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Good Parent

My sister has sent out pictures of her new baby almost every week. I have not. Good parent, bad parent. So here's a desperate attempt to catch up just a little. If it helps our case at all, we finally had some professional pics done and they are adorable, of course. I'll get around to posting those eventually.

First off, we have the compulsory Halloween pictures. Jordan explored his dark side as the cutest little Darth Vader ever.

Trunk or Treat

Jordan's buddies

Our Little Pumpkin

He later regretted eating the whole bag.

And here are some other randoms:

Check out that bod.

1st Haircut

One million dollars

These are a couple months old, but he just looks so darn cute in church clothes.

You'd never know that this cute chubby happy baby is in therapy. That's right, even though he eventually gets plenty to eat, the kid is so darn hard to feed that we have an occupational therapist coming to work with him. Hopefully it helps, or I might need some therapy of my own.

For now, this is all the therapy I need.

\

Kyle must win. It is the only acceptable outcome.

Chick Magnet

Just thought we'd put out a little update on our little guy since it's been a while. I used to think, "even when we have kids, we won't just post about them." That was when I was nieve enough to think we'd have time left for anything else! Some of you have multiple children. This currently blows my mind.

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Anyway, we got home from the hospital April 19th. Little Jordo had to sleep in a little Bili-bed for a couple days, but after that his biliruben was stable enough that we can just watch him and make sure he doesn't go all lizard-eyed on us again.

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However, because this kid likes to have some sort of drama going on, ever since we discharged his red blood cell count has been not so good--all stemming from the blood disease he got from mommy. (He got daddy's looks and mommy's disorder--glad I could bring something to the table!) His red blood cells die way to quickly. Luckily, his production has been fast enough to replace the ones that die enough for him to survive without a transfusion. In the meantime, we've had to watch for signs that he's going into heart failure, like lethargy and rapid breathing. Good thing all newborns are sleepy and have wierd erratic patterns of breathing...that didn't make mommy paranoid at all!

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Because of his low blood counts, he's also had low energy, so he was not able to go to exclusive breastfeeding...it was just too tiring. This means we had marathon feeding times that involved a bit of breastfeeding, a bottle of breastmilk, and then pumping, pumping, pumping. This took about 12 hours of every day, and trying to make that all happen amidst our many appointments in Colorado was quite tricky. The doctor said if Jordo's blood counts didn't improve at 2 months, it was probably time to stop the madness and go to formula. Bad news is his counts didn't improve; good news is that breast pump is out of my life.

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We were excited for simpler feedings...that's when the REFLUX hit. I know a lot of people deal with this, but I never gave proper respect for how terrible it makes life...for everyone. We seem to finally have it under control with medication. Oh the miracles of modern medicine

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With that resolved, we have one pretty dang happy baby. We just had family here this past week for his blessing. Afterwards, we went with my parents and sister's family to South Dakota to see Mount Rushmore and some other cool things. I'd post pictures, but I'm still "in transition" (AKA Large and In Charge) and really don't like to see myself!

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I know many babies are cute, but seriously....this guy will melt your heart like butter. His good looks and killer smile have already prompted serious parental conversations on how we will deal with his inevitable ladies-man-ness down the road. Think he'd be a good match for your little girl? Get in line, my friends!

Baby Jordan

Jordan Meikle Harris was born on April 9, 2010 at 10:15 AM and we couldn't be happier! He weighed a whopping 4 lbs 14 oz. and was 18.5 inches long.

I went to have an ultrasound the day before to make sure the baby was head down. During the ultrasound, it was discovered that I was low on fluid, so they sent me on the hospital, much to my shock. Ty eventually believed me when I told him we were having our baby that day and rushed down from Wyoming to join me at our hospital in Colorado.

Unfortunately, we are still in the hospital. Jordan turned blue during our initial nursing and was whisked off to the NICU. He was having problems keeping his blood pressure stable. They put him on IV medicine for it, which he is now off, and his blood pressure has been great. However, he became jaundiced during this process and we have had a hard time getting his billirubin counts under control. He has improved greatly but still needs the lights. The docs think he probably has my blood disease, but that shouldn't affect him much during life, and these initial problems should be resolved soon.

The worst part of all of this was that I couldn't hold my sick little baby and comfort him during the first couple of days. Although we still have to keep him under the lights as much as possible, we get to hold him for feedings, which are going very well. He is the cutest, funniest, sweetest, toughest little boy ever and we are really glad he's here!

This is what the computer says...

.... our baby will look like.

Hopefully the real thing turns out better.

We'll find out April 28, 2010.

(Yes, this is an announcement!)

WyOOOming

Yes, we are alive in Wyoming. And what different lives they are. You know you are somewhere special when the clink-clinks of spurs can be heard as cowboys and cowgirls walk down the aisles of Walmart, the heart and soul of the city.

The day we arrived here, several members of the Elder's Quorum met us to help unload our truck. As they drove away, the president got out of his pick-up (the unofficial vehicle of Wyoming) and said, "By the way, I forgot to tell ya'll. We've got an Elder's Quorum activity tomorrow mornin'. We're gonna be shootin' skeets. Don't worry about bringin' your guns (because naturally, everyone has their own guns), the guns will be provided." I thanked him kindly and walked behind the truck so he didn't see me burst into laughter. It was an all too perfect introduction to Wyoming.

Even though it is a very funny, small city, we are very happy here. We are thrilled with our new house (someday it will be all decorated and we will post pictures), and Ty loves his new job. I got a job soon after we moved here managing the Cheyenne branch of a nonprofit organization that provides support and education to families of children with disabilities. All in all, we feel pretty dang blessed. We laugh a lot here, and I still giggle when I say "Cheyenne, WY" when giving our address out, but things are good.

Despite our random location, we have had our fair share of visitors. The week after we moved into our house, some friends came with their kids, 9 in all. We went to Frontier Days, the big summer festival here where the population increases by 100,000 for 10 glorious days. We went to the parades, rodeo, and just enjoyed watching the very interesting crowd, including the elderly saloon ladies. At night, all of downtown is fenced off and turned into a massive outdoor bar. There are apparently multiple brawls and arrests each night as people get drunk on their horses. Needless to say, we did not participate. Although it might have been interesting to see, it seemed like a bad idea in a place where it's still legal to have a gun holstered in plain view.

Shawn and Lauren, our cousins and friends, have also been up to visit with their 3 girls. So fun to see them! My brother Michael also came up for a last hurrah before going into the MTC last week, headed to Everett, Washington. We were able to go to Utah for a couple of days to see him off with the rest of the fam.

We are gearing up for the winter and the wind. We came home earlier this week to see our neighbor's grill picked up and thrown about 10 feet off their porch, along with our heavy iron patio furniture. We are in for a special treat.

Here are some pics from good ol' Wyoming. We miss our friends and family in UT and are sorry for not keeping in touch so well--we will do better!

Home on the Range.

That is what we have. Really.

We found out last Wednesday that Ty would be starting work on the 22nd. Yes, June 22nd. Not a lot of notice. So we hopped in the car and headed off to our new home town. After several days of searching, we learned that home buying is not as fun as it looks on HGTV. Despite several setbacks, with some very obvious help from above, we finally went under contract on the home we wanted today. 2 1/2 stories, 3 bedrooms, 3 bathrooms, and my favorite part--a 2-car garage. After living in our little one-bedroom apartment for 4 years, I'm not sure we'll know what to do with ourselves.

We are very excited to have a home where the buffalo roam and the deer and antelope play.