Even when she's sick she's the cutest girl ever!

Ivy is doing a lot better. She's eating and sleeping again. Her fever is gone, thank goodness, and her oxygen saturations are about the same (she's on 1/2 liter of oxygen per hour and her sats average at 78%, in case you were wondering). She's definitely going to need to stay on the oxygen for a few more days.

Ivy finally gets to enjoy some of her Easter candy.

Anyway, here are a few reasons why she's still the cutest little girl in the world.

1. She likes it when I check her temperature and even picks which ear for me to put the thermometer in.

2. She gets cuddly around strangers again, just like she did for the first year and a half of her life. As soon as a nurse or doctor walks in she instantly buries her face in my belly or chest, and refuses to even look at them. Its sad, but cute.

3. She is suddenly VERY attached to me. Which can be good and bad. She still likes daddy, but prefers me to him right now. I love being loved and needed, because I'm selfish.

4. She discovered that she really enjoys back tickling, hair tickling, and most of all neck and chin tickling. I know it sounds weird, but she will stop crying or squirming the moment I start tickling and if I try to stop she will grab my hand and put it back and say, "tickle". (this isn't the kind of tickling to make you laugh, its the soothing kind, in case you're confused).

5. She yells "my chords!" whenever her oxygen tube gets stuck on various things (like the couch, a chair, someones leg, etc). Then when she frees herself just to instantly get stuck again she yells "Oh! Again!" Its ADORABLE!

6. Whenever I get out the SAT monitor to check her oxygen sats, she puts her finger out without me having to ask, so I can hook it on. She's so smart.

7. And finally, despite being ridiculously sleepy a lot of the time, coughing and coughing until she nearly throws up, and having an annoying tube putting air in her nose 24/7, she is still smily and happy. I'm so proud of her.

And here's a picture of the boys to prove that they do still exist, and we haven't forgotten about them. They've been good helpers! I'm proud of them too! Is Dexter's blue mouth creeping anyone else out?

Sometimes I Need a Reminder

Always optimistic, Ivy gives a smile despite a very crappy day.

I guess sometimes I forget that Ivy has a heart condition. It's not really that I forget, its just not really an issue all the time. She is healthy and has been for a little over a year, she's small but not developmentally far behind her peers, and she's in the middle of a nice big break before she has to have another surgery. We've been blessed and I think we've taken advantage of it. (BE ADVISED: THIS IS A LONG STORY)

This last weekend I got a big fat reminder that she is not as healthy as she seems. Saturday afternoon she awoke from her nap with a raging fever. When I say raging, I mean it! Neither of my boys have ever had a fever of 103.5, and when I saw that number it scared the crap out of me. In addition to the fever she started coughing and throwing up. It seemed really sudden and it was scary. We called our pediatricians after-hours number to speak with a nurse about what to do. She advised us to head to the ER. We were hesitant to do so since we've done that so many other times and it seems like it always ends with them sending us home without doing anything and getting a big fat bill in return (ie, Dexter's tongue incident of 2008, and the plastic kiwi incident of 2011). Anyway, instead of going right away we decided to take her temp one more time (after the motrin had a chance to kick in), and it had gone down to 102, so we thought it would be better to stick it out at home. Bad idea.

Sunday was worse, and it was Easter, and therefore kind of a sad holiday. Her fever kept going up and down and she threw up several more times. She basically stopped eating and sleeping. Throughout all this time I was periodically checking her oxygen saturations and they were consistently 83% (which is normal for her, bad for everyone else, your oxygen sats are probably in the upper 90's). Monday morning her sats dropped to 75% so I immediately called her doctor and set an appointment for that afternoon. It did not go well. We ended up being there for about 5 hours while the doc ran labs on her blood, she had some x-rays, received some IV fluids, got 2 terribly painful shots in her legs, and had giant q-tips stuffed in her nostrils. It was not a fun experience.

The results came back to show that she has RSV (which can be especially scary for heart babies). The doc gave me the option to hospitalize her for 24 hours or to take her home, start her on oxygen and monitor her myself. I chose the latter. She and I spent a quiet evening at home while her brothers were off at their cousins enjoying a sleepover and Scott worked a few hours later (to make up for the time he missed when he suddenly had to pick up the boys from school and find somewhere for them to go).

She slept better last night, and even woke up without much of a fever. Her oxygen sats are still quite low, but when we went back for a follow-up at the docs, he said they should slowly go back to normal, we just have to wait it out. She is doing well today. She ate lunch, walked around some (despite being tethered by her oxygen cords), and even smiled. I'm relieved, and don't think I'll be taking her health for granted again. She'll probably be on oxygen for a few weeks and will remain contagious for 10 to 14 more days. I guess that means I need to get some subs for nursery........that should be fun and super easy (in case you can't tell I'm being sarcastic. Nobody likes to sub for nursery).

So anyway, pray for my sweet girl to get better please. We love her and need her around. Thanks.

The Tooth Fairy Takes A Day Off

Corbin's tooth number three effortlessly falls out while eating dinner.

A couple of days ago Corbin lost his third tooth. We did the usual. Put the tooth in a plastic baggie and placed it under his pillow for the tooth fairy. Corbin was super excited.

The next morning Corbin came into my room talking about a Wall-e video game. He went on and on for about ten minutes before remembering his tooth. "I'm going to go see if the tooth fairy came!" He said with delight.

He came back to my room holding a baggie that still contained his tooth. He was confused and I felt awful. It had rained all night long and so I figured out that the tooth fairy must not be able to fly in the rain. It was the only explanation. I mean, its not like the tooth fairy is ridiculously pregnant and occasionally forgets things, especially at night when she's super tired. I told Corbin about not being able to fly in rain, and he was satisfied with the explanation. (phew!)

We put the tooth back under his pillow, and hoped that it wouldn't rain the next night. It didn't and the tooth fairy didn't disappoint us again. Although, if it wasn't for the tooth fairy's husband, who actually made the switch between money and tooth, she surely would have been fired. So thanks for your help, Mr. Tooth Fairy. You're a life saver.

ps...speaking of losing teeth. Do people lose teeth in the same order that they got them? I didn't keep track when Corbin was getting teeth to know if they are for sure coming out in the same order, but I think they are so far. Does anyone know?

For Max:

Yo yo! I just wanted to help you get ready for our "crochet-bra, party-like-its-1999" adventure!! Enjoy the nostalgia of these AWESOME vids. (everyone else please don't be offended by the content in these videos, they are strictly for jokes, unless of course you enjoyed the rap-rock era of the late 90's, and in that case rock on, man!).

Braggin' Wagon Wednesday: Martha Stewart Sucks

Remember last Halloween when I made my kids costumes and compared myself to Martha Stewart? Well, I may have slightly exaggerated.....I'm not so much a Martha Stewart as I am a dork with a sewing machine. I tried to patch some holes in Scott's pants and they turned out......well, lets just say Martha would be very disappointed. Who cares right? What's so great about Martha anyway? I don't need lessons on how to make a bed, its not like the queen is coming to visit! And, so what if the pants look slightly "W-T", I'm not a shamed to say that we're slightly "W-T" too! Okay, maybe a little ashamed, but I'm so over Martha Stewart! ps "W-T" means white trash in case you were unaware.

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What happened to good late night tv? I used to have several shows I'd tivo and watch after the kids go to bed, now I'm down to just a few! In a whole week of television. I don't know if its the fact that I read more and that makes tv less entertaining, or if tv is just in a rut, but basically I hate everything besides Community, The Soup, Big Bang Theory and SNL. Reading is better anyway, but I really miss looking forward to Lost.

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Hey, my big sis (or as I like to refer to her, my"best sister friend"), Max, has offered to come and visit in May a few days before Marde does in case I go into labor early. I'm SUPER excited!! (not that I'm not excited for Marde, but Max and I don't get to spend much time together these days, and I miss her like crazy). She and my niece, Regin will be here for like 6 days, and if the baby doesn't come right away, I have a feeling some shenanigans will take place!! I'm looking forward to it so much that I'm HOPING the baby really doesn't come right away so we can spend lots of fun time together. That's right, I'm selfish like that. I'm going to buy us all matching t-shirts and crochet some matching bras for some real party-time. Okay, okay, I'm not going to buy t-shirts or crochet bras, because that's just silly, but I really do think we should have some girl time without any stinky boys around!!

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Fun times coming up......5 weeks left to get ready for baby! WHOO HOO!! Ps. Happy Easter, Ya'll.

Dexter the spider crusher

Australia sounds like a cool place. Sunshine and beaches, hiking and scuba diving, and lets not forget those awesome accents. I will never go to Australia. Australia has BIG, scary, deadly spiders (not to mention other scary animals and bugs). Ever since I found out that spiders like these existed there, I have known that I will never step foot in beautiful sands of Australia.

I'm about an inch away from completely off my rocker when it comes to spiders, this is no secret. I have the house sprayed every three months to avoid coming in contact with them, but sometimes they still sneak in.

A few weeks ago the kids and I spotted our first spider of the season. It was in the garage. It was big and ugly (I know, I always say that, but I swear it was!). I panicked. Usually if a spider is on the ground I can talk myself into killing it, and usually cry as I do. That is, unless I'm wearing flip-flops, which brings the irrational thoughts of me missing and the spider crawling on the exposed skin of my foot. Of course, I was wearing flip-flops, so there was no chance of me killing it. I looked at Corbin, "Dude, kill the spider!" I said to him, as I backed away. He looked at me with almost the amount of panic on his face that I was sure was also on my face. I looked back at the spider that was running across the ground now. (I hate when the move, it gives me nightmares) A lump appeared in my throat as I contemplated what to do. Just then Dexter walked right up to the spider without a moments hesitation and stomped on it. "I got him." He said very matter-of-factly. I almost wept with relief! Dexter is now my official spider killer (although we haven't come across another one yet, thank goodness). Ever since that day I have had various dreams of Dexter saving the day when I come across unrealistically large yucky spiders. It makes me feel better that he's around to save me. My hero!

Braggin' Wagon Wednesday: I know he's my son...

Because I gave birth to him and I remember it like it was yesterday, but he does NOT take after me. I've decided that Corbin is too smart for his own good. I don't know if I've mentioned this, but Corbin has a Yahoo Instant Messenger account (courtesy of Scott signing him up), so he can talk to his Daddy while he's at work, or so he can talk to me while the two of us are already in the same room, or he can talk to his grandma Marde while she is at home in Utah. He loves it! In fact, he pretty much drives us crazy with it, but its wonderful practice for his spelling and sentence making, so we tolerate it. (Pictured is the beginning of his career in computers at the tender age of 16 months.)

Anyway, about two weeks after he started using messenger, he decided it wasn't enough. Out of the blue he asked us for a webcam. What would a six year old boy do with a webcam? Skype with Grandma of course. He had signed himself up for a Skype account without even asking us how to do it. He googled "Skype", then downloaded and installed it on his computer. He gave himself a very normal username and password, filled out the necessary information including: phone number (all zero's), address (our actual address), and date of birth (his birthday but with the year changed to 1997, apparently you have to be thirteen to sign up, and he figured out what year to put down to make it work).

Needless to say, we didn't give him a webcam and we had a pretty lengthy discussion about boundaries and how, yes, the internet is cool, but it is also dangerous. He now has more limited computer time, is only allowed to view specific websites, and is never allowed to download and install programs, sign up for anything, or give away any personal information. Who'd have thought that we'd have to limit internet time for a six year old!! I'd think that he was switched at birth if he didn't look exactly like Scott, plus Scott is pretty much a genius too so that is where he gets it from.

In wake of his recent computer escapades I've decided that when he grows up he's going to work for Pixar. He's a freakin' whiz (and we all know those Pixar people are oozing with intellegence), and he loves to draw, its the perfect combination!! Were you aware that Disney has an animation school, the very one attended by Pixar hot shot, John Lasseter? Well it does, and Corbin's going to go!!

note: I am in no way forcing my child into a career he isn't really interested in, he's six, and I joke. Besides, Scott is already convinced he's going to be a hacker and work for the government or something.