It's a Gee Thing

Baby Athena has joined Thor and Hercules in the G pantheon

2011-08-23T12:38:00.009-06:00

Athena, the Greek goddess of wisdom, war, the arts, industry, justice and skill.

Our sweet baby girl (code name - Athena) joined our family on Sunday, August 14, 2011. She weighed 7lbs 8oz and measured 20 1/2 inches long.

Thor absolutely adores her and always wants to know where she is so he can check on her. He enjoys feeding her and I often find him talking to her. He laughs when he hears her little squeaks.

Hercules is somewhat aware of her presence, but doesn't pay much attention to her. He does like to pat her head and put his fingers in her eye, he gets jealous when she has a bottle and he doesn't, but other than that, he is just as content and happy as ever.

Here she is today (Aug 23, 2011). She is a great sleeper and only gets a little fussy when she is hungry. She loves to be swaddled and instantly stops fussing when she is picked up and held.

I have the best 3 kids in the world. I feel incredibly blessed.

April Showers...

2011-05-14T14:52:00.014-06:00

May 2011 already! Hercules just had his 9 month birthday. As a birthday present he received his first 2 teeth. It doesn't seem much like a present when misery is involved. I took him to the doctor on Wednesday and he is very healthy baby. He is 20lbs (which Thor was at 6 mths old). He is in the 75+% for height & 50th% for weight.
All he wants to do is move around. Unfortunately, he doesn't want to crawl, he wants to walk. I bought him a walker a couple of weeks ago and he is cruising around in it. Although, he'd prefer that I hold his hands and let him walk that way instead.

Thor is the best big brother - he loves to make Hercules laugh.

April was a good month for Thor. He got to have a birthday party for Charlie Chaplin & watch the "Circus". He even helped Hercules dress up like Charlie.

Thor gets certain traits from me, and one of them is clumsiness. One day he was playing with his friends at school and had a little accident. He was running and for whatever reason his body got ahead of his feet and he biffed it. He didn't fall to his knees but straight to his face. He received a really bad rug burn to his nose. The photo shows the burns, but this is when it looked the best. His nose was swollen and red the first day.
Thor also had fun when his dad taught him how to play TWISTER.

At the end of the month he went with his dad and participated in the MS Walk. The photo demonstrates how much he enjoyed the walk. He really did have a good time!

Ew - Green Beans

2011-02-10T18:22:00.002-07:00

I captured a video of Owen eating green beans. I tried it two nights ago, and it was not well received by him. I thought I'd try it again last night to see if maybe he'd warm up to them. No such luck.

Yesterday was Owen's 6 month birthday. Time sure goes by fast. He loves to eat cereal, bananas, apple sauce and squash. He sits but is still a little wobbly and can roll from his back to his stomach but hasn't quite mastered stomach to back. I took him to the doctor his check up. He is in the 50 percentile for weight, 75 percentile for height and 25 percentile for head size. He is a solid kid and it looks like I've got 2 football players on my hands.

Just for you Ellen!

2011-02-07T21:41:00.004-07:00

I am finally posting after 5 months...
I just spoke with my wonderful friend Ellen. She asked me to send her some pictures of Owen and Ian. We can all thank her for getting me motivated to update this blog. Ian is 4 1/2 and Owen is 6 months.

Owen's first camping trip

2010-09-07T15:49:00.005-06:00

Some might say I am crazy or foolish, but either way we still took Ian and Owen camping over Labor day weekend and it was awesome. Owen did so well. The only reason he woke during the night was to eat. Ian has been asking to go camping all summer and we mostly went for his sake. Poor little Ian got pink eye on Friday and we were worried we wouldn't be able to go camping but the doctor gave us the OK. Unfortunately we had to give him eye drops every three hours - but at least we still got to go. Ian loved it and got to play with his buddy Jack all weekend. We had tons of fun and I'm glad we went.

Trip to Dinosaur Museum 8/31/2010

2010-09-07T13:55:00.005-06:00

Brothers

2010-08-27T13:34:00.004-06:00

Ian thought I was just going to take a picture, but luckily I had the video camera running instead. He is very sweet to his little brother.

Snip Snip

2010-08-27T13:08:00.007-06:00

Owen was born "tongue tied".
"Another cord between the base of the tongue and the floor of the mouth or the lower gum is called the lingual frenulum. If you lift your tongue up and look in a mirror, you probably can see the strand of tissue connecting the bottom of your tongue to the floor of your mouth -- what is left of your lingual frenulum."

"In some kids, the lingual frenulum is short and taut after birth, partially restricting movement of the tongue. This condition is called ankyloglossitis (don't doctors have great names for things?) -- more commonly known as tongue-tie."

We went to the E.N.T. today to have him take a look at it. The little skin under his tongue came to the very end of his tongue and limited movement, but fortunately has not interfered with Owen eating. Doc. said it was simple to fix, so he sprayed a little numbing spray under Owen's tongue and then got out the scissors. It appeared that the hardest part for Owen was being pinned downed so Doc could get his fingers under the tongue, stabilize it and then cut the frenulum. It bled a little but it appears that he is as good as new.

Family Update 8/16/2010

2010-08-16T10:56:00.012-06:00

Ian is the best big brother. He loves his brother and is so sweet with him. Ian enjoys Owen's little squeaks and little noises.
Owen has jaundice and we made 4 trips to the doctor last week to get his bilirubin levels checked. By Friday evening his levels were to high and we had to put him on bili lights to help lower his levels. He was on the lights for almost 24 hours and we were instructed to feed him every hour. My mom came up the first night and stayed up the entire night to feed Owen every hour. She was amazing and it helped tremendously. Saturday night we were instructed to take him off the lights (because his levels dropped and they wanted to see how he would do on his own). Unfortunately, we had to continue feeding him every hour until our next visit on Sunday morning. By Sunday afternoon the doctor said his levels were continuing to drop and that he no longer had to use the lights and that we could put him back on a regular eating schedule. Now we are lucky to only have to feed him every 3 hours.

Today I gave Owen his first bath since birth. He liked the warm water and was surprisingly calm.

Going Home

2010-08-12T09:55:00.002-06:00

Welcome to our family Owen "Hercules" Bradford

2010-08-10T18:58:00.006-06:00

Owen Bradford was born on 08/09/10 at the McKay Dee Hospital in Ogden, Utah. He was born at 10:46 pm and weighed 8lbs 1oz and 20 1/2 inches long. He is a great baby and hardly makes a sound.

testing, testing, 123

2010-08-01T19:42:00.002-06:00

So I thought it might be a nice idea to update our blog so that when the baby arrives next week, we can post photos and updates. I'm not good in the blogging world - it is quite foreign to me. So here I go...I will try to keep you all updated on our cute little family. I opened up the blog I created and discovered that I haven't posted anything for 2 years. I couldn't help but laugh. Hope you enjoy whatever I actually get posted.

I don't think I'm ready for this....

2008-08-17T18:26:00.001-06:00

Yesterday - August 15, 2008 - Ian climbed out of his crib for the first time. We knew it was coming but I hoped it would be a little longer before this adventure began. The thought of my little boy growing up makes me a little sad. So, we decided to clean out his room and get rid of all his "baby" things. We changed his crib into a toddler bed and then at nap time the real adventure began. I think it took an hour for him to finally go to sleep, and that was only after Jonathan moved the changing table in front of the bed so that Ian could not get out. Someone said "why didn't you just turn the crib around so the low part was in the back?" Ta da - who would have thought? Last night he went right to sleep with his crib backwards!

We know who rules the roost...

2008-05-28T22:32:00.000-06:00

Ian and Carter - Mar 2008

2008-05-28T22:24:00.000-06:00

Ian loved playing with his new cousin Carter!

2008-05-28T22:22:00.000-06:00

Sweet little Catherine letting Ian pick her pockets!

Thor and Catherine - March 2008

2008-05-28T22:11:00.001-06:00

who doesn't like pancake batter?

2008-05-28T22:10:00.000-06:00