Our last 6 months......

 



Our last 6 months have been INSANE to say the least.  We finished up soccer for Gid and Halle.  Gid did so awesome this year with his new coach.  He scored several goals so he got several shakes from Big J's (yes we bribed our children). 

 

Halle also did well (as long as she wanted to play).  She did score her first and only goal this year and wouldn't you know it she did it in the one game mom missed being in the hospital having Gabbi.  Grandma and Grandpa Taylor said it was awesome though!

We blessed Gabbi very quickly.  I think she may have been 2 weeks old.  We had to hurry and do it to ensure Grandma and Grandpa Taylor would still be here.  We had a family dinner at the fire station afterwards and had our first family pictures.

Playing around with Hal.

Love this picture of her with her dad.

 

We went to Grandma Corbridge's Legacy House Halloween Carnival again this year.  The kids love it and love to spend time with Grandma and their cousins.  They have treats and games. 

We took a fun picture of all the kids in their costumes with Grandma. 

We love our little Gabbi Bo.  She is such a sweet addition to our family.  She is doing well.  She does have bilateral ureteral reflux so we are waiting to see a pediatric urologist at Primary Childrens in February to discuss surgery.  She is on a daily dose of antibiotic to keep her from getting another kidney infection.  She is a happy baby unless she just had her medicine .  It upsets her stomach and makes her really gassy.  Other than that you would never know she has any problems.

Gid earned his bobcat and is pretty close to getting his wolf now.  Especially since we have a new leader in scouts that actually holds den meetings. 

I tried my hand at being a photographer.  Not the best.  Sarah my awesome sister in law came and took some pictures and we are just waiting to see them!  

Gabbi is now not quite 4 months old.  She is smiling, giggling and rolling over like crazy.  She was even doing pull ups in her bouncer tonight.  It was so dang funny.  She is so strong. 

Halle doing her song and jig with the 1st grade classes for their Christmas program.

The 3rd grade classes did a dance instead of singing this year.  When I heard this I really worried about Gid.  He does not like to dance at all.  He did awesome though and really got into it.  I dare say he even  had fun. 

Gracie finishing the reindeer dance.

Our annual Christmas Eve party with the Taylor family.  We do white elephants and one our ours was a fish.  Yes it is real.  We thought it would be so funny to have Tricia or Erin get it and see them freak.  Erik got it instead and thought it was funny.  I still love Tricia's reaction to it though. 

Christmas at our house was fun.   The kids loved their gifts and loved having Grandma Corbridge come and stay with us for Christmas.   

Gabbi loves her ball.  It is her favorite toy. 

We let the kids go pick out pajamas with the money they got from Grandma and Grandpa Taylor.  Halle picked out her pajamas because it had a sleeping mask with it that she wears every night.

Brian worked the Aggie Gymnastic meet so we decided to go.  The aggie bull and his girlfriend came to see us.  Gid saw them coming and ran to the far side.  Gracie posed for a picture with them instead.

Our cute family.

Gracie has been bugging me to change diapers.  I guess it took all 3 kids to do it and this is how it turned out. 

Halle's idea of "wrapping" the diaper.  More like folding.

And somehow they still managed to get the diaper on backwards.  Gabbi was a trooper.  She just giggled though it all like she knew they were doing it wrong.

 Gid with his first pinewood derby car.  He made a police car and won first place out of the wolfs. 

 We got to go see Santa again this year at the fire station.  It is a fun tradition the department does for the firefighters. 

One more ....

A couple of months ago I went to help out in Halle's class.  One of the boys in my group had hurt his wrist at recess and had ice on it.  Halle came home the next day from school and told me that "Mom, Degan did not just hurt his wrist, he broke his uterus".  I laughed so hard.  When I told her I did not think he broke his "uterus" she informed me "he did to, Mrs. Morrison said he did". I guess she combined "ulna and radius".  We had a good laugh.   

Incredible

I have the most INCREDIBLE man and little boy living in my house  I just have to share how special they are.....  I woke up early this morning to the sound of the RZR.  It had snowed during the night quite hard.  My awesome husband had gotten up even earlier than his usual 4:40 am to snow plow the driveway so I could get out easier.  I can't even imagine getting up that early.  I like my sleep way to much.  He is such a wonderful husband.  He must be a great example to his little boy.  This year before Christmas our town has a coloring contest for the kids.  Gid won one of these coloring contests for a local business.  He got a fun gift bag but inside was a gift certificate for their store.   When he saw it and I told him what it was he quietly asked me if he could use it to buy a gift for his sisters.  Man it still brings tears to my eyes.  He lovingly picked out special gifts for all three of his sisters with his prize.  He is so special to our family and sure takes after his Dad.  I love them both so much.

Gabbi's bad luck

On November 5th I took Gabbi into Dr. Brown.  She had run a fever the night prior and was acting crummy. When we got  there he checked everything and all was fine.  She no longer had a fever. No ear or throat infection.   However for some reason he felt something was wrong and called a pediatrician and told him her symptoms from the night prior.  The pediatrician Dr. Labrum thought it sounded like a UTI.  He told us to come right over and he would get a urine sample with a catheter.   I ran her over and the sample showed she had a urinary tract infection.  Dr. Labrum wanted to put her in the hospital for 24 hours and give her IV antibiotics and then send her home the next day with oral antibiotics.  At this point I kinda freaked and called Brian at work and informed him I was coming to get him from work.  When I picked him up he thought we were going to lunch.  No such luck.  We headed to the hospital and we were admitted to the pediatric unit.  We were met at the door by Emily, our aide.  When we got to our room our nurse came in and put an IV in Gabbi's hand.  Then the phlebotamist came in and tried to draw blood from her arm 3 different times with no luck.  She then decided she would go back and have a woman named Colleen come up and draw it.  Colleen had worked for many years in the NICU department at the U of U.   Gabbi was still obviously upset so I was told to feed her while we waited for Colleen. Then Brian's brother Chad left work to come down and help Brian give Gabbi a blessing.  What a wonderful blessing the priesthood is.   Fifteen minutes later I looked down to my shirt covered in blood.  The IV in her hand had fallen out and was bleeding.  The nurse came back in and attempted another IV in her other hand with no luck and decided to do it in her head.  We were told they looked bad in the head but they actually worked better.  She again tried and it did not work.  Then our hero Emily stepped in and said they they needed to call the NICU nurse and have her do it.  They called the NICU and the nurse came up and got the IV in her head on the first try with her "magic glasses".  We were so relieved and grateful to Emily.  Then Emily informed us that the NICU nurse was her mom!  When her mom heard that they still needed labs after being poked 7 times she said "Nope, that is silly, I will just suck the blood from the IV with a needle and she won't need to be poked again"  She did and we were so glad.  We were so glad Emily and her mom were there!

This picture is of Emily and her mom while doing the IV. 

Gabbi at 39 days old with all of her battle wounds.  The poor girl took it like a champ though.  She is one tough nut.

 Another picture of her battle wounds and her ugly looking IV in her head.

Looking so small in the bed. 

 Chilling with dad!  I sent Brian home that night to get the kids to school the following morning.  Then he would head down to pick Gabbi and I up!  That morning our nurse Jessica came in and informed me Dr. Labrum had called and her labs came back abnormal.  Her urinary tract infection had spread to her kidneys and then gotten into her blood stream.  Her blood work (CRP) which shows inflammation and infection in the body came back at 14.7 and normal is 0.8.  We were now looking at a 4-5 day hospital stay.  Dr. Labrum would be coming into see us soon.  I freaked and called Brian and told him to get down to the hospital fast! 

 As if it could not get any worse 20 minutes later the nurse came back in and said she had just gotten off the phone with Dr. Labrum again who had spoken to Primary Children's Hospital and they told him it would be wise to do a lumbar puncture (spinal tap) to check for bacterial meningitis.  For those who don't know what at lumpar puncture is it is much like an epidural except the needle in her spine would actually draw fluid out of her spine then be sent to the lab.  I would think anyone who was told their baby may have meningitis would panic just as I did.  I called Brian and told him, he was already on his way and later informed me he had looked down at the speedometer and was doing 70 in a 45.  Once he got there we were kindly informed by our nurse that we may want to leave the room and head down to the waiting room.  This was not a pleasant procedure.  We left her in the hands of 3 nurses Dr. Labrum and his medical student shadow.  Twenty minutes later Dr. Labrum told us the procedure went well.  He told us that Gabbi would need to be transferred to Primary Children's Hospital by ambulance once she was more stable for a pic line instead of an IV for her antibiotics since it would last longer and IV's only last in babies for 4-5 days and she would need antibiotics for 14 days.  Talk about pure panic.  He said he would be back around 12:00 to see Gabbi again and give us test results.  We did not hear from Dr. Labrum until 6:30 that night.  After all this bad news we were still prepared for more.  Her lumbar puncture showed she did not have meningitis.  He told us that he had been on the phone with Primary Childrens infectious disease doctors all day trying to get an answer on how to treat this and when to transfer her.  They hummed and hawed around and refused to give him an answer.  Very upset he called the doctors that just work in the hospital at Primary's and they told him since she was still not running a fever and the spinal tap came back good they would do IV antibiotics for 4-5 days then send her home with oral's.  He saw no point of sending her to Primary's for a pic line if the IV lasted for that long!  What a relief.  We had grown to love the wonderful nursing staff at Logan Regional and really did not want to go to Salt Lake for 2 weeks.  What an answer to prayers.  We had no clue how we were going to make this work for our family.    We knew all of our family was praying hard for Gabbi but found out later that Brian's parents who went into the MTC on Monday had gotten his text about Primary Children's/meningitis.  They were in class and obviously upset by the text.  The other missionaries noticed them crying and asked what was wrong.  The rest of the day whenever a prayer was said in their group our little Gabbi Bo was mentioned in their prayers.  That night we found out she would no longer need to be transferred to Salt Lake.  A true miracle for our family.

 This picture is of the kids and my mom with Gabbi at the hospital the night we got this good news.  My mom is so incredible.  She dropped everything to come down and stay with the kids and get them to and from school.  I did not even ask her, she somehow found out we would be going to primary childrens and called to inform me she was coming and would keep the kids. When we found out we would be staying in Logan she brought the kids down 3 different times so they could see their baby sister and hold her.  She also stayed with Gabbi when we had to leave and go have a last dinner with Brian's parents before they left on their mission to Montenegro.  I would have never left Gabbi's side if mom was not there. She was such a blessing at this time.  The whole Taylor family had planned to meet Brian's parents in Ogden on Saturday night for dinner.  When Gabbi went into the hospital and would still be there Bri's parents changed their plans and decided to come to Logan for dinner so they could see Gabbi one last time.  Thanks again to Tricia and Erik for picking them up and taking them back.  It was a ton of driving but we so appreciate having Grandma and Grandpa Taylor come see Gabbi.  While Grandpa was there Brian, Erik and Grandpa gave Gabbi another wonderful blessing.  It is good to know you can still have wonderful good memories in such a terrible ordeal.

Our little Gabbi with her head IV and 4 other wires connected to her at all times.  This made it so difficult to hold the poor little girl. 

Hanging out with Mom and Gid.  Gabbi sure loves her brother.  She just sits and laughs at him!  Somehow I missed getting pictures of Gracie with her but that girl sure was worried about her baby sister.  She was always the first in the door to see her and hold her.

So, on day 3 Gabbi also developed a rash that covered her whole body.  We finally figured out it was the strong laundry detergent the hospital uses to kill germs.  Her gown and blankets and sheets were all washed in it.  We finally removed her gown and used our blankets from home and it cleared up a bit.  Now that we are 5 days out from the hospital it is almost all the way gone.

More of her wires and accessories.

Dad, Mom and Gabbi on our last night in the hospital. 

Mom and Gabbi on the morning we were leaving.  As you can see Gabbi is much happier with no tubes and IV's.  We were hoping to leave the hospital on Sunday the 10th but they had to draw labs and make sure her CRP was below 1.  At 5:00 am I felt fluid around the IV and called the nurse in.  Her IV had indeed fallen out on its own.  They removed it and the tape and most of her wires.  They decided to not put a new one in and wait for the test results.  Her CRP came back at 1.9.  We were worried we would be in for a longer stay and more IV's but when Dr. Labrum came in he said "So, I hear Gabbi informed us she is sick of the hospital and wants to go home today!" He discharged us after 5 long days in the hospital.  She is now on oral antibiotics for 10 more days and has to follow up with a renal ultrasound to check her kidneys in a couple of weeks.

It was a very long 5 days (especially for our sweetheart) but we are so grateful to have her home and for modern medicine and incredible doctors and nurses.  My only regret is not getting pics of all these wonderful people who helped make Gabbi better.  Thanks again to all of our family who prayed so hard for her and cared so much.  Our hospital line was constantly ringing or Brian was constantly getting texts asking about her.  We love you all so much!  Gabbi is doing much better now and has returned to her old happy self.  We had a couple of hard days when she got home because whenever you put her down she would scream bloody murder.  We finally figured out she was associating being put down with being put down on her hospital bed and whenever that happened she was getting poked or prodded and was scared.  It took a lot of work to convince her we were not going to hurt her when she was laid down.  These sweet babies are so smart!