Daycation

Earlier this month, Bella, Liam and I got to visit Marci at the Arizona Grand, where she was staycationing for the week.  The twins still had to be picked up from school at 3, so it was really only a daycation for us.  Very sweet nonetheless.  We had lunch and played in the wave pool and rafted down the lazy river.  I am hard-pressed to think of better ways to pass three hours.  Bella loved being in the water (and hardly came up out of it for a picture), but I wonder if Liam may have loved it even more.  He made a crazy rhino facial expression and splashed around like he was some kind of fierce!

We <3 Carlson

Last month, Carlson Elementary held a spring carnival.  They had a fantastic turnout, and many of Gabe and Ari’s friends from school came too.  Gabe and Bella ran around the whole place, sprinting from one bouncy inflatable obstacle course to another.  I lost track of them several times… this is just a reality of having three small children of about the same ages.  My eyes do not move as quickly as their feet do.  But fear not—they came home with us.

Ari also got to ride the giant slide a few times, but spent most of the time surrounded by friends who love her.  Ari is so fortunate to have been in what I believe was the best Kindergarten class, with the best teacher, aide, and classmates; in the best school, with the best accommodations I could have ever hoped for this year.  She was fully mainstreamed with one hour of resource per day for academics, and one hour of Speech, PT, and OT per week.  She also received adapted PE.  Ari loves school.  She has more friends than I can name.  She has completely worn Jake out with the numerous birthday parties she attends nearly every weekend.  Kindergarten has been so good for her.  Ari has also realized a tremendous amount of growth in her speech and academic skills this year.  We couldn’t have hoped for better.

We feel so strongly that Carlson is just the ideal place for Ari that, even if we were to move to a new house, we could continue to make the drive to and from Carlson every day.  I feel so blessed that other sweet, charming, and smart girls and boys want to be her friends too.  I am inspired at how they have naturally found ways to communicate, joke, and chat with her – all without Ari being able to speak to them.  I feel such joy when Ari enters a room and the whole place rings explodes with cheers for her arrival.  My heart melts every time one of her friends asks me if they can push Ari in her wheelchair.  I have had to hold back the waterworks every time she is smothered in kisses and hugs at pick-up at the end of school each day.  I had hoped that she would be accepted and make friends in Kinder, but that she would be this loved, I could not have dreamed. 

Gabe loves school too of course!  He is my mister smarty pants, and excels at everything academic, but has lots of friends in class too.  He is way more social that I thought he would turn out to be.  I have no doubt that the CTA (Chandler Traditional Academy) side of Carlson was a perfect fit for him. 

Did I mention that we think Carlson Elementary is pretty great?  Well, just in case you didn’t catch that…

#7

I have a lot of catching up to do when it comes to posting on my blog and when it comes to just about everything else in my life right now, to be honest.  But for this post, I’m going to jump ahead, because some posts go straight to the top of the heap. 

Ari had her seventh post NICU seizure today.  She had it at about 4 pm at the end of a late nap.  Bella found her upon awakening (they share a room).  I think we caught it right as it started, because it was relatively mild compared to the ones of longer durations.  Her coloring was almost normal (slight blue cast), she wasn’t sweating, and she seemed to be breathing more or less normally.  I pretty much knew as soon as I saw her that we would be able to stop it with her Klonopin and Dyastat.  We only needed 2 Klonopin, before she began slowing down.  Then she was weak and nauseous for a while and had to vomit everything that she ate that day.  After about two hours, she seemed like she was slowly coming out of the woods.  Our favorite neighbor, Glenda, rushed over to help me with the other three so I could focus on caring for Ari.  Liam gets fiercely jealous if I hold anyone else in view of him.

We still have no idea what caused the seizure.  To our knowledge, she isn’t sick.  She didn’t have a fever at any point today, including right after the seizure, which is highly unusual.  We aren’t feeling very encouraged by the timing of this seizure, because it’s only 3 1/2 days away from her scheduled surgery.  This just seems like one of those times where, try as you might to be optimistic and/or resourceful, you simply have to choose from some very undesirable options.  The surgery isn’t going to be a walk in the park, even if things were to go perfectly, but any little variant could really skew the outcome. 

We are praying for her.  I hope we can count on you to do the same… and if you don’t pray, then please send us your positive thoughts, energy, vibes, whathaveyou.  We’ll take it all.

(these photos were not taken today).

Liam is 11 Months

Can I just say that I’m not ready for Liam to be approaching one year old?  I know that he is my last baby, which is probably why I just want to keep him little for much much longer.  I have not even planned a party for his one year, which you know, is so unlike me.  When I do, I will want it to be a small celebration, with just family… I think.  On Liam’s official birthday, I will be in the hospital with Ari recovering from her surgery.  I kind of feel like crying just to think about it… I am no good at thinking about Ari’s surgery or planning for it.  I have done nothing to mentally or physically prepare myself or anyone in the house, other than to pray, and I am bracing myself for the backlash of my avoidance and denial.  I also feel huge mommy guilt to be away from him for at least most of his big day.  Ugh, I just really want June to be over, to tell you the truth.  I’m getting queasy right now.

In other news, Liam is still wonderful and loveable and feisty.  Yes, he is a fiery one… just like his mommy.  With a stubborn streak… just like his daddy :).  He still loves music, and prefers making it over passively listening to it.  His favorite toys are bells, with hairbrushes and my IPhone tying for a close second.  He loves bells of every variety (hand bells, jingle bells, bells on instruments, little sleigh bells from the North Pole).  He will throw a fit if I ever attempt to take one of these items away from him.  He has been known to carry the same hairbrush with him all day long, attracting the amused comments from people passing by about how he much he must need it for all the hair he has.  Liam doesn’t get the joke yet.

However, Liam does understand a lot of jokes and seems to be developing a great sense of humor.  It’s a good thing too, because this is needed in our family.  Liam has a marvelous fake laugh that he’ll call on whenever he sees other people laughing at something.  He makes a high pitched sound and wrinkles up his nose and grins a toothy smile.  I love it.

Liam has been moving along on his tummy, but I wouldn’t call it crawling.  He does get around though… with his combination bum scooting, forward reaching, pulling knees in, rocking, commando crawling, reaching again, tummy pivoting, movement combination.  He had his first session of physical therapy, which was very informative (more on that in next month’s post). 

I am happy to announce that Liam has also started bearing weight on his legs, which is a first for him!  Up until now, his legs have been like noodles or permanently in the pike position so as to avoid letting his feet make contact with the floor.  Now, I can’t hardly get him to sit down in his high chair or flat on the floor, because he’s always intercepting me by putting his feet in a standing position.  Now, he still doesn’t have the balance or the desire to go it on his own, but I’m still happy to see him making progress in this area.

Liam has been starting to drink water and a little bit of milk from an open cup.  He is not so good with the sippy cup, and he’s inconsistent with the straw, but he drinks like a pro fairly well with an open cup or water bottle.  Holding it is another story altogether.  I have thought about starting to wean off the night feeding, because of the upcoming surgery, but I can’t stand the thought… of weaning or the surgery.  I’m starting to feel another anxiety attack come on…

Liam has been boycotting baby food except for the fruit and the sweet potatoes.  He won’t eat the fruit mixed with baby cereal either.  Baby food dinners have been out for a while.  At first, I thought it was his double ear infection and his head cold that was making him averse to eating.  But I have just had to come to terms with his distaste for bland pureed food.  We’ve moved on to a toddler diet for every meal, with the exception of a pouch when we’re out and about… yes, the gourmet organic $1.69 for 4 oz. of food… that kind, he’ll still allow.  Normally though, he’ll eat whatever we’re eating with gusto.

Liam has started enjoying playing in the company of his sisters and brother.  He sometimes squabbles with Ari over toys, but that’s to be expected.  Sometimes, he’ll even forget I’m not on the scene and just happily squawk away with them while playing with blocks or whatever else they’re doing.  Gabe and him sometimes even get into trouble together.  I’ve caught them sword fighting each other with a hiking stick and a long shoe horn from Korea.  Not my proudest moment, nor my calmest, but the point I’m trying to make here is that Liam is starting to fit right in with the others… mischief and all!

Easter

I am so tardy writing this post.  It seems like Easter was just last week, but I am well aware that it was almost a full two months ago.  *Sigh*. 

We dyed Easter eggs like every year in preparation for our egg hunt in the lawn, but this year we got to dye them with the Stoten kids, which made it even more fun.  My kids only hunt for the hardboiled dyed eggs.  The plastic ones are already in their baskets when they come downstairs in the morning.  We don’t make a big deal out of the Easter bunny, but I don’t take all the credit either.  It’s just kind of unspoken how those buckets baskets get filled with such an assortment of wonderful treats. 

I made these cupcakes that were supposed to look like eggs nestled in grass and chocolate covered strawberries that were supposed to look like carrots.  Some, but not all, of my ideas were gleaned from Pinterest.  Feel free to reuse them!

Their baskets do contain some candy, I’ll admit, but I try to be a little creative and throw in a variety of good things they don’t get everyday.  They got peeps and bunny tails (cotton candy) on a stick, fruit snacks, and bags of Cheetos that looked like a carrot.  Cheetos are the favorite forbidden snack in our home, so I had to give in for Easter.

Liam just got Puffs in his eggs, but he was just as excited as the older three!

The egg hunt is a huge competition for who can wrangle the most hard boiled eggs from the lawn.  Ari gets a head start, but other than that, all is fair in love and egg collecting.  My littles are so intense about it, you would think that those colored shells contained more than just overcooked eggs.  This is the third year in a row that we have done it this way, and each year they get more serious about the hunt.  After it’s all said and done, they actually eat every last egg.  I’m not exaggerating when I say that they eat at least four hard boiled eggs each, and for Gabe, the consumed count might exceed a half dozen. 

We usually save the spiritual and portion of the day for after the egg hunt (during and after church), but this year, it was Gabe’s idea to “act out” the story of Jesus’s death and resurrection before we could be allowed to enjoy any pagan rituals.  Gabe is and has always been my most religious child.  He reads bible stories for fun in his free time and he is the kind of kid who, when I’m trying to teach him a lesson, will relate the event at hand to a parable or a bible story.  He knows nearly every character in the Bible and the Book of Mormon (thanks to the books Grammy gave him :)) the way I used to know every kind of dinosaur.  And that’s saying a lot.  Of course my childhood dinosaur obsession never gained me any favor with the Lord.  He truly has a gift.

That said, under Gabe’s direction, I played the part of Mary Magdalene.  Jake was Jesus.  Ari and Bella were the two angels in Jesus’s tomb.  Marci and Leah were Jesus’s disciples (I’ll have to check with Gabe what the names were), and Gabe and Brian played Roman soldiers.  I messed up my part a little, but Gabe was really nice about it and gently informed me of what my correct lines were.  I’m making fun a little, but I was sincerely impressed.  I had no idea that he would initiate this, and I do think it really brought meaning to the morning.

Thank you to my sister, Marci, for being my back-up photographer and helping me document the holiday (I did not forget to plug you!).  No, seriously, I would never be in a photo ever if it wasn’t for you.

After we cleaned up, we went to all three hours of church – yay us!  And it was really good!  We then came home and had Easter dinner with just our little family of six ;).  They told me they wish it could be Easter every day.  So, I guess that means it was a great day :).