Bear Lake!

Over UEA weekend, we were able to spend a few days at Bear Lake. It was SO gorgeous the entire time we were there. It was a little chilly most mornings, but the sun always came out and warmed everything up. We played lots of games, went to the pool, and enjoyed my side of the family for a few days, including the Tingey's. Family Picture.
We were on a long 4-wheeler drive up the south side of Bear Lake with a big group of us. It was Jared and I; Quinn and Jaxson; Annie and Tony; Carmen, Sarah, and Tasha; Josh and Kailey; and Zach. It was tons of fun and it was great to sneak away from the baby for a few minutes. Their is not very many chances that I get to take advantage of seeing my husband and no baby in the same time frame. So I definitely jumped at the oppertunity!

Jaxson and Quinn. (Dumb and Dumber)

Jared and I

Quinn and Jaxson again.

Jack and his cute bear slippers

Jack refused to sleep in his pack'n'play, so here is he is snuggled up in my blankets, on my bed. Spoiled much?

His new baby prison.

He is happy in there is this picture... not so much when he actually was supposed to go to sleep in it. He threw a FIT!!!

It was a great vacation. We definitely needed to get out of the house. Jared and I got to sneak out again for a moment, so we took the bikes and rode down to get a ever classic raspberry shake from the best shake place ever, "La Beaus" (I think that's how you spell it). Funny story, Jared ended up getting a chopped up fly in his. (DISGUSTING!!!) He wasn't quite sure what it was. He thought maybe it was pepper or something until a piece he was trying to pick out was clearly a wing. I wanted to barf! It was pretty bad. I felt bad that he had ate through most of the shake. So needless to say, we both got our shakes AND our money back on that one!

It was quite the adventure!!

5 whole months!

Time has really been flying by! I think I say that like every month... but it really has! Jack now weighs 17 pounds even. And we know that because yesterday we had another trip to the doctors, with Jack's 3rd ear infection. All in less than a 2 month time frame. I think I see tubes for this kid in the near future... Yikes. Poor boy. He does.not.sleep. EVER! So neither does Momma. It has been a rough couple of weeks. Just when we get the acid reflux under control, we get an ear infection. When we were at the doctors yesterday, Dr Pete, (which is a family friend), gave me a bottle of Xanax and another antibiotic for Jack. It was desperately needed, since I had a meltdown at the doctors yesterday. But I am pretty sure it was just lack of sleep again. But last night I was able to get a little more sleep, which was good.

Okay, off my soapbox again.

Jack is rolling everywhere!! He can't leave anything alone that is near his hands. He grabs onto EVERYTHING! He giggles about lots of things. We sing the nursery rhymes "Jack be Nimble, Jack be Quick" and "Patty Cake". He thinks it's hilarious when we do.

His feet are SO ticklish, and giggles almost everytime you touch them.

He is still waking up at least 3 times at night. He has been eating a little bit of sweet potatoes and bananas every once in a while. He HIGHLY prefers the milk. Or what I think is mostly just for the boob. (He is a boy, right?)

He is such a fun little man, as long as he doesn't have an ear infection or the reflux is acting up.

And I still can't believe its been 5 months!!!

And here are some pictures again. :)

Happy Boy!

Rolling...

Being a big boy... always wanting to stand.

Laughing at Grandpa

Jack and Papa

Jared and Jack

Grandpa and Jack... watching something "Manly"

Smiley boy:)

Oh and this month was the big 2-1 for me!! Woo Hoo! I'm really starting to feel old. We celebrated at the Timbermine Restaurant with my family, and Olive Garden with the Rackham's. Jared bought me an Ipod touch with the camera and video. (SO HAPPY!) Just what I wanted. I also got my hair done (present from my parents) and the usually $100 from the Rackham's. We went to the State Fair as well, to hang out with the Rackham's for my Birthday as well. Overall it was an awesome Birthday. I couldn't be more happy with my little family and of course my awesome family and in-laws. :)

Moving Jack

Lots of Jack.... 4 month fun

So here is Jack's happenings for the last months or so... he is going to be a handful. This little monkey is ALL over the place. I think he gets bored easily. He wants to be able to MOVE constantly. You know that song "Move it, Move it" in Madagascar 2... Yeah that is his theme song we decided. His new thing is to grab the camera when you take a picture of him.

Beating up on daddy when he came home from school.

Smiley little man. He loves to laugh and giggle lots now.

Here we are at my cousin Shalei's weddng over Labor Day weekend this year. All dressed up!

His new favorite seat of choice! The sink.

Smile.

Cowboy Jack! Sportin the belly.

Chloe decided to take a nap with Jack the other morning. Stupid cat.

Overall boy.

At El Parrall. YUM!

Tired Boy.

Waking up daddy!

Happy Boy!

Going fishin with Cousin Wyatt!

Binky Boy.

Cool Baby!

Loves his hands.

Helping daddy. Of course.

Friends!

So this is catching up from last month, when I was way too busy to blog. Jack and I were able to go visit a great friend of mine, Lisa and baby Brooklyn. It was so fun to see them!! We got a few really cute pictures of the babes too. Miss you guys already!! We are coming to visit again soon! :)

4 Months!!

So it has officially been four months with this little man. And Boy has it been crazy, as you can tell from my last post.

We have the Acid Reflux under control as much as we possibly can.

We found out just a few days ago, he has gained 1 pound in a week, so we had to up his dosage of the zantac. Silly little boy is getting SO big. He was starting to do the arching and not eating thing again, that's why we headed back to the doctors.

At his 4 month check up, he is in the 71% for his height. He is now 25.5 inches long.

He is in the 61% for his weight at 15 pounds 7 ounces. As of yesterday, he is now 16 pounds, 4 ounces. My child is a chunk!!

He did SO well with his shots. Only screamed for a minute, then he was like GET ME OUT OF HERE!!

He is in all his 6 month clothes, he has grown out of most of his 3-6 month clothes already. Sad.

He is definitely not little anymore.

He experienced his 2nd ear infection in a month. That was definitely not fun. We are finally of the antibiotics for that.

This kid is a mover! He is constantly rolling, scooting, grabbing things, and just plain wiggly. He loves to move, and hates to be confined in any space.

When I go to pick him up in the morning he is usually in a completely different spot and is smiling and laughing when I find him.

Little stinker.

He has tons more hair on his head and I have been able to put his hair in a mowhawk, which I absolutely love. He is now eating rice cereal at night's, and isnt so sure he likes it quite yet. He loves the milk lots more.

He has learned how to growl, and growls at EVERYTHING!! It is SO funny. He is a chatterbox. He is always making noise.

He is sleeping in his crib now, and loves it there. I probably should have put it up sooner for him to sleep in, but oh well.

He prefers to sleep in his bed for naps and bedtime. Not anywhere else.

He has been an absolute joy now that he is not screaming constantly.

Thank goodness!

We love you baby Jack!!

A cure?

So... this post will mostly be my whining for the last couple of months. I thought maybe I was going insane for a while. Almost ready to jump off a bridge crazy.

My little bundle of joy has been screaming for the last, mmm 3 weeks or so. He has been an especially fussy little man, but I thought, "Oh it's just colic, it will pass". or "Oh it's just gas, it will get better after he poops/farts". Well things kept getting worse after a few weeks. It has been to the point were I was up almost every hour at night, trying to feed/soothe/cure ANYTHING I could for this screaming baby. Nothing helped.

The thing that makes me the most crazy is, everytime I took him to the doctor, they looked at me like I was a retard. Especially cause once we were there, my child was a flippin angel.

They just told me, that he was just a "fussy baby", that he gets more uptight than most.

I really wasn't that convinced.

He was really fussy around 6 to 8 weeks old, never really knew why, but we just sort of dealt with it. He would get really constipated, which we thought was really weird, since he is a breastfed baby. I did everything to cut things out of my diet like dairy, vegetables, anything that I thought hurt his stomach.

Nothing really seemed to help. And since he was just a "fussy baby" I just put that in my head and moved on.

I'm sorry, but I am a big believer that when a baby/child is SCREAMING, there is something wrong. End of story.

My child was SCREAMING, and the doctor just said that it was the "purple period of crying".

I am sorry again, but "purple period" my ass.

On saturday the 6th of August, I finally broke down, took him to the urgent care by our house and asked if they could figure out something.

They looked in his ears and said his right ear was slightly red and they saw some mucous in his throat. They treated him with the shot antibiotic and also gave us an Rx for amoxicillin.

Well, that made things COMPLETELY worse. I really don't remember sleeping for about 5 days.

I was dying. Jared was dying. We were ready to sell our baby to the Indians!

Well after the 5th day of this screaming, we took him to another doctor who I actually knew from working at Granger Medical Clinic, who agreed to look in his ears to see if they got worse. Basically to check and figure out why he was still screaming.

She looked at him, and this time he was crying and fussing the whole time we were there. Especially when she would touch his stomach. She wanted us to go up to Primary Children's hopsital and get some X-ray's and do some labs to check for other issues. She was worried that he had some kind of blackage in his intestines, or something along the lines of that.

Well we drove up there, and of course, perfect angel when we were there. Fell asleep without fussing (this NEVER happens), talked to the doctor, and acted completely fine.

The nurse was really nice though and said that it happens all the time. She laughed and said that they must have magic doors or something. They make children better all the sudden.

Well, all I can say is I was about to drop him off and leave him there. Maybe I could get some sleep that way?

Well they did an X-ray of his stomach, did a catheter to check his urine.

Urine came back negative. The X-ray did show some areas of gassy bubbles, and one small buldge/pocket of liquid that they thought was just a watery stool, since the amoxicillin did give him horrible diarrhea.

They said keep an eye on him and bring him back if he is still being awful.

Well the next day he was a whole new baby. No we didn't give him anything, he just acted so much better. So then I thought, maybe it was just the amoxicillin that made him be so awful.

Well the next day rolled around, and we were back to square one. Yes, he was screaming again.

I was so upset. I really didn't know what to do at this point.

So we waited through the weekend to see if he was still just "sick" and it would pass. Well it didn't.

We took him back to his primary care doctor, who examined him again. He decided we should try Zantac on a whim pretty much, as see how he does. I was willing to try anything at this point, so we went with it.

So the last 2 days, he has been different. I can't quite tell if he is getting better or not. There's been a few times I can tell he is much happier, and then he starts crying or screaming again.

Babies are hard.

That is my conclusion.

I love my little monkey so much. He really has been a blessing. I am praying that I make it through the next few months without going completely insane. Also, I am hoping that as this Zantac gets into his system that it will possibly be the cure to this craziness.

I would love to sleep more than 3 to 4 hours at a time at night. I would love to see my baby laugh and giggle tons more, without him being in pain. I would love to go on a stroller ride, go to the park, go to the store, ANYTHING and not have him be screaming. That is my ultimate goal, to make the pain go away for him.

I would also kill to have our own place again. I think I may go completely insane having my mother, sister, brothers, and dad on my back about everyting. Don't get me wrong, I LOVE my family and everything they have done for us. But, it's just not the same as having your own place. When your married, you just do things differently than your parents do, or your siblings do. I hate to say it, but I am super jealous of all the couples that didn't lose there jobs in this recession, and have been able to live in their own place, with their own lives, and you don't have a younger brother eating all your food that you just bought. Jared has been searching for a job for quite a few months now, and all I can say is it SUCKS!

Okay, so I will get off my soap box now.

On a happy note, school starts next week for Jared and I. I am quite nervous to go back again, but I know I only have a year and half left. Then I will have my Bachelor's and be DONE! Until I decide to finish my Master's, that is.

I will get there. I have plenty of time, right?

I will post pictures when I get a free moment again. I do have some really cute pictures, but when I have more energy I will post them.

For now, enjoy the whining! :)