Mary had a little Liam.

Welcome to Liam Jackson Mott, my newest nephew!! I went by to see my sister and her baby Tuesday morning, just hours after she had her baby.

Can I just say she spent several hours at my house Monday afternoon bouncing on an exercise ball and fighting off Rose, who was very persistent in asking, "Me turn bounce big ball minute Maymay, please?" Rose is working on learning English.

Who does Liam look most like? He has red fuzzy hair and is so cute. If Mary and Luke got married and had a baby, their baby would look just like Liam!

Families can be together forever.

Happy birthday to me!

We had a sweet Family Home Evening lesson tonight about the plan of salvation, how much Heavenly Father loves us, how Jesus made it possible for us all to be resurrected, and how we can be with our families and loved ones forever.

On Friday I got to celebrate my birthday spending the afternoon with my mom. Early this morning my dad took her back to the hospital because she hasn't been able to keep any food down for several days, and the pain she is feeling has been getting worse and worse.

After church I stopped by the hospital to see her and hear the news. It's not good. And that's okay. Every time I consider a serious or sad post, I have to ask myself the question at the top of this blog. Can life get better than this? This gives me time to reflect and look for some perspective when I really, really want to ask, "Can life get crappier than this?"

I showed my kids a picture of Heavenly Father and Jesus presenting the plan of redemption to all of us spirit children, and told my family how much they love us, that they know what's best for us, and that they want us to be happier than we can imagine. I asked them where their Grandma will go when her body dies and her spirit leaves, and they immediately answered that she would go live with Heavenly Father and Jesus. I imagine that she will also have a beautiful reunion with her father, David Phillips (Elijah's namesake), as well as other loved ones.

My mom has spent the last few months telling everyone who will listen to her from the nurses at the hospital to her friends and children that our Savior loves us more than we can understand, and that if we will just come to him and give him our burdens and sorrows and ask him to help us, he can and will help us. It's all she talks about, and she's sure that's why she's still with us.

We will miss her and feel sad, (and I will cry a lot more in the days and weeks to come), but just thinking about my mom going home, and knowing that because of the Savior's sacrifice, we can all go home, helps me to remember how very much God loves and how well he knows us. Really, can life get better than this? I submit that it cannot. Not as long as we can come to Jesus and live.

He's got skills.

Elijah can roll over! He can go from his tummy to his back, and since he doesn't really care for tummy time, he doesn't have to endure it anymore. Except when mean Mommy keeps rolling him back over so he can show off his new tricks.

Also, let me assure you that being on his tummy does not hurt him in any way. He is completely recovered from surgery (except for the stitch that was supposed to dissolve and hasn't quite disappeared yet). He's just crying because he's tired and hungry, and he had already rolled over several times before the camera came out.

Elijah also loves to smack his lips, stick out his tongue, make kissing noises, and "sing." Thank you for documenting, Aunt Mary!

And the lifetime achievement award goes to . . .

Tonight I went to my baby brother's spring choir concert. He's a graduating high school senior, so this was my last chance to attend a sibling's concert. I dragged my husband and four children, ages 5, 4, 2, and 7 months tomorrow, along with me. I did not have to ask myself if it would be worth it because I knew it would be.

The music, the black formal dresses and tuxedos, the slideshow of seniors and choir events throughout the year, the seniors singing "Roots and Wings," the senior girls holding hands and everyone hugging everyone else, just sitting in the auditorium took me back, and the nostalgia was definitely flowing.

The most impressive event of the evening was the fact that my mom, less than a week after coming home from her two-week hospital stay and surgery, got herself up and dressed and went with my dad to see her youngest son's last choir concert of his high school career. In a few months he'll be off to college.

As the choir booster organization was recognizing the choir directors and the directors were recognizing the accompanist and the graduating seniors, I couldn't stop thinking about what a friend mentioned just before the concert started. "Your mom just told me that she and your dad have been coming to Midway choir concerts for over 21 years."

I began hoping that somewhere in all those thank yous and recognitions they would recognize my parents, who were attending choir concerts long before the choir directors and pianist began working there, before the booster club existed, and before the auditorium was even built. I was hoping someone would make a special announcement or bring out a special plaque or a bouquet of flowers for the parents graduating their eleventh Midway senior and choir member, but no one did. They probably don't even know.

It doesn't really matter, since my mom would have done (and in reality did) whatever she had to do to be there just because it was Matthew's concert. I'm pretty sure my mom and dad got into parenting for the rewards, not the awards. I can't remember my mother ever missing a concert. It did take just about everything she had, and she ended up skipping out on ice cream and post-concert analysis around the kitchen table, but thanks to my amazing, wonderful husband, for the first time in over 21 years, my mom now has a video recording of Matthew singing with his choirs, and she can enjoy it whenever she wants. I hope she also enjoys Rose saying over and over, "Me seepy; me seepy. Me lay down." during his appropriately titled song, "Sleep."

I love you, Mom. Congratulations, Matthew. Happy spring, happy singing, happy graduation.

life and stuff

Elijah is doing great, but my mom could use your prayers. She came home yesterday after spending nearly two weeks in the hospital. You can read about it here and here.

Six months!!

Elijah had a quiet half-birthday the week after surgery, and today I took him to Dallas for his post-op checkup. He weighs 14.5 pounds and is 25 3/4 inches long. His EEG and heart echo both looked great. The doctor says he has minimal leaking around his tricuspid valve, which is normal, because the right chamber of his heart is pumping 1.5 times the amount of blood a normal heart would pump.

Before the Glenn it was pumping twice the normal amount (all the blood). The next surgery, around 3 years, will take care of that. She also said the amount of leaking she saw in Elijah was about the best they see in babies with his condition post-Glenn, and she was very happy about that.

Mr. E is on *one* medication twice daily, furosemide (Lasix), which is fantastic, considering other HLHS babies we know are on as many as five or more daily meds. His incision is healing beautifully. The last of the steri-strips fell off today, so he can have real baths again. The nurse gave me some adhesive remover to get the rest of the sticky stuff out of his hair from his scalp IV. Thank you, nurse.

Oh, yes, and every time I set him down and he discovered the crinkly paper on all the examination tables, he went into super kicking mode. That wasn't really conducive to an EEG or an echocardiogram, but these people are professional. And they are pediatric heart specialists. They swaddle like nobody's business and provide Baby Einstein videos for his watching enjoyment.

Elijah cannot have any tummy time for at least two more weeks, or a minimum of four weeks total, to give his sternum a chance to heal. We basically need to treat it like a broken bone. He can't roll over yet, and probably wouldn't want to even if he could, but he's getting really good at sitting up and loves to see what's going on.

And in more traditional baby news, baby boy has entered the world of food variety. His reaction to mashed banana was interesting. He has taken all kinds of nasty medicine and liquid vitamins by mouth without batting an eye. From the look on his face as he tasted banana, I might as well have been giving him a dill pickle. Maybe something a little more bland next, like green beans or oatmeal cereal.

Can you tell we're home?

As in, now that I have four children again, I have no time to blog.

Elijah is doing great. The morning he was discharged from the hospital he had a chest x-ray and a heart echo, and Dr. Laird said he looked great. Fully clothed, you can't even tell he had heart surgery less than a week ago. He's on furosemide (lasix) twice a day and ibuprofen three times a day for pain. We have a post-op check up with the pediatric cardiologist in a couple of weeks. He's eating and sleeping well, and if we can just get Rose sleeping again at night, I'll be happy.

She's still a little traumatized from being without Mom for five days, but a little extra love and attention is going a long way. She may never, ever get over the scariest Easter bunny ever today at library story time, though. And she may never want to go into the story time room again. I wouldn't blame her.

Ellen and Jack Jack are adjusting to having our family all back together in their own ways. Jack Jack wet the bed twice last night. He never wets the bed. Ellen, sweet girl, is getting used to sharing the parental attention. She loved spending the week with Grandma and doing big girl things with her.

We are so grateful for all your prayers and messages and thoughts for our family, and we'll continue to keep you updated on Elijah's progress.

Going home.

We are out of here!!

Visitors

Elijah had lots of visitors yesterday after he moved to the regular pediatric floor.

Big brother Jack Jack came with Uncle David, Aunt Chelsea, and cousins Bentley and Blake to check out the situation. He was excited to see us all, but he has been living it up at the Jacksons' and loving every minute of it, so when it was time to go, he was still happy to go with them for (hopefully) one more night. Jack Jack hasn't even had time to talk to me on the phone, so I think I was maybe even more excited to see him and see that he's been doing so well.

Uncle Eric, Aunt Callie, and cousin Ariana also came to see us yesterday. Ariana loved pointing out the baby and checking out all his snuggly stuffed animals for him.

Little boy was up to his old tricks over night. The nurses decided his O2 sats were low enough for long enough that he needed some supplemental oxygen, but this morning they took him off for the chest x-ray and have left the oxygen off ever since. I say tricky because as soon as I got him out of bed, they changed the probe, and I wrapped him up and fed him, his numbers were in the high 80s. They have to stay above 75 consistently for us to leave.

So now we're just chilling. Thanks for visiting!

New Room, New Bed, New IV

Yep. That's an IV on his head.