And Then Everything Changes...

So BIG news!







No, we're not pregnant








No, we're not buying a house








Yes, we are moving!!!  But not to where you may think.  We are moving to...







UTAH!!!!






Actually, Jaden and I are already here!  Jake and my dad will be driving the moving truck this weekend.  We are so excited to be coming home and being around family, but we are going to miss those beaches and that sun!

So, here's what is going on.  Jake has had some medical issues lately (not anything major so no need to be alarmed) and the doctor he was seeing recommended that he be released from the military on a medical discharge.  The exact details are slightly personal, so I won't go into it here.  However, it means that Jake is getting out of the military with an honorable discharge, and we couldn't be happier!  He will go back to doing real estate appraisals (which he was doing before and LOVED) and we will live in my parents house until we find the perfect rental.  So, if you missed us, then good news, because the Cuthbert's are back in town!

2!!!!

That's right!  My little boy has officially entered the Terrible Two's!  And we couldn't be more excited!

We are so lucky to have our little feisty Jaden in our lives.  There is literally not a day that goes by that I don't just stare at him in awe and wonder.  Here are some fun facts about our miracle boy:

*He doesn't like to hold his morning/nap time/bedtime bottle.  He likes you to hold it, and then he likes to play with your fingers.

*Favorite TV shows: Thomas the Train and Mickey Mouse Clubhouse

*Favorite Movies: Lion King (this is a new favorite and I think I have watched it about 50 times in the last week and a half), Finding Nemo and Mickey's Twice Upon a Christmas

*He is going through a Cheese-It phase.  That's all he wants to eat.  Thank goodness for multi-vitamins!

*He is a very quiet kid (comes from Jake) but has just started to hold long conversations in complete gibberish (comes from me).

*When he wants to show you something he will grab your finger and drag you over to see it.

*He is completely fascinated by his belly button.

*He spends a good portion of his day watching home movies of himself.  Vain child (comes from me).

*He loves to take baths.  He will take two baths a day if he can talk us into it.

*Jaden doesn't say "yes".  I mean, he can say it, but he doesn't.  He just says "ok!" instead.

*He is obsessed with dogs, and more specifically, dogs licking his face.

So here are the obligatory photos!

Jaden in the NICU

6 months (I love that you can see his apnea monitor wires at the bottom - we had taken him off oxygen for the pictures and kept putting the nasal cannula back in his nose in between pictures)

1 year

18 months

2 years!!! (ish - this was actually taken in November, but it's close enough)

Happy Birthday Jaden!  We love you more than you could ever know!  We are eternally grateful you were willing to fight to stay with us!

Whew! That's a lot of updates!

Between Christmas, my anniversary (6 years!!!), celebrating the New Year, Jaden's surgery, my birthday (28!!!), having my mom here (which has been nothing short of awesome!), getting ready for Jaden's birthday (2!!!), planning a family reunion to Disney World (including a Disney Cruise!), and preparing for a move (more about that in a future post), there just hasn't been the time to update the blog.  But I pushed it to the front of my list today, so enjoy!

Jaden's Surgery

Jaden had surgery on January 4th.  He had to be circumcised  and he also had some reconstruction work to be done "down there".  Things didn't form quite right, and we've known since birth that this surgery would have to be done.  We waited until now so that he was old enough to handle the ventilator (and more importantly, come off the ventilator ok, since that was such an issue in the NICU) but young enough to never remember this!  It was a same-day surgery, and the surgery took 1 1/2 hours.  Here we are in our surgery prep area:

 We made sure to bring a lot of Thomas DVD's and trains.  The hardest part was that he kept begging for milk/juice/snacks but we couldn't give him anything and he was miserable!  He didn't get taken back into surgery until 10:45am, and he was starving!

After surgery, they had us wait to go back and see him until he had woken up from the anesthesia.  But by the time we got back there, he was sedated again.  Apparently he tore out his IV 3 times and wouldn't stop rolling and thrashing around on the bed so they had to sedate him again.  I guess kids do better after waking up from sedation following anesthesia.  The nurses couldn't stop talking about how incredibly strong he was - it took three of them to hold him down!  Also, the nurse anesthetist told me that he completely freaked her out - right after she extubated him (pulled the breathing tube out) he sat straight up on the operating table!  Like, he was knocked out cold from the anesthesia one second, and the next, sitting straight up!  Something straight out of a horror movie if you ask me!
They had me crawl on his post-op bed to calm him when he woke from sedation.   He was still really disoriented when he woke and he wanted nothing more than to get that IV out!  We watched cartoons for awhile and then let him have some apple juice, which he kept down just fine.  Then they let us go home!

 They gave him a nerve block in addition to the anesthesia to help with the additional pain.  They said it would relieve his pain for about 6-8 hours after the surgery.  They lied.  Almost as soon as we walked in the door, Jaden started screaming.  And I mean, the kind of scream that you never want to hear your child make.  Blood curdling doesn't even begin to describe it.  That entire night was just a blur of awfulness that I want to forget.  The doctor had given us a prescription for Tylenol with Codeine  but that barely took the edge off the pain.  It was a long night.
The next morning he woke up at 4:30am.  As soon as we got downstairs, he wanted to get down to play with his trains, but as soon as he put his weight on his legs, he started to scream!  I quickly picked him back up and went and brought the trains to him.  He sat with me until 6:30am when he asked to be put down again.  I hesitantly put him down, and he ran off to play with his toys without even looking back!  It was like regular Jaden for the rest of the day!  Except we could always tell when he was peeing: his body would stiffen, he would hunch over, and then he would whimper in pain.  But then he would straighten up, smile, and run off to his next adventure.  He still had awful moments (like most diaper changes) but things have gotten progressively better.  I think we are almost done with the pain at this point.
At the end of the month he has his follow up appointment, and if the doctor is happy with his healing, he will discharge him from Urology, which means that Jaden will no longer have any specialists or therapists, just a regular pediatrician!  And we are also really happy realizing that this has been Jaden's only surgery since birth, which all things considered, is pretty amazing!

Curse You Pinterest!!!!

I have stayed away from Pinterest for a LONG time because I knew I would be addicted to it and I couldn't afford to be addicted to it.  But then one day, I received a call from a friend in the ward who was in charge of our Super Saturday (a day where the women in our church get together and make crafts) and she told me not enough people had signed up to teach a craft and she needed me to teach something.  Of course I agreed, but as soon as I hung up, I broke out in cold sweats.  I am not a craftsy person.  At all.  In fact, most of the time I try something, I like it, and then I think "and if I add this or change this it will be even better!" and then I add or change it, and it's awful.  How was I supposed to teach a Super Saturday worthy craft to people that could do everything better than me!?!  So, I gave in to the dark side and created an account to Pinterest.

Almost immediately I found the flat glass marble magnets that I eventually ended up teaching (simple, cheap, and even Jake could make them), but then I realized the black hole that Pinterest is: step-by-step tutorials with pictures for each step.  These incredibly talented people lead me to believe that by following their "simple steps" I can recreate their amazing things.  And I totally bought into it.  I kind of went "crafting crazy", as it were.  My crafting supplies went from being able to fit in a shoe box, to being crammed in two HUGE rubbermaid totes.  I discovered the awesomeness that Hobby Lobby is.  I finally figured out how to cut vinyl on my Cricut.  And I decided to do some homemade gifts for Christmas.  The results, I am pleased to announce, turned out awesome!

Honestly, the picture doesn't do it justice.  I also made several other things, but didn't take pictures of any of them.  I have since calmed down a little and only go on Pinterest every now and then.  It can be a great tool, but also a great distraction!

Christmas 2012

*It's really dark and has a hard time focusing, but worth it!*

So obviously all of the planning and buying things months in advance (I was done with Christmas and Jaden's birthday shopping by the end of October) was in vain, because all he needed and wanted was the train table.  But as my grandma said, at least I found something that he absolutely loves!  And the best part - I got it for free!  In fact, everything he got for Christmas and birthday cost less than $75, and that includes all of his new 12 month and 18 month clothes!

I got Jake several things, one of which was a carpet cleaner I picked up for next to nothing at a yard sale.  It didn't work as well as we would have liked, so Jake decided to make a project out of it to see if he could fix it:

We couldn't get it working the way we wanted it to, but I think he had more fun taking it all apart and trying to put it back together!

The Stockings Were Hung...

After setting out all of the presents on Christmas Eve, I looked at it and thought that we had done pretty good!  Not too little, not too much, but just the right balance:

 Then I looked at our stockings and realized I may have underestimated the amount a stocking will hold (the bags behind the stockings were the "overflow" stocking stuffers.  Mine was empty but Jake filled it later).

 Then I turned around and saw this, and realized we may have gotten him too much stuff after all:

And then I stumbled into the hallway and had that sinking feeling of "what have we gotten ourselves into!!!"

Lesson learned: LESS IS MORE!!!

Ward Christmas Party

Our ward had a Christmas Party this year where the youth put on a live nativity.  They had the nursery kids dress up as animals (with any animal costume they had, so we had a duck (Jaden), a shark, a lion, and some sheep - you never knew how diverse the animals were in Bethlehem that night, did you!), the primary girls dress up as angels, the primary boys dress up as shepherds (I will never again allow my CTR 4 boys to have large sticks.  Ever.), the young men and young women were Mary, Joseph, the Narrator and presented special musical numbers, and the bishopric were the 3 wise men.  We never practiced, but with the help of leaders shuffling them around to where they needed to be, it was really fun!  Jaden pooped out about halfway through, which was good because by that time I was on "don't even think about hitting him/stop twirling your staff in the air/stop hitting the ground repeatedly/the nursery kids are NOT for drumming on" shepherd duty.

Confessions From a First Time Mom

People always tell you that when you become a mom, your whole life will change.   It's true, but that's not really surprising.  Some of the things that I expected have come true:

*Sleeping in consists of when you wake up and it's 7:30am and you feel really well rested!

*You can have long conversations with your spouse about nothing but poop.  Literally poop.  Who knew that could be such a concern?  And don't get me started on the language you come up with to describe it...

*Goldfish crackers have become a staple in your diet too.

*Christmas becomes magical again - that "I've tried for hours but can't go to sleep because I'm so excited!!!!" magical.

*You notice things you never noticed before, like the first thing I look for when we go outside is if the moon is up because he loves to point at the moon.

*And the one that is most often talked about - that you will wonder how you can love something or someone SO MUCH!!!  I love my husband.  It's a fact.  But the love that I feel for my child is so different and so amazing.

Something that I didn't expect was how my emotions would change.  And I'm not talking about hormones, because that is almost a given.  It's more that my entire way of thinking about things and life has changed.  Let me explain:

When we were younger, we used to laugh and make fun of my mom because she couldn't watch a movie where a child was being hurt.  And I'm not just talking about horror movies, but regular ones as well.  When the first Pirates of the Caribbean came out my mom couldn't watch it because during the part where the pirates are pillaging the island there is a split-second shot of a young child screaming all alone until he is scooped up by someone and presumably taken to safety.  It was too much for her to handle, so she couldn't watch the movie.  We would laugh at her and call her crazy.  Now, I must publicly apologize to my mom, because

I get it.

I can't watch shows where it's children being hurt.  I can't watch the news without thinking "what if that was me and my child?  What would I do?".   There was a tragedy in Oregon last night, and I couldn't stop thinking that if I had been in that situation with my beautiful boy, how would I make him safe?  How would I get both of us out?  I just started reading a book today called Gone.  The premise of the book is that one day, inexplicably  everyone 15 and older suddenly disappear.  I can't tell you much more than that because I am literally only pages into it, and I'm considering not even continuing.  Before I had kids, I would think that it's just a good time-passer book to be entertaining on boring nights.  Now, I just imagine what would happen to Jaden if Jake and I both disappeared.  It makes me get all worked up thinking about all of the different scenarios.  All I can say is that I'm glad I read The Hunger Games before I became a mom!

Regardless of how my life has changed, I wouldn't trade it for anything!  There is nothing better than having my child cuddle in my lap while we watch Thomas the Train and I mouth the words along with the show because I really have seen it that many times.  How, when he gets hurt or scared, the only thing that will make it better is hugs and kisses from me.  The way his face lights up when I come to pick him up from Nursery and he comes running across the entire room to jump into my arms.  I love you Bubbas!

I Love My Camera!

Let me tell you the story of how I got my camera.

My mom decided that for her 50th birthday she wanted to get herself something really nice.  She did a lot of research and finally decided on a Nikon D60 camera.  She bought it and was happy, but she never really used it.  I, on the other hand, was asking to borrow it constantly!  For every family function and just every day life I was asking to use it.  Finally, she got tired of me asking and just flat out GAVE IT TO ME!!!  Yup, I have a really generous and awesome mom!

I love how simple the camera is, and yet it takes such amazing pictures.  It can probably do a lot more fancy stuff than I know, but it fills my needs perfectly.  So here are some pictures of us lately that were taken with my fantastic camera!

Watching the Blue Angels Homecoming Show:

Family Pictures in Utah (which consisted of Hana taking some quick pictures so I would have something to put in our Christmas card - thanks Hana!)

As you can tell, Jaden was NOT happy about sitting still long enough for pictures. :)

Taking Jaden to the ER on Thanksgiving Day (he threw up that morning, for the first time EVER, and so I was concerned.  We knew there wouldn't be any Insta Care's open on Thanksgiving, so we just went to the ER.  He's fine - he has been SUPER congested lately and it made his tummy upset)

Just so you know, not every picture of Jaden is adorable - in most of them he just looks drugged:

But he still looks kissably cute!

Here we are at a playground the other day just having fun as a family:

 Even though it's blurry, I love the look of terror on his face!

And my new All Time Favorite Picture: