Disneyland Dreams

We are back from Disneyland, and Jack had an amazing time! It went better than I ever imagined it would. Jack did really well on the car ride down to Anaheim, mostly due to the repetitive viewing of Wall-E on our new in-car dvd system. I have to say, I think that was one of the best purchases we've made in quite a while! Jack is mildly obsessed with Wall-E, so he was content to watch and act out the movie from his car seat. Once we were actually in Disneyland, Jack was ecstatic! His first ride was the Nemo Submarine Ride. While waiting in line, he kept talking about the water and clapping (which for Jack means he is very excited!) He got his "First Visit" pin from the guy loading people on--who spoke like Crush from Nemo! Jack was entranced the whole ride. We climbed out of the submarine, Jack clapped his hands, then looked at us very seriously and said and signed "Want more!" We knew right then that the Disney magic had hooked him! We had a Magic Morning early entry, so we hit all the Fantasyland rides fast...Peter Pan, Snow White, Mr. Toad (which he especially loved), Pinnocchio, Alice in Wonderland, Carousel, Tea Cups, etc etc etc... He loved all of them. Everytime we got off a ride, he would clap, wave to the Disney worker, and then say and sign "Want more!"

One of Jack's big favorites was the Pixar parade at California Adventure. Jack tends to be quiet and a "watcher" in public, almost shy. While we were waiting for the parade, one of the Disney workers stopped and sat with Jack, talked to him, and even read him 2 stories...our normal quiet-in-public little boy. We waited for about 40 minutes before the parade to score some primo viewing spots and during those 40 minutes, our normally reserved Jack became the life of the party! It was the funniest thing to watch!!! He was dancing in the street, talking to the people around us, then walked up and down the street giving high fives to the other people waiting for the parade. OH MY GOODNESS, it was hilarious! Once the parade started, he sat on his blanket and waved frantically at everything the passed by us. After the parade, he was waving at anything that moved. Jack spent his time charming all those he came in contact with. We were a little disappointed that there wasn't a Wall-E character, but Jack made due with the wooden cut-out and the Axiom ship background.

In all, it was an amazing family vacation. I think all of us are looking forward to the next time we can take a trip to Disneyland!

Post-Surgery Update

I'm now a week-and-a-half out from my gallbladder removal surgery, and things are going very well! The surgery was as simple as surgery can be. We arrived at the hospital at 7:30am, was taken back to pre-op like 5 minutes later, then they actually allowed John, my mom, and Jack to come hang out with me until my surgery time at 9:30am! As for the surgery, I don't actually remember, um....anything.....because of the wonderful dose of happy-medicine they added to my iv shortly before surgery time. The next thing I know, I'm waking up in recovery. Things seemed to progress really quickly after that. I had an awesome recovery nurse. He made sure I stayed happily pain-free during my short stay! I was wheeled out to go home around 1:30 (after he helped me put my shoes on and tied them for me---told you he was so sweet!). I was up and walking around, and even put some groceries away in the freezer that night. I ventured out of the house on Friday, to my classroom for their Valentine's Day party. I couldn't miss the sheer joy that first graders get from valentines, as well as the intense sugar-high most of them leave school with. Valentine's Day is one of my favorite holidays as a teacher! I've been hanging out at home since then, getting a lot of scrapbooking done and fantasizing about being a full-time stay-at-home mom.

We went shopping on Sunday and purchased a lawnmower, a purchase that seems to herald spring. Now we just need a BBQ grill! I'm excited about the planting we will be doing in our yard. I have the perfect area for a garden right outside of my kitchen, and I can't wait to start my herbs and veggies. We have huge flower bed areas in the backyard that are screaming out for some bright, beautiful plants. Goodness, all the responsibilities of owning your first home! I think this first year is going to be the most costly, as well as challenging, as we are starting with, well, nothing. We've lived in apartments since we've been married! That means we don't own ANYTHING related to a yard, home maintenance, etc. It's been fun figuring things out--like how to run the sprinkler system! John has really stepped up in this area, and I think he's having fun being the "dad" in charge of his own home now. Jack loves anything to do with being outside, so he is definitely our helper and little buddy when we are outside. We can't wait to see what spring brings to the Baker house!

Christmas in January

So in the last post, I talked about how much my parents rock. The theme of this post is going to be similar because......MY PARENTS ROCK! Why, you ask? Well for so many reasons, but for the reason today, keep reading...

The day after Thanksgiving, my mom, my sister, and I went shopping very early in the morning as is our tradition. We hit Toys-R-Us at like 4:30 in the morning, and then zoomed over to Sears. My sister was looking at some hooker boots on sale...ahem, I mean tall black leather stiletto boots...when my mom and I went upstairs. We got in this HUGE line, and my mom turned to me and said, "How would you like a washer and dryer for Christmas?" Now, I don't know if it was because it was so early in the morning or if my blond was showing through the brown hair color, but I assumed she meant that she was buying a new washer and dryer for her and giving us her old set; and I was THRILLED with this! (Side note, moving in to our house was very expensive. We have taken all the hand-me-down stuff we can get, including a discarded fridge. We had been looking at washer and dryer listings on craigslist and were just expecting to have a used set.) She laughed at me, as usual, and said, "No, I'm buying YOU the new set!" Woo-hoo!!!! You'd think I had just won the freaking lottery. I was SO excited! I am still so excited! They decided to combo my Christmas present, John's Christmas present, and a housewarming present all into one gigantic, awesome, very very very much needed washer and dryer. So many people were taking advantage of the amazing price that delivery was delayed until today, January 31st. (That's 64 days after purchase, for those of you mathies!) Look at the beautiful washer and dryer!

Jack was a great audience for the delievery men today. He sat on a stepstool and watched in amazement as they hooked everything up. There were lots of "wows" involved! We now have a beautiful, brand new washer and dryer set in our garage, just begging to be used.

While we're on the subject of cleanliness, our little waterbug Jack has gotten very independent in the bathtub. He LOVES his bath--I think it is quite possibly his favorite thing to do. He is learning how to wash himself now. He's been able to wash his hands for quite a while, so this seems to be a natural extension of handwashing. It's just one more thing that makes me realize that he is not going to be a baby for long. He has such an independent streak, and he's only 20 months old!

He is such a cute little boy! Notice the dirty face--it was definitely time for a bath!

Look at that mischevious face! He was being an alligator and chomping his teeth :-)

He starts by washing his hands...

and then washes his hair!

My little boy is growing up!

28 is great!

I had a wonderful 28th birthday. I have a great husband who is my best friend, an amazing son who is the joy of my life, awesome friends, and a family that anyone would want! What a lucky girl I am!

It seemed like a long birthday week, almost. We had a lazy family weekend before my birthday--pajamas and play days. Building a fort with your toddler will always make you feel young.

On my actual birthday, one of my students brought in mini cupcakes as a treat for the class. I thought that was just so sweet! My friend Mindy got me a present that I LOVE: cute border, letters, stickers, and heart accents. I was so excited! Does that make me a big teaching dork? :-) That afternoon, I had a consult with my surgeon and got the date for my surgery---Monday, February 9th. Then it was on to Chili's for a yummy, quick, toddler-friendly dinner. We all shared a Coldstone ice cream cake when we got home. John and Jack got me exactly what I wanted but didn't even ask for---a new Canon Selphy printer (dye-sub processing, unsurpassed color, beautiful pictures). Woo-hoo for me! They also got me an amazon ecard to buy some more ink and paper for it.

The following weekend, we went to my parents' house for my big family dinner...lasagna and fruit tart, yummy! Clay and Jack love playing together, so the boys were in heaven with a whole afternoon at Nana and Papa's together. John and I have been planning Jack's first Disneyland trip in March (just the three of us) and so.... my sister got me Disney Dollars for the park--so fun!--and a little Mickey doll, which Jack promptly claimed for himself. Then, my parents (have I mentioned again how awesome they are???) gave both John and I our birthday presents *John's birthday is in April, so he got his present early* and they got us.......tickets to Disneyland!!!! They got us each 3 day Park Hopper tickets. We are SO excited. We got a cheap hotel room across the street from Disneyland, birthday tickets, and Jack is free----this will probably be the most affordable trip to Disneyland that we will EVER make! I'm thinking I might use some of my surgery recovery time to start a scrapbook for the Disneyland trip. I am a fan of pre-scrapbooking!

In all, I had a wonderful 28th birthday. I am so happy with where I am at in my life now. I have a family, friends, and job that I love. We just moved into our first house, everyone is healthy (okay, almost totally healthy), and my son is growing into a loving toddler. How blessed we are!

So it's almost my birthday....one week to go, and I'll be 28. Watch this!

It's in honor of my birthday and Jack's 1st Disneyland trip that we are contemplating. Hopefully it will be soon, while he's still *free* I can't imagine how much money it would take to make Disney do this. I know Miley Cyrus had enough, but I don't think a teacher's salary will cut it!

Not as Fun as Last Time

So last time I had surgery, I got a baby out of the deal. I'd say that's a pretty awesome outcome. It also makes the pain and recovery SO much easier to handle. This time around, though, I have a feeling it's not going to be as "fun," shall we say.

Here's the whole story, since I had quite a few questions on my facebook page. When I was about 7 months pregnant with Jack, I awoke one night with what I thought was awful stomach pain. I attributed it to being pregnant and was able to go back to sleep. A week or two later, after a dinner of way-yummy chili dogs, I again awoke with CRIPPLING stomach and back pain. Now I am generally good with pain. Friends usually say I am very tolerant of pain. This was so much pain, however, that it was hard to move, and I was actually vomiting from the amount of pain.

My wonderful husband drove me to urgent care after a useless call to the Kaiser advice nurse. The doctor on call said: it sounded like a gallbladder attack; there was nothing they could do; don't eat anymore chili dogs; go home and go back to sleep. (NO pain medicine or anything!) Knowing this, I watched what I ate and only had one more attack during my pregnancy. My OB said it was a common complication of pregnancy, and that attacks generally go away after delivery.

After I had Jack, I didn't have any attacks for about 3 months. I kinda forgot about them because I was busy with a new baby, back to work, and not in any kind of pain. After I went back to work, I started to eat healthier, as I wanted to shed that baby weight. My friend Mindy and I started Weight Watchers. I started losing weight....and the problems began. As I started shedding the baby weight, the attacks came back with a vengeance. I could go a few weeks at a time with no attacks, then I would have a few attacks in a week.

The attacks were almost always late at night. I would wake with searing upper abdominal and back pain. I would try yoga positions, stretching, otc pain relievers, gasx, tums, pretty much anything I could think of, but NOTHING helped.

I went to my doctor, who told me that it sounded like muscle spasms in my back due to age, back strain when I was younger, hauling around a new baby and baby gear, etc (Turns out I ALSO get those. Unfortunately that's not the only thing. Otherwise, this story would be much shorter!) He prescribed a muscle relaxant and a stronger pain reliever. That turned out to be a blessing for my following gallbladder attacks, as it lessened the pain and made them much easier to live with.

These attacks went on for 19 months. Finally, up late one night during an attack (waiting for the pain medicine to kick in), I decided that I had had enough. I emailed my doctor to see if there was something that could be done. He emailed back a couple of days later saying that it did sound like it could be my gallbladder and sent in a referral to have an abdominal ultrasound.

This brings me to about a week ago. I went in for the ultrasound, and while the tech can't officially tell you anything, mine hinted to me that there was "something to take pictures of." Three says later, my doctor emailed me and said that they had found, and I quote, "quite a few stones."

This is an ultrsound of a gallbladder that looks like mine. All the white things inside it are gallstones.

He gave me two options: live with it or have my gallbladder removed. As I had already been living with it for over a year and I was quite tired of doing that, I have opted to have my gallbladder removed. It is a fairly easy surgery. When all goes as plans, there is minimal recovery time and usually manageable, though sometimes unpleasant, side effects.

This brings us to now. I have a consult with my surgeon on January 20th (also my 28th birthday!!) to see what the next step will be. Living in the age of Google, I've been able to do a lot of research on the surgery. My goodness, you can even watch one happen on youtube! I feel comfortable with the decision I've made to have it, so now we're just waiting for the next step. I will keep updating with surgery info when I know more. Thanks to everyone that sent me messages on facebook!

So this is a diagram of where my gallbladder is and what mine looks like right about now

Oh no...a driving toddler!

Santa brought Jack a quad for Christmas this year! He was a bit weary of it on Christmas morning, but all he needed was a nice day, a big back yard, and off he went!

Look at that concentration!

It's a cool little quad. It's made for toddlers, with simple one-button operation. It actually goes 2.5 miles an hour! Now all he has to figure out is how to steer.

Jack was having so much fun riding around our backyard.

He's headed off the patio...

...and is four-wheeling through the grass!

There goes my baby...

It may only be a toddler quad right now, but it's just a matter of time...

He is also loving his play kitchen, from Nana and Papa. He likes to pretend cook, and is really good at it for a 19-month old. Just ask him to cook you a cheeseburger with ketchup or an egg fried with butter. He'll be your chef! It's a really cool kitchen. It recognizes the food that you put on the cutting board or in the pan and talks to you about them. It also makes appropriate noises for cooking that food. For instance, the kitchen talks about the round yellow center of the egg, makes a sizzling sound, and then tells you that an egg is a protein and is usually eaten at breakfast!

If these beautiful days continue, I can tell that we will be spending a lot more time outside on the quad. Now we just have to convince him to wear his helmet so that we can ride outside in the front of the house!

Christmas Eve in Our New House

The title about sums it up...we are spending our first Christmas Eve in our new house! For those of you that don't know, we moved into a house this month. We didn't go far--still in the same zip code!--but we moved from our 2nd floor, 2 bedroom/1bathroom apartment into a single story, 3 bedroom/2bathroom house with a HUGE yard. So huge that one of the first things John will tell you about it will be some complaint about how I am making him keep the giant yard clean. It really is wonderful. It is an older house (early 90s) but has gone through so much renovation that it seems like a new home. You name it, it's probably been replaced or is about to be. The yard is where you can tell that it's not a brand new home; it's entirely landscaped with big, beautiful, mature trees (great shade and LOTS of leaves to rake!). We are in a nice little neighborhood right behind my school. We feel so fortunate to be finally moving into our house. We feel like we waited a long time to do this, and it will be so wonderful for our family. Plus, I have so been looking forward to being able to do things like painting the rooms, and finally making someplace seem like a home.
Our big furniture move day was on December 13th (if you are reading this, THANK YOU to my parents and the Seymour family for helping us move, the Brandon family for the use of your SUV, and the Wright family for taking care of Jack that day!!!). It was one of the fastest moves I've been involved with. We are not even close to being unpacked! It's nice to realize, though, that we didn't actually have as much stuff as we thought we did. It seemed like our apartment was SO crowded and cluttered, even with our storage unit, but we have everything moved over, and we are still able to very easily park in our garage. It still seems like we will be unpacking for the next 6 months or so. Luckily, I have these 2 weeks off from work so I will be frantically unpacking each day. We are slowly finding things and figuring out where they go. I think that is the hardest part of moving!
I will post some pictures of the house once I get film developed. I know, I know, I'm still in the dark ages with my retro film camera. I have a hard time giving up the beautiful pictures my Nikon SLR takes, though. A DSLR is WAY out of our price range for now, so I am sticking to my good old film camera. Who knows, maybe Santa is bringing me a nice digital point-and-shoot for Christmas. I have been a good girl this year........

Twilight Time

On November 21st, I went on a Girls Night Out to see the Twilight movie! I've read all the books--including Midnight Sun, only available online--and was dying to see the movie. So, like a bunch of crazy teen girls, we went to dinner downtown, then went to the first midnight showing. It was really eventful; ask anyone who saw the police chase the running, screaming bald man! I thought the movie was great. It did have some production/budget downfalls, but I had read the reviews ahead of time and knew what to expect. I thought that was easy to overlook, though, because I really liked how the story was portrayed. I thought they included a lot of Edward's point of view, more so than in Twilight. I could see a lot of Midnight Sun in Edward's role. I "borrowed" some pictures from Kristi's blog, since she was the crazy girl with the camera. Too fun!

This is everyone waiting outside the theater...almost midnight!

Sitting inside the theater, countdown going

Natalie, Ann, and me

Jessica, Kristi, and Stacey

Kelly, Tanda, Lori, Shelly

Lisa, Regina

Amber, Julie

Note...I actually typed this post quite a while ago, and forgot that I hadn't posted it. With all of the moving happening, I just remembered to post on here!

Jack was officially 18 months old as of November 21st, so it was time for his latest well-baby check. His pediatrician has been a *little* concerned about his weight, so each well-baby check always makes me a bit nervous. Now for the grand totals...

Height: 33 1/2 inches, 80%tile (on the height for age scale)
Head size: 19 1/4 inches, 75 %tile (on the head size for age scale)
Weight: 22 lbs 8 oz, 9 %tile (on the weight for age scale), below 0 %tile on the weight for height scale


She said she was only a "little concerned" again, but would like to see his numbers go up. I swear we feed him! The kid actually eats constantly, he just moves constantly, too. His doctor also said that we can try him back on dairy tomorrow, after being pulled off dairy for a suspected milk allergy. I don't really think he has an allergy, but the NP seems to think he might. We'll see what happens after his "yay, I get milk again!" cup in the morning. Vomiting=milk allergy, no vomiting=back to being a member of the milk of the month club.
So, our skinny little boy is officially still skinny. I think he looks totally normal, but he doesn't really have any of the rolls or pudginess that other toddlers have. And he is kinda tall, with a big head. I just think he looks like Jack. He's my baby, and he's just perfect!