A Worthen Life Update

Life at the Worthen house is beginning to get back to normal. Although lately being sick and lazy has become the norm and the lazy needy habits we all developed while being sick are hard to break.

Jay's health has improved considerably. The screaming fits have come back down to the normal Jay frequency and he is much more pleasant to be around. Due to our paranoia, however, we've opted to keep Jay out of nursery at church for the next few weeks. His immune system isn't so great right now and I can't bear to see him get sick again. This makes for a long 3 hours at church, but on Sunday we were well equiped with our Mary Poppins bag of tricks and managed to survive all 3 hours with Jay by our side. (This is an amazing feat seeing as we rarely made it through all 3 hours during the 1st 18 months of his life)

On Friday, I had a fabulous girls night and sleepover with some of my bestest friends. It was a much needed break and I came home refreshed enough to have a little bit more patience with Jay. I love hanging out with these girls and I'm sad to leave them in just 4 short weeks. I have still managed to avoid catching the flu. A miracle of miracles.

Chad is dilligently working on his massive paper due before graduation. We're all hoping and praying he finishes as the graduation announcements have already been ordered.

All of us are overly anxious and nervous for our big move on May 1st. We've been eager to move on with our lives after BYU ever since I can remember. Reality is hitting, and we're starting to realize that we may miss this place as we enter into the unknown. Well, maybe we'll miss the people in this place more than the place itself. We've nervous about finding new friends and new lives that we enjoy as much as we currently enjoy. Time will tell, but we're starting to get sentimental and sappy and that makes me feel a little more unstable than I like.

Picture Perfect Easter

I've always loved Easter. I have such fond memories of Easter growing up. Our new Easter dresses laid out on the couch with other surprises (usually the newest Disney movie). Easter egg hunts in the front yard while wearing our pj's (unless it was snowing and the event was moved inside and inevitably a boiled egg would get lost in the house to be found weeks later when it began to stink). I always remember holidays being quite perfect, but maybe it's my memory playing tricks on me, or maybe we don't notice all the imperfection as kids.

If there is one thing I've learned as a mother it's things aren't always (or ever) perfect. My picture perfect idea of Easter would have included:

-Jay waking up to his candy filled Easter basket and small new toys and be so filled with excitement that he played for hours without throwing a single tantrum.

Reality: Jay has had the flu for about a week now and woke up in a rage. Within about 3 minutes, all the Easter baskets and their contents were kicked around the living room. Jelly beans, M&M's, puzzle pieces and letter blocks were scattered everywhere.


-Me taking pictures of Jay enjoying his Easter spoils and eating a few Peeps myself.

Reality: I was lying on the couch vomiting into a plastic bag watching the whole ordeal. It did cross my mind once to grab my camera and snap a picture of the destruction, but Chad cleaned it up too fast.



-Jay wearing his new Easter tie with an adorable blue shirt and his khaki newsboy cap to church.

Reality: Jay took a nap for 4 hours and none of us went to Church. I tried to salvage this dream by dressing him for Easter dinner in said outfit, but the boy was to grumpy and sick and immediately declared "Tie off!".



-Me in the kitchen making apple pies for Easter dinner that evening.

Reality: While I was still lying on the couch, Chad made a brownie mix at the last minute to take to dinner.



Perhaps all this imperfection is just helping solidify Easter memories. I don't think we'll ever forget the Easter that Jay was so sick he destroyed everything while I lay on the couch and watch. In fact, last years Easter was just as imperfect. Jay was sick (hand foot and mouth disease) and we had to talk in Church. We had to get a babysitter for Jay so he wouldn't infect other children while we spoke in Church. Maybe he's doomed to be sick every Easter.

Update: We took Jay to the doctor today and on top of having the flu, he has an ear infection and the beginnings of pneumonia. The ear infection and pneumonia are treatable, so all should be well in a couple days. If I had the flu, pneumonia, and an ear infection, I'd probably kick my Easter basket and throw my new toys too. I'm feeling well also and must have just picked up some random 24hr stomach flu thing.

Hopefully next Sunday we'll have a picture of an active and healthy 2 year old wearing his new tie and looking adorable.

Las Vegas

Last weekend, we went to Las Vegas for the Mountain West Conference Basketball Tournament with some of Chad's family. BYU lost the championship game, but we had a blast watching basketball, swimming, and visiting Jay's new favorite place M&M World. (It's candy with letters on it, you can't beat it in Jay's eyes). We also got to visit our friends Mike and Emily and Jay got to play with their son who is about the same age as Jay.

No trip would be complete, however, without one event that increases every one's stress level by 300%. On this short trip it happened to be a poison control scare. Our hotel room(s) had two separate bedrooms connected by a common area. Jay walked into one of the bedrooms and shut the door in order to "take care of business" if you know what I mean, so we opted to let him be alone for a few minutes. When we went into the room a few minutes later, Chad discovered a blue pill on the floor that was obviously covered in Jay slobber. When Chad asked Jay about it, he just referred to the pill as "blue candy" (which by the way is amazing seeing as he really does not have a grasp of his colors...blue is typically his default color pick, so maybe it wasn't that amazing). We quickly studied the capsule and tried to identify what kind of pill he had half ingested, but found no identifying numbers or letters on the pill. Although Jay seemed to be doing fine, we opted to call poison control not knowing what this pill could do to him.

Then the stress level rises. The poison control man on the phone could not identify the pill either, so he told us we needed to go straight to the ER. When he found out we were from out of town, he advised us to just call 911 and have Jay taken in the ambulance because he was afraid we would not be able to find the hospital. I then lied to the poison control man and told him my husband knew his way around and that a 911 call would not be necessary (does he think we're made of money? Use an ambulance as a taxi, no way! We can read map!).

I would be lying if I said that we didn't look at going to the ER and as huge inconvenience. We both have had ridiculous ER experiences where they keep you for hours just for "observation" and really don't do anything to help you. Don't get me wrong, I care about my child's health first and foremost which is why we got in the car to head to the ER anyway.

Low and behold, as we pull out of our hotel, we see a CVS pharmacy right across the street. Since Jay was still doing just fine, we decided we would take a detour and stop by the pharmacy to see if they could identify the strange blue pill with a little person stamped on it in white. Sure enough, the pharmacist identified the pill as DetrolLA, a bladder control medicine for old people. More importantly, the pharmacist said that though he had chewed on and smashed the capsule, Jay didn't actually break the capsule to get the medicine out. Therefore, in her professional opinion, we had nothing to worry about.

When we got back in the car I immediately called poison control back to update them on our status. (If you've ever called poison control, you know that when you call they open a case on you and they keep track of you and call to check up on you etc.) First, the poison control person yelled at me for going to a pharmacy before the ER. When she finally let me explain what we discovered she cleared Jay and said we didn't have to take him to the hospital. Yay!

Wow, I probably sound like an awful mother for trying to get out of going to the hospital. I feel like we're just level headed adults with common sense and used our brains to solve a problem, is that bad? I did do the right thing and call poison control in the first place. Hopefully the old person who is missing his or her bladder control medicine is doing alright too.

Here are some pictures of the trip:

Jay focusing on the game

Yes, that tub of popcorn is bigger than Jay's head.

M&M World

Taking a ride in his new boat in the hotel pool.

Shortly after devouring his new found love, chocolate chip pancakes.

Brought to you by the Letter B

Jay's latest obsession is letters. I wish I could attribute this to my diligent parenting and teaching, but that would be a lie. It began a few months ago when he discovered the colorful letter magnets adorning our fridge. He would bring us these magnets and talk about letters and eventually named every letter either "D" or "Y". One day it all just clicked and he started remembering every letter name we told him. Before long, he was naming every letter and loved flipping through flashcards. I'm convinced he dreams about letters.

Signs Jay is obsessed:

*He loves playing with my alphabet rubber stamps and is fascinated by letter stickers (this makes trips to the scrapbook store easy for me, I grab an ugly sheet of letter stickers off the clearance rack for 50 cents and he's entertained for a good 10 minutes).

*He loves the beginning of movies because he gets to see big letters and screams "F B I !!".

*He's beginning to master the letters upside down as well and declared the other day while in his car seat "Letters, Jay's buckle! G R A C O!"

*When he sees letters on cereal boxes etc. he insists I run and get the scissors to cut them out so he can glue them on paper. (We've finally created a letter book for him so he can glue all his letters on different pages.)

*Last night while watching Brooke White sing on American Idol, Jay began to sing with her, but instead of "Let it Be", he sang "Letter B".

I really don't know what planet this child came from. Just don't ask him to count for you or identify colors. I don't think we have an little engineer on our hands, that's for sure. Letters are his forte.


His favorite letter? He's no dummy, ask him and he'll respond with excitement, "Jay start letter J!"

This picture was taken last summer before the letter obsession. We were making a birthday card for my brother on a mission featuring Jay spelling out "Happy Birthday". Maybe this is really where the obsession began.

Baby Cousin

Well, I'm finally admitting to myself that if I keep waiting for the motivation to catch up on this blog, it will never come, and I'm just digging myself a deeper hole. Here's to starting anew and posting the here and now, hoping to do better.

My sister had a baby this past week and Jay is so excited to talk about "baby cousin". Even before she was born he would say "baby cousin come out Stephie's shirt" and point to Stephanie's belly. Well, she finally came out Stephie's shirt and Jay got to hold the baby for the first time today. He is still having trouble saying her name, so he just prefers "baby cousin" for now.