Tooth Club

Tyler received a letter from the dentists office a couple of days ago. He was SO excited to get a letter! He received a Dora and Boots sticker too! (it is on his shirt) What a lucky kid! He wanted to put it on right then and hold his award so I took a photograph. It was so cute. He also got a certificate for a free kids meal at Chick fil A. After I took the photograph he went and put his award on the fridge. What a cool kid!



(In the background you can also see the "tie" Tyler made for Rodger for Father's Day in his Nursery Class at church. Also, do you see the mark on his forehead? (click on the photograph to see it bigger if you want) That is from him plowing his head into the carpet and driving around. He thinks it is fun! Definitely a boy!)

Way to go Tyler! You are a member of the Tooth Club!!!!!!!!!

Happy Father's Day!

HAPPY FATHER'S DAY!!!!!!!!!!!!

I wanted to say Happy Father's Day to all you Dad's out there. I want to especially say thank you to my awesome husband, Rodger. Thank you for all your love for us. Thank you for all you do for our family. Thank you for finding me and marrying me and we could have our three wonderful boys. I am lucky to have you as my husband! I look forward to being a eternal family!

Thank you to my Dad and Rodger's Dad for all the love and support you have given to us throughout our lives. Dad, I have always wanted to be like you and mom. I continue to look up to you and will take in all I can throughout my life.

What a blessing it is to have great Father's in our lives!


THANK YOU!
HAPPY FATHER'S DAY!!!!!!!!!!!!

A "Two-fer" One Breakthrough

Today both of Lincoln's eye teeth finally broke through! They were right there for weeks. Both of them are now through, both in the same day! Now my little boy went from being a Two-fer to a Four-fer!

Here is a photograph of him today (you can't see his eye teeth of course, but he is growing so fast. He is almost 7 1/2 months old! I love you Linkers!

Done with the Thumb!

TYLER DOESN'T SUCK HIS THUMB ANYMORE!!!! I am amazed! Let me tell you the story!

On Monday Tyler and I had a dentist appointment. One for me as I had a crack in my filling. Unfortunately I don't have insurance, but it was either somehow pay whatever it costs now or have it get worse and have something worse happen to my tooth. So, I got it fixed.

Tyler went to the dentist for the first time. He didn't take to the hands on experience but rather let the dental hygienist show him the instruments with me as the prop. He wouldn't let her brush his teeth or anything. After a while of being there he finally allowed some cleaning to take place by me. He reluctantly let Dr. Ford look into his mouth. He told me, as Tyler was sitting there, that his thumb sucking was starting to affect his teeth. He said we needed to work on stopping the thumb sucking by using tape, yucky stuff on his thumb, whatever we could think of. He wanted to have him stop by the time he was 4 years old at the latest. Earlier the better. After our conversation, I turned to Tyler and said: Tyler, Dr. Ford said you need to stop sucking your thumb because it is starting to hurt your teeth. So, during the day you can't suck your thumb anymore. You can suck your thumb when you take a nap and at bedtime, but no more during the day. If you want you can be a big boy and stop completely. He said: OK. I left it at that.

Then on his own he stopped completely! I didn't say anything else to him at all! The next morning I said: Tyler, you know what I have noticed? He said: What? I said: I have noticed you don't suck your thumb anymore. I am very proud of you. This will help your teeth so much. You look older today, Tyler. He said: Yup. He smiled.

So, here are some photographs from the past of my now Non-Thumb-Sucker Tyler Shumaker:









I will miss things about my thumb sucker... it is really quite adorable. I think I might have to pose one photograph ... one where Lincoln is sucking his thumb with Tyler sucking his thumb next to him.... I will think about that one for sure.

"Memory" Day

Wow, this weekend did not go as planned at all. We went to the cemetary to visit Parker on Sunday afternoon instead of on Monday because we were heading to Snowbird where my parents had a timeshare condo there. We were going to spend the rest of Sunday and also all of Monday there with my parents. We don't have any money (poorer then rocks (Lindi-lingo)) so we took advantage of this "vacation" and do something fun.

Because we have no money we couldn't do much for Parker. We got $7 worth of cheap fake flowers... that was all we could do. In a lot of ways it made it extra hard this year. Here are the reasons:

1. Parker would be 5 this year and going into Kindergarten this year. He would be entering this new stage of life. It is sometimes hard to know people I love (like my nephew, James; niece, Reese; and my best friends son, Lewis) all get to experience that this year as they are the same age as Parker. It is hard to see how much they can do and how grown up they are. Alas, there is nothing I can do to change it... but it is still hard.

2. We didn't have anything special to do for Parker this year. We waited until the day before to buy him the flowers since we don't have money. Because of this all the pinwheels were all gone..... Parker would have loved to have a pinwill. I think we are going to have a tradition to start finding cool and fun pinwills and add a new one each year so eventually he will have a slew of pinwheels for Memorial Day.

.... So back to this weekend. My brother Mark and sister-in-law, Jme came up to the condo with their daughter Isabela (22 months old). They came up just that night and were heading back to Ogden that night to pack up more as they are moving to Tucson, AZ. They brought a neighbor and her two kid. The boy is 4 and the girl is 2. Long story short... even with us checking on the kids a lot (they were watching a movie in the other room) the 4 year old ended up going into the bathroom and getting into my dad blood pressure medicine!!!!!!!!!! We knew there was a lot missing and a bunch were mixed in a glass of water. My niece had come into the room with a pill in her mouth!!!!!! Poison Control told us to get to the hospital asap. We all headed to Primary Children's Medical Center... where we have so many memories with Parker and here it is almost Memorial Day.

We knew Isabela had the slightly crushed up pill in her mouth and the boy said he took some. We didn't know if Tyler did... he said he didn't but we didn't know for sure... and what if he drank some of it! In the end after NINE HOURS of monitoring the three kids the only one who had some issues was the boy. So we think Tyler and Isabela didn't. It sure was A LONG LONG NIGHT!!!!

We had a lot of emotions running through us... being in the hospital where Parker's remaining days were (other then 2 days at home before he died). We pulled into the same parking lot. Existed for a time in the same environment. Tyler had the stickers put on him to monitor his heart... the same stickers Parker always had to have. We slept on the same COMPLETELY UNCOMFORTABLE pullout beds. The same alarms going off whenever the monitors came loose. The same forms to sign. The same questions asked. ....


(Tyler didn't want the stickers taken off because he was scared of them hurting him)

But then there were the things that were different that were almost harder:
1. The fountain in the lobby was gone!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! That was hard for me. When we left the hospital with Parker he would throw coins into the fountain. He loved it! The Wednesday afternoon where we took Parker home to die, we put a few coins in Parker's hand and "helped" him throw them in the fountain.... now the fountain is gone.
2. Spiderman and Mike Wazowski were gone! We took photographs of Parker in front of them when he was born before we took him home after his first heart surgery. We did it again after the second one too. Now they are gone.

They have done great things to the lobby. It looks really nice... but the memory things are now gone... and will never come back... I didn't like not having them there, but alas change happens unfortunately. I don't like having Parker gone either. I just want to be normal and have my son to raise like a normal family. I have learned sooooooooo much from this trial. I am very grateful for what I have learned, don't get me wrong. I just wish I could hold Parker still. I just wish memories didn't fade.

Parker? I love you.

Happy Half Birthday, Lincoln!

Lincoln is 6 months old today. I sure love him! Other then him being the loudest of my children, and the worst sleeper of them all... he is really quite a happy baby. He is even loud in his happiness (oh no... will he be like my brothers Don and Mark!!!, LOL). He does have the ability to blow your ear drums out. He gurgles loud, screeches loud, cries loud. I love my son (Nicknames: Link, Linkers, Pink, Pinkers, Pinkon, Squiggle Butt, Linkity Link Dog, Linkity Link Link Link, Yeepers, Yeepen, Leaps, Leapers, Leapen, ... I am sure there are more... He probably doesn't even know his name! LOL.

Here are the comparisons at 6 months:
6 MONTHS:
PARKER:
14 lbs 7 oz (7th percentile)
27 inches long (75th percentile)
43.5 cm (45th percentile)

TYLER:
15 lbs 2 oz (15th percentile)
26 inches long (40th percentile)
43 cm (35th percentile)

LINCOLN:
15 lbs 6 oz (20th percentile) (I just fed him right before... so I bet he is more Tyler's weight of 15 lbs 2 oz)
26.5 inches long (50th percentile)
44.5 cm (75th percentile)

Tyler went with me to the doctor. I told him about the immunizations beforehand. I told him they would poke him and put medicine in his body that would help him not get sick. I told him Lincoln would cry so he could sing him a song to help him not be so sad. So, when the nurse went to give him the first shot Tyler was watching the whole thing. I reminded him of what to do. So he sang "Teach Me to Walk" to Lincoln. While Lincoln got his second and third shots Tyler kept on singing to him. You could see his eyes starting to tear up and his voice a little emotional, but he stayed strong for his brother. I told Tyler he helped Lincoln a lot. He was very happy to help his brother. It was very cute.

I love my family!

Birthday Cake

Tyler got to go to TWO birthday parties today! One for his friend Megan and one for his cousin Ami. One was nicer weather and one was a downpour of rain. Tyler had fun. I will tell more about the parties later (hopefully I don't procrastinate too long) but for this one I wanted to show off my first birthday cake I have ever made. I made this for Ami's African Safari party.

Here is the birthday announcement I made:


Here is the cake I made (a few different points of view... it doesn't really do it justice as much, in my opinion but what do you do?)





The kids had a fun time at Ami's party even if they had to do all the activities with rain poncho's on :D.

Happy Birthday to Megan yesterday and Ami on May 19th!

Ummm.... Tooth #2 is Here

Ummmm.... Lincoln now has two teeth! His second tooth came through yesterday, I think. Needless to say, he is chewing on EVERYTHING (thank goodness not on me yet) and drooling and fussing. Good thing for numbing medicines, tylenol and motrin.

CONGRATULATIONS LINCOLN!

Twins?

No.... I am not pregnant. To have another newborn... ack! I am not ready for that yet. Sleep deprivation kills me :D.

The reason I said "twins" is how similar Tyler and Lincoln are in a lot of ways. Both took about 4 months to final settle down some and sleep better. Both weighed exactly the same weight at their four month check up... and now both got their first tooth at the same time! Yup, at about 9:00pm Lincoln was chewing on my hand, like he likes to do... and ahhhh there was a razor in there! Sure enough a little tooth was poking through. Tyler also got his first tooth right at 5 months old as well!

Will Lincoln get his second tooth at 5 1/2 months like Tyler did? .... time will tell.

Congratulations on your first tooth, Lincoln!!!!

Back in Time... Blessing Day

Ok... So, I have a friend who keeps nicely reminding me how far behind I am in my blogging.... Christmas Nativity, Lincoln's blessing, and so forth. So, I was thinking, I could be creative and do the Christmas Nativity at Easter time (as it relates to Christ) and I will do Lincoln's blessing on this one. So here I go:

As you may remember, I had a lot of anxiety with Lincoln's blessing day. I was so excited after Lincoln was born to learn that January 11th fell on a Sunday! I was very excited as this was the exact day, also a Sunday, that Parker was blessed. How crazy is that? I was on cloud nine (nine is my favorite number also, hahaha).

Then the end of the year came and we learned that the Stake was going to make changes to the boundaries of the ward. Every ward would be affected. I got nervous as I loved the 9th ward SO much. There are a number of reasons why I love the 9th ward. 1. There are amazing people in that ward. I grew to love them so much. 2. Parker died during our time in this ward. We had been in the ward about 9 months when Parker died. It was hard to think that we might not be in the ward who knew him. 3. Parker's funeral was in that church building with the 9th ward. I have a lot of memories of trying to keep Parker under control as he tried to escape and just have fun running around in Church. But, I thought... oh we will be safe to stay in the 9th ward. There is no way they would have too many condo buildings in one ward. But I was sad to think of some of those in the houses being moved to another ward.

Then the news came... we were going to be moved from the 9th ward to the 6th ward ... AND we would move buildings :(. I was shocked, and sad. How could I have this great day with Lincoln without all the people I love there for this event? Plus, they wouldn't be able to come to the blessing because they had church at the same time as us, also they needed to be there to meet the new people who would go into their ward. I was happy that there were some coming over to the 6th ward with us, but I wanted it to be as it was. I didn't want and wasn't ready for change just yet. I am still trying to heal from losing Parker.

Alas, the change took place. I think God made me just so busy that day that I didn't have time to think about who was there and who wasn't there. I was just so happy for Lincoln and how handsome he looked in his tux (the same tux Parker and Tyler were blessed in). I was so happy my husband was able to use his Priesthood and bless our son. I was also happy so many of our family was able to come. Many had to leave early, however, as they all had church at the same time and had to get back to their church buildings to teach, etc. But here is who were there (I hope my brain can remember: Grandma and Grandpa MacArthur, Toran, Paul, Monica, Emma, Jake, Ammon, Isaiah, Max, Mike, Melissa, Alexis, Cooper, Reagan, Sophie, Me, Rodger, (Parker), Tyler, Lincoln, Lori, Ami, Enoch, Mark, Jme, Isabela, Sharolyn, Billy, Ava ... If I missed anyone let me know and I will edit this blog :D).

Here are photographs with those who were able to stay till the end of Sacrament Meeting:






Here is Lincoln hanging out with Grandma and Grandpa at their house that evening:






I think sometimes when I face emotions, like those with Parker, I find if I just talk it through or write it down then I tend to face the actual day a lot better. I think I work through the emotions of it all beforehand. I did cry quite a bit before, wanting the day to be as I imagined, but as I get to know those in the 6th ward... I love them so much too. I wish I could just have the 9th and 6th ward be combined. Would that solve it? LOL. I learn each time that my life isn't ever smooth so I guess having the changes at the time I didn't need the change is just what happens to me... smooth life with no bumps at all. :)