Holy Cow

Okay once again it has been a while and I promise that my new goal is to update once a week because we have a ton of new things happening! One big this is SETH turns 3 on Friday. Three years old, I can not even believe it. I cant believe how fast three years has gone and yet how crazy they have been. I remember the day I had Seth so well. It was a crazy day and a crazy and amazing experience. I wish that the 11 days after his birth were just a horrible dream but I must admit they were not. We have been through so much with him in his 3 little years of life. He has had 6 surgeries-7 if you count the botox which was not surgery but he was put under. He has had some type of therapy once a week since he was 3 weeks old. He has had more doctor appointments than I care to count, blood draws, shots, pokes, and he has lost his top 2 front teeth. And you know what he still smiles! He is one of the happiest kid I know. He is absolutely amazing and freakin adorable.

This week is a very busy week. This morning Seth had an appointment with a therapist who is getting him the happy chair. I can not wait to get this and get him sitting in the right position. When she checked Seth out and looked at his back she said he already has beginning stages of scoliosis which I just did not want to hear. His ribs on one side are more pronounced and he does in fact have the rounded back. She said if we can get him in this seat and work on getting his pelvic bone in the vertical position he will be good. She believes that he will be able to walk if we can just get him sitting. This chair is amazing and when we get his back positioned correctly he then can start standing up on his own and then we can work on walking.

Tuesday we have a urologist appointment and they will do an ultrasound of his kidneys and ureters. He had the corrective bladder and kidney surgery in October 2010 and we had an ultrasound Jan 2011 and his kidneys were still enlarged so he wanted us to come back in a year and get them checked out again. Praying we have no kidney damage and that we can stop giving him the antibiotics. After that we need to get our butts home cause he has therapy at 11.

This Wednesday we have another fundraiser for Seth at Cold Stone which is 2 days before his birthday so its a fun little event for him. If you have time and want to celebrate his bday with us come one down. Its on Valvista and Baseline. Before we head over to cold stone we have occupational therapy in the morning and then we will make it out that way for some wonderful ice cream.

Thursday I have another urologist appointment but this time it is for Ember. When Sydney was 3 months old she ended up in the hospital for 3 days with a UTI. They found out there that she had kidney reflux. It is graded on a scale from 1-5 5 being the worst. She had grade 3 on the right side. She out grew hers when she was around 1 and we were able to go off antibiotics. Seth we found out had it as well when he was in the NICU. He had grade 4 on the right side and grade 5 on the left. When you have anything above 3 you will most likely not be able to out grow it and will need corrective surgery. If you have grade 5 you will for sure need surgery. They sometimes try to do other things like deflux gel balls to help but it did not with Seth and he needed the surgery. So when Ember was 2 days old I asked the hospital to run the test because I did not want to take her home and end up back in the hospital because of a UTI that we could avoid with antibiotics if she has kidney reflux. Sure enough she as well has it and she had a grade 2 on both sides. Thursday they will do an ultrasound and see if she still has it or if we can take her off the antibiotics as well.

Friday Seth turns 3. I am not sure what we are going to do yet. I am so bad with birthdays and always wait until the last minute and then I never do anything. If we do something we will probably have a few people over and go swimming and have some pizza.

Mike and I are trying to plan our birthdays. 30 years old for the both of us...I still can not believe that I am going to be 30! I think I have a great idea for his I just have to finish some last minute details before I know if it will for sure work out. Next week we have an important appointment for sure regarding the ketogenic diet. We have been waiting for over 2 months for this and I would love to get it started so that we can find out if this is going to work for him or if we are gonna have to do something else. I am not looking forward to this diet at all so please pray for me when you think about it. I am having a hard time with the fact that he will probably not take the bottle to eat the food and we will have to go with the g-tube all the time and I just really do not want him to lose the ability to suck. I know that sounds so stupid and that stopping seizures are so very importants but it is still very hard for me to let that go.
Here are some pictures to hold you over :)

Sydney and Em at one of Seths appointments

Her sad face and to me it is so stinkin cute.

Seth playing in his bed. We took this with his new monitor we got with some of the money from the hunger games fundraiser. We love it so much and we can see him so good. We are going to mount it above his bed so that it will look down on his so that we dont have the netting in the way.

I saw this shirt and I HAD to get it for Seth. It is one of my favorite shirts :)

Muffin

On the way to Chicago. I will have to do another blog post all about Chicago. We all had a great time and I got to spend time with family that I have not seen in a long time!

Sydney and Jessie. Matching Jammies and they did their nails. So cute!

American Girl Store. My wonderful cousin Jen got sydney a special day at the store. She got to have lunch with her doll. Pick out any doll she wanted to buy. She got some clothes and a dog and she got to do a photo shoot with the doll and pet. She also got to have her doll go to the salon and get her hair done. She had so much fun and I was seriously in Heaven. I love the american girl dolls and I have the 4 original ones and I just thought it was such a cool place. I can not wait to go back there again.

Seth finally got his stander that we ordered in April 2011. We got the actual stander in Oct 2011 but with the wrong parts. The last week of May 2012 we got the correct parts! FINALLY!!!

So stinkin cute I just want to eat him!

At the neurologist appointment and he was so happy that I had to get a picture of him. PRECIOUS!

On the last day of preschool Miss Sonja did some amazing face painting! She was so in LOVE with her unicorn.

Disneyland

September 29-October 2nd we got to get away and go to Disneyland. We decided we would take just Sydney and leave the little ones behind...as much as I didn't want to I'm really glad we did because it was so crowded and Seth would not have lasted very long at Disney. So my mom and dad kept Seth and our friend Jen kept Ember at our house. It was hard to leave both the little ones and I did have to fight back some tears but they were in good hands!

We left Thursday after Mike got done with his work golf tournament so we didn't get on the road until about 2:30pm. We got to Palm Springs about 7:40 and stopped at the Walmart in town and picked up a few things for the hotel room and got a bite to eat then continued to the hotel. We got to the hotel around 9pm and hung out in the room for a little bit then crashed for the night because we wanted to have a early start to the day. We stay at the Marriott Maingate and we love it...especially because we do not have to pay for breakfast! They provide a hot breakfast and it is amazing for being free. We stuff ourselves so that we can go as long as we can at Disney without eating a ton of expensive food. So Friday morning we got up ate breakfast and got to Disney about 15 min after it opened. We set out for Syd's favorite ride Nemo and waited like 5 min and then moved on to the rockets, Peter Pan and the carousel. By this time it was 10am and California Adventure was open and I was wanting to ride the new Ariel ride so we went over there and there was not even a wait we got right on and I loved it. We've never done the 3D Toy Story either so we hit that up and Sydney loved it. We also convinced her to do Soarin California which ended up being her favorite ride all together. After that we went back to Disneyland for the rest of the day and we had so much fun. We even got to do Goofy's Kitchen for dinner and Sydney enjoyed it so much! We got back to our hotel room around 8:30pm and we were exhausted. Sydney went non stop for over 12 hours without a stroller and she was so well behaved!

Saturday at Disneyland was insane! We had no idea but it was "Gay Days Anaheim 2011" while we were there and the place was packed. We did as much as we could but the lines were so long. What was maybe a 20 minute wait on Friday was anywhere from 1-1.5 hours. But the best part was getting to eat lunch at my favorite place Tony and Romas! Oh my goodness I LOVE that place and pray it never closes down!

Sunday we decided to go to Knotts Berry Farm. I haven't been since I was little and wanted to try it out. We got Sydney to do the log ride with us twice which is huge cause she wouldn't do it at Disneyland. The first time she didn't know what to expect the second time when the drop came she SCREAMED! But it was well worth it! We left when it closed at 5pm and went back to our hotel for dinner and then spent the last few hours before bed at downtown Disney. We love hanging out and just looking at all the little shops and then staying for the fireworks!

Sunday we packed up our stuff and ate a big breakfast and headed back home! Seth had a good time with my parents and even drank a few bottles for them. Ember spent every second with Jen and they did so much together including shopping :)

It was a great getaway and we had so much fun spending a few days with just Sydney! Sydney did talk a lot about Seth and Em and that she missed them and so did we. Mike did Disneyland every year with his dad and it is something that he wants to continue so next year I think the little ones will be ready to experience it as well!

Birthdays/Palm Springs

My birthday is August 29th and Mikes is four days later on September 2nd. This year we did not do much for our birthdays at all! Mike had a babysitter lined up for my birthday but it didn't work out so we just kind of laid low :) We both however ended up getting tattoos the weekend before which could count as our birthday gifts :) I honestly have been so bad with taking pictures that I'm not sure I even have a picture of our tattoos but I will post some soon. Mike got a graffiti style Mickey Mouse spray painting the word Disney and the artist did an amazing job! She could not get it done in one session because she only had a two hour slot so he got the outline done and then a week later went back for the color. I got two dandelions intertwined with each other and it's blowing in the wind and turning into 3 birds. Two black birds and one blue symbolizing the kiddos. It looks amazing and I'm so in love with it. Thank you Matt and Lisa for watching the kids for us so that we could go out and spend some time together!

August was a busy month! The 14th-21st we did our trip with the Finneys and MacCallums to Palm Springs and had a great time! Our days consisted of Lisa and I working out in the am-pool until lunch-lunch time-naps-dinner-game times-hangout-sleep-repeat! Thursday was street fair night which is always a fun time. We even had a bug incident this time which is way too hard for me to type out but it started with Lisa yelling at me to get it off and ended with Sydney, Lorelai, and Topher screaming and crying and me almost peeing my pants! We all had a great time and Sydney had so much fun she is still talking about it and we are in the middle of October! I have very few pictures because I forgot my camera at home but Mike did take some and well the rest I'm gonna have to steal from Lisa :) so when I can I will post some pictures!

Palm Springs 2009

Friday July 31st we left for a week long vacation to Palm Springs. We got the car pack and were ready to leave by 12pm. We went with the MacCallum's, Finney's, and the Sherman's. I can not say that the car ride with a 5 week old who hates his car seat is really much fun. He cried majority of the way there in between some bottle feedings and a two stops to stretch which is when I would get him out and hold him and of course he would stop crying that instant. Sydney did great the way there. She watched her favorite show right now which is Max and Ruby, and ate lots of snacks.

We all seemed to have a great time. Everyday the kids got to go swimming and I dont think I ever realized how good Sydney can swim, she really surprised me. A typical day while we were there was waking up, hanging out on the patio and Sydney playing with the MacCallum kids and feeding the ducks. Around 10am Mike would take her down to the pool where she would swim and have lunch and then about 1:30pm head back to the room for a nap. I would get Seth to sleep and then Lisa and I would go down to the pool and have some girl time until it was time for us to get dinner ready or my husband would call me to help him out with the kiddos. We would then all have dinner together in someone's room and then the kids would play until it was time for bed. Some of the nights us adults would have a game night. I think it only happened twice but they were a lot of fun. Cranium and Curses are not too much fun for me but I loved watching everyone else :)

We had such a great time and it was a much needed time away from life for us and of course a great time with friends. Here are pictures of our vacation!

Oh goodness, goggles were the death of me on this trip...these are too big but I had to get a pic

My little fish

She would swim all day if I let her

My little muffin

"What up yo?" (thats for Lisa :)

Friends and the pool and lovin it!

Lisa and Ezra...he hate the pool

This kid melts my heart!

This is one of my favorite pictures. I love daddy's with their little ones.

Mike and Topher

Matt acting like Matt!

The kids having fun at the street fair!

On Monday while we were on vacation Seth was 6 weeks!