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Case Turned 3!

June 22, 3pm, 3 years ago my little red-headed boy came into the world. I can't believe that he is 3 now. He's such a sweet, loving boy (most of the time) and I can't imagine life without him. He wakes me up every morning at 7am on the dot. He calls me "my mommy." He picks up his toys and puts them all away when I ask for his help. He's like his mommy in that he only listens when he finds the conversation interesting and then he asks you to repeat what you just said because he wasn't listening and something sparked his interest in what you said. He loves his baby sister.


Case & his train cake


Case & Kyler jumping in the bouncy castle

Case opening a Slip and Slide

Case's new big wheels. He can't quite reach the pedals so he pushes himself around the house with his feet.

Random Photos

Belly Button

Surgery for Case

Case was born with a herniated bellybutton. Basically, he's had an outtie. The dr. told us that most of these hernias fix themselves by the time the child turns 2. 2 came and went for us and we didn't see any progress on it fixing itself. The dr. then said it would fix by the time he was 3. Well, Case turns 3 in 2 weeks and it still hasn't fixed so we decided to have surgery and get it taken care of. Of course, we were planning on doing this before baby Siahna came, but since she arrived early it didn't happen exactly as planned. We had the surgery scheduled for a month ago, but Case got sick and they couldn't operate. Since my due date wasn't until June 13, we scheduled it for June 8 thinking this would give us time to have him recovered before the baby came.

Well, anyway, Tuesday was his surgery date. I had tried to prepare him in advance, but you can only prepare a 3 year old so much. We were brought to the pre-surgery room and the nurse asked us to put the rocket gown on Case and the funny looking hat. This is when I knew we'd have a long day. He refused to take off his clothes, no matter what we tried to bribe him with. We finally got his shirt off but that's all the progress we could make in 30 minutes. Yeah, we're his parents and we could have just forced the issue, but he's very stubborn, very independent, and very strong (can't wait till he's a teenager!). The dr. finally came in and said that we'd have to drug him up to make him more cooperative. It worked like a charm. It was like my 2 year old was drunk. It was pretty funny and he was so sweet and obedient. We really wish we could bring some of that home. :)

Jeff went back into surgery with Case until they put him under. We then waited about an hour for surgery to be done. The dr. came out and told us that everything went well and he was in the recovery room and they'd come get us as soon as he started to wake up. The nurse came and got Jeff and me shortly after that and as we were walking to his bed I knew we were in for it. He was just starting to wake, but was already trying to crawl out of his bed. We then grabbed him and moved him to a chair when he discovered the IV in his wrist and started screaming and trying to pull it out. It took both Jeff and I to hold him down. He also had an oxygen reader attached to his toe and once he saw that he really started screaming and trying to pull that off as well. We tried to hold him down and after about 20 minutes the nurse finally decided to pull out the IV and take off the oxygen reader. Thank you.

He then calmed down but was very uncooperative and in quite a bit of pain. After spending an hour with him in recovery we were finally told that we could go home. The nurse sat with us and told us how to take care of his bellybutton and that he couldn't remove the bandages until the next day. Well, of course, Case hears that and starts putting 2 and 2 together and realizes that yes he does have something on his bellybutton which is why it hurts. This starts a new round of battles as he tries to rip off the bandages. I swear, I have a multi-personality child sometimes. We do finally get him calmed enough to leave the bandages on and get him home where he chills and watches TV for the rest of the day.

He's recovered now, but I sure am glad that it's over and we don't have to deal with that again. Why oh why didn't we do this years ago when he was too little to understand or fight us? Pictures to come when I get new batteries for the camera.

Siahna (see-aw-nuh) Grace

I had a feeling that my little girl would make her mommy happy and come early, but I wasn't expecting her 10 days early. Case's cousins had come Wednesday afternoon to spend 2 days with us. I had started having contractions the night before but nothing consistent so I decided to go ahead and have the boys come. I told Collin to keep his phone close, but never thought I'd actually have to send the boys home early! Contractions started coming pretty consistently Wednesday night around 9pm. I went to bed at 10 and of course, couldn't sleep because they were getting stronger and closer together. The dr. had told me that the 2nd one comes faster and not to wait until they were 5 minutes apart. Around 10:30/11 I started timing them and they were anywhere from 2 minutes to 5 minutes. We started packing our bags and wondered what to do with the boys because Shiloh was housesitting 45 minutes away.

I figured I was in false labor and kept telling Jeff that things were fine and we wouldn't need to call Shiloh. He finally called a nurse who ended our conversation by saying, "I'll let the hospital know you're on your way!" Yikes, this was real. We called Shiloh and told her to head over and then I called my dear friend Elena who lives about 10 minutes away. She came over around 12:30am to watch the boys until Shiloh got here.

We got to the hospital a little after 1am and got checked in. I was 3cm dilated and 80% effaced. I guess this was real! Around 3:30 they checked me again and I was not 5cm and fully effaced. We were having a baby. They moved us into the delivery room, quickly got me an epidural (I'd been having back labor and was pretty miserable), and then told us to rest. Around 4:30am they came in and broke my water and said they'd be back in 2 hours to deliver. Jeff rested, I couldn't. I couldn't believe it was happening. It was the longest 2 hour wait!

I started pushing around 7:30 and the nurse then told me to wait because the dr. wasn't ready. We waited through a couple contractions, he came in, I gave four pushes, and she was out!

My husband, the hero!

Today, Case and I went to lunch with Jeff. As we were parking, a big suburban pulled into the parking space right in front of us and smashed into the mini van sitting right next to it. We both kind of cringed and proceeded to get Case out of the car, glad that it wasn't our car and we didn't have to deal with that mess. Well, Case wasn't cooperating and took a little longer than normal to get out of his carseat. While I was talking to Case, Jeff was watching the guy in the Suburban and I was kind of keeping an eye on him wondering what he'd say when he got out of the car and inspected the mini-van. We got Case out of the car and started walking towards the restaurant. We then noticed that the guy in the Suburban backed up and took off speeding out of the parking lot. Jeff immediately got out his phone and ran after the car getting the guys license plates (isn't that what they do in the movies?). The guy hadn't even bothered to do anything about the car he'd just smashed into and was taking off. Jeff got ahold of the police, reported what had happened and gave them the suburban's license plates. We then went in and ordered our food. A little later, I saw a police car pull in so Jeff went out to talk to the officer and give another statement. He spent most of his lunch talking to the police. Hopefully they catch that guy. What a good observer Jeff was to get the guys license plates as he was speeding out of the lot. Of course, I would have chased after the car but I'm 9 months pregnant and can just waddle around!