Sledding Fun!

We finally got snow! And a lot of it - almost 20”! And since I had some time off of work I needed to take, I thought a fun day with the boys was in order.

They were so tortured during the short trip to Costco prior to the sledding fun, but once we arrived they were nothing but grins! Speaking of Costco - we bought this sled there months ago when I saw them arrive in stock. We waited too long last time and the plastic sleds we bought didn’t survive a particularly rough group of kids last year.

We clearly weren’t the only family that had the idea to go sledding today! It really was a great day for it! :)

The boys definitely loved the new sled! It actually goes down the hill fairly straight instead of spinning them around like the round sleds did.

Which isn’t to say that they didn’t get going a little sideways on some runs… ;)

Look at the excitement! I am pretty sure he got a face full of snow of snow on several runs down, yet he was all grins!

Though he did figure out a method for avoiding the snow in his face! Creative, but much more likely to run into others since he wasn’t attempting to steer at all…!

No idea what he is doing here… ;)

The two of them were having so much fun, but would not go down the hill together. It took me forever to try and talk them into it! I specifically bought them the long sled just for sharing, but they were not convinced. I took them both down on runs with me and that finally convinced them to try it together. But only if I got them on there and pushed them down the first time.

Which obviously meant I got no photos of the first run, but here they are excitedly running up the hill for another run together! Clearly momma was right!

Although one of them looks more excited and one looks more terrified! And I am pretty sure they violated the 5 MPH speed limit sign. Ha!

Oh no. Things are going awry… Maybe Thomas was right to look scared!!!

Annnnnnd crash! Haha - it looks so dramatic. They were fine and did many more runs down together.!

Once all of us had frozen fingers, we decided to call it a day and go get some hot chocolate! What a fun sledding day and finally we had the beautiful Alaskan snow to enjoy. I was really starting to get worried we weren’t going to have a very white Christmas! ;)

Christmas Cookies

My most favorite December tradition - Christmas cookies!!!

But first, breakfast! Natalie was actually eating some food this morning!

Though she sometimes misses the business end of the spoon. ;)

Since Kathryn & Ben were bringing the twins over, we set the living room up to be the most exciting play date Natalie has ever had! She is probably wondering what the heck is going on, but I don’t think she is terribly used to sharing her toys, so I was trying to avoid baby fights. ;)

He was very serious about his cookies this time! Honestly, this kid just makes the best faces and they crack me up!

See what I mean??

Thomas had no complaints about the icing this time around and his decorating is getting sooooo good!

The babies weren’t really sure what was going on, but they seemed happy enough to hang out with their people. And luckily I have so many options for baby seats that everyone was able to hang out. I think the twins were pretty excited about borrowing Natalie’s oral sensory toys to gnaw on!

Henry went minimalist with this fire truck and just colored it with the food markers. He may have been aggressive with his coloring and broke the cookie - eek! Luckily, we were able to glue it back together with icing (crisis averted!).

I honestly can’t pick a favorite. The gingerbread guy holding his own head is just ridiculous, but so is the moose decorated with dinosaurs. And does that white squirrel have blood all over it’s mouth?!?

I love them all!

“Mom, stop taking photos! I want to eat my cookies!!!”

Gingerbread Houses

Since the boys had so much fun decorating the gingerbread houses last year, they are now officially tradition for December! And they seem like the perfect Sunday post-ski lesson activity. :)

We decided not to limit ourselves to just the included candies this year and raided my giant stash of sprinkles for what we could use on the houses.

We also opted to decorate a bunch of smaller houses this year in lieu of waiting hours for the big houses to dry between each step. The jury is out on whether this was easier or not… At least we had someone with lots of strength to help with the stiff icing this year! :)

Everyone got super into the decorating this year since there were more goodies to play with - it even came with colored fondant to add some excitement!

I gave Nonni my house to decorate since she seemed like she wanted to play too! Plus I got to take more photo that way. Win-win!

These two just love decorating together! At least this year they didn’t spill or eat most of the candy before they got decorating. ;)

There were some structurally stability issues on one of the houses, but Matt managed to save the impending disaster. Whew!

Of course when Dada is involved, these kind of things generally also happen. No complaints from the boys, obviously…

Henry’s finished house! Matt made him the awesome Christmas tree on the roof, but otherwise he did most of the decorating himself. (Still needed a little help piping icing though…)

Thomas’ house! He didn’t need hardly any help at all and it turned out so cute! I love his Christmas lights and icicles along the roof. Adorable!

Matt’s house - covered with about as much candy as he could manage on the roof. Fitting! ;)

Last, but not least - Nonni’s A-frame cottage. She went with a more classic vibe and I think it turned out cute as well.

We’ll see how long they last before boys start eating candy off of them…!

Holiday Train!

The Alaska railroad tracks sustained enough damage during the earthquake that the train ride that weekend was cancelled, but they managed to get the tracks fixed in time for our planned ride the following week. Yay! The boys would have really lost it if we had missed this event! (I think they even managed to add a ride for the people who missed out - they are so awesome!)

Nonni was pretty excited to be back on the holiday train again! And Natalie seems pretty excited to be hanging out with all of her favorite people!

This kid… Someday he will be able to eat chocolate without getting it all over his face, but we are clearly not there yet. ;)

Thomas was just so happy to be on the train that everything was exciting! Even tiny candy canes! :)

Where is the snow?!?!

Natalie was pretty happy being passed around to everyone, but definitely wanted some daddy time. This girl is definitely a daddy’s girl. First and favorite word is still “Dada!”

Not a bad looking bunch, huh?

All three of my boys failed to notice that the M&M’s they brought around were supposed to be markers for a game of Bingo. So we clearly didn’t win any bingo games, but they got more chocolate! ;)

Jenny, Lyla and Pat came along with us again this year! And Lyla even got to help play the guitar for the caroling group!

The sugar is clearly kicking in… I swear it is tradition to abuse mom with balloons on this train ride!

Santa was very intrigued with Natalie’s hearing aid and spent extra time chatting with us this year. She was totally cool with hanging out with him as opposed to Thomas’ first train ride! ;)

Overall, a great train ride this year! Plus the upside is that you couldn’t feel any after shocks while the train was moving. A nice break from the constant shaking we’ve been dealing with!

Seattle Trip #3?

I swear I am losing track, but I think this is #3. It was right after the ridiculous earthquake and we really didn’t want to leave the kids behind. So it was not my favorite trip, even though I had been excited leading up to it…!

Natalie didn’t seem terribly excited either - ha! She' thankfully slept most of the way to Seattle in her dad’s lap. We usually prefer to have the kids in their own seat regardless of age, but we don’t generally have enough notice on these trips to book three seats together. So we make do!

Our super awesome friends again let us stay with them for a few days! I hope they know how much easier they make these trips than staying in a hotel. Not having to bring all of the extra baby gear is huge!!! And Katie always make us coffee in the morning, which is the sweetest thing (mom’s get each other!).

You can see that Justin takes his role of entertainment very seriously. ;)

This visit was to the Aerodigestive clinic, which is focused on breathing & airway issues holistically. We don’t have that in Anchorage and it is terribly difficult to get the specialists she needs to talk to each other, so this is supposed to seamless care and I have been so excited to have that for her. They did her swallow study first and I was so nervous she would refuse to cooperate for the test, but she did amazing!

Then came this survey for me to fill out. It may be a little hard to read in, but it was even harder to fill out. I usually just try not to worry about the future for her, but this survey was demanding I face my worries and it was terrible… Yes, I worry a lot that my child will never eat and drink like other children. And yes I worry that I am somehow not doing enough to help her. Ugh. I can live better in denial, thank you very much!

But on the positive side, the swallow study showed massive improvement over the one she had at birth!!! She’s been cleared to eat more food (under close supervision, obviously), but also she’s going to be allowed to drink liquids that have been thickened to the consistency of honey. This is huge!!! She’s been NPO (nothing by mouth) since she was born, with the exception we had recently to try some solids specifically for this swallow study.

So this feels like an amazing step change and probably would have given me more optimistic answers for that survey… !

They also thought she looked very healthy and were complimentary on how we’ve been feeding her via the g-tube so far. So back home we went, with the instructions to come back soon for another follow-up. Good thing we already have frequent flyer accounts on Alaskan airlines… ;)

November Random

The month flew by and if I am being entirely honest, the whole next year from this date has flown by. I found it pretty hard to blog about losing furry Natalie and so I didn’t blog for awhile - which is when life went crazy and I got so far behind. I am trying to catch back up a year later! The details might be a bit fuzzy a year out, but I didn’t want to miss the chance to document everything. So between this post and next December(!) there might be some embellishment in places and total lack of details in others.

You guys know me, this isn’t exactly abnormal. ;)

Last year at the Christmas Market, Matt bought a giant log stump style checkerboard. So this year it shouldn’t have come as a surprise we ended up at the same booth buying more wooden stumps. The method of transport to the car was a bit questionable, but he swears our youngest is totally safe here… “/

Meal times can be so exhausting when you are actually expected to eat a few bites… Lol

Told you that she is a champ at pulling herself up to a stand these days! And the tiniest little cheerleader for her brother’s soccer team! :)

It took 5 years before there was an injury between the brothers that required intervention! Thomas was trying to show Henry some Tae-Kwon-Do moves and accidentally knocked his brother into a very heavy wooden chair. We finally discovered something that is harder than Henry’s head… “/

The urgent care clinic tried their best to close the wound with glue, but it just wouldn’t stay together. So Henry got his first stitches (I am sure not his last…). The PA said he was tougher than most adults she took care of!

Thomas felt terrible about his brother getting hurt - at first. Once we teased him enough about it, he exasperatedly said “Well Henry didn’t protect his base!!!” After trying not to die of laughter, we had to explain to Thomas that Henry isn’t actually in Tae-Kwon-Do and most 4 year olds don’t know they have to “protect their base”. Thomas remains unconvinced.

The super involved and time consuming bunk beds are finally done! (I kid, Matt!) We wanted to buy the boys bunk beds and all of the ones for sale up here seemed a bit flimsy, so Matt decreed them unsafe and that he would build them sturdy ones. He did and they look amazing!

They just took a little longer than expected because he has so many other fun hobbies in the summer. ;)

Since he got such good practice on his sparring skills with his brother (lol), Thomas had no problem advancing up to his purple belt!

On the bright side, Henry looooooved the emoji bandages I found for him! Also, the panic has set in that he is starting Kindergarten next year and won’t be right next to work… So I am trying to take advantage with extra lunch dates while I can. :)

Sooooo Aunt Heather heard I was trying to read Harry Potter with them and excitedly brought them Chocolate Frogs and the Every Flavor Jelly Beans. Boys being boys, the three of them were trying all of the “gross” flavors. Apparently some of them were super bad and Thomas ended up dramatically throwing himself on the floor. Pretty sure this one was soap.

Momma wisely abstained.

Also, look how adorable he is in his Cub Scouts uniform! :)

Natalie’s new favorite activity is knocking down blocks! I have been building her towers of blocks so she can crawl over and knock them all down. It’s quite the anxiety-inducing time as I try to build up to the full tower height before she can reach me. Thankfully she let me take this photo before going full destructor on me. ;)

Thomas loves it when his baby sister crawls on him, though he has gotten smart enough to take his glasses off before she can rip them off his face. He learns fast! ;)

She is kinda getting the hang of taking bites, but definitely loves playing with her oral toys more than eating. As long as she can take enough food in for the swallow study to work next month, that’s good enough for me!

Trying to get an early start on the Advent calendar this year! I bought a cute one at Target last month in the after-Christmas sale and realized we could make our own holiday envelopes for it. It took a few tries to get them the right size as the envelope-maker I have doesn’t have measurements that small listed, but we made it work!

She’s not allowed to have pieces of food yet, but her speech therapist did give her the go-ahead to try gnawing on them with this mesh bag. So far she hasn’t quite gotten the concept. ;)

The last photo I have of the two Natalie’s together… Furry Natalie looks like she is disgruntled, but she really didn’t mind baby Natalie sitting next to her. She just wasn’t feeling great in the last few days. :(

Not our best selfie, but I wanted proof that we had Thanksgiving dinner! Matt fried the turkey again and I made everyone’s favorite sides. I totally cheated and used Stove Top for the stuffing, but in my defense - I don’t really have one. Sorry grandma, don’t be mad at me when you look down from above. ;)

We had to facetime Nonni to get the last minute details of when she was coming back up and she got to see the boys get attacked with silly string. I think she got more of a kick out of it than they did… Ha!

And just like that - we have another skier in the family! He took to it pretty well right away and they are both doing awesome at lessons. So proud!

And the event that was pure chaos. I don’t have many photos from the day of the 7.1 earthquake that was a direct hit to Anchorage, but this one shows the emotional toll pretty well. The power went out, the ground would start shaking again every few minutes and the kids were terrified. They spent most of the day in the closet under the stairs and the adrenaline wore them out within a few hours. A morning naptime seemed to be a good break for them. Thankfully we did discover our fireplace works even if the power is out, so once we decided it was safe to turn on, the house warmed up enough until the power was restored.

Matt was thankfully still at home with them when it hit at 8:30 in the morning, so Nooni and Natalie weren’t alone in the dark. I was at work on the 17th floor and got quite the terrifying ride when the ground went crazy. I don’t think most people who weren’t here can understand the terror that this event caused and the weeks of non-stop aftershocks that killed everyone’s nerves. It was not a day that will likely be forgotten by any of us there - except Natalie. She seemed quite unfazed by the whole ordeal. Lucky girl!

10 Months!

Already 5/6ths of a year! A weird fraction and impossible to believe that our little one is getting so big!

She seemed much more interested in trying to grab the camera this month. My dodging skills have apparently gotten a little rusty in the past few years since I have had grabby toddlers!

She seemed much more excited for what was on the back of the card than getting her photo taken. I actually don’t know what was on the back of this one - they are usually holidays. My money is on baby’s first Halloween given that they seem to match months of the year.

At least Henry was excited! ;)

Oh look, my kids are getting better at smiling in unison.

Hahahahahaha.

Not sure why Thomas is giving his brother such side-eye, but Henry seems pretty excited Natalie is leaning on him!

Side note - I should probably have made the boys put on more photogenic clothing than what they were wearing, but they love running around in their thermals after ski lessons. They do look pretty cozy.

I didn’t get any great photos of the back of this outfit, but it’s another dinosaur one! I love that they make these in pink because girls can love dinosaurs too! :)

Also, I love this girl’s cheeks. They aren’t quite to the chub status that Henry had as a baby, but man do I love to kiss them!

10 months! She’s doing so awesome too! Clearly sitting up is no longer an issue… ;) And she loves pulling herself up to standing like a big girl. Walking still seems a little bit of a way off, but she’s pretty mobile even without it!

The boys love their baby sister so much! They love to play hide & seek with her and trying to get her to find them. She did turn around and try to climb up to the right after this photo - which is why this is the last photo as she isn’t quite stable enough to be trusted at heights… ;)

Also, she is loving being able to try eating purees! This is by far the most colorful one she has tried and she isn’t too sure about the beets… but overall loving the new tastes!

Furry Natalie

14 years ago, we fell in love with this energetic puppy in the aisle of the local Petsmart on an adoption day. We had told ourselves that we weren’t going to get a dog yet, but we fell in love with those big brown eyes and sloppy kisses. Unfortunately today, we had to say goodbye to our first furry baby and it was so much harder than I thought it would be. Thankfully Matt happened to be home taking care of the other Natalie today, so she wasn’t alone and I had loved on her before heading out the door this morning.

This dog knew she was loved, but I doubt she knows how much she will be missed. I don’t want to dwell too much on losing her, because I’m crying as I type this already, but I do want to post some older photos of her and talk about this crazy dog and her impact on our life.

Who is this tiny little puppy??? This was from her first few days with us - she was a little tentative at first and once she realized she was staying she celebrated by running around the house like a possessed dog. Matt woke me up to tell me “I think there is something wrong with the dog!” Nope, she’s just excited!

This baby girl went everywhere with us! She used to be tiny enough to fit between us in the S-10, which seemed impossible within a year.

Graduation day from obedience school! I don’t know who those young people with her are, but they sure seem happy about her passing. It was in doubt - she loved jumping up at that age and she may have accidentally done it to the instructor and scratched her nose. Whoops!

Of course, we put her jumping talents to good use once we realized how much she loved to jump. As a side note, that blue collar drove me crazy. People always assumed she was a boy dog even when she was wearing pink, so that clearly made matters worse…

Natalie would actually stay outside (in our fenced backyard) most of the day while we were at work and she was always so excited when I came home! I would be greeted by this adorable face straining to peer under the gate! :)

Of course, we didn’t have Natalie terribly long when we realized she might want a sibling. The neighbor’s had a visiting dog in their yard for a few days and Natalie was so excited that she was shoving all of her toys under the fence for playtime.

And our family of three became a family of four! Doesn’t Natalie look so excited to have a sister??

The two of them used to love riding around in the car with their heads out in the breeze! I was a very nervous dog mom and was convinced Natalie was going to have something fly into her eye. We had an unspoken deal that she could hold her head out as long as she kept her protective doggles on. She would leave them on just until the car stopped and off they would go!

But Natalie’s favorite activity was always swimming! We introduced her to it at a pretty young age and it was always her favorite thing to do. Our only criteria for her sibling when we were looking was a dog that liked to swim. And that scruffy little goober we found did indeed like to swim. Unfortunately for Eliza, Natalie was definitely a better swimmer and always got the stick first!

And she was not great at sharing…

But otherwise they were pretty good buds and loved going to the beach to run around like wild animals.

Natalie pretty much didn’t care what kind of water body was around, as long as she could swim in it. The dog park is where she really excelled at leaping into the water! And Eliza learned pretty quickly not to get between her big sister and the water… ;)

After we went on our first backpacking trip to Alaska, we thought we would start doing more backpacking closer to home. We bought the girls their own packs to carry their food and they loved the freedom of being out in the woods and ran double the distance we hiked by getting ahead and doubling back.

We didn’t need to wait for human kids to take family photos for Christmas cards!

(As a side note - all four of us look ridiculously young in this photo…)

But we didn’t just celebrate Christmas! Natalie didn’t care what holiday it was and she didn’t care if her mom wanted her to be a pumpkin as long as she got that treat her mother was dangling above the camera! Tell me she’s not an adorable pumpkin!!

Baby girl started to show some gray when we moved into the garage apartment, so she can’t blame it on having babies running around like I can. Old girl loved to lay around and get some napping in. I never knew how much napping she did during the day until I was home with her and Thomas on maternity leave. I’m not sure who slept more! (It wasn’t me…)

And her last big move and adventure up to Alaska with us! She didn’t seem to mind the snow and cold at all, though she was not too sure about the giant moose that liked to wander through the yard!

I honestly could keep posting photos of her and remembering this very special puppy of ours, but I have to keep taking breaks since the screen keeps getting blurry...

We are going to miss her so much and I hope our daughter appreciates that she’s named after such an amazing part of our life. We’ll miss you so much furry Natalie.

I sure hope all dogs go to heaven and we get to hang out with you again.

Happy Microtia Day!

Since Natalie was born, I have become much more familiar with many, many medical terms. I wouldn’t say I am an expert in any of them, but I am becoming an expert on her! Microtia was one of the first new ones, because it refers to a congenital deformity of the outer ear - one thing that didn’t need any further testing to confirm. ;)

She also has atresia, which is a broader medical term for an opening in the body that is abnormally closed or absent. The first time I was googling both of those terms I came across an online community for people with either condition and was amazed at the support both in their information and helpfulness on their social media pages. Plus, they have been building awareness of the conditions with a Microtia Day - complete with these adorable T-shirts!

She was doing a good job of hiding parts of the shirt every time I tried to get a photo, so I enlisted her brother’s help to show off the full shirt. Haha - it was a good attempt…

Maybe if I lay her down…? Nope! “Look at my foot instead, mom!”

It’s ok though - the girl with the pink headband and ukulele was the reason I bought the shirt anyhow! It is a bit hard to see, but she only has one ear and the title says “Microtia Kids Rock!” in a nod to the ukuleles. :)

You do rock, my baby girl!

But back to the ears! Obviously, her ears show up in a lot of photos on here, but I don’t usually take photos specifically of them. Her left ear is the side with microtia & atresia and the lack of an ear canal prevents her from having any air conductive hearing on the left. Thankfully her BAHA seems to do a great job at giving her directional hearing .

Her right side is just microtia. I was worried that her ear being a bit folded over would block sound, but that isn’t the case at all. Her ear canal is a little smaller than normal, but it also doesn’t seem to affect her hearing. When she is a bit older, there are reconstruction options as well as the permanent BAHA, but for now she is hearing great and there isn’t much to do except make sure we keep the batteries from dying on her. ;)

The ear community has get togethers pretty frequently, so hopefully we can start attending those and other hearing events so she can see what a supportive community is out there for her. Plus I hear Cochlear occasionally rents out Disney world!

In slightly less good news, furry Natalie doesn’t seem to be doing very good. She’s been not wanting to get up much the past few days, so we grabbed her soft blanket out of our bedroom and brought it downstairs for her. I can’t remember the last time she climbed up the stairs, so it makes more sense to have it down here anyhow. The boys made sure to give her a little extra loving instead of running around like their usual crazy selves. ;)

She seemed pretty comforted getting some loving from her dad. She’s always been a daddy’s girl. :)

All My Babies

I realized after the fact that I had washed some clothing for Natalie to wear on Halloween and it stayed in the laundry basket instead of getting put in her drawer where I would remember it. Whoops!

But we can just pretend she wore it on the right day! What a cutie, huh?

Henry didn’t want to miss out on an impromptu photo shoot. What a ham!

Eliza didn’t want to be so close to the baby, but she did want to be close to her mom. Such a struggle this girl lives! Also, she is so ridiculously shaggy and we should probably get her groomed…

Look at the shag! She kind looks like a sheep with that coat.

Also, you might have noticed her mouth has something weird going on. A few moths ago, I noticed she had a random growth at the front of her mouth. It got big enough to be concerning and we took her in to the vet. They wanted to run all of these tests to see if she needed chemo and we had to have a reality check with the vet that this dog is 16 and let’s just keep her happy without going down the over-intervention path…

So they did surgery to remove it and her two bottom teeth - they were completely out of place thanks to the tumor. It started to grow back pretty quickly, but doesn’t seem to be bothering her, so we’re just keeping an eye on it for now. (And giving her meds that help with any pain she might have and slow the growth)

I went to find the post from her surgery two years ago and realized I never posted anything about it. Short version is that she went from perfectly fine to almost dead one day and we found out she had a giant tumor in her stomach. They couldn’t promise surgery would help and the biopsies were all inconclusive. It was a really rough month of me stressing about her dying (probably why I never posted about it). I was driving home at lunch every day to syringe feed her mushed up dog food and let her out since she wouldn’t eat and lost bladder control. $8000 later, she was tumor free and back to acting like a puppy. The surgeon was pretty shocked by her rapid recovery!

She followed that up a few months later with the sudden inability to walk and twitching eyes. I thought she had a stroke and back to the emergency hospital we went. Thankfully, it was just an inner ear issue and dramamine cleared it up.

So we aren’t heartless by any means, she’s doing fine other than the gnarly pink growth. :)

Thankfully Natalie doesn’t have any health issues, but the poor girl is getting old and slow. Look how gray she is! She clearly doesn’t like me pointing it out and refused to look at the camera.

Baby Natalie is not nearly as camera shy!

I found one of her other outfits that I love and needed to get a photo of! It’s a zipper front, so it’s not exactly tube feeding friendly, but so adorable all the same. My cute little rainbow dinosaur. :)

We finally had a nice enough northern light show that was worth waking the boys up to see! And it was bright enough to see from the house, which is not very common! It was challenging to get these two to stand still long enough to get them and the lights in focus. It’s not the best photo, but it’s proof we did show them the auroras! :)