5 Months!

Given the madness of going back to work and another hospital trip, this month genuinely felt like it flew by…

Suddenly she’s 5 months!

And sooooo adorable! Repeating her chair lean from the previous month, but she is definitely getting stronger and closer to being able to sit up on her own. And still trying to eat anything that is close enough to grab!

Everyone looks so excited about photos this month!! They aren’t all looking at the camera, but hey - I will take what I can get!

I asked Thomas to hold up her 5 month card for a photo and she straight up stole it out of his hand. He thought it was hysterical and I think he was a little surprised how fast she got it from him.

Then she decided to play a little peek-a-boo with the card and the camera.

I decided to put her in a normal onesie and pants outfit for the photo session and the boys were obsessed with the fact there was a cupcake on her butt. Henry insisted on holding her so I could get a photo of it and Thomas decided to jump in the photo at the last second. It was a mess of a photo, but also a bit hysterical while it was happening. Natalie wasn’t terribly impressed with Henry’s positioning…

But she was pretty content to chill in her big brother’s lap. Henry loves to hold Natalie any chance he gets, so I let him hold her once we were mostly done taking photos. I thought it was pretty funny how giant his feet looked compared to hers. He’s definitely not the baby anymore!

But we had to get a few more photos of little miss since it’s her big day! The boys wanted to get Grape Bunny and her Pinkie in the photo with her. She’s finally bigger than them! Pretty sure that those are both from the Aunts, so hopefully they like that she was pretty excited about both of her stuffed friends!

We also thought we would try one of her bigger bows, but we all decided it still looks too big on her. Though the contrasting color was nice!

I finally put her down on the floor on her pillow to get a little tummy time while I straightened the room up post photo shoot. The boys were busy playing with all of her toys that were now on the floor and she was totally entranced with watching them. This girl loves her big brothers! :)

And I love all three of these crazy, adorable kiddos. :)

Weekend of Parties!

Somehow, we ended up with invites to three parties this weekend. Mom figured we could use a little bit of fun after the crazy week and offered to hang out with Natalie, so we told everyone we would try our best to be there!

The first party was for one of Thomas’ classmates who also happens to be the son of a coworker. We’ve been to their house several times and the boys immediately took off to play as soon as we got there.

As a side note, their mom also offered to drop Thomas off at summer camp all last week while Natalie was in the hospital and Matt was out of town. Her two oldest were also going there and they live in the same neighborhood, so I don’t think it was too much extra burden for her. But it was a huge help to me!

The party had a western flair to it and the boys had a blast demanding I take their photos while they used all the fun photo props. I love Henry’s cheese-tastic smile on this one. :)

Then off to a party at one of Henry’s friends from daycare (also the son of a coworker - it’s a small town!). We loaned them our bouncy house for the party and all of the kids had a blast running around in the yard going crazy. That’s always dangerous at our house, but they don’t have dogs so their yard doesn’t have poop hiding everywhere. ;)

Of course, Thomas found this nerf gun and was entranced. He’s been doing archery at summer camp and it was a pretty similar firing mechanism. Surprisingly, he wasn’t asking for me to buy him one as soon as we left. I think they were both pretty exhausted already…

Final party of the day was actually back at the first house. Not only was there a birthday, they also had a moving party. The dad is getting transferred to the Midland office and they decided to just celebrate everything today! Come to think of it, the move to Texas might be what inspired the cowboy theme of the party…

Matt doesn’t always love going to coworker parties with me because we don’t really have many coworkers in common and he usually doesn’t know many people. But at this party, he managed to find himself! He found a coworker’s husband who is also into hunting and they spent most of the party (in their flannel shirts and camo hats) talking about various hunting trips.

I’m not sure he appreciated the twinkie-ness as much as I did. :)

Since the party was so close, we obviously walked there. On the way home, we decided to take a short cut through the green space behind our house. The boys thought bush-whacking was the coolest walk back home ever. I didn’t exactly have on the most appropriate shoes for it, but it was pretty fun!

In the Hospital, Take 3?

Well it’s not like this was a total shock, since Natalie had been showing pretty clear signs of being sick this weekend. She threw up (or refluxed - the line between the two is blurry) all but one of her feeds on Sunday and had a horrible night. Since Matt is gone, mom offered to help if I needed it. I think I finally tapped out at 3AM and she took over.

I called the pediatrician Monday morning and we got an appointment to get her checked out. Since we got the Owlet (fancy bluetooth baby O2/heart rate monitor) for her a few weeks ago, I even printed out the last few nights of her O2 stats to show how she is struggling to keep her numbers up. We have a normal O2 monitor she uses as well, but we added the Owlet for our piece of mind and because it tracks her data every night and we can see it historical trends. The other one is really only good for real time information. Either way, they were both going off a lot last night.

I probably looked like a crazy mom, but at least our pediatrician is well aware of her issues and appreciates the fact that I am a scientist at heart and having data makes me happy. He chuckled when I pulled the graphs out, but only because it was so fitting for me. He did appreciate the extra info as well. He sent her down to x-ray to decide for sure the best course of action.

Which, of course, was getting admitted back to the hospital. Sigh… I wasn’t thrilled about it, but as awful as last night was - at least we have some backup in keeping an eye on her. And hey - she got her old room back, so at least that is familiar.

(This was the photo I sent Matt to tell him we got admitted. I think my feelings were fairly clear!)

They did the usual slew of tests when they admitted her and this time she tested positive for Parainfluenza 3, which is the #2 cause of serious respiratory illnesses in young children. RSV is #1 and thankfully she got vaccinated for that one!

Thankfully she’s not sick enough that she needed the high pressure air this time, just low flow oxygen and some breathing treatments. And she seemed unfazed by the Albuterol as long as she had her binkie!

Aunt Heather even came to the rescue and picked the boys up for me. She made an exciting night of pizza making and hanging out so they didn’t even seem to mind that I was missing.

And my amazing mom even offered to spend the night at the hospital so I could sleep. There’s a lot to be said about having family around!

Look at her not even caring about her vitals check. It’s all old news to this girl. And she improved enough overnight to not need the extra oxygen!

Some improvement, but was definitely not feeling great. On the bright side, it meant I got extra snuggles!

I brought the boys by to see their sister and check out her room. Neither one of them were sick, so I figured it wouldn’t hurt to bring them by. It certainly made their day! Thomas even made sure that her board was updated with her name. :)

Of course, it was Tuesday and you all know what that means… Taco Tuesday! I was trying to keep things as normal as possible and that means Taco Tuesday must be celebrated! And yes, I know those are quesadillas, but our interpretation is pretty liberal when it comes to Taco Tuesday. Pretty much anything that is remotely Tex-Mex counts. And these guys looooove the quesadillas at Taco King!

Well I spoke too soon on her not needing oxygen. This is about what happened last time. She would do great during the day and then overnight, she would need some extra oxygen support.

Also I think she looks very skeptical here. Like how on Earth could her mother make her do tummy time while she is clearly ill enough to be in the hospital?? Her therapists were pretty proud of her not slacking off though!

As I previously mentioned, I am officially back at work, which makes her being in the hospital much more challenging. Our IT department hooked me up with a laptop to work remotely, but there was a pretty important meeting this week that I didn’t want to miss. Thankfully, Mom was happy to hang out with her while I was at work.

Understandably, my stress levels are a little high this week and I was totally planning on grabbing an ice cream out of the vending machine to treat myself. Luckily for me, there was some event downstairs as I was leaving and they were handing out ice cream! Score!

They decided to try some breathing medicine that was delivered via inhaler. I was super curious how they get a tiny baby to use an inhaler and I was not disappointed with the clever-ness of this device. She was less impressed with it, but it works whether they are calmly breathing or throwing a fit!

She’s gotten much more into her toys since the last hospital visit so we made sure to have a selection to play with. I think mom was the smart one who hung them off the IV pole, but it was a perfect spot for her to look at them when she was chilling in bed.

More tummy time! She didn’t seem to mind it quite as much when she had such a cute baby to look at. Though the really impressive part was her timing on blowing this giant snot bubble as soon as I was snapping her picture. Gross!

The boys came back for another visit and discovered the giant white board behind her door. Thomas decided to draw her a family portrait. I’m not sure why Henry doesn’t have any hair, but I loved it. Unfortunately he is his own worst critic and wanted to erase it right away. Thankfully he let me take a photo of it.

But that wasn’t the only excitement! We stopped and got her balloons to brighten up her room. She loved them so much! We managed to tie them off so they were at her eye level and she stared at them and whacked at them when you put them in arm’s reach. She was obviously starting to feel better and actually got to come home the next day!

Only 5 days for this bout - our visits are getting shorter! I’ll take that for a silver lining. :)

Weekend Hijinks

Matt took off Saturday morning for a work conference in Florida, so the rest of us had big plans of a totally boring weekend at home. We are all about the stay-cation life this summer…!

Which, of course, means a visit to the farmer’s market! We may or may not buy anything actually grown on a farm, but we will always buy kettle corn - ha! You can see the boy’s totes they are carrying around. There is always an argument over the tote bags and heaven forbid I don’t fill them equally… although Nonni is also sporting one and I don’t remember her complaining. ;)

One of our friends got their baby girl a cool pair of sunglasses and I went and got a pair too. I was way more excited about them than Natalie was! You can’t really tell from the photo, but I am 99% sure she is zonked out. (She finally stopped trying to rip them off her face once she was asleep…)

The boys discovered frozen bananas today at the Farmer’s Market… For full disclosure - I may have pointed them out even though I am a banana hater. I figured they would like them and I was totally right. Good thing I love them more than I dislike bananas. ;)

Since it was such a nice day outside, the boys even talked me into taking them up to the park to play. Henry was so happy that he even gave me a real smile! :)

One thing that has absolutely been a game changer for my weekends is the ClickList option at our grocery store. I pick out the groceries on the phone app, send an order to the store, show up a few hours later and they bring me all of my groceries. I don’t even have to leave my car. It’s amazing!

Plus I have a cute helper at home to unload groceries with me. Not sure why he’s not wearing socks. But now I know why his socks have been so dirty recently… ;)

I made smoothies with breakfast this morning and the boys were so excited! I haven’t made them in awhile and they both kept going on and on about how we should do them more often. The Rainforest Cafe cups probably helped with the excitement - unfortunately I couldn’t get the smoothie out of them and decided they had reached the end of their lifespan. Hopefully the boys don’t realize they are missing for a long, long time…

Shhhhh!

The only downside to the weekend is that this girl doesn’t seem to be feeling great. She’s much snottier than usual and has definitely been having more reflux issues. Case in point - she’s wearing a blanket at the moment because she just soaked both of us.

Seems happy enough to be chilling with momma at the moment, but I hope she starts feeling better soon!

Company Picnic

Now in it’s 5th year for our family - the annual company picnic was here again! And good weather again this year!

Since the boys are no longer in the same place, it’s a little less convenient to get Thomas there. So I gave Matt the job of fetching the eldest and I took the easy job of getting Henry from daycare. While we waited for them to show up, we had a snack! Henry didn’t think the pretzel stick was nearly as exciting as I did. Maybe he thought it was an empty corndog??

Henry got tired of waiting, so we took off to do some chasing in the inflatable maze. This kid is much quicker and sneakier than previous years…

Thomas and Matt finally got there and Thomas went straight for the Lego display. Is anyone surprised? I’m not!

Next up was the giant obstacle course. Henry was having a blast running through the course, though I’m not sure he was terrible confident about the first time down the slide…!

The next time through the two of them got to race and Thomas just barely beat his brother - who didn’t seem to care at all. They went through it several times and clearly had a blast! (They make Thomas take his glasses off to go through it and it doesn’t seem to faze him at all.)

And I finally got my cheesy smile photo! I probably should have taken it before they were all hot and sweaty, but I think Henry was bright red before Thomas even showed up. Side note - who are these giant boys? Just look at how much they have grown since the picnic two years ago!

I finally managed to get them away from all of the fun stuff so we could go get some food. And the eldest one went straight for the fruit cup full of melon. Ugh. I mean, I am glad he’s such a healthy eater, but melon… Just ugh.

Luckily the dessert was unhealthy enough to make up for anything healthy we had already eaten. It’s a little hard to tell, but it’s a giant scoop of ice cream on top of a donut. With all the extra goodies, of course. It was about as ridiculously good as you would imagine it was. A great ending to a fun filled evening - as always! :)

The only change from the previous two years is that we aren’t going to the cabin tomorrow. :(

Huge bummer, but I just wasn’t up for no electricity or running water with the baby just yet. I offered to book it for Matt and the boys, but we just decided to wait until next year. Hopefully whoever got the cabin this weekend enjoyed it as much as we have!

Seattle Trip

When the ENT was discussing follow up care with us for Natalie, she mentioned that she was part of a group of doctors that focused on cleft palate issues. That isn’t an issue that Natalie has, but because our doctor is part of this group, she has strong ties to the Craniofacial Center at Seattle Children’s Hospital. She referred us down there to have the team meet and start watching over Natalie and hopefully get us some answers on her various issues.

The big day was finally here and I was super nervous about flying down there. Flying with babies in general always gets me amped up, but add in the monitors, feeding tube and my pump - well it felt pretty overwhelming. Luckily, the flight down was a dream and she pretty much slept the whole way. We were worried about her ears bothering her, but she didn’t even stir as we landed. Whew!

Another awesome aspect to going to Seattle is that we have friends who live there and are super close to the hospital. (Thomas and I actually stayed in their house when we went down for the fourth of July one year). It’s so great to stay with friends that also have kids because they have all kinds of things that make it less stressful than staying in a hotel. I mean, what hotel would have a cool Lightning McQueen chair?

Natalie was unimpressed, but the boys thought it was great when we sent them the photo. :)

All of my stressing and planning failed me a bit this morning and I didn’t get her feed started early enough. So I had to pause her feed for them to do her vitals, which including laying her down to check her weight and length. If you have ever had a baby with bad reflux, you know that this is a terrible idea. She, of course, refluxed most of her meal right back out. Sigh - parenting fail… I swear she’s giving me the “Really mom?” look. Probably because she was currently only wearing a blanket.

The silver lining is that her breathing picked up that coarse sound that it has so often and all of her new doctors got to hear it. They definitely had some concerns about the reflux and it damaging her esophagus. They some ideas for different reflux medicines that insurance would cover.

As for the rest of the visit, there isn’t much to be done yet for her ear reconstruction, but we did get to meet the whole team. Once she is a little older, they can do some more imaging to see the condition of her inner ear structures and what the best path forward will be.

The trip home was very peaceful! We didn’t really get any answers like I had hoped we would, but they want us to come back in a few months so they can do an endoscope and take a good look at her esophagus and related structures while under anesthesia. Our local ENT took a look at her while she was awake and she has so many secretions that it was hard to see much. By putting her under for the procedure, they can really get her cleared out before taking a look. So a bit of a holding pattern until then… :(

But they didn’t send us home totally empty handed. We told them that she sleeps in a wedge, but ends up in bed with us most nights because she throws a fit after a few hours in it and we can’t get her calmed down until she’s on her back. So they had the physical therapy department squeeze us in and got her fitted for a different style of wedge. Our friend amazingly had a giant bag for us to stick it in to fly home with it, so it made the trip without falling apart.

Here’s hoping it helps!

Random May Photos

So much randomness this month!

I think it’s a rule that no baby actually loves tummy time, so we try to keep her entertained as long as possible to encourage her to stay in tummy time. Apparently watching her big brother sort out Legos was pretty entertaining, she was happy enough to stick it out for quite a while.

Equally awesome is the fact I didn’t have to do the Lego sorting this time!

Check out Thomas’ awesome birthday present from Theresa! Taco Tuesdays are a big thing in our house and she sent the most perfect gift ever - a Tricera-taco holder!

Don’t ask me why my kids think tacos need olives, that’s a defect of theirs I have learned to live with. ;)

Speaking of weird food preferences, this was the requested lunch from my eldest. I was scrolling through Pinterest with him and was wondering out-loud who on earth would want a cucumber mini-sandwich?!? Cue my crazy child asking for me to pack it for his lunch. And he wanted melon! I am not entirely sure this kid got any of my genetics…

Look at this big girl holding her head up like a champ! Such awesome neck strength! I guess all the effort spent on tummy time has been worth it. Such a cutie-patootie, huh? :)

Given I tend to worry about all possible disaster scenarios, I needed a plan if we lost power and the feeding pump died. Syringe feeding via gravity is a very common way of tube feeding, but I have never tried it. I read up online on ways to make it easier and found this bottle holder that supposedly worked great for holding syringes. Except it was too wide and I had to wrap paper towels around the syringe to keep it from falling through. So it was kinda a success, though Natalie doesn’t look terribly impressed, does she?

Do you ever get out in public with your kids and then realize they look a little ridiculous? I mean, they totally fit in with the Alaskan spring clothing you see around town, but still…

And you can just barely see that Natalie has come with us to Costco. It’s practically become a weekend tradition. The boys never argue with going to Costco when they know there will be samples! (Henry’s sad face is because he finished his sample and I wasn’t inclined to let him have double of everything…)

Back to the NICU, but just for a drop-off this time! I loved all the outfits they dressed her in when she was staying here and we wanted to donate her outfits she had outgrown. We had quite the pile of button-up newborn clothes and we donated them all. Hopefully they brighten some other mom’s day. :)

Thomas kept telling me that he was having a talent show at his school and asking me to come. I told him if Natalie was in a cooperative mood, we would try to come. And she mostly was - she started to lose it right as it started, but a few bounces in my arms and she was fast asleep. Whew!

Kindergarten did a group song & dance performance. He wasn’t the most exuberant dancer up there, but he got through it!

I know I’ve mentioned it many times, but this guy loooooooves his baby sister. He gets frustrated with me that I won’t just let him carry her around and hold her all the time, but he seemed pretty happy with my suggestion to he read her a book. Of course, it’s not one he can actually read yet, so he mostly just made up a story to go with the pictures. Love his imagination!

And I finally had to go back to work… :(

Those 4 months just seemed to fly right by. All the grand plans I had for maternity leave were a total bust - especially any sort of physical activity, but thankfully most of my work clothes fit again. And two of my coworkers decided to surprise me with goodies to make the first day back better. Thanks for making my Monday a little bit brighter, Jenny & Liz! :)

Thomas finally got to take his orange belt test. He was ready to take it months ago, but it was while Natalie was in the hospital, so I didn’t sign him up for it. Imagine my surprise when they took away the “stripes” on his belt and made him start all over as a yellow belt since he didn’t take the test. Surprisingly, he seemed less upset about it than I was.

But I definitely made sure to get him scheduled for the next test date and even made it there to watch.

One upside to being back at work was being close enough to this guy for lunch dates! He seems pretty happy with it too. :)

And it’s finally time for the farmer’s market again! It’s totally tiny, but we all love going there on Saturday mornings. Some of us are more excited / silly than others, but it’s definitely a family favorite!

Four Months!

Another month and Natalie has definitely surpassed the exciting milestone of being home more than she was in the hospital. Talk about a cause for celebration! (Totally missed the actual day and didn't celebrate at all - but we *should* have!)

I love these three kiddos so much! Even if it's hard to get a genuine smile out of all of them at once. Close enough!

Natalie and I actually started the photo shoot without the boys. She was all wide awake and happy, but they were both taking a much needed nap. So we did her alone photos first! Doesn't she look excited to be 4 months old?!?

I was trying to help her sit up and got this adorable little slouch out of her instead. And you can tell that this little lady has found her hands! She loves holding her hands and trying to stick them in her mouth. All great signs of normal baby development! :)

She did a much better job sitting up in the corner than with her pillow, so we ditched the pillow for the rest of the photos. I tried to prop the number card next to her, but she grabbed it and started waving it around. She loves moving her limbs whenever possible. (I can attest to her doing that back when she was growing inside of me...!)

I left her BAHA off to get a few photos without it, but didn't want to totally leave it off. Before I took this photo, I slid it on and turned it on - which causes it to *ding* a few times to confirm it is on. You can tell that she paused in her arm waving and listened to the sound. So awesome to get confirmation that she is actually hearing with it and it's making a difference. :)

My adorable little four month old with her nicely accessorized BAHA. So stinking cute!

But back to the three of them! The boys were both very insistent they get a turn holding their baby sister. She looks mezmerized by Thomas in this one, doesn't she?

Not sure what she is doing here, but Henry looks like she has just told him the funniest joke. I bet she hit him - he would find that funny. ;)

And he was super excited about her clothes - he made sure that I noticed she had unicorn feet. Of course she does, why do you think I bought this awesome outfit?? Unicorns make everything better - even baby clothes. :)

But the best part of this month? We got to drop a monitor! She didn't have any events on her apnea monitor all month and we got to return it! We still have to use the O2 monitor when she sleeps (it's mostly useless when she's awake), but that means for a good chunk of the day we have a cordless baby!

So exciting!!!

The BAHA

You've probably noticed the new accessory she's been sporting in some of the recent photos - we finally got her hearing aid a few weeks ago! Since she has a functional inner ear, it's just a matter of getting the sound waves to her inner ear so she can hear - which is where the BAHA comes in. While BAHA stands for Bone Anchored Hearing Aid, she isn't old enough for an anchor, so it clips on to this soft band. 

Sound goes in the BAHA and the sound processor converts it to vibrations which travel from where it rests on her skull to her inner ear. This unit is actually a loner from the audiologist until her real one comes in - thus the reason it has DEMO on the side. But there's no reason to make her wait for surround sound! ;)

She doesn't seem to mind it at all and she definitely showed a reaction to it when the audiologist first turned it on! Like most hearing aids, it does tend to feedback if you get it close to something, so we have to adjust where it sits quite a bit since she spends most of her day on the ground or in chairs. Thankfully, it will work as long as it is resting on her skull somewhere on the left side.

Of course, we soon noticed that she intentionally makes it squeal by reaching up and touching it. Not sure if she finds the sound comforting or she just likes making music. But as much as she does it, I wouldn't be surprised if she ends up wanting to be an electronica DJ... ;)

Still waiting for the new unit, but I did order her a fun band to try out! The BAHA units clip on to a circular piece / button that is sewn onto the band, so I found a company in Oklahoma that sells bands and an aftermarket button that connects to the unit. So far, it seems to work great!

This time next year she will probably have lots of options for accessorizing her outfits with coordinating BAHA bands! :)

Happy Mother's Day to Me! :)

As I was getting Natalie dressed this morning (it's a multi-step ordeal these days!), I heard Henry trying to get his dad to come out in the hallway and help him with something...

Turns out it was buttons! He was insistent that he wear his fancy new clothes for Mother's Day. It was just about the most adorable thing ever. :)

Then he went with his daddy to go get the donuts his momma insisted she wanted for breakfast. And they even drove the extra distance to get the good ones!

Natalie got a little fussy later in the day while I was trying to finish the dishes. It was too soon to put her on her play-mat (stupid reflux!), so I put on nursery rhymes on my phone for her to buy myself a few more minutes. I look over a minute later and realize "The Wheels on the Bus" had drawn a crowd!

Also note Thomas' hat - he was super upset when Henry came home with a Krispy Kreme hat, even though he was the stinker who wouldn't go with his dad to go get donuts. But since I didn't want crying kids on Mother's Day, I dug out a matching Waffle House hat I had hidden away. If only there was really a WH in town...!

Look at this cutie! Apparently holding an object in each hand isn't a skill babies are born with. Up until now, if she was holding something and you put something in the other hand, one thing would immediately get dropped. But not today! Such awesome motor skill development! :)

And you can see another one of her oral development toys - the GOOtensil from the therapist. It's actually a practice spoon (and the Zoli is a gum massager), but for her they are fun toys!

She started to get a little fussy as she was fighting to not fall asleep, but she calmed down once I let her hold my finger. Soon she was happily snoozing and I was happily thinking about how such small moments are the best part of being a mom.

Thanks to my kiddos for spoiling me and I love being your momma so much!