Kate has turned six months! Here are some of the things going on in our lives. Don't worry about reading it, it is going to be boring- you know, as usual it's just stuff for the kids to read when they are older :)


Kate turned six months!

Miserable. I must have been poked at least 50 times while I was there.

NICU. First day. I didn't see this picture till after we got home. I don't think I could have handled it.

Me seeing her for the first time. I couldn't see her for three days.
By the time I was able to see her all of her tubes and IVs and all that stuff were off.

Corey was such a trooper, trying to be strong for me and the baby, but the whole thing was very hard on him as you can imagine.

My mom and I took Conner to the Mall for a birthday date to get a pretzel and have his first experience at Build-a-Bear.

He chose this doggy...

The finished project. He was excited to show it to his dad. He has already named him. "Beary." He was sure that a real football player would need a light saver :)

This was Conner's Birthday present. He has Corey to thank for it because I was 50/50. But we found it on sale and it came with the protective net and I knew he would love it. Corey jumps with him every single night after work. It is the best purchase we have made in a long time and I think it will save us from having to buy a new couch as soon (before we got this he would take off the cushions on our basement couch and jump endlessly.)

A big Thank You to Chris as well for staying up all night with Corey putting it up.

All tuckered out after a really long day of CELEBRATING CONNER! You can see he already loved his "Beary" enough to sleep with him along with his other favorite "Piggy."

My Grandpa Rhodehouse shares a birthday the same week as Conner. Here they are at Sunday dinner, we are so grateful that Grandma and Grandpa R have started to come to Sunday dinner at my moms again. My Grandma had several broken bones in her back this past year and they haven't been able to make it out of the house but finally they have started to come again and it is so much nicer with them there.

Connerisms: Conner was counting from 1-10 just for fun on the night we celebrated Conner's birthday with my family. My dad said, "Ok now do it backwards." Instead of counting backwards from 10,9,8...he took the instructions more literally and turned around and counted 1,2,3,4...while walking backwards into our living room. Boy did he get a round of cheers from all of us we thought it was the sweetest thing ever.

(This is too a very rough-drafted post, I will fix it later.)
Conner was sick this weekend. Sicker than I have personally seen anyone, ever. It was unbearable to watch. He was at the urgent care Friday, Saturday, and Sunday night. His Oxygen was only 86 which unbeknownst to me is really bad.
I cannot express adequately how poor his breathing and coughing were, he quite literally was coughing constantly. I have been sick for two months and he was following my symptoms exactly, and I had been on two antibiotics and finally figured it was a virus since they weren't helping. Therefore I assumed he was also suffering from the same "virus" and therefore going to the doctor and waiting in a room full of sick people for an hour to hear "humidifier, hot showers, motrin," seemed like a dumb idea.
Finally Friday night Corey and I broke down and took him in. The doctor he saw on Friday night said just one look at him he had asthma. His oxygen was bad, coughing was horrible and this doctor really thought he had probably caught something a while back and was now suffering from asthma. So of course they did the oxygen treatment which Conner could hardly stand, it was throwing him into a panic attack and we had to hold him down to get him to keep it in his face. Afterwards the doctor checked him again and admitted the treatment didn't really seem to have made him improve so they went to step two, the steroid. So they gave him the one dose of steroid and sent us home with a second one for 24 hours later, along with an inhaler. That night was horrible. He only slept a few hours and was laying all over the house coughing and fevering. The next day we were all miserable from no sleep and Conner was NOT improving at all. Finally Corey told me I needed to call the doctor again, so I did and told them he was doing poorly and they decided he should take the second steroid right then. So we did that, and guess what, it did nothing to improve his condition but added "roid-rage," to the mix.
He was already suffering so badly and was now very angry because he couldn't breath, he couldn't stop coughing, and every time we tried to give him his medicine or the inhaler he went ballistic. He kept saying, "Help me, I can't breath, I can't breath." He got so upset after a coughing fit he knocked down the vacuum. I got some reassurance from my parents who had to deal with steroids for asthma for my dad, my brother, and me from time to time and my parents told me that is completely normal and that those steroids are the devil.
So guess what, still no improvement. So we called again around 8 that night and they wanted him to come in. A new doctor saw him this time and bless his heart figured out what was going on. He gave him a different type of breathing treatment and then a strong antibiotic. Conner apparently had Mycoplasma which is also called "Walking Pneumonia." (This is of course most likely what I have been suffering from for the past two months as well.)
That night was horrible as well, he woke up after a couple hours of sleep and came to us bawling and coughing and I had to get in the bath with him at 1:00 in the morning to see if we could help him breath. He was due for motrin as well and wouldn't take it so we had to hold him down to give it to him. I will never forget the way he looked at me after we gave him that dose of medicine. He looked at me like I had betrayed him. He swatted at my leg out of total and complete exasperation that I had made him take that medicine and said thru his tears, "Don't EVER do that again!"
It. was. so. sad.
Usually Corey is the strong one but this was really waring him down having Conner coughing non stop and being so incredibly sick.
He got into bed with us so we could keep watch on his breathing and he finally slept for a longer period of time. Sunday was a better day after two doses of the antibiotic. That night he finally ate at my mom's after not having eaten anything for three days. The doctor needed him to come in again to have his oxygen checked and it had gone up a few points and they were very encouraged that we were on the right track. Sunday night he slept well and ever since then he has only improved more and more. Today he is almost perfect, he has a few coughing moments during the day but you would never know that a few days ago the doctors were talking about admitting him to Primaries.
We have hardly left the house all week, I am so afraid that with him just recovering he is going to catch something else, and I can't handle that. It has been very hard to be at home so isolated all day ever day. I feel like both his and my brain are turning to mush from so much tv watching. I am so exhausted that I can't get the energy to do anything other than shows with him.

(extremely rough-drafted post, I will have to come fix it later, I just wanted to get this all down.)
I have not been doing amazingly well the past few weeks. I. have. been. sick. FOREVER. I certainly have not felt like documenting it because I just keep telling myself it can't last much longer, and maybe if I refrain from acknowledging it to the world it will go away. But after a long talk with my mom last night I decided that one day I might like to look back on this and remember it. The other day out of total exacerbation I threw up my hands and said this baby better be the most wonderful baby that has ever come to this world because she has taken the life right out of me.

I always get lots of colds in the winter, but never lasting two months. And I almost always respond very well to antibiotics but never have I had TWO rounds of antibiotics and not gotten any better. I have got to get my tonsills out sometime after the baby is born, I have needed to for years but keep putting it off. I have heard it is nothing short of the worst experience EVER. But we will meet our insurance deductible this year with the baby and that is a bit of a motivating factor. I very strongly hesitate to say anything that resembles, "whoa as me, this pregnancy is so hard etc etc etc." people that do that are so nauseating but for me personally this has been a trying time. I had really terrible headaches beginning at around 10 weeks and had them literally every single day till about 18 weeks. In addition I was for some reason attacked by acne which has just now begun to subside. Neither the headaches nor acne occurred when I was pregnant with Conner. Could estrogen perhaps be the culprit? Anyways my point is that this has been a bit of a rough patch for me but do you know what, the more unpleasant life is at a certain point, the ever more sweet it is when things get better. That has always been very apparent in my life. I know in my heart of hearts the joy that comes when this baby girl enters our lives will be all the sweeter because of the less than sweet time I have spent being pregnant with her. I am nonetheless grateful for the experience of pregnancy.
So after being sick for so long and not improving I basically woke up one morning even WORSE than I had been. I had a fever, and from what I knew a fever in pregnancy is BAD. So I was miserable and freaking out. And now my exhaustion was even worse and I could not stop coughing. I was in the tub three times a day trying to breath and I just could not. My fever was better after tylenol but the second that tylenol wore off I was back to horrible fever. Corey called my doctor and being that it was the weekend he had to then call the on-call doctor who told us I needed to use Robitussin and Tylenol and just keep treating it. Since I had already had two antibiotics he didn't think it would help to give me another, "it must just be a virus."
Don't you love hearing that?
I am still struggling, I have never, ever in my life been so exhausted. I pant when I go up the stairs, I have to lay down after doing the simplest tasks. Literally all I want to do is sleep or being the bath tub. But being in the tub almost seems like too much energy to get off and on my clothes. That is how bad I am.
I have done so much research and most things you read about pregnancy say the second trimester is supposed to be the time where your energy returns and you feel pretty normal. I have not once had my energy return in this pregnancy. Given I have been very sick but it feels like more than that.
My doctor knows about it and they have checked my iron, as well as my thyroid and for parasites or something but everything came up ok.
If anyone out there reading this has ever had a pregnancy where they were as exhausted as I have just described FOR THE ENTIRE PREGNANCY I would like to hear about it because I feel like it is just so not normal. I called my mom crying one morning and told her I felt like my body was dying. It just took so much out of me to do anything at all.
To make everything worse I am then compiled upon by all the guilt that comes from me feeling like I am failing as a mom at this point. Conner has not been out doing anything fun, I have had him watching movies and shows all day every day since I got this horrible sickness and I feel so terrible.
I feel terrible because I am in my mind failing at being a good mother to Conner and I am failing at being a good mother to the little girl inside of me because I have had to take so many medications so far in this pregnancy just to get thru it. I pray daily that she is healthy and nothing I have put into my body has affected her negatively.
But do you see my dilemma? Do I want to be able to take care of the kid I've got or do I want to lay in bed all day neglecting him in order to take no medicines into my body.
I made the decision that I had to do whatever my doctor recommended to get better for Conner. Apparently my immune system is lower because of the pregnancy and my doctor thinks I might have caught the influenza virus this year because I did not get a flu shot. And I have just been so sick for so long. And I personally don't ever get fevers with colds. I have only ever had a fever when I had the stomach flu.
So thats all I know right now. I am so tired of being sick and being isolated at home all day every day. I have not been to church in months, even if I do find the energy I am almost too embarrassed to go get groceries because I am coughing so bad. I haven't been able to see anyone other than my mom and corey. My mom by the way, I will write about her later. She has saved my life during this hard time.
There it is, I have documented it. I hope I can get thru this.

Favorite thing IN THE WORLD right now. Playing Go-Fish. It is the first thing he asks for in the morning and can be used for bribery in any situation. For example: "Let's get your pajamas on." "No, Not yet!" "We will play a game of Go-Fish after you get them on." "OK!!!!!!"

Oh man. What a hard week. Our sweet little boy had to get a mini root-canal, two crowns, and a filling. He has a deficiency in enamel apparently called hypoplasia, basically I gather that it means his enamel isn't as strong as it should be so his teeth are more susceptible to cavities. And yes, we do brush his teeth every single night. The doctor told me you can brush their teeth three times a day but if they have soft enamel they are pretty likely to need some work done.
He actually started complaining to us a few weeks ago of his teeth hurting and our friend Steph D. who is a dental hygienist looked at his back tooth and said it definitely had a cavity and we needed to go to a pediatric dentist. We then found out about his "situation," and had to schedule the work to be done. Originally we were going to have him put out because we could not fathom him sitting still for any kind of procedure let alone one that included injections and drilling, but Corey did some checking around and found out they can sometimes give kids a "kiddi cocktail" that they drink before the appointment so they are more sedated and can have the nitrous while the work is being done. I will be honest, Corey and I were VERY skeptical but doing it this way was going to save us $500 bucks so we went for it. Much to Corey's and my shock he did MAGNIFICENTLY. We had to wake him up at seven in the morning to get him to drink his nasty green Demerol cocktail which the poor thing looked at us very willingly and drank the first sip and then looked like he might die from the disgust and said, "NO, NEVER!" when we tried to get him to drink more. Unfortunately we had to hold him down and shove it down his throat, it really must have been awful tasting stuff.
We didn't notice it taking much effect so again we were skeptical about how this was all going to go down but we took him to the doctor and they laid him down and put the bubble gum nitrous mask on him and after a few breaths he seemed pretty relaxed. Even more to our shock was the dentist actually gave him several injections in his mouth and Conner didn't even flinch. Corey and I just kept looking at each other like, "Is this for real?"
So after the work was complete Conner got to pick a prize from the dentist office and then Corey and I had promised a reward from us if he went thru all this so we took him to Toys R Us and he picked out a Cars toy.
I thought we had been over the worst (and it went so smoothly!) Boy was I wrong. The hard part came later when all the numbness wore off.
He was a wreck. I gave him Motrin and Tylenol and it did NOTHING. He was so upset that he was hitting his cheek saying "Get it out, get it out." And then when he started crying and kicking the walls, this freaked me out so bad that I called the doctor and asked if there were something else I could give him for the pain. They were not at all surprised and called us in some Tylenol with Codeine at the pharmacy so I rushed right over to get it. It made a very dramatic improvement so I am so glad I ended up calling. He was miserable for about four days and we had to keep him on a strict dose of the pain medicine or he would freak out the minute it wore off. It is now Sunday, six days later and today was the first time he made it thru the day without needing the pain med. He acted pretty sensitive and irritable today but he was not complaining of his teeth specifically so we are looking at it as a sign of big improvement.
I know all kids go to the dentist and most have a cavity or two when they are kids, but this experience was really hard on me. I finally had a total melt down the night after his procedure, it was so difficult for me to watch him in such discomfort and be able to do nothing. He kept asking me to take it out and I could do nothing for him other than give him the pain medicine and try to distract him.
Anyway hopefully we are on our way out of this and we can avoid this kind of thing for a -long-while. We are obviously being extra thorough on teeth brushing from now on, but it's kinda annoying because we really always have made it a habit to brush his teeth every night. Owell, we can only do what we can do right?

I am somewhat in shock that 2010 is coming to a close this week. The truth is, 2010 has been a less than favorable year for Corey and me and we have been excited for 2011 in hopes that it brings more contentment. As always in rough times we have learned some very valuable lessons this year. Luckily we grew together as a family. Me, Corey and Conner. "The Kunz Team" as Corey's little note said to me this morning... he often leaves me little notes to find on our white board as he is off to work early in the mornings.
I love that he calls us that, because it is so true.

I don't really do New Year's resolutions, but Corey and I traditionally go over our goals as a couple for the new year: financial goals, health goals, fun goals etc.
That is one of the many things I really love about Corey. He is very goal oriented. What an admirable quality! I make goals all the time, but I lack a crucial personality trait called FOLLOW THRU! I have great ideas and endless fabulous intentions but I get stuck in the follow through, which is kinda...well let's be honest, and essential ingredient.

That being said, I thought I would write down a few things from this year that I did follow thru with; some accomplishments that I am proud of.

1. We successfully kept family prayer and reading of a The Book of Mormon a night time ritual, the three of us together, almost no exceptions.

2. I think this year I solidified the TIME OUT consequence with Conner. I have not been perfect but I have definitely been pretty consistent, as has Corey. I feel very good about our discipline and reward system with Conner. I feel like we have done an excellent job. I feel blessed that Corey and I expect the same things from our kids and we agree on our discipline techniques and what rules we want to enforce. Conner had a couple of "boot camps" as we call them when we crack down hard on him and put him in time out for every single thing. That sometimes lasts a few days and he then remembers who is in charge. But the truth is the past couple of months he has gotten way too many rewards as I think he figured some of this out :) but do you know what? I COULDN'T CARE LESS! If my kid wants to be wonderful and delightful and obedient, I will reward him every day! But we are also very strict with him when he does not meet the expectations we have set for him. I feel good about the balance we have reached. It is not easy but I don't regret one second of the hard work I have put into it.

3. I successfully learned two difficult songs on the piano and performed them this year. I have for a long time wanted to learn a particular song on the piano for my dad. I bit the bullet and did it. I practiced and practiced and I learned it and memorized it. It took months, I not only learned it perfectly but I performed it perfectly, without a single mistake. I played it at my Dad's ward as a surprise for him on Fathers Day. The other song was a challenging piano accompaniment for the end of the year primary program in our sacrament meeting. That one also went beautifully. I personally felt that I was being blessed in those performances. I do not perform well naturally, it causes me a great deal of discomfort and causes me to be very hard on myself. As I said, I was surely blessed.