Is anyone still out there?

I realized this afternoon how nice it was to have the blog to keep track of the comical day to day with our kids, as well as some of our bigger life events, I've been going through the last few years of posts over the course of the last couple of weeks, and I'm realizing that without posting on the blog, and my utter failure to keep any semblance of a journal, we're losing memories all the time. So, even if we've lost all of our readers by now thanks to a rather extended hiatus, in anticipation of my future nostalgia when the kids are grown and I'm trying to remember all of the wonderful and silly things they used to say and do, it's time to get back on the horse and start posting again.

Hailey: Hailey is mature beyond her years. She takes care of the boys, including her dad. Lindsay is lucky she got Hailey first, otherwise, she'd be the only responsible one in the family. Hailey starts kindergarten in a few months. I think I'm going to be sick, just thinking about it. She still makes friends everywhere that she goes, and she is generally fearless. Yesterday she ended up a couple of aisles away from Lindsay and the boys while at WalMart, and she walked right up to the photo counter, and told the person behind the counter, "I can't find my mom, her name is Lindsay Renee Mills". Lindsay was probably less than 10 feet from the photo counter, so she could hear the employee snickering as she repeated Lindsay's full name into the intercom.

Blake: Blake is the family comedian right now, even if it's not on purpose. A few weeks ago, Blake was hurriedly trying to make it to the bathroom, he got into the room, dropped trou, and flipped on the lights, but the extra time it took to find the light switch lost him that split second he needed to make it in the toilet. Instead, he peed all over the floor. When Lindsay came to clean it up, she, rather calmly and gently, scolded Blake for waiting until the last minute to run to the bathroom. His response? With tears in his eyes, he said, "It was an accident.  Everyone makes mistakes, mom!" Also, Blake currently has an imaginary friend. He is English. His name is Todo (although he is most often referred to as "my English friend". He has blue hair. He speaks Spanish. And his favorite food is chicken and rice. Finally, Blake is still working on his pronunciation of certain words. One of our favorites, he calls Grandpa, Crap-pa.

Nathan:  He hasn't had any fractures since he was around two weeks old, and he is just a happy, sweet little guy. He is growing, slowly, but steadily. He turns 1 in a few weeks, but he's probably closer to the size of a 3-4 month old (he's finally out of the 0-3 month clothes and into the 3-6 month). He  weighs 14 lbs, and is about 24 inches long, I think. He's getting stronger every day, and we think he may be crawling by his birthday. He has started to figure out ways to get around, by scooting and rolling, and he is into everything. He is such a brilliant little guy, mimicking everything we do, and finding ways to communicate. He eats like a horse. At dinner, he's been known to eat more than Blake or Hailey. I'm just trying to figure out where it all goes, since he's not gaining weight or getting any longer...but we're just glad he's a good eater and he's so healthy. (Lindsay put the pink and white fedora on him at the store, a little feminine, but the kid looks cute in anything).

Lastly, a major event in our house, although less significant in the grand scheme of things. We have a functioning master bathroom again! We bought the house in February 2011, discovered a leak in the master shower due to an improper pre-slope on the floor, among other things, in October 2011, and by January 2012 decided that it was too expensive to pay someone else to do the shower for us. So, five months, and countless hours later, Lindsay and I learned how to put up dry wall, waterproof a shower, tile, and grout, and now we can finally use our own shower again!

 

Progress

Well it's pretty clear we've been negligent on this, as the following post was actually written back in August, I think, but I never got around to posting it. I'll try to writes something a little more current in the near future. For now, here is the update from a couple of months ago:

Before getting into Natey's treatment, etc. I can't help but give some of the details of what's going on with Blake and Hailey. I remember talking to a friend a couple of years ago who had a sibling who had some major health issues when they were kids. While she didn't resent her parents for it, she was aware of, and still remembers as an adult the fact that she and her brother were essentially left out of the picture for years while her sick sister needed special attention from her parents. I think we have made a conscious effort to continue to devote time to each of our kids, but even with three healthy kids, giving each of them sufficient attention would be a real challenge, and that has become even more challenging under the circumstances.

Hailey is an angel. There's no way around it, she is as sweet a child as any parent could ask for. I may be eating these words when she's a teenager, but right now we're just savoring the moment. She hangs with her brother, and helps with the baby. She started preschool this week, and last night asked me to help her with her homework. Her teacher hadn't assigned her any, but she wanted some homework, so we had to come up with something to take advantage of her ambitiousness.

Blake is a gem as well. He is daddy's shadow right now, in fact last night, he wanted to help mow the lawn, so he held my hand while I did the whole thing one handed. By the end, just from the walking back and forth over our very large back yard, he was exhausted, but he kept reminding me that he was really tough, and he can help daddy. He is all about superheroes, he loves watching the old X-Men cartoons (thanks Uncle Jeff) and only wants to wear his superman shirt, his batman shirt, or his spiderman costume. If all 3 of his favorites are dirty at the same time, he prefers to go naked than to wear something else. He also loves to have us tell him stories. He would rather that we told him the stories of Peter Pan or Aladdin then watch the movie. He has an incredible imagination, so I can only imagine that the version in his head is better than the movie anyway.

While we're not interested in boring everyone with the inane details of Nathan's growth (after all he's still not quite 3 months old), it seems important to chronicle everything that's happened and happening, for our own sake if for no other reason. It's amazing all of the little progress that we took for granted, even when we were first-time parents. I remember with Hailey and Blake noticing when they started to roll over, or sit up, or crawl, but there are a lot of little things in between that seemed such insignificant milestones at the time, that now seem monumental. A few weeks ago, Nathan received his first pamidronate treatment. Pamidronate or "pam" is a drug more commonly used in treating osteoporosis, and is also often used as part of chemotherapy. As us laypeople understand it, it basically assists in getting extra calcium into Nathan's bones. He was infused with 3 doses, over the course of 3 days. Each dose only took about 4 hours to infuse, but since it was his first treatment, we stayed overnight so they could monitor how he responded to the medicine. Thankfully, he didn't have any major adverse reactions. The most common would have been flu-like symptoms,and fever. While he was a little fussy the day or two afterward, he seemed to be mostly pretty comfortable. About 3 or 4 days after his last dose we noticed him starting to do things he really hadn't done before. While laying on his back he would put both feet up in the air above his body. He was moving both arms and legs, and turning his head with much more frequency than he had the week before. While he never seemed to be in pain before, it made us wonder how much discomfort he had been experiencing, since he was now so much more willing to move around.

He hasn't had a fracture since he was about 10 days old, and he is growing so much. He is happy, and getting longer and putting on weight very well. There are likely some hard times ahead, including surgeries on at least his legs or hips, which still don't look great, but for the next few months all we have to worry about is taking him in every 8 weeks to get his pam treatments, and keeping track of all of the tiny milestones.

Our Brave Little Boy

The first month of our Nathan's life has been... a trial to say the least! As some of you may already know Nathan was born with a genetic disorder called Osteogenesis Imperfecta (some people have heard of it as brittle bone disease). Basically, there is a genetic mutation that affects the collagen in his body. While collagen is involved in a number of places in our bodies, the most affected area are his bones, which are extremely brittle and break very easily. OI (as it is called) occurs about 1 in every 20,000 babies born and can vary greatly in severity. We still don't know what the longterm prognosis will be, but are hoping and praying for the best outcome possible. As I mentioned in the last post he was born with a broken arm but that isn't all. Along with the ulnar fracture that was splinted, he was born with a dozen other breaks, including several fractures in both femurs, broken arms, broken ribs and breaks in both clavicles. Since birth, he has had a broken leg, and a broken arm (which ironically enough was actually probably caused by the weight of the splint on the lower part of his arm).

This was of course a big shock, since there was no indication of any problems during the ultrasounds, etc. We only found out about his condition the morning after he was born when the pediatrician came in and told us she was worried that he had short legs, and one of them was actually shorter than the other. It was at that point that we wondered if he had broken his legs because we had realized that he would scream everytime he was moved or jostled.

To add insult to injury, 2 weeks later we noticed that he had swelling in his chest. Our little guy had developed some breast tissue (apparently not terribly uncommon). The doctor reassured us that it was perfectly normal and would go away with time. We thought it was pretty funny, and made a mental note to point this out to any future girlfriends, but otherwise forgot about it. As luck would have it 3 days later we noticed that it was getting bigger and very red so once again we went to the doctor to have it looked at and she said that he had gotten mastitis.Apparently if an infant is in need of antibiotics before 28 days old they prefer to administer them by IV so off to Primary childrens hospital (again) for 2 days to get antibiotics.

Inspite of it all we're doing our best to keep a positive attitude. We feel extremely blessed at the circumstances that have led us to where we are today. Nathan has been accepted to Shriners Hospital SLC. They specialize in orthopedics and are located 20 mins from our house. When we were searching for jobs 2 years ago we were struggling with the decision to come back to Utah but kept feeling that taking this job was the right thing to do, and now we know it was the right thing to do!!!

Nathan is doing great right now, all of his fractures all healed and he hasn't had one in almost 4 weeks. He's a very good baby and is now starting to smile and make cute baby sounds. I'm not sure why he is meant to have this trial but I know like all of God's mysteries, one day we'll know and it will all make sense. I'm so grateful for all the meals and help we have received this last month and I am especially grateful for all the prayers that have been said for Nathan. We know that he has been the subject of hundreds of prayers, and has been put on prayer rolls at temple all over the country. Thank you all so much!

(broken bones might be a big topic in our house right now!)

Nathan

Well here is our Nathan...I know he's a month old already but better late than never!

Here are a few of his pictures from his hospital shoot (We were very impressed by the new hospital pictures)

Nathan with his really big splint.  He was born with a broken arm so they decided to splint it which didn't last long to say the least!

Growing up...

So life has been a lot crazy around here the last few months, hopefully we can say that with all the challenges and changes that we've encountered the last 2 months we've learned a few lessons and grown a little more.




First of all Happy Birthday Blakey!!! I can't believe our little Blake is 2! Where did the time go?  He's growning up so fast (in every way but physically, he's still way underweight and we're working on that).  He knows all his colors, most of his shapes, and is in the process of potty training...we're not 100% yet, but we're getting there.  It doesn't really matter though because he looks really cute running around in his undies!



We tried to make it a great birthday for him despite cutting 2 molars, having an ear infection, and the whole family was recovering from strep.

We've also grown into a new car.  Thanks to Grandma and Grandpa Mills for lending us their van while on their mission for the next 2 years.  And the timing was impeccable because as we were driving to Colorado for their farewell we hit a patch of ice in the middle of Wyoming and wrecked the Camry...blessings come in unexpected ways sometimes.

In addition to all of that we've decided to buy a house...why not!!! We're excited and nervous about the whole process, and definitely dreading the packing (didn't we just do this?) and we're definitely excited for all the extra room we'll have.


We're hoping to be all moved in by this weekend because.... when you get a van and buy a house the next logical thing to do would be to have baby #3!

We had our ultrasound and decided to NOT find out what we're having! I guess we just wanted to save some surprises for the rest of the year... so we'll have to wait until June to find out.

A wedding, Halloween, and Other Fun

Well, lots to report since the last post. I was sworn in as a member of the Utah bar, my parents, Lindsay's parents, my grandparents, my brother and his fiancee, and my sister-in-law all came to support me. I'm sure glad to have such a great family! My brother was married a few days before Halloween, and that meant that we had lots of cousins in town for Halloween. It was awesome! Finally, Hailey's been hoping for snow ever since we got to Utah, and the weather finally obliged a couple of weeks ago. Today is looking like it is going to be a great Thanksgiving. Hope everyone else has a Happy Thanksgiving too!

Moving On

I found out on Saturday that I passed the bar exam. It's a funny thing, it seems like something you ought to be excited about, but it's sort of a no-win in some ways. It's not that big of a deal to anyone when you pass, but it would have been a very big deal if I had failed. So, I'm relieved, now I can really move on with my life. Speaking of which, I love it when Lindsay and the kids come downtown and visit me at the office

What a Summer!

Now that it's September, I suppose it's finally time I got around to updating our blog. We sure miss all of our friends, who are now spread all over the country, and we love seeing photos of you and your kids. We'll try and do better to keep our blog updated too. Well, the last post with any new photos or information was back on the 4th of July, so here goes the rest of July and August:

A visit to Wheeler Farms

A hike or two in the great outdoors

A visit to Lagoon

Hailey started swimming lessons

A long awaited honeymoon...in San Diego

A view of San Diego from Coronado Island

Romantic Sunset at La Jolla Cove

A visit to the San Diego Temple

My baby sister Julie's wedding in Denver

Garden of the Gods with cousins

Hailey's first day of preschool

Well, if you made it through all of that...you're pretty much caught up with us. Hailey is loving preschool. Blake is loving going on bike rides with mommy while Hailey is at preschool. Lindsay is staying busy (I'll put up some photos of her most recent projects in a few days), and I'm still getting used to having to work a real job, with real responsibility. I hope your summer was as much fun as ours!

Travelers

It's been a long time since I last posted. I took the bar at the end of July, and we've been busy since then. We've went to Colorado the day after the exam, and stayed the rest of the weekend. Hopefully we'll get some pictures from my family, and post them soon. The Bench family reunion is this weekend, then Lindsay and I are finally going on a vacation, just the two of us. Thinking about going on a little trip, made me think about all of the amazing places Lindsay and I have visited since we first met over 5 years ago. Hopefully I'll have something more recent to post about, but here's the list of all the places I could think of that we have visited over the last few years, and photos of those places, when I could find them...

Provo, Manti, and Salt Lake City, Utah
Rapids City, South Dakota
Jackson Hole, Wyoming
Colorado Springs, Colorado
Fort Collins, Colorado
Denver, Colorado
San Francisco, California
Rochester and Palmyra, New York
Kirtland, Ohio
Nauvoo, Illinois
Independence, Missouri
Wilmington, North Caronlina

Durham, North Carolina

Newport Beach, California

Beaufort, North Carolina

New Bern, North Carolina

Washington DC

Charleston, South Carolina

Boise, Idaho

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

Gettysburg, Pennsylvania

Williamsburg, Virginia

Luray, Virginia

Myrtle Beach, South Carolina

Atlanta, Georgia

Birmingham, Alabama

Vicksburg, Mississippi

Dallas, Texas

San Antonio, Texas

Outer Banks, North Carolina

Pigeon Forge, Tennessee

Orlando, Florida

Savannah, Georgia