Growing Pains

Today Ezra went in for his 4 month check up. Crazy, I know. He is just under 25 inches long, and only weighs 13 pounds. He also got shots, three of them. He was crying before they gave them to him so it made them seem a little less traumatic to me (although I'm sure it wasn't that way for him). He fell asleep in the car and has been a super happy camper ever since. Ezra has been looking much more grown up, and I'm having a hard time with the fact that my baby is quickly becoming not so much a baby. He looks like a little boy now. It's fun to see him develop so much from day to day, but Bob and I recently had a conversation that went a little like this...

E: I don't want Ezra to grow up. I want him to stay my baby forever.
B: Don't you want him to go on a mission and get married, stuff like that?
E: No, our other kids can do that but Ezra has to stay my baby!

The one reason why I want him to get bigger is so that I can squeeze him harder. He is so stinkin' adorable that I could hug him to death if I didn't use self control. Despite my best wishes, he is growing and getting so smart. He is going to be so ready for his surgery in two weeks. Let's just hope that he will pack on some more weight between now and then.

The following pictures are from birth to four months. Each picture is relatively close to the respective birthdays. Enjoy and try to not get teary-eyed at how big he is getting. You will notice that like all old men he loses hair with age!

He's the best man, he did it!

That title is just for you Bob! Ezra has officially slept the whole night through! Before his surgery he was sleeping from 8:30 to somewhere between five and six in the morning, but after the surgery he was back to getting up a couple times a night. Well not anymore, he's back.

I told myself I wouldn't consider him having slept through the night until he made it to seven. Morning should never start before 7. Saturday he slept until 7:30 and Sunday he slept until just after seven. This morning it was 6:40, but I will still take it. Oddly enough I still feel so tired when he wakes up, but the good thing is that he will be up for like an hour and a half and then go back to sleep for a couple more hours. I totally go back to sleep with him. He is still a terrible napper, so I still get nothing done because I sleep with him through his good nap, but it's worth it!

Ezra's Good News

Gnome Ezra (pre-latham)

We went to the plastic surgeons office today and the verdict is that they will do Ezra's next two surgeries in one! Hooray! They will be completely fixing his lip, gums, and nose on April 16th. We are glad that they kept the tentative date because my Mom and sister already bought tickets to come out. Anywho... we just wanted to share the good news. The one down side is they added yet another appointment which means we still have four appointments between now and the surgery and that doesn't count the pre-op appointments. At least the weather is getting a little warmer!

Happy St. Puketricks Day (mid-latham)

The Teddy Bears Have a Dream

So I'm sure that you all have noticed something with our blog, that my sister-in-law noted in one of her posts; our blog has become almost exclusively devoted to Ezra. It's a natural thing to happen when people have kids and it's probably what most of you want to hear about anyway. We created this blog to keep friends and family up to date with what is going on with us out here on the east coast so I thought I would give a formal update.

Before we had Ezra, EmmaLee had been considering going back to work part time. We decided that since he was going to be having surgeries that it would be better for her to stay home. Her work was kind enough to give her a leave of absence which keeps the door open for her in the future. She is enjoying staying home with Ezra quite a lot. Dental school is rolling along well. I just finished my second internship and am now getting back into classes. The big news is that I just found out that I passed my national board (NBDE part 1) exam!!! It's a big relief to have it done. This is my last semester of preclinical courses. In August I will begin seeing my own patients at the dental school. If anyone out here needs low cost dental care (and they have a lot of time on their hands) hit me up. The more patients the better. That's about it. It's a little sad that we can sum up what's going on with us in one paragraph but there you go. Spring is slowly (very slowly) starting to roll around here so hopefully we'll get out a little more and have some interesting things to post!

Since this post is pretty boring, I thought I would share this gem with you. EmmaLee and I got a box full of used kids books from a coworker. It has been quite nice and boosted up our Dr. Suess collection. We found that we really like "Fox in Socks." There were also some really special books in the lot. Our favorite definitely has to be "The Teddy Bears Have a Dream." We thought we would share it with you. Though this may be a copyright infringment, I doubt the publishers wasted time or money getting it copyrighted.

"It is a warm, moonlit night. The three little bears, Ragtime, Tatty Ted and BB are very sleepy. Tatty Ted looks up at the stars and starts to dream. Tatty Ted is dreaming of his cousin, Panda, with only one eye and leg. He thinks he would make a jolly good pirate....with a parrot for a friend. Now Tatty Ted dreams he is floating high up in the sky. He thinks dreaming is a funny thing as he passes his friends gently by. Suddenly BB joins him in his dream. He is surrounded by modern toys. 'I wish children would see,' he sadly says, 'that they cannot cuddle video games as much as they can cuddle me.' The bear in the moon is also sad. He hasn't got a friend. So Tatty Ted and BB say, 'When we dream again, we will come and play with you.'

That's it. Funny, but in a very weird way.

Pain for Progress

Ezra has his first follow-up appointment today. They cleaned most of the boogers off the Latham device and tightened the elastic two links. Needless to say I gave him his last dose of Tylenol with codein today. I feel like the gap has closed considerably already and it has only been a week.

These are the pre-latham pictures from the Dr.
He didn't send the ones from today, but as soon as I get them
I will post them so you can all see the difference already.

Bob asked them how they placed the pins, and it is even worse than I thought. They are about 3/4 of an inch long and they just hammer them in with a dental mallet. Can you say ouch! No wonder they say the baby has the hardest time with the first surgery.

Here is one that I took today to show the progress.

As for the surgery Bob and I were amazed with how well we, and Ezra, did. I felt so good heading to the hospital and it wasn't even hard to hand him over (I was expecting to break down at this point), it just all went so fast. I got a little anxious waiting, but the only time I felt like crying was when they brought us into PACU (recovery) and he was screaming. Alas no time for tears, we had to play the comforting role. I am really grateful for the blessing that Bob gave me when we first found out that I was pregnant...in it we were promised that our little baby would be fine and healthy. That promise has seen me through Lyme disease, diagnosis of the cleft, him learning to eat, and surgery. I am so grateful for a loving Father in Heaven who knows and cares for each one of us, and the strength and calm that he has given to me through all of this!

Tribute

For those of you live around here or have been out to see Ezra know, these aren't the best smiles, they are only a tribute to his best smile.

I just wanted to post a few pictures in tribute to Ezra's little smile that we instantly fell in love with. Now that he's begun the process of transforming it, we will never get to enjoy his face as it once was. The truth is we have captured some good smiles. The video we posted last time just melts our hearts. We watch it at least a couple of times everyday. Hopefully more laughs are on the way. I'm sure you'll recognize some of the pictures but we had to post them again in honor of his old look.

Okay, I threw in a few just because he's cute.

Everything went really well on Tuesday. Ezra is doing great. His pain medication seems to do the job and he is eating fairly well, not quite what he was before but certainly enough that there is no need to worry. The next step is scheduled for April 16th. They might do a partial lip repair or the entire lip repair depending on how things go with the Latham device. We'll certainly keep you posted. Thank you to everyone for your kind thoughts and prayers in Ezra's behalf.

The Latham has a blue elastic band that goes across the front in addition to the screw mechanism

Grins and Giggles

We know people have been asking when surgery will be in the comments and we never got around to posting something about it. The first surgery is on Tuesday. It's going to be a fairly simple procedure where they will be putting in a orthodontic device that will bring the cleft closer together. At our last appointment with the plastic surgeon he said that if they get a good enough result with the Latham device that they may be able to do the lip repair in one surgery instead of two. It will only take about a half hour. We have to stay over night for observation. The toughest part will probably be the adjustment for him to have some thing stuck in his mouth.

Latham appliance on maxillary cast

Anyway, the point of this post is that we wanted to get a video with him smiling before they started the process to change his little smile. Usually whenever he smiles and we whip out the camera, he just stares curiously at the camera but today we got really lucky and actually captured his first real laughs on camera. You may hear me cracking up as well on the video (I know I sound like a dork too but it's cool because I do it for Ezra).

Also, we found this really cool story written by the founder of widesmiles.org, a cleft organization, that expresses how we feel about Ezra's surgeries pretty well. It almost made us both cry. If you want to check it out or show it to your kids click here.

I don't normally do these...

Since I was the first person on the tag list, I will do this...and it will probably only happen this one time.

7 things I can do... enjoy Ezra, cook, embroidery, babysit, pray, love, try.
7 things I can't do... Ezra's surgery for him, hold Jett, hold Ava, pay for Bob's school, go home anytime soon, make others choices for them, keep my baby a baby forever.
7 things I say most... I love you, Oh really?, I miss you, Hi sweet boy, It's okay, How did he ever fit inside me? Ezra is so great (Bob and I seem to say this about 5 times an hour to each other).
7 goals I have this year... Read the whole Ensign each month, send all my family a card for their b-day, read my scriptures on my own daily, cook something new each month, lose this last little bit of baby belly, get in shape, enjoy more of Boston.
7 reasons I love Bob... He treats me really well, he's an amazing father, he teaches me a lot, he thinks he's funny, he suffers through school to better our family, he's my best friend, he's Bob!
7 things I love to eat... vanilla bean cheesecake, cereal, pasta, croissants, chocolate dipped strawberries, Tres Leches, Cafe Rio anything.

I choose to not tag anyone, but feel free to do this if you really want.

What could be better than having these two?

Ah the Advantages of a Cleft!

I know this sounds bad I think one of the ways EmmaLee and I cope with Ezra's birth defect is to laugh it off. We kind of make fun of him (remind us to delete this post in case he ever becomes interested in reading our old blog some day). Don't get me wrong...we love him to death and think that he is extremely cute. We love his little "wide smile" and we wouldn't even get it fixed if it wasn't better for him in the long run. So in the spirit of taking what life has given and enjoying it, we present these photos for your enjoyment (sorry for the poor quality of these camera phone pictures).

Why bother with just a thumb?

I have my cake and eat it too.

Lots to do, lots to say!

We have had a busy few weeks since we last posted. Bob's parents came to town on Jan. 27th. In order to get some cleaning done and allow Bob to study we sent Ezra over to the Russ' to be babysat for the first time. He did great and slept through the whole thing. We went to the temple with his parents the next morning and again have Emily Russ to thank for watching Ezra. That night Bob and his dad went to the Kings vs. Celtics game. Thursday my Grandma Denos and her sister Lena flew in. We didn't do anything to exciting due to the weather but we had a good time.


Ezra went to church for the first time and was blessed. For my own records sake, Johnny Russ, Brian Chase, Ted Quinn, Grandpa Bowling and of course Bob were in the circle. It was a beautiful blessing and luckily Ezra was quiet through the whole thing. Everybody left on Monday and we were back to the grind by Tuesday.


Ezra had an appointment at Childrens Hospital to get impressions taken for his latham device. He did so well. Even though the stuff made him gag he didn't cry. They also took a 3-D picture of him and it looked like they made a cartoon version of him. On Wednesday he went for his two month check up and his first round of shots. He weighs 11 pounds and is 23.5 inches long. He smiled for the doctor and was happy until the shots. He cried through those, but recovered quickly. I told the doctor that he can roll over and she was hesitant to believe me, so I had him do it in the office and recorded it. I'm also including some family pictures. (Man we owe Emily big time!) Hope you enjoy! P.S. He's sneezing in the below picture...isn't it adorable?