Potty Training

On Friday Chris took the kids to Wal-mart to pick up a few things for me. Because I am so close to my surgery date I am no longer allowed to take my regular pain medications for my hip, so I am basically useless when it comes to walking any farther than a few feet and even that is questionable depending on the time of day!

When they all came back Chris came in with a little froggy potty that he had bought for Keric! I was a little shocked that he had bought one because I guess I still kind of consider Keric too little to be potty trained even though I know full well he's probably not.

I suppose the biggest reason that I am so apprehensive about this new adventure is because I myself don't want to start doing it yet! When it comes to potty training I don't even really know where to begin! Heck I can't get the kid to quit throwing his food on the walls lately! How in the world am I going to convince him to go potty?? Granted it would be very nice to not have to buy diapers anymore, or change diapers anymore, but I was kind of hoping that he would be like my nephew and just come up to me one day and ask if he could start wearing underware!

I realize that the odds of this happening with any child are pretty much slim to none which basically means that with MY child the odds pretty much change to nonexistent, but a girl can still dream right?

Anyway, right after Chris got home with the potty, he unwrapped it and set it on the floor for Keric to "play" with. Surprisingly he knew what to do with it! He sat right on there, without any hesitation what so ever and he even talked about "pee pee", which was exciting, but that was about as far as it went.



We took his diaper off and sat him on there to see what he would do then. He sat for a little while, but seemed to be LESS comfortable sitting on it without his clothes on than with his clothes on and sadly he didn't stay on there for very long.



Later on I caught him trying to STAND in his potty,



and then after that I caught him letting Puppy try out the potty too.



We may have just as much luck with Puppy as we will with Bubby at this point!

I have been putting him on his potty every morning before his bath, but with absolutely no success to this point. I put him on it but he usually jumps right back off! I've even taken him in a couple times while changing his diaper to see if he would go, but he still hasn't gone. He doesn't sit there long enough TO go even if he had to!

I don't know? Maybe he is still too young to start, or maybe one day it will just click with him and then again maybe he will be going on 4 and still have not mastered the Potty Training thing! I have no idea. I guess only time will tell, but for now, we have a VERY cute little froggy potty in the kids' bathroom that hopefully one day will actually get used.

Ending Up with a Lemon

According to Wikipedia the term "Lemon" over time has come to refer to anything broken or defective.

I can't help but look back over the past few years and wonder if Chris didn't end up "Buying" himself a real lemon!

Most of you have probably heard by now that my hip-replacement surgery is finally scheduled and will be taking place on April 5th at LDS Hospital. I went to see Dr. Bertin on Wednesday and luckily he had a cancellation for the 5th so I snatched it up! I was so grateful that he had an appointment so soon! I was afraid I was going to have to wait another few months, and I wasn't sure I could wait that long! Although the recovery from this surgery is not nearly as intense as the recovery I would have been looking at with the PAO surgery, it will still be a good 6 weeks before I will be up and around all on my own. I will have to use 2 crutches for 3 weeks and then 1 crutch for the next 3 weeks, and hopefully when I go in for my 6 week check I will be all fixed!

Chris and I have been married for 4 years in June and in that 4 years he has had to put up with quite a bit from me! I don't consider myself a "sickly" or an un-healthy person, but I think I have probably only given him about 1 good year!

1st it was my Pre-Eclampsia, then it was being an overwhelmed new mom, and for the last year it's been a "gimpy" hip. Pretty soon it will be a wife on crutches for 6 weeks!

Thankfully he is a good sport about it, and he doesn't complain about having to use valuable vacation time to take care of me, and that he will have to do all the cleaning, and cooking, and the constant chasing after Keric, or at least he doesn't complain to me about it! :)

So even though most "lemons" are just lemons their entire life, and never really become anything more than that, I am hoping that after my surgery and my recovery I will at least be considered a lime, and hopefully Chris will still consider me a "good purchase"!

Little Person with a Personality!

When I was little my mom used to sing this funny song that went something along the lines of "He's a little person with a personality...." I don't know that there were anymore lines to the song other than that one, and I always assumed it was something she just made up to sing to us when we were little.

Whether it was made up or not, that song has been going through my head a LOT lately as I watch my OWN little person with a personality, and man does he have one!

The past week or so, he has really made us laugh with some of the silly things he says and does. He is getting to be quite the little talker!

The other day I was in the kitchen cleaning up lunch. Bubby as you know loves to watch Handy Manny, and he likes to sit and eat his "shish" (Gold fish crackers) while he watches. I had set him down on the carpet with his little bowl of shish and turned on Handy Manny for him while I cleaned up. I guess I wasn't doing too good of a job at watching him because as I was putting dishes in the dishwasher I heard an all too familiar voice say "Oh Bubby! No! No!" I looked over and he was no longer sitting on the floor eating his shish, so I started calling his name. Pretty soon he came running out of the bathroom with a big smile on his face. I asked him what he was doing in the bathroom, and he just stood there smiling. So I went to investigate.

He had been taking his goldfish and putting them in the toilet! From what I could see he hadn't eaten any of them, but I guess if he did, thankfully my toilet was clean! He obviously knew what he was doing was "bad", I guess he just didn't care that it was bad. So somewhere along the way, I have missed teaching him a step!



All the toilet paper you see in the garbage behind him, would be the remnants of a previous Bubby mess!

A couple days later I decided that I really wanted to have fettuccine. I don't know why, but since Chris is on Atkins and can't have pasta I made Bubby and I some for lunch one day. He seemed to really like it. He was eating away and saying "mmmm!" which is always a good sign. Next thing I know he is doing his famous "Ah ah ACHOO" game where he pretends to sneeze and then when he says "ACHOO" he throws something. Usually something he shouldn't be throwing. When I checked on him, he had thrown a whole bunch of noodles on my wall! I said "BUBBY! We don't throw noodles on mommy's walls!" His response was "Doggie! No! No!" So I guess now we are blaming the dog for things we have done?



This last week I also took Bubby shoe shopping. Shoe shopping would be much more fun if a) he was a girl and b) he was good in stores, but it was something that had to be done! This past Sunday I put his church shoes on him, and he started screaming and trying to take them off. He usually doesn't mind shoes, however I know he prefers to not wear them if he can get away with it. I figured he was just upset about having to go to church and I didn't think much more about it. I went to finish getting ready and he was following me crying about his shoes. I looked down and he was actually walking kind of weird like maybe they actually DID hurt. I said "Buddy what's wrong with your shoes?" and he said "Fat Feet!" I immediately started laughing! Chris and I are always making fun of his little fat feet. We are always saying that his feet are the only thing FAT on him. I guess he understands when we talk about his fat feet!! I hope he doesn't have a complex about them now!

I hate that my little boy gets bigger with each passing day, and that he becomes more and more a little BOY and less and less a baby, but I do love watching him become his own little person with his own little personality!

I love you Bubby! Thank you for always making me laugh and smile each and everyday!

Another Exciting Friday Night at the Wexels House!

We normally don't have much going on during the weekends, but this weekend was a little bit TOO much fun, and a weekend I hope to not see many more of!

Thursday afternoon, Keric was being his usual destructo self. I was trying my very best to keep up with him, but I was exhausted and I had somewhat of a headache. I kept thinking that if I could just lay down for awhile, I would feel better. Of course Keric was not interested in taking a nap, so I turned on Manny, I took some Ibuprofen, and tried to take a little nap on the couch, which of course never happened.

Ibuprofen has always worked for my headaches, and if it doesn't, which is rare, a Coke usually will. This headache however was not going away no matter WHAT I tried!

I am known to get headaches, not tons, but I get them here and there. I have had them since I was little, so it didn't seem like too big of a deal. This headache however just kept getting worse and before I knew it, I was throwing up. This also sadly, is not new to me. If I let my headaches get too bad, I always end up with my head in the toilet, but generally after that happens, I seem to be OK. Well, this time I wasn't. I threw up several times, and still no relief. By the time Chris got home at 6:30, I felt like I was going to die! I handed him Keric, told him I needed a break for awhile, and I went to lie down! I thought maybe I was just exhausted and that was why I had a headache and why I couldn't get rid of it. I was for sure exhausted because I didn't wake up again until 4:30 a.m.!

However sadly when I did wake up, my little "friend" was still with me and was worse than it was when I went to bed. I went downstairs and took some more Ibuprofen and tried to go back to sleep. I eventually fell asleep, but then woke up at 7 and started throwing up again!!

Now it was getting to a point where I not only couldn't keep anything down, I couldn't hold my head up without throwing up and lying my head down hurt too! I was crying I was in so much pain, and I had no idea what I was going to do. I obviously was in no shape to take care of a two year old, let a lone myself! I couldn't stand, I couldn't sit, I couldn't walk, I couldn't do anything but cry and throw up!

Chris stayed home from work THANKFULLY and was able to take care of Bubby and take care of me. He gave me a blessing and gave me some of his migraine medicine to try and then sent me back to bed. I tried yet again to sleep, but I didn't have much success and I couldn't even keep the water and migraine medicine down for more than a couple of minutes.

Finally I decided maybe I needed to go to the Dr. and see if he could help me with this headache, and also help me to keep something in my stomach.

A few years ago Chris had a really bad migraine that he ended up going to the Dr. for. The Dr. gave him a shot that took the nausea away and also knocked him out for several hours. By the time he woke up, his headache was gone. I was hoping that they would do the same thing for me. When I went in, they took my blood pressure and it was really really high. Of course that is a big thing, and always a red flag but since I don't have a history of high blood pressure, and have only had high blodd pressure when I was pregnant, they didn't seem too concerned by it. They checked it a couple more times and it was a little lower each time. So they decided that the high blood pressure was a result of the pain I was in. I do have to go in again on Tuesday to make sure it is still not too high however.

The Dr. did end up giving me the same shot he gave Chris, and told me to go home and go to bed. He told Chris I would probably be out for quite awhile, and when I woke up, I should feel much better. However, if I did NOT feel any better, or if my headache was worse when I woke up, I needed to go immediately to the ER.

While we were driving home I could feel my body relaxing, and could feel myself getting really sleepy. Chris helped me up the stairs and put me to bed. I feel right to sleep, but I woke up an hour and a half later, and my head felt worse than it did when I had gone to the Dr. I REALLY did not want to go to the ER, but I didn't have any other choice.

I truly have never been this sick before! The last time I had a headache like that I was pregnant, and the way they got rid of it was by delivering my baby. Well obviously none of these were options! So it was off to the ER. We thought about driving up to SLC to LDS hospital where Bubby was born, but I didn't think I could survive the car ride, so we just went to the ER here which thankfully was only a couple blocks away.

Mama Anne met us at the ER and took Bubby home with her, and I was admitted really quickly, which I was thankful for! My blood pressure was way high again, but no fever, and I was dehydrated. They hooked me up to a couple things, and started asking me all sorts of questions. You know your head HURTS when you can't entirely remember your address!!

The Dr. told me I had a severe migraine and he wanted to do a CAT scan on my head to make sure that I didn't have any bleeding on my brain. My CAT scan came back clear, and they gave me a big shot of some heavy duty narcotics and kept me there for observation for an hour or so. When I left the ER my headache was almost totally gone, and I actually felt like I could maybe eat something. They again told me to go home and go to bed, and if my headache was STILL not gone, I needed to come back and they would do a spinal tap.

We got home around 11 and I went to bed. I slept through the night, although I will admit that I had several anxiety dreams about my head still hurting! I woke up around 7 and amazingly enough my headache was gone! I also have been able to eat and drink a few things and keep them all down!

It really was a scary experience! I always kind of thought that I got migraines, but when you look up the definition of them, I don't have all the symptoms. I don't lose my vision, and light doesn't affect me or bother me, but the Dr. said that those things don't HAVE to happen for them to be considered a migraine. It's the pain and nausea that are the biggest factor in migraines, and that I certainly DO get!

So I guess next time...and heaven help me there wont BE a next time, I will know more what I am dealing with, and will hopefully be able to get it fixed much faster!

The Verdict is In...

So today was the BIG day. I finally went in to see Dr. Peters about my hip and to talk to him about performing a PAO surgery on me in the next few weeks. This appointment has been in the works for the past 3 months, and getting that appointment was somewhat of a fight and a struggle.

Chris and I dropped the kids off at school this morning and then headed into SLC. My appointment was at 9:30 a.m. but we didn't even get in to see the Dr. until after 11:00. Apparently, that is just a "normal" day for Dr. Peters!

Anyway, I got new x-rays, and we sat and talked with Dr. Peters' head resident for quite awhile. He was very nice, and actually told us some things that were "new" at least to me. I had been under the impression that the PAO was the best option for me because I was young, and this surgery would "fix" my problem making it so that I would no longer require a hip replacement. Well...that is not correct. The PAO would give me an extended life on my hip, but I would only be prolonging the inevitable. In fact, I would most likely only get about 10 years on my original hip before I needed to have it replaced. That was news to me, and made me think that maybe this wasn't such a hot option after all.

We continued to listen and ask questions, and basically what it boiled down to was my new x-rays, they would show us if I still had enough cartilage left to perform the PAO, and Dr. Peters' approval. Looking at my original X-rays, it looked like I had enough cartilage and would most likely get Dr. Peters' approval.

The Resident left, and then came back a few minutes later to show us my new x-rays. I don't know if the difference in the x-rays was because in the first I was lying down and in the second I was standing, or if it was more the fact that it had been about 9 months since my first x-rays, but I have little to no cartilage left. In fact I am pretty much bone on bone, and my dysplasia is much worse than the original x-rays showed. About 50% of my hip ball is exposed, which is a lot more than I thought. Of course the Resident couldn't tell us if that made me no longer a candidate or not, that was Dr. Peters call, but he wanted to prepare us for the "no".

Long story short, I no longer qualify. I guess maybe if I hadn't been so stubborn, and if I had been more aggressive in getting things going, the outcome may have been different, but things are what they are now, and sadly there is no going back.

My only option now is to have my hip totally replaced. While we were talking, and Dr. Peters was telling us that the surgery was no longer possible, I was fighting back tears, and trying not to lose it. I realize that I am 34, but to me that just seems way to young be having a surgery like that! I was more than a little bummed out and upset by the news, but there are some definite bright sides.

The biggest being that I am going ahead and doing what would have had to be done anyway, and I am doing it when I'm younger instead of 10 years older. Who knows what my body would be like in 10 more years! :) The other big bright side is the recovery time. The PAO surgery was going to be a BEAST to recover from, and I knew that. I was scared of all the down time I was going to have, and all the things I was not going to be able to do. I was looking at 6 months on crutches, and a complete year to recover. I guess when you only have 10 good years left, it seems like a real waste to be healing for a year of that!

So I am going to have my hip replaced and I am going to have the Dr. who did my mom's do mine. My mom has had amazing results, and really liked Dr. Bertin. He also comes highly recommended, Dr. Peters recommended him, so those two opinions are good enough to me.

I feel good about the decision that was made, I guess it isn't much of a decision anymore. Live with the pain, or get it replaced, but as much as I did not want to have to have a hip replacement, I think in many ways it is the best thing for me.

My biggest goals going into this were to find a way to one, get rid of the pain, two, go back to living a normal life and doing all the things I want to do and had been doing, and three, to have another baby. All of those goals can be met with a hip replacement. As much as it makes me feel old, I will meet my goals, and that was the most important thing to me.

My appointment with Dr. Bertin is March 24th, and hopefully I will leave his office with a surgery date. I should be up and doing things like normal with in 3-6 weeks, which sounds MUCH better than 6 months, another baby...well, hopefully he or she will make their presence known sooner rather than later. :)