Category: Medical

Everett:

 
Ember:

 
Everett LOVES the dentist! He is so social and loves meeting new people and being the 5th child in our family, he loves attention that’s all his! Which is what appointments like this give him. I love watching him soak in relationships with new people. I’m so thankful for people who are so good at their jobs, too. The people at our dental office are so kind and so good with kids and they truly listen and respond to my kids and I love it.

 
Ember is the exact same as Everett and loves meeting new people and talking with them. She is loved everywhere she goes because she is so present and genuinely seems to love every single person she ever meets! She is cheerful and happy and sees the good in everyone. I haven’t seen her dislike anyone in her entire 7 year life! It’s incredible!
She also really likes these tokens they give out after the appointment. The kids use their token to get a little toy in coin machines at the front of the office.

 
Before heading home I took this picture, Lyla was thrilled with that! She LOVES having her picture taken. Everett was actually smiling and looks maybe not thrilled but he was just really just thinking (this is his thinking face) probably about his new toy or that we were heading to McDonald’s after this and that’s his favorite place on earth!

 
Back at home Everett got into his “goody” bag and played with his toothpaste. I just let him because he had fun and we don’t use that type of toothpaste so it would’ve gone to waste. I cleaned it up right after. He used the whole tube!

 
So Everett had a perfect checkup, no cavities! I was shocked because his teeth came in with virtually no enamel! I do brush his teeth and have a spinny toothbrush to help but I worry SO MUCH about him getting cavities. Even though he has none this time his dentist suggested having Everett come in every 3 months for cleanings and flouride and I agreed to that because I really don’t want him to have any more dental issues!
On the other hand, Ember did have two teeny cavities right in the same spot in the back of her mouth in a flossing zone. She does a great job brushing so we just need to have her make sure to floss those back molars a bit better.
The very next morning we were back in the office to get her cavities filled.

 
I took very few pictures and filmed very little because I didn’t want to be bothering her with a camera in her face instead of just being there for her while she had that painful stuff done! She did want me to take a couple pictures so she could see what she looked like with all the stuff on her face and in her mouth.

 
She did really great. She did not like that process but she was so brave. And yay for another token and little toy! She picked the same thing as the day before, these squishy little animal toys.

 
And if you want to see a short video of what I did film from those two appointments, here one is:

My vision changed for the first time after I had Payson 9 years ago. I noticed things further away getting blurry. I went to an optometrist and was told that vision changes during pregnancy and right after are normal and my vision would likely return to normal within a year or so postpartum so I decided to wait on getting any glasses.
Sure enough, my vision went back to normal. Then I had Ember and had the same issue, but it went back to normal. Then I had Everett and the same issue and I don’t really remember if it went back to normal after him… that was a rough time in my life that’s a blur in general so I just don’t remember but I’m guessing it went back to normal because I don’t remember thinking about my vision at all. Then I had Lyla and my vision was so much different after her birth! Oh my gosh things were blurrier than ever before and I waited until she was a year old and nothing changed. Then she hit 16 months and no change. Then she hit 17 months and no change and I thought… I’m sick of this. I can barely drive at night and it’s getting dangerous… I need to get glasses. If only just for driving at night.
 
And so I scheduled an appointment with an optometrist and went. The experience of having my eyes tested was crazy!! They used this machine that gives them a head start on where your vision is and when I sat down in the optometrist’s exam chair she had already set up some lenses with a prescription that was close to what I need. She pulled up a chart and tried a couple different lens settings (I don’t know how all that works, just that there were different settings or lenses) and we settled on whatever we settled on. Then she asked if I wanted to see the chart with no lenses. I said yeah, of course! I want to see how different my regular vision is from these lenses. Since I sat down with the lenses already set up I didn’t have a reference to compare to what I would’ve seen without lenses. She took the lenses away. I was prepared for a slight difference… maybe things would get slightly more fuzzy?
I was shocked when I couldn’t even read half the lines on the chart anymore!! Oh my gosh, I was seriously speechless! I just sat there, my brain was struggling to make sense of this new information that my vision was WAY worse than I thought! haha! I felt a little self conscious about it!
 
Long story short, I got a new prescription and went and picked out lenses and then a week later the call came that they were ready and I excitedly headed to the store to get them and be able to SEE!

 
So yeah, here are my glasses! All my kids were so excited about this whole process and wanted to try on my glasses and see what they looked like and what mom was going to see. They were extremely fascinated. It was fun.

 
So my experience with getting the glasses on was really overwhelming. I put them on and pulled them right back off in shock! I could not BELIEVE the world around me. I could SEE things! I could see things clearly that were ten, fifteen, twenty, fifty feet away!!! Oh my gosh, wait… is this what other people are seeing?!?! All the time?!?! Is this what I used to be able to see?! I can’t even remember being able to see what I was seeing. How long had the world around me been blurry without me even knowing?!
I could see strangers’ faces when they were 15 feet away!
It was overwhelming in a store to experience that but driving home was one of the best experiences of my life! I could see everything!! It was a beautiful, beautiful world! Oh my gosh you guys if you’ve never had blurry vision you don’t know what you have right in front of you! The world is amazing!! Buildings, trees, rivers, sidewalks, lights… it’s not a big blur, it’s beautiful! The littlest things caught my eye and amazed me! I could SEE it all well enough before but not how it really is. It was life changing. I can’t describe it well enough but it was one of the best days of my life. It was a gift and everything felt wonderful and special and precious.

 
So here is my new face with glasses. It’s taken a lot of getting used to to see myself differently like this.

She weighed 14 pounds 14 ounces. She looks really healthy and she got four shots! I hate shots, my poor baby! Luckily she does really well with vaccines. She has lots of family members around to comfort her each time and she likes that a lot.

I took some pictures of her when we got back, my kids love seeing the bandaids on their legs from when they were vaccinated as babies so I kept up the tradition and took some for her.

And then because she looked so cute and was being pretty happy for a minute, I snapped a few more.

Somehow I tore some muscle in my back or something because one day my back started hurting and went from 0-10 pain within a few hours. It got worse and worse to where I could barely move. I didn’t have any help so had to take care of 6 kids with a back that felt like it would never heal from this level of injury.
But after weeks of pain, resting, ice, heat, and yoga… it did get better! Thank freaking goodness because those weeks were !@#$.

This picture is from when I finally went to the doctor because it wasn’t getting better and was spreading, my entire back hurt, my thights, my legs, everywhere! The referred pain from what must have been a pinched nerve from my inflamed torn muscle was destroying my whole body and life!!

So Payson and Ember are pretending they don’t have arms. Their arms were tucked in their shirts and they were jumping around on the couch. You fellow moms know where this is going! Payson quickly falls off the couch and without arms to catch himself lands square on his nose! It instantly looked bruised and really swollen! Luckily Allan was heading home from work right then so he took Payson to urgent care when he got home just to make sure it wasn’t broken!

He asked me to take a picture before heading to the doctor. Look at those tears! 🙁

Allan kept me posted as they were out what was going on. There was an hour wait at urgent care so they went to Burger King for dinner.

Waiting for the doctor.

He got an x-ray.

Waiting for the doctor again he got to point out pain levels on this chart. No matter whose appointment we go to, Payson LOVES talking about the pain chart so for it to be his turn he was extra excited! haha

Before bed.

The next morning.

First thing in the morning we had her 2 month checkup.

Lyla was diagnosed with reflux. She weighs 10 pounds and 8 ounces!

When I got home I snapped a few 2 month pictures while she was in a good mood 🙂

Everett wanted to be in pictures so we took a couple with the camera remote.

Lyla fell asleep after an outfit change.