May 2018

First Row:

• We went to the Northwest Wildlife Park. Phoebe liked to see the animals, but by the end it was nap time.
• We met with Phoebe's doctor at Seattle Children's and he says her lip is doing great. Whoo-hoo!Jessica came and spent a weekend with us. We watched a movie and had treats and went to the park and went shopping and were sad when she had to go.

Second Row:

• Phoebe and I traveled down to Vancouver with our friend, Carlene, to do some hiking down in Southern Washington. We hiked to Falls Creek Falls, stopped to look at Panther Creek Falls, and hiked through Forest Park in Portland.
• Phoebe is leaning to get into things she shouldn't....
• We met up with Mom in Chehalis and went for a bike ride

Third Row:

• My cousin, Alex, and her daughter Hazel were in town. It was great catching up!
• Aunt Emily came for a weekend of fun! She was a good sport hanging out with us at a family BBQ, going on a walk, and helping us with some yard work.
• We got a grill! I set it on fire and almost burned our house down about a week into having it, but besides that, it's been fantastic to have around!

April 2018

First Row:

• Phoebe takes after her dad...she loves watermelon!
• Phoebe FINALLY learned to take a bottle (and mom is very happy!)
• Phoebe loves to stand at and play with the learning table.
• Aunt Jessica came home from her mission in California and met Phoebe for the first time.

Second Row:

• Jon and I ran away for a weekend and went clamming for the first time with our friends, the Grays and Ballejos'.
• Phoebe and I went on several bike rides...one with Carlene Gray and one with my mom.
• Phoebe likes swinging in the swings.
• Jon attempts to dress Phoebe and puts her clothes on backwards.

Third Row:

• Phoebe and I met up at the park with a bunch of wonderful girls from church. The kids played on the playground while we played cornhole.
• Jon had us dress up and take redneck photos for one of our FHE activities....Phoebe wasn't sure she liked it...
• The weather started getting nicer and we played outside (yay for having a backyard!)
• I BEAT JON AT BOWLING! I was very humble about my triumph. 

Fourth Row:

• Phoebe has decided that shopping carts were made backwards because she can't see where she's going.
• Phoebe was intrigued by my family's dog, Hickley, one stay there. "Da! Da, da, da!" (translation: Dog! Bark, bark, bark!) is her first "word."
• Phoebe has her first sucker (and a lot of other "first" in the junk food category)...she thinks sugar is pretty tasty.
• We went to my sister-in-law, Laura's, place for Easter to watch the last session of General Conference and have Easter dinner.

March 2018

Our biggest adventure was obviously Phoebe's surgery, but we had fun doing many other things too!

First Row

• We hiked Pinnacle Peak in Enunclaw as a family.
• Phoebe and I snuk along with Jon to an Elder's Quorum activity and Phoebe went bowling for the first time (she has room for improvement).
• We met up with some friends and Phoebe "played" at the park for the first time.
• Jon had a birthday, which we got to celebrate the following week with Laura and Austin's family, along with Chase, who happened to be in town.

Second Row

• We went out lots of times with the sister missionaries serving in our ward, Sis. Lee and Sis. Darling. They are awesome!
• We went to the temple and walked around as a family the day before Phoebe's surgery.
• Phoebe started riding in the shopping cart and loves it.
• We had green cinnamon rolls for St. Patrick's Day.

Third Row

• My family came into town St. Patrick's Day weekend to have fun and help around the house. Kate grew Easter bunny ears while we were at Target.
• Phoebe has decided that she's too cool for the changing table. In fact, she's too cool for changing in general and often tries to run away mid-change.
• We started painting the inside of our house. It took me seven samples of paint (only one of which we ended up using) and a lot of prayers to pick the colors, but I'm really happy with what we've done so far! We've only done the bedroom, so there's more fun to come...
• Jon's family sent an Easter package to us, full of yummy treats and this cute duck for Phoebe!

Fourth Row

• Phoebe and I went to watch our friend, Raquel, coach a lacrosse game. Our friends, Cassy, McKenley, Lindsi, and Lukas came along!
• We went with our friend, Loree, and got burgers and fries at Pick Quick. Phoebe liked the french fries.
• Phoebe practiced wearing headbands. If it stays on her head, this photo is usually as good as it gets.
• Phoebe took her first ride in the bike trailer I got from my mom for my birthday. It was fun!

Phoebe's Surgery

Phoebe has a new look! On March 13th, she went in to have her cleft lip repaired. As I already said, it was a bittersweet day for Jon and I, but overall we are so happy and know that Phoebe is still our same wonderful Phoebe.

The most stressful part of the day was getting to the hospital in time. We left for Seattle Children's Hospital at 5:10 am to get there for Phoebe's 6:30 check-in. When I checked the googlemap on my phone twenty minutes into our drive and it said that, due to a crash, the drive would take 2 hours and 40 minutes, we got a little anxious. But we said a prayer and ended up only being five minutes late.

Phoebe was her normal social butterfly self as we got checked in and met with all the nurses and doctors. I was calm until they took her away...she didn't cry, but I did! But after calming down, Jon and I went out into the main areas in the hospital and waited to see how things turned out.

The nurse in surgery paged us at 10:45 to let us know that everything in surgery was going as planned, and at 11:45 they paged us to let us know that they were done and our doctor was coming out to meet with us. He did, telling us that everything went smoothly, and we expressed our gratitude to him. Shortly afterwards, I went back to the recovery room to feed Phoebe--which they try to do right away to encourage the baby to find comfort in eating rather than in heavy pain medicine--and by one o'clock we went up to join Jon in our hospital room.

You could tell that Phoebe wasn't feeling so well that day. Normally, she wants to see everything and she's never been one for snuggling. That day, however, all she wanted was to be held in my arms, resting her head on my shoulder. She didn't really want anyone but me to hold her, but Dad did a fantastic job at getting her to smile and laugh. Miraculously, the only pain medicine they had her take were Tylenol and ibuprofen, which seemed to get the job done.

The next morning, our old Phoebe was already returning to us. She seemed to be saying: "Get me out of this small hospital room! Let me crawl around! I want to see everyone and do everything!" No more head on the shoulder, and sitting around was boring. Luckily, by this point she was no longer attached to any monitors, so while we waited for things to wrap up, Jon and I walked the halls with her. She loved seeing the murals on the walls and saying hi to the nurses.

We were in the car and on our way by 10:30 that morning! Everyone was more tired than usual, but happy and well.

That was two weeks ago, and Phoebe is healing beautifully! She wasn't taking any medicine by the Saturday after the surgery, and the swelling died down within the first week. Two days ago she got the stents that were placed to help shape her nose removed and the doctors said everything looks fantastic. Phoebe's scar still needs to form a bit more and there's some things they've asked us to do to help with that--like applying gel and doing gentle massages. We'll also be checking in with the hospital about once a year, just to make sure things are going okay and to keep an eye on some things.

We are grateful for all the kind words, thoughts, prayers, and fasts offered on our family's behalf at this time. We have amazing family and friends and were blessed to associate with amazing medical personal throughout this whole adventure (Seattle Children's is fantastic!). And of course, we are blessed to have our wonderful, beautiful Phoebe!