Last Sunset

Goodbye 2008!



The sunset was certainly pretty tonight. That's a good sign for the upcoming year, right? :c)

P365

I tried this year to do Project 365. My attempt didn't go very well. I gave up completely a month or two into it. Actually, I think my problem was more that I forgot about it, forgot my camera, etc. I love the idea, though, and had fun the days I did participate, so I am going to give it another try. I am going to give myself a few guidelines:

1. Don't expect the pictures to be perfect. Capture the memory, don't worry if it's going to be a perfect shot, too grainy, poor lighting.
2. Don't stress if you miss a day, just pick up where you are and continue.
3. Take your camera E.V.E.R.Y.W.H.E.R.E. At least this year I have my iPhone, which helps, and I can upload those pictures very easily and quickly.

I really want to stick with this and have a wonderful record of 2009. Won't a collage of the 365 days(or whatever I end up with) be a neat thing to see? I should gather all the days I did manage to get a picture and see what it looks like. Maybe that will be a bit of motivation for the upcoming year.

Anyone want to give it a try?

Yaaaarrrrrrn!

If anyone has a little bit of Christmas money and wants to buy some gorgeous yarn from a very sweet person, you should check out Annie Amelia. There is a sale going on through the month of December and her taste in yarn is to die for! I want pretty much all of it. LOL! The wonderful mama that runs the shop is a dear friend of mine. You should check out her patterns, too. I'm finishing up the nice nice headband using the yarn she suggested and it is so... nice - just as the pattern says! :c) It's very pretty and girly. I have two of the i-cords left to do, the rest has been done for a very long time, but I tend to walk away from projects. Hi, ADD! (No, I'm not just throwing the term around, I really do have it. :cD) It was a really quick and simple knit and is beautiful. Sheri would very much like for me to finish it, since I promised it to her when I was done. It came in the first Sweetcase, which is another wonderful product of hers that you need to go check out. I had never worked with beaded yarn before getting Sweetcase#1 and probably never would have, if it weren't for Cheryl and her shop(which is named after her grandmother, that is so sweet!).

So get on over there and have a look around! :c)

The end of another year

We wish you a Merry Christmas!!



And a Happy New Year!

:c)

Happy Birthday to my baby!

Elijah is one year old today. I just can't believe it has been a year. I've been thinking all day today about the day he was born. Everything was up in the air. We didn't know what to expect. We were excited and nervous and happy and anxious. It was a very long day. Elijah was born at 12:39pm(all 10 pounds 7 ounces of him!) and I didn't get to see him again until about 12:30am. It is amazing how far he has come. We have been so incredibly blessed.


I uploaded some pictures into a "December 2007" album in our gallery. The link is over there on the left. I have looked at pictures off and on all day, remembering that day and the weeks that followed. And now, a year later, I have a wonderful, happy and healthy one-year-old boy.


Elijah is such a fantastic baby. He is so happy and loving. I feel blessed to have him in our family. I love his little open-mouth, slobbery kisses on the cheek. I love how he chomps my chin and giggles. I love when he snuggles in so close. He has an infectious laugh and his eyes twinkle when he smiles. I love his gummy, toothless grins.


Happy Birthday, Elijah! We love you so much!

'Tis the season

It's time to really gear up for Christmas. There isn't really too much that needs to be done. I took our family Christmas pictures on Saturday and have been playing around with them a bit. It's time to get them printed out and put into envelopes. I'm only slightly behind on this. I'll post some here once I get them mailed.(Hint: There are a couple sneak peeks in our photo gallery if you like to peek. Or you can just watch the little slideshow on the left of the blog!) :cD I have a few last minute things to get, but then I didn't start shopping until last week, so I guess it's all last minute. Haha!! We don't do a big Christmas, so it doesn't take much time. The kids each get 3 gifts from Kirk and I(think of the 3 wise men) and then a gift from Santa. They get a few little things in their stocking like chapstick, an apple, a clementine, a candy cane and maybe another little item or two like those. They also get a pair of Christmas pajamas on Christmas Eve to wear to bed that night. For their three gifts, we try to stick to one thing they need, one thing they want and one thing that's educational. Sometimes it's hard to know what to get, because they don't really have big Christmas wish lists. This year they each had 3 or 4 things on their list, so it was a little easier. I don't know if it's because we've always done Christmas this way or if it's just the way our kids are, but they don't really ask for much. It leaves time, money and energy to be able to do things for others as well.

I'm really enjoying this Christmas. It's so much different from last year. Elijah will be one on Saturday. It's hard to believe it's been a year. We are so incredibly blessed. I'm glad to be home and more grateful than words can express that he is doing so very well. He has come so far in a year.

The girls have two more days of school and then are off for 2 weeks. I have plans for Christmas cookies, gingerbread houses and all kinds of fun things. We'll be using Wednesday to make some cinnamon rolls for gifts and for our Christmas morning. I'm excited!

I do need to get to work, though, because there is shopping and sewing to be done. :c)

Neat CT scans

Here are some really neat pictures of Elijah's skull from the 3D scan on the 8th. Well, at least *I* think they're neat! LOL!



Looking at the top of his head. You can see his face at the bottom of the picture. This shows his fontanel on top, his skull sutures(not fused! Awesome news!) and his shunt.


The back of his head. You can see the hole where his encephalocele was and is almost gone! :c)


Looking at the back of his head. You see the encephalocele again and can start to see how the bottom left is a little bigger than the bottom right.


Again from the back. The part on the left is more visible here. You can see both the encephalocele and the fontanel at the top of his head in this picture, as well as his shunt on the right side of the picture.


The white spot is his shunt. You can see another part of it as a white spot on the right of the picture. The dark area is what is left of the fluid in his brain. Look at all that beautiful brain!


This is a picture from his CT when he was born. Look how far he has come in a year!! :cD (His head is the same size now as it was when he was born.) The dark part is fluid. You can also see how thin(and non-existent in some places) his skull was in the back.

Elijah's neurosurgeon is going to watch the back of Elijah's head where it is a bit deformed. He isn't going to have him wear a helmet because after a certain age it isn't as helpful, plus it is a bit risky to use a helmet on a kid that has a shunt. So, we're going to watch it and hope it evens itself out by the time he is 3 or 4.

It's good to be home!

We had a really great day! Elijah was such a trooper. He was happy and smiley pretty much all day with just a couple moments of fussiness. You can't ask for a better travel companion. His CT looked fantastic! His head might not have grown outward very much in the last several months, but that's because it's been working overtime on the inside! One ventricle looks really close to normal and the other is only slightly enlarged. It was such a pretty scan to see! So much beautiful brain! ;c) His head shape is looking good as well. There's a bit on the back of the head that we're going to keep an eye on, but Dr. Grant said it should even itself out over the next couple years. The plates in his skull are not fused, so there is the opportunity for more growth. The spot where his encephalocele was is really small! The skull is working hard to close the bone over that spot. He just looks awesome! :c)

Elijah was quite the little flirt today. He would flirt away and then get shy all of the sudden, so he would hide behind his arm. It was really cute. We stopped by the ICN to see if any of Elijah's nurses were there. It was a long shot and none of them were on shift today, but the guy at the reception desk remembered me and Elijah's name. He was happy to meet him! Elijah flirted with the girl that was working the reception desk, too. He was very taken with her. :cD

We head back to Duke in June for a check-up, but no more scans until a YEAR from now!! How awesome is that?!

Duke

We're at Duke today for a check- up. We got here a little early and Elijah was a champ so we're already done with the CT. Now we are waiting for his clinic appt. just before noon.

Happy Thanksgiving!

I'm a day late. :cD It's ok, we're still celebrating Thanksgiving with another dinner today, so I'm still in the mode. It's Elijah's first Thanksgiving and we have much to celebrate. You need a couple days for that!

Perhaps I've mentioned, perhaps not, but Elijah *loves* to eat. I mean loves, Loves, LOVES to eat.
He was so excited watching the food cook. Everything smelled so wonderful he just couldn't wait!
He even licked the glass on the front of the stove a few times and banged on the door as if to say, "Hurry up in there!!"

We had a wonderful and relaxing afternoon at my Mom's house. The food was very yummy and I probably ate too much, but Thanksgiving dinner was my only meal all day just for that reason. :cD Elijah ate and ate and ate. I think Papa John was his best friend for a while. Elijah ate a bunch of pumpkin mousse, an entire roll plus some of my Mom's roll, some bits of turkey, some jello salad, I think some corn pudding and who knows what else. He was unstoppable. Perhaps this will be his favorite holiday?

Here are my gorgeous guys in a bit of a Turkey stupor. ;c) It's nap time, dontchaknow? I didn't get many pictures, since all I had was the camera in my phone. My brother got some that were cute and I'm sure I'll get some more today. I'm going to do my best to remember my camera this time.

I hope everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving. We have so, so much to be thankful for this year. We are truly blessed.

Veterans Day

I chaperoned a field trip to watch the parade today. I think the entire Primary School walked down the hill and into downtown. I love our cute little town.

(You see this guy driving this cute old truck all over town.)

Sheri was in the parade. :c) (Pink coat right in the middle.)

There are a few more pictures in the gallery. We really loved all the old cars.

A month in review

I did it, again. I slipped back into my habit of the once-a-month update. I'll work on that. ;c)

The past month has been quite full. Elijah has had a great month! He was discharged from physical therapy on the 16th. Since then he has started pulling up on things higher than his eye-level, moving his feet and cruising a little, sitting on his knees in the middle of the room unassisted, and he climbed up two stairs. Time to start putting up the baby gate. ;c) He also has started making the sign for "milk" and started waving "bye". He's doing so well!


The rest of us are doing great, too, but a few of the family passed around a cold. It missed me, for the most part, but Kirk got a bad cold just in time to leave town for several days. We had a fun Halloween. The kids had a good time. :c) We finished it all out with me getting strep throat this week. :cP I'm feeling a bit better, now, but I'm still on the mend.


We've got lots going on this month and next, like every other family, but I'm going to try to be better about posting more often. :cD Happy holiday season, everyone!

Happy Birthday to my sweet oldest girl!

Katelee is 10 today! How did that happen?? It really doesn't seem like it's been 10 years since I became a mom for the first time. I'm certainly not old enough to have a 10-year-old. ;c)

My awesome girl loves pie. Every year for her birthday, she requests a birthday pie instead of a cake. One year it was apple, one year peach and last year I think it was pumpkin. Her favorite pies ever are pumpkin and lemon meringue. This year she wanted to take a treat to school, but pies aren't easily taken and shared in class. She suggested I make mini-pies like I did a month or so ago when I made 100 tiny pies. I didn't want to have that much work to do, so we came up with a compromise -- pumpkin cupcakes. All the goodness that is pumpkin pie, but in a delicious and easy-to-eat form.

I baked the cupcakes last night, decorated them this morning and we now have 24 yummy pumpkin cupcakes with maple cream cheese icing ready to head to school.

Happy Birthday, Katelee!

'Tis the season

Spicy hot chocolate
Originally uploaded by DeathByBokeh

Everyone in our family has had their turn with the first cold of the season. Even Elijah has had a runny nose. I knew it would likely be my turn soon. I hate getting a cold. It goes straight to my chest each and every time. I woke up Friday morning feeling awful. I hope it runs it's course quickly. The only good part about having a cold(haha!) is drinking hot chocolate with cinnamon and a pinch of cayenne pepper.That extra little bit of heat really helps loosen stuff up and it tastes great, too. You should try it!

Grandmama is one tough lady.

My 89-year-old grandmother fell last night while getting in her car to drive home after church. Yes, she still drives and lives alone. What did she do after she fell? She got in her car and drove home anyway. She's a tough one. Her friends followed her home to make sure she got there ok. She ended up at the hospital because her hip is broken. I can't imagine what it would have been like to drive with a broken hip. Ouch! At least she is in the hospital up here near the family instead of the one over an hour away, so we can visit her. Please keep her in your thoughts and prayers!

Elijah and PT

Elijah had a physical therapy appointment this past Monday. He is doing so, so well. We talked some more about him being discharged from PT. He's been having visits from his PT twice a month starting in March. It looks like his last day of PT will be the 16th of this month. His service coordinator from Early Intervention is coming this Friday morning to fill out the paperwork for the discharge. Unless something comes up at the last appointment that gives Elijah's therapist cause for concern, he will be discharged effective the 17th.

Isn't that awesome?! We still need to get his MRI scheduled sometime in the next couple months and then he will have a check-up with his neurosurgeon down at Duke. He wanted Elijah to have the MRI and check-up "closer to a year". Since he'll be a year old on December 20th, I'd rather get it all done before the holidays, before Thanksgiving, even, if we can.

It's hard to believe it's been almost a year already. Last year at this time, we were about a month away from our first trip down to Duke. We were going to the perinatologist pretty regularly for ultrasounds. Just thinking about all the uncertainty that surrounded us then makes me feel a bit anxious. And here we are. A year later and with a wonderful, healthy and very happy little boy. It's amazing.

I've gone pink

My blog is Pink for October. Make yours pink, too. :c)

And by the way...

My oldest baby girl is almost 10! Ok, so there's still a little over a week until her birthday. But, how did that happen?? Who gave her permission to grow up so quickly?

Double digits.

No, I am NOT getting old. My children are aging, but I am not. Ha! It's funny how Sheri still thinks, most of the time, that I am 29. She's starting to wise up to the game. It's a shame what school and learning Math will do to a child. ;c)

Insomnia

What do you all do when you can't sleep? Every once in a while I have a night where I just can't fall asleep, even though you would think I could sleep like the dead! I end up wasting time one way or another. Tonight it's been watching TV shows online, catching up on my Bloglines and just surfing around.

It's a shame I can't feel like cleaning, huh? ;c)

So, what do you do when you can't sleep?

My Spencer Boy

He has the best hazel eyes. They are green and brown and golden and just all sorts of colors. It's impossible to capture all the awesomeness in a picture, but that didn't stop me from trying.


He also has crazy-long eyelashes. They actually get stuck sometimes in his lower lid, I kid you not.

It was a beautiful day today.

They said they were hot...

So they crawled under my mom's truck for some "shade".








Isn't he just so yummy?

Oh yeah! He had his 9 month check-up a week ago. He weighed about 21.5 pounds and was about 31" long. According to the charts, he is really long and average weight. He still looks like a chunk to me. :c)

Hangin' Out with Owen

We had what very well might be our last summer swim over at Owen's house yesterday. They've had quite the eventful summer, so we weren't able to hang out much until now. We sat the boys down together for a quick photo-op. It was... not so easy to get a picture of the two of them. LOL! They were very cute together. :c) Some of my pictures were a little blurry, because I wasn't using a flash, but they are still really cute. Check out these adorable boys!!







Elijah even got a hug and kiss from Owen. :c)
Or maybe it should be titled, "Eat the baby!" :cD

As promised... pictures!

I can't believe he's already 8 months old!

A question for the moms of babies with VP shunts

Perhaps Elijah is just a super soaker, but I have to ask... does your little one seem to pee more than the normal amount? Elijah just seems to pee a ton. LOL! I notice it especially at night. I have found nothing that can stand up to a night with him. I do use cloth diapers, but I also tried 4 different brands of disposable diapers. None of them could hold the flood. Everything would be drenched the next morning - the diaper, his clothes, the sheets. At least with the cloth the diapers are just really, really wet, but not dripping. Of course, I had to try several things with the cloth as well before I found something that could at least hold it all in. I have even tried changing him in the middle of the night, but he is still soaking(and leaking in some cases) in the morning.

Is it just Elijah, or does the fact that the CSF drains as well make them have that much more output? Or maybe it's a combination of both. He pees more than the regular baby plus the extra fluid makes it even more.

It's Friday night, another week survived!

I keep putting off posting to the blog until I have time to fully update, but the longer I wait, the more there is to say, the more time I would need to update... you get the idea. :c) So, let's see how much I can remember and get out there before it all flies out of my head.

The girls started school on Wednesday. They all have great teachers. They are all enjoying school. Next week starts dance for Grace. Katelee's soccer practice starts sometime in September. I need to get going on Sheri's piano lessons.

Spencer misses his sisters during the day, so he spends his days driving mommy crazy. ;c) He talks my ear off and needs my full attention most of the day. It's pretty exhausting, but I know it will eventually get better. He's just used to so much going on around here all day long. He's such a good boy. He will be trying dance class this year to see how he likes it. I bet he's going to be so cute!

Elijah is just, well, he's awesome, that's what he is! He sat up for the first, extended period of time about 2.5 weeks ago at his PT appointment. We were shocked. He sat there for about 5-7 minutes before falling over. He has done really well with it since then. I don't think he has sat there for as long as he did that day, but he definitely does extremely well. I think he just gets too excited or distracted and falls over. About a week ago, he started trying to figure out crawling. !!! He gets up on his hands and toes into a little baby yoga pose(downward dog hahaha!). He also can get up on his hands and knees. He's trying so very hard to crawl and he is so so close. He can lunge forward sometimes when he's on all fours. He'll throw himself forward and flop onto his belly. He'll be crawling soon, I'm sure. He also is rolling around the floor a lot more. He;s definitely on the cusp of being truly mobile. This is unexpected. He turned 8 months old on Wednesday. We were prepared for him to hold off on crawling for another month or two. The rest of the kids were all crawling at 6-7 months and walking during their 9th month. We had expected that Elijah wouldn't be walking before he turned a year, but it looks like he may have other plans. He's such a miracle. The hydrocephalus and encephalocele both had the potential to really delay his gross motor skills, but he seems to be catching right up to the other kids. Oh, and he slept for 9 hours straight last night!! Hooray! Let's hope this will be repeated. Often.

I do have pictures, but I need to get them from the camera to the computer and then edited and uploaded. I'm so behind! I thought when the girls were back in school then I would have so much time to get things done around here. It's been almost the opposite. I hope it all settles out soon. Spencer tried to spend the night at Mom and John's house tonight, but around 9 o'clock he was ready to come home and sleep in his own bed. He went to bed pretty easily once he got home. The girls and Kirk are at the yearly Daddy-Daughter camp-out. I hope they're having fun! I'm sure they aren't asleep yet. ;c)

I'm going to go read a book for a bit(Anansi Boys by Neil Gaiman, anyone read it? It looks interesting.) and try to get some sleep myself. I have been so very tired all this week.

One more week!

The kids will be back in school next Wednesday. There are a couple more things to buy, but mostly we are set. I don't think their backpacks will be here in time, but they can use their old ones(and hope they hold together) for a little bit longer.

Elijah's new trick is SITTING UP! :cD He will be 8 months old in a week and I think by the time next week rolls around, he might not even be falling over anymore. He's doing really well and can sit unassisted for several minutes. Yes, I said minutes! He's awesome. He's very proud of himself. I still have to be careful, because when he gets tired he likes to either fling himself backwards or nose-dive into the floor. He's also pushing up really high on his arms when he's laying on his tummy. I bet he will be crawling in the next month or two. Right now he's rolling over more and more to get toward what he wants. He still hasn't quite perfected it, so he ends up frustrated most of the time, but he's working on it. He also has a big appetite and just loves to eat. I was just giving him dinner, but in the last week I have had to start giving him lunch as well. I'm sure I will be adding breakfast in there before too long. He gets excited and starts flapping his arms like crazy when he thinks you're making some food for him. This love of food has coincided with better sleeping habits as well. He will still have frequent nights where he is up to eat every 3 hours or so, but very often he will sleep for 5-6 hours in one stretch. One night recently he slept from 7pm to 2am, woke to eat, then slept until 6am. That was a pretty awesome night, except that he thought it was time to play at 6am, and I'm just not quite ready for the day that early. ;c) We're getting there, though!

The other kids are growing like weeds. Spencer is quite the cut-up and has us rolling all the time. He says the craziest things. I need to try better to record them here so you all can laugh with us. :c) We've gotten Grace and Spencer signed up for dance classes, Katelee signed up for soccer and Sheri has chosen to focus on playing the piano. It gets a little hectic here in the fall with all the activities, even when we limit each child to just one.

I've been doing a little bit of work from home. A friend of mine started her own business a couple years ago making cloth diapers. Her biz is booming and she needed some help to handle the repairs, so she asked me if I was interested. For the last couple weeks, I've been working an hour or two a day(some days more, some days less). It's been nice. I can set my own schedule and the amount of work isn't overwhelming. It's nice to have a little something "grown up" to do. I usually do it while the kids are napping or after bedtime.

Kirk is a busy man with church and work. His work keeps giving him promotions. What a problem to have, right? :cD He is now the Director of Product. He really seems to be enjoying his work and we're very proud of him. Sundays still keep him busy with bishop duties. I've had "meetings" with the bishop during 2nd hour a few times in the last month or so and just got to hang out with him and talk for a little bit. For a while it was our one good chance to talk without kids or interruptions all week. Luckily things are a bit more calm now, so I can give my 2nd hour interview time to someone else. I'm still planning to go with him on his next trip to San Antonio, which should happen sometime in September or October. It should be fun!

I promise, we have not fallen off the face of the earth. ;c) It's been busy around here. Kirk has been traveling quite a bit over the last month for work, which leaves me to go it alone. At the end of the day, I mostly just want to relax in bed with the quiet and a good book. The kids start school in just under two weeks. There's a lot to be done between now and then to get them ready. I'll be back to update, including pictures, if not before then, definitely as soon as they are back in school.

Pictures, pictures!

We had a wonderful 4th of July and I took many, many pictures. I'm still trying to sort through and edit them, but they're slowly coming. I'm adding them to the gallery as I get them finished.

Elijah is getting so big! We've started trying out some solid foods. At first he really hated everything. I wasn't sure if it was the texture or the taste, but he made those baby faces of disgust. He swallowed just fine, though, and didn't spit any out, so he seemed ready to eat them, if I just figured out what he wanted. I usually skip the rice cereal, but decided maybe he'd like to start with that. He chowed down! He loves the cereal and has become a voracious eater since his first bite. He now also loves applesauce, bananas and sweet potatoes. He chows as if he's never eaten before.

Sheri lost another tooth on the 4th, speaking of kids that are getting too big. :c) Spencer is quite the talkative boy. He will talk your ear off about anything and everything. He keeps us all in stitches! It's amazing the things that boy comes up with.

It's time for us to get ready to go to the local free movies, so time is up already! Keep your eyes on the gallery. I'll get more pictures added as fast as I can and I'll try to add descriptions with them as well. :c)