So There

Ellie was having a rough day Sunday. She was making a lot of bad choices and therefore getting in quite a bit of trouble. Steve was being the disciplinarian and Ellie was not happy about his chastisements. That night she was saying prayers and part of it went something like this, "thankful for mommy, daddy, grandma ... (pause)... thankful for mommy, grandma, grandpa..."

hands

Steve got the new photoshop software and had some fun...

kissable toes

I love newborn hands and feet. And little Tom's are no exception.

I haven't done a post about our newest little guy. There are lots of pictures that Steve sent out to friends and family. I'll find some and post them down below. He just gets cuter and cuter by the day. But for those that don't know, here are his stats:
Born: May 25th at 8:19am by c-section
weight: 10-3
length: 22.5"

So yeah, he was a big boy. No wonder my body was hurting those last couple weeks! He is a perfect little baby. He eats well, sleeps well, and is so incredibly content. I am one blessed momma (of 5 kids!)

Hospitals

I don't mind hospitals. I worked as a CNA for 4 months before Steve and I got married and I loved it. Of course, I was on Mother/Baby and it was so much fun. I've had 5 babies now and I've decided that I like hospitals when it's on Mother/baby. I was discharged from the hospital on Thursday and seriously, I can't say enough about how great my experience was this time around. The surgery went well, the nurses were awesome, the pain was manageable, and I had an adorable baby boy to love and snuggle.

But sometimes there are complications. Oh, miserable complications.

Sunday my parents came down to take the kids to church with Steve and even brought dinner. I have such awesome parents. I was good and only went downstairs twice. After dinner and a fun "welcome home" cake my parents decided it was time to head home. They were both exhausted after taking care of my kids all week. They were definitely looking forward to an early bedtime and sleeping in the next day! I was not feeling so great- feeling sore from what I assumed was incisional pain, so after getting the kids ready for bed (7:30-ish) I retired to my room and my spot on the bed. About 1/2 later I got the most intense pain in my abdomen. Holy moly, I don't think I've ever felt that kind of pain before. I couldn't move it was so bad. I called Steve upstairs to help me lay down, hoping it would make the pain lessen. I took my Hydrocodon and Ibuprofen and there was no relief coming. I kinda scared Steve as I was moaning in excruciating pain. Looking at my belly he thought he saw bruising, which would indicate internal bleeding, and that scared him a bit as well. He called the nurse help line and finally gave up and called an ambulance, as there was no way he could move me. And then my parents, who hadn't been home very long, got a call to come back and stay the night with the kids (including Thomas!) Our neighbor across the street, who likes to be in "the know" came over until my parents could get back down. The fire department EMTs showed up first from Mahomet and assessed my pain and vitals. I've never had a 150/90 blood pressure reading before! Because putting pressure on my right side seemed to give me relief, they assumed it was my appendix. And unfortunately they were not allowed to give me any pain meds so that the doctors at the hospital could accurately assess the location and level of pain. Lovely. Trust me, I could tell them that it HURT!!! A few minutes later we heard the sirens of the ambulance. They carried me down the stairs in a little chair, strapped me to a gurney, and took me out to the ambulance with the flashing lights. There was a graduation party going on across the street, so we received a sufficient audience on our way out :) And amazingly, Katie and Ellie were not upset at all about what was happening. They just gave me a kiss and said good-bye. Maybe the promise of Grandma and Grandpa's return helped? I still received no pain meds in the ambulance and apparently they didn't use the siren or lights and went the speed limit :( Lame! But Steve got to be an ambulance chaser, which is fun to be able to say. What a long, long night in the E.D. (it's not an ER, it's an ED here). Everything seemed like it was in slow motion. No hurrying for them, unfortunately. It took 3 good hits with the morphine before my pain finally found relief. Then I had a CAT scan and waited and waited for the results. Not the appendix this time, but rather a hematoma in my muscles. Just a fairly rare complication of my surgery earlier in the week. The on-call OB doc came in and told me she was going to keep me for observation overnight and see how I looked by morning. Of course, by this time it's 3:30 in the morning. I was exhausted, I was just told I couldn’t nurse my baby for 24 hours because of the dye they used for the scan, and I'm stuck in the hospital, in a shared room, with no Steve and no baby. Thomas is not even a week old yet and I was being separated from him! I was an emotional wreck. The poor nurse didn't know what to do with me. And to top it off, it just made my belly hurt more by crying. I wanted a quick solution that would send me home to recover. After a couple hours sleep I was feeling better this morning.

So here's the verdict: since there was no sign of infection, there was no good reason to go to the OR and clean it up. I was totally fine with that! I just have to wait for my body to absorb the blood that leaked out into my abdomen. It'll add a couple more weeks to my recovery, but otherwise I do not have any more limits than I did from the C-section. I am still in quite a bit of pain, but it's finally being managed with pain meds and it looks like I can be discharged tomorrow morning. After so many worst-case-scenarios running through my mind all night, it was a relief to know that it was nothing more serious.

Apparently Tom wasn't thrilled about Grandma taking care of him, so she didn't get much sleep last night. Thankfully he was okay with Steve, who relieved her when he got home around 3:30AM. My parents, who were like zombies this morning (did I mention how awesome they are?) took Katie, Sarah and Ryan home with them. I was told that I had to stick around here for another full day (boo!) and here I am. I had quite the roommate and am glad she was discharged this afternoon. A little too much swearing was coming from her side of the curtain! Apparently I’m about to get another roommate soon from a 10-car pile-up. Steve came by with Thomas and it was nice to be able to spend the afternoon with my baby. I couldn't nurse him, but he took the formula just fine (I had supplemented in the hospital, so he was a pro with the syringe). I'm anxious to get back home and finish healing.

Even though this has been a trial, everything fell into place and worked out just fine. The hospital had sent us home with extra formula, so Tom had food to eat. My parents are just 40 minutes away, so they could come rescue us no problem (and come help give me a blessing). I did not need any kind of surgery (I believe a result of that blessing) so I had just 2 nights in the hospital, nothing more. And tomorrow I go home.

So again, I don’ t mind hospitals when I’m delivering a baby and it’s all happiness and joy. I think I’ll stick with that from now on! This is just plain lame!

Steve's shirts

I have always read in my pregnancy magazines that when your own clothes get too tight, it's a great time to raid your husband's closet. I always said it would be a sad day if I ever got big enough to need to wear Steve's clothes. Come on, he's 6'5'' and usually weighs almost 100 lbs more than me. Well, it is a sad, sad day...


And just for the record, I don't wear these shirts out in public! I walked past a mirror last night and saw this profile and just had to get picture proof of how silly I look. Oh- and I'm wearing the necklace that Sarah made me during Nursery for Mother's Day. :)

Counting Down

The days are counting down to the arrival of our little guy. I have to admit- this has been by far the hardest pregnancy on my body. I just hurt all the time. Makes keeping up with kids, chores, cooking and all the other zillions of things about impossible. We've been eating a lot of macaroni and other simple meals around here (if they're lucky to even get that much!). 2 more weeks... just 2 more weeks.
*This picture was taken about 3 weeks ago. I am much bigger and carrying MUCH lower now. Ouch!

Quotable Sarah

Sarah said a couple funny things tonight.

At dinner Sarah said, "I was robbed."
Steve, "you were robbed?"
"Yeah"
"Where?"
"In the temple."
?

As Steve was reading scriptures tonight he asked the girls, "who is the evil one?" Sarah's response: "Pinky Pie!" (For those of you who are way out of the loop or don't have little girls, Pinky Pie is a 'My Little Pony')

Happy Birthday Sarah!

Happy 3rd Birthday, Sarah! I will be posting fun pictures from our day soon. Sarah was a perfect angel and loved everything about her day today. Hard to believe she's already 3! So now our kids are 0,1,3,4 and 5.

Bunny Family

The other morning Steve looked out our window at the lawn. He then asked, "why is there a family of bunnies on our lawn?" I looked down and what did I see? It was a family of stone rabbits perfectly lined up along the bushes. Rabbits that were supposed to be decorating our neighbor's trees! Yikes! We quickly sent the girls out to return them to where they belonged (maybe the neighbors didn't notice the hijacked bunnies?) My girls love families- whether it is my little ponies or decorative lawn ornaments.

Happy Easter

Happy Easter from the Elgans!

Wonderful wonderful girl....

I'm hijacking Tiff's blog tonight to voice my extreme admiration and love for her. She is simply amazing. I love you Tiff.

Anniversary Trip

Steve and I celebrated our 7th anniversary last Sunday. We had hoped to go and do an overnight temple trip, but our babysitter (my mom) had a horrible sinus infection, so we decided to just put it off a week. Friday we took Ellie out of school, dropped the kids off at my parent's house and headed over to Nauvoo. We got there in time to get a hotel room, change clothes and head over for the last session of the day. What a wonderful experience. We haven't been in that temple together since our honeymoon, so it's been a long time. The workers were amazingly sweet and genuinely excited that we were there. That sure made us feel good. The session was wonderful, we could take our time afterwards without feeling rushed and it was just perfect. We then went in search for food. Not exactly an easy thing to do in Nauvoo! We actually ended up driving over to Fort Madison, IA and picked a random mom and pop pizza joint off our GPS. That ended up being a great idea! Steve and I ate entirely too much pizza, it was so good.

After a nice, quiet night's sleep (no children waking up at strange hours) we dressed again and went back to the temple to do some sealings. Dad had given me a huge stack to do and again, it was perfect. The woman I did the session for the night before was sealed to her spouse, which was neat. We were there for almost 2 hours and I can't even begin to explain how awesome it was. To be reminded of all the promises we were given when we were married 7 years ago was wonderful. I can't wait to go back and do it again!

We went back to my parent's house, picked up the kids (of course they wanted to stay longer) and got home just in time for our babysitter to show up. Yep, we were heading out again. Ryan was not happy about this at all!! A guy that Steve works with is dating a gal that was in a show last night called, "Bellies for Life." It was a bunch of belly dancers that put on a show to raise money for Breast Cancer Research. We stayed for only an hour of the show (I would guess it lasted almost 3) but it was actually quite enjoyable. It's amazing how much jiggling was going on, though! Typically belly dancers are not thin... We stopped for dinner, grabbed a few groceries and were home in time for a movie and bed.

What a perfect weekend. I wish we could that more often! Unfortunately Steve was up most of last night with food poisoning and I've been miserably sick all day. But nothing will overshadow that weekend we enjoyed together.

Photo shoot

For Christmas we got a game from the Tolman's called "Pretty, pretty princess." It is a huge hit around here. Yesterday the girls decided that they would dress up as their princesses and play the game. Once they had all received their jewelry Ellie suggested we take some pictures. Since I had just bought some flowers to do pictures at some point, I decided to go ahead with it. Steve did some really great editing on some of these. I'm starting to learn, but still not as good as him- so when I can get his assistance, I take it!

Valentine project

We have been doing many, many Valentine projects around here. The girls did tons while we were visiting my mom last week to include heart cookie pops and a valentine tree (they painted a tree branch and hung heart-shaped ornaments that they decorated on it. I'll try to get a picture before it gets too destroyed). Then Saturday we made these Hershey Kiss Valentine mice. I don't know if you can see them in the pictures very well or not. Regardless, the girls really enjoyed these projects.

Ellie

Last night as we were reading scriptures Ellie said, "I hope I'm little when Jesus comes again so I can gather 'round his knee."