Monica's Back Surgery

Well hello!  Monica got to have back surgery this past week!  So exciting!  It was scheduled on Wednesday.  Apparently there was some miscommunication and they told us to be there three hours early... and then when we got there we could hear them talking behind the counter about how we got there an hour and a half too early...  Interesting.  So we took a walk around for a while, which was super easy for Monica.  I mean, I guess it was easier for her to walk then than it is now!  Anyway surgery went well and I'll talk about it a bit more when we get down to Wednesday.

Gram came out to help us through all this craziness.  To add to the craziness of the week, it was also Gram's birthday!  We decorated the house some for her, and she made brownies for dessert!

Grayson enjoyed the brownies very much.

So back to surgery day.  Nothing too eventful in the morning other than getting there much earlier than necessary.  Eventually, Monica went back for surgery and I was sent to the waiting room.  I actually headed out for some lunch, and then came back to wait after.  The doctor came out when he was done and told me about the surgery.  He said the herniation was right in line with a ligament, so it was pushing out on that too, and he said there were 4 pieces he cut off.  All in all it sounded pretty intense, but everything went well.  The nurse apparently didn't see me in the waiting room, and so called me to let me know Monica was starting to wake up.  I told her I was in the waiting room, and she asked me to stand up so she could find me, so I didn't make it back before Monica woke up.  She didn't say anything crazy or anything like that, but she did remark that her leg didn't hurt anymore first thing when she woke up (though she doesn't remember saying that).  After she ate and drank a little we were able to head back home.  She was able to climb the stairs up to our room, but she's not allowed to bend, twist, or lift more than 10 lbs.  That makes Grayson a pretty dangerous buddy for 6 weeks.  I don't think we realized just how severe/limiting this was going to be before the surgery.  I'm not sure anyone we talked with before had any experience with a 2 year old during this recovery...  Not quite the smooth sailing it was made out to be.

I've had to step up my dad game in Monica's absence, which  means taking on the duties I've typically escaped, such as doing the girls hair.  This was my first time doing Winry's hair, and I'd say it was pretty good for a first time.  Just wait till you see what I can do 6 weeks from now... or Monica will use her sitting up time to do the girls hair when she sees my styles.

At preschool on Thursday they told all the kids to bring back leaves if they could and remembered to, so Grayson, Winry and I went for a walk around the neighborhood to collect leaves.  Now there's one tucked in Winry's backpack, and hopefully it won't be crushed to pieces by Tuesday.

Jelly has been watching over Monica since she's been back... well, until Friday.  Jelly slept on the bed just about all day long to keep Monica company.  On Friday, I guess Jelly assessed that Monica was healthy again and took her naps elsewhere.

Thursday night Michael flew out to visit.  He was coming to visit his dad in Colorado Springs, but he stayed with us.  It was great to get to see him again and chat and catch up.  He showed me some of the cool things he found at his dad's house while he was down there helping clean up some.

On Friday Brooke didn't have school, so I took the girls to the zoo in the morning.  It was a pretty chilly morning, which is great for seeing animals.  The lions were out and up front.

And we got there just as the bear was finding his bucket of frozen fish!

And Jonas, the fishing cat was giving us a lot of attention.  Grayson was enthralled. She even stopped in front of the glass and stood there letting the kids pet her.

Also on Friday, a squirrel stole one of our sunflower heads and sat eating it on the fence.  There was occasionally another squirrel a distance away, but I guess this one already set it's dominance and got to enjoy it's feast in peace.  Monica said I looked like a weirdo up in our room with our camera and the long lens as I was taking a picture of the squirrel.

Saturday afternoon I took the kids over to the spiral rocks.  They were saying they wanted to go all day!  The girls had a great time, but Grayson wasn't too interested.  He took off pretty quickly to go to the playground.

They playground was fun.  I was out playing with the kids too.  We all had a good time, and I hung upside down on the spinning monkey bar things.

After the park we headed home for family movie night.  It got postponed because Friday night our old neighbors, the Calles, were back visiting, and the girls were out playing with Aurelia.  Anyway, Brooke wanted to watch Bluey, but as we were pulling it up there was a Doc McStuffins turns 10 thing she wanted to watch.  So we watched one Bluey first, and I thought that would appease Grayson, and then went to Doc McStuffins.  Well... Grayson wasn't appeased, and he wanted the new show OFF!  Fortunately the Doc McStuffins wasn't like a typical episode, and Brooke pretty soon wanted to go back to Bluey!

Gram and I took the kids to church today, and I don't know that anything crazy has happened at all.  I do want to say a HUGE THANK YOU to everyone who has done anything to help us.  The meals have been wonderful!  Thank you to everyone who has checked in to see how we're doing!  Thank you everyone for the help you've given, and if you're wondering how you can help, Monica would love help weeding the garden!  You'll probably need to give us a few more days though so she can more comfortably come outside and let you know what's going on.  As for me?  Well, if you know of a way to sleep and have it rest someone else, then please, take a nap for me.  Just let everyone around you know it's for us, I'm sure they'll understand.  Thank you everyone for your love and support!  I hope you have a great week!

Trapped in the Cold

Well, Grayson continues to love closing himself in things, and this week's adventure was the fridge!  He really likes to sit on the lip of the fridge, and it is a pretty appropriate height for a seat, but I don't really love the fridge being left wide open.  Well, this week he was trying to have fridge time, but ALSO close the door so the cold didn't get out.  What a crazy man!

Last Sunday Grayson was a bit sick, so I stayed home with him, and he really wanted to go on a walk around the neighborhood.  There's this bench next to the sidewalk.  I know there's a school bus stop here, so I'm guessing someone who waited for the bus every day put the bench here and it's just been there since.  It's right next to one of the large community mailboxes we have in our neighborhood, so it's not in anyone's yard, just chilling there for general use.  Grayson gave it a try and loved it.  While we were out I got a text from Monica, who noticed my name was on the program.  I was supposed to speak at church!  I may be mis-remembering the conversation I had, but I don't remember being given a specific date, or else I would have been there... and had a talk.  Either way, of all the weeks to miss church, this was not a bad choice :).

A friend at church gave Monica a picker-upper to help her out around the house since it's very difficult to bend over currently.  It's been all the rage since.  Brooke used it to help Grayson get his puzzle done Sunday afternoon.

Monday afternoon I took all the kids to Brooke's soccer practice, and Grayson and Winry ran over to play on the playground.  It worked out pretty well, though I would have liked to see some of Brooke's practice.  Anyway, right next to the playground was a really big caterpillar on the sidewalk.  We followed it for a little bit, and then gave it a break.  The kids kept coming back to see it again though.  Grayson ended up swinging for 15+ minutes at one point, and we never found it again.

Monica's back/leg have been hurting more, so I've been taking Winry to preschool and picking the kids up at the end of the day.  If we get to drop off a little early, or Winry usually gets out a few minutes before Brooke, Winry loves to play on the preschool playground.  One day when I was picking her up she just started "surfing" down the slide!

At playgroup on Thursday morning Grayson got stung by a wasp.  Monica said he didn't cry at all, but she saw a wasp flying away from him and he was waving it away, and then he was a little grumpy.  Anyway, he got a red welt on the side of his face, and I don't know that it even lasted until bedtime that night.  So possibly it wasn't too bad, but that's our first kid to be stung by a wasp.

Grayson came to drop Winry off at preschool, and he really wanted to walk down the stairs (we could have parked closer to the door).  He held Winry's hand and she helped him down.

Friday night we decided it was time to pick our watermelon.  It grew a little better than the lime sized watermelon we got last year!  Everyone was excited to go out and get it, and it got passed around.  Grayson did what Grayson does with anything that comes out of the garden, and immediately tried to take a bite of it.  He didn't like it...

We brought it in and cut it up for dinner.  Much more watermelon to go around than last year.

And it turns out that once the red part was accessible, Grayson DID like watermelon.  Who knew?!

Monica and I got a babysitter and went to an adults only ward social last night.  It was a lot of fun.  There were a bunch of people there I didn't know, and I got to know some new people.

I think that's everything for this week.  I forgot to get my golf stuff set up and get a video to show... hopefully I'll remember soon.  I actually have a video from the guy I'm working with, but I feel like I shouldn't share his video until there's an official release...  I'll get there though.  Gram came out today!  My drive to the airport was pretty nightmarish, and everything that could go wrong did (well, we didn't get in a car accident, but we did get stopped behind one on the freeway...).  Everyone's very excited to have her here helping out!  Yay Gram!

Monica's Herniated Disc (a.k.a Too Much Labor... Day)

My oh my, Monica's poor back!  Monica was able to get an MRI scheduled this week, and took the results to the spine doctor she's been seeing.  The night she got her MRI we put in the CD to look at the images, and you know it's bad when even I can find the problem without assistance!  She's got quite a large herniation at the bottom of her spine (L5S1), as is highlighted below.  Her doctor said it's about 1cm in size, and referred her to a neurological surgeon and told her to call and tell them she can't wait and needs surgery ASAP!  Of course, what does a receptionist care, so we're still working the system a bit to get things figured out, but we're looking to get surgery scheduled as soon as we can...  At this point Monica just feels ready.  She's been having increasing pain from this since the start of June, so whatever fixes it and gets it over we're ready for!

In milder news, the rest of the week happened too.  The week started off with Labor Day, the day in which we DON'T work, to celebrate... well, from my understanding, that people worked before us.  We had a good time together, and I set up the slide into the splashpad again as that was a big hit at the end of last week.  I joined the girls for an afternoon of slipping and sliding.  The slide didn't work very well for me.  I don't know if it was my swimsuit, or that I'm just a little too wide for the slide, but I didn't get the same sliding as the girls do.  That's okay though, I just had to take diving slides across the splash pad, and then we played a game Brooke plays at school called snakes in the grass.  It's like tag, but the people running away have to slither like snakes.

That evening we joined some friends for a BBQ and swimming.  Grayson wasn't napping this time, so he got to play in the water too.  Actually, he really didn't want to get in the water.  He really wanted to ride on this duck, and there was a raised spot of the pool that he spent most of the time walking around.  He did fall off the wall one time, but fortunately his floaties were on and caught him, from hitting his face into the cement.  It was a close one, but the padding did a pretty good job saving him from that fall.

Grayson is becoming more of a wild one at bed time, and has recently discovered how bouncy his crib is...  This is not great, and every night I think "can this crib survive to be used for another child?"  That's not an announcement or a plan for the future, I just wonder if Grayson is going to break his bed sometime soon.

This weekend it was pretty cold here.  It rained ALL day on Saturday, and the high was in the 50!  It was REALLY nice, and seeing the sun this morning is a little sad...  Anyway, Grayson found some stylin' shoes and put them on.

Saturday afternoon Katie and Nolan came over to visit.  They brought pizza with them and we had a great time catching up and playing together!  I promised Nolan a spot in the blog if he'd take a picture with the girls, and it worked!  He hopped right up on the couch!

Last night at dinner Grayson finished a little before everyone else was ready to leave the table, and ran around giving everyone kisses.  It was really cute.  At first he was running up and grabbing Winry's head and pulling her in for a kiss, but he only did that when the camera wasn't running.

I stayed up to watch the BYU game last night, and what a game!!  I did a lot of other random things as well, and completely forgot about the blog, but I'm not forgetting today!  Anyway, the game was super great, which of course means BYU won!  It went into double overtime, which I could have done without as I ended up being up till about 12:30.  And that's everything I've got for right now.  I'm just realizing I haven't talked about a side project I'm working on at all with a golf company.  I'll have to get a video or pictures this week so I can show that off.  It's pretty neat, and I've been working on it quite a bit lately.  Anyway, I think that's everything for today, have a great week!

Rough Week

Well, not a lot of pictures this week, and it's been a bit rough!  ALL the kids are currently whiny and fight all the time and scream and hate listening to things, etc.  It's made for a long week, but we're at the tail end of it... the week that is.  Hopefully we're at the tail end of whatever all this sassiness is.  Anyway, there are, of course, always good moments.  Monica spends a decent bit of time laying on her stomach on our bed.  It helps her leg/back not hurt.  Quick aside on all that, her doctor wants her to get an MRI, and it hadn't gotten scheduled, so she called the place this past week and they said they never got an order to schedule one... so hopefully her MRI gets sorted quickly so we can get our full picture and figure out what we need to do to get things taken care of.  Anyway, back to laying on the bed, Winry and Grayson were in hanging out with her.  Winry had Monica's phone and took some pictures.  Grayson is a very willing snuggler!

Grayson loves to climb up on our feet/legs/knees/backs (if laying down) and bounce saying "riding a horse!"  Like, he does it EVERY time he can.  Well, at the park this week he got to ride a dino, and kept his mantra going.

And here's Grayson hanging out in a basket!  Also, it's worth stating that Winry and Grayson have become REALLY great friends since school started.  It's not that Brooke and Winry ignored Grayson before, but now that Brooke is off at school Winry wants someone to play with, and she and Grayson have been getting along great!

And speaking of Grayson, last Sunday night I was playing with him, and we were playing with Brooke's ice cream counter and shared some of the best treats we could make!

We had to get Jelly shaved again.  The fur on her back was SOOO bad.  On her under side she had some hair clumps, but they were most loose and could have been taken care of without a full shave, but all down her sides was just one huge crazy matted lump.  Anyway, we got medicine from the vet, and the groomer said she did great!  She thinks the medicine started to wear off at the end because Jelly got a little harder to shave, but it went well.

I always worry that Jelly might get cold after she's shaved.  She just looks SO much smaller, I'm sure it's a lot colder for her.  I found her laying in a sun spot this past week in the basement.  She still spends most days in the basement with me, but she hasn't been in the office as much, but instead over laying on a blanket or in this sun spot.  Maybe I should get her a sweater?

Oh my, Grayson, what a kid!!  Gotta be careful about making toast around him.  He's never climbed into a cabinet before, so I don't know if this is going to be a new thing or not, but it was really funny.  He never closed the door all the way, which is good, because the child lock would have locked him in.

Last night Monica and I wanted to watch the new Lord of the Rings show on Amazon, but sitting on the couch can be uncomfortable for Monica.  Fortunately, I recently came into possession of a projector, so we set things up off the foot of the bed.  Pretty nice!

The girls wanted to play in the splashpad this afternoon.  In fact, Brooke pulled it out and set it all up all by herself!  I still need to go out and clean it up, and it's getting dark, so maybe I should have done that before writing this...  Anyway, it's nice when the girls will do things on their own.  They had a lot of fun playing out there. The splashpad get's really slippery when it's wet, and it was also getting the slide wet, which made it super slippery, which turned the yard into a super slide!

I'm really enjoying this new write the blog on Saturday thing.  We'll see if there's a Sunday update this week.  I'm just watching the end of the BYU football game, and things went well in that regard today.  Hopefully this means we'll have a great season!  Have a great week!