LO's 10th Birthday!

What a day! We've had a wonderful time celebrating LO's 10th birthday! I can barely believe she's been here for a DECADE! Or that I've been a mom for ten whole years! I still feel like such a novice when it comes to parenting, but that's a post for another day!

To kick off LO's birthday celebration, she had a sleepover with a couple of her friends two weeks ago. It was so much fun! The girls had a blast, and I appreciated the fact that LO basically handled all.of.the.details. for the party. What a treat for me! She did everything -- from the invitations to the menu planning to the crafts to the cupcake baking -- EVERYTHING! It was wonderful.

Here's her adorable handmade invite! Her handwriting could definitely be better, but I'm pretty sure she did them quickly in her room during quiet time.

She made these cupcakes! I showed her how to pipe the chocolate buttercream on one cupcake and she did the rest! All the horse decor was perfect!

Themed snacks ftw!

The girls enjoyed snacks, pizza, movies, popcorn, and of course they did nails! Two of LO's younger brothers decided to get in on the action. Here's E sporting his pretty nails! Chase had his done with Poké balls, but I forgot to take a pic! #momfail

The second phase of LO's birthday extravaganza was with our family on her actual birthday. We started the day with our traditional birthday pancakes! I can't believe all the candles!

Brother love!

More brother love!

Lots of brother love!

I think this one shows some sister love! Little squishy loves his big sis!

Mmmmmmm... breakfast!

My sweet girl BAKED HER OWN birthday cake! She's becoming an expert! She made a cookies and cream buttercream filling and chocolate buttercream for the finishing touch!

My beautiful girl!

Couldn't help but grab a pic of this guy's cheesy grin. ;)

Goofy girl!

My little pyro loves to light her own candles! With parent supervision, obvi.

May your wish come true!

Her card from mommy & daddy.

Um, E likes cake. And being silly.

Present time!!

She was THRILLED to get the 4th book in this series! It released TODAY on her actual birthday. She couldn't be more excited!!!

I love love love love love this gift! I created monthly date nights that rotate between mommy & daddy each month for a year. This month is a daddy/daughter date, next month is a mommy/daughter date, etc., through June of next year. Quality time is her main love language, so I think she's excited about this gift!!!

She was so surprised (and shocked, actually!) that she would have special dates with us for an entire year! Love her so!!!

Chase has Pikachu from Build-A-Bear. E has Charmander. LO has been wanting Eevee. We have a trip to BAB in our future! :)

Yet ANOTHER horse craft. This girl LOVES these things! She has quite a collection!

A gorgeous artsy horse shirt!

Seriously -- she was SO goofy today!

Beautiful!

Again with this goofy dude!

LO's yummy cake!

Tonight we enjoyed the next phase of "LO Turns Ten" with dinner at Pizza Inn with our family! It was SO much fun to have ((most of)) our family all together to celebrate LO!! Unfortunately I was so busy chatting and stuffing my face that I didn't take any pics! But we had a great time, and my sweet girl was spoiled with a ton of awesome gifts from her loving family.

It seems my sweet girl had a great day celebrating her 10th birthday, and we will continue to celebrate throughout the rest of the week. She's so excited! I just love that girl so much and I'm so grateful for the blessing of being her mama! I cannot wait to see what God has in store for the next 10 years of her life!!!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO MY BEST GIRL!!!!!

The One with the Procedure

I just wanted to share a little update and answer to prayer here for my own recollection in the upcoming weeks/months/years. You may recall that Squish wasn't able to be circumcised in the hospital because he had bad reflux and the pediatrician preferred to do it in his office the following week so as to not deal with a compromised airway during such a delicate procedure. We wholeheartedly agreed, and scheduled this office visit for the following Wednesday when Squish would be 8 days old.

Well, you know from this post that we were in the doctor's office (or hospital!) quite a bit during Squish's first week, and that the pediatrician noticed an "issue" during an appointment on Squish's one-week birthday that required us to be referred to Pediatric Urology for a possible surgery in addition to circumcision. GASP! Not what you want to hear as parents of a sweet little squishy newborn!

Fast-forward to the following Friday when Squish was two weeks old, and we found ourselves at the Pediatric Urologist for a follow-up and diagnosis. Imagine our surprise when the doctor noticed NO ISSUES with sweet Squish's boy parts, and said she didn't see any reason why we couldn't proceed with an in-office circ. No surgery! No complications! Praise the Lord!!!

We tried to schedule the procedure at check-out, but they weren't able to get in touch with the scheduler and told us they would give us a call. Let me mention here that we were told it would be possible to do the circ in the office as long as Squish was UNDER 10 POUNDS. If he was over that weight, we would need to do a sedated procedure under general anesthesia, which isn't great for tiny little newborns, so it would require that we wait until he's at least 6 months old. Not at all what we wanted to do!

The following week I waited patiently for a call from their office while keeping a very close eye on Squish's weight (we have an infant scale and I weigh him before every bath). I hadn't heard from their office by Wednesday, so I gave them a call.

I was told that the schedule is full, they weren't able to find any room for Squish's procedure, and that they were going to refer us to the Pediatric Surgery unit affiliated with their hospital system.

I was NOT happy about that!

I was fine with our pediatrician doing the circ as he is the same one who did E's. I of course was okay with a Pediatric Urologist doing the circ, because, well, duh! But I did NOT have a warm n' fuzzy feeling about a general peds surgeon doing his circ. But I went ahead and called over there anyway just to see what our options were.

Imagine my surprise when Peds Surgery said they didn't have any room on their schedule, either!

What??

Gracious. They told me they were planning to do a clinic day to do circumcisions as they had several that needed to be done, but they wouldn't know until the following week when it would be scheduled, and they knew it wouldn't be until the week after that (end of July) before the clinic would actually take place.

My chunky little monkey would have been WELL OVER 10 pounds by that time! So then we'd be back to the plan of having to wait 6+ months (not a big deal) and put him under general anesthesia (a VERY BIG DEAL) in order to have it done.

I was beside myself!

{SIDE NOTE: For those who don't know about our journey with Chase, he was born with a Congenital Heart Defect (CHD) called Hypoplastic Left Heart Syndrome (HLHS). Basically the left side of his heart was too small to function. He had his first of three heart surgeries when he was 7 days old. When he was 2 weeks old, he had to go back to the OR for what was supposed to be a standard bronchoscopy procedure, but it ended up resulting in him crashing on the transport bed, the emergency oxygen tank was NOWHERE to be found, and the team ended up doing chest compressions and CPR on our fragile newborn baby boy. You can read about horrible that experience here.}

So if you happen to think we're being a bit ridiculous with our concerns over putting Squish under general anesthesia, please know we have had difficult experiences with one of our other children, which makes it difficult for us to hand over another baby for such a procedure.

So, I ended up calling the Pediatric Urology office back and informed them that Peds Surg was booked, too, and that they wouldn't be able to get him in until he'd be comfortably over the 10 pound limit. They ended up looking at their schedule again, and were able to find a TINY window the following Tuesday to fit him in.

Again, Praise the Lord!

This was such a HUGE answer to prayer to my mama heart. I didn't want to go through general anesthesia with my little Squishy! Thank you, Jesus, for hearing our hearts and making a way where there seemed to be no way!

So fast-forward to last Tuesday, July 11th, and we were at the Peds Urology office for Squish's circ. The entire procedure took less than 20 minutes, and he handled it like a champ! Bless. He's been surprisingly awesome these past 5 days as well, even with the extra care we've had to take to ensure he heals well. Seriously, this kid is just amazing, folks! Well, I guess all of our kiddos have been pretty relaxed and laid back babies... we are so grateful!

Here's my sweet little fella while we were waiting for them to take him back for his procedure last Tuesday. I'm thinking he wasn't overwhelmingly excited about the idea...

And here he is this afternoon, all sweet and content and just lovely...

I'm grateful that God has brought us through the unexpected difficulties of Squish's first month! I just love this little guy and I pray he has a much smoother road ahead!

Thanks for following our journey! Hugs!!

Squish is One Month Old!

My sweet Squish is one month old! I just love this guy. He's the best! He's so laid back and calm... the absolute perfect recipe for a fourth child!

We've had a great first month with him! His first week started out a bit rocky, but things have since calmed down and we're all adjusting nicely to our new routines as a family of six!

We went to the pediatrician for his one-month well check on July 22nd, and he's up to 10 lbs. 15 oz. (65th percentile), 22.25" long (91st percentile!), and his sweet head measured 15.5 cm (95th percentile!). So, obviously he's gonna be a smart one! LOL!

Just for fun, check out this little guy's one month pic! Any guesses?