Katie's Nose and Ryan's Home Preschool
Johnson Family Newsletter - May 2001
Chris is in his second and last week of Orthopedic Surgery. It’s pretty awful hours. He gets up at 4:15am every day. Next week he will start Urology and then he’ll finish off with 2 weeks of Anesthesiology. And then we will be done with 3rd year. It is coming very fast. Chris’ basketball seasons came to an end last month and now he’s starting soccer. I’m excited to go and watch some of his games.
I’m busy with lists and lists of things to do. We found a bunch of big boxes and we’re slowly starting to pack things away. It’s hard to believe we only have 2 1/2 months left. It makes me sad. We will sure miss our friends and great ward. I will miss our weekly girls night. We have been getting together every Thursday night to paint or scrapbook. Our husbands call it group therapy. Chris is very supportive. He’s a good husband to let me leave so often to be without the kids. I’m way behind in my scrapbooking. I’m excited to go scrapbook shopping in St. George. I’m way out of supplies.
Ryan is a big boy. It is amazing how well he can talk and answer questions and remember stuff. He is going through a “No I not” stage and it’s driving me crazy. What a handful. He gets in trouble all the time now for laying on Katie, or pushing Katie over, or getting in Katie’s way when she’s trying to crawl somewhere. He is a bully but then he apologizes to her and gives her kisses. He likes to sit by her and put his arm around her too. Katie has started to ‘chase’ him lately and Ryan thinks it’s so funny. Ryan’s favorite movie these days is Jurassic Park. He hums the melody around the house all the time. It’s so funny. Ryan LOVES his preschool every Tuesday morning. I love it too. He has such a great time with his little friends. They are so cute together.
Katie is an expert crawler these days. And she can climb the stairs SO fast. She loves her baby cookies, Ritz crackers and Cheerios and is starting to eat better. She also likes a bottle of juice. Katie’s hair keeps growing. She has to have it clipped back or it will cover her eyes. We’ve had to cut her bangs a couple times now. Katie is starting to give Kisses by making a kissing sound with her lips. My young women think it’s so cute. She definitely has a lot of energy. She is always moving and it surprises me how fast she can get from one place to another. She likes to stand up and hold on with one hand. She is very daring.
We are excited for our vacation. It will be so fun to see everyone in St. George. That’s only six weeks away and it is going to come so fast.
Love Chris, Lisa, Ryan and Katie
Katie’s Nose
For some reason the kids were playing with the cookie cutters. The one metal one was a red heart that I suppose an almost three year old Ryan and 11 month old Katie both wanted to hold. When Ryan let go, it flung back and cut Katie giving her an upside down V shaped facial laceration right on the bridge of her nose. All I know is that I heard a little cry and saw blood. I immediately picked her up and tried to wash it in the bathroom sink. I could tell it was deep and bad. Amid my panic I hurried to get the kids ready and in the car and began the twenty minute drive to National Naval Medical Center in Bethesda, MD. I remember lots of crying and praying each time I turned to look back at my precious girl. It was about 4:30 when we got there – I remember being completely weak as I tried to get the kids out of the car and into the emergency room. Chris was doing a rotation at Walter Reed. I tried the hospital phone but couldn’t get a hold of him. We were in the waiting room for hours. Everyone made comments on how cute Katie was. ‘Cute?’ I thought to myself... “can’t you see the piece of flesh missing from her nose???” Excuse me for being dramatic. Finally the ENT docs were paged and prepped her for surgery. Since she was so young there was no way they could repair it without putting her out. After 9 messages home to Chris I still couldn’t get a hold of him. ENT docs reassured me that she would be fine and I wouldn’t even be able to see it when she went to her highschool prom. ‘High School prom???” I thought... ‘what about her first birthday???’ Katie went in to surgery and Ryan and I waited and waited. Meanwhile Chris had decided to go play in a softball game with his friends leaving several messages for me at home. He played a great game, hitting for the cycle (which means he hit a single, a double, a triple and a homerun during the game). When he finally got home and saw the answering machine blinking 17 messages he knew something was wrong. 15 minutes later he was down at Navy just as Katie came out of surgery. I remember her raspy cry. I cried as Chris entered the room. I fed Katie and we waited for a little while before heading home just before midnight. What a day. During the days and weeks that followed doctors were happy with Katie’s nose and it’s healing. Luckily it healed fine. We can still see it but these days we hardly notice it... it’s just our Katie! This incident prompted us to finally go and buy our first cell phone.
Ryan was so good at the hospital. The nurses and doctors were so great with him. They took him for walks to get juice, take tours of the hospital and go see the helicopter take off outside. They helped him put stickers all over his shirt and gave him rides in the wheelchairs. He thought it was fun. Katie was so good too. She didn’t seem to think she was hurt and smiled at everyone who would look at her. She crawled around with Ryan, practiced standing up all by herself and took steps holding on to Mom and Ryan’s hands. She was the ‘hurt’ one and yet I think I suffered more.
Ryan’s Home Preschool
This year Ryan was in a home preschool with his friends Jace Breinholt, Kennidy Creswell, Ethan Carlson and Elise Cummings. Every Tuesday they took turns going over to each others house to sing songs, do art projects, eat snacks and play play play! They learned their colors, shapes and alphabet. They also went on a lot of outings to the zoo, the park, the library and the fire station. Ryan loved going to Preschool!
Last Thursday night was Ryan’s 2 year old preschool Graduation BBQ at Black Hills Park. I am not the one who planned this. I actually think it is kind of silly to have a graduation party for 2 year olds who didn’t even realize they were going to preschool OR graduating from anything, but it turned out to be quite a big thing. I was in charge of the graduation certificates - that’s right up my alley. Someone else was in charge of formal invitations, someone else made frames with the kids picture in it. Someone else made graduation hats and then someone else was the official MC for the ceremony. Chris adn I, as well as Jared and Geneva (even though they are not in it) had a great time laughing about what a big deal this is. But when we got there, we really did have a great time and Ryan loved all the attention. They sang songs in front of all the parents and then each one came forward with their graduation cap and were awarded their certificate. They loved their hats. They didn’t take them off the whole night as they ran and played.
Letter from Lisa - May 30, 2001
It’s Wednesday again and so much has happened since last week. Our weekend was fun. On Saturday we went shopping at the outlet malls in Virginia. Chris is a good sport … we shopped for hours. Sunday we both taught classes at church, had meetings and then went to the baptism of a new guy in our ward. Then we went over to the Chuggs to play games till late. On Memorial Day, we went to a cute new playground and played around and then picked up some food from BAJA Fresh and rented ‘What Women Want’. Chris hadn’t seen it yet and I really enjoyed it more the second time. It sure has some funny parts. We put the kids to bed early and put the laptop up on our counter top and watched as we ate and then finished the movie while lying on our bed. We are enjoying our ‘portable DVD player’. It’s so fun.
Tuesday wasn’t such a good day