Halloween

For Halloween we celebrated by carving pumpkins, watching Nightmare Before Christmas with friends and going to our wards Trunk-or-Treat. For our costumes we dressed Logan up as a penguin and Nick and I put on blue polos and Sea World name tags. We decorated the trunk like the penguin exhibit and put Logan in it. He was pretty tired though and he pretty much slept through the whole thing. We did win most creative trunk so it was pretty fun!

Here are the pumpkins we made! And by "we" I mean Nick because I gave up carving my Mike after like ten minutes. We did Mike and the skull the night before we took this pic so they are already pretty droopy. I guess that is what you get when they sit out in 85 degree weather all day in Texas. Logan's Stitch pumpkin turned out pretty good though. On Halloween night we spent time with neighbors and friends making sugar cookies decorating them. It was a pretty fun but I cant wait for Logan to be big enough to take him trick or treating around the neighborhood!

Entry Table

Nick's saw! He finally got to use it to make me an entry table. Do you like his workbench? It is the piece of foam the saw came with. Very classy. He is still planning how he wants to make his workbench so until then it will sit on the foam. Below are pics of the bench he made a few weekends ago. It was a really simple project and didn't cost much for the materials. I am completely obsessed with the website Remodelaholic right now and want to make everything on there so we started with this console table.

The pics aren't great since they are from my phone but it is nice looking. I am thinking of spray painting it black because I think the stain is a little too country for me. Plus then we wouldn't have to move the temple picture above it because it would match better. I am leaving it alone for a bit to see if the current color grows on me. Below is the smaller table we got at goodwill and spray painted black. I really like the semi gloss of it so if I decide to change the other table it will be this color.

We are expecting to do a few more projects in the near future (including finishing Logan's room) so more posts to come! Here are some of the projects were are hoping to do; a bathroom mirror frame, a headboard (maybe this one or this one), a laundry pedestal, and maybe even this entertainment center!

Card Table House

This is the project Nick and I have been working on lately! Some good friends of ours have the cutest little girl who turned two and we decided to make her a card table house for her birthday! So we got all the supplies and then Logan came early so we took a little longer to complete it than we thought but here it is! It is a pretty basic house and we even left the back blank so things could be added on later. The first picture is the front of the house with a mail slot and fake window. The door rolls up and ties. The flowers, fruit and bugs are all buttoned on so they can be interchanged.

This is one of the sides. The window has buttons allowing it to be opened or closed.

Here is the last side which has the tree and fruit and then one button for a bug.

Then we made these little letters so that she can slip them in the mail slot. Also instead of making it closed we opted for ribbon closures on all the sides. That way it fits over more tables and will fold up easily. Also, sides can be lifted up completely if needed. Overall we had a ton of fun making the house and we learned how to use almost every function on the sewing machine. Now we need to start planning for Logan's future playhouse!

Club Feet

When Logan was born he had the most precious little feet that were all twisted inward. These first few pics were taken right after he was born. He would curl his legs up into himself like a little frog and it was super cute. The next day when the pediatrician came to check him out he referred us to an orthopedic specialist for his club feet and the treatment was to begin as soon as possible.

The first step in the process was plaster casting. The doctor would stretch his feet to as straight as he could keep them and then they would hold it while they casted him. At first we would go back every few days to be recasted but by the second week we had once a week appointments. Each cast you could tell that his feet were getting straighter. The picture below shows his left leg says No because the doctor felt it was stretched to where it needed to be so that cast was to stay on for two weeks without change. The other foot, which was slightly worse, had an extra week.

This next picture shows that his left leg had moved onto the next step, splints. They casted his left leg in a fiberglass cast and then cut it off immediately. We then put on a sock and ace bandage it closed. He was to wear it for 20 hours a day. 2 hours off in the morning and 2 hours off at night. We were then told we would need to begin his stretches that he will need to do his entire life in order to keep his muscles from wanting to return to the club position. As you can see his right leg still had the plaster cast so no full baths yet!


Finally he was able to have both legs in splints! It was exciting to give him a bath and not have to worry about getting the casts wet but splints also meant stretching and it was HORRIBLE! He would scream and scream and scream until he turned purple and would stop breathing only to start screaming again. We had to do it four times for two min and it was heartbreaking. It was supposed to be getting better but it didn't seem like it was. So we started going to physical therapy once a week where she taught us some good techniques and massaged his cute little feet so they softened up.

Finally after two months he has graduated to the Dobbs brace! He has had this cool new brace for three weeks now. His stretches no longer make him cry but his right heel still isn't stretched all the way so we are working on that as well as keeping the flexibility he has gained. For right now he wears the brace 20 hours a day just like the splints and we stretch him about forty minutes a day. His little calf muscles are finally coming along but the doctor said he will always have little chicken legs. Hopefully soon he will graduate to wearing the brace only while he is sleeping. Although each case is different I believe he will wear the brace while he sleeps for up to two years. After that time he will just need to continue to do some daily stretches but he should walk and crawl at the normal times.
We are glad that this method of correcting club feet is used now. If he were five or ten years older they would have automatically done surgery to cut the muscles and then casted him to have it heal up in the right way. With this series of casting there has been no need for surgery so far! We have an appointment next week so we will find out when we can graduate to wearing them only while sleeping. I will be grateful for that because right now he ruins a lot of things with that heavy bar and it is difficult to feed him. Wish us luck!

Thanks Grandma!

Just wanted to show off some fun photos of my mom who came and stayed with us for a month to help out. I don't know if we could have done it without her! Thanks mom/grandma! Can't wait to see you in a couple weeks.

We were a little bored in the hospital room and I needed my toes pretty for the delivery. Grandma taught Nick how to do it so now I can expect this to happen more regularly right?

Some NICU pictures...

Logan LOVES his grandma!

NICU

So after a few short hours at home Logan had a few seizures when I was trying to feed him. Long story short he ended up in the NICU for the next week. It was a pretty horrible experience but Logan is a trooper and made it through hundreds of pokes and endless monitors beeping night and day. Good news is Logan is now a happy healthy little boy. Although the doctors are not sure why he had such troubles they are pretty sure it won't happen again and no permanent damage was found. We are so happy to have our little boy home now but here are the pics from, what we like to call, the "Nazi NICU"....

Welcome Logan!

So instead of posting the "Nursery After" pics I will post what happened instead of completing the nursery! Basically I went into my 36 week appointment and the doctor wheeled me from the appointment to the Labor and Delivery room shown below where I spent seven days awaiting Logan's arrival. I was considered to have borderline preeclampsia and combined with the fact that Logan was having a really rough time during each of my contractions (which I wasn't able to feel yet) my doctor told me to stay put for the week and she planned to deliver him if he didn't come on his own within the week. So I waited and waited........ one week of not leaving the room below and only able to get up to go to the bathroom was tons of fun! I had an excuse to do nothing all day except play on the computer, watch shows on hulu and people brought me food when I was hungry. Also, Nick stayed with me all day long! Of course the monitors stuck to me all night, the four in the morning blood draws as well as the fact that the noisy nurses station was right outside my room kind of spoiled the whole vacation idea.

Well after six days they decided they would induce me in the morning so they gave me some meds to get me ready but in the morning my water broke all on its own! So after six hours and some close calls Logan Nicholas Graves was born on July 6th, 2010 at 12:47 pm. He had the cord wrapped around his neck once and his body twice so I didn't get to hold him for a while but here are some pics......

They had quite a few nurses ready for Logan when he came out- four I think were all checking the little guy who came out looking pretty blue. These two pics are from when they were cleaning him up a bit.

Clean boy after his sponge bath.
Check out his tiny little crooked feet. We are working on that- updates on that will be posted later

Going home! If only for a short time.... below is the only pic from his first couple of hours at home. Then our next hospital stay came. Pictures of that to come.