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.

Hayden turns 3!!!!

So we celebrated Hayden's 3rd birthday yesterday. I can not believe he is 3 already... It doesn't even feel like it has been that long.
Anyways he actually opened presents on Sunday from Great Grandma and Grandpa Harward and from Grandma Sandee and Grandpa Andrew. He was so excited! He got some clothes, legos, kitchen stuff (he loves to cook with the play kitchen at my mom's house), and Geotrax train stuff. He didn't want to go to sleep that night because he was too busy playing.



When we finally got to bed I told Kevin that the first thing Hayden was going to ask me in the morning was to turn his light on so he could play with his trains and legos. And sure enough at 7:00 he was up and asking for the light on. So we got up and got a move on the day. We went grocery shopping and stopped at grandma Sandee's. Waiting until dad got home so we could go to the zoo.



Off to the zoo we went! Though when we got there we were sad to find out that the train wasn't running. But we did get tickets to ride the carousel which Hayden likes. So we were off. Hayden wanted to see the elephants first. He loved the little baby elephant zuri.





After that we saw rhinos, monkeys, and cougars.





Hayden also liked the baby Giraffe that was there. He informed us that they were really really big. There were also some lazy tigers that were really close up.





The building were the birds are just flying around really excited Hayden! "look at that mom it flyin'" He was so funny and cute.



As long as the critters were behind glass Hayden was fine being that close to them.



He measures up to the big apes at about a juvenile level.



We had tons of fun at the zoo. Though after 3 hours of wandering around looking at all of the animals we were pooped.



We went home for a short nap before we continued celebrating.



After cake we went and saw Great Grandma Thorup. He got some books, pj's, candy, balloons, and some money. Which he informed me he can buy more train tracks with.

Before we were finally done with the day we stopped off at Grandma and Grandpa Whitmer's. I thought Hayden had had all the excitement he could for the day, but I was wrong. When we got over there Grandpa pulls out a scooter for Hayden. He was so happy. He was rather mad that he had to go to bed and leave all of his fun new stuff.

Overall I think he had a pretty good birthday. And I think he enjoyed himself. Which is all that counts in the end. Thank you everyone for the birthday wishes and for helping spoil him rotten.

Christmas Time!

What a crazy few days!

Christmas Eve we headed to Grandma and Grandpa Harward's house for their christmas party. It was a lot of fun to hangout with everyone and catch up on things.









My Aunt's had fun giving Hayden lots of sugary stuff thinking it would keep him up all night. Well they were wrong. Hayden was tired when we got home and wanted to be in bed by 7:30.
But when he got to his room it was a mess and so he wanted to clean it. Which ended up in him playing, but he was in bed and passed put by 8:30. Such a sweet night.

Christmas Morning I got up bright and early. Kevin wasn't too happy about it, but we had to be over to my parent's house to talk to brad at 7. So at 5 I went in to wake Hayden up!



If I had known that all it took was santa to wake him up when he didn't want to I would have tried it earlier. After waking Hayden up we went to wake dad up. Hayden was so excited santa brought him tons of games to play and books that read to him. He loved it all!









Kevin was happy with his new kitchen toys. And I was happy with my new books. they will be my entertainment on bedrest.

After all the presents were open Kevin made us a yummy breakfast. Then we headed over to talk to brad and open presents at my parent's house. Then it was off to Grandma and Grandpa Thorup's house for their christmas lunch of lobster, crab, and prime rib. We were able to see Sage who is home from his mission and hangout with my other fun cousins.
After that we made our way home to visit Kevin's parents and have a fun birthday party for Joel.

I over did it on Christmas and am paying the price now for not staying down enough. But it was all worth it. Over all this was an awesome Christmas.

I hope everyone else had an awesome christmas too!!!