The after is the x-ray that was taken yesterday. If you can read x-rays (which I really can't), you can see where the bone graft was put in to build his upper jaw. And you can see all the screws and wires. He has a little plastic plate, like a retainer, in between his bite now, but after the wires come off, he will be able to shut his mouth more and have a normal overbite. I am so excited for him to finally be able to chew with his back teeth!
Yesterday I broke character as a dutiful nurse and accidentally made Jakob laugh. Hard. But, actually, he made me laugh first so it's not my fault. Jakob's been on some heavy pain medicine since the surgery, and I guess it has been making him hallucinate at night. A few days ago, Jakob wrote this to me:
"This sounds crazy, but not being able to sleep at night has really messed up my mind. Like I'll wake up in the middle of the night and start thinking about finishing our painting project (which we finished two weeks ago) or I'll think I'm in 'The Amazing Race' and my mind starts to think about so much (this is while he's AWAKE!) and then I'll try to go to sleep for the next half hour, mad at myself that I was delirious for so long."
I feel bad for him. I just think it's funny that he spends a long time stressed out about his next move on 'The Amazing Race' while he's awake and trying to fall asleep. But I didn't laugh, just showed concern. But while we were at the doctor's appointment yesterday, waiting to be seen, Jakob wrote this to me:
"Another crazy night of dreams. Where do I start? We moved in with (our friends here) the McQueens. I messed up some drywall in their house during our move in that I needed to fix up. I had to borrow some of Liz's shorts because Matt didn't have any that matched my shirt. And the McQueens (who are LDS) were having a Margarita party.
Then I woke up two hours past meds, waded through the "paint tarps" on my way downstairs, and then took my meds."
That's when I lost it. Imagining Jakob making his way through our jungle of paint tarps - paint tarps that we had taken down two weeks ago - made me laugh. And then poor Jakob started to laugh. But his was more of a torturous moaning laugh. That made me laugh more. He grabbed his face with his hands and was moaning and laughing. I felt so bad and tried to stop laughing, but I couldn't. We both were crying. Me from laughter, him from pain. So I had to leave the room to compose myself. I had been holding that laughter in for a long time, so it was like trying to hold the tide back. Sorry, Jakob!
Three days after Jude was discharged from the hospital, Jakob went in for his big jaw surgery. Jakob's mom, Judy, was able to fly out and stay with the boys so that I could be at the hospital with Jakob the whole time. We went in early Wednesday morning and went through all the surgery prep stuff. Jakob wasn't feeling too nervous about the surgery, but got a lot of anxiety about getting the IV. They began his surgery at 11:00am and didn't finish until 5:00pm. A six hour surgery! The surgeons came out when it was finished and told me that everything had gone very well, but that it was a very difficult surgery. The movement of his lower jaw was smooth and easy, but his upper jaw was very difficult. He basically had no upper jaw. His teeth were just fused to his skull bone. So they had to saw from the skull to move the teeth, and then build him an upper jaw with a bone graft from his hip. Complicated!
I wasn't sure if I was going to stay overnight with Jakob in the hospital or head home to help with the kids. But then the night shift nurse came in - a young, skinny little blond thing - and I knew I wasn't budging from that hospital room. If I wasn't there, I knew she'd be hitting on my man all night. Who could resist! We stayed in the hospital two nights. They needed to slowly transition him off of his IV fluids and antibiotics and get him drinking and 'eating' on his own - through a tubed syringe. Pain management was also a huge struggle, and still kind of is. The Morphine makes him sick, the Lortab doesn't cut it. It's going to be a long recovery.
As far as his appearance, the doctor says that there will be very little change. But because he moved the lower jaw back a bit, he will have a little less profile. It's hard to envision what he'll look like because of all the swelling. Right now he has a strong resemblance to Jon Lovitz. So even if he stayed like this forever, that would be fine. Who doesn't think Jon Lovitz is sexy? But I do think he will have to develop a stronger sense of humor. You can't pull off a look like this without being VERY funny. And, even though Jakob was voted 'Class Clown' in high school, he's been working as an accountant with other accountants for about five years. And that has definitely sabotaged his comedic style. No one could walk away from that monotony without being a little jaded. :)
Jakob has to communicate with us through writing. And Kobe is having a fun time writing notes to Daddy. Here's one he wrote. He's so sweet. This is what it says:
This story starts in so many different places, I just don't know where to begin. And it's a long one, just to warn you. I want to be sure and document every detail for posterity. Two weekends ago, I think, the ward had a 'Fathers and Sons' campout. This meant a night all to myself after Jude went to bed. I decided this was the perfect night to start a project that has been hanging over our heads for a long time. Even though this house was built in 1999, we have that popcorn/acoustic ceiling texture. Our first year here, we scraped all the popcorn off in our three bedrooms, and had someone come retexture, then painted. But in our front room the ceiling is vaulted, so we knew it would be way more difficult. Jakob had the next week off of work, so I thought this would be the perfect weekend to start and finish this project.
Fast forward to nearly one week later. Our house was in shambles. There had been tarps up for days. Our kitchen was our substitute storage unit, stacked to the roof with furniture, pictures, and decorations. (Our computer was also disassembled until today, which is why I hadn't blogged.) The ceiling was scraped, but we had been waiting on our affordable texturers, Jesus and Gustavo, to make an appearance (at their convenience, of course) for days. They finally arrived Thursday evening, and started unloading their things.
From the moment Jude was buckled in, his eyes started rolling back and he was trying to go to sleep. I had heard that you weren't supposed to go to sleep after a head injury, so I was frantically trying to keep him awake. I blasted the cold air and kept saying, "No night-night, Jude." It was so sad because he understood what I was saying, and was trying so hard to fight it for me. Later the nurse told me that it would've been fine for him to rest. She said that it's the body's natural defense mechanism during trauma and pain to shut down and go to sleep. But I didn't know that. I started singing to him, and then started singing an upbeat song. It's kind of a chant I sing to all the boys to try and get them to dance. "Go Judah. Get busy. Gimme kisses. Go crazy. Jude Davy. Go! Go! Get busy.", etc. I was just trying to keep him awake, but it turned out to be the most heartbreaking thing ever. In his carseat, with blood streaming out of his nose and mouth, in so much pain, and with his eyes rolled back trying to go to sleep, Jude lifted up his arms and started to move his head back and forth. He was dancing. For me. I immediately stopped because I didn't want to torture him. Bless his heart. He is so sweet.
When we arrived at the ER, of course they didn't take me seriously. They assumed I brought Jude in with a just bloody nose and told me to wait in the waiting room. I started to doubt myself, too. Maybe I should have stayed at home and tried to stop his bloody nose first. I saw a doctor who said that he may have a tiny break in his nose, but there's nothing to do about that. He said his nose would eventually stop bleeding. But, just as standard procedure for a head injury, they were going to give Jude a CAT scan. The doctor thought this was a waste of time, but it is the protocol. This doctor was very arrogant. So we got the CAT scan. I was very nervous that Jude would be crying and screaming and not hold still. But, because of all the trauma he had been through, he was very numb and just laid there. I was rubbing his tummy to comfort him. I said, "Time to go night-night, Jude." When he heard that, he stuck his thumb in his mouth, tried to turn onto his side (which he couldn't because of the head supports), and then gently pushed my hand off his belly. He's a very independent sleeper.
Right after the CAT scan the doctor came and told us that he had multiple facial fractures and that he had to be transferred to Children's Hospital in an ambulance. They put a neck brace on him and we both drove in the ambulance to Children's. Jude slept in my arms the whole time. He wasn't himself. It was very sad and scary. 
The CAT scan also showed multiple skull fractures right above his eyes. Those bones also stayed in place, except for one tiny thin piece of bone that was poking down into his left ocular cavity. Because of the impact of the blow on his facial bones, it caused some air to be pushed back around the brain, which isn't normal. For these two reasons they had us stay in the hospital for two nights to monitor Jude. They wanted to see how the stray bone affected his eye and vision, and also monitor the brain for infection. The first night they didn't give Jude any pain medication because they said that would mask the symptoms they were looking for. It was so sad. Jude was in so much pain and just not himself. The next morning they started rotating him on Tylenol and Motrin, and he started feeling much better. He wanted to walk around, play with toys, run, etc. It actually made the hospital stay very difficult and stressful because there are so many accidents waiting to happen in those tiny bedrooms. He was having difficulty eating because chewing caused movement and pressure on all those broken bones. So we just tried to feed him soft foods slowly.
The doctors watched him and felt confident that the air pockets would dissolve, as well as that thin piece of bone. His body will just heal itself, and one doctor even said that in 10 years, you might not be able to even tell he had ever broken any of those facial bones on an x-ray. Baby's bodies are amazing. Jude started acting like himself after only a few doses of pain medicine. His eyes got very puffy at first, almost swollen shut. Then they started to turn purple. Then the swelling began to go down. Then the bruising moved below his eyes and changed colors. Now, a week later, the bruising is almost completely gone.
The doctors said that Jude should do no strenuous activities or any activity that would cause another head injury for the next three months. So we have him in a straitjacket, tied down to his bed all day and feed him through a tube. Seriously, every activity this 15 month old does could cause a head injury. He runs everywhere he goes, and his head always arrives three seconds before the rest of his body can catch up. I even get a scare when he holds his heavy sippy cup, because he could drop it right on his face. But we're doing the best we can. We feel very blessed that his brain went unharmed, and recognize what a miracle that was. I'm squeezing him extra tight all day long and just can't possibly imagine our life without him.
Everyone in our ward has been so incredible to us throughout this ordeal. They have taken Kobe and Luke so that Jakob could be at the hospital. But the greatest service was when a bunch of men in our ward volunteered to help Jakob paint our newly textured ceiling. See, Jesus and Gustavo were supposed to show up on Saturday morning to paint our ceilings. It seemed perfect because they would paint Saturday morning, Jakob could take the tarps down and do a quick clean after they left, and then Jude and I would come home from the hospital Saturday evening. But our painters never showed up. And never picked up their phone. So Jude got discharged out of the hospital, and our home still had tarps up everywhere and dangerous ladders all over. Another miracle in this whole situation is that our friends, the Wests, were out of town. BUT they had left their garage door opener with a friend. We got ahold of them and they immediately said that we could stay at their home until we got our house figured out. So we left the hospital and arrived at a very clean, organized, safe home. I hope that someday, someone will visit my home and describe it with those very words. That is my new life goal. Thanks, Wests!
Since we had nobody to paint our home, the Elders Quorum found out about it and four of them showed up Saturday night to help Jakob paint. They painted the entire vaulted ceiling and two hallways in about four hours. I want to personally thank them all so much, even though none of them read this blog. I don't know what we would've done without their help. We felt so devastated and depressed, but we were finally able to take the tarps down and start rebuilding our life.
So that is the first reason that I have been too busy to blog. I hope to blog about our SECOND hospital visit tomorrow. Stay tuned!
Today, Mother's Day, I want to pay a little tribute to my mother. There are going to be lots and LOTS of pictures. Because I am the oldest child, I'm lucky enough to have lots of pictures of just me and my mom. If I didn't include a lot of photos in this post, it wouldn't be a true representation of my mother. She's a big fan of the camera. In fact, that's one of the many things I love about her. She has instilled in me the importance of documenting memories with pictures, and I'm already grateful for all the pictures I've taken of my own family.
My mom is extremely gifted at working with small children. But, more importantly, she was absolutely flawless when it came to parenting us when we were young. My sister and I were very fortunate to be born in slots 1 and 2, because it means that we were aware and can now remember how my mother parented us and our little brothers. It feels like I was enrolled in a parenting master class. When I went off to BYU, I took a few child development and parenting classes for my major. Everything I learned there absolutely confirmed that my mom was gifted with the ability to work with and raise small children.
Here we are dressed up for a 'Merrie Miss' 
It's only now, with a few small children of my own, that I realize how incredibly challenging and confusing raising small children can be.
Thank you, Mom, for choosing me to be in your family before this life. I know everyone wanted in. But you could only take six. Maybe I sung you a song. Or threw you a surprise party. Or made you a carmeled apple. I guess I must be something special to have been 1 of 6 chosen to be in your family. :) You definitely have a natural ability with children, but even knowing what to do doesn't make it easy. So thanks for taking time with us rugrats and following through.
I've heard the some people disregard the importance of the 'younger years'. But some people aren't smart. In fact, some people are silly (which is the word that my mom taught us to replace s--pid with). But you taught us not to make fun of some people. So I won't. But we all know how crucial the younger years are, and I'm grateful that you were my mom. And I'm even more grateful that I had you as the perfect example to learn from as I attempt to emulate you with my own children. I'm struggling. But I think that's why I have boys. They'll forgive me. They forget. But girls remember. (Just ask Jakob.) Happy Mother's Day! 
I had a wonderful Mother's Day. Jakers! Sleeping in, breakfast in bed, cards, gifts from Kobe and Luke that they made at school, and my favorite chocolates from See's Candies. I rarely lifted a finger the whole day. I sang in Relief Society today (Hilary Weeks, 
