This little girl…

Who I think is looking more like the Brazell side of the family has started smiling at us.

She is also starting to get little rolls on her legs and arms, and even a double chin.

Monday, Jameson got to go to Build-A-Bear since his friend had a birthday. He chose a dragon. He did not like the stuffing machine, but when it came time to pick out some clothes, what did he pick? None other than a race car shirt.

We ended up putting the shirt back. He didn’t care if his dragon has clothes. Even now, the only time the dragon has been out of the box was to show his dad. He loves to point to his dragon and his tail (the tail sticks out of the box through a hole) every time we go in his room. Silly kid. Thanks for inviting us along, though. We had fun.

Jameson is big into building bridges with his blocks, and playing with his trains.  Usually, he tells me, “Close compuder Mommy. Come play blocks wid me?” This is all fine and dandy, except he just wants you to build something he can knock over. Not so fun when I just spent 10 minutes building your bridge.

The other night (April 24th) Jameson got Kevin to build him a pretty fancy tunnel. It even had a helicopter pad on it. I think Dad was even more proud of his skills than Jameson was.

See, Kevin’s just as excited…

There’s only one other toy that he loves more right now. That’s his cars. Notice in the pictures the cars are on platforms,  and what is playing on the tv? That’s right… Cars.

(Yes, he still has a binki. We will work on that along with potty training.)

This little girl is now 8 weeks old (on Monday, 4.19).

We had her 2 month appointment on April 14th. As of that day her stats were:

Height: 21.5″ (42.8%)

Weight: 10 lbs 1 oz (54.8%)

Head Circumference: 14.69″ (35.57%)

MBI: 15.31

Ella is starting to stay awake more, which Jameson loves to point out. I hear, “Mom, baby sister awake!” All the time. He also likes to point out her eyes, which I’m not too fond of. She is usually up for about an hour before falling back asleep. Starting on Sunday, (4.17) she started smiling in response to us. She has smiled before, but not consistently. Maybe she thought her brother’s Mohawk was funny. She will also follow us in the room with her eyes or turn her head. She is starting to have different cries to distinguish what she is in need of. I’m just glad we don’t hear the, “Please save me from Jameson” cry very often. Ella is also on a pretty consistent 3 hour schedule. At night she might even do 3-4 hours

Jameson is becoming more helpful. He will run and get diapers for me when changing Ella, but hates when it’s his turn. I wouldn’t mind starting potty training, but he could care less. So until he shows some signs of wanting to go potty on the toilet, we’ll stick with diapers. That is not a fight I want to have to battle. He is also starting to cry every time I leave him home with Kevin. I think it’s because I take Ella with me and leave him. The other day, he and I went to the grocery store together. He was so good, and was being so cute. He wanted Chick Hicks, and I had told him the next time we went to the store we could get him, if he was good. Well, Jameson woke up from his nap and asked to go to the store. Since he was being so cute and good, we ended up coming home with our groceries along with Chick, Sally, and DJ (from the movie Cars). I don’t think I ever realized how many different characters there are in that movie until now that we are buying them.

So life is getting back to normal. We are getting back into the routine of things, and doing well.

too funny

Monday morning it took me two washes to get all the hairspray out of Jameson’s hair, and even then I probably could have washed it again. Well, I wasn’t going to try to shave the rest of his hair by myself, so I took my child out looking like a kid from the backwoods. We went to a library story time, and then the park. Check out that hair-do.

Yes, I was a little embarrassed by my child. When Kevin got home from work, I told  him the hair had to go. So before bed, we got busy and took care of our child’s hair.

Before…

During. Such a stressful situation for him.

And the finished product…

A NEW BOY!!!

Kevin really wanted to leave Jameson’s hair for church. I told him, “Fine, but you have to answer to the bishop.” We had to rush to get ready, since our kids actually slept in a little bit. I told Kevin we needed to take pictures before church, before anything got their outfits dirty at church. This is the best we got.

(I bought him new nice church shoes only to find out they don’t fit his feet. So we had to revert back to his converse adding to his whole presentation.)

So we walked into church at the end of the opening song and sat down. Immediately you could hear the chuckles behind us. Jameson was actually pretty reverent, and Ella slept most of the time, so we had a good Sacrament meeting. After, we had everyone coming up to us laughing, and questioning regarding Jameson’s hair. Some had bets on whose idea it was, and I heard an “I told you so” when I said Kevin did it. Everyone thought he was awesome, and some kids told their parents to do their hair like that.

Kevin took Jameson to nursery. (Kevin also just got called as a nursery leader.) I went to feed Ella. After she was fed, I did a lap around the church as I was burping her. It was also very warm in the chapel, so gospel doctrine was not sounding so appealing. As we were walking, I ran into the bishop. Our conversation went something like this…

Bishop- “I have to tell you, I was starting to get tired, because the chapel was so warm. I looked down and could see some spikes and was wondering what it was. Then Jameson’s head popped up from behind the pew. I started laughing!”

Me- “I told Kevin he’d have to answer to you about it.”

B- “No, that’s awesome.”

So the Bishop was ok with it. I told him it would be cut for next week. I also had the Relief Society president question our intentions, while laughing. She said we made everyone’s day at church. I just hope this doesn’t come back to bite us when he is a teenager.

Saturday, April 17th, Kevin took Jameson to run a few errands. When they returned Kevin informed me he was keeping both kids, going to clean the house, and I was going shopping. Who can argue that? I was supposed to get stuff for me, but shopping for me is not so fun when I’m still carrying baby weight. Well, on their errands out that morning Kevin bought clippers to give Jameson a much overdue haircut. I was out walking around the mall, carrying all my shopping bags (I missed not having a stroller to store my bags in) I got a picture message from Kevin. It revealed this…

I started laughing in the middle of the mall. First of all, that he actually followed through, with his Mohawk idea, and also that he got Jameson to hold still long enough to cut and style his hair.  Kevin admitted he was nervous for my response and was relieved when I was laughing. So here is the series of events…

See how long his hair is?

Then after…

(He’s trying to do “thumbs up”.)

 

And does the boy fit the haircut, or does the haircut fit the boy?

Lately, Jameson has decided he doesn’t need to take a nap. So this was how I found him the other day (4.16.2010) when he should have been eating dinner.

At least he didn’t fall asleep in his food.

Last Saturday, April 10th, we went to Tulip Town. It’s over 300 acres of tulips in Mount Vernon. It took us forever to get there, about twice as long as it should have. Luckily, the kids slept most the way. It was windy, and kind of cold, but the sun was shining. It was a nice, clear day.  Jameson was so excited to see the kites in the air. (He’s trying to jump high to reach the kites.)

You weren’t supposed to venture through the tulips, which we obeyed in the beginning…

but the pictures were too good to resist not venturing a little ways down the rows.

We had a nice old man (that had a very nice camera on a tripod) take our picture for us. I think this is our first photo as a family of 4. We never did take any at the hospital with everything that was going on. You can see Mt. Vernon covered in snow behind us.

 

Jameson doesn’t like to get too close to Ella in our presence. When we’re not there, he has no problem. He did take one picture for us, and then watched the planes. He’s also learned to do “thumbs up” so he tries all the time.

We got a few of Ella in the Tulips. Hopefully I can get some of these on an announcement soon.

Jameson and Dad hiding from Mom in the tulips.

 

Looking for bugs on the flowers.

A helping hand.

We checked out the display tulips, then headed to the barn to see the horses.

Before we left, Ella tried on her dad’s sunglasses. She looked pretty good.

Last week, April 6th, Ella had her appointment with the cardiologist. I had asked my sister how long her appointment had taken (she also had to take her daughter in to the cardiologist for a follow up appointment for a heart murmur) and she said it was real quick. So I took Jameson with me, and had other appointments planned for later in the day. Not so for us. After having to wait 20 minutes to even be checked in (Kevin’s employer never sent Ella’s information to the insurance) our appointment lasted almost 3 hours. Try keeping a 2 year old in an ultrasound room for 2 hours without having him turn on the lights, or get into anything. Not so fun. He will not be coming in 6 weeks for her follow-up.

She weighed 9lbs. 4oz. (with a diaper and binki) which means she gained almost 2 lbs. since coming home. She is also 21.26″ long. The found her results were about the same from the hospital, which is good. She is not getting worse or having her heart overwork. Her pulmonary valve is  slightly narrowed, which means it has to work harder to pump the blood out to her lungs. She also has a medium size hole between the top left and right chambers of her heart. This means the blood can flow back and forth between them. So her left side is receiving more blood than it should, and then is having to pump it out of a narrow valve. They are watching to make sure that left side doesn’t become swollen or show any signs of being over worked. For now, everything looks good. There are no outward signs if there is a problem. They just told me to watch if she has a hard time eating for long periods of time, that might be a sign. If she were to have to take breaks every few minutes rather than eating a full feeding. She will have to go back in 6 weeks for more ultrasounds, and as she grows, the visits will be spaced further apart. The doctors are hoping these issues fix themselves, but they wouldn’t consider doing anything until she was older if it was needed. The doctor also told me that she wouldn’t necessarily need surgery either. There are ways where they can go in through a vein in her leg that would lead to her heart, and they could patch her hole that way. It would require an overnight stay and a band-aide on her leg. So we’ll just wait and see. Hopefully her heart heals itself over time and no treatment will be needed.

(Taken April 5th)

As close as Jameson gets…

(Taken April 7th)