We know our son is going to have problems when he is born. He's going to have the Cleft, either lip or lip and pallet (most likely both). There is a hospital in Virginia that actually does all of the surgery quickly after birth vs. waiting to do them over the course of a couple of years. I would like to go there and have it done simply because I'd rather have the risk of one surgery vs. 3+. Also babies are constantly growing and are very resilient. Not 100% sure, but it's what I'd rather do, even if there is an extra cost. I want to do what is best and least stressful on my child.
As I mentioned in my catching up about my next child. We have had a lot of ups and downs with this pregnancy, from my wife's health to the recent discovery that my son will have a Cleft lip and Palette. The cleft is a bi-lateral cleft which is the rarest form, and affect both sides of his lip, and with that there is about an 85% chance he has the palette as well. And one of the ultrasounds was pretty evident of that.
I'm a stats person so I live by numbers. The chance of getting the birth defect is .018% (no not 1.8% it's .018%). So the chances of a nurse having experience with it are minimal, but fortunately we have Primary Children's in Utah that are some of the best. With my wonderful wife, we've been studying what to expect.
1. 3.9 surgeries in the first 5 years. They will start at about 10 months
2. 66 Dr. appointments in the first 5 years.
3. 15% mortality rate in the first year because of other issues that might stem from this.
So what does it mean? Stress. Lots of it. The bottles cost $16 a piece and then last 15 feedings. Feeding the baby will be unique cause he won't be able to suckle.
But good news it's a boy, and yes we already have the name picked out :P
I haven't done a movie review but felt like this one deserved one.
So Evan Baxter the news anchor that Bruce made a fool of in the first movie, runs for Congress and wins on the platform of changing the world.
They move to a BEAUTIFUL HUGE house and start all over. His wife and kids have a little prayer, the kids want to hike with their dad, and the wife wants their family to be closer. She suggests that if Evan wants to change the world he might need a little help.... So Evan says his prayer.
Things happen and sure enough God presents himself and gives Evan the task to build an ARK. Overall the reviews on this movie were not flattering, but I think they saw the movie for the wrong reason.
#1 It was funny
#2 It had a good message
#3 It was not offensive
#4 It had birds crapping on John Goodman (Not that John's bad, but his character was a jerk)
The best item in the movie was God's talk with Evan's wife. She was leaving her husband cause of his "ARK" project, but "Al Mighty" there to save the day as a waiter. Evan's wife told him about his husbands problems and about God, and the topic of prayer came up. The gist of it was, "If you prayer for God for more patience, does he give you patience, or does he give you opportunity to be more patient; if you ask for courage, does he make you courageous, or give you the chance to show courage; if you ask for time together as a family, does he put you together, or give you the opportunity to be together with things in your life"
So thumbs up, go see it! If you don't like it sorry, if you do you can thank me
So I've been pretty quite lately, mostly because I didn't have much I wanted to say in public. But here are a few quick things to catch people up.
Rule #1: Life kicks you when you're down
Rule #2: Understand rule #1 and recover.
Car I've had since '94 a '95 Nissan Maxima broke down
It was the day after we discovered a purchase on EBay for kids furniture is going sour, the person dropped off the face of the earth, but when we bought they had 99%+ feedback and are now at 98.1% and "No longer registered" on ebay.
This followed finding out that our child has a bi-lateral cleft lip and more than likely a cleft pallet which will require several surgery's starting at 10 months going to 8-9 years.
I've been working all weekend on a project so I've missed my girls a lot. I like to spend most of my Saturday with them, but I couldn't. I was on the phone with my wife and my youngest wanted to talk to me. So she asked me, "You coming home?", in the most adorable toddler voice. I sadly had to tell her, no I was working. She then started to cry and tell me she wanted me home. It nearly broke my heart.
On Sunday I had to go into work and my oldest was playing an "Incredibles" game. She had just passed the part where Mr. Incredible was in his blue outfit and switched into his red one. And she made the comment, his not as big as he use to be. I said, "He's not as fluffy as he was". She looked at me and said, "No he was fat just like you".
Boy if kids don't say em like they see em. As hurt as I was, I was laughing as well cause it was so cute and so innocent. Kids, you have to love them!
Today was a really bad snow storm and it took me 4 hours round trip to get to work and come back home since the roads and weather was so bad. On the return trip the roads had been cleared pretty well and had some slush on them, so still dangerous. Everyone's moving along pretty well, and suddenly this JERK in a big 4x4 pick up truck come whizzing by at an excessive speed and throws 1 - 2 inches on my window, and I mean my WHOLE window. So much crap that my wipers wouldn't move. I'm going about 40 on the freeway, blind, cannot see a thing. Fortunately I was able to move to the side of the road, still blind, but able to see that I'm not about to side swipe anyone. I end up on the side of the road about 30 feet off of it. I was lucky enough to have seen a pole that informed me I was about 10 feed from a large wall. I get out clean my window and slinked my way through the snow back to the freeway.
So some jerk speeding far more than they should in their 4x4 almost cause me to be in a serious accident, and I would have NO WAY to find out who they were. Sadly my windshield has a horizontal crack that I now need to get replaced. So Thanks JERK! (I feel better now)
The other day I decided I would get my hearing checked. For a couple of reasons. First, I have had a horrible ringing in my ears for many many years. Second, my wife will hear things and look at me and say "Can't you hear that?" The going joke with her is she'll look at me now and just say "of course not it's that one pitch". Third, sometimes I think I miss things. And finally going along with #2 my wife keeps telling me I'm def.
So I get the test done and sure enough I do have hearing loss. They said it's nothing to really worry about, I'm not def, but I do have a lose in the higher ranges. Which isn't surprising since the high pitch that is in my ears all the time is in the higher range. So go figure.... They also said, "You are a candidate for a hearing aid, but I wouldn't strongly recommend it". I took that as you could hear better, but you're not hearing that bad right now to worry, so come back later.
So I'll wait.
More Ears. That night my daughter had a bad ear ache and we put cotton in it etc. etc. and when we took it out later it looked like it had blood on it. So we went into lets get her checked ASAP mode. My in-laws came over quickly so my wife and I could both go with Gena to the Doctor. We get to an urgent care about 8:00 PM and she gets in pretty quick. The Dr. looks in her ears and says they need to be flushed.
If you have EVER had your ears flushed you know it sucks, feels weird etc. Now imagine your ear already hurts. So my sweet daughter gets the drops to loosen the junk in her ear and sits there for a few minutes. A nurse comes in and proceeds to flush her ear. A LOT of stuff comes out including a really big piece of wax. At this point my daughter is upset, and I mean irately upset. And the nurse says there's more. She tries again and my daughters had enough of it. I ask to just put more drops in and the nurse finally complied. I figured it'll loosen what's in there up. We convince my daughter and talk her up to let the nurse do it again, but that was not going to happen any time soon, she wouldn't even let them look in her ear. Finally with her on my lap hugging me, a different nurse looked in her ear and said she could see the ear drum, so the Dr. could look again.
Her ear is infected and the drum is bulging. The Dr. said he wouldn't be surprised if the ear drum didn't rupture. So we internally freak out as parents until the Dr. said it would actually probably make her feel better and he then explained that it would heal. So we felt relieved. My daughter went home and we let her sleep in our bed last night. Lucky for me, it was just her and I, and she woke up several times just screaming, "Get Away From Me, Get outta here". She was still asleep yelling at the Dr. and Nurses. Today she also threw up, but we aren't sure why. But she's my girl and I'm getting ready to go spoil her.
She'll recover, she always does, but once again she's really learning to hate Doctors. I hope she gets over that and later realizes how beneficial they are, vs. how bad.
On my birthday, my wife and I ran off to see the movie Bridge to Terabithia. I had never read the book so my perception of the movie was based on the previews. If you've seen the previews, and expect a fanciful movie similar to The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe, you'll be disappointed. If you have read the book, you will probably be prepared for what you'll see.
In short the story is about two young kids and the trials they face in life and how through their friendship and imagination they create a wonderful world called Terabithia. They are the King and Queen and we see their friendship grow to something truly meaningful. As all of us grow up we have those friends that we are inseparable from. They are the folks that help mold who we are, for better or worse. This movie has it's tragedy which I didn't feel was portrayed in such a way that made it as wrenching as it should have been.
The tragedy does lead me to believe it would not be a movie I'd take my daughter too, but it makes me think that I want to read the book and then possibly read it to her. I cannot give this movie really high marks because the marketing was very misleading, but I can give it a recommendation to those that want a good story and a reminder of your youth.
So I'm categorizing this under "Religion", why? Because I don't have a political category yet. This might also end up being a rant, but lets see how this goes.
So Mitt Romney decides to run for president. I don't know Mitt, I've never voted for him, until recently I didn't know much about him. I first started hearing his name a couple of years ago about MA allowing Same-Sex marriages. I then hear he's LDS, which is a good thing to me. Now George W. Bush is our current president and he's a religious man, God fearing man, etc. So that makes me happy as well. Honestly it's nice to have a president that doesn't shy away from his beliefs so my hat's off to GWB. And you should as well even if you don't like his policy, too many people are too worried about the polls [read Hilary].
What got me the past few days are all the headlines "Mormon, Mitt Romney..." "Mormon enters..." When is the LAST time you saw "Southern Baptist ..." "Catholic ...". What does it matter, what matters is their convictions, core beliefs. I guess it just frustrates me that society is so messed up sometimes. I wish Mitt the best of luck, and if his platform is good, then he'll have my vote.
Some one may find my blog and find something useful in the post. I tried to hook up my Nintendo Wii and kept getting a 52030 error. Now you search on the web and everyone says the same thing.
Upgrade your firmware
Set it to Channel 1 or 11
if already on 1 or 11 change it to the other
You should be fine
Well that didn't work.
What I ended up doing to finally get it to work is all of the above then I switched from WEP to WPA2 (AES). And sure enough it work. Hope this helps someone else.
