Random October

I swear we did more this month that just celebrating Halloween, it was actually a pretty fun month!

The moose are back and roaming around! And I just love the fall colors! Less exciting has been the ongoing construction on the road, but at least it’s a nice festive color, too… ;)

I was making a meal & grocery list this morning and Thomas randomly asked me how to spell a few words. I didn’t realize he was making his own menu for the week! He wasn’t far off actually this week - ha! Also, he has such good handwriting. :)

Someone’s feet are growing so fast! He told me his sneakers were getting a bit snug, so we went and found a fun pair for him at Target. I wanted to send a photo of his new kicks to his dad and he insisted on retaking the photo because he forgot to make them light up on the first photo.

I bought this skeleton decal after Halloween last year (I love you, clearance!), but apparently didn’t realize how tall it was and didn’t have a wall to put it on. So I changed him to being a slightly more clumsy skeleton on the window. I kept forgetting he was there, so every time I opened the blinds I got a new giggle out of him.

You may have noticed the “Chicken & Waffles” Thomas wrote on his menu. I added that to the rotation a few weeks ago and they love it! Of course, we need to have a discussion on appropriate maple syrup usage…

(He clearly takes after his dad…)

After months of fighting with the insurance about policies versus common sense, we won our appeal for the denial of her BAHA. I was ready to fight longer and escalate it higher, but something in my appeal must have resonated with someone there, because they changed their mind. Cochlear had to confirm with the audiologist before they would fill it though, because it’s apparently pretty rare to win with the specific denial we had. But won we did! (And got an adorable pink headband too!)

And she had her first Visual Reinforcement Audiometry hearing test and did awesome. Obviously they could only test her right ear this way, but she passed at almost all of the frequencies. The only one she couldn’t hear was the one that was the same as her noisy breathing, so no surprise there. Rocking it, baby girl

This kid…

I love him and his adorableness so much! :)

Her g-tube was leaking a little, so I thought it would be a good idea to change it out before our trip to Seattle. Leaking isn’t uncommon, the one-way valve in the middle sometimes gives out and you just have to make sure you put the cap back in it. I posted a photo of the one with a broken balloon, but thought you might be interested in seeing what it should look like.

The top part ("the “button”) sits flush against her skin and the narrow part is what goes through the stoma (opening in the epidermis) and the balloon on the bottom holds it flush against the stomach wall to prevent leaks. The port on the right is how you add/remove water from the balloon. The cap is covering the food port, but that is where the extension clicks into and some what locks in place. This one has been in for about 3 months and I think all of the preference of orange foods has something to do with the yellowish tint it’s gotten since it’s “install”.

Such a fantastic little medical device that keeps our baby girl growing like a champ! :)

After approximately 14 years of debating, I may have given up on Matt and bought a RV! You can tell how excited I am by the cheesy grin on my face. We had some friends leaving Alaska that were selling it and it was the perfect layout for our family - big table, bunks in the back! I can’t wait for next summer to get to use it!

Now Matt just has to buy a truck to tow it… ;)

Baby food! Also baby steps toward this girl’s blended diet. The dietician said most commercial baby foods tended to skimp on the meat portion of the mixed meat & veggie blends, so we made our own. Chicken puree isn’t really that appetizing, but mixed with other stuff starts to look like normal baby food.

Someone stole my phone and was taking selfies of himself in the crown from my Halloween costume. Always a fun surprise to find cute photos I didn’t know existed!

The pharmacy gave us an adapter cap for one of her meds to draw it up with a syringe. I had the brilliant idea to order a bunch of the caps online to use with bottles and her blended food. Unfortunately, I had no idea that measuring bottle caps was such a science and got ones that were too small. :(

I was trying to see if anything else in the house would work and found one bottle it would fit on. Ha - her grandpa definitely approved of that feeding method!

Happy Halloween!

All of the fun pre-Halloween activities, but it was finally the big day! Yay!

Henry wanted to be a doctor this year which was super sweet given the amount of time we have spent with doctors this year. But their lab coat Nonni bought them a few years ago has gotten too small. So I bought him a new doctor’s coat with scrubs. Doesn’t he look ridiculously adorable?!?

Of course, it is Alaska, so we had to layer them up under their costumes. :)

Natalie and I weren’t going to venture out with the boys, so we pulled all the decorations inside so people wouldn’t be ringing the doorbell on us. The pumpkins the boys carved with Nonni while we were in Seattle with Natalie were definitely starting to show their age. Plus they were covered in frost. Poor grumpy pumpkins!

Her therapists up here found her a better high chair for trying to eat foods since the one I bought her isn’t great at keeping her at a specific angle. We have to try and maximize her posture to keep her from having any additional troubles with swallowing.

We get to try solids for a little while before her next swallow study - it’s kinda hard to get a meaningful swallow study if she won’t swallow anything! So we are excited to try this out, even though she seems more interested in playing with the bowl and spoon than eating… Baby steps!

The boys weren’t gone very long before they came running back in the house. Apparently someone had to potty and I thought they had enough candy to not venture back out in the cold again. The promise of hot chocolates and TV time clearly won out over any protests about more trick-or-treating.

Hope everyone had a great October and a Happy Halloween!

Trick-or-Treat in the Street!

Since we like to over celebrate certain holidays, there was no way we were going to miss out on Trick-or-Treat in the Street! And since it’s relatively easy to bring the stroller along, that means it was a family outing!

You can see the boys were both only half interested in dressing up (ha!). Natalie was all in with her adorable unicorn outfit though! And Henry was, of course, giving me ridiculous expressions while I was trying to take photos.

Asking him to sit up and give me a real smile didn’t really improve the situation much… Though Thomas must have thought I was talking to him since he did sit up a little bit straighter. Natalie clearly ignored me - she was too busy waving her arms around like a crazy unicorn.

Also, I kept asking Thomas if he was a meter maid (like in Zootopia!) and he would get so irritated with me because he was clearly a crossing guard. Oh yeah, obviously.

I love her little unicorn outfit. I was just going to let her wear the giraffe, but I saw this at Target and how on earth could I resist such cuteness???

Apparently it was nice and cozy too! It was a little chilly outside, but she was nice and toasty while we were walking down the street collecting candy. She doesn’t even know the excitement she is missing!

Pretty sure this nice police officer snuck Thomas an extra piece of candy since he was dressed as a police officer again this year. :)

Just like last year, we gave up a little earlier on the actual trick-or-treating and headed for the ice cream shop. Henry was not impressed by the fact we had to wait a few minutes.

I love their Halloween names! The boys both settled on the Blood Red. I didn’t think they would really like, but they were insistent!

All smiles about their raspberry sorbets!

But as predicted, neither one of them was interested in actually eating the whole thing. “I don’t like it…”

They’re pretty adorable anyhow. :)

They were happy with the hot chocolates at the next stop though!

Matt & I had a halloween party at a friend’s house tonight, so Aunt Heather came over for the traditional early Halloween party! And she made them slime with glitter glue…

Thanks, Aunt Heather…

I’m just teasing, the kids had a blast and didn’t even care we weren’t hanging out with them all night. It’s nice to get away for a little bit of fun and they like having fun without us sometimes. Win-win!

9 Months!

What? Three-quarters of a year already?? Impossible!

Also impossible to see how big she has gotten! She’s definitely lost the brown hair she was born with and is a blondie! Though both the boys were as well, so she could still go brown later. And, unsurprisingly, I am still so in love with those big blue eyes!

She is clearly still in love with holding on to her monthly cards.

Though this month, she was much more excited to yell at the cards than she was interested in eating them.

Well, she was also interested in yelling at me - just in case you can’t tell from the photos… Henry seemed to think it was fun and was half heartedly yelling with her.

Speaking of Henry… Kid… You are going to kill me with these facial expressions. This was pretty much the best shot of the three of them that I got. Ha. Not our best month!

Though Henry did want to dress in his nice shirt this month, so at least there was that! And even though she was going topsy-turvy, Thomas kept her upright. Such a good big brother!

Aaaaaand there is the card eating! At least she let me get a few photos in before she tried to destroy it.

Henry is clearly done with me. Thomas has forgotten where the camera is. And Natalie is glad she can hear in stereo again.

Thanks for putting up with me for another month, dear baby of mine. I love you whole bunches and can’t believe how big and strong you have gotten. You not only wow me, you blow away all of your therapists who have seen your progress.

You are going to be a force to be reckoned with, little one.

Seattle Trip #2

It seems like we’ve been forever waiting for the follow-up trip to Seattle. Waiting to do another swallow study, waiting to trial food, waiting to see if they can help with the reflux, etc.

But the wait is over! We’re headed down there to hopefully get some more answers! Since we saw a pulmonologist up here in the meantime, he suggested an additional scope procedure in addition to the ones Seattle was already planning. Trying really hard not to stress about it. Clearly I should take a page out of Natalie’s book as she is not the least bit stressed out!

This girl seems very interested in food these days. Obviously she can’t have any yet, but that doesn’t keep her from trying to steal it from you!

She fussed a little bit right as we were taking off, but then her and her dad fell asleep for their plan ride nap. So cute!

We had to check in with the team on Monday morning, but it was just a quick appointment to give updates on how she has been and for them to walk through the procedure plan for Wednesday. Then we had a whole afternoon with nothing to do - might as well go soak up the sunshine and warmth!

She looks pretty entranced with her dada in this photo, huh?

Wonder if she would be so entranced if she knew he was walking her into Lake Union?? ;)

Tuesday we had nothing to do, so our friends suggested a few daytrip options. But first, I wanted to introduce Matt to the donut store down the street from their house that I took Thomas to a few years ago. I went up to get the coffees and when I came back there was a bite taken out of my donut. The size of the bite led me to expect one of my companions more than the other…

Not that she wouldn’t have… I gave her a tiny piece of icing and she sucked it in approvingly! :)

We drove to the north and took one of the less crowded ferries across the sound. She seemed pretty excited about her first ferry ride! (Even if it was a bit windy!)

Chilling in the car away from the breeze. She’s more interested in the people walking by the car than her momma. But I like this photo (even though it was horrible in color) because it shows her ridiculously long lashes. Still soooo long and full - I’m jealous!

After another bit of driving, we finally made it to our destination - Fort Casey and the cliff-side gun batteries that used to defend the entrance to Puget Sound. The views were pretty awesome and the day was just ridiculously gorgeous. And learning about the history of the gun batteries was pretty fun!

Of course, Matt decided to get a bit more up & close to the battery than I did… ;)

Even homegirl seemed to appreciate the adventure and the fresh air! It was by far the most time she has spent in the car and she didn’t complain at all! She must like hanging out with us. :)

Of course, we weren’t just here for fun, so Wednesday morning was time to head back to the hospital. Due to a mix-up, we almost missed our scheduled time, but the staff was thankfully very forgiving. They rushed her through pre-op without actually rushing and made sure they had all of her information right before wheeling her back to the procedure room.

I could have done without the extra stress added to the morning. But I will be forever grateful for our friend running out a coffee to me as we were panic packing the car to get there. You are the best, Katie!

The procedures all went great and she handled it like a champ! She was a bit fussy when she first came out of anesthesia, but otherwise it was no big deal. She had to stay overnight to make sure there were no side effects from the anesthesia - it was so odd being in the hospital with a completely healthy baby!

The scope showed no abnormalities that would cause her any issues with eating or breathing. They did notice her trachea was slightly compressed and managed to squeeze her in for a CT scan to make sure it was a benign cause and not a artery compressing it. The didn’t want to put her under anesthesia again, so the CT team was willing to try doing a speed CT so she could be awake. It went great even though she was yelling at them the whole time (she wasn't a fan of being strapped down…) Thankfully all the arteries are in the right place, so no emergency surgeries were needed!

The ENT recommended trying a gel filler that they generally use to fill laryngeal clefts. She doesn’t have a cleft, but the treatment has shown some improvement in patients with dysphagia. The medical team thought it might help help start trying to eat solids a little more safely and there weren’t really side effects, so we opted to try it. So given all that, she is cleared to try to start eating small amounts of food and we’ll come back to do a follow up with the Aerodigestive Clinic soon.

By the next morning she was clearly ready to bust out of there! I don’t blame her - discharge always takes for-e-ver…!

The next morning, we set off for the airport with enough time to make a few fun stops. I wanted to buy the boys something and figured treats from Trader Joe’s would be as good as any trinket! Plus, look at how awesome she is sitting up in the shopping cart! :)

The flight home was pretty uneventful, with just a little fussiness before crashing and sleeping most of the way (along with her dad). And we made it back in time for another clinic - the Shiner’s orthopedic team was in town for her quarterly appointment. She got some new x-rays she wasn’t terribly excited about doing, but they think her spine still looks nice and straight.

So overall, not a bad week in the medical news department. I’ll take it!

School Halloween Party

The boys had so much fun at Thomas’ school halloween party last year, that we thought we would all try to go and get some family fun in!

Homegirl doesn’t get out as much as the rest of us, so she was super excited about hanging with her big brothers! Since we usually go to several Halloween things and always have a ton of costumes, I never know what they will actually dress up as until we are getting ready. They went with their costumes from two years back that still fit them (apparently I bought them big!) and I put Natalie in Henry’s first Halloween costume.

Adorable kiddos, huh??

She wasn’t too sure about where we were going or the fact that I put her in a completely different stroller than usual, but she was willing to give me the benefit of the doubt… She did seem to enjoy having a bit more freedom of motion than she usually does in the car-seat stroller combo.

These two were hamming it up for the camera most of the night. You can also see that the blue police pants did not make it through the years - there was a bit of a seam blow out and even Nonni gave up on trying to fix them.

This guy was super excited to try the hockey game in the gym. If you ever get the chance to ask him, he will tell you he played hockey before. He has tried the hockey learn-to-skate program and it went horribly, but that is not how he remembers it and I think it’s hysterical. :)

They almost didn’t let Henry in the wrecking ball inflatable and I was so confused since he was in there last year. Turns out they were worried that the two older kids would be too rough for him, but once the older kids realized the problem, they promised to be careful with him. And they totally were - they shoved it super hard at each other, but took it easy on the little guys. My boys better grow up to be so considerate!

It’s hard to catch this guy not making a crazy face for the camera (see above for evidence), but I caught him off guard here. He’s such a cutie when he’s not being a toot. :)

Homegirl put up with being wheeled around for quite a while, but finally got tired of watching from the sidelines. Luckily, we brought two cars so the boys could keep playing while the girls went home. She forgave me for being slightly ignored part of the night since I let her bounce in her jumper for a little bit longer than usual. Babies, so easy to please!

Hahahahahaha…. ;)

Halloween Cookies

It has been way, way too long since we decorated cookies. I think the second set of Halloween cookies was the last time the cutters and sprinkles got pulled out. I am clearly depriving these poor kids!!

They were both super excited about getting to help cut the cookies out - and clearly not going to be orderly about taking turns. Also, I am not sure if I ever mentioned it, but this giant baking mat that Matt bought me has been a game changer for rolling out things! Our kitchen has cut granite tiles for the counter and it’s pretty awful when you need to roll things out and not have lines in them. A very thoughtful present!

Since we were in the decorating mood, I went and retrieved the Halloween houses from last year - they survived with only a moderate amount of disarray. Thomas got his fixed right up with some glue!

We bought some new kits and I once again question why I buy them such complicated kits. In my defense, I thought I bought easier kits this year, but I was quite wrong.

Thomas tried really hard on his kit, but I don’t think we ever got it finished. Henry’s got completed by three separate people helping him, but we lost the instructions to Thomas’ kit and it was all over. :(

But cookies? Now those we can get finished! And everyone likes cookies better anyhow…!

Plus we had lots of help with decorating! Although I learned that if six people are going to be decorating, then four bottles of icing will not cut it. Next time I will have more!

Clearly the amount of sprinkles is never an issue around here.

The boys came along too, though they didn’t help much with the decorating… One was super happy to look at me while I was taking photos and the other one was all “Bro, be cool!”

Whatever, I love both of you cutie-patooties, no matter how coy you try to be with me!

All the finished cookies! I honestly can’t pick a favorite, there were so many fun ones!I feel like you can still pick out the ones that Henry decorated pretty easily, but Thomas is starting to blend in with the adults decorating. Pretty impressive! :)

His sprinkle amounts are a bit of a tell if his dad is not also decorating. ;)

A Cookbook for the Kids

I am not as good as I would like to be about getting the boys in the kitchen and helping out. Don’t get me wrong - I absolutely want to, but it seems like most nights I am doing everything I can to get the baby fed and in bed while simultaneously making dinner for everyone else. Anything that slows that process down will spell disaster!

The weekends are a little less stressful and I try to let them help out anytime they show interest. Which is sporadic most of the time… But this weekend they both wanted to help! And wear their aprons to be official!

Plus it was a pretty low key meal they were making - layered yogurt parfaits! Not much there for me to have to watch too closely except the strawberry cutting part. And I probably should have watched Henry a little closer, but cleaning yogurt off the counter isn’t that difficult… ;)

But why were they so excited about being little chefs this morning, you say??

Because Grannie sent them this awesome new cookbook! I love all things from America’s Test Kitchen and they just published a cookbook for kids! Eeek! (Grannie also made them these awesome aprons awhile ago and I love when they remember to wear them. I am the worst at remembering aprons and that probably explains why I get so many random stains on my work clothes while making dinner….)

You can see my picky eater clearly approved of his own creation since he wolfed it down while Thomas was still making them for us.

After breakfast, we all decided to have some play time on the floor. Natalie got herself up on all fours! It’s a new skill and we were all so excited for her!

I finally remembered we had this awesome tiny table toy downstairs and brought it up for her to play with. She seems to like it, though she isn’t terribly sure she should be standing up without the support of her bouncer…!

Her older brothers clearly wanted to join in on the fun. Thomas buckled himself in to this chair and then couldn’t get himself out, he was walking around with it still attached. He looked like a very bizarre turtle. =D

We’ve been working really hard at trying to get her to beat on her new drum toy from the therapists. She picks the “sticks” up on her own, but she seems to look at them like “these are my chew toys, why do they want me to hit the drum with them??”

Oh well! She does like playing with the drum either way. She’ll get there!

I almost forgot that the boys wanted to make the overnight waffles the next morning, so we ended up going to bed a little late so they could get the batter ready for in the morning.

Thankfully they were so excited that I let them stay up to be chefs, they were very cooperative about mixing the ingredients. Usually it’s a battle to make sure they both get to do a little but of everything!

But they didn’t just want waffles in the morning - they also wanted to make smoothies! These boys love smoothies and we hadn’t made any in a long time. (Life is a bit hectic these days…)

Henry isn’t quite sure he trusts his brother to measure everything correctly and is keeping a close eye on him…!

Finally it was time to blend! I love our Vitamix so much, but it is a loud machine and they used to run away from it with their hands over their ears whenever I would use it. Thankfully, they managed to be strong and tough it out this morning. Though you can see Thomas is giving the blender a pretty stern look!

Henry was a little skeptical about pushing the buttons at all, but he was brave enough to do it once Thomas held the lid down for him. These two are so silly sometimes!

This was definitely something new! I am super nervous about letting them use heat sources and lectured Thomas about being super cautious. He was doing pretty awesome until he went to pull a cooked waffle out and managed to just touch the iron with the back of his hand. An ice pack soothed the injury, but he wasn’t too sure about trying again. We compromised on him filling the waffle iron and me taking them out.

What a delicious looking breakfast, huh??

Thanks Grannie for the awesome cookbook and the hope that someday breakfast will be waiting for me whan I come downstairs! And as usual, ignore Henry’s expression, he was just as excited as the rest of us about the chef time! :)

8 Months!

Well September just flew right by and somehow it was already time for pictures again! I blame school starting - it always makes things more hectic…

She looks just as surprised that she is 8 months already! Pleasantly surprised though! :)

“Well there’s not reason to change my ways at this point, right mom? Might as well start by eating the card!”

So she is able to stay siting up these days, but that doesn’t mean she’s not just a bit unsteady sometimes…

To be fair, the chair is a little squishy and not as firm as the floor she usually sits on.

Just for fun, I stood her up so she could lean back into the chair. She looks like she doesn’t understand why on earth I would do this to her and clearly this is completely unsafe, mom!

Luckily her brothers came to the rescue and held her down to be extra safe. She’s not sure she likes this any better! But she’s just not quite strong enough to get away. What’s a poor baby to do??

She finally decided to just relax and let herself get hugged on by her big brothers, but in no way would there be any coordination of smiles this month. Even my eldest, who is usually my most reliable was looking over my head at his dad.

Sooooo helpful, Matt. ;)

I gave up on pictures and we went back downstairs because I promised the boys they could watch TV if the cooperated for photos. Natalie got her BAHA back and was happy to watch TV while making her BAHA squeal by holding on to it. No idea why she loves making it squeal so much, but it is one of her favorite daily activities.

You can also see one of her newest accessories - hand splints! She has tended to keep her thumbs in most of the time instead of splayed out like the rest of her fingers. Indwelling thumbs aren’t a cause for concern up until about 7 months and then it’s a slight cause for concern. Since she’s still doing it, she earned herself the privilege of wearing this hot pink splints to encourage her to keep her thumbs out. Thankfully she doesn’t seem to mind them and hopefully she doesn’t need them for long. (And she obviously does it more one on hand than the other since I’ve only got one of them on at the moment…!)

State Fair!

September in Alaska means it’s time to go to the Fair! Mom was game for a birthday visit to our second favorite state fair. We are clearly spoiling her this year! ;)

The Elam family was also going to the fair today and we managed to show up at the same time without planning it. Our first stop at the fair is always the fried cheese curds and their crew had never had them! Clearly Abby was a fan as neither her or Henry would stop eating them long enough to smile at the camera. Thomas smiled for me, but had ranch smeared on the side of his mouth. Ha - these kids get into their food!

Abby was pretty excited to finally meet Natalie and baby girl was pretty enthralled by Abby as well. You can see she’s quite intently staring at her new friend! (And if you look close you can see Abby’s reflection in her shades)

Nonni was particularly excited about the baby chickens and probably telling the boys about how we used to hatch baby birds. They were suitable impressed. :)

My favorite is always the petting zoo! These little farm animals are so over-fed and they don’t seem to mind at all. And even though I rarely have any form of cash on me, today I had enough quarters for the boys to actually get to feed them!

Henry was pretty selective about who he wanted to give the food too, but decided this wooly sheep looked worthy. He claims it was yelling at him to be fed, which is pretty believable. ;)

Chickens are not the first animal I would think of including in a petting zoo, but these hens didn’t seem to mind and the boys were pretty excited about petting them. So I guess someone is smarter than me…

The sun was finally warming up the day and these three decided to try their hand at hula hooping. These boys have many talents, but hula hooping is not yet one of them. Thomas was giving it his best shot, but it was just not happening. Nonni had hers up forever and the boys were super impressed!

We headed over to the lumberjack show, but it was so crowded that the girls decided to sit it out and let the boys have fun without us. Natalie enjoyed the chance to get out of her stroller and getting some snuggle time with Nonni.

I enjoyed a little time in the shade - that sun is super hot when it is out and beating down on you!

She wants mommy’s camera! You can just barely see the clear line coming off the back of her BAHA today - it’s the safety line and we figured it was probably a good idea to use it. Usually if she pulls the BAHA off the band, we can hear it squealing but that would be challenging at the fair! And losing it would be a nightmare. So safety line it was!

Pilot Henry ready for take-off! They decided they needed their own helicopters to be their own pilots. Henry was super exited about being a big boy and not needing his brother. (I wasn’t - stop growing up, you two!)

This guy smiled and waved! He’s usually so serious when he is piloting the helicopter, but not today! Love that smile. :)

Another successful fair visit in the books and what a beautiful day for it. Thanks for the sunshine today, Alaska!