Jade's Sixth Month Checkup

November 24-30, 2008: On Monday I took Jade to the pediatrican for her six month checkup. She is officially 17.7 lbs and in the 75th percentile for everything; head circumference, weight and height. I talked to the doctor about taking her off of the Prevacid. She agreed with me that I could start to wean her off of the medication. I think she is old enough and with eating solids now I think she would do okay. Jade sleeps through the night 10-11 hours. She eats three meals a day and is eating baby food really well. Her favorite is prunes. She still hates peas and green beans but will eat squash, sweet potoatos and carrots really well. She holds her own bottle, sits by herself, sits in a high chair, and is starting to scoot herself with her elbows. She is constantly happy, always smiling and is easy to make laugh. She takes 2-3 naps a day, one in the morning, one after lunch and one before dinner. She likes to sleep with a pacifier and her "Beary Bear". It's like half stuffed animal, half blanket. It's a he but he's pink. She loves him. She especially likes the little tag that I left on him. She likes to play with it. She seems so advanced for her age. It could just be that I'm biased but she seems super intelligent. She's such a great baby.
Tuesday was a red letter day. I convinced Aaron that we should buy a big screen TV. I think he was feeling a little responsible for the large mess the fish tank made. My dad was able to find a killer deal on a Sony 52 inch flat screen with a PS3. It only cost us $1800. We both agreed that we would get the TV now while it was a great deal and just not open it until Christmas. That will be our Christmas to each other. We've also decided to build an entertainment center in the middle of the wall where the fish tank used to be and include a 2 sided fireplace. We've hired Jeremy to build it for us. He's currently working on the plans and we will see how it turns out. I'm excited.
Thursday was Thanksgiving. We went to Gary Gunn's house for dinner around 2pm and then I had to go into work at 6pm. It was one of the busiest nights I have ever worked. The wait to get back to a room was almost 3 hours. The craziest thing was the patients were super sick. Yes we saw our fair share of Turkey Bowl injuries and lacerations d/t knives but the majority of the patients were super sick with serious illnesses. We even had two full arrests. One we saved and the other came in basically dead. It was a sad way to celebrate Thanksgiving. While I worked Aaron and Jade went over to the Sorensen's and had leftovers and played games. Aaron came to the hospital and dropped me off some leftovers. I didn't even have time to eat it I was so busy. Too bad too because I love turkey leftovers.
Friday we spent all day putting up our Christmas lights outside and the tree and inside decor. It was really fun to be together as a little family and put the tree up. I can't wait until Jade is older when she will really get into the Christmas season. It will be fun to establish our own traditions with her. Unfortunately this year Jade has slept through most of the squeeziness. I think she is getting sick again because she is a little cranky and has a runny nose. Let's hope not. She just stopped taking her antibiotic and was doing so well.
On Saturday Clair offered us his Jazz tickets. We debated whether to go or not because Jade had been running a fever earlier in the day with a runny nose and red eyes. I took her to the pediatrican's after hours clinic but she is just fine. No ear infections etc. Just something viral. This evening however she seemed to be feeling better so we decided to go to the game. She loved it. She was so good natured even though I knew she didn't feel well. There was a little black boy sitting behind us and she was totally facinated with him. She spent most of the time watching him than the game. Everyone around us commented on how cute and good she was. We had a really good time and the Jazz even won.

DiaperRash, Christmas Village, Sickness

November 17-23, 2008: Nothing too much to write about this week. It was a pretty laid back week. Mostly we are all just recovering from being ill. Jade had really bad diarrhea and ended up getting horrible diaper rash. I called the pediatrican to ask for ideas on what I could do to get the diaper rash under control and she recommended I use Lanolin to work as a skin barrier. She also suggested giving Jade yogurt. I didn't know I could give Jade yogurt at 6 months but she said it would be okay. Sure enough, within one day the yogurt had gotten rid of her diarrhea. So mental note: next time Jade takes amoxicillin, I need to give her yogurt.
Also on Monday and Tuesday I had a TNCC class for my nursing continual education. It's an 8 hour class, two days a week with an extremely hard test at the end of the two days. Luckily I passed but it was extremely hard and time consuming. Jade stayed with my mom and Jen Sorensen for those two days. She did a really good job.
On Wednesday I had to go to traffic school for the ticket I got last month while driving to lunch to meet the Sorensen ladies. It was so gay. What a waste of my time. But you've got to do what you've got to do to keep the insurance costs down.
On Saturday Aaron, Jade and I went down to my parents house to help them put up their Christmas village. It took us several hours and all we did was help them unload all the boxes. Jade had fun though sitting on the floor looking at all the action. I am really starting to like this paper weight stage that Jade is in. She is content sitting on the floor with a toy as long as she is in the middle of the action.


Aaron is starting to get sick. He has felt crappy all day today. He's getting the cold that Jade and I are getting over. Poor thing. I know he didn't feel well when he decided to not go to football in the morning. :)
On Sunday, Aaron stayed home from church sick in bed. He feels awful. We went to Grandma and Grandpa Gunn's house without him.

November 10-16, 2008: On Monday Aaron went to California for a quick business trip. He will be home on Tuesday. Jade and I went down to Grandma Gunn's and hung out all day.

At lunch with Grandma Gunn

Playing with Grandpa Gunn.

The black on her face is from a Halloween cookie we gave her. She loved it.



Tuesday: Aaron came home. It's good to have him home, even when he's gone for just one day.
Wednesday: I worked at the hospital tonight. I had Aaron bring Jade in after he called to tell me that she had a fever again. Dr. Darr checked her out but nothing was wrong, just viral. But because she has had a runny nose and fever off and on for three weeks now Dr Darr put her on antibiotics. I hope they help.
Thursday: I worked again, Jade stayed with Aaron. Nothing special. Jade is still running a fever and has a runny nose.
Friday: Aaron had a campout with the Young Men tonight. He gets home tomorrow in the afternoon. It's not really a campout though. More like staying in a cabin...in style. Pathetic :)
Saturday: Jade woke up with diarrhea. I've changed her diaper at least 5 times. I'm sure it's due to the antibiotic but still, poor thing. If she keeps this up her little bottom is going to be so sore. The antibiotic is helping though. She's feeling a lot better.
We had our tithing settlement interview with the bishop this morning. We are officially full tithe payers. It is a good feeling to be declared a full tithe payer. Both Aaron and I have always payed our tithing every month and I can see how the Lord has blessed us for doing so. I notice that if I don't pay my tithing every month, even though I will pay it later on, our finaces are always a little tight. But when we pay our tithing every month and pay a generous fast offerings we always seem to have surplus in our account.
We took the girls and Jade to the bowling alley tonight. We had a really good time and Jade loved the music and lights. We played a game that the girls introduced us to. You play with Mika and Ikes and when it's your turn to bowl you choose a Mike and Ike and the color signifies how you bowl. For example, if you choose green you bowl with your left hand, yellow, you bowl backwards etc. We had a really good time and the game made two games of bowling go really fast. Aaron still killed us though. He's a pretty good bowler when he wants to be. Lately when you hold Jade under her armpits she will jump up and down. It's the funniest thing. She did that all night at the bowling alley. We paid more attention to Jade than we did to bowling.

Paige and Jade at the bowling alley.

Jade is Six Months Old

November 2-8th, 2008: Sunday we came home from church to a weird sound downstairs. Aaron went to investigate and found our basement semi-flooded from the fishtank. He ran upstairs to discover that the entire north wall of our living room were the fishtank sits was wet. Water was leaking from fishtank, down the wall and into the carpet. It ruined the wall and we had to pull the carpet back to keep it from getting wetter. Aaron called Jeremy and he came over in his church clothes to help us. Little did he know what a big mess it would be. In six hours Aaron and Jeremy emergency evacuated the fish into buckets and drained the tank before it could dump more water into the basement. They also tore out the north wall and removed the fish tank. They pulled back our carpet and ripped out the pad underneath. I dutifully took care of Jade while they did the major clean up. It was such an awful mess. I'm just glad we weren't out of town at the time and that we caught it pretty much at the beginning before the water could leak completely. We were able to save the fish and Aaron put everything up on ebay. He sold all of the equipment, fish and even the sand within one week. He sold everything for about $1500. It was kind of sad to see our fish go. I've kind of gotten attached to them, we've even given them names. I hope they do well at their new homes. I guess the good thing that comes from all of this is now maybe I can convince Aaron to get a flat screen TV. That would be awesome.


On Monday Jade and I went to lunch with Grandma and Grandpa Gunn. Jade is getting sicker and sicker. She is still super congested and now she has diarrhea. She has diaper rash because of the diarrhea that I can't seem to get under control, no matter what kind of ointment or how fast I change her after she poos. Poor thing. She cries every time I change her. I have to give her props though. For feeling as poorly as she does she still is in good spirits. She laughs and smiles at everyone. During dinner I feed Jade pureed peas for the first time. She spit them back in my face. I take it that she doesn't like them. I don't blame them, especially pureed. Gross! For FHE Aaron and I voted for the next President of the United States via email. I had a tender mercies moment. I have had a difficult time knowing who to vote for this election. Both canidates make me nervous and there really isn't much that I agree with on either platform. So before voting I said a prayer that I would directed to know who to vote for. The answer I received was that I should vote for the person that I thought would hold the same church and family values in the same light as I did. Unfortunately, the canidate I voted for didn't win. It will be interesting to see what the next 4 years hold with Obama in power. Heaven help us! On Tuesday Jade and I lounged around all day. I officially have Jade's cold. So we didn't really do anything all day but eat, sleep and watch TV. I sure hope Aaron doesn't get it. Also Jade is learning how to scoot herself around using her hands and knees. It's super cute to watch her. She doesn't move far but if she is reaching for something she can move a couple of inches and get it. She's close! Oh no! Wednesday, Jade is 6 months old today. She is getting so big. She still doesn't have much hair but that's okay. She's still super cute. Aaron made the comment that he's really starting to enjoy Jade because she's getting a personality. She has her likes and dislikes. She's so easy going, loves strangers and special attention (not like she gets enough of that :)) always smiling, cries a little and laughs a lot. She is on a great schedule and eats and sleeps really well. She also really likes the boys. She flirts with them constantly. A boy walks into the room and instantly her attention is drawn to them. She smiles and blinks her eyes adoringly with her long lashes. She's quite the flirt. When she is older she is going to be trouble. We sure do love having her in our family and I can't imagine life without her. All day Thursday I've been in bed sick with flu-like symptoms. I've been sick in bed for the last two days...as in bed as you can be with a six month old. I was actually scheduled to work tonight but I was thankfully flexed for all 12 hours. It's bad timing to be so sick cause Aaron and I signed up for a half marathon in St. George. We haven't really trained as well as we should have for the race but healthy I think I could have walked/ran it and made it. Now that I am so sick I don't think I will be able to do it. I guess we will see. The race is in two days. On Friday we traveled to St. George with Clair, Roanne, Kylee, Austin, Mara and their kids. We didn't leave until Aaron got off of work so we didn't get to the condo until really late. By the time we got there everyone was already asleep so we just went straight to bed. I'm glad too because I didn't feel good at all. I'm still really weak and have a horrible chest congestion. On Saturday Aaron and Mara got up early and went to the race. I didn't sleep well last night because Jade kept me up most of the night. She had a hard time breathing d/t congestion and change of scenery. with the lack of sleep and not feeling well I just didn't think I could run the race. Instead we all went to cheer them on. Mara ran it in under two hours and Aaron ran it just a little over 2 hours which is really good for not training hardly at all.

Afterwards Roanne and I went shopping at the Outlets while everyone else went back for naps. Ro and I really had a great time shopping together. I decided where we went and she followed right along. We even got a brewski afterwards. It was great. I ended up buying Jade alot of cute baby clothes at the Carter's outlet. They were having a sale! That night we went to the Olive Garden and took cute pictures of her in the car. She did fine until dinner and then she had a breakdown. We had to wait for an hour to even get in and by the time we were done eating she was so tired that she was just plain ornry. It's not like her to do that. She's usually really happy, even when she is tired. I guess she was just beyond tired. Poor thing.

Sunday it started raining while in St. George so instead of going to Zion's, like we had planned, we just went home. We ended up at the Gunn's house for dinner and had the chance to meet Hudson's new girlfriend of the month, Vanessa.

Jade's First Halloween

October 26-November 1, 2008: On Sunday we were down at my parents house for dinner and to practice Thriller and I took the funniest picture of Aaron and Jade together. While we were outside Aaron stuck Jade in the snuggie and wrapped his coat around her and zipped it up. The only thing you can see is Jade's huge round head and her bright blue eyes. It's really funny! She loved it though because she got to be in the middle of the action.
On Monday we went to Jeremy and Jen's house to celebrate Boston's 1st birthday. Boston was so funny with his little cake. He had chocolate cake all over by the time he was done. He had to have a bath he was so messy. Jade had a really good time with all the cousins there. She always done. There's so much action and she loves to watch the older kids crawling or running around. You can see that she is carefully watching what they are doing and analyzing whether she can do what they are doing. If she had the ability she would be up running around with the best of them.
On Tuesday Jade participated in her first 5k walk/run at Xango. Xango was celebrating their grand opening of Building B and the premier of Glimpse (a new skin care product). Aaron ran ahead of us and I walked/ran with Jade in her running stroller. We did a really good job and I was able to run most of the way. It felt good. We got a free tshirt and goodies for finishing the race. After the 5k Jade and I went down to Grandma Gunn's and hung out. We tried to get Jade to crawl. I would hold out a cracker and Mom would move Jade's legs' in the crawling movement. She can scoot without help but can't quite get the crawling action down. I predict though that she will be crawling before Christmas. It wouldn't take much to get her to crawl. Especially if food was used as an incentive. :)


Wednesday Jade woke up a little congested. I hope she's not getting sick. We haven't seen RSV at the hospital yet but I think it wouldn't take much with me working in the health care industry for Jade it get something horrible.
Thursday I bought a Gold's Gym pass from off of KSL. I bought the Gold pass because they have free day care. They have a seperate room for children under two and Jade stays there while I work out for an hour. Everyone at the daycare say that Jade is very well mannered. She likes to just sit there in the middle of the room and play quietly with a toy and watch the other children. It's really true though. Jade is a very good baby. She's so good natured and is a very lovable person.
Friday was Halloween. We performed our Gunn Thriller Throwdown, Thriller vs. The Werewolf. We started our first performance around 6:30 and kept it going until close to 10pm with a show about every 15 minutes. We had a really good crowd, the same as in the years past and I think people loved the new dance and the pyrotechnics. Dad did a really good job getting everything together. We had two different sound systems. Aaron controlled all of the lighting and sound, Erica helped with crowd control, Dad was "Satan" again, Whitney (Auburn's SUU roommate) was the werewolf dancer and Aubry (Brian's wife) was the Hippy Werewolf. Luckily we didn't have too many problems. Everything worked out well for not really practicing with everyone together. The only possible problem was during one of the first performances a couple of teenage boys were fooling around with the flashpod across the street. It didn't go off but it very easily could have. If it would have blown up in their faces it would have caused major damage and we would have been in serious problems.
Jade stayed with Roanne and Claire. We dressed her up in a little ladybug costume. She looked so cute. She even had a little bag for candy. Roanne took her to a Trunk-o-Treat with Kylee and she got some candy. They then brought her down to us so they could see the Thriller performance.



Saturday Jade woke up early because she was super congested. She didn't nap very well all day but just kind of mooped around. We cleaned the house but then lounged around for the rest of the night, recouping from our performance yesterday. We all were pretty pooped. Jade didn't sleep well during the night. She kept waking herself up because she couldn't breath with her pacifier in her mouth. I took her temperature and she had a fever of 101.4. I gave her some tylenol and ibuprofen and gave her a bath. That seemed to help her feel a little better. I also gave her some children's DayQuil to help with the congestion. (I know you technically aren't supposed to but I spoke with my pediatrican and she said the studies saying that children shouldn't take cough and congestion medications are inconclusive and she gave me the appropriate dose for her weight.) The medication seemed to help her a lot and finally she fell asleep. Poor thing. Let's pray she doesn't get worse.

First Brewski, Cup and Highchair

October 19-25, 2008: Sunday, Aaron got called to be the first counselor of the Young Mens in our ward. He is nervous but excited to work with the boys. He will be perfect with those boys. He loves to do boy stuff and rough house. I think the booys will really love him...as soon as they get to know him and his sarcastic humor.
On Monday I studied like a mad-woman for my Statistics midterm. Jen was nice enough to watch Jade while I took the test. I don't think I did very well. I didn't finish the test and there were several questions that I didn't even know how to solve. Not good.
On Tuesday I worked a 1800-0600 shift and spent most of the time getting the ready to open the new ER. For the last 6 months we have been under construction, adding on 10 more ER beds and redoing the Waiting Room. It has been quite the mess having to work around the construction. At times we have only had 10 beds to see patients and for the lat 3 months our fast track area has been a make shift area in the Cath Lab. However, it is finally over and the area is huge. We are now a 28 bed ER. So needless to say I spent all night getting it set up to open in the morning. What a pain.
On Wednesday I worked again with the new ER open. It was really hectic because nothing was in the right place, things didn't work properly, and the new system is so different from the old system that it's hard to adjust. It became apparent that the builder has never built an ER before nor did he get any advice from a healthcare worker. For instance, the rooms aren't any bigger than before, the monitors are in stupid places, the cabinets are big enough, the water is on a sensor which makes it difficult to use, etc. There are just a lot of things I would have done differently. Oh well, what can you do?
On Thursday, after working two 12 hour shifts in a row and not getting much sleep in between except for when Jade would take a nap, I had a 9am nursing meeting. I took Jade because I couldn't find a babysitter. Let me tell you, I was sooooo tired. The nice thing was Jade was a super good baby. She seems to revele in the attention of strangers. She seemed to warm to one nurse in particular. His name is Brandon and he was really cute with her. She stuck by his side the entire meeting. Thankfully when Aaron got home that evening I was able to take a very long and well deserved nap.
On Friday, Jade and I went with Grandpa, Grandma Gunn, Cierra and Paige to Cedar City so we could practice for Thriller. For Halloween this year we are doing a face off between Thriller and the Werewolf. Dad found a cute music video about a werewolf. Dad had me learn the dance off the video and then we went down to Cedar City to teach Aurburn and her roommate Whitney the new dance. Whitney was kind enough to volunteer to be the Werewolf. After practicing for several hours in a park while Jade played in her playpen, we went to a pizza joint and Jade drank brewski from a glass. Dad was drinking and Jade reached out both hands and motioned that she wanted his drink. He helped her and she picked it right up. She's still a rookie at it but it won't be long before she is drinking from a cup all by herself. I guess I should start with the sippie cup soon. Jade also sat in a high chair for the first time by herself. She loved sitting up and looking around. There were several kids sitting near our table and she spent most of the time with her neck craned watching what the kids were doing. It's fun to see how much she is changing and how attentive she is with things going on around her. Jade is also a very good traveler. We left Cedar City after dinner but with a four hour drive she and I didn't get home to really late. Jade played with her toys until it was time to go to bed and then she fell asleep and slept until we got home. What a good baby!

Strawberry Reservoir Trip

Mara, Aniston, and Kylee crawdad hunting.


Jeremy and Ethan fishing.


I caught the only fish-and it was a big one. It was so big it broke my line and got away.


Cade, Aaron and Austin fishing in the early morning fog.


Aaron, on the cover of GQ Fisherman.


The main room of the cabin.


The kitchen.


Jade sitting up all by herself.


Jen and Jeremy during our scooter races.


Aaron racing on the scooter. He was pretty amazing, won most all of the races around the patio.


Mara's grandparents' cabin from the bottom of the hill.


Me standing by Strawberry Reservoir.


Aaron at Strawberry Reservoir.


Jade playing in her pack-n-play.

October 13-19, 2008: This week has been a busy one, full of work and play. Aaron left for California on Monday and was gone til late Wednesday night. In the mean time I worked Sunday and then had ACLS classes Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday. The grandmas were nice enough to watch Jade while I did class all day. She seemed to do really well at both houses. I did notice that Jade is starting to sit up by herself. She requires some assistance but for the most part she does it on her own. You just have to watch her close cause she tips over easily.
On Thursday, we met up with the Sorensen clan around 3:30pm and headed to Strawberry Reservoir. Mara's grandparents own a cabin up there and they let us borrow it for the weekend. Their cabin is very large, has 5 bedrooms and serveral bathrooms, not to mention a huge loft, kitchen and grandroom. It fit us all really well. Every family had their own room so we could lock the babies away for naps. Plus there was plenty of room to play and eat in. The cabin sits up on a hill that overlooks the reservoir but the walk is only about 15 minutes to get to the water.
Thursday night we all just played around the cabin and had dinner. Each family was in charge of specific meals which means we had lots of food and snacks. For Roanne's turn she made homemade lasagna and breadsticks. Yummy! The boys ordered Dish so they could watch the football games all weekend and we just hung out watching tv and playing games. Mara's grandparents also own these small scooters that you rock back and forth in and they move. I think we spent all of Friday afternoon having races around the patio. One morning, Austin, Aaron, Cade and I got up early and went fishing. The lake was covered it fog. It was really pretty especially as the sun came up. The only bad part was the lack of fish. I was the only one to catch one. Jade did really well while up at the cabin. She stayed on schedule and would take her naps really well. She also can officially sit up by herself. She did it all weekend. It was all of a sudden she could just do it by herself. It was fun to see her with all the cousins. There was just so much excitement and things to see all the time that she had a blast just watching everyone. We brought up her exer-saucer and she sat there for hours on end just watching people run by. She was a great baby and we had a lot of fun with her there. All in all it was a fun weekend and a great time being with the Sorensen family.