Homemade Christmas present bows

Last week we were a foodie blog, today we're a craft blog. Don't worry we're not getting fancy, these just turned out to really make me happy.
1. Productive
2. Cute
3. Recuse something I already had
4. There was a need
5. Kate could assist
6. Free
7. Use up scrapbook supplies I don't use often



Dang it. My annotations didn't work and Grant is getting mad. So much for being a cool craft blogger today. I'm still just a hurry up and post momma blog.

The Cake & Abby's Special Day

Yesterday was my sister's birthday. If you know us, you know Sister Birthday aka Special Day is sacred. I am ready to go. I have dressed in the assigned outfit and am so proud of the cake. The journey... the google image research, the youtube education {yes I expect you to watch his whole video, he's awesome. Click on his ad. Plus he promises to be your best friend...I'll wait} and the actual day long, highly assisted, heavily guarded, very coveted job of construction.

I made the chocolate cake from scratch. The scraps were dang good. I recommend this recipe.

I made the sugar glass.

(Sorry I'm not cool enough in the foodie blog realm to take progress pictures. I do good to keep 40 fingers out of the icing and 300* lava hot sugar)

I broke the sugar glass...on purpose.

(It feels good to break something on purpose.)

I decorated the cake and the sugar glass.

(I guess this is where pictures along the way are what make it cool.)

It turned out awesome and as soon as my scrapbook embellishing sister gets here (and the birthday girl in route away from wifi) with the gator and swamp people you can see it too.

laa dee dah, lah dee dah...

Are you so excited? I am. I'm excited for meat treats too, I haven't eaten all day... frosting doesn't count.

Aren't you so in love? Don't you wish someone loved you enough to spend all day making you a Swamp People cake? If you need to see the best 70 of the 180 photos taken at Tucanos in four hours {yup 45 an hr, one every 1.333 minutes...it's a wonder why our quoted 2 hr wait was 20 minutes}, visit us on Facebook.

PS: The rude balding lady, in the red sweater, that pushed Kelly with her plate...we know where your husband works so back up! Tonight we shared the restaurant with the Provo PoPo's finest, scary. Thank goodness my registration was up to date there were cops crawling all over the place.

NICU Sunday

Sunday morning Grant got off oxygen at 9:30am and is still off... I'm not getting my hopes up or anything. We're just playing it cool. Ok, I lie. I am pretending to play it cool. We are almost a quarter into blowing that popsicle stand. But like I said, we're playing it cool.

We went up as a family to visit him.

Grandma went with us and

then Kelly came at the next feeding and gave me a ride home. Kelly was lucky enough to receive his first projectile spit up. That 1 mil had to have gone a good seven inches before landing on her hand. I'm glad she could be a part of such a important milestone...I don't know if she was so much.

And something for Gma/pa Brossette about the boys new spenders. They love them. I do too.

Day 5: Why

I've only really been in contact with family and facebook but I am a little nervous about church tomorrow. Grace's assistant teacher from Kindergarden saw me Friday at the school and asked, and I thought I'd be just fine, but the lump in my chest, came up my throat, and was doing everything it could to come out my eyes. Big deal. I cry.

Why is Grant still in the NICU?

When he sleeps his oxygen saturation drops, most babies readjust or take a deep breath, he does not. He just breaths shallower and shallower until his alarm goes off. He has to out grow that to come home. They are testing him. They take him off oxygen and see how long he can sustain himself on room air. If he drops below 90 and stays and does nothing; like move, breath deep, etc, it proves he still needs the oxygen. We are past the point of needing it around the clock. He's gotten to the point that he can sustain himself while sleeping, just not all the time.

He gets one test every nurse shift (7a-7p or 7p-7a) that he can prove he is ready to try. I love the nurse I had today (twice now). She's very informative and very aggressive on keeping that line between helping him with O2 and making him work to progress very fine. The first time was 1.5 hrs. Today he made it 5 hrs before needing help. They put him on the lowest amount of oxygen needed so that he does not become dependent on it and balance that with not letting him get so low that he wears out and needs more than the minimum. We'll get there. Probably not in the next day or two but next week is highly likely. On top of that, since he takes two steps forward and one step back, they want a 48 hr perfect record to let him take his car seat test (2 hr buckled in perfect O2 for him).

So, that's why.

In happier news, the nurses call him a bottomless pit. Who wouldn't be happy that their son can out eat everyone in the NICU (including what a set of twins can down per day)?

NICU Friday

Kate wanted a big video of Grant, so we'll share.

and it's back...

Stupid dumb old ugly nose cannula. I hate it. Thankfully Mr Grant is cute enough to make IT even look cute.

Guess who's rockin the NICU sans nasal cannula?

I'll give you a hint. He's the cutest baby in the joint.

I was about to make a "so, happy I could pee my pants" comment but given the circumstances, that's kind of not appropriate. I have bladder control but am super duper excited (but that doesn't really convey my excitement).

Look at those chub cheeks. He's a great eater. I love his expression... kinda reminds me of a little Kate. {Holy cow, if you knew the number of times I have edited this post to be coherent...I have a touch of post partum ADD :P }

NICU 2

eating all the time...

getting held all the time...

people watching you breath...

being by the window...

being so dang cute...

It's hard, I know... :)

Somehow we will overcome...

We just need to get his sleeping breathing in check and we're out of there...but who knows when that is.

Grant Brossette Lewis

About 2am, I thought I was having contractions. I called L&D and confessed that this was number five and I wasn't sure if this was really contractions and wondered what they thought. Two tylonol, water, and a shower later I was pretty sure it was. If not, I didn't want to be experiencing this so we were going either way. We packed a little and contracted a lot while Abby was getting there. We left and raced up to St Marks. After going 80 to Lehi, I felt it better to get there faster. Really faster. We called a couple of times when I started feeling like pushing. We got here at 3:55 with a wheel chair waiting. Grant Brossette Lewis was born at 4:11. They checked me at arrival to find I was at a 9 and unable to have ANY, really ANY, drugs. I begged and cried and the nurse told me I gave her a look of death, but we're still friends. I think 3 pushes, one of which broke my water and he was here. He came so fast that he was unable to squeeze out all the fluid so was on a oxygen mask for a little bit He's a perfect little man. He's 7lbs 13ozs, 19 inches, and did I mention perfect. I love him. His skin is so sweet. I'm in love with him.

Rich was amazing, drove like a rockstar, breathed with me to calm me (as much as that was possible), put up with my evil side, crying, maybe yelling, fingernails...who know's... it was kind of intense there for a while. He held him as my body was very tense and was either shaking or jello. I love them and loved seeing their first hour together.

It was an awesome experience. I wanted to do it naturally for the experience, then was positive I changed my mind in route, to find out that nope it's going to happen as planned.

8:51 - the nursery said he needed to warm up after his bath, a 30 minute process but just came back saying his oxygen drops each time they try to remove his mask. :( It may be time for another field trip to the nursery.

9:15 - going to the NICU, :( won't keep his oxygen above 80

The party

We decided to have just a 6.99 person party. JUST in case Baby Grant decided to mess with our plans. Since James went to bed last night at 7pm, he was wide awake at 7am. We opened presents before church so that we could wear and take stuff to play with.

The plan was to make birthday pizza when we got home but the boys fell alseep as soon as they got home so we waited until post nap to party.

The birthday Imo's style pizza was great. The wind storm that started up while making room for cake was fun.

The boys were completely impressed with their airplane birthday cake.

Now if Grant could only pick a birth day.

3

My James and Miles are 3. I have 3 days until my due date with Grant.

3 is a GREAT number.

Papercut

I'm flattered when people say "she looks just like you". I may be partial but I think she pretty cute. It's the when she acts like me that I fear what people think I am doing to this poor kid . I may have a tendency to panic in the sight of freshly cut {quiver} blood. She may have that same tendency. We're working on it. When she jumped in the van, from kindergarden, she showed me her industrial sized plain bandaid-ed hand I asked her what happened?

G- I got a paper cut.

M- Ouch, did you do ok?

G- Yep, I had to go to the office.

M- Really? Did you say thanks for the bandaid?

G- I forgot.

M- Maybe you can write them a note and take it tomorrow. {anything to get her working on penmanship}

G- Ok. I practiced being calm.

M- What do you mean? {oh crap, please tell me this wasn't a scene situation}

G- I just looked at it and thought "oh no, blood" but I didn't do anything but look at it like this. {dramatic stare}

M- That's good.

G- Mrs. Lee came over and looked at it and said my mom could deal with it and I told her "no way. I needed a bandaid STAT".

M- What did she say to STAT? {biting my tongue}

G- She just said to go to the office.

Most Kindergardeners use the word STAT, right? Mrs Lee should have a blog. I bet it'd be hilarious.

It's another...

perfectly boring and normal cervix. The baby just had it's head mashed against it and was making it look shorter via ultrasound but after moving and alternate view we got a "perfectly normal, middle of the road" description. I didn't get to see Ball or Belfort but everyone else was still there and it was like if Cheers was a Maternal Fetal office.

Kate went with and only there to make sure it was a girl. Well, sorry Kate it is another stinky ol brother. At lest you won't have to share your pollys, barbies, and dress ups with two sisters? Or have someone trying to wear your clothes? Or have to talk to him or even touch him? When Jeniel confirmed it Kate's response was "aww, I wanted the girls to win." Kerri got her a consolation Sprite. I think she'll survive. In telling Grace, she scrunched her face in disbelief. We've got 19 weeks to get used to the idea.

Profile, legs, face, manhood, feet.

As soon I figure out how to rip the video, I'll show better pictures.

Guess where we are?

I'll give you a hint. The give IVs, mauve tubs of personal items, and O2 tubes.

{PS: it's not ironic or funny yet}

We are back at Timp, although in a different room with the same monitors, same oxygen tubes, same dumb IV, different boy.

Miles started puffing/spitting out breaths this evening so we headed to the after hours Pedia and after a nebulizer treatment and O2 monitoring, he thought it best to send us to the hospital. Miles has his IV, had his boogers sucked out, x rays and is now sleeping.

78 jobs later

Sometime probably before Christmas Grace and Kate thought it would be a good idea to break dad's skullcandy headphones, like rip the cord in half. These headphones were a free company replacement from the previous headphones that broke through probably too much handling from the afore mentioned duo.

On the night they broke them, they were told "We don't have money to replace them and that dad uses them a lot so they needed to get to work". It started very slow, died out for a while, picked up speed through the 40s and 50s and now has 2 jobs left. Grace has done the majority but I am pretty happy to see them working off the $80 with 80 jobs. I do fear what will be broken next to keep my girls employeed or what they now are going to want to work to get.

A side note... since Skullcandy is based in Park City, Rich headed over there with them in hand in January and received another free pair. Probably more because he has a in depth opinion about audio equipment and chatted it up with them on how great the first pair were in comparison to the second set. That shouldn't make a difference in the dollar per job right?

100th Day of School

"100th day of school was so much better than that other day" (that other day being Groundhogs Day). Everyone got to bring 100 things. Grace took princess stickers. They counted a few peoples 100 things and played games. They all got to dress up like 100 yr olds too. There were a few with the intensity of Grace, who wore pink rollers, a shawl, a robe, a zip up Walmart night gown and her support hose...err tights. And guess what? Tomorrow is Teacher Something Day so there's no school. She's so excited.