Thank Heaven for Sisters….

Having a sister is such a precious thing…  Even though my sister and I are 10 years apart in age, we have a special bond between us.  I think it is a “sister thing” because I know that my mom and her sister and my best friend Ann and her sister have that same bond.  It is a very special gift and I’m so thankful for it.  In a way, I’m very sad for Addison that she won’t have that same relationship since she won’t have a sister, but I really hope that she and Katie Belle will be as close as sisters and share a sisterly bond between them.  It’s also nice to have a brother/sister bond but there is just nothing like the bond between sisters.  It’s unexplainable.  Love ya Lyndi!!

Here are some pictures of Katie and Addison.  I hope their love and admiration for each other grows beyond 1^st cousins to “sisters.”

Wearing their matching "moosin around" pjs

She looks so grown up with straight hair!

Our Human Sponge…

It totally amazes me how quickly children learn—they truly are little sponges.  I absolutely love to watch Addison as she figures things out.  I had read that talking to your baby a lot and reading to them at a young age would really help them and I totally believe that to be true.  We talk to her all the time and apparently she has been listening!  You can ask her, “where’s your ball,” and then watch her eyes as she searches the room for it until her eyes land on the ball and then she crawls over to it.  She does the same thing when you ask her where her doggie is and her monkey and her eggs (Easter eggs) and her blanky and her baby and the list goes on and on.  She is so smart.  She has also recently discovered her belly button and everyone elses too.  She will randomly come up to me and raise my shirt so that she can see my belly button and then stick her finger right in it!  She loves it that she has one too.  It’s adorable.  Here are some pictures of her recent discoveries:

We always (well most always) read books before bedtime.  It's so funny because I try to introduce new books into our reading ritual (I get so tired of reading the same ones over and over and over) and she will make it one or two pages into it and then smack the book away as if to say she has had enough!  She's very sassy--if she doesn't like the book I've picked out, she lets me know it! 

Her vocabulary is still very limited at this point but she can say bye-bye and dada and mama and I think she has said bubba a couple of times.  While she can’t say a whole lot yet, I know that she understands us when we talk to her and I love it!  She will be 11-months old in about  a week and it is an absolutely adorable age!

Our Weeknight Chaos...

I can honestly say that I have a TON of respect and adoration for women (and sometimes men) who raise their children on their own!  With my husband working 2^nd shift, I definitely feel like a single mom through the week and it is HARD! 

Austin auditioned for and got a part in the spring musical, called South Pacific, so he has practice every day after school until 6 or 7 pm (or whenever the director decides to let them go).  So when I leave work every day, I have to go and pick Addison up from my mom and then pick Austin up from practice (or make other arrangements for him) before I even get home for the evening.  (My commute to and from work is 45 minutes each way so I spend 7 ½ hours a week commuting.  It sickens me to think about that because I could get SO MUCH done in that amount of time but anyway….)  Then once we get home the REAL CHAOS begins! 

Well last night, we got home at about 7:10 pm.  Thankfully, Addi and I had eaten dinner at my mom and dad’s house while waiting on Austin’s practice to be over and mom sent food home for Austin so when we got home, he just heated his dinner up—it was nice not having to deal with dinner.  I did cut up some strawberries for Addison though because she hadn’t eaten a whole lot for dinner and I wanted to make sure that she wasn’t hungry.  (She loved them by the way!  I also believe that she could live on bananas alone because the child can put them away!  I need to buy stock in Chiquita because we buy bananas every week!!)

Austin informed me that he had a quiz tomorrow in Science and that he didn’t understand it at all.  Now Science was not my favorite subject (math was) but when he told me that the stuff he didn’t understand related to sin, cosin, and tangent, I knew there was hope.  I had learned all of that stuff many, many years ago but it was math back then and now they are learning this stuff in Science class?!  Oh well, don’t get me started on education because I could go on and on and on.  Which, by the way, did you know that they don’t require students to learn their multiplication tables anymore?  We had to memorize those in like 4^th grade…. Yep, my 15-year old doesn’t know that 8x6=48 unless he uses a calculator or sits there counting on his fingers!  I did encourage him a couple of years ago to learn them even though it wasn’t required of him (since they let them use calculators)—I even made him some flashcards.  I use my multiplication tables daily for figuring out stuff—it just makes life easier but anyway, I digress…  Long story short, he still doesn’t know them but at least he has a calculator on his cell phone (sarcasm)!  

Where was I?  Oh yeah, so while Addi was in the bathtub, I sat there tub-side reviewing his notes and trying to re-learn sin, cosin, and tangent.  After letting her play in the tub a little longer than normal, I felt I had a good enough grasp on it to teach him.  I went over it with him and I saw the spark go off in his head.  I gave him several problems to do on his own and he went to work on them while I dressed Addi in her pjs and read her bedtime stories.  When I got her in bed, I came downtstairs and checked Austin’s work while washing bottles, packing my lunch, and packing her diaper bag—multi-tasking at its best.  HE GOT IT!  He was thrilled and so was I.  High-fives all around!!  He really cares about his grades and schoolwork (thankfully) so I was so glad that I was able to help him.  He told me that I should have been a math teacher which I thought was really sweet and if I could go back in time and do things differently, I probably would have gone that route!  Good luck on your quiz today Austin! 

That’s about how our nights go through the week.  I am usually exhausted by the time we get through all of that!  Definitely looking forward to the weekend—only 2 more days!!  J

A Perfect Weekend...

What a wonderful weekend.  It was jam-packed with all things GOOD!  I need to fast-forward a little bit to the present as my posts so far have gone back in time a little bit.  This weekend was just too perfect not to write about—nothing extraordinary or anything—just the little things in life that matter most!  Saturday was a great day because UK won its second-round NCAA game to advance to the Sweet 16!  Addison and I went to mom and dad’s house to watch the game with our wonderful family (Addison was sporting her UK cheerleader outfit which is so adorable).  It’s always more fun to watch the game with family and since Craig was at work and Austin had play practice, we went over for the 2^nd half!  Lyndi, Katie Belle, and Connor were there too.  Thankfully, after an extremely close game, we were victorious and all were happy!  We came home and spent some time outside enjoying the beautiful weather.  Spring weather is unbeatable—I love it and so does Addi!  Saturday night was fun too because I got to spend some much-needed girl time with close friends and we had a blast.  We decided that we definitely needed to do that more often! 

Sunday was my ideal of the perfect day.  We got up and had breakfast and then went to church together.  After a great service at church, we went to Jimmy Johns and ate lunch and then went to Dick’s at the mall to look at tubes for this summer at the lake (we are already anticipating our summer on the boat)!   We got home around 12:30 and Addison hadn’t had her morning nap and was rubbing those pretty blue eyes so we both laid down in my bed and took a little nap together!  It was great—she doesn’t believe in long naps (afraid she might miss something good) so she was ready to get up an hour later—rejuvinated and ready to play so we went outside and played and played and played some more.  She LOVES it outside just like her momma!  Craig came out and we did some clean-up in the garage and then decided to go to work on de-cluttering our basement!  We have so much stuff down there and need to get rid of about half of it so we have a huge pile started of things to sell in an upcoming yard sale.  Austin and Addi were “helping” us go through boxes and organize things.  Addison loved exploring and finding new things to get into!  We would work on the basement for a while and then take a break and go in the back yard and rest on the porch swing for a while, which was nice. 

After we finished up down there, we were hungry and still needed to run to the grocery so we did that and then came home and grilled some burgers and had baked potatoes for dinner.  It was great that it was so nice outside because we LOVE grilling!  After that, it was bath time for Addi (and she REALLY needed a bath after all that playing outside and crawling around in the basement) and then story time and finally bedtime—we were all ready for bed after a fun day together.  I cherish the days when we ALL get to spend the whole day together—those days are so precious to me.  I’m very blessed.

Panama City Beach Vacation…

We normally make the trek to Panama City every year by car, but this year things were different—Addison Claire changed all of that to the benefit of all of us (but not our bank account)!  She just isn’t a good traveler.  Most babies take the opportunity to get in a nap while in their car seat but I think Addison finds it way too confining and sitting still for any length of time is just not a strength of hers.  So Delta to the rescue—Austin was super excited because he had never flown before so both of our kids were going to get a chance at flying for the first time—one at age 14 and the other at 5 months.  After we made flight arrangements, some others in our clan decided that sounded like a much better option than driving for 10 hours so they followed suit.  My parents and sister and brother-in-law, Katie Belle, and Kristy made the trip by driving while us and my in-laws and brother and sister-in-law and Brad all flew.  There were a total of 11 of us flying and we flew out of Louisville.  I was a little nervous that she would be loud on the plane and would disrupt the other passengers so we had an arsenal of toys and books and bottles just in case.  She did wonderfully though and it was really nice to get there so quickly! 

Addi looks terrified!

We spent the days on the beach and at night we always went out for dinner.  The weather was beautiful but a little windy and the beaches were gorgeous.  We were a little nervous about the beaches since there had been the huge oil spill several months earlier but we saw no trace of oil at all—it was fabulous. 

Addison loved the pool—she is going to be a water dog I believe and she loved having her toes in the ocean and sand too. 

Some of the restaurants that we visited while there were Boatyard, Pineapple Willies, Sharkys, Angelos, Scampys, and Reggae Js.  I have to say that my favorite place was Sharky’s which was a place that we had never been to before.  I also like the Shrimp Boat but we didn’t make it to that place this year.  We also did some shopping at Pier Park and even had to make a trip to the Urgent Treatment Center because Addi had a cold and cough.  They gave her some Amoxicillian and that really seemed to help her.  Even though she was a little sick, she was very happy and seemed to totally enjoy our vacation.

It was a great trip and Addison got lots of attention with both sets of her grandparents there!  We love having the whole family together but missed Debbie and Nick.  Here are some more pictures of our fun trip!

We are already looking forward to our trip back to Panama City in October of 2011!

Typical Wednesday (OR NOT)....

8/11/2010 - It was a typical Wednesday…  I went to work and then went to my mom and dad’s house to pick up Addison, who was 3 months old at the time.  She was her usual smiley self and everything was great.  My mom told me that earlier in the day after taking a bottle, she was holding Addison and Addi got real still almost as if she wasn’t breathing and mom said it kind of scared her.  She said she kind of tapped on Addison’s chest and then she started moving around as normal.  Mom said she didn’t really think it was anything and maybe she was just imagining something that wasn’t there.  Later that evening after we got home (Austin had gone to church with the Vahle’s and Craig was at work), I was sitting on the couch nursing Addi and gazing at her beauty when she totally stopped nursing and just became very still--it was almost as if she was staring off into space.  I jumped up with her and kind of started moving her around and she began moving and acting completely normal again.  I picked up the phone to call EMS and decided instead to call Craig’s sister Lisa, who is a nurse, and who lives just a few blocks away from us.  In a matter of minutes, she was there.  Of course by this time, Addison was fine but I wasn’t.  I wasn’t sure if I was being paranoid after what mom had told me or if something truly wasn’t right.  I have learned that, as a mother, you second-guess everything it seems.  Lisa told me to call her pediatrician (since he is awesome and gave me his cell phone number).  I called him and explained what had happened.  I just wanted someone to tell me what to do—should I go to the ER to have her checked out or just stay at home and keep a close eye on her?  He advised that since she was so little that it would be a good idea to take her to the ER just to have her checked over.  I agreed—it’s better to be safe than sorry—especially when it comes to my little girl.  I talked to my parents and they volunteered to drive us to the hospital.  Dr. McKinney had recommended the Pediatric ER at UK Children’s Hospital, so that’s where we headed.  The whole way to the ER she slept, which is uncharacteristic for her—she normally likes to cry in the car, not sleep but I didn’t complain.  I sat beside her the whole way watching her chest move—inhale, exhale, inhale, exhale.. 

When we got to the ER, they took us back almost immediately (which was a nice change from the long wait that I was expecting).  The doctors and nurses were wonderful and wanted to run some tests based on what we had told them.  First they ran a CT Scan and a flu test on her and then we came back to the room to wait.  While waiting, my dad was holding her—we had been playing and reading books—I looked over at her and she wasn’t right—I just knew that SOMETHING wasn’t right.  I yelled for our nurse who was outside the door and she came running in and looked at Addison—she told us right then that our baby was having a seizure.  That’s hard for me to type and it brings all of that emotion right back from that night.  I know it is hard for any parent when their child gets hurt or is ill but to see a little 3-month old, 13 lb. baby have a seizure was just too much for me.  I think up until that point I had held myself together pretty well but hearing those words from the nurse wrecked my composure completely.  Seizures had been in the back of all of our minds because of our family history of seizures but we just didn’t want that for Addi, ya know?  Of course, looking back, there are SO MANY worse things that could have happened to her besides seizures but at the time, it didn’t feel that way.  The seizure was very short and afterwards, she seemed fine.  The doctors decided that the next test that they wanted to do was a spinal tap on her to check for meningitis.  They suggested that everyone leave the room—they said that it would be too hard to watch.  I didn’t want to leave my baby but I knew that watching that wasn’t something that I could stand so we all left and waited in another room.  There were 2 doctors and a nurse in there doing the procedure.  I just wondered if she was scared or wondered why her family had left her in there with a group of strangers but thankfully it was just for a short time.  When they came to get us to tell us it was completed they also told us that she had had another spell while the doctors were in there with her. I was glad (in a way) that the doctors were able to witness what we had described to them earlier.  They too believed that she had had a small seizure and it, like the other ones, was very brief. 

They told us at this point that they would like to keep her overnight just to keep a close eye on her.  By that time, Craig was already on his way to the hospital.  When he got there and while we were still in the ER, they also did an EKG on her where they had little patches all over her chest.  So far every test had come back normal thankfully.  A neurologist came in and saw her and said that they wanted to start her on some Keppra, a seizure medication, as a precaution and to hopefully prevent anymore seizures. 

EKG

They finally got us out of the ER at around 1 AM and moved us into a room in Pediatric ICU so that she had more specialized care.  That first night, I “slept” in a chair and held her in my arms all night.  Her IV was in her head since babies move their hands so much so we had to keep a close eye on her to make sure she didn’t grab it and pull it out!  Of course, no one got much sleep as the nurses came in constantly to check her. 

Thursday morning, they came in bright and early to do an EEG on her to check for abnormalities in her brain.  This time, all of the electodes were on her head and neck.  She did pretty good with this--of course mommy held her hand the whole time.  This, too, came back normal.

EEG

One of the highlights of our time in the ICU was when the nurses (who were absolutely adorable and wonderful) asked us if Addison could be in a flyer to advertise a fundraiser that UK Children’s Hospital was participating in.  She had won the hearts of all the staff with her good nature and adorable smile.  Of course we agreed—(they said her name would not be in the ad anywhere)—so they came in for the photo shoot and here is the finish product (the bandage on her head is just to cover up the IV):

We were moved from an ICU room to a regular room and the doctor came in and told us that they wanted to do an MRI on her later that day.  I wasn’t looking forward to that.  They told us that it would be best if she slept through the MRI—we were amused by that.  The time came and they came down to take her for the MRI.  I just think the picture of her (below) is so precious.  She looks like a sweet angel and guess what, she did great.  When they were getting her in the "straight jacket" she was going to town on that pacifier.  I think that was a good distraction for her because she slept through the whole thing and the results were normal (hooray)!

MRI

Friday morning came and we were hopeful that we would be discharged but we had to wait for the doctor so we waited and waited and waited some more…  Thankfully we had lots of visitors to make the time pass.  Finally, that afternoon the doctor came in and told us that we could go home.  They wanted to keep her on the Keppra as a precaution and said that after she was on it for a year or two, they would  do some more tests and then try to wean her off of it if everything was still normal.  The bottom line was that we were told that sometimes babies just have seizures—thankfully all of her tests had been normal so they were just hopeful that she would most likely outgrow them. 

Always had a smile for everyone!

On our way home!

We have been to the neurologist several times since then just for check-ups and all has been well.  We go back in June for a repeat EEG and if that is normal, I believe the plan is to start weaning her off of the Keppra and see how she does!  I'm so thankful that she is doing well--this thing hasn't slowed her down a bit--she doesn't fight us to take her medicine every morning and night.  It is just a part of life and she expects it I think!  She is an amazing little girl and we love her so much!