new Family Blog!

I'm so excited! I've finally started a new family blog... this one just had too many bad memories associated with it and it became painful for me to update. If you were a once upon a time reader please check out my new blog at http://www.beautifulnordicpeoplemonthly.blogspot.com/ ! My plan is to copy my genius cousin, Lauree, and use it as a family journal since I do most of our journaling via FaceBook already. I hope you enjoy!

Happy Birthday Kyle!

Kyle turned ONE the end of September! We celebrated with a Space Themed party at a park near our house. He loved his cake made of a stack of donuts and was an active participant in opening his presents. Kyle weighed in at 16 lbs 13 oz at his 12 month visit and is 27.5 inches long. He is holding steadily at the 25% on the Down syndrome charts. He is sitting by himself and has one tooth. He has 5 hours of therapy a week including Physical Therapy, Occupational Therapy, Speech Therapy, Feeding Therapy, and a Developmental Special Instructor, all who come to our house once a week. He is happy and gives the best hugs! We are so in love with our little guy and are so happy he is a part of our family.

Upper GI Study

Friday Kyle finally made it to his upper GI study at Banner Desert Cardons Children's hospital. This was our third rescheduled appointment. He's been so sick this summer we had to keep putting it off. His GI Specialist requested it to make sure he didn't have any anatomical malformations of his small intestines that is making it difficult for him to gain weight. We were expecting to be there for an hour or two. It turned into an awful 8 hour day.

He had to fast from 6am to 3pm when they finally let me nurse him even though we weren't done. He screamed and screamed while we fed him the Barium and figured out every conceivable trick to spit it back out at us. He cried all morning and into the afternoon and fell asleep for about 20 knock out, exhausted coma-like minutes. (hence the above picture, complete with leftover chalkiness on his lips from the barium) We were told that adults usually take 2-4 hours to pass the barium through their small intestines and babies usually take much shorter time since they are smaller. It took Kyle over 5 1/2 hours to get it to the point they needed it! We were there because he has digestive issues, but I had no clue his digestive tract moved quite that slowly! The good news is the radiologist doctor did not see anything "wrong" on her first look at the films, except for a bad case of reflux which we were already aware of (but it was nice to have it officially confirmed at least). We'll go into his GI specialist next week to get the official results and I'll request a lower GI study to test for Hirschsprungs Disease. Which means I will most likely have another awful day like that. Kyle bounced back nicely though and is happy to be home and is eating more then he has in weeks.

4th time's the charm...

Kyle is being admitted to Banner Desert Cardon Childrens hospital. The doctor hopes it will be only a 24 hour visit. He spiked a fever of 104 this morning and had difficulty breathing so I rushed him to the ER. They did a chest Xray and discovered his fluid levels on his lungs had gone up. He obviously has an infection somewhere and the dr is hoping to stabilize him and lower the fluid levels and send us home asap.

Updated: we are home now. His fever broke and with it went his respritory problems. He is still not well yet but is well enough to go home.

Hang on to your Fries...

(last week before Kyle got sick) I was sitting on the floor working on my computer and Kyle was rolling around playing. Sara had put her fries in my lap for "safe-keeping". I wasn't paying enough attention and looked down, in my lap, and Kyle was laying there with the entire container of fries spilt and a fistful in his hand, chomping away. I had to laugh at my own inattentiveness that this was literally going on between my feet and I had to laugh at Kyle's ingenuity to get exactly what he wanted.

More Birthday Pictures

I'm pretty sure I have a photo of me looking just like Sara in this photo when I was about the same age with that same dreamy look in front of a siblings birthday cake. Look how many candles are on that cake!

The completed Dog House cake

Sara adores her big sister. MaryKate was so sweet helping Sara help her decorate her cake.

MaryKate's present, a Zhu-Zhu pet compound.

One of the many comical attempts at an entire family photo using the timer function. .

Happy 9th Birthday!!!

Happy Birthday to MaryKate. I cannot believe she is 9 years old! She helped decorate her "doghouse" cake and requested one of the two cakes be hers alone. A request I granted even though she only ate about 3 bites of it :). She was out of town for her birthday so we have celebrated over a period of days. Last weekend I took her and her siblings to Build-a-Bear workshop and today we will be going as a family to see the new Cats and Dogs movie. She is such a sweet, loving girl. I do not know how I manage when she is not around. Happy Birthday to my Katie Scarlet, Lady Bird!

A built-in Toy Option for the low price of an ER visit... updated

I didn't have my camera with me so the best picture I could do was off of my phone, pretty good considering it was dark in there. Kyle loved playing with his IV line and actually only cried for about 15 seconds while it was being put in. He kept trying to hit the nurse with his "club" afterwards though, so I'm pretty sure he harbored some ill-will.

Sunday update: we were told to bring him back in if his symptoms got worse so we ended up back in the ER Saturday night. His rash was worse and he was so incredibly irritable that I had spent the whole day pacing while bouncing him in my arms. He refused to eat any food and wasn't nursing as often as he should. They did another battery of tests and discovered from a chest x-ray that he had fluid on his lungs. It was not severe, there was no other obvious sign, but I am very grateful for his pediatrician, who is a member of our church, who I'm sure listened to inspiration to put him on an antibiotic, even though there was no obvious reason for it. That is what saved him from developing full blown pneumonia. We will be going back in for another checkup tomorrow and hopefully, even though his rash is worse then ever, he will have managed to not lose any weight and we might even see an end in sight .

And just to set the record straight, I really don't have a good attitude about our ER. I hate it actually, but I love my baby so much more then I hate the hospital so in my previous post I was being ruthlessly sarcastic in an attempt to lighten my sour mood over this past month. I am not a saint, this month is driving me nuts and I'm not quite sure how much more I can handle. But I do know the truth in Isaiah 41:10 "Fear thou not; for I am with thee: be not dismayed; for I am thy God: I will strengthen thee; yea, I will help thee; yea, I will uphold thee with the right hand of my righteousness." And even more so the Truth in Hymn 85 How Firm a Foundation vs 5 "When through fiery trials thy pathway shall lie, My grace, all sufficient, shall be thy supply. The flame shall not hurt thee; I only design Thy dross to consume and thy gold to refine". Foolish me thought enduring almost a month in the hospital and my baby going through OHS was the climax of my current fiery trial, apparently I have much more dross then I originally thought :).