The Bear

My Jonah Bear. Ryan says "He's just a different creature than Ben isn't he?" And he is. He is his own little person. Jonah is kind of unaffected- he does his thing and he's good with it. Ben is a SUPER sensitive soul, and while I think Jonah is caring and loving and concerned- he rolls with the punches. Doesn't get too distraught over much, unless food and the lack thereof is involved. Jonah... like I suspected he'd be in utero (because he was so darn wiggly) is a bit of a trouble maker. He really isn't a bad kid, he just knows when something is wrong and still will do it until he's moved away. Then he wont for a little while, and then he will just to see if it's still wrong. And then, if you get mad at him... he does this thing... he has this little cheesy grin that he does with his head cocked to the side... like "you can't get mad at me, I'm too cute" and deep down I'm saying to myself "DANG IT! YES YOU ARE TOO CUTE!" but I have to stand my ground and show him who the boss is. hahaha He's funny. He jibber jabbers a lot. He's saying a lot more now. Shoe, more, down, momma, daddy, bubba (Ben), Ally, bo-bo (ball or even air plane... weird), all done, nigh nigh, bye, I wuw you, whoa-whoa-whoa! He makes the most adorable animal sounds; my favorites are his "ffffff" sound for "woof" and then he just says "meow, meow,meow" in like the cutest way possible. He's a momma's boy. If I'm around, he just needs to touch me every few minutes. Likes to be my shadow, doesn't really ever want anyone else if I'm there. He loves to wave bye to people and out the car window. He loves books. He loves dogs. He doesn't like loud noises. He doesn't like the doctor's office. He loves his doggy blankey. He loves FOOD. He's a good eater, and he eats a lot for his age.  He loves the bath, used to like the shower, but isn't so sure about it anymore. He likes to play with our phones. He has the cutest laugh and is super ticklish but I'm about the only person that knows all his good spots. He's just a character. I don't know how else to describe him, but he is just... Jonah. He's just all him. It's such a wonderful thing to see as a mother, these little people we are so privileged to create/parent and call our own and how it's so true that we come with our own package (spirit, personality, features and functionalities, hehehe). And there's nothing better I could've done for Ben then give him a sibling. He LOVES his Jonah. He is such a good big brother, and was definitely meant to be the oldest. He takes good care of Jonah, and Jonah loves him.

Jonah had his 18 month check up today. He's a squatty fellow. Big head still, don't think that'll change... 60th percentile for weight and only 10th for height! ha! You're a Collier, kid... you got my genes! 

He's just so darn cute. We say that to each other like 50 times a day. Just look at him!

Elementary School Creeped Up WAY too Fast!

So my Ben, my boy who was just born a blink-of-an-eye ago is a Kindergartener! This whole experience of sending a child to elementary school has been pretty surreal for me. Just a few days before school started, we were given the chance to go to his school, meet the teacher and pick up all the things he needed to get started. As we were walking down the VERY LONG HALL to his classroom, he suddenly stopped as he hugged up against the wall... whimpered... looked at me for reassurance. I said "are you ok? Kind of scared?" he nodded with watery eyes, and I said "it's all good. You got this. It's ok that it's a little scary, but you'll be just fine and you'll LOVE it." (I'm always guessing at this mommy thing) But that apparently was what he needed to hear. We kept on down the hall and found his classroom, met his teacher, and assistant teacher (who remembered his name from registration), and his seat. His seat that was RIGHT across the table from a friend of his that he went to daycare with for years. (Mommy was probably more excited that he knew someone in class than he was!)  By the time we were out of there, he was pumped up and ready to go! He was SOOOO excited to start a new school and adventure. His first day of school he was so excited. He was I think, the most excited to ride the bus. Our neighbor girls are wonderful to him, and kept a close eye out for him and gave him the 411 on elementary school. Ryan so wished he could be there, but with the leg and stuff... I took lots of pictures. :) Now you get to see them!

Orientation Day

First day of school!

Where to begin...

There is a lot to catch up on, and I’m afraid I won’t be able to do it all. I will do my best, but some of it I’m sure we won’t really want or need to remember later in life. I don’t want to give my children the idea though that everything in life is always peaches n’ cream- but I do want this blog to serve as a reminder of some of the fun things in life they got to experience if they can’t remember it on their own- and to know more of our family history while they are too young to recount for themselves.

Though, for Ben, I’m sure he’ll remember the one big thing that’s happened this year without any trouble, because it’s been pretty traumatic for all of us. Even Jonah, who, I’m sure won’t remember it, has felt the hardness of the situation. Daddy broke his leg in July. Daddy has a desk job for the most part, but has the responsibility of the security cameras and keeping an eye on them. On July 1^st he noticed one wasn’t working, he rewound the tape and found that someone in their warehouse at the steel company had hit the camera with some sort of tubing and so he went out to the warehouse with his hard hat and safety glasses on to fix it. He asked one of the warehouse managers to help hold a ladder for him, but for some unconfirmed reason - the ladder slipped, and daddy fell down with it. I have to note a couple of things, a couple of blessings hidden behind this because I don’t want us to sound like martyrs. One of them was right after he fell he called me. I was in a meeting, in a meeting room. A lot of my meetings at work take place over the phone, so it was kind of unusual for me to be in an actual room with people. So because of this, I saw he called once and I missed it- and then he called right back again and on my iPhone swiped up to send him an automatic response to say I’d call back. But instead, my finger inadvertently swiped to the right to actually answer the phone, something I did NOT mean to do-especially since I was in that meeting. I turned around quietly and told Ryan I’d call him right back, to which he stressfully replied “no Heather! Don’t hang up! I broke my leg, I’m hurt, and I’ve broken my leg!” I immediately left the room and talked with him and his coworkers to find out who called an ambulance, where he was going, what happened, etc. But I’m grateful for whatever it was that moved my finger to the side so that he could tell me himself what had happened and I could be “there” for him in those scary, painful moments right after his accident. He was taken to Grady hospital; someone from work rode with him and his dad met him there. I had to run home to get some things, and also to give his mom our car seats so she could pick the kids up from daycare that day. Also, his coworkers brought his car home from work so we wouldn’t have to worry about that later and I waited on them. I got to the hospital finally, and entered through the emergency room entrance only to have to provide all my personal items to the guard at the desk and walk through a metal detector (much like an airport)… remember, sketchy part of town. Later, Ryan told me that he also got frisked and checked when he got there, as a patient with a broken leg!  

in the emergency room

To sum it up, the fibula and tibia were both broken- the tibia (the bone on the inside of the leg and the bigger of the two) was broken in about 10 different places all in a cluster. It was (and is) a severe break and we were told the recovery time was at least 3-4 months. They had to put his leg in a temporary cast, and that was the hardest thing to see my man go through. They had to bend his leg and it was so extremely painful for him, and I hated seeing him go through that.  Sadly, this meant we had to cancel our trip to see my family in UT just a few weeks later. Luckily, we were able to cancel our tickets without a cancellation fee. That was another small blessing, and when we got home from the hospital after a surgery and a day later, there were either groceries we had just bought (like milk for the baby) or things we had just done that would’ve been really difficult for us to get to after he got home.  We’d even gotten to go to the pool (unbeknownst to us) one last time before it happened (which is one of our favorite summer activities).

I had to take work off for that whole week to nurse and be with him. We had a lot of help from Ryan’s wonderful parents, who sacrificed so much to help us with the kids. And also church members brought us meals and any kind of help we needed. The next week or two were really hard. I had to work from home and nurse Ryan, and his recovery was rough at times. He had a lot of blessings from our home teacher and friends, and after a couple of weeks was somewhat back to normal. Between that time though, he got dehydrated enough that during a shower at home he passed out- and then again when we went to our first doctor’s visit in the office. The doctor sent him to the ER to get hydrated again and to check for any blood clots as well. I could tell such a HUGE difference in him after he was hydrated that I did my best to keep him that way afterwards, but that man doesn’t love water. Ha! It was a difficult thing to do! The biggest obstacle about all of this was Ryan came out of his first surgery with an external fixator on. It was basically a cage on his leg, which was in the way, horrible to look at and painful to boot. That stayed on for a month total (a VERY LONG MONTH). The problem was this, when we were at Grady- he had the fixator put on. Before we left, they had scheduled Ryan for another follow up a week later and then surgery to get the fixator removed and plates and screws put in. What we didn’t know was that they’d already put a plate and screws in on the fibula when they put on the fixator. (We never even got to meet or talk to the surgeon that actually worked on his leg, only another doctor in the practice-so I suppose that’s why we missed out on that important piece of information!) And when we left the hospital, we were turned over to workman’s comp which has very strict policies on the doctor you see and so we had to go to a different doctor than the ones at Grady for the remainder of his treatments. Which was a good thing, because not only was it a sketchy area it was a long drive from our house. The doctors were WONDERFUL and it IS the main trauma center in Atlanta, so he was well taken care of- but it was overall better for us. When we visited the new Doctor, he showed us an x-ray and told us that he’d be keeping the external fixator on for up to 12 weeks- but wanted to talk to the rest of the doc’s in the practice. This was not the greatest news, devastating really… but the appointment was very rushed because Ryan had passed out and he wanted us to get to the ER, so when we didn’t get very many more details. Luckily, by our next visit, he had reevaluated things with his practice and decided to take off the fixator and put in another plate and screws. 

second surgery

This is what my man will have in his leg, forever.

We had to wait until Aug 1^st for surgery though, to allow the swelling to go down. He had surgery and it went well, it was outpatient so he came home that day. The doctor visited with me and said that everything went well, and that they put a plate in that pretty much is as long as the tibia, so he has a large plate and several screws alone on that bone. I asked if he’d have that in there the rest of his life and he said, “yeah… pretty much”. Here is the x-ray from right after his surgery! He has about 14 or so screws in that poor leg of his! Recovery since then has been pretty good. He had a splint on that was taken off 2 weeks after surgery. We’ve been patiently (me anyways…) waiting for the x-rays to show that the bones are healing well enough for him to start putting weight bearing on his leg. Because of the severity of the break, and in a whole lot of places- the bone has to heal correctly before he can do anything, and even then he will have to work slowly with his physical therapists to get it to where he can do it without using crutches or a walker. So… we’re going on month 3 now and there’s still a ways to go. Our goal is Christmas, because that’s when we’ve reschedule our flight to go see my family in UT.

Between the two surgeries, and about a week after he broke his leg, my wonderful and kind and generous sister drove down from Chicago to be with me and help us for a week. it was so good to have her company and support. It was good to have someone close to me that understands me and how I work to be there in my house to help out. Not that I didn’t appreciate anyone else’s help- it’s just… different with a sister. It was good for the boys too, because they got to play some. My older brother had to come to town for a couple of days to work and stopped by to see us too, which was wonderful- but WAY TOO SHORT.

Aunt DJ came to visit

and so did Uncle John!

During all of this, we had our kitchen remodeled because back in May we had noticed that there was a leak under the dishwasher and it had pretty much destroyed our floors and cabinets. So before Ryan had even broken his leg, we had a claim in with our insurance company- and we had chosen our contractor. It just happened to be that they started demo and everything 2 weeks after Ryan’s surgery. We have a nice new beautiful kitchen now, but it was an added stress I could’ve done without at the time. On top of that, our little (big) Benny Boy started KINDERGARTEN! I can’t believe it! I’ll post about that separately. Jonah turns 18 months old this week, and life has just been so crazy, busy, stressful the last 3 months. Work has been crazy for me. Our BFF’s little baby was born and had surgery, there have been some other health related issues in both of our families, it’s just not been a very fun year on some different levels! There have been a lot of good things too- don’t get me wrong. We are very grateful that Ryan’s fall wasn’t worse, and we are on the road to recovery and seeing the light at the end of the tunnel. Even though for him, it doesn’t feel like it. He’s back to work half days, which has been great for him- and he’s really doing well with Physical Therapy. This has been a trial at its best, but so good for us and our family in so many ways- as crazy as that seems. And MY perspective on it is probably a little different from Ryan’s as well (especially right now when all he wants to do is walk again and play with the boys and do the things he wants to). Don’t get me wrong- this has been some of the hardest months of my life. There have been a lot of tears and frustration, a lot of exhaustion and not knowing how I was going to make it from one day to the next. But what doesn’t kill us makes us stronger, right? We have had tremendous support and love poured on us, and we truly have been well taken care of through it all.

Its fall now and the leaves are changing. The air is cleaner and crisper, and the skies are bluer. I feel like this comes along with things getting better and better (I hope) and am really looking forward to some time with my family in December and a much needed break, especially away for even a week. My nephew gets home from his 2 year mission in December so this will be the first time since my sister passed away, that we will all be together again as a family!

J-Bear is 365 days old!

Today, the littlest member of our family is ONE YEARS OLD! Happy 1st Birthday to our Jonah Bear! He's a ball full of energy that kid. He NEVER stops moving, unless, he's sleeping. But even then he moves around a lot. He wears me out, especially during church or anytime we have to sit "still" with him. He has just started making funny faces; fake crying, puckering up his lips and squishing his face up and breathing in & out funny, he'll roll his eyes or close them real tight if he doesn't want me to look at him. He's super silly. He's starting to eat more table food, which for some reason kind of trips me out- because even though i know he's old enough to do it- I get scared or something. Like he still feels too little to be doing that already. But man does he love to eat. He LOVES food. And he'll pretty much try anything twice, and if he doesn't like it- he'll spit it out. He loves pasta, he loves bread and crackers. Now I've just got to start being more diligent about getting him to drink from a sippy cup. I've tried giving him water and so far he doesn't dig it. I've also tried slipping milk in to his formula, and either I've just had really bad timing with stomach bugs or teething- or it really doesn't settle well with him. So we'll have to check with the doctor about that next week at his 1 year appointment. He doesn't seem to have any desire to walk, he's just in a hurry to get everywhere via crawling. And he's fast. He LOVES to go in to Ben's room and try and play with all his toys, especially the little tiny ones that are easy to put in his mouth. We've had to start shutting his door and the bathroom door. He LOVES Ally. LOVES her. I need to get him on video sometime how he calls for her. He gets this cute little squeely sounds and it sounds like he's saying "Ally", just like Ben used to... "Ah-yee". He loves to crawl around and "chase" her when she gets hyper and she likes to run from him.
He's gone from a momma's boy to a daddy's boy. If Daddy is around, he only wants him (Hmmm, sounds familiar, oh wait- Ben was the same way). I must be a mean person or something. I don't know what happens at this age with my kids. Maybe one day I'll have someone to love me... sniff, sniff. Just kidding. He at least only wants me to snuggle with at night.
Jonah blows kisses with the back of his hand, and just recently started making the "mmm-wah" sound with it. He also has a cute little wave bye-bye, but only does it if he feels like it. He LOVES his teach Miss Tamara at school. He will pick her over me, and to be honest- sometimes it makes me a little sad, but since he spends a good portion of his day with her I'm so glad he loves her. He apparently gets very jealous of the other kids she's tending to.
Jonah is a little more rambunctious and busy then Ben was, and we'll probably have to baby proof much more than we did with Ben. We've already had to put plug covers in and we never had to do that with Ben. He's starting to learn "no" but sometimes doesn't want to listen! We believe he will be our comic relief in the family, he already cracks us up on a daily basis.
We love you little Jonah Bear. You are a light in our family, and a very important part of it. We are so honored that you chose us to come to. 1 year down, many more to go!
HAPPY BIRTHDAY BABY BOY!

De-doo doo doo, de-da da da

Things can get kind of rough. You know, being a mom is hard. Awesome, but hard. And work in to the mix and for me... that make things even harder. I'm not saying that being a stay-at-home mom is easy, by any means. I know from friends experiences that it's not. It might be a different kind of hard, but it's hard none-the-less. Last night I was pretty pooped. Everyone but me was asleep. Ally, the dog all through the evening kept going to the back door to be let out. Ally... doesn't really like to go out- even when we know she needs to. So when she begs like that, over and over again- we know she's up to no good. Like she found crumbs or some food we might've thrown out there while cleaning the table off or something. Or if Ryan's grilled out on the deck, she might sniff around extra and lick stuff in hope she might get one tiny morsel of human food. (As if we have never fed her before and she's starving.) So before Ryan went to bed (before I did) she kept asking to go out and finally we told her no. So I trapped her in our bedroom with Ryan, turned off the lights and went and got on the computer out in the family room. When I finally went to go to bed, the bedroom smelled... bad. But I just thought maybe it was dinner not settling well with Ryan, but I realized after stepping in POOP what the smell was. She had pooped about 4 times in our main walking area of our room.  GRRRRR Got it cleaned up and went to to bed. Didn't sleep good. Woke up to a mildy annoying email. Went to go change the baby after his bottle, because he had a stinker and realized he'd thrown up some of his bottle and there was poop... all over the place. Crib, blankets, changing table, my arm, my bra his back- up to his neck, his clothes... so, I had to give him a bath- which takes time out of my precious and very routine time in the morning. All the while, big brother still isn't feeling great after being sick the beginning of the week. It all worked out though, and it's funnier now than it was even at like 9am this morning. But you know what? I wouldn't trade it for anything. Well, ok maybe the poops I would. That was NASTY. He had a big one yesterday too that even HE thought stunk, he was making a face at me like "whoa lady! what is THAT!?"
That was my story for today. A lot of poop, sorry. Such is life. :)

My Birthday

Another day older, with the wrinkles to show for it.

 My birthday was on a Thurs this year. And I decided to take it and the next day off for a long weekend. I haven't had my birthday off in a while so it was nice to just have a "me" day. And that's just what I did. I did things I wanted to do, and wanted to eat. I shopped but didn't really buy anything, I laid on the couch for a lot of the morning. It was nice. My lovey brought me home flowers that were beautiful and Springy, and it totally made my day. He even brought me Cadbury eggs because he knows I love them. Ben made me an adorable birthday card at school as well. I am a lucky lady. I heard from all of my family in some form or fashion and felt very loved. It was a good day!

Over the weekend, we went to the Vortex again with our friends. I love that place. Their food is so freaking good. And then environment is pretty fun too, although some might not feel super comfortable there. It was a nice night out talking about music and fun things. I very grateful for our good friends we have.

5 years gone by...

I'm way behind. 

Really behind.

We've done a lot lately that I need to write about. 

I just need to start posting things about our weekends again like I used to when I had time to. 

Boring posts are better than none, right?

Well... maybe not. I take that back.

Look, I'm busy. Sometimes so busy I don't even really remember what happened two days ago.

I will do better... I really will give it a valiant effort. I know these days are important to remember- because at the rate I'm going at I might not in just a few years, or even months.

The first person in this world to make me a mother, Ben, turned 5 yesterday. I can't believe that it's been 5 years. But then again I can. I can't believe that in 5 months my Ben will be in Kindergarten. But then again, if feels like the most natural progression there could be. What's new with Ben? A lot. He's so handsome. He is! I'm not sure what gene pool he swam in, but he sure picked the right one! I don't know WHERE it came from though! He's doing really well in GA Pre-K. He's starting to learn to do Math problems and find sight words and learn about the weather and authors of books and all sorts of fun things. Last month he was made the Star Student for good behavior and got to do some fun stuff at school for a week. Like bringing his favorite snack in, favorite toy, having Mommy come for lunch at school... we were very proud of him.

Ben is an excellent big brother. He's very patient with Jonah, and Jonah just thinks he's about the funniest person he's ever met. I hope it stays that way forever. Ben still doesn't eat very many veggies, but if he does it has to be baby food veggies (a work in progress). He has developed a super sensitive sense of smell and things when any bodily fluids come out of Jonah it's disgusting. He's way in to Beyblades and Spiderman and kept asking for a skateboard for his birthday but he's still on the smallish side. He's still a sensitive soul... I think because he comes by it naturally- that will never change. He's such a good kid, he has his moments trust me, but he really wants to do the right thing. The other day when I went to pick him up, I wanted to see a family project we did hanging up- but the kids and families are not supposed to be in their classroom after school. There have been people going in and over feeding the fish adn moving things out of the closets and so they asked no one go in. But I really wanted to see this project we did and Ben acted VERY worried about it "mommy... Ms Abby said we can't come in here." me: "It's ok, we'll be really quick and I'm with you. I just want to see your poster" Ben "But mommy... we're going to get in trouble. She's WATCHING us..." I don't know how he thought she was watching us, but it made me giggle a little! We are having Ben's birthday party this upcoming weekend and he's asked for a Ninja theme. So me and Ryan are doing our best to create a fun little Ninja time for him and his buddies from church and school. Ben is in CTR4 in church this year! Can't believe it! He's not napping anymore. I can't believe I'm a mommy of a 5 year old! I am so grateful Heavenly Father sent me these perfect little boys for me and Ryan to take care of. I love them both so very much. We are truly blessed!

The Circus!

A few weeks ago we went to our usual jeweler (I swear it's not as uppity as it sounds) to get my rings cleaned and made to look prettier. The owners of the store have known Ryan's family for a very long time so they are nice to us whenever we go in. As we were leaving, he asked us if we might want to go to the Barnum and Bailey circus... he had vouchers to give away. None of us have ever been so we were excited when he offered. Plus he had tickets for the Friday before Ben's birthday. So it was kind of like a fun birthday activity we could do. I had already planned the day off anyway, so Ryan took the day off to be with us.

We had to actually go to the arena to get the vouchers exchanged for tickets and that particular arena isn't very close to our house. So by the time we got there, we didn't get the greatest seats. Or so we thought. We had the front row on the balcony and the arena is sort of "small" enough it didn't feel like we were that far away. They really were just right for us. We enjoyed the dancing, the clowns, the animals, the motor cycle stunts and acrobatics... Jonah was pretty good, he was tired but he didn't fuss or whine. He mostly took turns thrashing around on us, trying his darndest not to fall asleep. I think on a couple of occasions he did for like 45 seconds and then realized what happened and thrashed around some more. He was still very good, didn't like all the noise, but he did good. Ben said it was noisy, but he liked it. He said his favorite was the lions and tigers that did tricks. He liked the dirt bikes in the cage too. And he loved the spinning elephant head who's ears light up I bought him as a souvenir. I'm not sure how much he'll really play with it though. He's got way too many toys that kid. I need to get rid of some or put some away for him to play with later so he can appreciate what he DOES have.
After the circus we decided since we were out and about to go to IKEA, which is quite a drive from the arena but we needed some stuff. We stopped at Sonic on the way, Ben wanted a corn dog and chocolate milk for lunch. We ate, and then about half way to IKEA... he got sick and threw up in the car. Ryan frantically pulled off an exit and in to a parking lot and I rushed Ben out of the car to throw up on the side of the road. That was kind of the first time I was a little... embarrassed? It was even that I was that... it was just daylight, and he's literally puking on the side of the road while people are driving by and seeing us. Then some pigeons showed up and well... they enjoyed his lunch the second time around. It was gross and we left at that point. He didn't throw up again that day, although he didn't eat much dinner- which I don't blame him. But it must've been the Sonic food. We did eventually go to IKEA after the kids both had a rest.
It was a fun outing, minus the barf and pigeons.

Girl's Cabin Weekend- Year 2

Meghan Markham, Erin Alba, Ashley, Martha, Jennifer and I went to the cabin for our girls weekend again this year.
We went to Helen again for dinner and a stroll. We did a little shopping and then ate dinner at a cute little tiny pizza place. Then as usual we played card games, ate food, watched movies, slept... it was wonderful.