I'm not nesting

I'm pretty sure that the concept of "nesting" is one of those pregnancy myths. Kind of like morning sickness is limited to the mornings. I don't think I've really felt any particular nesting urges as this pregnancy nears its end. That's pretty evident the second you walk in my house. What I have felt is a healthy dose of panic as I've been forced to comes to grips with the reality that this baby is likely going to be here in less than 4 weeks. Yikes!

With that in mind, we spent last weekend getting Ben's big boy room pulled together so the nursery would be vacated in time for little brother. The whole process of moving into a big boy room has actually been an amazing success (knock on wood). Ben has been really excited about his big boy bed and has been sleeping through the night in his new room. Well, except for one night last week when he woke up at 3:00 in the morning and came in our room, which totally freaked us out. But generally, a success.

We found awesome bunk beds at Costco, which were too cute to pass up for the price--especially given that the only other bunks I'd found that I liked much were at potterybarn and they were several times more expensive. We only set up one bed for starters. Grandpa Steve came over to help put the bed together. Ben is quite the little helper and stood by to hand over screws as needed.


Unfortunately we didn't have a mattress for the bed at first. Ben was seriously bummed and was anxious to sleep there. He kept asking to go night-night with the choo-choos.


When we finally got the mattress Ben was totally ready to sleep there. He's not really an under-the-covers kind of guy though.


Generally speaking, I'm really pleased with how the room turned out. Painting the striped walls required some additional effort (that Cam was not happy about), but in my mind, they were totally worth the effort.

After hunting high and low for perfect big boy bedding I came across this lovely train set at TJ Maxx. I'm still pleased with my budget-friendly find.


And I think Ben's pretty happy about it too.

Merry Christmas!

Well, December got away from us before I had much of a chance to blog about it. We had a busy month, but unfortunately we have little to show for it by way of pictures.

The week before Christmas we got TONS of snow. In fact, I think we probably got a good foot of snow on Christmas day. We had planned on celebrating at my parents' house in Daybreak, which is literally only a few blocks from us, but we'd gotten so much snow by the time we went to leave we couldn't get out of our driveway. Our neighbor had to help Cam push the car back into the garage and we called my dad to come pick us up in the the 4-wheel drive.

Ben is a huge fan of the snow (he didn't inherit his love from me), and his daddy took him out to run around in it for a while. This was before the big Christmas storm hit and we still only had a couple of inches. We only got one lousy picture of him with his eyes closed before the camera battery died. Oh well.


We only got a couple of Christmas day pictures too. We really are crappy photographers. Our poor children will have no documentation of their young lives. Sigh. Anyway, two big hits for Ben were his cheap stuffed Elmo (I wasn't about to shell out $60 for the fancy one) and his big boy chair from my mom and dad.


You can now find Ben on any given morning enjoying some cold cereal and viewing some Playhouse Disney from the comfort of his chair. He is his father's child.


We totally failed to get any pictures of our Christmas celebration with the Cam's family. Suffice it to say Ben got totally spoiled by Cam's parents and has plenty of new toys to show for it.

Time to update

I realize that I haven't blogged much recently. Really, I haven't felt like there was anything going on in our lives that was blog worthy. Mostly, our camera hasn't been getting much use lately and I hate posting without pictures.

Ben has been doing really well recently. We think we are out of the woods when it comes the possibility of a recurring infection and/or surgery. However, we are still making frequent doctor visits. He's fine though and his scar and surgical site keep looking better.

Cam is wrapping up the final weeks of his MBA. He will finally be done after this semester. We have spent almost our entire married life with one or both of us in grad school, so it will be a welcome relief to both be done with school. Now we just have to start paying off student loans. Ugh.

As for me, I am officially in the third trimester of this pregnancy. Part of me feels a sense of relief knowing that this pregnancy is ending in a few weeks. Part of me is horrified that this pregnancy is ending in a few weeks. I feel so unprepared. Also, My doctor's office called today to inform me that my thyroid is still low and I'm anemic. I guess that explains the overwhelming fatigue I've been feeling. Baby is healthy though, which is what we really care about.

Anyway, we'll have to do a better job of taking our camera along with us as we frolic during the holiday season. Our next post will have pictures. I promise.

The Manzier

It's been a long week. I was really hopeful that after Ben's surgery we could get things back to normal and quit making frequent doctor's visits. Unfortunately, that has not been the case.

Ben seems to be feeling pretty good, but when we went back to have his stitches removed the doctor noticed that part of the surgical site was swelling. The lymph node by Ben's left ear was quite large and when the doctor removed the infected tissue it left a fairly large cavity. That cavity has been filling with fluid. We've been keeping Ben on antibiotics to prevent infection, and so far that's been working, but we've had to go to the doctor to aspirate the fluid twice this week since the swelling has been pretty severe.

In an effort to minimize future swelling, Ben now has to wear a pressure bandage around his face so (hopefully) the fluid will not settle in the cavity and it can fill with healthy fat and tissue. The doctors affectionately refer to this device as the "jaw bra." It is seriously complicated to take on and off, so it's just as well that we have to leave it on pretty much 24/7. Poor Benny is not a big fan of the jaw bra, and it definitely draws attention. Poor Boo.


Oh, but the good news doesn't stop there. The skin by Ben's ear isn't healing as it should either. The doctor said he opted not to remove the skin during the surgery since it would have left a scar and he hoped that it would get better after the underlying infection was removed. Well now he's concerned that the skin itself was infected and they may have to remove the infected skin to prevent a recurrence of the infection. Great. He wants us to consult with infection disease before he makes the call, so we'll be trying to get in to see infection disease docs here soon.

In other news, baby number 2 is doing well. The doctor didn't bump back my due date even though he was measuring a little behind on dates. Yeah! So at least there's some good news this week.

Good News

I figured I'd better update on Ben's condition since he was looking so pathetic last time we posted. We were afraid we were going to have to stay in the hospital through the weekend, but after lunch on Saturday we got the go ahead to go home. We were all thrilled to leave and Ben has improved so much since we've been home.

We were worried about pain control while we were in the hospital since he couldn't seem to get comfortable and we changed his med regime before leaving. The crazy thing is, after getting home he's seemed really comfortable and we've been using nothing but Tylenol for pain. Amazing.

We're going back to see the doctor for follow up tomorrow. We expect that the permanent stitches on Ben's neck will be removed then. The stitches in and around the ear will dissolve. The swelling has gone down quite a bit. His mouth is still paralyzed on the left side, although he doesn't seem to mind and he still looks cute with his crooked smile.

Mostly we're just glad to see our little boy getting back to being himself. He's been running around and playing all day today and I've almost been worried that he's going to split his stitches since he's been climbing and crashing into things. I wish I had taken a picture today to show how well he's doing.

Thank you all for your thoughts, prayers, visits, and presents. We have really appreciated it.

Poor Benny

Ben had his surgery yesterday. It took the doctor close to 4 hours to complete the surgery. Most of that time was devoted to removing the nasty infection by his ear that started this whole thing. All-in-all he estimated that he removed 8-10 lymph nodes and a saliva gland.

The lymph node by Ben's ear was so large and infected that there is now a depression in his face where it was removed. His doctor thinks that it will probably fill in over time. His facial nerves were also bruised so the left side of his mouth sags a little, but this will also likely be temporary. The doctor said it could take a few months to really heal, but he thinks it will heal. We'll have to wait and see.

His surgical wound is looking good so far and we're hoping Ben will be discharged tomorrow or the next day. Staying in the hospital is no fun.

I thought I'd show a picture of happier times before posting some hospital pictures. The night before his surgery we had some Halloween festivities. Ben was looking pretty cute as a turtle.


Unfortunately, a couple of days later this is where we're at. The second shows his stitches pretty close up, so if that bothers anyone, you might want to stop here.




He's had a rough couple of days. Poor little guy. Thanks for the truck, Nicole. I think it was probably the highlight of his morning.

Pumpkin Pickin'

We finally made it out to get pumpkins last night. We'd made one previous visit to the pumpkin patch, but Ben didn't really enjoy the experience so much. I think the skeletons and ghost pirates didn't agree with him.


Yesterday we waited for Cam to get done with work and then we went to a pumpkin patch by our house where there were just pumpkins. Ben found this to be much more agreeable.


He found a favorite pumpkin pretty quickly. We ended up getting 2 medium sized pumpkins and a small one for $6! I thought it was quite a deal.



There were also some tractors in the field for the kids to take pictures on. It was pretty cold out, but Ben was a trooper and was really mad when it was time to go.


And how cute is his coat? Thank you, Target.

We also set a date for Ben's surgery. He'll be going in next week. The doctor said he thinks he'll be in surgery for about 3 hours. Also, for those of you who have expressed concern because your kids also play in/eat dirt, this disease is extremely rare. The likelihood of your kid getting it is really minimal. In fact, our doctor emphasized how weird it was that Ben caught it. Anyway, I'll be glad to have this whole experience behind us. Hopefully Ben will be back on his feet in time to go trick-or-treating.