Dancing and Pool Party

I haven't taken many videos or pictures this week, I guess I didn't realize how much time I would need to recover, but before the surgery we had a few fun days. Last Monday we had a pool day at Jake's. We brought James' frog pool over and filled it up. I put James in and he climbed right out. He just wanted to put his hand in and splash. Hopefully he will get more used to it and have fun "swimming" in his pool.

After swimming I stripped him down and he had a snack.

Then he fed his snack to the neighbors dog through the fence. It was a very cute dog and James had a lot of fun barking at it.

James also loves to listen to him music. He loves the "Mother Goose Rocks" Cd's and I think they are pretty fun to listen to also. He loves to stand on the fire place and dance. He also loves to use the stereo as a seat. What a cute little boy we have.

Surgery and the Worlds Greatest Husband/Father

It has been a while since my last post, a lot has happened. Last Friday I got a call that there was a cancellation and we could go see the surgeon that day if we wanted to. So we did and she surprised me when she found a second hernia in my belly button. She suggested I get them fixed and we didn't want to wait too long so yesterday I had the surgery. Congratulations Chad, you won, but I don't exactly know what we were betting.

We got there at 6:30 in the morning to fill out paperwork and get ready for the surgery. I have to say Doug knows me very well. He didn't tell me anything that he knew I would freak out about, like the IV or how hard the recovery would be (he knows those are the things I hated worst about having a baby). So the first I heard about the I.V. was when the doctor was explaining the entire procedure.

I have to say that I was very calm and doing very well...until they sent Doug out to the waiting area and took me back to the operation room. Then I panicked. I don't know why but it was really hard to have to go all by myself. They had me lay on the table and were covering me will a ton of warm blankets and I was just shaking. They kept asking me all these questions, that they already knew the answers to, but I couldn't focus enough to answer them. The next thing I knew I was waking up screaming/yelling (I don't know what) in the recovery room, which by the way had several other people in it. I heard another patient telling her mom, or nurse about it after. The nurse said that is common when someone is upset before they are put under.

Now enters my wonderful husband. He explained to me that after the doctor fixed the 2 hernias she was checking around and found 2 more. So I had a total of 4 hernias fixed! Doug has been amazing. He has completely taken care of me and James for the past few days. He even slept in the guest room last night so I could have the whole bed and be propped up and watch TV in the middle of the night when I woke up, several times. It was kind of fun to lay in bed and listen to Doug playing with James downstairs. James has been loving all the extra fun he gets to have with dad. So Happy Fathers Day to the best Husband and Father we could ask for. Thanks for all the extra help and work you have done to make us happy. We love you.

Here is a picture of something that I thought would NEVER happen. James was really grumpy one morning so I put a movie on to try and help calm him down. He screamed for a few minutes then was quiet watching the movie for a while, the next thing I knew he was asleep on the floor. He slept for about 45 minutes. I don't think he has ever slept outside of his crib or car seat since he was about 3 months old.

On Saturday we decided to take a picnic to the park. So we got some hamburgers from Wendy's and went to the park. James loved it. He loves to eat hamburgers and fries.

Where's James?

On Saturday night we had a little excitement. I filled the water in our fridge and forgot to push it in all the way. I was trying to get dinner ready when I noticed there was about a gallon of water all over the fridge and floor. So Doug and James came to help clean it up when James started choking on something. So I grabbed James and was holding him over the sink trying to help him cough up whatever it was. He started screaming so I held him up and he threw up all over my arm. So I handed him off to Doug and while I was cleaning up my arm he threw up all over Doug. This time there was a tiny blue star in it so we were pretty sure it was done. So I stopped cooking dinner and we all went upstairs to change and give James a bath. After his bath we had dinner. I guess we should have waited for the bath. Finally, a couple of firsts, for Me and Doug. On Monday I had a doctor's appointment at 4:30. Doug had a toothache and the only time he could get in to see the dentist was at 4:30. So we dropped James off at a friends and Doug took me to the Doctor while he went to the dentist. Doug thought he would be faster thinking they would only have to grind his tooth down so it would push on the other one anymore. Turns out it was really infected and he needs to have a root canal, which he will be having in July. I have a hernia that needs to be fixed so I also have an appointment with a surgeon in July. So Doug will be having his first root canal and I will be having my first hospital visit, besides when I had James.

Learning to Share

We had a pretty fun Memorial weekend. Doug went to Logan on Friday and Saturday to help Chad with their tile and Shannon, Myra and Lexi came to stay with me and James. James had a lot of fun playing with his cousins.

Saturday after everyone left I gave James a bath and got him ready for bed. We went downstairs to play a little while we were waiting for dad to get home. James decided to play in the bathroom and went in and shut the door. When I went to check on him I found him in the bathtub with a bunch of toys he had thrown in there. He kept "climbing" in and out. He couldn't really climb in or out he would just get one leg until it was almost there and fall in the rest of the way. Then he would cry for a few seconds and go on playing. He is pretty cute.

On Monday we had some friends over for dinner. James and Jake don't always play that well together and James was really not wanting to share his Lightning McQueen car. He kept trying to push Jake off of it. I guess he needs to learn how to share!

James Loves Water

Today we went over to James' friend Zac's house. James and Zac had a lot of fun playing but after a while they both got a little grumpy so we decided to take them outside to walk. They soon found these puddles in the alley between the condos and had a ton of fun. It didn't take James long before he was crawling through the puddles and laying down in them. He even stuck his face in the dirty water and was trying to drink it. What am I going to do with this cute little boy!

I kept trying to get a picture of his dirty little face. But he was pretty stubborn and wouldn't look at the camera, so these are the best I have.

No Cute Videos!

I don't have any cute videos of James for this week yet because everything takes two people, one to help James do whatever he is doing and the other person to video it. So it is a little harder to get all the cute things he is doing on video, but we will succeed! So anyway I thought I would post these links to some fun websites I found.

http://www.blurb.com
This is a fun website that you download the program then you can create books with your photos or blog or whatever. The prices are not that bad either.

http://thepioneerwoman.com/cooking/
This is a website of a woman who puts recipes that she creates on it. They seem to be pretty simple and sound really good. Two that I would like to try are Pineapple Shrimp Skewers, and Apricot bars. Her directions can be a little annoying but the directions seem to be very complete and easy to follow.

Bruises, Parties, and a Near Escape from a Fire

We have had a very uneventful week, with nothing to write about, followed by a very eventful weekend! On Friday night James was walking around, that is pretty much all he does now, and decided that he needed to go play in his room. He climbed the stairs, opened the gate (it was not locked) and was playing in his room. I was putting groceries away and Doug was doing something downstairs. Suddenly we heard a loud noise and one loud cry come from James' room. Doug went to investigate and found James laying on the floor next to the changing table with his shampoo bottle laying on top of him. Not knowing what happened and hearing no more cries from James he brought him downstairs and sat him on the couch. A few minutes later I looked at James and he had this huge swelling on his forehead and the beginning of a bruise. I am actually surprised that it has taken this long for him to get a bump on the head. We decided that he was probably walking around and fell hitting his head on the corner of the changing table. On Saturday we went to Myra's birthday party in Logan. We left about ten in the morning and James slept for about 40 minutes in the car. We got to the park about 11:30 and James played, with no nap, and without being too grumpy until we left to go home about 6:00. He then slept for about 30 minutes and woke up to eat his first hamburger from Wendy's, which he loved! We thought he would be so tired that he would fall right asleep when we put him to bed, but he was still playing in his crib when we went to bed at 10:00! James had so much fun playing with his cousins at the park. He had fun opening his birthday present from them, and Lexi just had to help! He loved eating cake so much that when Myra was sitting next to him with a cupcake he just reached over and grabbed a handful of her cupcake! She didn't even get mad at him. It was so cute I just had to have a picture of them eating the cupcake together. Later when Chad had a cupcake James ran over to him and did some of the best begging I have ever seen!

A little background to this next part of the story. We have often gone in the 1/2 bathroom on the main level and smelled a very odd smell. We tried very hard to figure out what it was thinking maybe it was smoke from the neighbors whose garage is on the other side of the wall, or something coming out of the vent. It didn't smell like smoke really, I had even thought maybe there was a dead mouse or something in wall. But we never could exactly figure it out. Once we got home James got a cute hair cut. (I will put pictures on another blog.) I told Doug to just put he hair on the floor because I was going to vacuum. So after his hair cut and a bath Doug was feeding James some applesauce and I decided to vacuum upstairs. Usually I use an outlet in James' room but I thought it would be a lot easier if I plugged it in the bathroom so I could reach all the rooms without switching. I was almost done with James' room when I heard shouting from downstairs and Doug ran up and unplugged the vacuum. We went downstairs and the 1/2 bathroom was filled with smoke with more smoke pouring out of the outlet. Luckily Doug was downstairs and started to smell that mysterious smell and was able to turn it of before it caught on fire. It was pretty scary to think that we have lived here a year and a half and never knew about this problem. So Doug took off the outlet cover and the outlet and the wire connecting to it were completely burned. Luckily I live with a handy man and we were able to immediately go to Lowe's and get a replacement. We talked about replacing all the outlets and light switches when we moved it but never did it, so now we are really going to check and replace them all.

We have had a great Mother's Day! James had a new nickname, Monkey Doodle, and we have gotten lots of comments on how busy his is at church. His new favorite game is to climb the stairs like a big boy. No more crawling up the stairs for him, we have to walk. So his new favorite game is having Mom help him climb the stairs and when we go up Mom says "Up" and when we go down James says, "Dow" it is pretty cute. He also loves to give leg hugs. He always walks up to us and wraps his arms around our legs. It is so cute. We just love having James around. He is such a fun kid!