twinkle

twinkle twinkle little star as sung by aislyn at 2.5 years old.

"twinkle twinkle yiddle star
how i whatchu whatchu are
how i whatchu whatchu are
how i whatchu whatchu are
twinkle twinkle yiddle star
how i whatchu whatchu are."

just wanted to remember that.

OH, and my favorite thing she says:

"oh mommy! there's a yiddle yadybug!! i yuv yadybugs!" (its usually a spider or something awful by the way)

i definitely want to remember that...

uncomfortable much?

for some reason, i could never imagine why, these images make kenny's stomach turn. i guess its the realization that someday, our daughter will want to ride away with a boy. in a car. or on a motorcycle. i think they're cute for now... these kids are two peas in a pod , and MAN, alyssa, do we have some fun pictures for the table at their wedding, should they end up together one day...

happy birthday daddy!!!

today is my daddy's birthday, and we want to wish him a VERY happy one!! and enjoy it dad, cuz tomorrow is.... SOUTH BEACH DIET TIME!!! whoo hoo!!! ALSO.. my parent's 35 year anniversary was a week ago today and i forgot to post something. i am so proud of my mom and dad for stickin with it their whole lives. they have been such an example to my brothers and i of what marriage is supposed to look like. it can be hard, believe me, but God uses it to make us more holy, thats His plan. thanks mom and dad for not giving up.

my boy

i did grayson's one year shoot this week and wanted to post a couple of my favorites. :) little munchkin. i can't believe he's one!!! i just adore him... oh, and if you're wondering what he's holding? its a brown rice cake!! he can actually have a snack now! it tastes like cardboard, but he LOVES them. and i love it that he loves them. :)

our doctor is smart! and nice!

by the GRACE of God, we have had an amazing month!! i mean, when you think of all we have been able to accomplish medically with grayson just in three weeks, it is crazy. when our pediatrician told us that we would need to see the doc at UNMChildren's back at the beginning of may, our appointment was not scheduled until the END of july. THREE months from then. well, somehow God worked that out and we got to see him on june 2nd, just four weeks later. when the doc said he wanted to do the biopsy, it usually takes one month to schedule that in, but grayson was scheduled for june 5th, just THREE DAYS after we met the doctor! after his results came back negative, the unm doc referred us to the allergist to go from there. that appointment was scheduled for SEPTEMBER 30th! are you KIDDING me? i was so sad because i can't really do successful food trials without the help of a doctor, so i wasn't sure what i was going to do about that one. BUT, yesterday afternoon, this dr's office called and said "hey, um, we have you down for sept 30th. however, we have a cancellation in the morning..." OH MY GOSH I WILL TAKE IT. can you believe that? so since june 2nd, we have had three MAJOR appointments which would normally take about 6 months to complete! thank you LORD!!

so our appointment went GREAT! we love the doctor. he is SO proactive, (just like you said he'd be cobi and jen!) so, first , we clear up the sinus infection i had no idea he had, and then we start the food testing! he'll be eating in no time! he's doing good with rice this week, i think. i never can tell. all i know is that he has a snack to munch on (100% pure brown rice cakes) and i've never seen him happier!

anyway, just wanted you to know that i am feeling so hopeful about all this stuff! yea for good doctors!! yea yea yea!!

update on little cash

i wrote last week about my friends micah and jeremiah's son cash. here is a little update from daddy... and a couple pics.

"hey, everyone! just wanted to let you guys know how everything is going withus. cash is now two weeks and 3 days old and he is doing really well. he isnow 1 lb. 8 oz. & 15.5" long (he was born at 12.5). everyday is a bitdifferent, he has days where he does real well and makes a lot of progress.he still has those days that aren't real great either, but it's all part ofthe process. micah got to hold him for the first time today! they say that that is reallygood for him and for her too. his big brother is pretty stoked on him, he'snot afraid of the tubes and wires. he touches him lightly and talks to himtoo. I think jameson still wanted to name him optimus prime, but cash willhave to do. as always, we thank everyone for their prayers and thoughts!"

keep prayin' for this little guy~

sweet angel baby

you would have been 6 and half months now little sydney. i have been thinking of you alot this week. as i went through your memorial service pics last night to get them ready for your mommy, i remembered feeling your life inside your mommy's belly, even just hours before Jesus took you home. and then i remember holding you sweet girl. it was almost more than i could handle. but i had to be strong for your mommy and daddy. they love you so much little girl! as i thought some more, i couldn't help but imagine the what if's. what if you were here, you'd be sitting up by now maybe. grayson would LOVE to come and snug up to you, smack you in the face probably trying to love on you! you would be trying to hard to crawl and chase him around. or maybe you'd be trying to run from him! your mommy and i would sit in the backyard and put you in the kiddie pool in one of aislyn's hand me down swimsuits (that probably would have been one of braidyn's hand me down swimsuits!). we would laugh at how much beautiful dark hair you had, and how you already would have grayson beat in the hair department! your mommy and daddy would start working on your words with you. ma-ma. da-da. bub-ba. and liam would definitely be teaching you a thing or two about the drums. and about george. and about Jesus too. your daddy would swing you SO high in the swing while your mommy would yell at him. :)

but this wasn't God's plan. its hard to be ok with that sometimes, as we mourn that He took you home. but He doesn't have a plan b, as i've learned as i talk with your mommy. it was always His plan for you to live in your mommy for 7 months and then to go back to heaven with Jesus. but i have to say sweet girl, i have learned alot from your short existence here on earth. you have taught me that even my own babies are not my own. they are on loan from Jesus. God has used your short life to teach me about the generosity of strangers, through funds raised for grayson (he would have been your betrothed :)), to help him with his allergies. some of those people never would have met your mommy if it hadn't been for you! i am learning more and more every day what an amazing writer your mommy is! she has taught me more about my Jesus through her grief. the list goes on baby girl. i haven't really ever posted about you, because i've never really known what to say or how to say it. but since you've been on my heart this week, i will take the opportunity. i am excited to meet and know you one day sydney grace. love to you dear baby. i sure do miss you.

happy first birthday QUINCY!!!

my very best friend from early highschool has a little munchkin who turns one today! just wanted to wish you a happy first quincy!!!

me and my daddy

this is my daddy. i could not possible have been given a better father. thanks dad for teaching me about Jesus. thanks for teaching me that your home is where your family is. thanks for teaching me that riches are in your heart and in your heaven and not in your pocket. thanks for teaching me about unconditional love. and for teaching me that lifting weights with free weights is never a good idea. :) and for teaching me how to deal with scary situations, even though i still worry too much. and for teaching me that the left blinker blinks faster than the right one, so that blind people know which way they are turning. and thanks for being such an amazing papa to my kids. i love you so so much. happy father's day daddy. :)

a few from yesterday...

this is the new water table that tati and nono got grayson for his birthday! yes, thats water on his face and not awful blisters or something... he NEVER smiles for the camera, so i had to post this one, even though its not a very good shot.

um, who is that 15 year old over there on the left?

my babydaddy...

this man is amazing. he is everything i could want for the father of my children. he is loving, he is gentle, he works so hard everyday, sometimes for 10 to 12 hours if duty calls to provide for these kiddos and me. he is fun, he is playful, he is daring (not sure if thats good or bad yet) and most importantly, he is God fearing. he teaches our kids about the Lord any opportunity he gets, mostly after spankings! he reminds their momma that he thinks she is beautiful on a daily basis, even when it is the last thing she expects to hear (and usually just laughs at him). he teaches them about nature and about bugs and they love to be with him. i love my man... and don't these two look just like him? my little scandinavians....

happy father's day to all you dads...

that's right. go right ahead and wade in the kiddie pool with a beer and a farmer's tan that would make any wife proud of her husband's hard day's work. and ian, don't use any nail guns today, ok? we love you crazy boys. happy father's day.

results...

they are negative for an eosinophilic disorder. :) could you hear my cry of joy around 4 pm this afternoon? i had all four kids (mine and my brother's girls) and they just stared at me as i sang "grayson doesn't have it" around the livingroom. i think i might have scared them a bit, but i didn't care. our dr. said that it is pretty definitive at this point, but that if he gets worse or something changes that we will test him again and see what happened. so really at this point, we start trialing brown rice. organic so that it is sure to not have any additives. we are waiting to see another allergist who i've heard nothing but good things about. and i guess he's so good, that he can't see us until september 30th. giant UGH for that one. we are trying to get in earlier but i'm not holding my breath.

we are very relieved about this for sure. we still have a food battle to fight but its not going to be nearly what it would have been. i do have to say, that while i am so excited about this for grayson, it kills me that my new friend jen won't get these results for carter unless the Lord heals him supernaturally, which i do find myself praying for. whats amazing about jen is that i know she will be so excited to hear that grayson doesn't have it, even though her sweet boy does. i really really like that about her.

anyway, its late. but i had to share. thank you all for your prayers, once again. we are truly relieved and ready to move on to the next step of getting grayson back to eating food.

cash daniel sutton

please pray for this little teensy weensy one. his parents are friends of ours, jeremiah and micah. they live up in angel fire, and her water broke at 22 weeks. she was airlifted here to albuquerque and was able to hold the baby in for another 3 weeks, and he was born at 25 weeks 4 days gestation, which is REALLY really early. he weighed 1lb. 3oz. at birth. in this picture, jeremiah's wedding ring is around his little tiny foot. they haven't been able to hold him yet, but hopefully soon. he has already endured alot, including a slight case of pneumonia, but he keeps pulling through. he'll be in the hospital here until the fall at least. please pray for this sweet family, that they would adjust to being here, away from home (jameson, their other son, is 4 i believe) and that of course, little cash will continue to grow and go home one day with no problems.

oh, and also, no news on grayson's test results yet. (biting fingernails like crazy...)

cousins who are...

not fighting over princess crowns at the moment. i loved this one of braidyn and aislyn. shots like these come very rare these days, as generally they are fighting over who is actually in the picture. :)

all done.

grayson was a champ with a capital 'c'. i might go into detail in this post because, as said before, this serves as my documentation of my kids' lives. sorry if its too much. :) we started the day with me giving him a bottle at 5:30 this morning, just so that i could give him another one at 7:45 , before the "no more food past 8 a.m." rule kicked in, which worked great by the way. when he woke up from his morning nap, i did everything in my POWER to keep him distracted, including pulling he and aislyn up the street for a looong time in the radio flyer wagon that my parents and kenny's parents got grayson for his birthday, SO fun. he would sleep in that thing if he could. of course we were late, so i was totally stressed, parking at the children's hospital is a nightmare. but it ended up that we were fairly early. grayson played with the toys in the waiting room and really did good for a kid who was SO so tired and hungry. i didn't eat all day either, mainly because of nerves. i really really thought i was going to hurl most of the day. we got back to his prep room and they gave me this pair of orange scrubs to put him in. they were GINORMOUS. grayson was not a fan, and was trying to rip them off until he was too tired to fight anymore because of his lack of sustenance. :) he looked cute in them. but of course it made me more scared, because it was just weird. the nurse brought me a "bunny suit" and told me that i would probably get to hold him while he was gassed. i don't really know what would be worse, holding your kid while they pass out, or having the anesthesiologist carry them away. i will never know what its like to hold them while they are gassed because apparently i am not a "good candidate." seriously. thats what the anesthesiologist told me. he said that he had been to a seminar in arkansas or something, where they learned which moms and dads would actually help the anesthesia process, or make it worse. he said they didn't like to have "two patients" back there. really? that's just MEAN. he said i wasn't holding my sniffles well. what? i mean, i kinda have a cold, i certainly wasn't crying. so i was totally offended by that, and i actually really liked the guy until he said that. but, whatever, i guess he probably knows more about it than me, and maybe i would have fallen apart. but don't you think i LOOK like i totally had it together? (and yes thats a sock on his arm. its not a foot coming out of his shoulder, though it looks like it). we played in that room for a looooooooooooong time. luckily grayson was great. they gave him a mickey mouse doll to play with, just after his doctor came in wearing a goofy hat. literally, like goofy the disney character. it was great. he said the parents get more of a kick out of it than the kids, which i realized was true as i was a victim of nervous laughter while grayson just stared at him.
finally they came to get him, and he had already fallen asleep in my arms. the anesthesiologist took him from me and talked to him sweetly and whisked him away. SO HARD. i did NOT care for that part of my day. during our talk with him, he told me that he would be gassed, then get a couple IV's, and then they would intubate (sp?) him (breathing tube). i hadn't realized that they would do that, so that was kinda hard to hear. kenny and i went out into the waiting room, where my mom was waiting for us. she did a GREAT job of keeping me distracted. i don't even remember what she was talking about but her mouth was moving 100 mph which was good for me i think for sure. steffen came up to see us too. his residency is there at the hospital , so he trekked on over and prayed with us during the procedure which was very cool of him. after about 40 minutes, dr. fahl came out and grabbed a piece of paper to map what he had done. in a nutshell, he took a piece of his bowel or intestine, two pieces of his stomach and two pieces of his esophagus. he said everything actually looked normal, except for part of the stomach. it looked very red to him. i didn't like hearing that. he said that he may be making more of it than it is, but he took a piece from the red part and the not red part so he can see if they are different. it will take a week for the results. when we got to go back and see grayson in recovery, he saw us with his little drugged up half open eyes and sat straight up, just yanking on his IVs. he looked so small and helpless as he thrashed about SCREAMING. not a happy camper. i made him sip some water, which he just about threw across the room because ALL he wanted was a bottle. i think i scared the nurse as i insisted that she FIND HIS PACIFIER since it was missing and i knew he needed it. she went back to the O.R. and there it was. he downed his little bottle so fast, and then was back to thrashing and crying in the saddest little voice i've ever heard. poor baby, you could totally tell his little throat was killing him. after a few minutes, they told us we could go. we had borrowed my parents' car (ours is forever in the shop it seems) and we did not have the key to open it, only the one to start it. so while we waited for our rescuer, we took our thrashing baby outside to wait.
we sat on the sidewalk and played with a couple hot wheels, and he was much better. once we got in the car, he fell asleep, sweet boy. yes, that's a sad leftover tear on his right cheek.
the evening has been ok. he was happy to see his uncle taylor and big sister when he got home. he's asleep now, and all is well. we just will wait for the results and pray for the best. thanks so much for your prayers. it was a scary day. but God is faithful as always. and the first gastro endo fdaf;ejkduodenallajfdklsa ;oscopy is over. :)

biopsy

we got a call from the nurse and they have scheduled grayson's biopsy for two o'clock tomorrow. i'm super nervous as any mom would be, to have drs and nurses take away your barely one year old to knock him out with gas and stick something down his throat and take pieces of his stomach lining. i feel as though i will be an absolute wreck through the whole thing, thank goodness its only an hour. so, please pray for him, for strength, that nothing bad will happen, the anesthesiologist will be a good and smart one, and for peace for kenny and i during the procedure. AND for favorable results! which will take 1 to 2 weeks. :( wish it was same day! thanks for the prayers.

the long awaited....

appointment... ya know, i think it went well. we really liked dr. fahl. he's very attentive and took at least an hour with us. he got a full history from us of grayson, back to even when he was in the womb! after looking at him, labs, hearing our story, his gut feeling is that he does not have an eosinophilic disorder. i know, awesome, right? but i have to tell you, its going to be awfully hard for me to celebrate until after the tests are done. he does want to pursue testing for this because of all of his allergies and previous test results, so we will start with a biopsy of his stomach lining, hopefully on thursday, but it might be a couple weeks from now, depending on his schedule. he is puzzled by all of the positive food tests, but on the other hand, he really doesn't trust the RAST testing that they have done. he said there are only a few labs that do the testing well, none of them are here. i'm not sure what that means, except that he said it is possible to get false positives. i said "thirty false positives?" he said "yes". so, there's that. he was quite intrigued by the fact that my uncle was allergic to just about all foods when he was a kid, and i need to call him and get all that he remembers out of him. uncle mike, if you're reading this, call me if i don't call you first. :) anyway, the biopsy. basically, they take my sweet angel boy, sedate him with gas, i believe, and then stick something down his throat and take 3 to 4 pieces of his stomach lining. its done in an operating room with an anesthesist standing by, and then he will be in recovery until he wakes up and is ok. its outpatient, so its same day. it makes me awfully nervous, as it would any mother, but it has to be done, so that we can move on. after he gets the results, if they are favorable, then we start trialing foods. we'll start with rice for a week. if we don't notice any change in anything (poop, gas, spit up, eczema, behavior), then we trial the next food the next week. he wants me to make a list of all of the things i want to be able to feed him. it was nice of him to put it that way. "the things you'd like to feed him". i don't know why, it just felt encouraging to hear i guess. anyway, we'll do this for 6 weeks, with 6 new foods hopefully, and at the end of the 6 weeks, he'll get another biopsy to see if the eosinophil levels have changed at all. that will be a big determining factor to see if he has a problem. so that's about it in a nutshell. neither kenny nor i ate all day long until after the appointment, me- because i was nervous, kenny- because he couldn't find any food. :) so we were pretty excited to go eat the elaborate feast that sweet alyssa and ian had cooking for us! it was LOVELY to at least do something special on this, his real birthday. kenny gets so frustrated with me because i'm so attached to the actual DAY the holiday falls on. we technically celebrated his birthday yesterday when the party was, but TODAY is the actual birthday so i wanted to do something fun. well, really i wanted kenny to take the day off work, to which he promptly rolled his eyes. so thanks ian and lyss for makin' it special. (OH and for bathing our daughter and delivering her to our front door fed, clean and in jammies!!!!! how bout that for the end of the day!) thank you all so much for praying for us today. i really do feel more at peace today. i know that we have to be ok with either of the results. alyssa reminded me today that God does not call the equipped. He equips those whom He calls. isn't that great? because right now, i do not feel equipped to deal with anything like this. which brings up another thing. my new friend jen and her husband scott and son carter all came to grayson's party yesterday. carter is the sweet little boy who has an eosinophilic disorder who i've talked about in a previous post. he is four and absolutely the cutest little thing. jen is such an inspiration to me. she has done so much research for this little boy and she makes every day so special for him! carter and graysoLOVED the hypoallergenic grape kool aid snowcones at the party (jen's idea) and he was just so happy about life! i just wanted to hug the little munchkin. anyway, back to my point. jen, i don't know how you do it! God has given you so much grace and its so encouraging to hear you talk about the recipes for fudge you have come up with using only like 2 ingredients! its absolutely amazing! thank you for giving me courage. i'm just in awe of how you have handled all that has been thrown to you. your family is a blessing to ours. :)

thank you again for the prayers. :) i will keep the blog updated if we get to do the biopsy this week.

happy 1st birthday my sweet boy

today is your first birthday little angel boy!! you are such a blessing to your daddy and i and to your big sister. we are so thankful that God placed you in our family and has let us "borrow" you to raise and love. it seems like yesterday that you were born and your big sister came up to meet you at the hospital! she fell in love with you immediately just like we did! we might have a long tough road ahead but we wouldn't have it any other way with you little one. we love you dearly and pray God's will over you and for your life. we are so happy that you are our sweet sweet boy.