A few weeks back my little brother Cody entered the MTC to serve a mission for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.  I’m so proud of him and wrote more about that in my personal blog.  While Cody is gone the only contact we will have with him is through letters, weekly emails and bi-annual phone calls (Mother’s Day and Christmas).  While we miss Cody very much there is an awesome side effect to this – I’m writing him letters regularly, which means I’m sitting down at my computer and writing out the things that have been going on.  Consequently I can take those letters, paste them into WordPress, make some changes from letter to blog post and voila!  You might get semi-regular updates from us again!  So, here’s what I wrote to Cody last week.  Probably tomorrow I’ll post what I wrote to him this week.

Cody left for the MTC on Wednesday February 6th.  The night before he entered the MTC my family all got together.  Since Tuesday is a regular office day for me and I already had babysitting lined up for my boys I joined my parents in a quick excursion to the temple.  They had planned to go to the Salt Lake Temple, but then found out it was closed.  So they decided to go to the Draper Temple… only to find out that it was also closed.  Finally they settled on going to the Mt. Timpanogos Temple since it was in fact open.  We were going to go and do a regular endowment session but ended up pressed for time and opted to do initiatories instead.  While my mom and I were sitting in the waiting area to do the work (there was a half hour wait) we sat and talked about some different scriptural things (which, Mom – you need to blog those thoughts, they were good ones) and suddenly mom sees someone walk in who she recognizes – Sister Lehman.  The Lehmans lived in the same ward as our family when we lived in New York almost 20 years ago (that makes me feel old to write that).  When Brother Lehman was the Bishop he called my dad into the bishopric with him and my dad began a long stint in church leadership which is still continuing today.  So it was really fun for my mom to get to sit and catch up with this sweet sister for a little while.  Then we got to go and perform the ordinances we were there for, and as I was coming out my mom is sitting on a bench happily chatting with someone else.  She’d run into Danielle {Shorts} Janzen, the big sister of Cody’s very best friend Zach.  We don’t think it was coincidence that we ended up at Mt. Timpanogos doing intiatories that day, it seems that’s where we were supposed to be!

After the temple we went to Tucanos.  As I was sitting next to Sam he was feeling a bit warm to me.  He was sitting and eating slowly but consistently but just seemed warm and lethargic.  By the time we got home we’d decided he definitely had a fever and put him to bed.  I stayed up helping my parents and Cody pack up his bags.  We realized that Cody had left at home a very critical part of his missionary supplies – his white shirts.  Anyone who’s seen LDS missionaries before knows them by their iconic white shirts and ties, so this was more than a bit ironic that those were the items left behind :P  In the end my mom was kind of happy they’d left the shirts behind because they were really my other brother’s old white shirts that hadn’t gotten much wear, but it just didn’t feel the same sending Cody out with used white shirts.  She was happier to have him with newly purchased white shirts to start off his mission, even if it cost a little more and was a bit of a hassle.  After we finished getting Cody packed up I went up to check on Sam.  He was laying in bed awake and looking miserable.  When I felt his forehead he was burning up!  I went and found a thermometer and found that his temperature was 104.7° F – Yikes!  I quickly went and found him some motrin and sat with him for a little while.  This whole time he’s sitting there telling me (a little bit delerious) “I’m fine.  I’m not sick. I am well.”  Which was nice of him to say, but quite evidently false.  After a little while Sam threw up the Motrin, but his fever went down and stayed down for the rest of the night.  Poor kid.  He proceeded to have a fever that went up and down but lasted until Saturday.

We were so glad that he was finally doing better and that Danny had seemed to have dodged that bullet.  We started making plans for our traditional Chinese New Year dinner the next day.  Not one hour after we’d sent out emails to invite everyone… Danny had a fever.  We quickly sent out a redaction email for the party and hunkered down to take care of our baby.  He was sick for almost the whole next week!  Neither of the boys were too miserable, but they slept A LOT and obviously fevers are cause for not leaving the house.  Danny finally got better.  The following Saturday I woke up in the morning and could hear Sam downstairs.  I went down and he said “I threw up”, and sure enough, there was throw up all over his PJs, in his hair, on his bed upstairs… yuck.  He didn’t show any other signs of being sick and ate fine on Saturday and Sunday so I thought maybe it was just a fluke thing.  Maybe all the congestion had built up in his stomach from the sickness he’d had, or he’d eaten something that didn’t agree with him or something like that.  So, on Monday morning we decided that we’d go to Grannie’s house for a President’s Day party with the cousins.  Eric dropped me off and headed out skiing with our nephew Dallin.  I’d made Sam a cheese and pepperoni sandwich for breakfast (by request) and he slowly ate a bite of it at a time.  In three hours he only made it through about 1/3 of the sandwich!  Finally I just finished it off for him and decided he’d just have enough at lunchtime and we’d call it good.  It wasn’t too atypical for Sam to eat that slowly so I didn’t think too much of it.  He went to the bathroom and had some pretty bad diarrhea, and had made a mess in his underpants.  Grannie threw his pants and underpants into the washer and Grandpa made a quick run to Wal-mart for some clean clothes (thanks again!).  As we were starting lunch Sam was wandering around, then as he was walking into the front room he started coughing and Katrina said he sounded like he might throw up.  Sure enough, he threw up a little in the front room.  I quickly ushered him into the bathroom and he proceeded to puke ALL over the bathroom floor and had diarrhea at the same time.  It was a huge mess and so disgusting.  We threw him in the bathtub and let him soak while Grannie and I cleaned up the bathroom.  He looked so miserable and pale.  Poor thing.  We offered him some 7-Up and he drank half a sip before he said it made his stomach hurt – that’s really sick when even 7-Up can upset your stomach!  In the afternoon he suddenly fell asleep on the couch and took a 3-hour long nap.  In the evening when Eric came back Grannie and Grandpa had offered that we could stay for dinner, so I helped prepare the meal.  Sam woke up just after we’d started eating and said he was REALLY hungry.  I was very wary of him eating after his reaction to the 7-Up but we decided he could eat a little bit of plain rice.  He ate probably 7 small bowls of rice – which is saying something considering how slow of an eater he usually is!  After that, he was fine, no further reactions to food, no puking, nothing, he was right back to normal.  We had a reprieve on Tuesday with no upset stomachs and we’d thought that maybe Sam had just eaten something bad.

Nope!  (Chuck Testa)  Tuesday night I woke up to Daniel having puked all over his bed as well.  Eric and I cleaned him up and then Danny came to bed with me.  I think we woke up every 30 minutes all night long to either Danny puking, feeling miserable, wanting something to drink etc.  He couldn’t even hold down the apple cider that I had in his sippy cup!  So sad and miserable.  He wasn’t much interested in eating that day and had a bit of a fever – but by the next day, he was back to normal.  *knock on wood*  I’m ready for our family to just get well and stay well for a good long time now.

Another adventure we had last week.  We came home from church on Sunday and found a big puddle of water next to the fridge under the water dispenser.  We gave Sam a mild lecture about not using the water dispenser on his own (carefully because we weren’t entirely sure it wasn’t Daniel who’d caused the puddle), and made ourselves some lunch.  As we continued making our lunch I came back to find that the puddle had regenerated, and I knew that Sam hadn’t been a part of its creation this time.  Some further investigation showed us that the water was coming from our ice maker, and that our freezer was not all that cold.  The water was coming from the ice melting in the ice maker and dripping out through the water dispenser – awesome.  We came to find out that our freezer has some buttons on the outside that you can push to adjust the temperature of the fridge and freezer.  If you adjust either side to be set to 0 then the fridge or freezer is shut off.  Who wants that kind of access to that functionality?!  So one of our boys had apparently played with those buttons in the morning and had turned off *both* our fridge and freezer.  Great.  Luckily the only thing that really spoiled in that time was our ice cream, but there wasn’t very much of that anyways, but it still wasn’t a very welcome surprise.

That’s it for this installment of letters to Cody.  Tune in tomorrow when I get us caught back up to this week!

Sam *loves* Family Home Evening.  It is one of his favorite things in the world.  Frequently during the week I will watch him “play” Family Home Evening.  He’ll sing a song, say a prayer, pretend to have a lesson, sing and pray again.  It’s SO cute.  We haven’t always been awesome at actually doing FHE though because we wouldn’t have a lesson quite ready.  Fortunately for us our sister-in-law made us a whole bunch of Family Home Evening Lessons for Christmas so now it’s even easier for us to make sure we actually do Family Home Evening each week.  (Thanks Susan!)

As everyone knows, the most important part of FHE is the treats afterwards.  Since we’re pretty lame our post-FHE treat is pretty much always Oreos.  It’s already made, easy, makes everyone happy, and we fairly consistently have some on hand.  In fact, I think Sam would be surprised to find out that Oreos are *not* a church mandated part of FHE ;)

Tonight after we finished our FHE Sam was excited for his treat, so I pulled out the Oreos and started eating some with him.  Eric had just gotten Daniel back to sleep in his arms so he retreated upstairs with the baby so he could keep him asleep (particularly since Danny’s been sick recently with a little bit of croup :( )

I walked away from Sam momentarily and looked over just as Sam was going up to the counter to reach for another Oreo.  I didn’t so much mind that he was getting a second Oreo, just that he was going for it without asking.  So I mildly scolded him with a, “Hey, what do you think you’re doing?”  To which Sam responded something about Daddy and milk cookies (he calls Oreos “Daddy milk cookies” because they are Eric’s favorite treats and he – of course – always eats them with milk).  I decided to count that as a request and handed him an Oreo.

Sam immediately took that cookie, ran upstairs… and gave it to Eric.  He was so concerned that his Daddy hadn’t gotten a treat after FHE that he wanted to make sure that Daddy was taken care of. He didn’t even come back and ask for another cookie for himself.  I’m constantly amazed at the sweet and caring nature of our little Sam :)

If you’re anything like me then you come up with great ideas for presents to get your kids throughout the year but as soon as Christmas/birthdays roll around you come up blank and have to scramble for ideas.  So to combat this I started a running “wish list” for each of my boys so that I could keep track of things I think they would like.  I keep them on Amazon so that it’s just a quick click to add things to each of their lists.  Tonight as I was gearing up for Christmas shopping I took a quick peek at the wish lists I’d compiled for each of my boys.  Sam’s list had 106 items, while Daniel’s list had a mere 4 items.  Eric commented that according to Amazon I love Sam much more than I love Daniel.

So to make up for this apparent neglect of my sweet baby I decided it was time for a gratuitous Daniel update!  (Ok, so I’ve been meaning to write this post anyways, but this gave me a good excuse to get my rear in gear and do it)  So without further ado, here’s how our wonderful 7 month old baby is!

I took Daniel in for a doctor’s appointment at the end of October and got his new stats -

Weight – 15lbs 14oz – 20th percentile

Length – 26 1/4 inches – 25 percentile

Head Circumference – 17 inches – 25 percentile

So all in all he’s pretty even.  When I went in to the doctor I mentioned that he hadn’t been sleeping quite as well recently and that he’d had sorta goopey eyes, but not so much so that we’d been worried about it or anything, just noticed.  I had chalked it up to allergies or something minor.  As the doctor was checking him out she was like “Oh!  He has a very infected ear!”  No wonder he hadn’t been sleeping quite as well and had goopey eyes.  Now I have to explain that really the changes were VERY minor.  He hadn’t been fussy or anything, he’d still been a very happy baby.  I was SHOCKED to find out that he had an ear infection.  He’s such a low key mellow kid and such a change from what Samuel was like as a baby.  We’ve decided if that’s what he’s like with a pretty good ear infection we’re going to have to try to listen up closely for any minor complaints because they’re likely to be worth listening to!  Aside from the ear infection though he looked fabulous.

That really pretty well sums up what it’s been like to have Daniel in our family, he’s just a delight to have around.  He’s always happy and smiling, and very friendly.  I don’t think I’ve once taken him anywhere without him making friends with someone!

He’s starting to get some fun tricks.  He can army crawl all over the house pretty quickly, and he’s starting to pull himself up to standing a little bit.  He loves to “talk” and giggle to people.  He had been a really good sleeper up until about the time he got that ear infection.  Since then he’s stopped really wanting to sleep on his own, but he’s been teething so that has definitely hindered his progress on getting back in his own bed.  He now has his two bottom teeth, and he loves to use them to eat cheerios and crackers or whatever Sam has thrown on the floor.

Daniel also really loves the TV.  It’s so funny to see his face light up when the TV goes on.  We call him our little couch potato.  And yes, I know that I’m not supposed to let my baby watch TV, but if Sam’s watching SuperWHY I’m not likely to keep Daniel from watching too, especially when he gets so excited about it!  But his favorite thing to watch on the TV is himself.  Eric will sometimes hook his phone up to the TV and show the videos he has of Daniel.  Daniel thinks this is about as cool as things can get.  He will laugh and look at the TV like “Wow, what a clever and funny baby!  He’s so smart!  Have you guys seen what a cool guy he is?!”  It’s even better to watch Daniel watching videos of himself than it is to watch the videos themselves!

Unfortunately you don’t have Daniel to watch the videos with you, but you *can* watch the videos yourself and judge whether or not he really is as clever and wonderful as he thinks he is (I tend to agree with him, but as his mother, I am a little biased ;) )  Here are some of our recent Daniel photos and videos -

This one is his favorite to watch, the one that makes him think he’s so clever :)

A few weeks ago Daniel started sniffing things. I don’t know why but I find this hilarious, so I had to get video of it!

Eric was eating a sucker while holding Daniel, this is the result of that activity :)

In case you were wondering what happens when you give a pacifier to a teething child. You can see that he also thinks this is pretty clever :)

These two pictures were taken within a day of each other.  They illustrate the perils of having a two year old brother and mom turning her back for a minute -

Yes, those are maxi pads stuck to his head. Apparently we need to adjust the child lock on one of our bathroom cabinets...

... and yes, here his head is inside the cover of a DVD case. I know the picture is kinda blurry, my camera was giving me grief and Daniel was starting to get mad so this was as good as it gets.

Sometimes things happen which don’t involve his head…

Yup, what could be more fun than putting stickers all over your brother's back?

I think that’s all for now.  The upshot is, despite Sam’s wish list being longer than Daniel’s, we really do love this little kid a LOT.  One of these days I’m even going to get around to getting a good picture of him and adding him to our sidebar pictures so he looks like he’s part of our family… but don’t hold your breath, life’s pretty busy with these two munchkins around!

Well, I must say that this wasn’t a complete surprise. After spending last week participating in Omniture Summit 2011 and working more than 12 hours a day every workday, my body has decided to retaliate against me with some sort of viral infection. Considering all the interactions I had with various people during the week, I suppose the disease was transmitted to me while I was in Salt Lake. Of course, when you combine that with a weakened immune system from the lack of sleep and all the concentrated work I had to get done, I was a goner this weekend. I remember talking to my mission president once about zone conferences. He would work so hard and long preparing for and during the conferences that he would immediately get sick after it was over. It was the same story for me. I started to feel icky on Friday, and by that night I was sporting a cough, fever, and a  pounding headache. Even now, if I move my head too fast or cough too hard, I get the feeling of needles poking my brain.

But wait, there’s more! It’s not just a self-pity post about my sickness. Sam contracted a viral infection (probably last Sunday from nursery), and it incubated until around Friday when a high fever popped up. One time when we took his temperature, he came in at 104 degrees. We think it was the Roseola virus as he seemed to be acting fairly normal despite the fever. Fortunately, we were able to tame the fever by alternating doses of Tylenol and Advil every three hours.

Through all of this, I just feel bad for Brittny who has a useless husband who can barely move and child that needs to sleep more but is somewhat erratic because of the sickness. We’re praying that we will all get better before I need to go back to work tomorrow.

Warning : This post is somewhat descriptive and thus is not for the weak of stomach.

Well, that was interesting. For those of you who might have missed the Facebook and Twitter updates, everyone in our entire family had a bout with a nasty stomach flu bug this past week.

It all started on Monday when we noticed that Sam was acting unusually docile and lethargic as opposed to his normally chatty, active self. All of a sudden, he started puking everything contained in his system, and I mean everything. What didn’t come up went out the other end quite forcefully. We felt really bad for the poor little guy. He was so miserable and started developing a fever. As soon as we felt he could actually keep it down, we gave him some Tylenol to tackle the fever without upsetting his stomach. After that, he would mostly just cuddle with us and lay there, inactive.

Brittny took the night shift and helped little Sam get through the night, but I really started to worry the next morning when I woke up to Brittny looking miserable in the bathroom. She asked if I could watch Sam for a little while, but that little while turned into the entire day as Brittny experienced the exact same symptoms as our son. So Tuesday was spent caring for my wife and child, which I was of course willing to do, but at the same time it carried a sense of dread. Here I was, noticing a highly contagious and fairly fast-acting flu bug starting to run it’s course through the family. And since I needed to take care of them, I knew it was only a matter of time before it got to me, too. I can only be grateful that this didn’t take us all out of commission all at once, or else we would have been in big trouble.

Just as is traveled to Brittny from Sam over the course of a day, I was next to be hit. That Tuesday night, I got hit hard. Just like the others, I ended up vomiting everything I had in me and spending a lot of time in the bathroom, but the unfortunate side of things for me was that the major symptoms lasted through the night, so I wasn’t hardly able to sleep at all, even though I really wanted to. My memory of everything is pretty foggy since I was so miserable, but my Facebook status history tells me that I was up until at least 7:30am the next morning. I finally got to sleep for a good amount of time and was feeling much better by the end of the day. Though I must admit I had to slowly transition back into eating normal foods over the next couple of days.

While I’m glad to say that our family is pretty much fully recovered from the incident, it did cause quite a disruption in our long list of things to do. I think we’ve all gained a greater appreciation for our generally good health as a result of this experience, and hopefully we’ll have better news to report in the weeks to come.