Man I am running behind....

Wow it has been a bit since I posted last......
What has been happening???

Tanner is rolling. And proud of it. Though he still has trouble getting back over.



Lydia was baptized.



Tanner started eating baby food. He really does like it.



Emily got her braces off!



Hayden and Matt had a sleepover at grandma and grandpas.



Tanner loves and hates his jumper. Sometimes he acts like it is punishment.



If we are at the table then he has to be at the table.




These are just some of the things happening with us. Tanner is growing up too fast and so is Hayden.
Kevin is working full time and going to school full time so we only get to see him a little. But it is only 3 months that we have to endure.

First Day of Preschool!

Hayden started preschool today!!! He was so excited this morning. All he could talk about was preschool.








HE LOVED IT!!! He was telling me all about sing-a-long and show and tell. The pictures he did were so cute. I am glad that he loves it. It was sad for me, not that he was gone from me for 2 1/2 hours; but because he is growing up...

Summer

Well it has been a very crazy, but fun summer. I am going to be glad when it is over. Though we did have some fun times...

For the 24th of July we went camping. Kevin's parents let us use their pop up camper and got us a spot at East Canyon last minute. Hayden had a blast. He asked Kevin if we could stay there forever.











Kevin even let his inner child out and was going down the slides with Hayden. =)



We had a really fun time!

Then the next couple of weeks were spent getting my mom ready for girl's camp. My poor mom was trying to get camp ready while she had a kidney stone trying to pass... I tried to help her out where I could. Anyways they ended up getting rained out of camp and had to come home the second night they were up there. So they decided to finish girl's camp at home. They setup the tents at Mona's house so they could dry out and the girl's camp over and slept in them and finish girl's camp there. At least not all of the hard work and planning went to waste. We were there helping setup the tents so they invited us to eat with them.




The latest project that I have been doing is helping my mom get everything ready for my sister's baptism. Lydia is going to be 8 on August 27th. It really doesn't seem like that long ago when I was visiting mom in the hospital after she had had her. Man time flies. Anyways we have been getting ready for it. She is going to do a triple baptism with her 2 cousins. It has been crazy trying to organize it. This is the invite that I made for it.



Well summer is almost over. Hayden gets to start preschool next week. He is super excited to start school. Kevin also starts school next week. He is super excited too! If all goes well then this will be the last semester he need to get his associates. YAY! Tanner will be getting his 4 month shots next week too... boo. That will make for a grumpy baby. I hope everyone's summer has been full of fun!

Hayden singing and playing

Kevin picked up the guitar tonight and started playing. I asked him if he would learn songs that Hayden could sing too. Here is the result....




Hayden didn't just want to sing-a-long he wanted to play also.

crazy times

What a crazy month it has been!



Being a mom of 2 sure keeps you on your toes.

So what have we been up to lately???

Well....

We blessed Tanner on June 6.

Man he is a handsome little stud! Just like his brother!

We were without a kitchen for a few weeks... It was tough but so worth it! Why were we without one? Well my awesome Mother in law remodeled our kitchen to add in a dishwasher and more cupboards. Well hehehehe I guess I should give credit to everyone. Kevin's dad did electrical to move all the appliances around and put in cupboards and the counter top. As well as Kevin's siblings helped put in cupboards and counter tops. While we were at it we figured we would paint the whole upstairs...


That hole where the green wall is is where the dishwasher is. =)





I haven't taken any finished pictures yet, but I will once I get some. I still have to paint the ceiling and do some touch up work with the paint. But I am loving the new and improved kitchen! Thank you to all who helped!

My mom put up a pool in her backyard. It was the pool that was up at Grandma Sammy's house. Hayden and the kids love it! I haven't yet taken Tanner in it, but I will soon. Hayden and I went swimming in it yesterday and it is like bathwater at 90 degrees.



Tanner also got his first round of shots. =( Poor little guy. But he was really good about it. Went red in the face with a silent cry, had tears in his eyes, and then was done. Broke my heart though.


This last week we have been watching my cousins. They are currently in the process of moving from PA to WA. So while their parents are house hunting they have been chilling with family here in UT. I had them at night for sleeping over at my mom and dad's house. It was fun, nothing like going from a mom of 2 to a mom of 5 overnight. =)

We also did fireworks over at my mom and dad's house with my aunt and uncle next door. They were really pretty. Hayden loved them and they didn't even phase Tanner. Man it is almost like he is deaf.... hahaha jk my mom thought that for a while, but he just has selective hearing. It is a trait that runs in the family. =P

We are finally home now and starting to get back into the groove of things.

One year today

It is hard to think that it has already been a year today that we were sealed in the Jordan River Temple.

So much has happened in that time. But it still feels like it was just the other day that we were going through the temple for the first time.





Now we have a wonderful new addition to our family. And he will be with us forever!







We are very happy as a family and can't wait for more years to pass together.

Where is Hayden?

On Thursday evening Hayden was asked to go clean up his room. Now he wasn't feeling the best and had been up since 5 am. Well it was rather quiet downstairs. So I wandered down there and this is how I found Hayden....

Other things that have been going on...

Tanner is home!!!!

He was able to come home Wednesday afternoon. We have been so happy to have him home with us. Hayden has been a big help taking care of him. And any time he is around him he always says 'thats my little brother I like him'. He is too funny. He is a good big brother.







Tanner is still on oxygen. His doctor is hoping we can ween him off of it soon. As for Kevin and I we have said goodbye to restful nights for a while. =)

Welcome to Holland

On Tuesday we were given instructions on how to contact the nursery to check up on Tanner and we had any of our questions answered by the nurses in the nursery. Along with an instruction paper we were given this little story to read:

“Welcome to Holland” by Emily Perl Kingsley

I am often asked to describe the experience of raising a child with a disability – to try to help people who have not shared that unique experience to understand it, to imagine how it would feel. It’s like this…

When you’re going to have a baby, it’s like planning a fabulous vacation trip – to Italy. You buy a bunch of guidebooks and make your wonderful plans. The Coliseum, the Michelangelo David, the gondolas in Venice. You may learn some handy phrases in Italian. It’s all very exciting.

After months of eager anticipation, the day finally arrives. You pack your bags and off you go. Several hours later, the plane lands. The stewardess comes in and says, “Welcome to Holland.”

“Holland?!” you say. “What do you mean, Holland?” I signed up for Italy! I’m supposed to be in Italy. All my life I’ve dreamed of going to Italy.

But there’s been a change in the flight plan. They’ve landed in Holland and there you must stay.

The important thing is that they haven’t taken you to some horrible, disgusting, filthy place, full of pestilence, famine and disease. It’s just a different place.

So you must go out and buy a new guidebook. And you must learn a whole new language. And you will meet a whole new group of people you would never have met.

It’s just a different place. It’s slower paced than Italy, less flashy than Italy. But after you’ve been there for a while and you catch your breath, you look around… and you begin to notice that Holland has windmills… Holland has tulips. Holland even has Rembrandts.

But everyone you know is busy coming and going from Italy… and they’re all bragging about what a wonderful time they had there. And for the rest of your life you will say, “Yes, that’s where I was supposed to go. That’s what I had planned.”

The pain of that will never, ever, go away… because the loss of that dream is a very significant loss.

But if you spend your life mourning the fact that you didn’t get to Italy, you may never be free to enjoy the very special, the very lovely things… about Holland.




After reading it I felt like this story sums up almost any disappointment we can go through in life. How we expect a certain outcome and are shocked when it doesn't happen that way. It has been like that for me the last week. "Being in Holland" has been a very different and very trying test for Kevin and I. We are very lucky to have the loving and supporting family that we do. Although we did not plan for this situation we will keep with it. And I know that one day we will look back at this and realize that it wasn't so bad and that we have learned a lot from it.

Life throws you curve balls sometimes and you just have to go with it and make it work.

Tanner Emmett Whitmer

Oh what a week it has been.

Last Saturday (April 10th), I had a headache all day. Well normally that is not so bad, but when you have toxemia.... that is never a good sign. And me being me, I down play anything that is wrong with me. I hate being fussed over. And my doctor had told us that anything like a lasting headache, spots, or if I just don't feel right that I needed to go to the hospital immediately. Well I had held off all day thinking it would get better. It didn't, so Kevin finally said come on we are going in. That was about 9 pm.

When we got to the hospital I was admitted and hooked up to some machines to watch Tanner and me. They decided to keep me over night and if my blood tests and blood pressure looked better in the morning then they would send me home. Morning rolled around and we received the news from the nurse that my doctor, who was heading out of town, had come back to induce me. My blood pressure had been all over and my blood test wasn't looking as good as it had in the night.

At 8:00 am my doctor came in and broke my water. I was hooked up to petosin and magnesium sulfate to help my blood pressure and to keep the contractions coming. Around 10 I got the epidural. Kevin loves the needle and things they use for that. My mom came up to be with us during this. Don't know what I would do without the family support that I have from all of my family members. At 11:40 I started pushing. Tanner was really high up still and so he had a bit of moving to do. At 12:04 Tanner came into the world! This labor was much easier than Hayden's was by far. The best part is... that he weighed exactly the same as Hayden, 6 lbs 10 oz and 18 inches long.

After delivery we had Tanner for about an hour and then they sent him to the nursery to check up on him and give him a bath. We didn't even get him back. His oxygen saturation would not stay up and he was breathing to hard and fast. He was put under an oxygen hood to help him keep his oxygen up.



We had a couple visitors during our stay at the hospital, but not as many as with Hayden. It was weird... Also with no baby to take care of the stay at the hospital was very boring. Though the hospital does a nice little dinner for the parents on the night before they are released.



As for Tanner he was then placed on bili lights with oxygen because his biliruben was high. I was released on Tuesday to come home. Tanner is still at the hospital...



While he is now doing better and is off of oxygen, his oxygen level still dips down while he is eating. He was taken off of the bili lights and they retested his blood for his biliruben level. Yesterday we had a little hope that he might come home, but it was dashed when we heard his biliruben number had gone up after being off of the bed. His number had jumped from 12 to 15 to 17. Which put him in the high-risk group. Today he is doing a little better after being under the lights again he is back down to a 15. He failed his carseat and will be retaking that as well. He has to be able to sit in a carseat for 90 minutes with no problems. He will be retested on that and if he fails again we will be given a flat carseat that he gets to go home in when he goes home.



We visit him everyday and all of the nurses at alta view are awesome. We hope to be able to bring him home soon. But for now it is just playing the waiting game. And like everyone keeps reminding me, it is better to have him come home healthy than to have him come home sick.