my afternoon nap, having Andy come home late (5:30...poor me) from work and then having him take off again for meetings soon thereafter.

A hard day for them would probably include waking up and realizing they had no food for the day...again, finding one of their children had frozen to death during the night, having to leave that child above the frozen ground for the wolves to find,

walking all day in freezing temperatures and no longer being able to feel their hands and feet,

and laying down at night knowing they had to do it all over again the next day...if there was a next day. 

Yes, my perspective changed that night.  Who knows how long it will last, but at least for that night I lingered a little longer on the faces of my sweet children as I tucked them into bed, making sure I gave them an extra special kiss.  I walked into rooms and realized how many "things" I had been blessed with...unnecessary things.  And as Andy and I prayed together and on our own, our thoughts were turned to those who had gone before and prepared a way and sacrificed so much.  We were humbled and truly grateful. 

I need reminders like this every now and then...to shift my perspective and help me see what is really important and how much the Lord has given me...to make my hard days seem not that hard anymore.