3 Months / January 2014

Each of our four babies have brought with them a unique joy into our home.  Kallie, while she screamed all day every day, was kind at night and allowed me a solid eight hours to recover and rejuvenate for another day full of tears.  Cole was blissfully content all day but refused to sleep at night.  Hagen was a happy content baby but refused sleep in either the night or day.  

Hayes is a gem all the way around.  Taking a four hour nap each morning and two or three cat naps in the afternoons allows me to accomplish a lot and still have time with the older kids.  He has also been sleeping through the night for the last two weeks.  The last three nights I have been woken up at least four times a night, none of which are by the infant.  This is all in thanks to Hagen's lovely cough and the elementary school terrifying my kids with "intruder drills".  By 6:00 this morning I had two kids on the floor by my bed, one in my bed and my perfect little baby still sound asleep in the bassinet.  He has no choice but to be good.  

We sure love this chunker.  He is smiling a lot now and trying real hard to laugh out loud.  As soon as he is able to laugh a little noise out, it scares him though and then he cries.  Hayes is my chubbiest baby by far.  He has at least three chins and multiple rolls on his legs.  I sure wish my chub was as cute as his! We buzzed his head because he had some narly long hairs on top.  It seems to have thickened up a bit since then and is still pretty light brown in color.  His eyes are definitely going brown, which was up for debate for awhile there. Hayes looks more like Kallie to me than like the boys.  I have always thought so, but in the last couple weeks I have had a lot of people say the same thing.  He even has a chin dimple like hers, only one though. 

I couldn't be happier to have this sweet, happy boy in our home!

Hagen Eye Update

The first of January we took Hagen down to Primary Children's for a bunch of sedation eye tests.  The docotor put a contact like object on his eye with a bunch of electrode on it and was able to take a lot of pictures and see the workings of this boy's eyes a lot better.  The main reason for doing this procedure was to try and figure out why Hagen stares at lights. (it would kill my eyes to look at lights the way he does!)  This behavior is strange alone but especially so because his Ocular Albinism should make him extra sensitive to light (as it does outside).  

The test results showed that he does in fact have Ocular Albinism, which we already knew but it also told us that he has otherwise pretty healthy eyes.  There were no tumors, growths or other abnormalities that would warrant his light staring behavior.  Dr. Hoffman did however find that his vision loss due to his astigmatism which is due to his nystagmus (wiggly eyes) was far worse than he otherwise thought.  Luckily his astigmatism can be corrected with lenses, very thick coke bottle lenses it turns out. Hagen was pretty happy about his new glasses, and I must admit he looks adorable.  He is pretty good about keeping them on which tells me he can see better.  I am so grateful for the technology we have in this day and age.  These doctors are brilliant and so good.  We are very blessed.

Picture note:  I don't normally duct tape my kids' mouths shut, but Hagen apparently thought it was hilarious this particular day. 

Opportunities

Sometimes in life opportunities present themselves to us out of nowhere.  I am a believer that a person should take full advantage of every opportunity that comes their way.  Now having said that let me preface this post just a bit.  My friend showed me this blog the other day and directed me to the "snuggie text" post that can be found on the right sidebar if you are interested.  Together we laughed until we cried as the author posted about how he "messed" with the person who texted him by accident thinking that he was someone else.  This was on Friday and I said how much fun it would be to do something like this and hoped I would get the chance someday.  Well as luck would have it my opportunity, if you will came much quicker than anticipated.  On Sunday evening I received the following text from a complete stranger......and just couldn't resist "messing" with her a bit as Weston sat by rolling his eyes at my immaturity.

This is our text exchange for the following 12 hours...(exact spelling and all)

Lil Mamma (and YES this was her sign name on all her texts, that alone gave me the go ahead to "mess"): Im looking for Paul C. Is this him or do you know him???

Me: Yep this is Paul, what's up?

Lil Mamma Babe please call me...I didn't mean to snap at you the other day i miss u i still luv ya and i would really honestly love to talk to u i need you in my life no matter what.

At this point a twinge of guilt entered my mind but I figured as long as I avoided the subject of their relationship problems it was okay to "mess"

Me: I really cant call you right now.  Someone just left a box of kittens on my doorstep! 

Lil Mamma o ok i understand im sorry.... please forgive me

Me:  I'm not too mad but these kittens have me overwhelmed.  There are six of them and they are hungry.  Do you think i should buy some baby formula for them?

Lil Mamma Ya or delute regular milk

Me I could try that. How warm do cats need to be? I'm wondering if they need a blanket or something.

Lil Mamma I would give them at least a towel

Me; Who the heck would do something like this? I'm not qualified to take care of kittens.  What am I going to do with them? 

Lil Mamma  Call the animal shelter or the police.  They will send a dog catcher to u and they will take them.

Me: But they aren't dogs

Lil Mamma  It don't matter they take all animals no matter what espically if they are abandone

Me I guess I could keep one.  But I would like it to be a boy.  I'm not sure how to tell on cats.  They are too furry.  

Lil Mamma Lol! I know how to its kinda hard to explaine first u take one spred their legs and seprate the fur if there is a nub there it is a boy if not then its a girl. 

Me: Well shoot, either I'm really bad at this or they are all girls! Maybe that's why someone didn't want them.  They are going crazy meowing though.  Do you think music would calm them down? I'm wondering about looking up some cat sounds on YouTube to play for them.

Lil Mamma  Honestly idk sorry wish i could hear ur voice

Me Well I've got to get some milk in these things but I will talk soon.  Night lil mamma

Lil Mamma Goodnight, love you. 

The next morning...

Lil Mamma Good morning

Me maybe for you! These kittens crawled all over the place last night.  There is crap everywhere.

Lil Mamma Im sorry if you wanna talk call me later..

An hour later....

 Lil Mamma  Apperntlly you don't forgive me and don't wanna be my friend so i guess this is goodbye

Me Oh lil mamma.... I think you should try harder to find the real Paul C.'s number. I'm surprised you don't have his number if you love him.  You did however provide me with a very entertaining 12 hours.  Don't give up on Paul just yet, he may still forgive you.  

At this point I figured I had messed enough and let her down easy.  I was surprised when the comedy continued.  She gave me her whole life story and told me how Paul was the only friend she had ever had.  I will spare you the text exchange but I will say I was very kind and sincere as well as totally weirded out.  At one point she told me that she was going to move out of the state to Germany. I wondered if I should tell her that Germany is actually out of the country but decided she would figure that out eventually.  She explained that she was going to live and die alone if she couldn't have Paul.  I then strangely enough, found myself sharing a bit of the gospel with her which she rapidly rejected.  I seriously was feeling a bit bad for her.  Noone should ever feel totally alone.  This exchange continued into the afternoon with me kindly encouraging her be strong and lean on her friends.  She finally told me that she needed to go get packed for Germany, so we said our goodbyes and I apologized for messing with her about the cat thing.

Hours later I got the following text;

 Lil Mamma Just one question? y would you %^&$* with someone so bad as u did with me when Im pouring my heart out u should have said you wernt paul how low r u feeling to pretend that you are someone elase?

Me I TOLD you I wasn't Paul and THEN you poured your heart out to me, which I was sincerely kind and sympathetic about

Lil Mamma Oh.... ya.  Well sorry for snapping at you i do appreciate you listening.  good by


 Lil Mamma and I parted ways on a good note and I think we are friends.  I have to say that this was a pretty fun way to spend my day.  I laughed way more than I have in a long time and for good reason, I mean how weird is this exchange?