Happy Birthday to me--sort of.

I turned 1 on Thanksgiving, but there wasn't much of a celebration. This is how I spent most of my birthday:

I was miserable. I started getting sick on Tuesday afternoon and just kept getting worse. I had a fever on and off, a phlegmy cough, no appetite (highly unusual!), and I couldn't stay awake for more than an hour at a time. Even when I was awake I didn't want to do anything except sit in mommy's lap. That is completely unlike me--normally I can't sit still and love to explore. Cuddling isn't really my thing. I slept through almost my entire birthday--no cake, no presents, nothing. Finally at 10pm, mommy and daddy woke me up to change my diaper and try to get me to eat something. They thought I seemed a little better since I wanted to walk around, so they helped me open one of my presents--it was from Grandma and Grandpa de Jong.

Less than twenty minutes later I was ready for bed again. Mommy and Daddy thought they might have to spend another Thanksgiving in the hospital, but when they called the 24 hour nurse she said I could wait to see the doctor until Friday.

My annual visit to the hospital

When I woke up Friday morning, I seemed to be feeling much better. My fever was down and I was walking around, so mommy and daddy thought I was over the hump of whatever was making me sick, and decided not to call the doctor. However, after my first nap, I started going downhill again and slept almost the whole rest of the day. At 4:30, daddy saw me sitting up in my crib and got me up to feed me. I barely drank my bottle and could hardly keep my eyes open. When mommy took my temperature, it was 104. They took me straight to the ER.

At the hospital, they found out I had pneumonia. I got two shots of antibiotics (OUCH!) and they decided to keep me overnight for observation. I do not like hospitals. It's so hard to get any sleep when nurses keep coming into your room every couple of hours to stick a little rod up your butt, a cold metal thing on your chest and hook you up to some machine to check your heart rate and blood oxygen level. It was a rough night. Luckily Mommy was able to stay with me and I got to go home by noon on Saturday.




Now I just have a yucky cough and I have to take this nasty tasting medicine for ten days. But at least I'm back to my normal happy and energetic self!

The funny thing about all of this is that I had the same doctor in the ER as I did a year ago when I went in because of my projectile vomitting and found out I had Pyloric Stenosis and needed surgery. This time, before we headed up to my hospital room for the night, the doctor said, "I guess I'll see you in a year." Let's hope not!

Can't a guy get a little privacy?

Daddy can't take a hint. Apparently shutting the door in his face umpteen times didn't help him get the fact that I didn't want him in the room. And he says I need to be told things more than once!

Note from Kristen

Ty said I could take a few lines of his blog for myself--thanks, bud! I've been tagged twice now, so I guess it's about time I posted six things about myself. I'm supposed to post 6 facts about myself and tag 6 other friends to do the same. You lucky six will find out who you are at the end.

1. I love to try out new recipes. The Food Network is usually the first channel I flip to when I turn on the TV. Unfortunately I don’t get to experiment very often because Brian’s not a fan of new recipes and the things I make only turn out well half the time. I’m hoping to train Ty early to like the new things I make.

2. I love Dancing with the Stars. I watch it every Monday night and even vote online for my favorites. Brian and I even have to tickets for the Dancing with the Stars tour Seattle performance for our wedding anniversary in December! (What a good husband!)

3. It has always been a dream of mine to publish a children’s book someday. I even wrote a full length chapter book when I was in third grade. Unfortunately, I haven’t written anything in a very long time as my inspiration is lacking. You’d think having taught elementary school for ten years that I might have some sort of great idea for a book. But all I’ve done so far is read tons of children’s literature, in awe of the storylines authors are able to concoct. Maybe someday…

4. I think most people know this about me already, but I love to make cards and recently got into scrapbooking. I fought scrapbooking for a long time because I thought it would be easier to just stick your pictures in a photo album and call it good. But your creative juices flow more freely and it’s a lot easier to scrapbook when you have a cute new baby as your subject! And with my calling as YW Secretary I get to make all the birthday cards for the girls.

5. I hate dusting. I will vacuum, scrub bathrooms, clean the kitchen, and do laundry, but dusting rarely gets done. It just seems like such a bother to pick up all those little things you have on your shelf to run a cloth over the shelf in two seconds and then have to put everything back the way it was. Next time you come to my house, don’t look too closely at our end tables and piano!

6. And since I can’t think of anything else I want the whole wide world to know…here’s a random factoid—I was a Spelling Bee champion in elementary and middle school. I participated in the Bee in 4th-8th grade and won the district competition three years in a row which, I believe, is a district record to this day. (Although having made that known, I will be extremely embarrassed if I find any misspellings on this posting!)

Tag! You're it: Liz, Danette, Ashlee, Tiffany, Carrie, and Kristie. Sorry if any of you have been tagged before, but I don't know that many people with blogs!

Future Mozart

Sleeping or sitting?

Wow! It's been a while since mommy or daddy posted anything about me. Apparently the batteries in their camera died and unbeknownst to them, the charger for the batteries was mysteriously unplugged (I kept hearing my name come up during this conversation...). Anyway, they haven't been able to take pictures for about a week and just barely got the batteries charged and ready to go. So mommy took these pics of me sleeping.

When mommy put me down for my nap this morning, I was not happy and immediately sat up and began bawling my head off. But apparently I really was tired (how can mommy ALWAYS tell???), because I fell asleep in the middle of sitting and crying.

Happy Halloween!

This was my first Halloween. Mommy and Daddy kept stuffing me in this brown furry suit. It was nice and warm, but a little strange. At first they tried to put me in a white furry outfit with orange feet, but it was too small and tight so I pulled at it and cried until they took it off.

Daddy took me outside on his shoulders to look for trick-or-treaters. He was really excited for kids to come to our house and ask for candy. Apparently no one came to our other house the past few years, but now that we've moved, there are kids in our neighborhood and Daddy was sure we would get trick-or-treaters. He was right! Every time the doorbell rang, Daddy would jump up off the couch and run into the living room to answer the door. We ran out of candy and Daddy sent Mommy to the store to get more. We ran out of that too and finally turned off the lights when the last set of trick-or-treaters came at 9:40. We had over 60 kids in all!(Although Mommy put me to bed after the first few came and I know all of this from listening very carefully to their conversations the next day.) Daddy can't wait to take me trick-or-treating next year--although I have a sneaking suspicion it will be more for him than for me.