Broken

We were warned to start looking for fractures once Natey started walking. Sure enough, just a few days after he took his first steps, he got hurt. We took him in to the doctor last week to get an X-ray. Based on what seemed to hurt him the most, we thought the fracture was on his right side. They X-rayed his right femur/hip area.  They told us that they only saw one small fracture on his right femur that was 5-15 days old (based on how much it had healed). Well, that was a surprise, since we had no idea he had broken his leg two weeks before.  Our wonderful pediatrician told us she didn't want to take more X-rays and just keep guessing where the injury might be.  Especially because he already has to get X rays so often.  We got some pain medication, and took him home.  We let a few more days go by, and long story short, when he started to feel well enough to start crawling on Thursday, he finished off the injury he'd started earlier in the week. He seemed hurt worse, but we still couldn't tell where exactly the fracture was (femur, pelvis, hips?).  Then, his left leg started to really swell up. We went into the doctor yesterday, and confirmed that his left femur was fractured. They considered putting on a spica cast, but in the end we all decided to go with a splint that is much lighter weight (Natey only weighs around 16 lbs, and the cast would have been almost as heavy as him!).  He will have it on for 3 weeks, at which point we hope he'll feel well enough to pick up where he left off, and be walking again in no time.

Natey's splint - it's amazing how much this has helped with pain control

Nasty fracture (I snapped this with my phone when they had it up on the screen)

Miracle

When Nathan was just one day old, the pediatrician at the hospital told us his legs were not the same length. When he was two days old she told us he has OI. For the first few weeks (maybe even months) Lindsay and I wondered whether he would ever be able to some of the basic things every child should do.  Most importantly to us, would he ever be able to walk. There have been a lot of little miracles in his life already, but to us, this is a big one. He's walking.

The Drive-In

For family night this week we took the kids to their first Drive-in movie. Since it was a double feature, the kids watched the first movie, and slept in the car during the second movie. It was a late night, but well worth it.

Cabin Fever

We spent last weekend at the Bench family cabin. The cabin was built by Lindsay's grandpa (not sure if it was her great grandpa or her great-great grandpa, someone in her family is going to have to remind me!), many years ago. It's a great place to gather with the family, and it still gets lots of use. Our kids love the cabin. They get to capture butterflies, caterpillers, and any other bugs they find, and, most importantly, play with their cousins. The trees are changing this time of year, and it was absolutely beautiful.

The "driveway"

Natey enjoying some watermelon

Foil dinners

Linds and Natey

The kids down by the nearly dry creek

Hailey, Blake, and cousin Embry

They played all day in their PJs

still playing...still in their PJs

Summer of 2012

Well, I missed July, and August, and now part of September, so here's a brief recap.

We had a lot of visitors in June and July. My sister Kim and her husband came and stayed with us for a couple of days. My brother Greg was in town visiting for a few days during the 4th of July week. A couple of weeks later, my Grandma Mills passed away, and Kim came back to town for the funeral. Grandma had been sick for a while, and had been ready to let go and see my grandpa, and the rest of her family. At the service I had a chance to talk to some of my extended family, and learn more about my grandma, and her life growing up. She really had a tough life, and it's amazing what she and my grandpa accomplished during their lives.

Finally, my sister Shelly was in town at the end of July with 5 of her 6 kids. It was so much fun to see my family so much, we usually only see each other once or twice a year. Most of them live in Colorado, and we try to go out there in the summer, but we weren't going to get out there this year, so it was great they all came to see us.

Hailey started kindergarten just a couple of weeks ago. She seems to really like it (although she did start the "I don't want to go to school today!" talk this morning, so that didn't take long!). She has a very good teacher, and is making friends.

Blake started his first year of preschool. His preschool is at the same school where Hailey goes to kindergarten, so it's nice that he gets a chance to get used to the school, although we're not convinced he's going to learn much based on what we've seen the first couple of weeks. That's mostly okay though, he still has a couple of years until kindergarten, and it's nice for him to get away from home and meet new kids.

Nathan is still getting faster and stronger. He's finally tall enough to climb stairs, so a few weeks ago he started really cruising up and down the stairs. Considering his brittle little bones, we are not so excited about the possibility of him falling down a flight of stairs, but he needs to figure it out, it's just scary for mom and dad. Along with the stairs, he likes climbing into or onto pretty much everything.

My little sister and her husband moved in with us at the beginning of August. They will be staying with us until April or so, when my sister finishes school.  She is getting her masters at the University of Utah in speech pathology, and he just finished up his bachelors at BYU, and is applying to graduate schools. The kids love having them around. Hailey begged Aunt Julie to do pedicures and facials every day for the first two weeks after they moved in, and Uncle Trent is basically a human jungle gym.

We're looking forward to the fall. The kids have already picked out their Halloween costumes, and we have close to a dozen pumpkins growing in the garden, ready for carving (we only planted a single pumpkin plant, thinking we'd get 2 or 3, but it has gotten out of control!).

June

June is a busy month in our family. First, we had Hailey's 5th birthday. Next, Lindsay turned the big 3-0, (I know I'm going to get in trouble for publishing that), and finally Natey just turned 1. Also, because it is an even month, that means we spent a couple of days at our favorite spot, the Shriner's Hospital, getting Natey's treatment. Which didn't exactly go well this month, but that's a story for another time. As if we weren't busy enough, we have had a nasty flu-like bug going around our house. We've had at least one ill person in our house for nearly the entire month so far. Miserable.

Back to the fun stuff, Hailey had a Rainbow themed birthday this year. She had a few friends over, Lindsay made a rainbow cake (rainbow both inside and out), rainbow ice cubes for the drinks, skittles as party favors, and well, lots of other rainbow things. We had the party in the backyard, and the kids played watergames for a couple of hours, and Hailey got lots of wonderful presents.

For Lindsay's birthday we took a day away and went to the Zermatt Resort in Midway. It was pretty fun, the entire place has a Swiss theme, we had delicious fondue and a steak dinner at the chop haus, and some really good pastries from the bakery they have on the property. We played a little tennis, threw some horseshoes, and even played some shuffleboard (that was a first, and I have to admit it was a pretty fun game). Anyway, a night away was very fun, (although Lindsay couldn't sleep in, and couldn't help worrying about whether Nate had kept his grandma up all night.) The kids of course had the time of their lives. They stayed with Grandpa and Grandma Bench. Hailey said it was the best, Grandma let them stay up late, and have ice cream before bed. Blake especially loved having cookies for breakfast. Grandma is so much cooler than us.

Natey's birthday was really just a pool party at Grandpa Brig and Grandma Gale's house. Linds went with a banana cake for this one (easily Natey's favorite food, he wakes up saying "nana? nana?" most mornings). A monkey theme went nicely with the banana cake. Natey loves water, whether it's the bath or the pool, he just loves it.

What a year he's had. We're so grateful for the progress he's made. The last couple of months he has been crawling everywhere, and is now pulling himself to a standing position, and as of yesterday, climbing up the stairs. Speaking of which, he snuck away from me while I was upstairs getting changed after work last night, and he tried to go down the stairs. When we heard him fall, and finally land at the bottom of the stairs on our hard wood floor, we thought for sure every bone in his body would be broken. After a few moments of Lindsay and I both trying to calm him down (while shaking uncontrollably ourselves), we could tell that he was scared, but not hurt. Really, when I think of how easily his arm broke when he was just a few weeks old, i realize what an absolute miracle it is that he wasn't seriously injured yesterday.

Just for good measure, here's a photo of Blakey at the chalk art festival this last week next to one of his favorite superheroes, the Green Lantern

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