Pirate Girl & Carnival

Katelyn put on this pirate hat and she would get mad every time I tried to take it off.

She just ate breakfast and I hadn’t had a chance to clean her up.

The boys decorated 2 liter bottles of pop for their school carnival. They were pretty proud.

They got to pose with Star Wars characters at the school carnival.

We have a costume box and the boys love to dress up just for fun. Derek likes dressing as a Pirate or any Star Wars character and Blake really likes the raccoon costume.

Soccer and Teeth

These are some shots from Blake and Derek’s soccer game a while back. You can see that Brandon has a bunch of teeth that have recently came in. This meant a lot of nights with poor sleep for me. However, he has been much better this last week. I think he is feeling much better.

Brandon has also gone without oxegen for a while now, (even at night). For a long time he has been very inconsitant. Some night he didn't need anything and some he needed more. Recently I took a good look at the probe we were using and I think we were getting bad readings. I beleive he hasn't needed oxegen for a while now.

Brandon also went the pulminologist today. He was doing great with no major problems!

Walking

If you have noticed from the previous posts, Brand0n is getting much better at sitting. Even though she is still under 13lbs. Katelyn is close to walking on her own. We recently pulled out this push toy and she LOVES it.

BYU Victory

My good friend from high school and roommate at BYU now lives in Idaho. We bought BYU football season tickets this year because we had high hopes for the season. The Popes drive down for all of the home games. The Dads and one kid go to the game while the rest go do fun stuff. It’s fun for everyone. Yesterday BYU crushed UCLA 59 to 0. The outlook for the season is looking really good! (I predicted an undefeated season before the first game and now I sound a little less crazy)

Here are some pictures we took before the game yesterday:

Brandon's a sitting boy now! (His glasses got smashed so he will be without them for a few days while they are being repaired)

She must have wanted the big football. Katelyn does a lot of crying lately when she doesn’t get what she wants. We’re going to have to work on that

Siblings

Lately Blake and Derek love to play with Brandon and Katelyn. We have to remind them to be very careful because they all get really excited but they have a lot of fun. The babies love the attention and usually laugh and laugh so it can be hard to convince the boys to calm down when they get rowdy. The boys also love to hold the babies. Here are some photos:

Aunt Stacie sent some cool shirts for the boys, right after they started Kindergarten. If you can’t tell, they thought the shirts where pretty cool.

Costco with 8 kids and 2 strollers

All of our good planning efforts went a bit astray today and we ended up biding our time with a Costco trip with the Sinemas. So my friend Aimee and her 4 kids ranging in age from 9 to 10 months and me and my 4 kids went on a Costco shopping trip. Blake & Derek took turns pushing the Sinema's baby and I pushed Brandon and Katelyn in the double stroller and Aimee did the cart with 3 kids in it. We were a moving traffic jam and no doubt quite a spectacle making out way through the store. I think I got asked at least twice if I had triplets. No, thank goodness - no triplets here! It was a very amusing trip and we always have fun with the Sinemas!

Matter of Perspective

Katelyn can't figure out how to put them on.

Katelyn showing off her muffin. She was REALLY excited.

A trip to Thanksgiving Point with the Popes.

I think it is funny how a lot of parents feel that the hardest number of children to manage is the number they currently have. I will often hear things like “I thought two kids were hard but when we had our third, it really got hard. We could handle two kids but it was much harder to go places with three young kids.” This simply means they have three kids.

Although Amy is amazing and takes all four kids to a lot of places, if she sends me to the store with all four kids, I have to brace myself for the worst. However, if she takes just one, and I only have to take three kids, it feels so much easier. It doesn’t even matter which kid. I think it is all a matter of prospective. When you are used to four kids, handling three is just easier.

There are a lot of ways that our experience with Brandon and Katelyn has changed our perspective. Even though we’ve been through a lot we feel really lucky. The outcome has been great. We have seen many other parents that have a lot of varied outcomes and some of them have not been as lucky as we have. It’s amazing to see how happy these parents can be when their child is able to do something that many people take for granted. When someone tells us about how their baby came a month premature and stayed for a couple of weeks in the NICU, we obviously have a very different perspective on how big of a deal that situation is. However, to most people this would justifiably be a very big and potentially stressful event. There are also many people who we know who could look at us and say we got off lucky and we have not idea how bad it could really be.

Amy and I recently came in contact with a mother who obviously had some sort of paralysis on one side of her body. When I first saw her I knew nothing about her condition. However, because of Brandon’s situation I instantly had a very different feeling than I might have had in the past. Brandon is making good progress and I have some serious hope that the long-term effects of his hemiparesis will be very minor. Even though our two situations may be very different, I can’t help but feeling this instant connection to this woman. I look at her very differently after having thought about how something like this might affect one of the most important people in my life. I often feel the same way when I see other kids with other disabilities. Because we have narrowly escaped many of these trials, I feel like I understand better. When I think about the difference I have come to the conclusion that my new perspective allows me to feel even more love for these strangers. It’s not that I didn’t feel this way before but it is now deeper and with more understanding.

Brandon has an MRI & MRA scheduled for this week so we can better understand what’s going on in his brain. Because Brandon had a blood clot in his Broviac line, I believe that Brandon had a stroke that caused his hemiparesis. Hopefully this test will let us know if this is what really happened. We have to meet with the doctor to discuss the results so it will be a couple of weeks before we know anything.


The medication that Katelyn has been taking for her lip seems to be helping. We think her lip is looking great.