Caulder Had a Birthday!

Our Mister Twist turned 4 yesterday. I can’t believe it. I swear it was only about a month ago that he looked like this:

Okay, so actually he looked more like this:

And wasn't it just last week when he started doing this?

And then only three days ago he looked like this:
And, if I'm honest, he still does this on occasion:


So how is that now he looks like this? Can someone please explain to me how this happened?

We’ve been talking about his birthday all week. On Tuesday he said, “Mom, when the sun comes up is it going to be my birthday?” I told him he still had a few days to wait and he said, “It’s taking FOREVER for my birthday to come.”

And I think he was trying to suck up to me all week to make sure he got some good presents. He cleaned the living room up without me even asking him to, then sang a song about “I’m cleaning up for my buddy Misty Lou.” One night I said, “I’m so glad I get to be your mom,” and he replied “Me too. And I’m so glad I get to be your boy.” And all week he’s been telling me that he loves me and that he thinks I’m beautiful (yep, that one worked. I bought him an extra present just for that.).

So he had a big day of celebrating. He got his favorite breakfast, banana muffins, and played monster with Dad all morning. (Monster doesn’t just involve Cole chasing him around the house making frightening growling noises. It also involves Cole letting Caulder beat the crap out of him – he is a monster, after all – and jump up and down on his guts repeatedly. Dad is a very good sport… who will need corrective surgery to repair his intestines if Caulder gets any bigger.)

For lunch we took him to Mi Rancherito so he could tank down on Mexican rice and horchatas. Then we went to a park and played pirates on the playground. And then he got to go to Yaya’s to play Nindiana Jones on the Wii while we put this together so we could surprise him:

At his party we opened presents, although he was having way too much fun with these to be very interested in opening anything else:

We smashed a Spongebob piñata:

Ate way too much cake and ice cream:

And ended the night by watching He-Man in our bed with the birthday boy… and Toots, and Lion, and Caulder’s binoculars, and his new Nindiana whip. It’s a good thing we have a king-sized mattress.

We sure are glad we have this crazy boy. We love, love, love him… even if he is growing up despite the fact that we’ve expressly forbidden it.

Sweet Summertime Pics

We've been camping at the BOG a couple of times. Tukk’s got stickers on because I made him wear oxygen at night the first time we went because of the higher elevation.

This is a pic I took by accident while trying to pry the camera out of Tukk’s mouth. The boy loves to chew on technology: cell phones, cameras, remotes…

We finally convinced CJ to wear flip flops. For about 2 days. Now he’s back in Crocs. But it’s not so bad. For a while he was wearing boots and shorts, which was a little frightening even for someone as fashion challenged as myself. And Yaya got tired of his old, disgusting, torn-to-pieces Crocs and bought him a new pair. See? If you neglect your children long enough someone else will take care of them for you.

We did fireworks at Grandma Sarah’s on the 24th. Grandpa Babe got a bit excited (something about fireworks always does this to him), and I almost had to kill him for this little maneuver. Yes, that’s my firstborn child he’s carrying.

The firework smoke may also have had something to do with this pic of me and my sisters.

“Where are the fireworks?” you might be asking. Well, Tukk and I enjoyed the explosives from a distance because I was worried the smoke would bother his lungs.

Then I tried to snap a shot of Caulder. After 5 minutes of chasing him this is all I got.

We took a trip to Torrey to visit my grandparents. Caulder and Uncle Kory spent lots of time building a huge mountain with a volcano. I’m pretty sure Kory was having the time of his life.

We drove into Capital Reef one evening to check out the deer.

We also got brave and took the little man to the Santaquin rodeo. I spent the entire rodeo worrying about all the people around us getting him sick and freaking out when he snatched a strange piece of garbage off the ground and stuck it in his mouth and asking Rylee over and over again if she thought the dust from the arena or the smoke from the hamburger stand was going to bother his lungs.

So basically the boys have been playing this summer, while I have been getting more and more paranoid with each passing day. Worrying about bbq smoke? Crazy.

PS: Dear Rylee, you're totally blogworthy.

Internal Hairballs and Other Oddities

So after Jess’s comment from a couple of posts ago I realized I’d neglected to tell you all about some of Tukker’s most interesting medical conditions. You already know he’s the king of oddball problems from all the weird things he developed in the NICU, but since coming home he’s gained a few more to add to his list.

When we took him in to the plastic surgeon to have his flat head looked at the doc immediately pointed out a lump over his eye. It was smaller then, and we hadn’t even noticed it yet. You can see it over his right eye in these pictures.

The doc told us it was a cyst. I can’t remember exactly which kind of cyst it is, but the doc said it’s a ball of cells that got encapsulated and will keep growing because it’s still producing hair and oil (but not teeth, as my mom likes to tell people). He then told me that he suggests removing these cysts, because they’ll keep getting bigger, but they’re almost always benign, so we don’t really have to have it removed if we don’t want to.

However, Cole and I decided we need to have it cut out because A) we’re Mormon, so people will think he’s growing horns. And B) it’s a greasy hairball that’s growing on the inside of his face. Do we really need another reason? That bad boy is coming out. Luckily we’ve found a surgeon who will remove it at the same time as his hip surgery so Tukk won’t have to do a separate surgery just for that. We’re going to see if we can keep it, cut it in pieces, and sell it in tiny decorative bottles you can wear around your neck. So start saving your pennies now. Ew.

Remember when Tukker had hernia surgery and they were only able to fix the hernia on the right side, not the hole that could develop into a hernia on the left? Well right before his birthday he got a bulge on that left side, and I just knew it was another hernia. I took him to the doc and he examined him and thought it was a hernia, too. Then he started saying, “Wait a minute. Is that his…? Yep, it’s not a hernia. That’s his testicle.” Now I’m no anatomy expert, but I was pretty sure testicles don’t belong up by your hip, so I asked the doc what the crap it was doing up there.

Apparently Tukk’s got what’s called a retractile testicle. It roams around where it doesn’t belong. Luckily, we can give it another 6 months or so to see if it’s going to stay put before we have to do surgery, and even if we do have to operate it’s pretty minor. I think they just throw a couple of stitches in to tab it in place or something. Although Tukk’s Aunt Darby thinks we should leave it because it will be a cool party trick when he gets older. Darby’s got problems. J

And then last week Tukk went in for his 1 year well baby check and his head had grown too much, so his doctor was worried he had hydrocephalus—water on the brain. He’s at risk for this because he was born so early, so the doc ordered a head ultrasound, and we spent a week vomiting out our eyeballs worrying about this. It could involve brain surgery to have a shunt placed that would drain the fluid out of his brain down into his abdomen, and he’d have to have the shunt for life. So we were pretty freaked out. Luckily, though, the head ultrasound looked good. The radiologist didn’t see any problems… apparently Tukk’s just got his dad’s big head.

So overall the Tukk is doing very, very well. His therapist and pediatrician think he’s close to being on track developmentally for his adjusted age, and they don’t see any problems in that area yet. He still isn’t catching up size-wise, so we have to take him to see an endocrinologist this fall to discuss giving him shots of human growth hormone, but besides his hip/cyst surgery in October we don’t have anything too serious to deal with. I’ll take internal hairballs and traveling testicles over brain surgery any day.