16 pounds 4 ounces of....

Cute, wild, crazy, adorable Eliza!

Eliza is already 15 months old! I can't believe how fast the time has flown or how much she is maturing. She's talking and signing more words every day. She's playing and interacting more with Hazel. She's climbing on everything.

Notice I say maturing, not growing up. She really isn't growing up quickly. At her 15th month appointment she had grown a bit taller and was up for 29 1/2 inches (15th percentile). But she only gained about 8 oz since her one year appointment bring her to an itty bitty 16 lbs 4 oz (she is well below the 1st percentile - like 3/4 of an inch below the bottom of their little graph). But she is growing and so the doctor is not concerned. As for her blood, the final results from all of her blood work confirm what the hematologist told me the in the office - her body shows signs of inflammation but the test is non-specific meaning that they don't know what is causing the inflammation. It could have been anything from a virus to a chronic condition. But her blood counts are recovering and are now on the "very low end of normal." So the plan is still to re-check her blood in three months to see if the anemia and the inflammation have resolved or if they need to further investigate the cause of the inflammation.

Health aspects aside, our little E is thriving! First off, she climbs, all the time, on everything. She has learned to climb on the kitchen chairs and then up to the table. I turn my head to stir dinner and next thing I know she's standing on the table. She uses toy crates as step-stools to try and climb shelves. She climbs up on the couch and our bed with ease. We are going to go crazy trying to keep her safe until she learns not to climb up things. I just hope we can avoid broken bones or stitches until then.

Eliza is the cutest things I've ever seen. My mom says Eliza reminds her of a precious moments doll and I have to agree. Her petite body, pale skin, and gorgeous blue eyes make her a good precious moments look alike. She is much more cuddly than Hazel and will frequently give us hugs and kisses (we love that!). Her signing is also adorable! My personal favorite is toothbrush which she signs by biting down on her index finger than shaking her head side-to-side. So cute!

Little E is an adventurer. Today at the park I had to laugh. Hazel is still afraid to go down slides and always wants me to pull her leg, catch her at the bottom, etc. But there's Eliza, climbing up the stairs and sliding down a small slide on her tummy. Over, and over, and over again:)

 Cute, crazy little Eliza. Keep up the adorableness! We love you!


On a completely unrelated note.... look at our pumpkin harvest this year! 10 pumpkins! (one isn't in the picture). Four of them were pie pumpkins that made about the equivalent of 8 small cans of pumpkin puree- yum! The other six will get carved. The two green ones were late bloomers so we'll see if they're orange in time for Halloween. If not, Thanksgiving decorations maybe? That was a few dollars in seeds very well spent! 

A Niece!

My sister Gabby had her baby about a month ago and made me an aunt for the first time. Brenna Natalie Larsen is adorable. And big! She was 10 lbs 2 ozs and 22 inches at birth. She's a doll and the girls LOVE her! Brenna's 3 1/2 weeks old in these pictures.

She was happy until right when I took the picture. Hazel was saying "She's squishing my hand!" haha.

Me and Brenny (as Hazel likes to call her)

I give Brenna about 3 months until she's the same size as Eliza:) But, that's not hard to do.

Hazel's Teeth, Part 2

 Poor Hazel's tooth saga continues (see the initial post here). When Hazel knocked out her tooth the dentist warned us to watch for signs of trauma to the surrounding teeth. Sadly, about a month after she knocked out her tooth the other front tooth started turning grey. The tooth had been hit hard enough to kill the roots and so they had to pull it.

Here she is the morning of her appointment telling me how she would be brave:) She was brave - with the help of the conscious sedation:) And she won't hate the dentist when she goes back.

She looks so much older to me without her teeth! And yes, we have been teaching her "All I Want for Christmas is My Two Front Teeth." Couldn't resist! 

Amazingly she does just fine without her teeth. Her speech is normal, she eats corn on the cob, etc. She has changed her mind though and agreed to get "fake teeth" put in, but that won't be for a few months. 

It will certainly be a good "how I lost my first (and second) tooth" story!

Great News

Eliza had her appointment at Primary's and we received great news. Her blood levels are stabilizing!!!!

The doctor explained how her previous three lab draws had shown a worrisome trend. Each time her red blood cells and platelets has decreased and her white blood cells had increased (which is the trend observed with leukemia). He wanted to just draw her blood and see where she was at. While her red blood cell count is still a bit low, her blood levels were more normal. For now, he sees nothing wrong with her! His best guess was that her body was battling an extended "inflammation" in her bone marrow and that she is now recovering from it. They will just check her again in three months.

Talk about a huge sigh of relief! We feel so blessed and pray her body continue to fight off whatever is going on.

Little Miss Manners and Little Miss Climber

It's about time for a normal post around here with some fun pictures. These girls - I LOVE them! They are the cutest things and are becoming such good friends. I love to see them play, and laugh, and, yes, get in trouble together.

Hazel has become my little Miss Manners. She definitely has inherited my tendency to enforce the rules. There's a video of me in my first dance recital moving another little girl to the correct place on the floor:) And such was my childhood. Well, Hazel has the same gene. She is always reminding us of things like, "Mom, food stays in the kitchen" or  "Eliza,  you need to wash your hands" or my personal favorite "Mom, stupid is not a nice word. You need to say sorry." Thanks Hazel for keeping us on our toes and making us better people:)

Hazel has also become obsessed with dressing up. We've gone from only wearing dresses to only wearing costumes unless we're leaving the house in which case she'll put on a dress. But never pants!

 One last nugget of Hazel cuteness... Some days she decides that she doesn't need a nap and reads books through nap time instead. One those days, I always find her like this by 4 o'clock...

Now Little E, otherwise known as little Miss Climber. This is our little monkey. Here are just a few shots to give you an idea... 

 

 

She's also a skilled mess maker. Hazel has always been such a girly, girl it's been an adjustment for us having a climbing, mess maker:) 

  

But mostly Eliza is just adorable. She is learning more words and signs every day. I love watching their language take off at this age. This week she signed several things I didn't even know she knew - book, bath, and car to name a few.  Her new favorite word has been "Yaya" for our dog Kiara whom Eliza has decided is her own personal garbage disposal. She literally walks around the house with unwanted food in her hand calling for "Yaya, Yaya."

 

We are so blessed to have such sweet, wonderful girls! 

A New Path

I've put off writing this post for over a week now because I can't seem to put my feelings down in to words. But, we need records of the good times as well as the difficult times....

I recently posted this scripture in connection with the amazingly, perfect job Mike was offered teaching at UVU. "... and ye shall know that it is by me that ye are led." (1 Nephi 17:13) It rang so true two weeks ago when the Lord led us to the wonderful blessing of that job. Last week it rang true as we have been led to the beginning of a rough road.

I need to preface this story a bit.... At Eliza's 9 month check up the routine hematocrit test revealed that she was anemic. Many breastfed babies are and so she was started on an iron supplement without any worry. She had labs drawn again after 6 weeks and she was still anemic so the doctor said just kept her on the supplement a while longer. At her one year check up they did an in office hematocrit again and it was still low (a low hematocrit = low percentage of red blood cells = still anemic). Again the doctor was not worried but said to supplement for one more month then we'll test her again. Because of the move and everything it ended up being more like 6 weeks before I took her to the hospital to have her labs drawn (I was partially putting it off because I HATE holding her down and hearing her sad cry while they draw her blood).

The very next morning after drawing labs I got a phone call from the doctor saying Eliza was still anemic. By now the iron supplements should have corrected the problem and so they knew it was not iron-deficiency anemia. So they wanted to run more tests to rule out other causes of anemia (apparently there are over 400 causes). More labs and another call from the doctor. I knew the moment the doctor called me with the second round of results that things were more serious than anyone, including the doctors, imagined they would be. I could just hear it in her voice. She said many of Eliza's test came back normal. In fact, the only abnormal finding was she had an elevated level of one kind of hemoglobin. She told me how they (the nurse practitioner and the doctor) were unfamiliar with results like this so she had called a hematologist oncologist at Primary Children's Medical Center in SLC.

My heart stopped when she said the word oncologist. My daughter's blood work warranted a call to the oncologist? She went on to explain that the specialist at Primary's believed that the anemia is being caused some sort of problem with Eliza's bone marrow. There are several possible causes of the bone marrow not producing enough blood cells - genetic disorders, auto-immune disorders, and possibly even cancer. Eliza would need to be seen by the hematologist oncologist at Primary's so they can do further testing and pin point the exact cause. Her treatment will depend on what they find. She wanted to stress to me that her blood work did not raise any "major red flags" so as to warrant admitting her as an emergency patient so it would be a few weeks before we could get in.

Today I finally a received a call from Primary's to schedule her appointment which will be for next Thursday. It made of a very long, emotional week and a half of worrying, wishing for the best, fearing the worst, etc.

It was last Tuesday I received the lab results from the doctor and thankfully Mike and I had plans to attend the temple that night. I had briefly Googled things until I scared myself silly with some of the possibilities. I repeatedly saw words like blood transfusions, bone marrow transplants, life long treatment, etc associated with things I was finding. Like our doctor said, there are still dozens of things it could be. I quickly shut of the computer realizing that knowing all of the possibilities could not possibly make me feel better. I was so thankful for the temple that night. It's peace has never meant so much to me before.

In the temple I felt overwhelming peace but not in the way I expected. I was hoping for the "everything is going to be alright" type of peace. Instead the peace I felt was more of a reassurance that if I remained faithful, this trial would not be more than I could bear. I also felt the realization that, like the scripture quoted above, the Lord was leading me. Earlier in the same verse it reads, "And I will also be your light in the wilderness; and I will prepare the way before you, if it so be that ye shall keep my commandments" We are lead down so many paths in this life. Some of them are wonderful and smooth while others are full of rocks and thorns. But, we never have to walk a path alone. We will  always, always be led if we obey the commandments. I realized that the Lord is leading me down this rough path just as He has led us down so many other paths in the past. All we have to do is remain faithful.

The time between now and next Thursday cannot pass soon enough. Some moments I look at our happy little E toddling around and climbing on everything and think there couldn't possibly be anything wrong with her. But then there are times like this morning when I look at her and I can see she is sick. Behind her sweet smile you can tell something is not right in her blood. Her skin is too pale, her eye are too tired/baggy, she gets overly cranky/clingy easily.

She's a fighter though. Whatever she is facing, we know she will be so strong. My prayer is that we can be as strong and faithful as she is.

Family Photos

One of Mike's mission companions took family pictures for us. None of our group shots turned out with all of us looking but guess that's what you get with kids:) We LOVE them! Enjoy!

Brigham City Temple Open House

 Two weeks ago we made it up to the Brigham City Temple open house. Every temple is open to the public to tour for several weeks before it is dedicated and only worthy, adult members can enter. Hazel was SO excited when we told her she could go in the temple. She said, "But I'm not old enough to get married." It was like a dream come true for her. The temple is beautiful and I'm so thankful we had the opportunity to take the girls!

Now I can't wait for the dedication in a few weeks! (For more information on temples visit this link)

"I have a window!"

Of the two girls, Hazel has always been the more cautious. I never had problems with her running away with me, it was only this summer that she had the courage to go down the slide by herself, etc. Eliza on the other hand seems to have no fear and climbs everything. My family had even begun guessing how old Eliza would be before she broke a bone. Much to everyone's surprise it was Hazel who had our family's first emergency...

Thursday afternoon I took the girls to the park. They were having a great time. Remember those toys with the spring on the bottom that you ride and rock back and forth? This park had a double one that the girls were loving. Right before we left Hazel got on with another girl at the park. They were rocking pretty fast and loving every second of it. But then poor Hazel hit her face on the handle bar. I grabbed her off knowing she would be upset only to see blood pouring from her mouth! Surprisingly I stayed totally calm and hauled them both off to the car. When I finally got her to open her mouth I saw one of her front teeth was cracked nearly in half. The next time she would open it for me, it was gone (swallowed I think). Poor little girl!

Luckily our dentist was still in the office at 5:30 when I called and agreed to see her. The tooth had been knocked out cleanly so they didn't have to pull any of it (thankfully). And the teeth around it weren't lose so they should make it.

Poor Hazel was so traumatized by the whole experience though. She literally screamed at the top of her lungs for the first hour and cried the rest of the night. Then for two days she didn't want to close her mouth or swallow anything so she ended up drooling all over. I convinced her to drink by buying her a princess cup and telling her we would take it back if she didn't use it. Luckily that did the trick:)

 

She even held her mouth open while she was sleeping.

Thankfully she is back to normal now. She has even embraced her lost tooth. Yesterday she was running around singing "I lost my tooth! I lost my tooth!" and "I have a window!" She also thoroughly enjoyed her money from the tooth fairy.

The dentist said they can put in a permanent retainer with a fake tooth but it sound horribly uncomfortable and Hazel is so traumatized by the dentist I'm sure they'd have to knock her out to do it. If at some point she decides she wants it we'll get it for her, but I'm not going to force her. It will just be a long 3 to 4 years waiting for it to grow back!

Plot Twists

"... and ye shall know that it is by me that ye are led." (1 Nephi 17:13)

This scripture best summarizes how I feel about recent events in our family. The Lord is constantly looking out for us and leading us to the experiences that will bless us and allow us to grow.

I posted here about how Mike had accepted a job teaching ASL at SLCC and we had struggled with the decision of whether to move in to the "new" house here in Provo or move up to Salt Lake. Ultimately we felt that staying here was right. About a week before SLCC was set to start, the section of ASL Mike was assigned to only had 6 students enrolled so they cancelled his class. While I normally would have felt saddened and upset by such a situation instead I felt A) immense peace that this was a blessing and B) gratitude that we had been guided to remain here in Provo.I know that Mike experienced similar feelings of comfort and assurance.

A few days later Mike was contacted for an interview for an ASL teaching position at BYU. Instantly I thought, "this must be why the SLCC class didn't work out." Imagine my surprise when he was not offered the job at BYU. However, once again we felt no hint of disappointment. Only peace that everything was in the Lord's hands.

The next evening (Friday night) at 10:45 Mike received an email... He was offered a job at UVU teaching two ASL classes! No interview, just offered the job (which was to start just 3 days later). I was shocked and amazed and wondered if I would wake up thinking the whole thing was a dream. Instead of driving all the way to Salt Lake every day, he will only have to drive to Orem. Instead of teaching one class, he will teach two. Instead of teaching level two, he will teach level four. Instead of teaching at a community college, he gets to teach at a University. I am in awe and humbled by the amazing blessings that have come our way.

None of this was simply "good luck" or "turns of fate." The Lord's hand was certainly in the entire process leading us to the best outcome for our family. What a wonderful blessing!

Mike starting teaching today. I'm a little sad I didn't get a picture of him on his "first day of school":( My sweet hubby is all grown up and teaching college! Professor Ballard, I like it!