Jonas' Birthday...and a Long Story

 Jonas' birthday was May 26 and he turned 4 years old!  (I brought my DSLR camera, but unfortunately forgot the SD card, so thank heavens my iPhone takes somewhat decent pictures or I would have no record of his special day!)  For his "dinosaur birthday" as he called it, he got a dinosaur cake, a giant dinosaur from Aunt Alese and Uncle Shane, a bag full of dinosaurs from Grandpa and Grandma Birch, a dinosaur piggy bank and dinosaur Legos from Grandma and Grandpa Larsen, and a dinosaur puzzle from Grandpa Butler. And perhaps his favorite present: a dinosaur apron that Grandma Larsen made him and spatulas to go with it! Jonas loves to help me bake and was so excited that he now had an apron his size and with dinosaurs on it. He wears it almost everyday now and is always asking me if its time to make bread or cookies.

He spent his actual birthday in Rexburg celebrating with Jeff's side of the family.  He had fun playing with cousins and opening presents.  He also spent a day celebrating with Grandma and Grandpa Larsen and another day celebrating with Grandpa Butler.  By the time we left I think we all were done with birthday parties!

At Grandpa Birch's house...

Putting together a dinosaur puzzle at Grandpa Butler's house.

Playing on Grandpa Butler's new trike in his shop.  The boys absolutely loved it!

Unfortunately, I didn't take any pictures at Grandma Larsen's house, but here is a picture of the boys playing in the water table she bought Jonas.  This picture was taken less than an hour after we got back from Idaho.  After everything was unloaded from the van, the boys talked Jeff into putting it together so they could play with it.

I don't think I've mentioned it on here, but around the time Porter was born, Jonas was having some issues going to the bathroom.  Like peeing every ten minutes.  And no, I am not kidding.  One day I wrote down everytime he went and the longest he could hold it was 20 minutes.  His problems started right before Christmas.  I remember being out shopping and he had to pee when we went into the store, when we left the store, and as soon as we got out to the van he had to pee again.  It was crazy! He was worse than I was at nine months pregnant! The problem was somewhat overlooked in the rush of the holiday season and then the birth of Porter. 

When Porter was a few weeks old, I had finally had enough of it, and took Jonas to the doctor.  I was a little freaked out that he had diabetes, but both his urine and blood tests came back normal.  They did an x-ray and told me that he was constipated and it was putting pressure on his bladder and causing him to pee all of the time.  So we did a two week routine of ex-lax and miralax to flush him out.  It seemed to work a little bit... now he was peeing every half hour to 45 minutes.  Better, but I still knew something was wrong.  I took him in again and they did another x-ray and said he still wasn't all the way cleaned out.  So again we tried to get him flushed out.

  It was now March and he started complaining of really bad stomach pains.  Like laying on the floor screaming. "Mommy help me!" pains.  Then he started throwing up.  After about four days, I took him to the doctor and they couldn't figure out what was wrong. They did another x-ray and he was cleaned out. The doctor thouroughly looked him over and told me that he couldn't rule out appendicitis, but he didn't think he had it.  I went home from that appointment, and listened to Jonas scream all evening and all through the night that his tummy hurt.  I called back to the doctor's office in the morning and the nurse talked to the doctor.  He told me to take Jonas straight to the ER at Primary Children's because there was a good chance it was appendicitis.  There was my little boy, curled up in a ball on my living room floor, pale, and screaming, "Mommy, please make it stop!" And he was still having problems peeing all the time.  I was so frustrated that this problem had gone on this long and my little boy still had no relief.  In the end, we spent the day at Primary's, got no answers, and were told to go home and wait it out.  In a follow up appointment with our Ped, he finally determined that Jonas had an over active bladder, and put him on medicine to control it.  It worked wonders! He finally was regulated and his stomach pains went away.  He's been off the medicine for two months now and is still using the bathroom normally.  We are praying that his bladder has been "re-set" (as the doctor phrased it) and he'll have no further problems.