And so the Summer begins!

This weekend has been bitter/sweet for me. It's the end of the school year, which means less chaos. But it also means the boys are home all day, everyday, together. That translates to many, many screaming/fighting fits. But since Trevor is actually home for the entire summer this year, I am starting a new summer routine. It will include some regular playdates, and a 'quiet time' every afternoon for Trevor and Jordan to work on the things they were doing at the end of the school year. I hope that the next couple weeks of transition will go as smoothly as possible.
We have some activities planned, such as the zoo, dinasoar park, aquatic park, air force museum, ect. So hopefully the summer will just fly on by. Josh will continue to have therapy weekly, so that will help us stay in some sort of routine.

And the boys both did very well in primary today! Trevor gave the prayer, which went very well. We had been practicing, but you never know how it will work out with him. I was very proud of him. Jordan gave his first talk. He did awesome. He spoke right into the microphone, with no hesitation, and was very clear. I was so excited that it turned out so well. Today was a stressful day for me. My class also had sharing time and it was my week to teach. So I had lot's of things going on today. It all went well and I am so glad it is over!

Jordan's Preschool Program

Jordan had a preschool program tonight. He sang some songs and got his yearbook. He has been waiting for two weeks for this night. And he was such a little performer. Who knew??

This is Jordan and his best friend Roman waiting for the program to start. These two are so cute together!

They were singing a song about standing on one leg. Jordan has been practicing for a week so he could do it the best, he said. He did a really good job!

And here is Jordan and Roman. They love to play together and get along so well. Thank goodness for Lorina and I!!! Jordan has come out of his shell so much since starting preschool and having Roman as a friend. We love Roman to death!! They will get to play together alot this summer as well, which will make life easier!

A trip down Memory Lane....

This week has been one of those rare weeks for me. I have spent quite a bit of time thinking about when Josh was born, and how that has changed our family this past year. With him turning a year soon, I thought I would post some pictures of when he was born... maybe they are some pictures we have never shared with anyone.

This picture was the day after Josh was born. This was the first time we were able to offer Josh a bottle and the first time Scott held him. I was able to hold him late the night before... I was at the hospital anyway and the NICU is open to parents 24/7. He was 16 hours old before I was able to hold or really even touch him for the first time.

This picture was taken when Josh was 4 days old, and under the Bili lights for his jaundice. This is the point where we were only allowed to hold him twice a day... at 9am and 9pm.

This picture was taken hours after we finally were able to bring Josh home from the NICU. You can't tell, but he still had lights at this point... they were a blanket that was wrapped around him under those blankets. I was so glad we only had that for 3 days.

And my baby today!!!!!!!!!! Look how big!!!!!

Josh is doing great. We have had a rough week, which is why I think the trip down memory lane has been going on. Just an update on how things are going with him: he has been in therapy for 5 months now. And this past monday is the first time we have ever had a session go for almost 2 hours. Usually his therapists are here for 30-45 min and are gone. He has always had progress since his previous visit with whichever therapist is here. So for the first time ever, we are backing off and back to square one. His therapist tried him with chunks in food, a Gerber Stage 3 food with tender carrots and stuff to chew. He did not do well at all. He gagged several times, and then actually choked on it. It came out his nose and everything. He was so upset after, and I was worried as you can imagine. So his therapist said that he is still going to have to be on a strickly puree diet, and we will work with tongue development. With his birthday in less than two weeks, I had obviously given up on cake, but was going to do some jello for him. But his therapist said that he isn't going to tolerate that either. So we are back to puree foods, with at least 3 bottles of formula a day. It is not what I was hoping for and seemed like a blow to how hard we have been working on this. It seems like more and more this poor child is not going to ever catch a break. It truly breaks my heart that as a mom, there isn't anything I can do. But we will keep chugging along. We have the best therapist ever, so at least I feel like we have a good game plan and we will get through this.

So that has been my week with Josh so far. He just has so many things to deal with, I still am amazed at how happy he is, and hope he continues to have that great attitude. He'll need it!

Trevor's School Program

Can you believe I have been able to do two posts today??


Here is Trevor today at his end of the year program for school. He had been talking about this all month, but was disappointed to find out Scott had to work and couldn't come.

I don't think he was happy about the whole butterfly on his head, but I was surprised he cooperated! It's kinda cute.... don't ya think?

This isn't a great pictures, but I had to videotape it too...so the pictures were done in a huge hurry!

This is Trevor's bus driver Tad, and the aid Jan. He would not have ever ridden the bus if not for Tad. We get a daily report of the fun things Tad and Jan do with Trevor and sometimes it feels like they are part of our family as well! LOL! They even know Jordan by name and leave him treats on all the holidays too. So of course we had to have a picture with the famous Tad and Jan.

The program went well and he did very good. He was pretty shell-shocked at first, but was attempting to sing by the end. It was so cute and lot's of fun! I was very impressed with how well he handled it. He has had a rough night since then, but you win some, you lose some.

Poor Josh!!!

I was going to post an update on Josh but hadn't had time....and then THIS happened!!!


Our poor boy had his toe broken! Doesn't it make you sad????

Wednesday afternoon Scott was getting Josh out of our van and accidentally somehow, Josh got his foot slammed in the drivers side door. He cried for hours and would scream when his foot moved or anything touched it. Since I had an appt thursday morning already, we waited to have it looked at. His Doctor looked at it and is pretty sure it is broken, but wanted to save us money and not do an x-ray since you would treat it the same... if it is broken or tissue damage. So, his whole foot is splinted and he seems to be doing better with it... he doesn't cry all the time and can crawl again. So that was our newest drama of the week.

So Josh had a checkup appt to make some changes in his ever-growing list of meds/therapy/food schedules. He started a reflux med two weeks but it isn't making enough of a difference, so we added a second med. He started on some meds for his constipation... Milk of Magnesia, and a double dose at that. So he is now on four meds daily, and I am hoping it is not for long. We are changing to a different formula again to see if we can help his problems too. His Ped. said next month when he comes in for his 12 month appt, if we have not made significant progress with all this.....it is down to Primary Children's Medical Center to see a specialist. So pray for us! We don't want to have to drag him to another doctor. The poor boy can't catch a break.

So this is our newest update. I changed bottles again too, so we'll see if that helps with his reflux as well. I will keep you updated on our progress... and let's hope it is positive progress!!!

An update on the youngest of the crew

He is teething again..... can you tell???

I took this picture yesterday just to show that we finally had a warm enough day for shorts.

Now an update on our littlest one. There is always something going on with him. I sometimes wonder where all my time goes... and I think he gets more of it than I realize!!!

Josh had his ear surgery on the 31st of march. He has had some problems and another ear infection since then, but I think we have finally got it under control. He is now on Zyrtec for allergies and the problems seemed to have been solved for now. We are starting a whole new feeding program with him tomorrow when his Occupational Therapist comes back. He has so many food allergies: milk, eggs, peaches, apricots and strawberries. And that is so far. But he is not self feeding or anything yet. So we are going to get that going and start teaching him to put objects in his mouth. He doesn't really do the hand/mouth thing either. Right now we are also on ready-made soy formula and his therapist thinks we can get him back on powdered. We aren't even looking at weaning him off the bottle and formula for a few months, even though he is 11 months tomorrow. We also started him back on some prevacid for reflux and some other meds for constipation. We aren't going to get anywhere until we get the digestive/reflux problems solved.

So that's the latest on that. But the flip side is his physical therapy is going excellent. He is crawling very well, transitioning from sitting to crawling and back again perfectly. Just a couple days ago he started to figure out that he can pull up to things. He hasn't done it alone yet, but he is showing interest. He is also babbling a little now. Since his ears are clear he can ear and balance much better and things have taken off.

He is still such an laid back, easy going baby. He is such a joy and has been a real trooper through all he has been struggling with. I do wish life was easier for him and I hope that it does get better. I can't believe his is a year next month!

Our new floors!!!!!!!!!

This is what we spent a week doing lately! We had carpet everywhere in our house and we finally got some wood down! Thanks to a friends of ours (THANK YOU! Alison and Thomas!!!) We were able to afford to get this done now instead of waiting.
This is the back of our big family/living room where our table and back door are.

This is our kitchen area, I so wish I had before and after pictures!

This is the bar area where the kids eat. As you can tell with Josh now crawling... all sorts of foods he is allergic to on our floor was not a good thing. I am soooo happy about this! My vacuuming time has been cut by 3/4 now! It's so easy to clean up after meals!!

So thank you to everyone who helped us.... Ron, Brian... Alison and Thomas, we could not have done it without some help!!!

Trevor's 6th Birthday (a little late)

Here is Trevor with his Castle cake I made. He was very insistant he needed it, even though he never ate any.

Trevor and Jordan actually both looking and smiling at the camera..... it's priceless!!

Trevor's birthday was fun, we had his party ahead of time the sunday before since it worked better with everyone's schedules. But he turned 6 on April 9th! It is hard to believe he is that old already. I remember when we brought him home from the hospital........ ahhh.... those were the days.

Just a quick update on him.

He is doing well in school, his last day will be May 23rd. He is learning to read and it's been so fun to see how far he has come this school year. This summer will be a challenge to make sure he doesn't regress, but with some daily work I think he will be fine.

Josh is 9 months!

Can you believe I have been able to do two posts today? Amazing!


It is hard to believe that my 'baby' is 9 months now! Life sure does fly by, and before you know it, they aren't a baby anymore!

He is so happy he can finally sit up now. He has been in therapy for three months now, and it is helping him. He is still a little unsteady, but for the most part stays sitting for long periods of time now. We are now working on some exercises daily to help him learn to scoot and crawl.

His OT therapy is going good too. We haven't made too much progress there, but at least we finally know some of the reason he is having such a hard time. His gag reflex is on the front on his tongue instead of the back of his throat. It is re trainable, but takes time.

We have also found out some interesting things with him. He is allergic to Milk and peaches, which we knew about. But we recently found out about an egg allergy too. They aren't supposed to have egg whites until a year, but Gerber puts some egg yolk in one of the chicken noodle dinners they have in stage 2 foods. I gave it to him three separate times to make sure it wasn't a freak thing, and he got hives all three times, with each time being worse. At his check up the Doctor said that if he has a problem with egg yolk... it means we have some serious food allergy problems. So we now have an epi-pen we carry with us, and we hope to never have to use it. His food allergies are much worse than Trevor's ever were.

And if that wasn't bad enough, he also has ear problems as well. He has had 4 ear infections since Jan 4th, and when he was in for his check up, the Dr found his ears are infected again. So we have an appt on tuesday with an ENT (ear, nose, throat) Dr. to see about probably getting tubes put in. I feel so bad for this poor kid! He has ear problems, is teething again, and just had shots. So needless to say, I am not getting alot of sleep! It is a good thing he is so easy going!

And for everyone wanting to know about our puppy, Gracie,here is a new picture. She is doing good. She hasn't grown much, she is about 7 pounds. She had a reaction to her first set of shots and I had to take her back in for Kennel Cough last week. She just got through with some antibiotics to help that. Life is sure never boring around here!

I will keep everyone updated on the kids when I can. I have been pretty busy with them lately, plus we have stuff coming up in the next couple weeks for Trevor as well. Thanks for the emails and concern! We appreciate it!

Jordan is 4!!!

Jordan is 4!!! Can you believe it? Sorry the pictures aren't any better, but it was crazy and there wasn't alot of room for him to open presents. That is what happens when you get both sides of the family in our house.

The two kids you can see here in this picture, are my cousins, Kendra and Harrison.

This picture is of Kendra, Harrison again, as well as my nephew Jarron (who is Jordan's age).

He had a great birthday and got way too much stuff as usual. He got a changing color Light Saber, Star Wars figures, a pirate sword, punching bag, spider man gun, airplanes, and a few outfits and jammies. He was so excited he couldn't even decide what to open first. It was a lot of fun! It's hard to believe his is 4 now. Time sure flies by!