...to not have enough time to do a blog post, Is what my Wonderful Mom has been asking me for the past 2 months. ok maybe just one month, but I decided to fill you all in on what has been going on at the Wallin house over the past little while.
We have been enjoying Life, need I say more?
After our wonderful trip to Capital Reef I decided to make a few changes to our living arrangements. We moved Marcella into our bedroom and moved our bedroom into her old one. Well I mean Jon did all the hard stuff and I put all the little things away. That took a week of my life. I am still in the process of making it look cute, but here is a boring picture of it. I like it a ton better even though our bedroom is so small now. At least it makes me pick up my clothes faster because once one thing falls to the floor there isn't a place to walk. All in all I love my new cozy room. (I will love it even more when i get it decorated, another project for another day)
I am still trying to find places for everything, hopefully I will be able to keep getting rid of things faster than I am accumulating them. Not likely to happen anytime soon, but I am trying.
This spring I planted some tulips. I wish I could say that they bloomed and I have beautiful pictures of what they look like, but on the contrary. I only have these pictures...
Smashed,Stepped on Damaged flowers. It really made me quite sad, so in the process of trying to save them I decided I needed more plants to make the outside of our place look nicer. It sure was fun. Marcella helped me pick out a bunch of different flowers and we had fun planting them in pots and around my tulips. Although, the ones around my tulips have basically suffered the same fate as my tulips. (As shown in the picture above) At least the ones in the pots are doing very well, I love this time of year.
I have also been supervising Marcella as she heads outside to "play". She has become the popular one of the neighborhood. She owns sidewalk chalk and bubbles. So this picture is trying to show what happens when she goes outside. It is kind of funny, so funny in fact that you have to just come and see for yourself. It seriously is a matter of her walking outside and less than 5 minutes later there are always at least 6 kids here asking if they can play too. Most of the time there are more kids that come over than this, but I told Jon he had to just go and take a picture of it so we can look back and laugh. Marcella loves it. She loves telling everyone that her friends come over and play and I try to keep the older ones from always tattle telling and bossing everyone else around. Believe me it is a hard task when you speak one language and all the other kids speak a different language. I am just glad that Marcella has a lot of fun and enjoys playing outside. I am a little nervous about bringing out the pool... good idea or no?
There was also a week in here somewhere when Marcella and I did a lot of baking. It was fun. We made lots of cookies and some yummy treats.
I love this picture, because Marcella wanted to eat the oats more than the cookie dough. She also loves raw potatoes.... I am thinking she gets this from Jon.
I am also trying to keep up with this girl who has a love for books. We have spent a lot of time reading lately, and I admit I am slacking off again, and need to be better at stopping what I am doing to just relax and read with Marcella, but I love it! I will even catch her in bed late at night... a couple hours after bed time still up reading books to herself. How can you get mad at this cute face?
I have also been trying to keep up on making sure Marcella looks presentable. You all think this shouldn't be a hard task or take away from my blogging time, but hey this takes skill, and I am still working on it. What do you think?
Yes this would be one of those days when you just tell your child to get ready and here they come, sprayed and combed their own hair, gotten dressed all by themselves, (which Marcella is very proud of as of late. I think it is pretty cute). And the Hangers? A fashion statement maybe? I at least made her get rid of the hangers before we went shopping. I didn't have the heart to change her hair. "Don't I look pretty mommy?" She is just the best girl ever I love it!
I wish I had a before and after picture of the next thing I did. I recovered my kitchen chairs. They look so much better than they did before. Well, let's just say cream and a two year old whose main life substance is pasta w/ red sauce and beans and rice don't mix. Here is a finished product and I really like them. Marcella had fun picking out the material with me. She really loves to shop and is such a girly girl.
I can't forget this, our dinner ritual. Dinner isn't just normal any longer we now have a candle light dinner almost every night. Marcella will pick out a stuffed animal and it is their Birthday for the day, so we will sing Happy Birthday after dinner and keep singing until we have decided that Marcella has blown out the candles a bizillion times. It really is quite fun.
Also to add to our business, do you notice that delicious looking meal, I love the steam coming off of it. YUM! I love cooking, so we have been doing a lot of it lately. I also love that Jon is AMAZING at it. Someday we will open a restaurant and you all can come and enjoy the goodness. If you can't wait that long, just give us a call and you can come on over anytime.
We added a person to our family for the next little while. We are super excited to have her stay with us. It has been fun and she is currently rooming with Marcella. You will have to ask her how she likes it. Wait, I almost got a picture of her, but she just left again. We only see her between the hours of 12 am or 7:30 am. It is hard to get sick of someone when they are never here, so it works out perfectly. We give her a place to sleep and shower and I find a nicely made bed everyday. I wonder if I can get her to make my bed everyday too? ha ha. We really love having you with us Mim, I have enjoyed our late talks.
I got permoted and switched branches at work. I now work 5 minutes from home and love it. I really enjoy all the new stuff I am learning and my favorite part is coming home for lunch to eat with Jon and Marcella. It really makes my day and the best part I make more money, yea! Mim took over my old job so it worked out really well for both of us and we get to talk Credit Union lingo. Awesome.
Jon and I worked down at the Race way in Tooele in May. It was pretty fun, although I didn't take any pictures. If you want to see some of the sweet cars check out
Cam and Amie's blog. It was fun to see how everything works, but I am glad it is over. I think I have spent the money I earned from working there a few times, because with every impulse buy I think oh I worked at the race way, I can buy this. I hope I come out on top.
We were hoping to get in some camping sometime in May, but the weather just isn't allowing it. Every time we have a chance to go it rains, or snows. I feel super bad because the only thing our adventure girl talks about is going camping again. If you ask her what we are are going to do this summer she will tell you, "go camping, and go to the cabin!" I hope we can make these dreams of hers possible, because the cabin keeps looking slimmer, due to the baby factor and camping keeps getting rained out. I am sure we will get our fill in and have a fun time I just hope we can soon.
Last of all to admit, we now have a netflix account. I have enjoyed it, even though the only movies that have been sent to our house have something to do with having sub-titles, westerns, or Strawberry shortcake. Maybe someday I will remember to log in and add some of the movies I want to see in the que, but until I do it is on with the Spaghetti Westerns and Strawberry Shortcake and friends. I also have been addicted to Gilmore Girls. I never watched it when it was on the air, but I really have been enjoying it, so I say that is what I do to unwind from work.
Through this madness and chaos we have still managed to be everywhere at once and go back and forth for homecomings, Birthdays and exciting events in our families lives. We love you guys, thanks for the fun times.
So these are a few of the many reasons why I haven't blogged lately and I apologize to my dear sweet Mother who loves to see what I will post next. I wish you a very Happy Birthday. It was fun celebrating with you last night!
HAPPY BIRTHDAY MOM!
She was taken of the ventilator on the 12th, about a week ago. It felt pretty good to get a better look at her face.
On the 13th, she had her umbilical arterial line taken out. They were confident she wouldn't go back on the ventilator, so they no longer needed to do blood gas tests, which rendered the UAL obsolete. Once it was out, they let us hold her. She started to feel a bit more like "our baby" after that.
At this point they stopped all of the sedatives she was on, and started to bring down the levels of blood pressure medicine she was taking. That meant she would be more alert, awake, and aware of her surroundings.
She even opened her eyes a little bit.
On the 14th, they started feeding her with the milk Kanien had been pumping. She had a tube down her esophagus to vent gas that might build up in her stomach, which doubled as a feeding tube once she was able to eat. They started by giving her 5 cc's of milk, and gradually worked it up. A normal feeding is 52 cc's.
Happy Daddy
Marcella stayed at her Grandma Dougal's house. She loves the bikes and their dog, Chester. Having her there made an unbelievable difference for us, since they won't let anyone under 18 into the NICU.
On the 15th, two days after Kanien was discharched, we "moved in" with the McCann family. They live about 10 minutes from the hospital, so we could try and attend Claire's feeding and care sessions, which take place every 3 hours. Caroline and Jeff let us stay in their bedroom. This is Marcella's bed on the floor of their room.
On th 16th they tried to move Claire into a crib. She was wearing a onesie, pjs, two hats, and three blankets, but she couldn't maintain her body temperature without the heater, so they moved her back.
She's been doing pretty well with a bottle. The nurses tell us as long as she's awake, she'll eat from a bottle. Her feedings are up to 32 cc's now.
