Ice, Ice, baby.

I wanted a picture with this cute boy.  He's at such a fun stage where he says, "I hug you!  I kiss!  A BIG one!" and then he lays it on ya.

This week, for your viewing enjoyment, I have a clip of Cooper at his basketball game.  Next time I will film Boston. 

Cooper has white #5 jersey and dark sleeves.  I think he's pretty smooth.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IccVjEda7r0

Usually I consider January to be a pretty boring month, but it has proved to be pretty fun.  It started off with Cooper's 7th surgery  (I think.  Lost count.)  It was a pretty easy one, with a new set of more permanent ear tubes and a partial adenoidectomy.  We weren't really planning on the adenoids, but the ENT wanted to scope him see if they were pressing on his ear tubes and causing all the problems, and sure enough, they were.  She said they were beyond enormous.  However, a kid with a cleft palate actually quite needs his adenoids to help make back-of-the-throat sounds, so the doctor only shaved off the parts that were problematic and tried to leave the bulk.  Even then, she was a little worried about it.  As soon as Cooper woke up, she came in and asked him to say, "Kitty-Cat".  He could talk just fine, so we are glad and hoping this means he won't have to repeatedly get new tubes as he grows.

This gown was hilarious.  He was too big for the child gowns, so this is an adult size.  The "short" sleeves go almost to his wrists, and he is so skinny (almost 20 lbs lighter than Boston) that I wrapped the short ties clear around and tied them in front.  He also was awarded a stuffed animal, which he mostly pretended was a football while we were waiting.

Cooper did great and only cried some the first hour waking up (mostly from the "bad smell", which the doctor guessed was the cauterization.  He hasn't been around on branding day I guess), and downed about 4 popsicles, getting red drips all over the sheets.  After that first dose of Tylenol at the hospital he didn't even want any painkiller and was busy running around and asking to play football as soon as we got home.  He didn't even take a nap or go to bed early, silly kid.

Well, as soon as we got home I was on the phone scheduling a check-up with Luke's ENT (now that I knew Cooper had huge adenoids).  Luke has snored horribly and choked/gasped with sleep apnea off and on pretty regularly since he was born.  The first several months I thought it was a low-oxygen sleep apnea thing because of his heart condition, or possibly an aspirin allergy bothering his airway.  Then when it continued after his heart surgery, and my brothers' kids were having the same problems but got their tonsils out, I was sure it was tonsils.  Well, it turns out that Lukey also has huge adenoids, and great big tonsils, and fluid in his ears, and an ear infection.  Great.

The doctor was like, "I see he has a bit of a drooling problem (understatement of the century). That will probably go away once he can breathe.  How's his speech?"  I responded that he probably is my worst talker of five.  "Well, he probably can't hear very well with all that fluid sloshing around in his ears all the time."  Great.  So, he's on the surgery calendar for March.  They have to do it at Primary Children's because "nobody will want to touch him with that heart."  Ah, come on.  He's not that scary.  It's just that they want to use the special heart-trained anesthesiologist to monitor him.  The surgery should be totally safe and just like any other kid's.  It will probably also take a bit of a load of his whole system when he can breathe and sleep properly, too.  In the meantime they put him on antibiotics for his ear infection (I had no idea) and that has shrunken down some of the obstruction.

Although I've seen lots and lots of Luke's chest x-rays, this is the first head shot.  The part to look at is that dark airway coming up his throat, and then there is this white staple-remover shaped thing in the way and the airway kind of disappears.  The doctor pointed at this and was like, "he's pretty much breathing through a slit."

And now, we are all healthy and enjoying our month.  I even was able to host a bunch of kids over for a music mom and tots playdate without worrying about infecting anyone.  Oh, incidentally, I guess I also had surgery this month, removing an absess/cyst under one of my molars that has been bothering me for like, two years now.  They finally just went in through the side of my mouth and removed it instead of trying to drill down and get it.  Pretty invasive and I had to ice it constantly for a few days, but now I feel fabulous.  Bring on the popcorn!  Who knew chewing could be so easy?

Besides our weekly basketball "date" (Leslie stays home with Luke and Macy while we go watch the boys) Mark has done a good job of getting me out of the house.  One week we went to a BYU Men's Volleyball game...super fun and impressive to watch.  We've also been to the temple, had dinner or parties with friends at our home or theirs, and last night for the first time, at age 36, I learned how to...

Ice Skate!  This isn't actually me.  I don't have the legs for this kind of shot anyway.

Rocky Mountain Mortgage (Mark's company) was hosting a client-appreciation night at the Peaks Arena, (the hockey venue for the 2002 Winter Olympics) so Mark took me to help greet clients and then we got to skate, too.  The skating was harder than I expected but much to my relief, I didn't fall down once.  I'm sure I looked pretty ridiculous out there, but at least I could get from point A to point B.

Good thing this is a still frame.  I think I was actually wildly swinging my arms and trying to catch my balance.

Other people brought their kids.  Ha.  Propping each other up was tricky enough.