Congratulations Mr. CRT!

See this cute guy??!!  That's my husband and Rochester's newest Certified Respiratory Therapist!  So proud of all his hard work and studying that went into passing his boards!  He really worked sooo HARD!  So happy for him!  Congratulations Brennon!

Family Pictures!!

We have put off family pictures for...well,...YEARS!  Our last family picture was when Zach was a baby!  Isn't that terrible!  I think it was worth the wait though!  Thanks Selena Davis for doing such a great job capturing smiles and candids on a very busy family!

The New House

We moved!  Yay!  And we are LOVING our new house!  It is so fun!  It is nice to have everyone upstairs instead of some bedrooms upstairs and some downstairs!  I LOVE having the piano in a different room than where everyone is...it's so nice during practicing hours!  I LOVE having a deck!  It is so. so. so. nice!






I LOVE my new kitchen!  It has so much room!  I have unpacked all my kitchen boxes and still have empty  cupboards!  How great is that?  I even found a spot for my grandmother's china...which used to dwell on my bedroom floor in my old house : )

(and it is this clean all the time ; )!!)

I love this staircase...I can envision great Christmas decorations and fabulous prom entrances : )!
So come visit us!  We'd love to see you soon!

What in the world have we been up to?

So what have we been up to??  LOTS!  That is why we have no recent posts!! We have been loving on the cutest baby ever!

The kids have been playing in the mud, the sprinklers, and packing and unpacking because we moved!

I graduated from college...again : )  These are all my classmates who also had babies while we were getting our BSN!  Funny right?

And...our camera broke!  So that's why we have no pictures!  We will post pics of our new house soon.

More Newborn Pics...

Love these little feet...poor little heels are still healing from all the trauma in the NICU. Luckily you can't see the big bruise on the top of his foot from a failed IV attempt!!

Just love those little toes sticking out!

Sooo cute! Love this scale too!

I think it looks like he is smiling in this picture!

Happy Thanksgiving everyone! Can't believe Camden is one month old already!

Camden's Newborn Pictures

Check out Camden's Newborn pictures:

www.jolenereedphotography.com

He is the little guy under the titles "More baby!" and also "New" (Love the picture with the teal hat! Can't wait to hang it on my wall!)

Thank you Jolene for sharing your talents with us! You are AMAZING!

Updates...so behind!

Some overdue updates in a very random order...because its WAY too hard to load the pictures in the order you want them!
Camden is home! We are soo glad to have him home! Plus...I love this shirt that Natalie gave us...it says "Chicks dig me!" We put it on him and took him for show and tell at work and guess what??? It was true!


He makes lots of funny faces. We love just sitting and watching his eyes get big and cross eyed and his mouth get tiny and pursed : )!

Savannah turned 11 (wow right??!!), so instead of a birthday party, she and her best friend went and got "updos", went to lunch at the steak house and then came home and played "spa". It was a fun day! I can't believe she will be out of primary next year! Wow! Where has the time gone?

Blowing out her bonfire!

Trying to find clothes that actually fit Camden has been a bit of a challenge. He is sooo tiny! We've never had such a small baby. It isn't only the weight issue, its that he's only 18 inches long! That is not big enough to fill out ANYTHING! We laughed so hard when we put these "newborn" jeans on him...yeah right!

Coming home from the NICU (see random order!)

Now we have finally made it to the Halloween pictures. Camden dressed up in the NICU (he's a pumpkin...in case you can't tell!) The kids were invited to the most amazing Halloween activity ever! It was put on by Mayo and the pediatric hospital. It was for the pediatric patients and their siblings so since Camden was still in the NICU on his Halloween my kiddos were included. They dressed up and paraded through the hospital and were showered with gifts and love from the employees (Mayo Clinic is SOOOO AWESOME!). My kids came home with 2 HUGE bags each of candy, games, toys, coloring books, and even money! We were overwhelmed by the incredible generosity of the employees at the hospital. Plus it took the pressure off for having to make time to trick or treat that evening with a baby in the hospital. Thank you so much to the amazing people at St. Mary's Hospital!

Jessi wanted to be Jenny Weasley for Halloween, but since the baby came earlier than expected and stayed in the hospital longer than expected all our shopping plans fell apart, so this is her "Jenny Weasley" costume. I am vowing to do a better job at Halloween next year!

Here's everyone in front of the house. You wouldn't believe how many pictures it took to get everyone to look at me...and this is the best we got!

Zach wanted to be a pirate...due to the late shopping trip for costumes, a zombie pirate was the best we could find! He didn't seem to mind! See the pumpkin flashlight he is holding up...got that at the Mayo Parade. Pretty cool, right?

Spiderman and his "baby"! (He carries that thing EVERYWHERE!)

Another failed costume...the idea was to be Hermione...but you know the drill...early baby, late shopping...and viola this is what she got!

Thanks to my kids for being such fabulous sports about everything. I don't think life will ever get back to normal around here...so instead we are working on establishing a new normal! But we love our Camden and are so glad that he has joined our family and will bring more "joy to our journey!"

Improvement...

Camden is having more awake time and is improving! Here he is with his CPAP on. It got turned down to room air and a PEEP of 3. He tolerated it well...

...so today he got taken off of the CPAP and put on a high flow nasal cannula. He also got to take his "angry elf" hat off! Since his bilirubin levels are high he had to start on the bililights...unfortunately that made him replace his angry elf hat for a pair of "sunglasses" that he also isn't crazy about!

But he did get a few breaks from the lights and the glasses! He is looking better!

Transferred to the NICU

Best day ever! I finally got to hold baby Camden! It was soooo great! He is such a sweet little guy! It was a so fun to hold him and snuggle him! It was a little tricky with all those lines and stuff but totally worth it!

A close up of Camden's CPAP. This is what is helping him! He is doing soooo much better today and is so much more relaxed. His respiratory rate is down and his oxygen needs are down. He is finally making some progress!! YAY!

Size of nose is not quite as large as it appears with the CPAP stuffed in : )! Here is Camden in his little bed in the NICU. He started tube feeds of formula today and will hopefully be weaned off of the TPN and Lipids that he has been getting by the end of the day! Good job Camden.

Camden's Video

Here is a video shortly after Camden was born. It sounds like he is crying but actually he is "grunting". This is what babies do to try to expand their airways (we have recently learned!). He made this sound for about 24 hours straight before he finally stopped! Camden had his first ambulance ride tonight as he headed over to the NICU and as soon as he got there he immediately started doing better (must have been the ride...little boys and their trucks!) He is on continuous CPAP and this has helped decrease his oxygen needs! He has a new IV in his head and they also put in an umbilical arterial line. He got a blessing tonight and hopefully will continue to improve!

Baby Camden

Camden James Olsen...6 lbs. 12 oz. 18 1/4 inches long (we have to put that quarter in because he is soooo short!!). Even though he is only 6 lbs he looks a little chunky because 6 lbs on an 18 inch frame is a lot different than 6lbs on a 22 inch frame! He is cute!

This is Camden getting ready for his chest x-ray! They put his arms up and then everyone started laughing cuz he stayed that way! He had another chest x-ray this morning. His lungs look like they are immature...this is what is causing all his problems. It is 3-fold issue...he is a white boy (think slower to develop), he is 3 weeks early, and his mom had gestational diabetes (again, slows development).

Here he is in the Level 2 Nursery. In addition, he now has a feeding tube taped to his cheek and an IV in his arm. But he is pretty wired up here too! Today they have been going back and forth about sending him to the NICU. His respiratory rate is in the low 100's and he's still retracting quite a bit when he breathes, but he is no longer grunting. His oxygen needs have steadily increased throughout the day he started the day at 25% and is ending the day at 42% (this is bad...we want him to go down on his oxygen needs...require less supplemental oxygen instead of more!). He was started on some bilirubin lights today too! He hasn't eaten anything yet but has a good suck reflex and goes to town on that binky. If his respiratory status is better tomorrow we might get to start feeding him! Poor little guy! The camera mysteriously traveled home but we will get it back here tomorrow and get some more current pictures to post!

What we have been up to...

In no particular order...
We have been getting ready for the arrival of baby Camden. He should be making his debut at the very latest, 2 weeks from today. Yesterday was my doctor's appointment and I got on the induction schedule for November 4th! Yay! I expect that he will actually be born on November 5th because I'm not going in until the evening! His room and bed are all ready, clothes are washed and...

...I am ready to be done being pregnant!

Zach lost his other front tooth! One has been missing for a while (about a year) and the other finally came out. While this is not doing anything for his speech issues, he certainly looks cute...now we get to wait and see if both teeth will come in or if he will have to have surgery to pull the other one down as the orthodontist suspects!

We have started the month of birthday celebrations in earnest! Zach decided that instead of having a birthday party this year he would rather take his good friend to a day at the pumpkin patch. So that is what we did! They had fun running around, riding bikes on the track, climbing on the slides and playgrounds, getting their pictures taken, watching a magic show and just generally being silly! It wasn't even too cold...about 50 degrees and breezy!

Everyone after the magic show in the barn! This is a "super-dilly-deluxe" pumpkin patch!

We celebrated Nathan's third birthday! We figured since he didn't really know when his birthday was anyway it wouldn't matter to him if we celebrated it early! Plus since we have so many toys already...we didn't need any more...so we bought him tickets to go see Barney for his birthday! He had a great time! It wasn't very crowded (I guess Barney isn't as popular as he used to be!) but they put on a good show anyway!

Nathan the birthday boy holding up 3 fingers to show how old he is! I can't believe he's already three! Wow!

Nate's birthday cake! He wanted cookie cake this year...but then just ate all the frosting off of it! Haha Nate! We love you! Happy Birthday!