April - Country Music, Kam's first Easter and another surgery

Back in November Marie told me that George Strait, Reba McEntire and LeAnn Womack were coming to Salt Lake for a concert on April 2. George Strait and Reba are two of my absolute most favorite people in Country music. I have ALWAYS wanted to see them in concert. George doesn't come to Utah very often (maybe every 10 years) so I knew that we had to jump at the opportunity. We wanted everyone to come (all of the Nate's siblings) but it ended up that it was just as the parents going so we jumped online and bought tickets before it sold out. We bought the cheapest ones so we were in the upper bowl at the Energy Solutions Arena but the seats were still fabulous. We had a good view and could see everything.

LeAnn started. She only sang for 30 minutes and the band was so loud we couldn't hardly hear her. But she was still great. I like her music and she was fun to watch.


Reba came out after that. She sang for almost just under 2 hours and put on an awesome show! She sang new and old songs so it was great to hear the old stuff. She ended with the song Fancy as her encore song. She left and for a minute we didn't think she was coming back but then a the music video started showing on the jumbo tron and then a really old fashioned taxi drove out onto the floor and she got out in a sparkly red dress and sang Fancy while the music video kept playing. It was really cool! Marie said that Reba used to put on a HUGE show with tons of props and costume changes and stuff. That would have been cool to see but she definitely put on a good show for us.




Melissa Peterman joined Reba during the show and they did a little impromptu skit. She is so funny! If you don't know who she is, she plays Barbara Jean on the REBA show on tv. She also hosts the "Singing Bee" right now. She is hilarious and her and Reba play off of each other so good. She came out with a Jazz hat and a Jazz flag as a cape and a jersey on. She of course threw each item into the audience as they bantered back and forth. I think the funniest thing was she was holding a Budweiser bottle in her hand and taking sips from it. She looked at the guitarist and handed it to him and said "have a few of those and I'll start to look like Faith Hill". Hilarious! Then she handed it to Reba and said "look at that... The Queen of Country is holding the King of Beers!" Those two are just too funny.



George came out last. He sang for about 2 hours too. It was a little over 4 hours of country music! Some people don't like that he just hangs out with his guitar and sings but that's what I love. I love that he's just natural like that. He has seriously the most amazing voice! He sang good old songs and new ones too like Reba did. I'm pretty sure there isn't a single George Strait song that I hate. There are 1 or 2 that aren't my favorites but I still listen to them. One thing he pointed out was that he was singing a lot of #1 hits and the next song he was going to do wasn't one, but it's one of his favorite. It's was Amarillo By Mornin'. I had no idea that wasn't a #1! I thought for sure it was! That's one of my most favorite songs of his. Oh well... I'm just glad I got to hear him perform it live. He is just amazing to watch and listen to. I'm so glad we went!





On April 15 Kamry had to have tubes put in her ears. She got another ear infection (not as bad as the first one) but at that point I decided (along with the Dr and Nate) that we just didn't want her to deal with it anymore and we should put tubes in her ears. It was an easy breezy surgery - seriously in and out in 15 minutes but the thing that bugged me was that it was her 3rd surgery before her 1st birthday. She was such a trooper through it. A little later in the day after she had a good nap and you wouldn't have even known she had just had surgery that morning.

Nate was sitting by her on the bed when the anesthesiologist came in and was talking to us. All of a sudden we hear a noise and Nate seriously grabbed her right as her feet were leaving the bed. She would have landed on her head if he hadn't caught her. It's amazing how fast your parent instincts are. He seriously looked away from her for 2 seconds to look at the anesthesiologist. Luckily he caught her and everything was fine. Whew!

April 20: Nate and I went and got the ultrasound to find out what we're having. Darn baby would tell us! It kept it's feet crossed under its butt so we couldn't see the "necessary area" to see the sex of the baby. It was frustrating but we tried for about 40 minutes to get it to move and it just wouldn't. I even got up and walked around, emptied my bladder and came back. Still no luck. I guess we'll just have to try again. I for sure want to know what it is because if it's a boy I need to prepare myself with some boy clothes. Oh well... I guess we'll find out later.

Kamry's first Easter was fun. I got her this cute little basket from Smiths Marketplace and filled it with snacks that she can gum and eat. There were little cheese puffs (almost like cheetos), Apple Wagon Wheels and Yogurt drops. I also got her one of those little cups you can put treats in and she can reach in and get them but it's not supposed to let anything spill out. Hopefully it works. I guess we'll see. She had a ton of fun opening her gift too. She was good at grabbing the paper and ripping. She would just get distracted and try and eat the wrapping paper instead of continuously ripping at the presents. We just kept pulling the paper out of her hands when she would rip it off and then she would start over. It was cute to watch.


She is going to be crawling so soon it's insane. She started getting herself on her belly and she can now roll from her back to her belly like a champ. So full of life. It's awesome!


This was one of her gifts.


She loves the little piano. The center part lights up when the music plays and she grabs at it. It's so funny!


Daddy was playing with her one night on the couch and she was just all over the place. It was hilarious to watch him. He doesn't get to see her really active like that all the time so he was just getting a kick out of it. We let her stay up until 10 that night because she was having so much fun.


On April 23 we went to Ogden for a Memorial Service for a guy that Nate worked with that passed away. It was crazy. I think he was maybe 32 and one day he didn't show up for work. Joe Cardall went to check on him and when his truck was home but he didn't answer the door he called the cops. They went in and found Jimmy dead at the kitchen table. Preliminary autopsy showed it was some abnormality with his brain. We haven't got the final results yet from his brother but hopefully they can pinpoint what happened. He was so nice. He was just at our house talking to Nate for a while the day before it happened. He came a couple weekends before and helped us tile the kitchen too. He also gave Nate this really cool gun from like the 1870's. It's stock is broken and needs to be fixed, but it is an awesome gun. He was a really nice guy and I know Nate is going to miss him. He really liked Jimmy. But his brother put on a really nice Memorial (I think it's also called a Wake). They had a video thing of Jimmy going and they displayed a lot of items that he had made from wood and stuff. He was really talented.

Anyway, since we were going to be in Ogden anyway we took Kamry back to the NICU at McKay Dee to see everyone. It was a really busy day so we didn't stay long and we only saw a couple of nurses that we recognized. We're going to take her back again on the evening shift sometime to see them again. They all couldn't believe how big she was and how good she looked and of course they thought she was just adorable. We also donated Kamry's preemie clothes to them so they were excited about that. I kept one outfit for her memory box, but gave everything else.



April has been a pretty eventful month. We are also moving back into our house this coming weekend. The sale we had fell through so we've decided that we might as well be living in it since we are still paying the mortgage. It will be good to get Kamry home again and get into a routine at her own home. I graduate next month and am looking for a job so it's going to be a busy life when I get a job.

Merry Christmas, Happy New Year and lots more...

I can't believe how fast time flies and how easy it is to put off updating your blog. Well we've got a few months to cover so here goes...

Saturday December 4: I had volunteered to wrap presents at Kmart for the Shop with a Cop event that happens every year. If you haven't heard of this event, it's when the cops take under privileged kids shopping for their families for Christmas so they can have a nice Christmas. It's been described as Black Friday for children. We were going to wrap presents for a couple hours in the morning and then we were leaving because the family was going to Temple Square to see the lights that day and to the Festival of Trees in Sandy at the Expo Center. Anyway - so that morning me and Marie went to Kmart and are getting things set up and Nate calls me. He said that Kamry has a "huge bump" on the side of her neck. I didn't know what to think because I had just fed her earlier that morning and I didn't notice anything. I told him to take a picture of it and send it to me. That picture is on my phone and being technologically retarded I don't know how to send it to the computer so I'm not posting it. Anyway, you could tell in this picture that the bump was pretty dang big. Me and Marie ran home without being able to participate at all and Nate and I got Kamry into the doctor. My pediatrician's office has a weekend clinic so I called and luckily they could get us in at 10. (I say luckily loosely because I kind of had to force my way into an appointment over the phone... but a frantic mom on the phone seems to get results.)

We saw the on-call doctor and he said that it was her lymph node and it was just infected. Sometimes when kids get infections if they're lymph nodes aren't able to fight off the infection it overwhelms them and they get swollen like hers was. So he put her on antibiotics and said he wanted to see her on Monday. Sweet. Hopefully this antibiotic took care of things and we would be fine. We went to the Festival of Trees and then to Temple Square. It was a lot of fun. We went with Marie's niece Sharon and all of her kids. They hadn't ever seen the lights before so it was a fun experience for them. I'm a slacker and didn't take hardly any pictures of that. This is pretty much the only one I got. This is Kamry sleeping in the stroller. I had her in warm fuzzy clothes, this hat (which has matching mittens) and then her bundle me. She was toasty warm the whole time and it's a good thing because it was pretty cold outside that day.


We were hoping that the antibiotic would take care of this lump but it didn't. Monday when I took her in to the doctor he was worried about it and recommended we take her over to an Ear, Nose and Throat specialist. I asked about Dr. Blotter because that's who Nate's dad Allen see's but he wasn't in so I said whoever was available. We got in to see Dr. Bennion. He is really nice and laid back. He agreed with the diagnosis that it was a swollen and infected lymph node but he was concerned because when it happens it's usually in kids that are older than Kamry and he worried about her ability to fight off the infection. They put her on a different antibiotic and gave her what they call a "peanut butter butt shot". It was a different antibiotic called rocephin and it goes in the top of the thigh. It's really thick like peanut butter so it hurts really bad going in. She screamed and I tried not to cry. He said he wanted to see me everyday that week so he could check it and so that they could give Kamry this shot. I wanted to die... this shot EVERYDAY in my baby? AHHH!

Here are two pictures that show you just how big this lump was. The first picture makes her look really weird but you can see the lump on the left side of the picture (her right side).



This one really shows the lump.


Well, we went back everyday and at first the lump was going away but when I woke up Thursday morning it was MASSIVE! Even bigger than before! I called and was able to move her appointment up so she could get in sooner. Dr. Bennion was right, her little body couldn't fight it off so we were going to have to do surgery. He said what they would do is make a small incision on her neck (about an inch long running horizontally) and drain the infection. They would pack it with an antibiotic gauze and I would have to bring her in every day so they could pull a little of the packing out and trim it. It needs to heal from the inside out so they would have to leave it open to allow that to heal. Her neck would be wrapped to keep bacteria out. Dr. Bennion was leaving town that night so Dr. Wood was going to be the one to do the procedure. We set the appointment for the next morning.

This is me holding Kamry at the hospital before she went in for her surgery. Her little gown was so big on her!


After her surgery, on the oxygen again. We had to have her stay overnight to be sure that she was breathing okay. Pretty much the same thing as when she had her hernia surgery. It's just a precaution and I wouldn't have it any other way. Nate and I slept on the bed in the room and she was in the giant crib next to us. The doctor told us everything went great but he was really surprised to see how much infection was in there. To make sure they had cleaned it all out they drained it with a whole gallon of saline!

The pink thing on her hand is her IV. They had to wrap her hand up so she couldn't pick at the IV. It made her look like she had a broken wrist or something.


You can see the wrapping on her neck in this one.



My angel. She was being so good through this whole thing.


This is a video of my happy little girl! Even when she had just had the surgery and was not feeling good she is happy! This was the first time she ever really giggled and I had her going so good that I just had to video it. SO CUTE!



I took her in to the doctor every day and they pulled some gauze out and then when it was all out, they repacked it again and we did it all over again. It was the worst thing in the world to see her get that pulled out. You could tell the it hurt so bad and she would scream so loud. I hated it. At the doctors office I had to help hold her down so she wouldn't squirm away. It was horrible, but I know that if Nate had to take her to the doctor there is no way he would have been able to handle it. It's amazing how "soft" dad's are when it comes to their little girls. By the time Christmas Eve rolled around she only had a band aid on it.

This is me and Kamry at my parents house on Christmas Eve for the King Family Party.


Kamry and Aunt DD


Here is Nate with Kamry on Christmas morning. She looks so sleepy still! I think the sugar plums were still dancing in her head.


Kamry with all her presents


Another shot of Kamry with her presents


Grandma and Grandpa Lundgreen gave Kam this rocking horse. It's still too big for her but when she's big enough she will love it! If you squeeze it's ears it will nay and make the "clicking" sound like it's running and it's tail will move. SO FUN!


For New Years, luckily Kamry was fully recovered because we had made plans to go to Denver with Kelsey and Brady. We had tickets to the Sunday Jan. 2 Broncos game! I'm not a huge football fan, mostly because I don't understand the rules and the scoring and stuff. But I didn't want to miss the opportunity to go to an NFL game. They played the San Diego Chargers. We left on December 30 and drove in Nate's new truck to Denver. I think normally it was supposed to be a 7 hour drive but we hit a horrible snow storm and I-80 was closed. Nate used his navigation and we found a different route. The roads weren't even terrible but we varied in speed from 20 mph to 55 mph at times. It took us 12 hours to get to Denver! We stopped in this po-dunk little down to get diesel and use the bathroom. While the guys were filling up I went in and asked if there was a restroom I could use. This beasty lady snapped at me and goes "It's for customers only!" so I looked at her and said "well my husband is filling up with diesel right now." I wasn't as snippy as she was but I was still a little snippy. I couldn't believe how rude she was! There was absolutely nobody else around and it amazed me that she didn't notice the giant truck outside fueling up. What a brat!

Denver was way fun. We ate awesome food the whole time and went shopping on 16th street. On New Years Eve we went to Market Street because apparently that's where "it all happens". It was a lot of fun. They shoot of fire works every hour to celebrate New Year's everywhere. There were a ton of people. It was SO FREEZING COLD though. I think if I celebrate New Year's somewhere other than Utah I'll for sure go SOUTH where it's warmer and can be in shorts instead of 12 layers of clothes. It was 25 below zero with wind chill that night!

Me and Nate


Me and Kelsey


Pictures from the Broncos game. The stadium really wasn't as big as I had pictured. On TV they look massive!

The Bronco that runs across the field a few times prior to the game.


They set up this huge bronco entrance and light of fire works and stuff. During the National Anthem they have fighter jets fly over. It was awesome and gave me the chills because it's right at the climax at the end of the song and the jets flew over. Kelsey was looking up with her camera and I was like "umm... what are you doing?" and then the jets flew over. WOW!


Me and Nate freezing at the game. It wasn't too bad when the sun was shining but of course the seats we were in were the only section of the stadium that didn't see the sun.


Me and Kelsey. She looked so cute and I looked like a scrounge with my hair in pig tails. I'm a dork.


During the game. We ended up losing 28-32 but we came back in the 4th quarter and were SO close to a win. It would have been so fun to see them win but oh well. The Broncos didn't have a great season and just a couple weeks before that game they had fired their head coach. It was definitely not their year.


The main entrance to Invesco Field


Invesco Field


New Years was a lot of fun but nothing compares to the week I had when we came home. That first week in January was quite the ride for me and Nate. We got home on Monday January 3. On Tuesday January 4 I wrecked my car. I was driving home from Sunshine Terrace where I'm doing my internship and an ambulance was coming toward the intersection at 400 North and main in Logan and the people in front of me could have made it through but they slammed on their brakes instead and I just skidded right into the back of them. I hit them at like 10 mph. The guy jumped out of the passenger seat and asked if I was okay. I was fine and they were fine so we pulled off the road into the 7-11 parking lot so we weren't blocking rush hour traffic. Of course I hit them right at 5pm. The couple was really nice and the guy even offered to buy me a hot chocolate while we waited. The cops came and got our statements. The guy I hit had his arm in a cast from his shoulder down so I couldn't help but ask him what happened. Well - apparently they had a really bad year too. In the beginning of December his wife got a brand new car. Well about 2 weeks before Christmas he was climbing over the doggy gate they have blocking the stairs to their basement when his foot got caught and he tumbled down their stairs. He had a compound fracture on his arm (if you don't know what that is, it's when the bone in actually sticking out of the skin!) so the wife was rushing him to the hospital and they hit a deer and wrecked her new car. The car that I hit them in was their rental! I felt so much worse after hearing that story. The cop just couldn't believe it either. I was just happy that I didn't have Kamry with me when it happened. Whew! Anyway, so I called Nate and luckily he was just in Wellsville on his way home from work so he came to 7-11 and picked me up.

The week is going on and I'm working with the insurance but Kamry had not been sleeping well. Two nights in a row she woke up screaming bloody murder and didn't sleep hardly at all. I was able to make her an appointment with Dr. Wood (the ENT that did her neck surgery) for Friday. Well, Friday morning January 7 I got a call from the insurance saying that they decided to total out my car because the repair work was going to cost $7,000 and they only valued my car at $9,000 so it wasn't worth it. Okay... so that's one more thing happening. Nate and I had refinanced my car in October because interest rates were so much lower (3.4% vs. 7%) and we pulled a little extra off to pay off his dirt bike. When the value of my car came back from the insurance and everything was said and done, I owed the bank a whopping $64. I could live with that... my loan was getting paid off and the dirt bike is officially paid for. The day was looking up.
Well, I get Kamry into her appointment and find out she has an ear infection and a ruptured right ear drum! Things were not looking so good. We got her on an antibiotic and I just had to make a return appointment to get her looked at in 2 weeks. I felt so bad. This poor girl just can't catch a break! To top things off... my period was a week late. That's just not normal for me so I took an at home pregnancy test. IT WAS POSITIVE! WHAT THE HELL?!?!? I ran up to the hospital lab to get a blood test and they had a sign that said "All pregnancy tests will now require a doctors order". I made the fastest call to Dr. McCulloch's office and talked to her nurse Becky. She is so nice and was like "Um.. didn't you just have a baby?" I was like "YEAH! I NEED THE TEST!" so she called it in for me. I got the blood test, and 2 hours later when I called for the results they said "Congratulations! It's Positive! You're pregnant!" I almost fell off the couch. I think I would have passed out if I hadn't have already been sitting down. I didn't know what to say. Then my thoughts were.... how do I tell Nate?

How I told him: When I got home that night I got out my new 2011 calendar that my mom gave me for Christmas. I started going through and writing birthdays on it. The doctors office told me I was due September 9th (it's now since been changed to the 8th) so when I got to September on the 9th I wrote "BABY DUE" in big letters. When Nate got home I said, "Hey honey I've got a funny story for you." I grabbed the calendar and go "I was filling in the birthdays and the weirdest thing showed up in September. Look at this" and I pointed to September 9th. He was like "baby due. baby due. why would your mom give us a calendar with stuff written on it?" and I just stared at him quietly thinking to myself "proudly" that this was my husband and oh he is just so smart. haha. Anyway - I looked at him with a serious face and just said "Nate! BABY DUE!" and he continued to stare at me so I finally just said "I'M PREGNANT!" and he just busted up laughing! He thought it was so funny! He had been telling me for like 3 weeks that he thought I was pregnant and I just kept telling him he was crazy. Ha! Who's the crazy one now?

We waited a couple weeks to tell family but once I started getting sick I told him we just had to tell them because it was going to become obvious soon enough. We were at Sunday dinner with my family and previously that week my dad had surgery on his sinus' and nobody had told me until after the surgery. So during dinner I kept making a big deal about how nobody tells me anything and how everybody is keeping secrets. So I looked at everyone and said "lets just go around the table and have everybody tell what they're keeping secret" so my mom just said nothing, Brian and Kelli said nothing and then Kevin goes "well Jeneil's not pregnant that's for sure" so I piped up and said "well I am!" and everyone just stared. My mom kind of laughed and goes "you're not serious, right?" and we just looked at everyone and said "yup. we're having another baby." Of course everyone was way excited but it took us all a minute to let it sink in that we were serious. Pretty funny. Then when we got home (to Allen and Maries where we are currently living) Kallie and Kory were here. We sat down around the table with them where they were chatting and Nate was trying to get everyone's attention with Kamry and finally he raised her arms in the air and just said "I'm going to be the best big sister in the world!" and Kallie goes "WHAT!? ARE YOU PREGNANT?" Marie wasn't listening to Nate so all of a sudden she just goes, "WHAT?" and then after a couple seconds she goes... "IN MY BASEMENT?" haha. It's like it just clued into her that we "do that" in the basement. It was pretty funny. So that's how we told the families. I just called the other siblings that weren't there and then called my Grandma. It was a crazy beginning of January that is for sure!

Kamry is getting so big! She is sitting up perfectly on her own and can even rock a little and keep her balance. She can grab things like a champ and switch hands without issues. She eats anything I put in her mouth and is so happy all the time. She takes awesome naps and wakes up smiling. I couldn't ask for a better baby.

At her 9 month appointment her stats were as follows:

Weight: 16 lbs. 2 oz. in the 7th percentile
Length: 28 1/2 in. in the 3rd percentile
Head Circ: 42cm in the 5th percentile

She has never been in the percentiles before! The doctor is really happy with her growth and said she is developing wonderfully. He's not concerned at all about her. I'm so happy. And she is getting to be such a chunk!

This is her sitting on the floor so good


Her first time playing and sucking on licorice. Trust me, it was everywhere.


Grandma Marie had a valve replacement done last June so she has a "ticker" (mechanical valve) and Kamry just loves to listen to it and fall asleep on Grandmas chest.


Marie has this fuzzy red blanket. We love to take off Kam's pants and let her lay or sit on it. She loves to rub it with her legs and feet. Marie said we get to take it with us when we move out because Kamry loves it so much.


I have a new goal to update my blog at least once a month. We'll see how well I do. If my next post is before the end of April I think I'm doing dang good!

Oh to catch up...

WOW! I can't believe I haven't posted since July! What is wrong with me? Oh yeah, I had a baby, my brain fell out of my butt, I started school again and amazingly enough it's really hard to find the time to do this now! Haha. I'll get off my soap box on how busy my life is because it really isn't that busy, but it's amazing how much time a very small person can consume from my life. Kamry came home, and things just really started to settle into a routine. I was able to take a leave of absence from work the month of August so I could be home with her. That was really nice.

Before Kamry left the hospital we found out that she had a hernia on her left side on her pubic bone. The nurse noticed a small bump and they did an ultrasound. So when they did that they found out about the hernia. The nurse said that she had a baby that had that and they didn't catch it fast enough and it caused all sorts of problems. When you looked at her you couldn't even see the bump, you had to feel it. The nurse was doing her assessment and felt for it just to be safe. It was crazy how she found it. Anyway, so the day after Kamry came home we had to take her down to Primary Childrens Hospital for a consult. We met with Dr. Barnhart who was so nice and scheduled her surgery. So on August 10 Kamry had her hernia surgery. It was so sad to put her in a tiny little gown and watch the anesthesiologist walk away with her. Me and Nate were really stressing. Everything went fine and when they got in there they found that she had a hernia on each side so they repaired them both. I guess in preemies hernias right there on their pubic bone are actually really common. Dr. Barnhart said it was the most common surgery they do. Apparently their abdomen wall just doesn't close off all the way and the opening leaves space for a hernia to happen. Everything went great and she handled the surgery really well. My sister Deanna works in the Infant Med. Surg. unit at Primary's and she was nice and stayed the night with Kamry at the hospital (she was off duty) so me and Nate could sleep at her house and get a full nights rest. At first I thought her incision was a big one like my c-section incision, but once the glue like stuff came off of her there were just two very small incisions on each side. As she grows you probably won't even be able to notice them.

Once it came to going back to work though I started getting really nervous. She was still on the oxygen, and I hadn't nailed down a babysitter yet. So I started making calls and made arrangements with a really nice lady named Desi. She had a small daycare at her home and only had a few kids at the time which I thought was a good idea because then that means, less of a chance for Kamry to get sick from other kids. Sweet. Well, things worked out good for the first 2 days. Then I noticed that Kam was having a harder time breathing through her nose and was really stuffy. I mentioned it to the doctor and he thought she may have an allergy to the babysitters cat... and her house just wasn't quite as clean as I thought it should be. Those of you who know me, know my standards when it comes to clean.... they're kinda high. Clutter is one thing, but clean is another. So... after 3 days of having her at that daycare, we quit. Luckily, Nate was working with a guy, El (that's short for Ellery), and his wife is a stay at home mom and all 3 of their kids are in school. So I immediately had another babysitter. This girl, Jeanette was a clean freak. I loved it. Her house was sparkling 24/7. That worked out wonderfully. I started working again in the beginning of September. Before I had Kamry we had agreed that it was okay for me to go 3/4 time and only work 30 hours a week. That way I get to keep my benefits and everything. Well... when I analyzed it and realized that I was going to be working 30 hours a week, attending classes and doing 16 hours a week of internship... I would never be able to see Kamry. I was going to be gone way too much. Nate and I discussed it and decided that I only had 1 more semester of school to pay for so we didn't need my half tuition anymore. We could just pay full tuition my last semester. And we can get insurance through Nate's work, so just a few days before I went back I met with my boss and told her that I wanted to go part time and just work 20 hours. Well, I came back to work and about 3 days into it I decided I couldn't handle being away from Kamry that much. It was just too hard. So Nate and I discussed it again and decided that we could afford for me to stay home and just finish school. So I gave my notice at work. We were able to work it out so I only worked about 15 hours a week and we used up my remaining vacation leave to get me through the rest of September. Then, September 24 was my last day at work. I had been at my job for 4 years. It was sad to leave, but relieving that I could spend more time with Kamry where I was needed the most.

Friday Night, September 10 we decided to unhook Kamry's oxygen and let her try it on her own. The doctor had given us one of those oxygen saturation monitors that we hook onto her foot (because her fingers are too small) and we let her try it out. Let me tell you I didn't sleep much that night because I was so scared she was going to stop breathing. However, the night went great and that next morning we kept the oxygen off of her and it was official! She was off the oxygen and breathing completely on her own! YAY! That was a joyous day for me. No more hauling that stupid tank around and cute little Kamry could have a normal face and nose without a tube in it!

Anyway, so things were working out great with my babysitter, and then her husband got a job with the union and was stationed up in po-dunkville Montana like 15 minutes from the Canada border. Their initial plan was to keep living here in Utah, and have him stay up there and come home on the weekends because he was going to be working 4 - 16 hour days, but as it got further into the details of the job they found out he was going to be working 6 days on and 1 off so that plan kinda went down the tube. They then found out that he is going to be in Montana until July or August, so they decided to move. I had 1 week notice that they were going to move. It was insane. Luckily (AGAIN), Nate's cousin Sharon (that moved down from Idaho with her family in June) is a stay at home mom and said she would love to watch Kamry. It's working out fabulously! Kamry loves going there and Sharon and her kids just adore Kam so it works out perfect. One initial bump about it was that they live in Richmond and we live at the south end of Logan. So I was commuting her to Richmond every day and then coming back to pick her up. (I know it sounds crazy, but it will all make sense in a minute.)

We blessed Kamry on October 17th at my parents church in Lewiston. We decided that we didn't want to take her to the ward with so many possibly sick people so we did it after church in the Relief Society room. We also decided to keep it just close family, so only siblings and grandmas. We asked my dad to bless her and because I have a big pet peeve at blessings when there are so many people in the circle that they can barely touch the baby we decided to just have it be the two Grandpa's and the bishop. Well, Bishop Baldwin couldn't make it, but his counselor Ted King (my dad's cousin) was there so he was in the circle. It was a great day. It was funny because my dad was blessing her and said "Kamry Lundgreen".... that may not sound funny, but it is because he forgot her middle name! He should have said "Kamry Ann Lundgreen". Anyway, so after the prayer was over we kind of looked at each other and I told him that he forgot her middle name and he felt so bad. It was a simple fix though... so we had another short blessing to complete her name. Then we had dinner and just chatted. It was a lot of fun and a nice quiet blessing instead of an insane asylum party with 1000 people. That's exactly how I wanted it.

Well, Nate and I decided that selling our house on our own just wasn't working, so we decided to sign with a Realtor. We had met with a couple of Realtors that we really liked, and then we met with the lady (Nancy) that sold Nate's grandparents house. She was wonderful and we really liked her, so we decided to go with her. Because we have a baby and a dog, it's difficult for us to keep our house in "showing" order and constantly perfect. So we decided that because our plan once our house sold was to move in with Nate's parents for a while (lots of mounting medical bills from Kamry), that we would move in with them now and just stage our house so it's always "show ready". So we moved in with Nate's parents and got our house ready. I only had to commute to Richmond with Kamry for 2 weeks before we moved, so it wasn't totally crazy. Kamry was a ballerina for halloween. My friend Megan had made her an adorable tutu and Marie had bought her a sleeper that said "My 1st Halloween" that was pink and had little bats, ghosts and pumpkins on it. So I turned her into a very tiny ballerina. She was really cute and although she didn't realize it, she had a fabulous 1st Halloween. I decided to quit pumping breast milk shortly after I went back to work (and quit anyway :) ) but because I was done pumping I decided to take on the HCG diet and see if I could lose a little more weight. I was 20 lbs. lighter than I was when I got pregnant at that point, so I only had 30 lbs to lose to get to my goal weight of 160. Well, that diet is stinking hard! It's very effective and if you stick with it you can totally do it but because I'm a loser and have absolutely no will power, I only lost 10 lbs. But I've been off the diet for a month now and I have maintained my weight. So here I sit at 180 and I'm very happy with it. I lost about 9 inches overall too so that's fabulous! I can pull all of my pants off without undoing the button! It's been really good living with the in-laws. They are great, and we really have our own space because of the basement. But it's nice to come home and have someone to talk to when Nate is working late and when Kamry has needed attention but I've needed to do homework Marie has been great to help out. Don't get me wrong, she's not a built in baby sitter by any means. I still do everything for Kamry, and I cook a meal here and there too so I'm not getting a free pass either. I've probably cooked more here than I did when we were living at our house. That's pretty pathetic. Once our house sells, we are looking at buying some land so we can build a house. Hopefully we'll get it sold and be able to build next Summer. That would be nice. Thanksgiving was fun. We ate this year with the Lundgreens. Sharon's family joined us too so it was a madhouse with 18 of us (19 counting Kamry) but it was a lot of fun. I thoroughly enjoyed my lemon pie after stuffing myself extremely full too. The semester is pretty much over (classes end this week) and I don't have any final exams so once classes are over, I'm done. It's crazy to think that only one more semester and I will be a college graduate. I love that thought. I've started revamping my resume and hopefully I'll be able to get a good job as a social worker. Thoughts of a masters degree have ran through my head a little, but I need a break before I undertake that. I hope to get my masters someday, but right now I need to take it easy. 6 years of school (including summers) is way too much for my brain. Kamry had her 6 month shots the week before Thanksgiving. They gave her a flu shot too so she had a total of 4. The girls that give the shots are way fast and do a good job but of course she still screams. When she got her 4 month shots she did the screaming so hard that she held her breath for a short period of time. So I was kind of expecting that this time, but what happened I definitely did not expect. They hurried and gave her the shots and the girl was like "okay you can pick her up" so I did and I was trying to love her better when I noticed she wasn't moving. Well.... SHE PASSED OUT! I looked at her and her whole body was limp. I started freaking out and crying and the girl was like "blow in her face" so i did and she was pinching her cheeks and playing with her hands and she finally took a big deep breath and started screaming again. I couldn't believe it. She held her breath so long that she passed out. I was so freaked out. The girl was like "wow. lets hope she doesn't make a habit out of that" and i was like "are you freaking kidding me?" anyway... that was scary and I hope she never does that again. On December 4, we went to the Festival of Trees at the South Towne Expo Center in Sandy, and then to see the lights on Temple Square. It was a lot of fun. Kamry slept pretty much the whole day, but we had her all snuggled in her car seat with beanie and gloves on so she kept warm. I hadn't ever been to the Festival of Tree's before. For those of you who don't know what that it, it's a big thing where Families decorate Christmas Tree's in honor of a loved one and then they are available for purchase and all proceeds from the ticket sales and the tree sales are donated to Primary Children's Hospital. It's a great cause. I guess usually they have a little paper by each tree telling about the tree and who it's decorated for, but for some reason they didn't have that this year. It was still fun to see all the trees, because they are all so amazing, but it would have been nice to understand the trees a little more. Some people had pictures of the loved one next to the tree, so that was nice to see... except for a lot of them were children. That was really sad.

That morning (before leaving for the Festival of Trees), Marie and I went to Kmart as volunteers to wrap presents for the "Shop with a Cop" event that they have every year. It's where cops take under privileged kids shopping for the families for Christmas and they get to ride in the cop car and go to breakfast and everything. That's a really good event too. Well, right after we arrived at Kmart, Nate called and said Kamry had a huge lump on her neck. Well, Marie and I headed straight home and then Nate and I took Kamry to the doctor before we left for the festival of trees. The doctos said she had an infection and that he lymph nodes were infected and that's what the lump was. Well, he put her on antibiotics and told me to come back Monday. Well, today was Monday and when I woke up, Kamry's neck was even bigger so I called the Dr. and changed her appointment from 3:30pm to 10am so I could get her looked at sooner. I went there, and he decided it was best to get a second opinion and sent me to see Dr. Bennion, an Ear Nose and Throat specialist. He gave her 2 shots (so sad) - one was an antibiotic and one was a steroid. He said that I needed to watch it really closely. If it changes at all to call him. He was concerned because she's so little and I guess it's not very common to see this kind of infection in a small baby like her. He said there is about a 50/50 chance that they will have to do surgery on it (lance it) and release the infection. It's possible that the steroid will just make it go away on it's own. Well, I had to take her back each day to see how it was going. She got the shot on Monday, another one on Tuesday and Wednesday when I took her back things were looking great. The bump was getting smaller so he decided not to give her another shot and just put her back on the augmentin antibiotic. Well, Thursday things were looking great and it was a tiny bump. I went to my internship at Sunshine Terrace and when I was headed home, my babysitter Sharon called me and said that Kamry had been good all day and then woke up SCREAMING from her nap and the bump was back and it was huge. Her appointment was at 4pm that day so I was already on my way to pick her up to take her there. Dr. Bennion was disappointed but not completely shocked to see that it had come back. He was worried about that. We decided the best option (really the only option) at that point was to do the surgery to lance it. We scheduled it for 7:30am the next day (Friday Dec. 10). Dr. Bennion was leaving town for some work things, so Dr. Wood was the one we scheduled the surgery with. He's really nice and was great to work with. There we were again, watching an anesthesiologist walk away with our baby. It was so sad. Her poor neck was massive by that time and you could tell that it just hurt her so bad to move her head. Everything went well in the surgery and Dr. Wood said that there was A LOT of puss in there and that they irrigated a whole gallon of saline through the wound. Her cut is about an inch long on her neck (just a little below her ear). They had packed it with gauze that has antibiotic ointment on it. I have to take her back in each day to have a little bit of gauze pulled out and then once it's all gone, they will repack it and do it again. Dr. Wood said that it's very important to let the wound heal from the inside out or the abscess would come back. Kamry has been so brave through the whole thing. You could tell after the surgery that she was really hurting, but once we got her on a pain med schedule she was pretty happy and kind of returned to her usual self. This poor girl just can't catch a break. I sure hope that it's smooth sailing from here on out for her.

Well, If you actually made it thru that whole saga of the last 5 months I'm amazed. Here are a lot of pictures with captions of what's been happening too.

These first ones are pictures my friend Megan Bair took when Kamry was 5 months old. I love these pics! They're absolutely fabulous and there were so many adorable ones I couldn't choose. I printed so many of them!

















I absolutely love her blessing dress. It was perfect!



















Does this one say that she is my daughter or what?




Her random sleeping styles were so cute!



Nate was worried she would get cold when she was in the swing, so this was his solution.



This is the hernia on her belly button (umbilical hernia) prior to surgery



Kam in her little tiny surgery gown


Kam in her GIANT crib after surgery



Post umbilical hernia surgery. I didn't take pics of the scars on her pubic bone, but they're both about 3/4 of an inch long on each side.




Kam's blessing day





This is her "post blessing" dress


On Halloween, Marie and I went with Cori, Cooper and Kilee to Lee's to do the trick or treat thing and Marie had these so we put them on Kamry. CREEPY!

My beautiful Ballerina


First time eating cereal





Guess who found her tongue?!




HAPPY THANKSGIVING! Her bib says "Everyone is Thankful for Me" and that is SO true!


She kinda looks like a boy in this one cause I don't have a bow on her head yet. She's still cute though.


This is when we went to see the lights on Temple Square. She was wearing mittens to match too!


This is right before surgery. If you look at her neck you can see the huge lump. That was the abscess.


At the hopspital in her little gown (that was way too big for her) before they took her to drain the abscess in her neck.


Laying in the crib that fits her a little better now after the surgery. Her poor neck was wrapped up like a wounded soldier.

Again with the oxygen.... at least we didn't have to take it home this time.


Well that was all the pictures of the past few months. Christmas will be here all too soon and I'll post again.