Friday, October 28, 2011

Updates All Around!

Every night I feel like I am in a competition. With who, I'm not sure. My three boys perhaps... Most nights end in my victory and occasionally I lose. But, when I lose it usually means that at least one of my boys loses too... so perhaps I am not in competition with them? A competition with gas, maybe? Hunger pains? Tonight, I seem to be winning as all 3 of my boys are.... hmmm.... make that two of my boys are sleeping and Trev is in his swing grunting at me when he should be sleeping. We're gonna wait and see how that one ends. Perhaps he will work it out on his own. A mommy can hope, right?

As time goes on, our lives are taking shape more and more. Here is a little taste of where we all are in life right now.

I am attempting to balance work life with home life, though the scales definitely seem to tip towards home life. I am so greteful to work with close friends who would give me the world if they could! Because of them I am able to tip the balance to my home life more than I would be able to at most other jobs. I am involved in opening a restaurant in Redding right now. I like to consider myself master taste tester! I am not the culinary genious of the group but I have gained a good appreciating for good food. And I do have one signature dish of my own on the menu! It involves goat cheese and that is all the info you get! If you want to know more, you must come! We are a few weeks out from being open and I expect to see all of you there!

Matt is not working currently and he spends his days mostly in our living room keeping the 3 boys entertained, clean, fed and happy. A very exhausting job to say the least! He is considering working a little bit part time during the holiday season. We'll see if that works out.

Athan is stepping into his role of big brother as well as I could have hoped! Though he did throw a ball at Dax earlier. That was a fun conversation explaining to him that his brother can't catch a ball yet. Athan brings them blakets, holds their bottle for them and gives lots of kisses. It is amazing to see how sweet that boy is!

His knee is looking great after having his surgery over 2 months ago. He has a very nice pronounced 2" scar vertically right over his kneecap. We've explained to him that one day it will help him get attention from the ladies! The Dr. said it looks great and he doesn't expect the hemangioma to recur so we are done with that chapter of his life and we just need to keep an eye on it to make sure we don't see signs of it returning.

He is beginning to speak so well! Every day I am amazed by his vocabulary.

------ And that is where the boys decided I would stop writing the other night. Now to pick up where I left off. Athan's vocabulary...--------------------------------------------------

It's amazing to see his little mind at work learning new things constantly. He has gotten to the point where we no longer need to teach him words. HE simply absorbs them from conversations. Speaking of conversations, he has very clear conversations with us now. Matt told me today he walked by my empty mug that still had a tea bag in it and said, "Uh oh, Mommy didn't eat it all!" Cute. though apparently he doesn't quite understand tea yet!

Daxton is growing and developing very well. He is well over 8 lbs now and has grown out of newborn size diapers already! He really likes to talk to us and is starting to give us smiles often. He is a very easygoing baby and quite content just sitting on his own after he eats so that Trev can eat too. Tonight was the first night I have had him demand that I hold him while he falls asleep. We have his first Shriners appt on Nov 14th which I can't wait to get more information as to what his treatment will be. I just want to know what my baby is in store for. He has his 3rd (and hopefully last) eye exam since his discharge on NOV 1st to make sure that his retina has developed properly. With all the O2 he was given early on I was concerned about ROP but his last few eye exams have been getting better and better and he just had one spot left in his left eye where the blood vesselsdevelopd in a way that is referred to as popcorn. We expect this to be all resolved when we go in on Tuesday.

Trevyn is growing and developing well also. He knows what he wants and is not afraid to tell us. Poor baby has a lot of gas pains and was a bit colicky when we first got him home though this seems to be gone now. We get a lot of sweet "sleep smiles" from him which are quite precious. I'm pretty sure he was working on sticking his tongue out with Jeanette tonight!

We are currently going to the pediatric unit at the hospital twice a week to check his BP as it was elevated again shortly after he was discharged. His pediatric nephrologist wants his diastolic BP to get below 100 and it has been around 115+. On his last visit Trev was being fussy which makes it hard to get a good BP read. We decided to take a break after getting really high readings so he could calm down a bit. We walked up to the NICU to say hi to the nurses. While we were up there I mentioned what was going on with his BPs and the nurses measured Trev's arm for me and determined that they were using the wrong size cuff to take his BPs! They gave me the right size and we proceeded down to the peds unit to try again. This time we got 2 high BPs and 2 normal ones. I didn't want to torture his poor little arm any more so we decided to leave it at that. I plan to take him in again tomorrow and hopefully we will get some normal pressures!

We also have an appointments with a pediatric cardiologist in mid november for a small valve between Trev's atria of the heart that never closed, called ASD. We will see how that goes but the Neonatologist seemed optimistic about it.




I want to add more picures to my blogs but I am finding it to be a very time consuming pain in the butt. Whenever I load one it automatically loads on the top of the page and I have to drag it through the entire blog to get it in the right place. Anyone know of anyway to get it to load in a specific location?

Thursday, October 13, 2011

4 Men and a Mommy!

Well, the last month has been a whirlwind to say the least! We have been acting like a "normal" family of 5 over the past month, simply with a few extra Dr. appointments.

If I could pick 5 words to describe this experience so far they would be:
Exhilarating
Exhausting
Amazing
Difficult
Joyous!

How do we do it??? I don't know!!! Here is my typical day!
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11am - I wake up around and immediately pump (moo!) and take a shower. I do so immediately because I know the moment I emerge from my room I will be sucked into a wonderful vortex of cuddling with Trev, feeding Dax and listening to Athan tell me all about his airplanes and Choo Choo trains as well as what he had done throughout the morning so far. I love this part of my morning, thus I do the necessary things before embarking on this daily journey, therefore allowing proper enjoyment of such events.

11:45am - I am now ready to tackle what needs to be done for the day. So, I emerge from my room and partake in the aforementioned activities.

12:15PM - Now is the time I begin to think about the things I need to do for the day. Grocery shopping, Dr. appts, blood pressure checks, Early Intervention appts, manage medical bills, go to work... yadda yadda yadda!

12:30pm - 5:30pm - Time to actually get those things done. This is the time of day where I get to escape the madness of my living room. Don't get me wrong, I love spending as much time as possible with my boys, but I need some me time and some girl time!!! (enter Jeanette!)

5:30pm - I come home defeated only having gotten 1/3rd of the things done that I had planned on completing. ((In high school I never understood adults when they said that there are not enough hours in the day... Now.... I GET IT!))

6PM - Either Matt or I figure out and prepare dinner while the other juggles babies, dirty diapers, lego trains, computer mouses, juice bottles... you name it...

7pm-7:30pm - If we are lucky Matt and I get to eat dinner around this time. Of course it is almost always cold but by this time, I couldn't care if it was frozen, I'm starving! And we don't dare take the extra time to pop it in the microwave for a few minutes. Moments with free hands to eat a meal around our house are fleeting and if you don't sieze the moment, it may pass you by and leave you with an empty stomach!

8pm: Bath time! Athan is pretty easy and enjoys his baths a lot! One of us simply polices to bathroom to make sure there are no shenanigans going on (ei, the water is staying in the tub). The boys get bath time in the sink in the bathroom. They LOVE their baths! In turn, I love their baths as well! They get so irritated with me when I am getting them out of their outfits that by the time I get them to the water they are screaming at me. Then, as I put them in the warm water they immediately calm down and just look around and stare at me with their big beautiful eyes!

Sometime between 9pm-midnight - Athan's bedtime. He has taken on the desire to sleep either in our bed or on the couch so he can be with mommy and his brothers. We tried letting him sleep in the bed once. After numerous bruises, poor sleep and waking up to a toddler who feel of the side and was stuck between the crib and bed led us to the determination that the bed was not our best option... Now the couch is fun because Athan falls asleep while Mommy takes care of his brothers and then when he is good and zonked, mommy takes him to bed and he never knows the difference. PS: carrying 30lbs of dead weight toddler at midnight is no easy task!

10pm - Matt heads to bed to get some sleep before I wake him up before 5am. I'm on my own and ready for the challenge!

10pm-2am - I feed and try to train the boys that it is sleep time all while pumping (moo!) and trying to clean up the craziness from the day.

2am- I usually have both boys asleep and I join them!

4am-5am - Boys wake up and I wake Matt up and then I pass out!
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Heh, I explained in the beginning of this post that this was my "typical" day. As I laid it out I realize that I do not have a "typical" day! But, that is a good example!


So, as you can see by my daily schedule, I don't have much time with free hands. Thus, the lack in blogging. I really want to keep all the details straight and everyone updated so I am hoping to get another blog together within the next 2 days that is more of an update on the boys and how they are growing. Hold me to it!