Porter-man Turns One

Yep, I'm just a little slow on blogging. On January 3rd, Porter had his First Birthday. We celebrated by having a birthday party with our family.  He was spoiled rotten, but mainly received clothes and shoes, at my request. I had just moved him into 12-18 month clothing and realized that after three boys, the clothing was pretty sad looking. Plus we were on toy overload from Christmas and I couldn't possibly think of any toy he needed. 

I attempted to make him a monster cake, but we all know how awesome my cake decorating skills are, and part of the monster's head fell off. So the top of his head was flat, but I'm pretty sure Porter didn't care because he loved getting to eat cake. As you can tell from the pictures, Jonas was right there in all of the action helping Porter open presents.  These two have such a special bond and Jonas is Porter's protector.  I can't tell you how many times Jonas has probably saved Porter's life by pulling something out of his mouth or shutting the basement door so he doesn't fall down. Porter absolutely adores Jonas and gets a big smile on his face when Jonas plays with him.

So thankful for this sweet baby boy. He is becoming such a Daddy's boy and likes to follow Jeff around the house.  He gets heartbroken and throws himself on the ground crying when Dad leaves the room without him.

12 Months

With below zero temps, lots of snow, and smog, we didn't get outside to take a 12 month picture.  In fact, I looked back and realized that I didn't take any 12 month pictures on my nice camera.  Sorry Porter! So this month (or rather last month, since he was 12 months in January) I am using the IG picture I took on his birthday.  Can't believe he's been in our family for a whole year now.  Sure love this baby boy!

11 Months

I figured it was about time I posted Porter's 11 month facts since he will be having his 1st Birthday next week.  I can't believe how time flies, especially the first year.

Halloween Festivities

Another Halloween has come and gone.  This Halloween I took the boys around the neighborhood, while Jeff stayed home and handed out candy.  At the time, Jeff was working the night shift and when it came time for him to go to work, we were still out Trick or Treating, so he had to come looking for us to give us the keys to the house.  I had met up with one of my good friends, and we decided to take the kids to a different part of the subdivision since not many people were home on the streets by us.  Here are my four little spooks, just before we left. We walked around the neighborhood for about an hour and a half, until Porter had had enough and cried until we got him home.

(Sorry for the blurry pictures, most of them are from my phone.)

In early October, Jeff's friend, Finn, invited us over to his house to pick pumpkins.  He lives in American Fork, and has a huge garden.  (All Fall, Jeff kept coming home from work with tomatoes, peppers, and zuchinni from Finn's garden.)  The kids had a blast and Finn's wife, Michelle, and I hit it off well. We stayed much too late talking and letting the kids play. I can definitely see us hanging out with them more in the future.

Jeff and I joke that Carson looks like a proud Papa in this photo. We got a few of these Hubbard squash for decoration.  You can see Finn in the background.

Finn and Michelle also gave us these corn stalks to decorate with . 

The boys had fun trying on masks in Walmart.

The week before Halloween, we took the boys over to Thanksgiving Point to the Barnyard Boo.

They got their faces painted.

 Carson and Mason were brave and held the snake and tarantula.  Jonas is more like me and had no desire to hold such things!

Then we hosted our annual Halloween Party.  I made these Owl Cupcakes for one of the desserts. Cake decorating is NOT my thing, so I was happy to find something so easy to make and that looked halfway decent.

Some of our attendees.

Then it was finally time to carve those pumpkins.

On Halloween, we went to Carson's school for the Costume Parade.  I only managed to snap this blurry picture.

When we left Carson's school, the boys begged me to take them to Neptune Park.  Since it was such a gorgeous day, I agreed, and we spent 45 minutes soaking up the sun. It was a great way to get the boys out of the house so Daddy could sleep!

Hypospadias Repair

After months of waiting, the time finally came in September, for Porter's hypospadias repair.  We arrived at Primary Children's Hospital bright and early at 6:00 AM, and quickly went upstairs to the day surgery area.  After checking in, we waited for the Registrar to call us and verify Porter's medical history and our insurance information.  After completing registration we waited for a nurse to call us.  When it was Porter's turn, a nurse took us into a room where we dressed him in a hospital gown, put on his hospital tags, and checked his vitals.

 

We were then escorted to  a different waiting room right outside of the operating area. Here we waited for the anesthesiologist and surgeon to speak with us.  There was a little girl who had checked in shortly after us, and while we were sitting in this waiting room, I overheard that she was there for open heart surgery.  I was deeply humbled that Porter's surgery was only for something minor.  I couldn't imagine sending my toddler off to have open heart surgery!

We talked with the surgeon and he explained what would happen to Porter.  He told us that in the parents waiting room we could get updates on Porter's status via phone calls, but that most likely we wouldn't get a call because the surgery was minor and didn't take very long. After talking with the surgeon, the anesthesiologist came to get Porter.  We walked with him down the hallway until we reached some double doors where there was a big red line painted on the floor.  The anesthesiologist stopped us and said, "This is where we say goodbye."  We hugged Porter tight, and handed him over. 

Jeff and I were then escorted to a third waiting room. About 20 minutes after getting to the waiting room we heard the attendant call out, "Update for the parents of Porter".  Jeff and I looked at each other and wondered what was going on.  Jeff walked over to take the call.  I was nervous that there had been a complication or bad reaction to the anesthesia because we were told that we probably wouldn't be receiving a call.  I followed Jeff over and listened to his end of the conversation. I heaved a big sigh of relief when Jeff told me that Porter's hypospadias was very minor.  In fact, after pumping his bladder full of liquid, they had determined that his stream was straight enough that there was no need to move his urethra. It would have been a matter of moving it 1 mm.  The doctor did say that they were going to perform a chordee repair to fix the curvature of his little man part and then circumcise him. The surgery was quite short and soon the surgeon was out to talk with us and give us instructions on how to care for him.

I was then able to go to the PACU to see Porter as he woke up.  He was screaming and as they placed him into my arms, the smell of anesthesia on his breath was overpowering.  After about 10 minutes in the PACU, they took us into recovery where Jeff was able to come be with us.

Porter was pretty upset.  We couldn't get him calmed down so the nurse gave him some oxycodone.  This made it so we had to stay in the hospital an extra hour so they could monitor him. 

This is him after nursing and having the oxycodone.  He was quite relaxed!

His recovery went very smooth since his operation wasn't as invasive.  We were anticipating stint tubes and visits back to the urologist, and feel very blessed that we just had to follow up with our pediatrician the next week.  It ended up being just a little bit harder than a normal circumcision, since he had stitches up one side of his little man part.  In no time at all it seemed like he was back to normal and terrorizing the house with his curiosity!

10 Months

Sure do love this baby.

Oh, and he says "mom" and"daddy", shakes his head "no", and likes to click his tongue.

Porter-Man

7 Months

June in iPhone Pics

I've been such a horrible blogger lately. Not that anyone much cares, but I do since this is how I do our family history.  June was a crazy busy month for us.  Besides the few posts about the fire and birthdays, here are some more things we did.

We went to the Pony Express Days Parade.  I was so happy Jeff was able to come with me this year.  We were at the end of the parade route and the boys only got a few pieces of candy each.  They were quite disappointed.

Right before my birthday, Jeff's younger brother, Jason, fell 40 feet while rock climbing.  He is very lucky to be alive.  He broke his back and completely shattered one of his legs.  We went to the hospital several times to see him.

In May, our baby swing finally died after six years of service.  So we bought a new one and it died a week later.  Target is awesome and took it back and we replaced it with a exersaucer/jumper.  Porter loves it.

On my birthday, Carson headed home with my mom to Idaho.  He was able to spend a week with his grandparents and got to do a lot of fun things, including going to the Army Surplus Store, rock hunting with Grandpa Birch in Challis, and earning money by doing chores for Grandma.  A week later we headed up to get him and go to my class reunion.  I got to ride in Carson's seat for part of the drive to Idaho to keep Porter entertained.

The boys have loved playing dress up.

Our garage door has given us fits ever since we moved in.  One day it refused to shut and Jeff tore into it.  He had to realign a bunch of things and was very frustrated with the cheap quality of work of our builder.

My handsome Porter right before church one day.  I love this kid!  He cut four teeth in June and started eating a lot of solid foods. He likes bananas and sweet potatoes.

Also, he was finally kicked out of our room and into the nursery.  For now, he has the room to himself and Mason has a trundle bed under the boys' bunkbeds.

We spent a lot of time swimming with friends, swimming with family, and going to the Splash Pad with friends.  There was one week where we were gone everyday somewhere or another getting wet.  This pic is from the Splash Pad with some of my friends.

We also had fun playing in water in our backyard.  The day this picture was taken, all the neighbor kids were hopping from house to house getting wet.  I think there were 12 kids in my yard at one time.  I love our neighbor hood and that my kids have friends they can play with all the time.

Baseball season ended.  While it was nice to get our Saturday mornings back, they boys were so sad that it was over.  You can tell by Jonas' face that he wasn't happy it was his last game. I definitely think we will sign them up again next year.

Tulip Festival

Last week we took the boys to the Tulip Festival at Thanksgiving Point Gardens for FHE.  It was absolutely beautiful!  Spring is my favorite season and I just love it when everything blooms out. We got there a little later than we wanted to because our lesson ran longer than anticipated (but Mason gave a great lesson on love...with a little help from Daddy and the Nursery Manual).  We didn't have as much time there as we would have liked, but I'm sure we'll be back soon since we have a season pass.