This picture is needed to document that amidst all the wonderfulness of life, this kid has been struggling. Which means *I* have been struggling. He is so cranky 95% of the time. Cries, whines, screams and is basically very discontent with life. I'm losing my brains. Honestly, all my nerves are shot. It's wearing me down and I have tried ALL the things to help the situation. He's mad even when I'm reading to him, playing with him, or at the park. I can't go to the store. I can't take him anywhere! Friends want to meet for lunch and it's just not worth it if I have him with me. I know he's just frustrated because he can't communicate yet but he WANTS to communicate. He has opinions and preferences and requests and can't tell me. I try to guess what he wants. He'll point at something in the room and I pick up 20 things to see if that's what he's wanting. By the 25th thing, I might get it right. But then he's only appeased for 30 seconds before we're doing it again. I can't. I CAN'T. It's awful. I don't want any more children! The constant crying and hysterics are more than I can take. Days on end. Several months now. Since July. It's pure torture. I don't know how I haven't torn my hair out. I want to run away to Mexico. I try to tell myself that people have worse lives, but it doesn't FEEL like it could get worse than this. I'm constantly trying to teach him baby sign language to help. It hasn't helped yet. We have a strict rule of no T.V in the car unless we're on trips. Oh, he watches TV in the car. You better believe I've got Kidsongs playing so I at least don't have to listen to screaming while we're driving. But at home, he has no interest in TV. He has no interest in anything except crying at me. You know that scene in Dumb and Dumber where Harry asks Lloyd what the most annoying sound in the world is and then he opens his mouth and makes the most awful, horn/screetching noise that makes you immediately want to punch him in the face? Yeah, that's the sound Tanner makes all day long. The most frustrating thing is, he only acts like this for me. When other people are watching him, I'm told that he acts perfectly fine! What.the.heck. It's maddening.
The boys think fishing is cool because their cousins Neil and Liam love it. So they beg and beg for us to take them. Ugh. Fishing is the worst. But I acquiesced and took them to Discovery Park over the break.
They learned pretty fast that fishing is the worst too. Wrangling Tanner long enough for them to learn that lesson make ME want to jump in the lake.
We have been going to church 15 minutes away because there are no buildings close to us available. It's the worst! Luckily, one is being built down the street. I have been wanting to take a picture of the kids in front of it while it's being built to document how old they are while it's happening. Tanner wasn't on board.
Travis's office was so sweet and gave us tickets to see Manheim Steamroller at Gammage! I was so excited! Their songs are iconic at Christmas time. Welllll, turns out, they are one strange band. Psychedelic is a good adjective. They had a screen behind them with videography going the entire time, but it was of the strangest things! Footage from NASA or just random patterns of colors or images from the 80's. We were almost stunned by the weirdness. Of course, the Christmas songs were beautiful and fun to listen to, but the whole experience was perplexing?? Otherworldly?? Nightmarish?? We are convinced the producer is wildly talented but also on acid. If you've seen the FRIENDS episode where Ross showcases his secret keyboarding "talents", you've got the right picture.
Still. A date night out is a date night out and I love being with this guy!
So precious when he's sleeping and QUIET.
I'm trying to put together our front room and bought some arm chairs and a couch. The kids immediately put the boxes to good, hideout use!
A work in progress!
Family bike ride through Freestone park. Have to take advantage of this nice weather!
How many grandkids can squeeze onto the kids table?!
This happened to be the same Sunday night that Travis suddenly came down with horrible stomach pains, right in the middle of his chest. He was doubled over in pain, rocking back and forth on the floor after I put the kids to bed so I made him go to the ER. I waited for my mom to come over, then drove to the hospital to be with him. I was so alarmed when I was taken back to his room to see him still writhing in pain! I thought for sure they would have had him on meds by then. It was terrifying to see him is such extreme pain with bloodshot eyes, in the fetal position, shaking. They had given him something to drink to see if it would help but it didn't at all. Then they took his blood to run tests and not too long after I got there they gave him morphine. But the morphine didn't touch the pain. I text his family to see if his brothers could come give him a blessing and they all came. Trevor was first and it was such a relief to see him. Finally, after what felt like forever, when they could see the morphine wasn't helping him they gave him something called dilaudid and that worked wonderfully. It was such a relief to see his start to relax. His others brothers got there after the dialudid so they didn't see him the way Trevor and I did. They still gave him a blessing though and stuck around for a while before going back home. The doctor said the blood tests came back negative so they sent him for an MRI, but that also came back not showing anything. SO WEIRD. They essentially just sent him home with a pain med prescription and a diagnosis of indigestion. Which is crazy. He had been throwing up in the waiting room before I got there and that didn't help the pain at all. We thought it was probably gall bladder related, but he saw Dr. Udall a week later and he thinks it was an ulcer. None of it made sense. We got back to the house after waiting at the 24 hour pharmacy for an hour, sometime around 2 or 3am I think. The next day was New Years Eve so luckily he didn't have work scheduled and just stayed in bed and slept. I think his body just felt wrecked from the trauma of it all. It was a bummer though that he wasn't feeling well enough to party on New Year's Eve. My mom had picked up Collin, Weston and Olive around noon so I could take a nap when Tanner did, which was so nice and helpful. We had planned to go to her house that night and make sushi and ring in the new year, but when I got there, Weston was on the couch with a fever. Poor guy!! He had been complaining of his ear hurting, but I hadn't taken him seriously. Found out later he had a really bad ear infection. I was going to drive him home to be with Trav but he burst into tears at the thought of missing out on all the fun, so I let him stay. Landon had been dealing with allergies which made his face break out in hives and his eyes look red, so with the fear of possible pink eye and Weston's fever, Shelley opted out of coming over. Collin was super bummed and there were lots of tears but it ended up ok. We were a rag tag group, but we still had a lot of fun!
Olive's hair send off to 2018!
Her dance team makes us take pictures of them doing the splits, three different ways and posting it on the team app every day. Oy! One more thing to remember!
Collin helping Grandpa in the garage.
Alison and her fiance, Bret, came over for the first part of the night.... it was fun having them there!
It sort of looks like a weird, food caterpillar but it tasted good!
The guys did some fireworks in the driveway around 10pm, so we got an early dance party started! Olive and Scarlett watched from the warmth of the back of the car!
We played some games and then before we knew it, it was midnight! I got our toast drinks covered, haha!
Ain't no party like a dance party! We were missing Christopher from last year!
Grandpa had waffles waiting for us when we came in, but these two didn't quite make it to breakfast.
We made a big change in 2018, finally choosing our "forever" home! I have a feeling 2019 is going to continue to be a lot of adjustments because of it.
*deep breath*
We can do it!
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