Happy Birthday Yousef!!

My little angel boy is 5 years old! Can't I slow this down or put my kids on freeze for a brief moment? They are growing up tooooo fast!! Yousef, of course is thrilled to be five. His birthday fell on game day so everybody was going to come watch my little swinger but we got rained out so we reconvened at the house for dinner and a snake rice cripies "cake". Yousef decided to have a jungle theme this year. And he is my wild little animal!! Yousef is very active and loves to wrestle, jump, run, do donkey kicks, dance, and play with whomever is about and approximately his age - whether he knows them yet or not. He loves music and dancing so when a rockin' tune comes on a movie, I'll see him look around to see if anyone is looking and then he'll start a-boogying. He sees everyone as a potential friend and loves to play. It doesn't matter if he knows them yet or not. Surely they want to have fun with him. He is a really great brother to Ammon - they hate to be separated from each other. Yousef loves to learn and has a great memory. He will ask what a word means and begin using it from then on. Including foreign words. Yousef loves reading books and is great at making connections. He applies Book of Mormon stories in our everyday life. Of course, part of the reason he loves the Book of Mormon is because of all the swords, fighting, and bloodshed. Sad but true, as hard as I try to talk about not hurting others and how violence is not a good answer, my boy loves swords and the like. I don't know....
Yousef is quite a ham and I see a great future in the theater for him! He went to his friend Benjamin's Mario party and came home doing an Italian accent with hand gestures and all, "Luigi, canna you bringa me some more spaghetti?" The other day he leaned against the wall in a James Dean/GQ kind of pose and said, "Mom, do I look cool?" I told him that he did indeed look cool and he replied, "Do you know why? Because when I was still in heaven before I came here I said to Jesus, 'Will you send me down there with some cool?'" Ha! There I was in the pre-mortal life asking for as many challenges as possible and he asked for "cool"! He is one smart cookie! His primary teacher said that last week they told the 4 and 5 year olds that they were going to talk about when Jesus calmed the sea. Yousef proceeded to tell them the whole story and then when they were going to act it out, he wanted nothing to do with the streamers for the storm or the active roles, he wanted to be Jesus. He slept quietly in the back of the boat until his disciples awakened him and then he rebuked the storm and told it to "Be still"! On the Mother's Day the children sang in Sacrament Meeting the chorister had to stop him from hamming it up 3 different times and then he applauded after they and Linda finished their song. I just know his teachers at school and I are going to have a lot of talks! Buckle your seat belts!!
I really love this little guy - he keeps me on my toes, keeps me laughing, has some good spiritual sense, and is a great kid!! I'm one lucky mom!! Happy Birthday to my big boy!

My Brave Little Guy!!

Sweet little Ammy had an itsy bitsy bruise-like thing on his back when he was born. It was about 1 cm. His doctor sent us to see a neurosurgeon at Primary Children's Medical Center who figured it was a hemangioma - mass of blood vessels - that would get bigger for a year and then go down. The MRI seemed to confirm that. It sure did get bigger but it never bothered Ammon. His bump was just part of him. The problem was it never went down - in fact it seemed to get just a little bigger and began hardening aroung the edges. We decided to remove it and low and behold it turned out to be a benign fibrous hammertoma - a tumor. It would have just kept getting bigger so it was good we removed it but it was quite an adventure!
The day before his surgery we went in for a final check and the plastic surgeon suggested a new procedure to help keep him from bleeding too much and having to have a blood transfusion. Basically they put him out and inject him with an alcohol solution that burns up/cauterizes, something like that the blood vessels. It sounded kind of scary to me! I asked what would happen if the solution went into other blood vessels. The radiologist said if it got into his spine he would be paralyzed. Aaah! But they do a test first to see where the blood flows. So they decided he needed to start a fast and come back a few hours later for that procedure, spend the night at the hospital and then have the surgery the next day.
When Ammon came out of surgery with his big Zorro cut across his little back, I felt so horrible! I was sure I had done a cruel thing to my little angel boy! It was so big and some of the skin was black and the doctor was afraid it wouldn't make it. It did die but our great plastic surgeon Dr. Sidiqi, was able to cut out the dead skin and pull the healthy skin together without doing difficult procedures like he thought might be necessary. I account this to many prayers and fasting from our loved ones on Ammon's behalf. I'm so thankful for priesthood blessings and lots of faith. We had so much comfort, support and Ammy was so good-natured through all of it. Amm had a hard time getting back to himself and believe it or not, my boy who wants to munch constantly, wasn't interested in eating or drinking much of anything. So what we thought was going to be one night ended being 5 days in the hospital! But truthfully, it wasn't that bad. Primary's is such a great hospital! They treated us so well and the nurses and aides were really kind and supportive! Ammon was an amazing little trooper! The aides or nurses would come in and he'd hold out his little baby arm for the "doctor hug" (blood pressure cuff)and he was always pleasant and took his medicine so well. And the whole time he was healing - the whole month of April - and going through one procedure after another, he did what was asked, stayed postitive and brave, and took good care of his stuffed animals who also had sore backs and needed tender loving care!
We are grateful to Drs. Riva-Cambrin and Sadiqi and all the nurses, aides, staff at Primary Children's. Our family and friends who called and visited and facebooked gave us strength and love that at least I really needed and appreciated. We didn't come home until Easter day and Mark and Jodi and the kids brought the boys Easter baskets, and Judy and Debbie did too and then when we drove up to our home the Bergstrom Bunnies had visited us and spoiled us!! It's so wonderful to have so many kind and loving people in our life! What would we do without all of you??