Update on the boys!

 Schafer

 

Our littlest Mahon is doing well!  He's growing and developing like a champ!

He has slept for almost 8 hours at night 4 times already!

 His belly button cord fell off after 11 days.

He's great at holding up his head.

Poor little guy has dry skin but HATES getting lotion put on him... :-(

He doesn't like it when he has a dirty diaper, pee or poop.

Very content in general unless he's gassy.

He's already pooped on one of our friends (sorry Marie...)

He absolutely adores watching his brothers!  He turns his head to follow their voices and gets upset if he's left alone in a room with no entertainment.

Vale

 Vale just had his 2 year old check up and he's doing great!

He was 27lbs, 35" long and 19.5 head circumference.

He's such a sweet boy with a tender heart, he loves to help other!

He had to have shots and it was traumatic for him :(  He had a nightmare that night about it screaming, "No shots!!" and he's been showing me his boo boos for days...

This kid has the hugest sweet tooth and would eat candy, cake and cookies all day if you let him. sigh.

This kid is a jumping machine, be it off the couch or hopping around the floor he's endless energy and tons of 'hops'.  He's also fearless... the kids gonna kill himself jumping off of something before I'm able to stop him... sigh... pray for him... and me...

He loves to sing all kinds of songs and he learns them quickly and sings the tune very well!  His favorites right now are Only a boy named David, Amazing Grace and the Awana Cubbie's Song.

He has a very keen ear for any kind of sound and is constantly saying, 'What's the sound??'

He loves baby Schafer and likes to call him Baby Shay Shay. :)

He LOVES to go to church and gets really excited and jumps around saying 'I go to church to see my friends!!!!!' :)

He refers to himself as: Vale Pale which I think it's awesome! :)

Connor

Connor is 37" tall and 30lbs! Which puts him in the 2% for height and 9% for weight!  Whewww whoo!

He can write his name on his papers now at church which makes him very excited!

He's only 3 and I'm already getting the hard theological questions thrown at me!  He asked me the other day, "Why doesn't Jesus just kill Satan now and make sin go away?  Does Jesus like sin?!" 'ummm... welp son... no Jesus hates sin but he has a plan and we have to trust that he knows what's best.  He wants us to be able to choose to glorify him instead of sinning.' He seemed ok with that answer for now... Lord give me wisdom! 

He's very bright and gets concepts that just astound me, I told him that we were going to see GG later that day and then when we were about to leave I told him we were going to Aunt Michelle's house.  He said, 'I thought we were gonna see GG??' I told him we were and he said, 'oh GG must be at Aunt Michelle's house'.  And he's 3!!! sigh... 

He's so good with baby Schafer!  He feeds him and gets his clothes & diapers.  He talks so sweetly to him and can get him to stop crying when mommy is busy or we are in the car.  I am very fortunate to have such a good helper!!

Connor is into doing 'shows' for me.  He likes to show me cool tricks or do an impromptu play which, lets be honest, are sometimes painfully long and drawn out but for the most part are very creative and I am excited to see how that develops as he grows!

When I told Connor that hopefully we'll be able to go to Grandma's house soon he said, 'That's the one by the pool and the beach right?'... we haven't been there since June... this kid has a crazy memory!

GG came to visit!!

 We had the privilege of a visit from Grandma (or GG as the boys call her)!

Schafer got to meet his Great Grandma who used to have the same name as him, before she got married.

It also happened to be Grandma's birthday on Sunday so we all went to Stonefire for lunch!

We tried to get a nice picture of Grandma with all the great grand-babies but Sunday afternoons are always a difficult time with kids... This is the best one we had and welp... it's not real great of anyone... 

We all got/made Grandma cards and she had a cake.

Grandma's a very loved lady!

The next morning we went to Egg Plantation for breakfast so we could spend a little bit more time with Grandma.

The boys did great cause we had to wait to get a table.

We went back to Rich and Michelle's to say goodbye to Grandma (since she was headed up to Sacramento).

Rich was doing some work in the garage and the boys were very interested... but not so much in the noise. :)

The boys were GG's little soldiers. :)

Waving goodbye to GG!!!

Just thought this picture was cute. :)  Poor kid got circumcised when he was 14 days old.  With all the happened in the hospital with me, poor kid kinda got overlooked.  I will NEVER do that again... we will be sure to get it done right away in the hospital... much more traumatic even just a couple weeks later.  This was the day after his circumcision... I had to bathe him cause he blew out his diaper... poor kid still looks traumatized...  

Healing and getting back to normal...

Everything is pretty slow around here except for the speed of the toddlers... that's a constant 200mph...

During the superbowl they wanted to wear their football shirts and wanted Schafer to wear one too.

They were so excited to hold him!

Connor's like, 'am I doing this right?'

Schafer's like, 'Your letting the TWO year old hold me?!?!?!'

Total terror... 

They are so sweet!  They are gonna all be such good friends!!  I love it!! 

Right before this picture was taken Schafer said, "This is my impression of Winston Churchill as a linebacker" :)

I let those boys eat so much junk during the Superbowl... I think they were died orange from cheese puffs for 3 days... 

This is the three of them watching football together... isn't that cute! :)  We'll have to recreate this photo when they are teenagers :)

Daddy had to get back to studying but the demands don't stop at home... :)  Holdin the baby and studying at the same time :)

He has such a sweet face!

The boys are thrilled to have a third boy in the house... that part of the adjustment has been easy!

He's so sweet and concerned for Schafer... he always wants to make sure that all of his needs are met bringing him blankets and paci's... :)

Dad's gonna have to make some more room on that lap soon... :)

This kid sleeps like a champ... I think he sleeps better with people running around crazed and screaming... :) ha

Let the torture begin... sigh...  

Schafer LOVES Connor... I think he actual might have for real smiled at him... not just gas.

People have been so gracious to us, sending us diapers and bring meals... we have felt very loved!

So blessed to have three healthy and wonderful boys!!

Coming home from the hospital with Schafer

 Ok this is a little late but everything runs slower around here with mommy only 1/2 strength.

When we brought Schafer home, the boys had planned and decorated for a birthday party for Schafer!!

(and a welcome home party for mommy and daddy)

My mom said they picked out what to write on the cake... it's like they thought I wasn't going to come back!! They were trying to love me home!!  Oh my heart!!! 

 Our first little family photo... I look like death but I'm happy!

Connor was so excited to meet Schafer!

 They love each other already!

Vale was running around too much for us to get a picture with Schafer.

 Daddy takes such good care of his boys!

 

 Emery was partying with her little cousin!

Yeah he's a party animal.

We are a happy family of 5!!!  That's crazy!

Schafer Saga Part II

So Schafer was born at 1:18am on Tuesday the 28th and we were super happy that he was here!

I had to wait for 6 hours in order to get up because of the epidural so that night I didn't sleep a whole lot but was taking care of the baby, feeding him and just enjoying our time as a little threesome.  (by the way, because of the 'awful' flu season no person under 16 was allowed to visit the maternity ward, including siblings, starting Jan 1,2014 which was completely heartbreaking to me!  Mercifully the Lord allowed me to see this before I actually went into labor so I was able to deal with it before the time came.  I cried, literally...)

Anyway, so the next morning, they took my IV out and I got a shower and ate some breakfast.  I was feeling pretty good!  I was tired but ok.  So I took a nap, laying on my left side, at around 9am I flipped over onto my right side just in the course of sleep and I had this horribly sharp pain shoot through my rib cage.  I sat up and had a horrible pain in my stomach up right underneath my sternum by my diaphragm.  I thought that maybe it was really bad indigestion and after about an hour I threw up my breakfast and I instantly felt much better.  I guessed I had just eaten something my body didn't agree with so I just continued with my day.  My brother and sister-in-law came to see me around noon and brought me Arby's which I happily ate but only drank water think that I had still just had indigestion that morning.

I then took another short nap and when I woke up, our pastor was visiting, my stomach was uncomfortable then but not painful.  I still thought it was bad heartburn/indigestion so when the pastor left at 2pm on Tuesday I asked the nurse for some sort of an antacid.  Before she could bring it back, I threw up my lunch but this time it didn't make me feel any better.  The nurse brought the antacid but it didn't do anything and in fact made me feel more sick.  I threw that up too. The pain in my stomach was increasing and I tried to take a shower with nice hot water to see if that would make me feel better, it didn't.  Nothing was helping so I called the nurse again and this time when she came in, I was moaning in pain.  This was about 5pm.

Somewhere in between 2 and 5 I realized that I was not able to feed the baby.  The pain in my stomach was so intense that there was no comfortable way to hold the baby and feed without throwing up.  I had thrown up about 5 times by this point.  We had to start giving Schafer formula.  I was so fortunate to have a husband and mother there to take care of the baby when I could not.

The nurse called the doctor and a short time later he came into the room.  He said to give me some morphine and see if that helped the pain.  It didn't, at all.  He then said to give me some Demerol every two hours to see if that helped.  That worked for about the first 45 minutes of the 2 hours then I was left in agony for the last hour and 15 minutes.  The doctor came in again and pushed on my stomach and said that we should do some blood tests and get an ultra sound done.  I went to get the ultra sound done and I was moaning the whole way, I probably scared small children to pieces in the hallways...

The ultrasound lasted about 30 minutes and was VERY painful because they had to push really hard on my right side to get the pictures they needed.  It started with one ultrasound tech and by the time it was over there were three ladies gathered around the screen looking and pointing at things.  That was actually really encouraging because I was like, 'GOOD! They found something so they can fix it!'

When I got back, the doctor had already seen the ultra sound and said I had several large gall stones.  He put me on Fentanyl with a button that I had to push every 10 minutes to get another drip.  Let me tell you, if it had been 10 minutes, I knew it!  It worked great though!  Thank goodness!  What a blessing for modern medicine!  At that time the doctor also said that a surgeon would be in to see me and talk more about options.

At 2 o'clock on Wednesday a surgeon came into the room and said that it's apparent that you have several large gall stone in your gull bladder but we can't tell from the ultra sound if it is infected but the stones are enough to cause sever pain.  My options were either to wait until the pain passed (which no one knew when that would be) and go home and wait for this to happen again before I had surgery or get the surgery that day at 5pm.  I asked him if he was sure it would happen again and he definitively said 'yes.'.  I figured I might as well get it over with while I was here and the pain wasn't lessening or passing so that really didn't seem like a great option.

At 5pm we went into sugery.

On a side note.  Schafer was discharged from the hospital on Wednesday afternoon perfectly healthy and great, praise the Lord.  The problem with this is that after surgery they wanted to put me in a general surgery ward of the hospital meaning the baby could not come with me.  Schafer would have to go home and mommy would have to stay... boooo!!!  I asked if I could come back to the maternity ward after my surgery and my doctor said he'd see what he could do, the nurses said they wouldn't mind caring for me and the surgeon said he'd see what he could do.  While I was in surgery the director of the hospital decided that it was policy that I NOT stay in the maternity ward and that the baby go home without me.

I am very blessed to have a father who's business is people and is an expert at dealing with difficult situations so he decided to call and talk to the director of the hospital.  By the time I got out of surgery the decision had been reversed, I was able to stay in the maternity recovery room AND the director of the hospital came into the room where my mom was waiting with Schafer during the surgery and hugged my mother. :)  That was a true blessing from the Lord!!  As it says in Prov 21, the Lord is the one who is really in charge of the decisions not the people who are 'in power'.

So anyway, back to surgery!  It was a laparoscopic surgery so I had a small incision by my belly button and then three little holes on my right side.  The surgery went well and the surgeon came out to talk to my husband in the waiting room to let him know how it went and the surgeon told him that my gallbladder was severely infected to the point of corroding.  It was falling apart in places and was gang green!!!!  Yikes!  I don't know how I had had no symptoms before that time!  I had no idea there was anything wrong with my gallbladder.

I was able to go back to the maternity recovery room where I felt MUCH better as I recovered WITH my newborn infant.  I was pretty soar and could only lay on my left side (back, right and belly were too painful).  I had this terrible pain in my right shoulder which they said was transference pain from the stuff they had to pump into me to inflate my stomach to get the organ out.

The surgeon came in later in the day on Thursday and said that not only had he removed my gallbladder (which he used the term gang green to describe to me as well) but when he went in at my belly button he also saw that I had a hernia (didn't know I had that either!) so he fixed that as well.

I was able to go home that evening which was wonderful and I was able to start breast feeding on Thursday night because I hadn't taken any pain meds after the general anesthesia wore off from my surgery the night before.

We came home to two very excited boys who had decorated our house, throwing a birthday party for baby Schafer!  It was very cute!

So basically I went to the hospital and traded an organ to get a baby...
I didn't want ANY pain meds for the birth and ended up with an epidural, Morphine, Demerol, Fentanyl and general anesthesia.
I ended up with post natal recovery, emergency surgery to remove my gallbladder and hernia surgery.

Let's just say I'm very efficient. :)