Hayden is...

Hayden is getting so big! I don't like it at all, he is supposed to stay small a lot longer than this!

Well he is almost 8 months old! I know right! Some things he is doing now are...

-sitting up with support for over a minute!

-loves to eat his baby food! (he can't get enough even with the added iron in it)

-laughs all day at his sister and brothers! (not just giggles, I'm talking belly laughing)

-loves to pull my hair and attempts to eat it;)

-makes a high pitched squeal through out the day to hear his own voice!

-follow me around the kitchen in his walker!

-turn in circles on his tummy and somehow make it to the other side of the room!(not crawling or rolling)

-attempting to get up on all fours and once in a while does the rocking thing!

-loves to pull our faces into him so he can gnaw on our chins and cheeks! (probably for teething) but he gets really excited about it! it's really cute!

He is such a good boy! I feel so blessed to be his momma! and from what I get from him he kinda likes me too;)

Up is the right direction!

Hayden is looking up! Levels are coming up pretty slow but still coming up which is music to our ears! What a sweet little guy! I feel horrible for him to have to eat so much of that yucky iron in his food! I tasted just the tip of my finger with it and I felt like I had been sucking on a mouth full of pennies for 30 minutes! ;) He is a good boy! Still pale, still doesn't make a peep with all his pokes... such a good boy! We love him!

Prayers are answered....

Hayden is having some trouble right now with his iron! Not like a small little thing! We have been battling it all weekend and we are still seeing/talking to the doctor almost daily!

It all started with a W.I.C. appointment last Thursday where they found his iron to be super low and had me call Haydens doctor to most likely get him seen but the nurse(which was filling in that day) didn't seem to care to much! I told her the levels and she said just get him some iron drops he will be fine! I couldn't find any and she seemed to not be to concerned so I was going to wait through the weekend to go find some! She sort of pissed me off actually! (the safe level for iron is 11.6 or higher, the hospital considers 7 or below to be critical and Hayden was a 6.5 at the time!)

This weekend was the kicker when Hayden didn't want to move, used every ounce of energy and muscle in his little body to just blink and held his mouth open like he had been running a marathon! He was almost translucent in color too! It was scary to say the least! We saw a doctor which then sent us to the hospital for blood work! (His levels had dropped to 5.5 from Thursday) He called us back that night but my phone was acting up. He said "call me as soon as you get this, whatever time it is! Just call me." We had thought it was a simple iron thing at the moment! So we called and he said we need to get back to the doctor the following morning as soon as we could for some more tests! They had been in touch with Salt Lake about him for the best of the best opinions and proper procedures. So off to the doctor we go for more blood work, heart rate, oxygen and then the doctor says we need to check for a few other things. Urine- for kidney disease, stool- for a bleed out, the blood work would run for a bunch of things but the 2 things we did not want to hear were that they would be checking for problems with bone marrow and leukemia! Monday was a VERY LONG day and the night was no better. We kept getting called throughout the day with some of the test results saying urine came back clear, stool is good, but we would not know until Tuesday morning for the scary tests! The nurse said she should know by 8 or 830a.m. 8am hit and I watched my phone every second! It was the LONGEST 30 minutes of my life. She gave us very good news! He came back clear of any Leukemia or bone marrow problems! He is struggling with iron-deffiency only! *PHEW & LOTS OF SIGHS OF RELIEF* I am so grateful for the gospel and for amazing family and friends that were praying for him! So after all this craziness and emotional couple of days he is healthy and only has to battle anemia! Which I will most certainly take;) and its much easier to fix!

I was a mess thinking about those words being spoken for my baby to possibly go through! I held him a bit more Monday night and loved on him lots too! (more than usual, he probably wanted to run away:) Ryan and I are so relieved and thankful for our prayers being answered!

I am also thankful for the regular nurse!

Hayden is doing better every day! His color is a little better, his iron levels came up a teensy bit Monday! Tuesday it was the same but that is good! We will take a maintaining level rather than a drop! It looks like (and we are still praying) if his levels keep coming up with the iron supplements we will bypass a transfusion too!

I am also increasing my iron intake (my iron is really low right now) and hopefully that will help him through nursing! We found out that the last 3 months for the baby in utero are the most important for iron! Well... we delivered almost a month early so he got almost half the time for that and he had gone way down hill in growth at that time anyways, so we think he got off to a pretty crappy start in iron! We feel good about how things are going now and will continue to do what we need to do to help our little choochy face get over this!

In the end we are reminded that the power of prayer is real and the priesthood is an amazing and wonderful gift to have in our home!

Thanks for all your prayers! We love you all!

Reagan, the boys & Reagan w/me!

The boys are so naughty! I will leave the room and realize a couple hours or days later that they had played on photo booth without permission! They are so naughty but so funny! Reagan and I had some fun too!

We had our ward Christmas Party so I did Reagan's hair cute. She loved it. As usual though I forgot to take a picture when she was in her beautiful dress so it's just hair tonight;)