He's 3!

Finn turned 3 years-old last week.  I can't believe how fast he is growing up!  It's funny how when Kai turned 3 how he seemed so much older, though.  Maybe it's because Finn is the youngest for the time being. I don't know.  But anyway....we celebrated his birthday rather simply.  I had won a gift certificate from our local CF chapter for fundraising for Great Strides that just happened to be for a bakery.  Since it was won through our CF fundraising, I felt it was appropriate to use if for Finn's birthday cake.  The bakery actually turned out to be really nice and the cake was quite yummy.  Admittedly, I was nervous when the lady taking my order didn't even know who Mater was, so I was pleasantly surprised with the results.  We started our "party" with dinner from Arby's (I wasn't up for cooking that night), and then we topped it off with our yummy cake.  After that, Finn had a few presents to open.  We kept it really simple, and yet everything was a big hit.  Finn is in love with his police car, as well as his Mickey Mouse microphone and Cars drawing book.  For such a low-key event, I was happy that it was such a big hit.

I love this look of pure excitement!

Singing for Daddy

This week Finn had his 3 year well-child visit.  He measured in at 36 1/2 inches and weighed 27.5 pounds.  Geez, he feels a lot heavier than that these days!  :)

Happy Birthday little man.  We sure do love you!

Difficult Decisions

After Finn's diagnosis with Cystic Fibrosis it seemed as if all of our plans for our family had been shattered and thrown out the window.  While we had never intended for Finn to be our final pregnancy, it seemed that our hands had been forced.  The knowledge that all of our children had the potential to struggle through life with a difficult, progressive disease was enough to make us question every plan and dream we had ever discussed.

Over the years we have had several conversations about expanding our family, and yet we had never come to a solid, definitive conclusion.  It often seemed that we were on different pages, and the timing never felt right.  In some ways, it felt as if we were gambling with our children's genetics--and we're not gamblers.  I've heard many CF parents say that they feel the decisions regarding future children have been decided for them the minute they receive a CF diagnosis.  In that instant you feel that you lose your agency and the decision has been made for you.  After Finn's diagnosis, that's how I felt.  And while I've never struggled with infertility, I all of sudden could understand to a small degree what that must feel like.  Every friend that announced a new pregnancy (facebook or real) left me heartbroken for days at a time.  Sometimes I regret to admit that I'd even cry (heck, I still do).  As time passed and all of my friends with babies Finn's age continued to expand their families, I decided that every "congratulations" I shared was going to be heartfelt, or not shared at all.  So, sometimes it took me days to absorb and process and then be able to honestly say "congratulations".  I'll admit, even then I wanted to say something like "You don't know how blessed you are not to have to deal with a life-threatening genetic illness."  Or "I wish I could get pregnant and not worry about the outcome, and just know that it will turn out well, but I can't.  You don't know how lucky you are."  I grew to realize that I am no longer naive.  Not every pregnancy ends with a healthy, happy baby.  And every time I heard someone say, "I don't care what it is, I just want a healthy baby," I thought to myself, "You're just saying that because you're supposed to, not because you really mean it."  Because honestly, I said it and I didn't mean it.  Of course my babies were going to be healthy, I was never worried about that.  And I don't think that anyone truly can be, until they have an unhealthy baby.  I'm not saying that there can't be a level of concern or that they haven't thought about the what-ifs, but worry at the levels and depths of a CF parent?  Nope, no one can know what that feels like until they've had a pregnancy of their own end poorly.

The first year after Finn's diagnosis I remember experiencing a near-constant, somewhat frantic feeling of "I need to have another baby now or I'll never get another chance."  Some other CF moms have shared those same feelings, and in hindsight I think it was my way of wanting to do it over to prove that I could do it right.  Not that I had done anything wrong that resulted in Finn's disease, but I still wanted to correct it.  And it wasn't that I wanted to replace Finn.  There is no replacing Finn.  I think it's just normal to want to experience "normal" baby-dom.  Whatever "normal" is these days.

Over the last year I've heard several opinions from moms of CFers and there are as different and varied as they can be.  There are some who feel that they will not let CF control their lives and they will push ahead and deal with whatever may come.  There are others who adamantly state that to bring another child into this world, knowing that they have a 25% chance of CF is "selfish".  I've thought a lot about this statement and while I can see where it's coming from, I see it coming from a place that does not acknowledge the hand of the Lord in our lives.  See, what causes CF are known as genetic mutations.  But I KNOW that the Lord makes no mutations.  Every thing the Lord makes is perfect and just the way He intended it to be.  Finn has CF because that's a challenge that will help both him and our family become more Christ-like and learn the things that we need to learn in order to return to live with our Heavenly Father.  End of story.  But still, where did that leave me on future family planning?

Slowly, but surely, my heart began to change.  I clearly remember thinking at one point that this was it.  We were done.  Two kids was manageable (remembering that one has a progressive disease and requires more time and work than your "average" child) and even could make the financial side of life relatively easy (once again, whatever that means these days!).  I began to think of all the things we could do now that we were out of the baby stage.  There were trips to take, areas to explore, concerts to attend, and family camping trips to be had.  Somewhere along the way, though, my heart began to seriously yearn for another little tiny baby to hold.  I know most women get baby-fever at some point, but this was really intense baby fever.  This was the kind that would leave me crying at night because I knew it was just beyond the reach of my fingertips and yet was something that seemed impossible to grasp.

Slowly this yearning turned into a feeling that there was another baby out there for us, but that the time wasn't right.  I knew that there were things we needed to work on in our family first.  Over this past year, I feel that we have made good progress on some important issues, and that without that progress we would never have gotten the answers we needed.  After months of fasting and prayer it seemed we were both finally on the same page and we were both ready to put some serious trust in the Lord and what may come.

So, I guess without any further ramblings, we introduce baby Jones #3.  Our own little miracle baby of sorts.  We are anticipating an arrival sometime around May 4th and we couldn't be more excited!  This pregnancy can't go fast enough if you ask me.  I can't wait to meet this little one and hold him/her in my arms.  I'm already so grateful to Heavenly Father for the many blessings that He has sent us, with Kai and Finn being two of the biggest, that I feel entirely inadequate to receive this wonderful blessing from Him.  I guess that's why I've struggled to announce this publicly.   Saying, "I'm pregnant" just doesn't seem to do this any justice.  This is so much more than that to me.  And I'm so incredibly grateful and excited!

10 week ultrasound done 3 weeks ago
 (sorry it's blurry--our scanner is down so I had to take a picture of it instead)

Kai and Kindergarten

This past week Kai had his first class field trip.  He was excited to go with his teacher's morning class to Wishing Star Farm.  They seriously spent 3 hours at the farm!  Kai had a great time and was so proud of the pumpkin he picked out.  He is so anxious to carve it into a jack-o-lantern that I just don't have the heart to tell him that it's a tad soft and a bit on the lighter side for a pumpkin (I'm guessing it's not too fresh on the inside. :()  He loves it and that's what matters!

Also this week was our first round of parent-teacher conferences.  I'll admit that I wasn't sure what to expect, but I came out very impressed with what he is learning and what is going on in the classroom. I have volunteered in his class twice over the last month, and so I think his teacher is feeling more comfortable with me (she is super-shy and  has a hard time talking to adults) and that makes me feel better.  I'm hoping that by the end of the year she'll feel free to share with me anything that she needs to.  Anyway, she started the conference by pulling out Kai's work.  She showed me a one-inch binder that she keeps especially for Kai (with his name printed on cute paper on the spine) for a sampling of his work and art throughout the year that she will then gift to the parents at the end of the school-year. How awesome is that!  She also pulled out his journal to show me handwriting samples from the first day of school through to the present, and I was really impressed with just how far he has come in a short two months.  Finally, she pulled out his assessments.  When I was in the classroom last week I noticed that they were pulling kids out on an individual level to do assessments, and so I was very curious about this.  The first thing she noted was that in terms of reading, reading comprehension, and math Kai scored a 0.8.  Ummm....that number didn't look good to me.  She went on to explain that meant that when the school year started Kai was on the same level as a kid in their 8th month of Kindergarten.  Ok, I thought.....not so bad.  Then she told me that he scored the highest out of all 31 kids from her 2 classes.  Ok, not going to lie, it was a proud mommy moment!  She went on to talk about watching his progression throughout the year to see if he would qualify for gifted testing at year's end.  She did warn me that it's awfully hard for a kindergartner to get into the program and that in order to even qualify for the test he would need to score a 2.5 on his assessments.  Yikes!  He has a ways to go, but I'm sure we can get him there.  And if not, that's ok, too.  I'm awfully proud of my little guy and he sure doesn't need a label for us to all know that he's a "smart cookie" (Ms. Korte's words, not mine).  After that we ended up flipping through the remainder of his assessments.  Kai scored 100% on every.single.section.  Well, he struggled with only one section--segmentation--but that is one that we've never really introduced to him, so that's understandable.  We talked about it and agreed that we would work on it at home with him, and she also said that they just started working on this in the classroom and she didn't think he would have a hard time picking up on it.  We'll see.  I HATED phonics as a kid and always struggled with it.  I never understood the rules.  I just memorized my words--just like Kai.  So, we'll see!  :)  We finished with talking about his assessments for the first trimester (which ends right before Thanksgiving) and she said that since he has already demonstrated mastery of the requirements she's not even going to reassess him.  Fantastic!

I also wanted to mention that last week the school had a program called "Kindergarten Preview".  Kai was so excited about this evening as it was a chance for him to bring me to school and rotate around to all of the different specials so I could see what he was learning in art, technology, counseling, PE, library, and music.  It was a fun night and I was impressed with all of the teachers, especially the ones that knew the kids' names right off.  (which most of them did)  I had another proud-mommy moment when the librarian found me and asked if I was Kai's mom.  When I answered in the affirmative she told me that Kai had told her he was going to be an astro-physicist and that she believed him because he was really that smart.  She also told me that she has a son in middle school who takes the bus over every day to help her out in the library and that Kai is his favorite kid.  This made me smile, and also helped to explain who this "Cameron" was that Kai has come home talking about.  So, not only does Cameron enjoy Kai, Kai really enjoys Cameron.  Her comments made me proud and watching Kai in his specials "classes" that night made me realize just what a good kid he is.  He has his moments, and I think Ms. Korte deals with them more, but for the most part he just loves school and everything that includes.  He says his favorite class is PE.  I'm sure one day in the not too distant future that will change but, at least for this week, that's his favorite.

We sure do love this little man!

Conference Tidbits

All is quiet here, so I thought I'd take a minute to share some thoughts from this morning's session of General Conference.

First, I LOVE my kids!  They are full of great lines that I wish I wrote down more often.  But each of them had something funny to say today and I wanted to share.

As Conference was starting and we were all piling onto the couch, everyone wanted something to do.  I normally print out the kids conference workbooks, but they never last the full 8 hours, so we haven't pulled those out yet.  Maybe tomorrow?  Finn grabbed my iPhone and was playing a game and Kai asked if he could have something else.  So I told him he could have the iPad, but could only play our Sunday games (we have LDS coloring books, etc. on there that get used every once in a while in Sacrament meetings).  Kai said, "I know.  It's Sunday in Utah."  I laughed and told him it wasn't, that is was still Saturday there, too.  And then he asked, "Well, why are they at church then?"  Ahh.....I love my observant little guy.

Towards the end of the session Finn was getting quite restless.  He was also quite tired after not napping yesterday and getting up at 5:45 this morning.  When he gets tired, he gets super wound-up and in all of his craziness he bumped his mouth on a table or couch or something.  (I can't remember.) It wasn't bad, but when you're tired every bump HURTS (or at least that's what I've learned from my kids).  So, I scooped him up and told Reid I was taking him for his nap.  He cried and cried and then told me he was ok and didn't need a nap.  I told him we'd just snuggle then, and he calmed down.  Next thing I know he says in a pitiful voice, "I need a new mouth."  I looked at him and said, "You need a new mouth?  Just where am I going to get that."  He replied, "Maybe the library?" :)

Finally, there has been much discussion here about the announced changes for the required ages of missionary service.  Reid and I have thrown around ways in which we think some things will change and what some of those changes may mean.  For me it means that Kai has the option of going straight from high school on a mission at just 18 years and 2 weeks old.  Wow--poor kid may have never been away from home for any extended period of time and yet can go straight into the mission field.  (Kai says he wants to serve a mission as long as he can go to Colorado Springs and be close to home.  He's attached to us and I like that!)  And of course for Finn, well, it doesn't change a thing for Finn.  Finn will turn 18 in October of his senior year in high school.  But no matter how old he is, or how spiritually or financially prepared he is, Finn may never get the chance to serve a full-time mission.  For me, the greatest miracle of all would be to see Finn healthy and strong enough to leave home and serve full-time.  The thought of him being away from his doctors and a care team, though, is very unsettling.  Some of the greatest advances in CF research and care are counted as the fact that patients are getting married and even having families (no small feat when 99% of males are infertile!), but no where in there is the statement that they can serve for two-years away from home and family full-time.  Being realistic, the treatment regimen of a young man with CF is too demanding to fit into a mission schedule.  So, for me, Finn being able to serve a mission would be a miracle.  In the spirit of today's announcement, I hold on to that dream and hope to one day see that miracle fulfilled.