This is George...

This is George. George is a good little monkey and always very curious. On Halloween night George went trick-or-treating with his friend, the man in the yellow hat.

There was one neighbor who thought his friend was a pilgrim... "Oh look, a monkey and a pilgrim!" And another who thought his friend was Mr. Crayola. But for those of us who remember our Curious George stories; we all know this is "the man in the yellow hat."

And as for Logan... well, a 5 0z. bottle + a ride in the stroller = a nice long nap.

We are home

We made it home today. It was fun to be home with the whole family. Katie was glad to see us and we were glad to see her. It is going to take a few days to figure out Logan's schedule. Right now he wants to be held a lot. Kind of a challenge since we occasionally want to sleep. :)

A Boy and A Name

We finally decided on a name. It was a harder choice that we thought it was going to be. We have decided on Logan Jeffrey Happe.

So far Logan has been a good little eater. He also gets quite mad, when he get hungry and he doest get his food quick enough.


Lori is still doing well. She is up and moving around some. She is still on a liquid diet. She is looking forward to some real food.
Last night was kind of rough. Its hard to get good sleep when nurses are coming in all of the time. And when the nurses are not there, things beep and don't stop beeping. Then a nurse shows up to fix what is beeping. Just way to much beeping! But all of the beeping things have been disconnected. So tonight should be better. The plan is to feed Logan at midnight and at 6:00 am. And let the nursery handle the 3:00 feeding. Hopefully that will allow us to get a few hours of uninterrupted sleep.

A Boy

This morning at 7:56 we had our baby boy. He weighed in at 7lbs 14oz. We are stilling working on his name, hope to have an official name soon.

Mom and son are doing well!

"Mom's Day Out"

Katie was so excited to start her "Mom's Day Out" program... two mornings a week during the school year. We went to "Meet the Teacher" the week before school started so she could see her room, the chair with her name on it, and all of the fun new toys she would get to play with. As I dropped her off on the first day, she wanted me to come in, but I told her this was "her time" to stay and play. She looked at me for a moment and then said, "Stay and play, O.K." and off she went to look for the chair with her name on it. She looked at the nametags on each one until she found her chair and then sat down. She sat with her hands crossed in front of her on the table with a look on her face that said... "O.K., now what? I'm ready... someone teach me something."

At pick-up later that morning I was so proud to learn she was the only one in her class of 12 that didn't cry. When we returned two days later she was practically running into her classroom... barely looking back as I dropped her off at the door.

Doc Says

Doc released Lori to normal duties.

Now what does that mean for a mom?


One thing he said made since.

If the activity makes you tired, then it is ok.
If it exhausts you then it is to much.

I can get out of bed by myself

Katie has been sleeping in her big girl bed for several days now. We had been wondering when Katie would start getting out of her bed and head down to our room. We don't have to wonder any more. Yesterday, she got herself out of bed and came down to our room for a visit. Fun.


But I hope she waits a while before she comes to visit us in the middle of night or to go play in her play room.

Comments

A few readers wanted to leave comments, but were unable to do so. So I have turned on public comments.

So comment away !

Big Girl

Katie's big girl bed has been set up for a couple of days. She had taken her daily naps in it. Last night she wanted to sleep in her big girl bed. She hopped up into her bed and I covered her up and of course she wanted Elmo and Gloworm etc. But she didnt ask for Paci. A little later she cried some, but she slept through the night without her paci. Hooray!!!

A couple of weeks ago I told her that she wouldnt be able to have her paci if she slept in her big girl bed. Maybe she remembered that. I dont know. But two great accomplishments in one night.

She is our big little girl.

Home

Lori came home yesterday. She was really glad to be home and we were very happy she was home. After all the scariness, the docs decided that she did not rupture. Two simultaneous events, baby jumping on her bladder and somehow her placenta tore a little bit. She was a sleep at the time, so waking up to fluid and blood is a scary thing.

She is still on bed rest, but we hope that will change to be less strict this next week.

Thanks again to the docs and nurses.

Thanks to grammy for staying with Katie.

Scary Hours and Bed Rest

Our easy pregnancy came to an end on Wednesday. Lori was resting on her bed, when there was a gush of fluid. We went to the hospital and she was admitted into Labor and Delivery. The doctor was called and it didn't take him very long to get there. After an exam, he determined that Lori had ruptured.
The monitors hooked up to Lori were showing that the baby was doing well. But Lori was having some contractions. The doctor wanted a level 2 ultrasound done, to check fluid levels and such. We had a level 2 done just last Friday, and the ultrasound showed everything was just perfect. While we were waiting for ultrasound doctor to get there, the baby's heart beat disappeared. Those were some very scary moments, but the baby had just moved. Actually it was a good sign that the baby had moved. It showed that there was at least some fluid left for the baby to move around in.
Our ultrasound doctor got to the hospital a little later. The ultrasound showed actually good fluid levels. It also showed where the rupture was. About 3% of her placenta had torn/ ruptured.

Lori was put on some medication to stop the contractions. She is on permanent bed rest until the baby is born. Which sucks for everyone. She really misses Katie. Most likely she will be in the hospital for the next couple of months. There is a chance that the rupture will repair itself. There is a small chance, since the rupture is small, that she can do bed rest from home.
The biggest risk factor now is infection. If an infection sets in they will go ahead and deliver the baby. The hospital has a great NIC unit. They handle babies at our baby's age. ( 28 weeks) They currently have babies smaller than ours. Right now our baby is around 2lb 8oz. So our baby will be in good hands. But he/she needs some more time inside mommy. So pray for baby and mommy.

Lori's mom flew in yesterday. She is going to help with Katie, while dad works.

Both docs agreed that we had the best possible results under the circumstances.

Thanks to our two great docs Rovner and Koster and the staff at the Labor & Delivery at Medical Center of Plano.

And thanks to Margaret for stopping her life and coming to help with Katie.

Summer Camp

Katie started summer camp this week. She is becoming a trooper, very little crying when mom dropped her off. The ladies said she did fine after the first few minutes. They said, Katie carried Elmo around everywhere and talked up a storm.

She has become very chatty the last week or so.

Grocery Game

Lori has started the Grocery Game. It is a cheap subscription service that tracks local store prices and coupons. Every week it suggests which items to buy based on if they are on sale(lowest recent price) and if there is a coupon available for the item. So this past weekend, Lori spent $111 on groceries but got $207 worth of groceries. That is well worth the small subscription fee, Sunday newspaper cost and time to clip the coupons.

Way to go Lori!!!

Watch A Movie

The family went to the local library last night to watch Ratatouie. Katie was enthralled. Last week Lori took Katie to watch Curious George and Katie watched the complete movie. But she loves George and he is her current favorite tv show. So we didnt know if she watched the movie because it was George.

By the end of Ratatouie, Katie was saying "Watch a movie". Katie got scared at times and laughed some. She/We had a great time!!!

Predator

We found out last weekend that a 3-time pedophile has moved into the neighborhood. We are all greatly concerned. The guy was previously kicked out of another neighborhood in Plano, so hopefully we can encourage him to move along. The HOA and the Plano police are hosting a town hall this Thursday. We hope for some good news. Lori and I are going to it and Grandma is watching Katie.

Yeah, Grandma is in town !!!!

Welcome Home Dad

Last week I wend to Redmond, for some Microsoft training. One think that struck me while I was there, was how pretty it is there, a lot of lush greenery. I had four long days of training.
There was a room setup for playing xbox games, projector, sound system etc. The favorite game of the week was Rock Band. It was a lot of fun.

However I really enjoyed the running hug that I got from Katie the morning after I got back. I do believe she missed her dad. It was real fun, playing with her after I got back.

'In the Water'

Katie finished her first set of swimming lessons a few days a go. In the beginning there was a lot of crying. But she mostly followed the instructions. By the end of the lessons, there was no more crying and she was starting to enjoy the lessons.
The teacher told us that she was ready to be advanced to the next class, but she didn't have the age requirement ( 3yrs).

The Tunnells came over to visit and she loved watching their kids in our pool. They were swimming and diving under water. She started trying to mimic them, by putting her face in the water. So now she is putting her face in the water and doesn't mind a quick dunk. She also jumps off the edge to us. All fun.

Since the lessons we have been going to our health club, which has a sloped entry, couple of times of week. She loves playing with the dive sticks. We throw them around and she does the alligator crawl to them, gets them and throws them again. Last time we were there, we could tell she was getting tired and it was getting close to her nap time, she really didn't want to stop but it was time to go. We were walking back to locker room and she was falling a sleep walking back.

So we are very glad that Katie loves to swim. But it also very scary, since she is getting so bold around the pool. We have a fence around our pool at home, and we are very glad we have it.

She has added two new phrases to her vocabulary, 'In the water' and 'Under the water'. She says them a lot now :)



Kevin

Katie's 2nd Birthday and San Antonio

We headed down to San Antonio for Katie's birthday. We spent the Friday evening at the river walk. Katie enjoyed being outside and seeing all og the people there. We had one gentlemen watching us during our dinner. Afterwards, he mentioned that she was very cute and very well mannered. It is always great when you get complimented on how well your children are behaving.

We went to Sea World on Saturday. Again she enjoyed being outside. The first thing we did was go a toddlers play area. She throughly enjoyed that. We then headed to the Shamu show. She didnt understand why we were just sitting around. She wanted to go play some more. But once the show started, she enjoyed it. She enjoyed the music and the whales jumping. Later in the day after some more shows and lunch, we went back the toddler area. She played and played and ended up playing through her nap time. We attended some more events and headed back to the hotel. She slept very well that night.

We headed back on Sunday. One of the things we were trying to find out on this trip, is how well Katie would handle traveling in the car for a long period of time. She did very well on the trip there and back.

Flights and Storms

Flights

Lori had planned for several months to have Katie's 2nd birthday party in Decatur this year. We wanted to share the experience with Katie's great grandmother, great aunts and uncles and friends of grand ma. And of course grandma, grandpa and uncle Jeff and aunt Kelly.

It wasn't meant to happen. Our flight was canceled, we couldn't get any information from the AA web site and we couldn't get anyone to answer the phone at AA. So we headed to the airport. We were able to get booked on a later flight that evening. We headed home, but by the time we got back home that flight was canceled.
From talking previously with the agent at the airport, we knew there wouldn't be any more flights for that day, so we focused on getting a flight for the next day.
We tried the web site and the phone, but no results. So I kept trying the phone and Lori headed back to the airport. I finally got an agent to answer the phone, and called Lori and she turned around and came home. We were able to get flight booked for the next morning. We had two flights to choose from, one was an MD80 and the other 757. Of course we chose the 757. The MD80s flights were the ones being canceled. So we were going to make it to Decatur, a day late, making it harder to see everyone and get the party prepared, but doable. There was still a big question mark on whether our return flight would be canceled etc. But we hoped for the best.

Storms
Storms hit Plano around 4:00 Thursday morning. We had some fierce 80+ mph straight winds. There were tornadoes in the area, but none near us. I looked out the bedroom window just as our big Bradford Pear in the back yard broke off at the base of the trunk. It landed on the fence knocking down one of the fence sections and then came to rest in the alley, completely blocking the alley.

We knew then that the chances of us making it to Decatur were slim. I got up at light and started working on clearing the tree from the alley. Hoping that I could get the alley cleared and fence uprighted in time to make our flight.
I was making decent progress on the tree, but then the chain saw broke. A guy wandered down the alley about that time and asked if he could help. I was working on trying to figure out was wrong with the chain saw and mentioned he had a lot of experience with chain saws. He found the broken part. He asked if I had a hand saw, he wanted to start sawing by hand. I told him no, but thanked him for the offer. He left as I was going in the house to get my keys. When I came back out, he was there with another guy who had a chain saw. Both of these guys were wandering the neighborhood looking for someone to help. Both of these guys were great and very kind. With there help and the help or our next door neighbor we were able to get the tree cleared and fence uprighted, but not in time to make our flight.

There were a lot of trees and fences down in our neighborhood. Several house lost chimneys and parts of roofs.

Screening Results

We got the results from the screening. The base chance for a Down's baby at Lori's age is 1/48. Our results came back as 1/941, the equivalent of a 27/28 year old. Lori's good living is coming back to reward her :) The results for Trisomy 13-18 came back as 1/1700, We feel really good about the results.

Baby News

For the people, who didnt notice Katie's Big Sister shirt. Lori and I are expecting. The due date is Oct 9th. The doc has already scheduled the C-Section.

We had our first ultrasound earlier in the week. We got to see fingers and toes. The baby was moving around a lot. Much more than we ever saw Katie move around. Everything appeared to be normal. It was very very fun.

Our second ultrasound was later in the week. We went to a doc that uses a high power ultrasound so a nuchal translucency test could be performed. The test screens for Downs and consists of measuring the fluid gap at the back of the neck, combinded with a blood test ( Lori). The gap appeared to be normal. We will get the results next week. The results will show if we have better or worse odds than the norm for Lori's age. It will not definitively say whether the baby has Downs. A Amniocentesis could tell, but it is an invasive test and could result in a mis-carriage. We dont plan on doing that.

However the doctor was very negative. You could tell he did not approve of older mothers having babies. The first words out of his mouth was, "Boy, you guys are brave". This doctor specializes in high risk pregnancies and his attitude was awful.

So earlier in the week we had a wonderful ultasound and were on a great high. Later in the week we had a very negative opinionated doctor . So there has been a lot of up and downs this week.

Kevin

Aunt Elaine's Funeral

My aunt Elaine died this past week. I took dad down to McAllen for the funeral. Elaine was dad's last living sibling.
It was good to see my cousins. Aunt Elaine was a great woman and raised some great kids. She was buried at Valley Memorial next to her sister Edna.

Thanks to Richard and Kim for letting Dad and myself spend night. And thanks to Doyle and Pat for carting dad and myself around.

Outdoor Play

Previously I blogged about the new picnic table that we got Katie. Here a couple of picture of Katie outside playing.





Sitting at her new picnic table.







Pushing some chairs around.






Running around on the grass.

Shuttle Launch

Watching a shuttle launch is on my 100 things to do list. I have been on the Nasa email list for about a year. The email list informs you of launches and special events at Nasa.

I have attempted to buy tickets for launches before, but they were sold out. I was able to get tickets for shuttle launch STS-123. STS-123 was a night launch on March 12, 2008 at 2:28 in the morning. My flight to Orlando was a late flight and was really getting me into Orlando to late. I got up early Monday morning and did stand-by until I got on a earlier flight to Orlando. Didnt take to long, as I got on the second flight of the day to Orlando. After getting to Orlando, the car rental place decided that I didn't have a reservation. I forgot the print out at work :( The car rental place was out of cars. ( Spring break was starting that week. ) They suggested the car rental place next door. L&M, they had one car left. I took it!
I checked into my hotel, and then drove to the Space Center. Took about an hour to get to the Space Center. I hit the shops for a souvenir shirt. Second stop was the 3-D Imax movie. Next was the space shuttle display and shuttle launch simulation. Movie and simulation were both fun.
I got lucky on supper. The cafeteria was already closed, and I was at the end of a very long line for a hot dog stand, when an employee informed us they were opening up a restaurant. Ran over was able to get some food.

After supper, I headed over to the Rocket Garden to find a spot to watch the lift off. Nasa has a big screen tv, bleachers and chairs set up in the Rocket Garden to watch lift offs. I found a spot on bleachers. I sat near a dad and his daughter and another guy and his father in-law. We sat around for the next 8 hours, watched Nasa videos and swamped some stories. As it got to close to launch, there was probably a couple of thousand people in the Rocket Garden.
They also had a guy come out on the little stage, they had set up, and let us know what was going on. He described what we would expect to see. The shuttle would take off and we would be able to see if a couple of seconds later. From where we were sitting it was behind a tree line. As the shuttle climbed higher in the sky, it would like the sky up like day time, turn the sky blue and would be able to see the clouds. Sounded really cool.

Count down 5,4,3,2,1 lift-off. We could see the glow behind the trees, climbing higher and then it disappeared into the clouds that had built up after it got dark. So we didnt get to see a spectacular launch. I was bumbed, but I am still glad I went. May have to have a do-over though. The last scheduled shuttle launch is sometime in 2010.

Starting a blog

Well I'm starting a blog. Wonder how long it will last? :)
I will be including some pictures in this blog. But you can find more pictures at http://happefamily.homeserver.com

Katie's grandma came into town yesterday. She is a great grand ma. Everyone enjoys having her around. She hails from Decatur, Il, so she was glad to get down to Dallas for some great weather.

The last couple of weeks Katie has been placing Mom, Dad or who ever she can find in the correct position for her play. Mom you go here, Dad you go here. Lets play ball ! Very cute.

The weather has been wonderfull since we got our snow a week ago. She has been playing outsite alot. We recently got her a picnic table and filled up her water table. She just loves em. Oh a new thing this week is actually playing(walking) in the yard.

We bought a Katie a special shirt a couple of weeks back. She is going to model it for grandma tonight. I will post a picture later of it. We like the shirt a lot.

Dad's last surviving sibling(Aunt Elaine) died this week. I am taking dad down to McAllen this week end so he can attend the funeral.