Easter

Mike was home for Spring Break last week and we loved it! We got a bunch packed and some cleaned and spent some time together and with friends. What more could you ask for?

We stopped by the Swamp Center, our favorite place, and checked out all the animals. Even though we've been there quite a few times now, Lil' O is still so excited to see the animals! This time he was extra animated and liked pointing and talking to each one. He also liked walking the trail and finding all the lizards and salamanders. He insisted on getting out and pushing his own stroller about halfway through and we only almost lost him in the swamp once. Mike was fixing his shoe and I was looking at a lizard and apparently O was continuing, because next thing we knew the stroller was halfway off the boardwalk and about to take Lil' O into the swamp. It was pretty exciting.

Here's a neat caterpillar we found on the way out.

We had a nice Easter. We had dinner with a bunch of friends on Friday. Lil' O had so much fun playing with his friends on the playground. We looked over once to find him watching contentedly while his friend Leah proceeded to dump handfuls of woodchips down his onsie. We couldn't help but just laugh, we were still finding woodchips when I cleaned the bathroom yesterday.

Saturday morning we got up and headed for the Primary Easter Egg Hunt. Oliver loved decorating his bag and then looking for eggs. Here are a couple pictures of our fun morning.

 

On Sunday we got to church early since Mike is temporary choir director. We had a nice turnout for choir and they sounded great singing "I Believe in Christ" for the Intermediate Hymn. I love Easter Sunday, it's such a special time to talk of Christ and His Atonement and Resurrection. I love teaching Oliver about Christ. He loves Jesus, he's such a sweet boy. His favorite part of the "Because of Him" video is the picture of the baby, he loves babies!

Before we headed to church, Lil' O checked out the Easter basket. He loved all his neat Easter things. Thanks so much Nana and Papa Fisher for the doodle pad and candy, and Aunt Tauna, Uncle Steve, and Jess for the soft puppy! He loves doodling away and now knows the word candy. He has to take his puppy down for naps and to bed every night now! Nana and Papa Fisher got Mike a score and me some socks. I'm lovin' my socks, they're seriously so comfy, and Mike's already been checking out his new score.

Later that evening, we had Easter dinner with some friends. It was so nice. Oliver loved playing with his friends again. He's even getting used to their cat and didn't act like he was in mortal danger whenever the cat was around!

Here are a couple videos of our silly Little Man for your viewing pleasure.

He dressed himself this day and insisted that this was all he needed.

I tried to convince him to show you his ABC's and Counting, they're starting to come a little...

 

We love you all and hope you're doing well!

Counting Down

We're starting to get ready to go now, and it's getting pretty exciting!

Yesterday I packed the first two boxes. Lil' O was awake and it was a lot harder than packing with no children. He likes to check everything out and take it all out of the box as I'm packing it in. Maybe I'll just have to speed pack during naptime? We'll see how that goes.

Here are some of his antics lately, he's so funny!

He thinks this is so funny on laundry day, it's so cute!

You have to keep your cheeks from getting chapped, ya know?

The other day I slept in and he came in to make me some soup for breakfast. :)

 Lil' O's favorite times of the day are bathtime and naked time, which closely follows bathtime.

I think he might like pasta... :)

Here he is with his friend Evelyn, she says he's her favorite friend since he never hits or pushes her and he's really nice to her. She is so sweet! She and her little brother Harrison are two of our favorite friends, too!

Nana and Papa Fisher and Lindsay sent him this for Easter and he loves it! Thanks so much, he draws all the time now and I don't have to worry about it getting on everything!

 Today we went to the Strawberry Patch for playgroup and it was so fun! Even though it was muddy from the rain last night and Lil' O stepped in a puddle up to his ankles the first 5 minutes we were there, we had so much fun picking strawberries and playing with our friends. Well, some of us picked strawberries while others of us watched and ate all the strawberries being picked...

Here he is with two of our cute friends, Leah and Orson, milking the cow. He was pretty good at milking, but didn't think much of how the "udders" felt.

 Can you guess who was doing the eating?

Phew, sorry for all the long videos, I'll try to post more often so there aren't so many next time! Happy Wednesday, we're halfway through the week, woohoo!

March!

March, where did it go?! I can't believe it's already almost over, but I am happy we survived!

Mike passed his Written and Oral Exams, finished his Thesis, and had his recital. It was crazy, but everything went so well! Now all he has to do is finish out the semester and he's officially graduated with his Master's in Music! Woohoo!

He's also been accepted into the Doctoral program here with an Assistantship offer, so we'll be staying another three years. I'm getting used to Baton Rouge though, and aside from missing my family and western friends all the time, I kind of like it. We've made some great friends here, and I'll be sad when we have to say goodbye!

Lil' has pretty much just been busy learning and growing. I can't believe I'm the mama of a toddler now. He's so independent, too! He can drink out of a cup, help clean up messes, name most of the parts of his body, climb onto just about anything, and open the set of drawers that hold our office supplies.

Here are a couple pictures and videos from the past month.

He loves the laundry basket. It's so funny when he puts it over his whole body and then walks around, I'll try to get it on video this Saturday when we do laundry again.

He insisted on taking both his red teddy and his giant teddy to bed for naptime, it was so cute!

He loves driving cars and trucks around everywhere... driving some people crazy in the process... :)

Now that most of the craziness is over, I'll try to keep things more updated. This month we'll start packing our stuff up and getting ready to go. Lil' O and I should be heading to Idaho the day before Mike heads to Canada the second week in May. My piano studio recital is at the end of the month, so I've been helping all my students get ready. I think they're all going to be great, I'm so excited!

Have a great weekend!

18 Months!

Our Little Man is 18 months next week and I can't believe it! He's getting big so fast!

He's such a silly little character. He loves to be naked, but if he can't, then in just a diaper is close enough.

He's so cute in Dada's hats, too!

He likes to dress up in anything of Dada's actually...

He had lots of fun around Valentine's Day, especially with the sweet packages he got from Nana and Papa Fisher, Great Nana and Papa Lindsay, and Aunt Tauna. Thank you so much!

Here he is in his special Valentine's shirt writing Dada a Valentine.

Here are a couple videos to show how big he's getting! :)

In the first two he's in his new jammies, they're so sweet on him!

Here's another pic in his cute new hat, too!

Not too much to report from Mike and I, we're just trying to hold on through the rest of the semester. Mike's been sick, but went to the doctor today and they gave him some prescriptions, so we think he'll be feeling better soon now.

Our Week

The last couple days for our little family have been kind of a whirlwind. Things just came and went so fast, even though the days themselves went slowly. Since this blog is about our family life, I feel it important to include what we've been through, even though it's been difficult.

First, I want to make sure I thank everyone that was so kind and helpful during the last couple days. We have great friends here in Baton Rouge that were so willing to help and family that provided us with support, prayers, and fasting. We can't thank you all enough. For our family and close friends who didn't know anything was going on, please don't feel bad. Everything went so quickly and we really didn't have any answers to give anyone, so we only told our immediate families.

Mike and I have been hoping that we'd be blessed with another little one soon, since Oliver is getting to the age where he really loves playing with other kids. We'd love for him to have a brother or sister to play with. This Saturday I took a pregnancy test and it was positive. We were excited, but a little worried since I'd been spotting for about a week. My cycle has been off, so we had no idea I could be pregnant until I looked down to find a definite bump on Saturday evening. Many of you may not know that Oliver is actually our fourth pregnancy, we had three miscarriages before we were blessed with him. The first was at about 7 weeks and the following two at about 4 or 5 weeks.
We decided I should just take it easy until Monday and then get in to a doctor as soon as possible. First thing Monday morning I started calling around, but due to weather and insurance difficulties I couldn't get in to anyone. A woman on the nurse's hotline told me I needed to see someone within four hours since my spotting had now turned into bleeding. She suggested we go to the ER at a women's hospital in town. I called Mike, we dropped Oliver off with a friend, and headed for the ER. There they did a blood test to measure my Beta HCG, the hormone that is released when you're pregnant. During the first of your pregnancy it doubles every 48 hours, so this would allow them to determine if the pregnancy was continuing or miscarrying, but they first needed to take my blood again in 48 hours. At this point my HCG level was 800. They also checked me and said everything looked fine, but I was bleeding more than they'd like. They said I had a threatened miscarriage and sent me home on bed rest. I was to come back for the second blood test on Wednesday.
I took it easy on Monday. This seemed to be working, until I started having some pains and increased bleeding in the evening. This part was much like my previous miscarriages, so I started to wonder if I would lose the baby in the night. Things calmed back down and by morning the pains were gone and the bleeding had almost stopped, so we got our hopes back up that it could be ok. I took it easy again on Tuesday.
Tuesday evening I started having the pains again and the bleeding became the worst it had been. The pains increased until they were much like labor pains, which is what I remembered having happened before, so I was prepared. Then they became more intense and I was bleeding more. Mike got Oliver ready for bed, and I was literally on the floor in so much pain I could barely move. We decided something could be wrong, like an ectopic pregnancy or perhaps my body wasn't opening the way it needed to, since that's the reason I had to have a C-Section with Oliver. Due to the weather and road closures we knew we couldn't get to the ER we had gone to before and we didn't know where else they could help me. We also weren't sure if we could get there in time since the pains were continuing to worsen, so we called the ambulance and they came and got me. Oliver was sad when they took me, poor little guy, he was scared. Mike dropped him off with some friends and followed me to the hospital. We were blessed that he could find an open route to the hospital they took me to.
Once there they did an ultrasound and pelvic exam and found that I was having a normal miscarriage. After the ultrasound I passed the tissue and the pains subsided. They did another blood test while I was there and my levels were 6700, much higher than they should have been, especially for someone who was miscarrying. They sent us home and I need to rest for a couple days and see another doctor for a follow-up ultrasound and blood test. The ultrasound will make sure everything passed so I don't require a procedure and the blood test will hopefully tell us a little more about the spike in my levels. We're hoping this time we can come up with some answers as to why this has happened to us so many times now. There aren't very many answers they can give us since it's the first trimester, but they can look into it a little more.
Thank you for all your support and prayers, they're greatly appreciated! We're recovering well, just drained and exhausted. Poor little Oliver hasn't had much Mama time the last couple days, so today was just he and I. We read, we danced, we played, and we snuggled, it was the best medicine for a sad Mama. Mike and I have noticed that miscarriage isn't always talked about, which sometimes makes those who face it feel that they are alone. We're hoping that by writing about ours, it will open up the subject a little more. If this has happened to you, please know you're not alone and we'd be happy to talk about it if you'd like or if you have any questions.

Pizza and Some Dance Moves

The other day we had some pizza and the only way Lil' O would eat some was if he had his own piece. Don't cringe too much health food friends, he didn't actually eat this entire piece, one of us had taken a couple bites when he told us he wanted it.

A couple nights later he started to show off his dance moves to us. Mike says he definitely gets them from me... what could he possibly mean by that?!

He loves being a big boy, so he helps make popcorn and loves to eat it.

He also likes to be just like Dad. He pulled Dad's shirt out of his closet the other day and wanted to wear it...

We eventually opted for the same color in short sleeves, but he was pretty darn cute in this long sleeve one! :)

Mike and I were pretty excited about the golf club covers we made for his Dad's birthday. It was a collaborative effort and we had to come up with our own pattern for the Cubs marking, but we were happy with how they turned out.

Christmas and Other Fun Times

After bath time each night, we have a "Super Oliver" that runs around for a little while...

This night he was extra wound up!

I can't believe how big our little one is getting! Once we got this present under the tree, it became his seat until Christmas. He always manages to sit right on the bow...

One of our favorite Christmas traditions is to watch "A White Christmas."

Here's O in his new Christmas shirt watching with us. He loved the music!

What does a monkey say Lil' O?

We took it easy on Christmas Eve and read the Christmas Story from Luke 2.

Here's our Christmas tree and our Little Man.

Christmas Morning!

Thanks for the cute Christmas jammies for Little O, Aunt Sis!

We had fun taking it easy after Dad left for work that afternoon, and Lil' O played with his toys all day and night!

Here's one of our cute new outfits with our snazzy new shoes, too!

One day while Dad was at work we had a late lunch and someone was a little sleepy...

This has got to be one of the cutest things!

Another cute outfit from Christmas!

Lil' O is getting pretty good and some small motor skills, look at his neat pen trick!

A couple weeks ago, Lil' O said his first sentence. He said, "Bye, Dad" to Mike when he was at work, so cute! Here are some more words he can say...

Here's our little skipper.

Two heads are better than one?

Lil' O and our friend Jojo playing the piano...

His new church outfit makes him look like such a big boy!!

So sleepy...

Someone loves his goldfish...

Phew, I'll try to keep up a little more often so the next post isn't so long!!

Mike is just starting his last semester of his Master's program, which is going to be an extra busy one, and I've been blessed with quite a few new piano students, so we'll be running for the next few months. It should be a fun Spring though with this Little Man keeping us busy!