Our beautiful Godson Charlie Lawrence was baptised. Thank you Kelly and Jacob for allowing us to have such an awesome responsibility!
We had a wonderful Christmas and enjoyed great time with both sides of the family. Mass was absolutely gorgeous and the boys were darling in their Christmas outfits that Mommy shopped for for months! Curtis got some pretty cool presents...here is one of his favorites from his poppop coacher and nana!
Thursday, December 31, 2009
Wow What a Month!
What a crazy month this has been for the Counts family! On December 1st we brought home our beautiful baby Nicholas. We had a wonderful time readjusting to meeting the needs of our growing family. Curtis has been an absolute joy and took to his brother immediately. He has also been fantastic at adjusting to a little less attention! We are so incredibly proud of him!

On December 26th Nicholas's little cough wasn't so little any more and we took him to our pediatricians office. Come to find out he had RSV and Bronchialitis. The doctor warned us that it had been a terrible year for the virus and there were a whole lot of cases of it going around. Less than 8 hours later we ended up in the emergency room at Texas Children's Hospital after watching Nicholas struggle to breathe and nurse. We were admitted into an emergency exam room where Nicholas was deep suctioned and given a breathing treatment. Unfortunately, the breathing treatment was unsuccessful and his oxygen levels were dropping by the minute. We were admitted at three in the morning and Nicholas was hooked up to all sorts of machines to monitor his oxygen levels and also placed on continuous oxygen via a nasal cannula. We all tried to get a little bit of sleep while keeping one eye on the machine at all times. He did okay through the night but every time the doctors tried to ween him off of his oxygen his levels dropped instantly. All throughout the next day he stayed on his oxygen and maintained relatively stable oxygen levels. During the night (Sunday) he had a really rough patch where he was really struggling to breathe and was unable to nurse or catch his breath. His oxygen levels dropped even though he was on continual oxygen. He pulled out of his distress on his own and we breathed a sigh of relief. At eight in the morning he went into distress again but this time much worse. He began to wheeze and his breaths became short and quick. He was unable to nurse and his cries turned into whimpers. The nurses ran around and tried to deep suction him to no avail. We called for a respiratory therapist who had a little more success suctioning him and then we tried a breathing treatment which thankfully worked this time. After an hour of watching our sweet little guy struggle he appeared to be doing a little better. Needless to say we got five star treatment after that and doctors and nurses flooded in continuously to monitor his breath sounds. Our doctor kept telling us it was "really good" that she could still hear breath sounds in his lungs! That didn't sound "really good" to us! His oxygen was cranked up even higher and he continued to have breathing treatments every four hours to make sure he didn't have another attack. By the next night he appeared to be turning a corner and was finally able to maintain his pulse oxygen on his own. We were discharged on Tuesday afternoon and sent home with breathing treatments every four hours for at least another week. Turns out that adults are susceptible to RSV also and Jacob and I most likely have it as well as we came home with head colds. Curtis ended up with a double ear infection which our pediatrician believes is from RSV as well. What a week we have had! Praise God that Nicholas is doing better and we are so thankful for all of our friends and family for all their help and prayers! Thank you a million times to my mom for taking rounds at the hospital to support me while Jacob came home to give Curtis some stability. Thank you to Dad, Jan and Daryl and Barrett and Jessica for helping out with Curtis while we were away! We are so blessed!
We ended the month with Curtis's 3rd birthday! No party this year seeing as we got out of the hospital only the day before but we did have some brownies and candles(thanks a million Tommy and Kelli!). So hard to believe that our big guy is three already! We absolutely do not deserve such a loving little boy but are so glad that God blessed us with him! Happy New Year everyone! We will spend it catching up on sleep...given the excitment of the past few days none of us will have our eyes open at midnight that's for sure!
Sunday, December 6, 2009
St. Nicholas
St. Nicholas...pray for us! Today is the feast day of the amazing holy man whose name we choose to give our son. To read more about him check this site out:
Jacob goes back to work tomorrow. I am pretty sad to see an end to his stay at home! Its been a great week for all of us and I wish we could have daddy 24/7 every week! Guess someone has to pay the bills though! I'll end with some fun snow day pictures...it was so beautiful and fun! Oh and just a cute picture of Nicholas sleeping after mass today. Have a blessed week everyone!


I think its pretty neat that Nicholas's first Holy Mass was also the feast of his patron saint! This was our first outing as a family of four and things went perfectly. Nicholas wasn't too happy to have his picture taken after mass but its still a cute picture of him crying!
Tuesday, December 1, 2009
Introducing Nicholas Michael!
Just one day after the last post Nicholas Michael made his grand arrival! He was born Monday, November 30th at 6:14 am. He weighed in at a whopping 9lbs 4 oz and was 21 1/4 inches long!!! He is a big 'ol healthy little linebacker! Labor went really well and thanks be to God was very fast as well! We are headed home from the hospital this afternoon and can't wait to be at home with our beautiful new addition to our already great family! Thanks to everyone for all your prayers and help over the past few days! Lots of pictures on Picasa.
Sunday, November 29, 2009
Still Waiting
Friday, November 20, 2009
Waiting and Watching
Just a waiting game now...only about 2 and 1/2 weeks left until D day! Trying to find a good balance between staying busy and resting. Nesting like crazy...although that is not really out of the ordinary for me! Grandpa is coming in this weekend and we are all dying to see him again. Mom has off all next week so we are really looking forward to having some quality time with both of them. We are hoping that Nicholas gets the memo and joins the family time before Grandpa has to head back to Florida!
Our local Chick Fil A threw us a celebration party on Wednesday so all of our families could get together and watch us receive all of our awesome prizes for being the Grand Prize Winner in the Cow Appreciation Photo Contest. It was a great night of free food and awesome fellowship. The kids were super cute all dressed up in their costumes again.
Goodbye for now...hopefully the next post is about Nicholas's arrival! Oh and check out this belly, I think there could have been a few extra kids in that picture if I wasn't blocking them!
Thursday, November 5, 2009
In Full Bloom





My amazingly talented friend and neighbor took these fantastic maternity shots of me and our family last week. I intended to do the shoot a little earlier in the pregnancy but I'm glad things didn't work out until now as this is a more true representation of about to pop! She did a wonderful job of capturing our entire family during this exciting time of waiting and preparing to meet our little guy. I posted my favorites here although it was really hard to decide! You can view all of the pictures here:enter into the proofing galleries
Our photo shoot is titled 10/26/09 Maternity/Family and the password is Counts
If anyone is looking for quality family/children/maternity professional photographs at a reasonable price let me know. She is not only incredibly talented but a lot of fun as well. She took most of these pictures in our master bedroom after she set up all of her cool equipment. It was a great experience and I am glad to have some nice photos to remember just how HUGE my tummy has been this pregnancy!
Wednesday, October 28, 2009
Not for the faint of heart!
We went to the playground this morning with Jessica, Clare, & Francis...a normal occurrence until this happened...
Honestly, this picture doesn't do it justice since you loose the depth aspect. Its a giant gaping hole exposing the insides of his tongue muscles. Oh ya and he got it from the underside as well. Thankfully the holes didn't line up so it didn't officially go all the way through.

A call to the pediatricians office sent us to the local urgent care center. Mommy was slightly panicking on the way as his tongue was so swollen he couldn't close his mouth anymore. Forty five minutes later Curtis finally stopped screaming bloody murder when he fell asleep in the back seat. As soon as the doctor walked in we had to wake him up and screaming resumed. That HAD to hurt! They believed that even though tongues normally heal pretty well on their own, this one was so jagged and deep that it would probably need stitches. So they sent us to Texas Children's Hospital. The first doctor at TCH said she couldn't decide if we should stitch it or not, the second doctor said the same thing, finally they sent us into the procedure preparation room and brought in an entire team of doctors to decide. In the end it was thought that the procedure was too risky for a borderline call. Obviously they would have had to sedate him in order to do the stitches, the bleeding involved in the procedure is quite a bit given the rich blood flow in the tongue, the airways of toddlers is not something to mess with, and the pain and discomfort of a stitch on a little tongue was in the end not worth it. Thank God! We were both really anxious about him having to be put under. So we are now home with our minced meat tongued child...sigh! The really sad thing is that it wasn't even a spectacular fall. It was a total run of the mill happens a thousand times a day little trip that sent us running around from hospital to hospital! Poor little guy!
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