National Dog Day

And since I am blogging tonight, who would I be if I didn't do a quick blog on the first 3 children, the "Osco's"! Especially since a few thousand dollars have gone to the vet this past week! These boys have been through a lot with me, and I am having a hard time wrapping my head around the fact that they aren't spring chickens anymore. That said, we still ring in the total with 235 pounds of dog!

Rosco is 10 now! Hard to believe my first little puppy is a senior! He is happy, healthy, and loving life. He has not had any more issues since his leg surgery late last year. He just may live forever!


Costco will be 10 in December. He is beginning to get arthritis, but honestly, he doesn't move around less than he ever did! He definitely gets an award for being the worlds laziest dog!

Then there is 8 year old Bosco. He just had surgery last week on his elbow because he developed an open wound because bits of his arthritic bones are chipping off, and he developed a tumor around it. The vet said it was the strangest thing she has ever seen.  We found out today that the pathology was normal, and he is doing great after surgery.

I took these pictures just now...however, any time of day, you can find them in a similar position!

Rosco

Costco

Bosco

Kaycie Turns 2!

Kaycie is 2! It has gone by in a blink. Life has been so incredibly busy, but a good busy!

 

In July/August we spent some time at the beach in Florida with my parents and sister's family. We had so much fun, but I will say that vacation is not quite as relaxing with 3 in tow! Kaycie struggled the first few days, but she seemed to love it by the end. LJ loves the water and is a little fish, so he was in heaven. Eli is just to young to care...but he is a go with the flow little guy, so he is happy as long as as he has a toy or person to play with. It was so nice to have built in playmates with Sam and Max, and we even got a little bit of time out alone, just Matt and I.

 

We have continued our regular apppointments with Kaycie, and back in May her neurologist convinced us to go forward with some genetic testing. She is doing so well, but she has all of the seemingly random diagnoses that they wanted to see if we could come up with some better answers. We found out last month that she does have a chromosome deletetion, however it is rare, so we haven't gotten a whole lot of information on it yet. They are sending us to Emory Genetics to meet with a doctor there that can help us figure out what it all means. They also want Matt and I to have a genetic panel done to see if either of us has the deletion as well. We have been stalling on it because we are currently fighting the insurance battle again, and it is exhausting. They love to call genetics "experimental", and therefore not covered. Until we settle Kaycie's testing, we are not jumping in to it. Emory schedules appointments way out, so we have some time to figure that out with insurance before her January appointment. We are at peace. The deletion is relatively small in comparison and she is doing well. This is the exact reason that we sort of stalled on doing it to begin with. It is so much easier to do now than it used to be and therefore, they are constantly developing new "syndromes" to go along with different deletions. That said, I always wonder how many adults have chromosome deletions and never knew it because testing wasn't so readily accessible. Sort of a catch 22 I guess. Now that we do know about it though, we would be ignorant to take the information and completely ignore it, so here we go. My calling is not genetics...so far we only have the report. I have gotten some experience reading medical reports in the past few years, and with most of them I have sort of learned to decipher them. This genetics report is complete gibberish to me though. All I know is that there are a couple of named genes (many are not named because there are so many, and many individually seem innocuous. The ones that end up with names are the ones that have become associated to specific symptoms) that Kaycie is missing. Interestingly enough, one of the "named" ones seems as though it is related to vestibule damage and hearing. Ding ding! We may have put together another piece of the puzzle without ever even doing the hearing genetic panel (we had chosen not to do that right now because at this point it doesn't make a huge difference, and insurance coverage is always iffy...I can only fight one battle at a time)! In that regard, I am interested to see what Emory has to say.  

 

Everyday we learn more about what makes Kaycie B tick. She is this amazingly sweet and smart little girl. She knows her ABCs, she is counting to 10 (and beyond but skipping a few numbers) forward and backwards, she sings songs, she speaks in sentences, she has just exploded in her abilities. She does something everyday that makes me pick my jaw up off the floor. She has a temper...my mom says it was like mine as a toddler. We are slowly learning the difference between a temper tantrum and a sensory meltdown. They are very different and have to be dealt with differently. She usually does great these days, but I do admit, every time I take the 3 kids out alone, I have to say a prayer first. I still cannot pinpoint when a meltdown will hit. Is she extra tired? What type of stimulation gets her? If she has a meltdown, at least one of my other kids will too. LJ doesn't like the screaming, and Eli is still just at that stage of crying when someone else does. I am that mom at the grocery store with screaming kids on occasion trying to get what I need as fast as I can because this chaos is better than tomorrow may be...please be nice.

 

She had a few rough days on our beach trip and pretty much refused her aids the whole week. It is her first line of defense against a meltdown these days. She will take her ears out and hand them to us...that is when we know she is on overload. Last week I took LJ and Kaycie to the denstist and she flipped. I never saw it coming. I am so happy in a way that she is learning to cope by taking them out, but it is also a reminder that she spends so much time on overload. That said, we are thrilled that she is starting to advocate for herself. She wants her aids in much of the time. If she wants them out, forcing her to keep them in is not good.

 

Kaycie had her 2 year checkup yesterday, and she is 34 inches and 27.5 lbs. She is exactly the same size LJ was at 2! She seems to be growing like a weed lately and losing that baby fat in exchange for turning in to a little girl. The doctor was very happy with her progress.

LJ and Kaycie started sharing a room a couple of months ago. That has been an experience. Once they are asleep they do well, but they are up way too late every night, so they have been functioning on too little sleep. We have a 3 bedroom house, so Eli had bee sleeping in our room, and he was getting old enough that our comings and goings at night were keeping him up. He still naps in our room and Kaycie naps in the crib. It is always a shuffle. We have decided that a bigger house will be back on the agenda in a year or two.

 

LJ-My sweet little boy. That is all I can ever say. He wants to make sure everyone is happy, and his heart belongs to his daddy. He started school last week. On day 2, I was told that he was using "potty" words in class...seriously...bathroom words. My kid thinks farts are funny and he was warning his classmates they needed to poop. Ho hum...on to teaching my 3 year old that farts aren't funny after all.

 

LJ does say the darndest things. I created email adresses for the kids awhile back. I will give them the passwords one day. LJ's is full of random statements. For example, tonight I asked what he would eat for dinner. His response, very seriously, was, "Sloppy Joes and grapes, but I am not going to eat the sloppy joes." At least he is brutally honest.

 

Sweet baby Eli--he is a funny little boy. Just laid back. He is 8.5 months old now. He wants desperately to play with the big kids. He loves to make a mess out of the playroom right after we pick it up, he laughs constantly, and he is a pretty good sleeper, although he has only napped once a day since he was about 3 months old. I have felt like I have finally conquered my one lingering desire in having babies, and that was to be able to nurse them. Obviously with LJ and Kaycie it ended in disaster, but I am so proud that we are going strong with Eli! He refuses formula. He does love his food though. I have taken a more baby led weaning approach with him because he always seems to prefer real food over purees. It is insane how much he likes to eat real food...after 2 children who haven't wanted anything until almost a year old. He does not seem to have the milk issue that the other 2 have either. That said, he will still end up on almond milk because that is what we all drink now. I am not buying him regular milk when no one else will drink it. He won't care :) Eli eats a full waffle for breakfast every morning...the exact same amount as his brother and sister. He loves fruits and veggies and potatoes and cheese. The first thing I discovered this week that he doesn't like is green beans.

Spring has Sprung!

So long it has been! I have been thinking about catching up on my blog because since I am horrible with baby books, this is also my way of keeping track of things. That said…3 kiddos has kept me busier than I ever thought I could be! I am just praying that this year brings us more down time, more time to just be, than we had last year. I tracked all of our appointments last year for tax purposes…we had 148 appointments last year. This did not include our visits to the house for Kaycie. There are 255 weekdays in a year. That is a lot of appointments!

LJ-LJ is in the midst of being 3. He is so much fun. He has absolutely horrible temper tantrums, and he is also the most loving little boy. LJ has done so well with Eli. He is very gentle, and he loves to try to make him laugh. He loves to play with Kaycie now that she is getting older, but he also gets super annoyed with her because she is loud. LJ has been in school 2 days a week this year. He loves it. We have signed him up for a 3 day class next year, and he is very excited. I think LJ is going to be our creative soul…he loves building and creating. He loves to draw. He is a big helper around home. I find it hard to believe he will be 4 soon. My baby is growing up. He is playing t-ball. He is having fun playing in the dirt for sure! 

When we are out in public, LJ befriends everyone! He always has a car with him, and he will show it to anyone who will look at it. That said, when we see him at school, I think he is also one of the quieter ones. His teacher says he is doing well. We have learned that he is struggling a little bit with some of his gross motor skills…like running. I talked to Kaycie’s physical therapist about it, and she thinks it could go back to his prematurity. She gave us some exercises to work on with him too. LJ feels. He is sensitive. He loves. He just reads what our moods are, so we have learned we have to be deliberate about the things we say and do because he is very empathetic, even at his young age.

Kaycie-We have made a breakthrough with Kaycie! She is 19 months old now and on the move! She has worked so hard with her speech and her physical therapy. I think I can officially say that we have a walker! “They” told us not to expect her to walk until 2.5 or 3. My little girl is determined if nothing else. The kids love music…they get it from their Daddy. Kaycie has been desperate to dance with LJ around the house for months. She can finally do it! She wiggles her arms and spins in circles. She may have my rhythm right now, but her deaf mentor is amazed that she loves music so much…usually kids that can’t hear it all aren’t drawn to it.

Kaycie officially graduated from speech and physical therapy last week! It is not to say that she won’t ever go to speech again, but at this point, she is past “average” for her age. She has a huge vocabulary both in spoken language and sign language. She has finally decided to keep her aids in. She has realized they help her hear. She finds so much joy in the little things she hears…Mickey Mouse, dogs barking, music…she amazes us every day. You just have to see her to realize everything that is Kaycie…just don’t mind her hot temper. She has one of those too J

Eli-Baby Eli…he is almost 4 months now! Eli is a happy boy. I find myself, in my sleepless nights, having to remind myself that this is the last time I will have newborn cuddles and to cherish every moment. Eli is a cuddler. He is the first baby I have been able to nurse, which is a major wish I have had for all of my babies, but it didn’t work out with LJ and Kaycie. He prefers to sleep in my lap right now. I think Matt secretly loves that he doesn’t take late night bottles because he can sleep J

I haven’t blogged about it, but Eli took a tumble off of our high top table a little over a month ago. He was taken by ambulance to Children’s Hospital of Atlanta where he was seen by one of the top pediatric traumatic brain injury neurosurgeons out there. We had to go back for his follow up today, and he was officially discharged from his care. He said he was the healthiest baby he had seen all week.

I started this post last week and never finished it because our household self-destructed. Matt and I had bronchitis, LJ had a sinus infection, Kaycie had an ear infection and pneumonia, and Eli had bronchiolitis…needless to say, we were down for the count for a few days. Everyone is much better now! I have to take the kids back in on Wednesday for follow up appointments and Eli’s 4 month check-up. Maybe I will be wild and crazy and update again after that!

Eli is home!

Wow...so I guess we came home from the hospital and things got busy! I have thought about updating everyday, but thinking is about as far as I have made it.

 

Eli came home on December 23, which put him at a 17 day nicu stay, most of which was spent getting this eating thing together. He was seeing an occupational therapist for his sucking and a lactation consultant for his breastfeeding. I swore my poor boy just wanted a tube in his nose forever. He finally got it together just in time for Christmas at home!

 

I have to say this transition has been much better than when we brought Kaycie home. LJ wants to help and some days I am still not sure Kaycie stịll doesn't realze she is no longer the baby. Matt was home from the time Eli was born until January 5th. It worked great because he got a week paid fmla and then his usual holiday days off. My mom then came in the afternoons until bedtime for the next 2 weeks to help out! On January 8th, the week Matt went back to work, I had to have a wide excision minor surgery done on an "ugly" mole on my shoulder that they found while I was pregnant. That said, it was in a really bad spot and I was told not to lift anything for 2 weeks while the stitches healed. Needless to say, the stitches never healed and I now have a nasty sore on my shoulder because when they removed them, the wound opened back up...it will make for a good battle scar for sure. Good news is that we got it in time. They had told me that if I left it, it would have been melanoma. So just a psa...have your annual dermatology exams! Funny enough, the first doctor I went to told me it was nothing and ignored it. It made me nervous and when I went for a second opinion was when they biopsied it.

 

Eli has been pretty laid back. He never spits up...this is wierd for me! I didn't know what it was like to smell like spit up all the time! They did send him home on 3 high calorie formula bottles a day...we are supposed to do it until his 2 month appointment, but I have to say we have been fudging a little. I am giving him the same 5 oz a day we did at discharge. It used to take 3 feedings and now it takes 1.5. I came home mostly pumping, but since I failed at breastfeeding LJ and Kaycie (I exclusively pumped with them for 10 and 8 weeks), I was determined to nurse Eli. It has been tiring since in the nicu they start them on bottles, and some days I have wanted to quit. I got mastitis right after he got home, which I wouldn't wish on my worst enemy. We are still figuring it out. I was at my final straw this week because I cannot handle the pain any more, so I had another visit with a lactation consultant who confirmed what I was thinking, that Eli has a lip tie....she also said he has a tongue tie, which can greatly affect nursing. We have an appointment with the ENT that has works with all of Kaycie's hearing issues next week to get it revised. Besides that, my little squirt is now 9 lb 3 oz and growing out of his newborn clothes.

 

Kaycie is doing really well! She does not stop talking. Some days I have to pinch myself because it was less than a year ago that we were at our wits end with trying to figure out why she was so miserable! She is just so happy with a bit of crazy mixed in! We have stopped counting her words (her deaf mentor says that is a good sign that she has too many to count), she puts a couple of words together, and she has really started signing many more just in the past few weeks. We have noticed that some sounds are left out....they are the sounds she doesn't hear, but those should come in time. She still fights her aids if she doesn't have a hat on, but if she has a hat on, she is doing better. She can stand on her own for brief periods from a sitting position. She tries to take a few steps on her own, but her balance balances is still off. She has not missed therapy through all of this craziness because we have tried so hard for their schedules to remain a constant in their lives. She is so proud of herself.

 

LJ is still LJ...he is a goofball but also takes life very seriously. He will talk to anyone any time, but he just fears things. He is afraid we will leave him, he is afraid to get sick (thanks to Sunday school...they had a lesson on the leppers), he is afraid of bad dreams, of being left alone. We are trying to be very encouraging, and we have learned to be very purposeful lin everything we tell him. We have just signed him up for spring t-ball, and he is very excited!

 

In my last post I had mentioned getting Eli's and Kaycie's thyroid levels done again. Good news is that they both came back normal this time...crazy how that works. When they did Kaycie's, they ordered a full metabolic panel too. Her alkaline phosphotase levels came back absurdly high. That could mean a wide variety of things about her liver or bones. After yet another round of bloodwork, they discovered that it is only that her vitamin d levels were very low. Praise God! She is now on a vitamin d supplement a d we will recheck in 4 months.

 

I will leave you with some random pictures from the past month!

 

Kaycie meeting Eli.

LJ and Sam meeting Eli

Santa

Mommy meeting Eli

LJ trying to get Eli to do the thumbs up!