Official baby owners

As of yesterday, Spencer and I officially own Grace.  She is no longer a ward of  Orem Community Hospital.  Meaning, we paid off our last hospital bill.  Now, there's no way they can repossess her should any of our payments be delinquent.  :0)  Hooray!  It feels wonderful.  In honor of this momentous occasion, here are some recent photos of OUR little Grace.  He, he. 

Once Grace found this ornament, it was over.  She would not look at the camera for anything.  And...notice how she's balancing by herself?  Hooray!  She probably fell over three seconds after this picture was taken.

Our Christmas tree is very Grace-sized.

Practicing sitting up.

      

Wearing the Christmas dress Aunt Emily bought her.

Grace loves watching Spencer build fires in our often used (but unfinished) fireplace.

As far as Grace is concerned, there is nothing about feet that is not appealing.

Grace can't get enough of this little ball.  It was left in our house by the previous occupants.  I washed it, and now it provides endless entertainment for her.

And last, but not least, our mantel.  I'm really trying to be Christmas-y.

      

Or maybe she doesn't...

This past week we took Grace to an ENT whose perspective on her little breathing problem was quite different than our pediatrician's.  He stuck a little tiny camera up her nose and down her throat and proclaimed that the problem was acid reflux.  He came to this conclusion because the camera showed that her throat was really irritated and swollen--due to all the acid coming up from her stomach, I suppose.  I wonder if maybe it also had to do with a camera being shoved into it against its will.  :0)  

I had mixed reactions to the news.  First, I felt proud.  I had always felt that Grace had acid reflux.  Whenever I read anything about the symptoms of it, it seemed like Grace manifested each and every one of them.  Thinking I was just being a neurotic, paranoid mommy, I didn't give much credence to my personal diagnosis.  When the doctor did, I had a moment of pure joy thinking that I actually DO have intuition (and inspiration) where Grace is concerned.  

Hooray!    

Secondly, I felt silly.  When I was in high school, one Saturday morning I woke up early with (what I deemed) severe stomach pain.  I went up to my parents' room and told them of my stomach woes.  Seeing as my dad had not too long ago been operated on for appendicitis, he rushed me to the ER thinking I had the same thing.  I agreed readily to go along with this because I am always perfectly willing to believe that my health problems are more serious than they really are.  It could be just a dash of hypochondria or...maybe just a flair for the dramatic.  Call it what you will.  :0)  At any rate, I came home just a few hours later with my tail between my legs.  

Turned out, it was just gas.  

For some reason, Grace having acid reflux (which is quite common it seems...everyone I know is coming out and telling me that their niece, friends' child, brother, sister, dog, etc. had it) feels the same to me.  No, it's not some rare, malformation of her windpipe; it's just baby heartburn.  

Third, I felt relieved.  Acid reflux is treatable (whereas I can't imagine tracheomalacia would have been) and we've already seen some improvement, we think.  So, we're happy.  Now I just have to get down how to give her the medicine.  For some reason, I keep squirting it all over her instead of slowly expelling the liquid from the thingey (baby medicine dropper?) like I always mean to.  Grrr.  I blame the thingey.  Since, as we all know, I am a wonderful, intuitive mother.  He, he.

"Tracheomalacia"

Definition: Tracheomalacia in a newborn occurs when the cartilage in the windpipe (trachea) has not developed properly. Instead of being rigid, the walls of the trachea are floppy. Because the windpipe is the main airway, breathing difficulties begin soon after birth.  Congenital tracheomalacia is very uncommon.  

Symptoms    

• Breathing noises that may change with position and improve during sleep
• Breathing problems that get worse with coughing, crying, feeding, or upper respiratory infections
• High-pitched breathing
• Rattling, noisy breaths

Outlook (Prognosis)    

Congenital tracheomalacia generally goes away on its own by the age of 18-24 months. As the tracheal cartilage gets stronger and the trachea grows, the noisy respirations and breathing difficulties gradually stop.

So...Grace has this.  Luckily, her doctor didn't seem too worried about it at all.  We are scheduled to see an otolaryngologist (that means an ear, nose, and throat doctor--hooray for a new vocabulary word, though I wish I could have learned about it under different circumstances) on December 2nd to make sure that there aren't any complications.  I wasn't worried about it at all until I stupidly decided to look up "tracheomalacia" on the internet and found all of the possible serious complications.  Silly me.  Now I'm a little worried.  

But...I've decided to continue having Grace's care in the hands of professionals instead of turning it over to the internet.  I read that in the Reader's Digest once--doctors hate it when you trust the internet more than them. :0)  So...we're hoping for the best.  I think everything should be just fine.  It's just kind of scary to have a doctor tell you that your cute little baby has any kind of problem that is hard to pronounce and has more than ten letters.  Scary mommy moment number one.  Our doctor said that her having this explains why she has not been gaining a whole lot of weight.  Everyone who sees her says she is so small and many have asked if she was a preemie with a low birthweight.  And, uh, we all know she was exactly the opposite.  Yeah.  

Grace is still just as cute as ever and is laughing a lot these days.  She also makes these really sweet little gurgling noises when she's happy.  We love those.  And...she rolled over for the third official time tonight. Hooray!  She's great and we love her.  More to come... 

      

It's a good thing I've never been interested in drugs...

I am a candy addict.  There's no use in tip-toeing around the cold hard truth.  :0)  I have been this way as long as I can remember.  I would like to present the following facts as proof of this assertion.  When I was a kid, my Halloween candy never lasted more than 2 days, tops.  I was always so envious of friends of mine that made it to Easter still having Halloween candy to munch on.  How they did it was beyond me.  I couldn't resist the stuff!  I couldn't understand (and still can't, really) how they could know that a delicious package of Starbursts was sitting next to some wonderfully colorful and tasty Skittles in their drawer and not pounce on the both of them.  A mystery!

And then, there were the friends of mine whose parents actually kept candy in plain sight in their house! (instead of in various hiding places throughout the house--all of which I was very good at finding)  These friends could walk past the jar of candy canes or bowl of Tootsie Rolls and do nothing!  They didn't take one or two and then stash three into their pockets for later!  Once again, pure mystery to me.  I've theorized that because I grew up in a candy-deprived household (meaning there wasn't constant easy access), it has made me all the more obsessed with it.  So, had there been candy strewn all around my house, maybe I would be a very different woman today.  Or...I would have just been a very fat, cavity prone child.  :0)   

Also, I remember my parents trying to teach us how to save our chore money.  We were instructed to not spend our money until we had at least five dollars.  I guess the idea was that the waiting would make us spend our money all the wiser.  Oh, you can just bet that as soon as I had five dollars, I was riding my bike to the local candy store (King's, at the time) and buying five bucks worth of Necco's, pink mints, Sugar Daddies, and Sweetarts.

And don't even get me started on the joys of holiday-specific candy!  Those are my hardest times!  Easter jelly beans, candy canes, conversation hearts, candy corn....ah!  I'm in heaven.

To this day, I have a hard time going into the grocery store and not exiting with a package of Starbursts, Mentos, or caramels.  I remember as a kid thinking (honestly, I really did think this) how wonderful it would be to be an adult and be able to have an unlimited supply of money to buy as much candy as I wanted.  That seemed to me to be the most appealing part of adulthood.  Forget independence, car driving, marriage, child raising....It was all second to absolute candy buying power!

Luckily for me, Spencer is not a crazed candy addict (though he too had a sugar deprived childhood--I guess that blows my theory).  This helps me to find some sort of balance in my crazy candy world.  However, much to my enjoyment, I have recently found something that Spencer "binge" eats.  Swiss Rolls!!  Never having been a big pastry eater myself, I am happy to let Spencer eat the majority of the box whenever one ends up in our home.  I grin as I watch him down 2 or 3 packages in 15 minutes or so.  I guess misery (or candy bingers...) love company.  I'm afraid my sweets obsession has begun to rub off on him after 2 years of marriage...he's been coming home with Swiss Rolls much more often than before.  :0)

  At any rate, I think I have a propensity to addiction.  Hence the title.  There have been many times in my life when I have decided to give up candy for a month or two.  And, I am proud to admit that I have been successful.  But...as soon as I'm done with my candy fast, I jump right back into eating as much of it as possible.  I sincerely believe that I took up marathon running simply for the benefit of being able to eat as much candy as I wanted without seeing the effects of it in my hips.  :0)  To bad my metabolism has decided to change...

Just recently I have begun a new candy fast.  Three nights ago I told Spencer that I wanted to avoid eating candy of any kind until Thanksgiving.  We even shook hands on it.  And then he sneakily tried to include ice cream, popsicles and any other kind of sweets in the deal.  Ha!  Yeah right!  There's no need to get ahead of myself here.  :0)  

I just wanted to report that since that day, I have been stone-cold candy sober.  Thank you.     

Happy Halloween!

We dressed Grace up as a bunny rabbit for Halloween.  She wore the costume three different times: at Spencer's work Halloween party, at a Halloween party thrown by a sister from my mission, and almost to the friends' home where we spent Halloween evening (we took it off before we got there so she would stop crying).  She hated it every time.  It was as if she was saying "bah humbug" to all fun Halloween activities.  Little grump.  Someday she'll dress up and like it!  Following is a rare picture of her wearing the costume and not crying.  I'm pretty sure this was accidental and that she would be angry if she knew we caught her looking content while in the bunny costume.

She was, however, okay with wearing a "trick or treat" onesie during the day.  Victory!

  Happy Halloween!

Why can't trees learn to clean up after themselves?

Last weekend I spent a good 2 hours raking the yard.  And yet...

It still ended up looking like this by the next Saturday.  Argh.  I refer you now to the title of my entry.  So, I raked again.

And then we decided to have some fun.

This was working quite well until Grace decided to start grabbing the leaves and trying to eat them.  That ended her individual photo shoot--she then had to model with props.  

 

To the one

One who loves and gives so freely,  kind and true with warmth inside.

Beaming brightly through cold mis-caring, hoping, serving, till they collide.

Up and down the forces waver, standing tall the one will gaze.  

Often never, but receiving little more than others praise.

Without forgetting, always longing, faithful them the one desires 

Knowing what, and feel you ever, your faithful one sees whats inside.

To the one, so clear and focused, living the unwavering hand

full of love, from the sire, thy day is yet, and yets so grand.