Damn You Trisomy

I've been mad lately. Not at anyone person or specialist but at Trisomy in general. There is so little known about Trisomy and it's so frustrating. Every new diagnosis that my son gets I wonder if it has to do with Trisomy or something seperate that if he was born without Trisomy he would still have. This has been a very rough past couple of months.

Kaleb has been diagnosed with moderate hearing loss, some type of blood disorder, is very delayed, his stomach is not working properly, his feet are a whole 'nother issue, anemia, soft tissue inflammation, fluid behind his ears, and I'm sure I'm leaving some things out...all in the past month or so.

My frustration has been growing day by day with news that there are still no answers. The specialists are completely stumped. How am I supposed to help my baby if we are all just guessing?

I am normally very happy and don't let these things bother me. I haven't really cried or stressed over health and developmental issues that Kaleb has but as he gets older it's hard for me not to. I know there are parents out there are are dealing with even more than we are and I feel for them. I am so lucky to have Kaleb in my life...I am truly blessed. But dammit....I hate you Trisomy. There are mother's out there that don't know what NILMDTS is (Now I Lay Me Down to Sleep), or what congenital heart defects are, or stenosis (I swear all Trisomy parents know about stenosis...stenosis of everything!)...I'm not one of those mother's. Unfortunately I know about all of those things and a billion medical terms and medications and therapies. However, those same mother's also do not know about the special fingers and toes our Trisomy babies have (and oooo do I love those special piggies!), or know about that special one crease in our babie's hands, and they also don't get to same excitement over a child doing something that seems to be small...like opening their hands, putting pressure on a leg...and lets not even talk about the bigger milestones like walking and crawling. I bet I'll fall out of my chair when those happen. I guess it's a love-hate relationship that I have with Trisomy.

I just want answers. If there is something wrong with my son, I want to know so it can be fixed or treated or whatever needs to be done. I feel like there is something really going on that is causing the anemia, his bone marrow to not work properly, and the soft tissue inflammation...I feel they are all linked and no one has a clue. What if it's getting worse or doing more harm than we know and it isn't being treated? Ugh.

Sorry for my soap box...I just needed to write and get some things off of my mind.

Wow...I just "googled" Trisomy 9 to find a page I had been looking for and my blog came up on the first search page. Wow. Hopefully my blog can help educate pregnant moms or new moms in the future about Trisomy 9. When I was pregnant there was not much information on the internet and finding someone's personal blog would have been amazing.

Kaleb - 11 Months Old

My precious sweet baby is about to be 11 months old in 30 minutes. Wow. Time sure does fly. I haven't been good about updating his monthly birthdays, bad mommy! The older Kaleb gets the more his delays become apparent. It's hard on me. Especially seeing other people post about what their 11 month old or 10 month old is doing that Kaleb can't do...I know it shouldn't bother me but it does. BUT...when Kaleb does something new or reaches a new milestone, it makes it so much more special. During the past 11 months (and even more, some during my pregnancy) I have gotten to know such amazing people and children. I have gained a new family, I call them my trisomy family. They know the struggles and they understand the ups and the downs, but even more...they understand how having a child with trisomy makes life amazing in so many ways. I'm so thankful for these people. No more sappiness for today...I've cried enough recently so here's a quick glance at my sweet cheeks.

*he loves to blow rasperries

*he loves his daddy more than anyone else and will laugh just by seeing his daddy

*he still has no teeth but has been chewing on anything and everything he can get in his mouth

*he says dadadada and does some babbling

*he started bearing weight on his legs this week

*he absolutely HATES to be put down when my hubby or I are anywhere around

*he hates aquatic therapy

*he loves food, any food. 

*he can gum some puffs now

*he loves to be thrown up in the air

*he sleeps about 12 hours a night {thank god}

*he is still drinking alimentum formula

*he can pick up things

*his hands can completely open, and now over extends them a lot

*he is double jointed in almost every joint {the moves he has are sometimes creepy to look at}

*he spent a week in the hospital recently and I'm pretty sure it was for the extra attention

*he LOVES his big brother. Nolan can hit him with a toy and he will laugh. 

*he hates his exersaucer and bouncer seats, mostly because that means we aren't holding him

*he recently got his AFO's (ankle foot orthotics) which I believe we will use once he gets close to walking

*he is not crawling but can roll and turn himself so much that he can get across a room

*he is finally sometimes allowing other people to hold him when we are nearby. although that is not always a sure thing, especially if we are in sight

*he is currently on antibitotics and has always been on reflux medication, which he loves to take! 

*he can somewhat sit up on his own and is bearing more weight in his hips lately

*he hates physical therapy

*he finally will sleep in the car, no more screaming during car rides

*he has the most infectious smile I have ever seen

*I love to snuggle up in his cheeks, sooo soft and cushion-y

*he loves to hold his legs straight out and pull them straight up to his mouth to suck on his toes {again...double  jointed}

*he absolutely positively loves Yo Gabba Gabba

I think I could go on and on about this amazing little boy and how amazing he has made my life. I'm so lucky that I'm able to now be a stay at home mom so that I can help him grow in every way possible. I have a great support system and even though this is difficult at times, I am so happy to say I am Kaleb's mommy.

I need to start planning his birthday party!

FITBF

Today after my 11 hour Black Friday Shopping trip I am filling in the blank with Lauren @ The Little Things we do. 

1.   Waking up at the break of dawn to go shopping is my idea of     a little wacky. i never was one to wake up super early to go shopping, but i do partake in black friday shopping a littler later (maybe 9 or 10 am). We did try to go this morning at midnight however that didn't work out too well and we only lasted about 30 minutes before my friend got sick   .

2.   If I were to go shopping today I would be on the hunt for   well i did go shopping today and i was on the hunt for anything really. i didnt have a list necessarily but i knew a couple things i wanted to get for the hubby and then mostly toys for the kiddos      .

3.  The best thing I ate yesterday was    i really dont eat much on Thanksgiving, yeah i know I'm weird. The most I ate was probably of my grandma's mashed taters :)    .

4. Something I've been learning lately is    that i am a total shopper deal grabbing mommy. i love me some good deals and may get addicted to "stockpiling"   .

5.  I cannot start my day without    caffeine. normally in the form of a frappe or a coke zero...and sometimes even coffee.

6.  My nighttime attire consists of    t-shirt and pj pants

7.  I am looking forward to    being a stay at home mommy. i can't wait to spend so much extra time with my kids and not have to worry about my very demanding and stressful job as an investigator. i begin my new job as a SAHM on monday!!

Oh How Pinteresting

{i am thankful}


{thanksgiving is actually the holiday that I eat the least but I know this is true for most}




miss you dad...




{hilarious episode}


{always need some texas love}

Bath Cleaning

This year everyone is doing their "thankful for..." lists. Well I've decided I'm going to tell you what Nolan is thankful for instead of myself. 

He is absolutely, positively thankful for

cleaning supplies. 

He started getting into the cleaning gig before he could even crawl, he would take his wipes and wipe down our cabinets or anything that was his height. We were sure he would out grow it. Instead, he has grown more into it. He is now tall enough to actually plug in our vacuum and vacuum our carpet....on a daily basis. 

He begs for my cleaning supplies which I have to hide in my laundry room from him. We even made him his own spray bottle (with water) and he gets one of my cleaning towels and cleans just about everything. At first I enjoyed it, hey...one more person cleaning in the house sounds great. Now it's basically the only thing that will set him off into temper tantrum mode. If you tell Nolan he cannot clean at any given time, you better watch out. He will throw things, pull your hair, hit you, punch you, pinch you, bite you...and the worst part is this is actually true. 

"I anna clean. Clean mommy clean. Clleeeaaaannnnnn!

CLEAN!!!!"

He absolutely loves bath time. Why? )Especially when he hates getting water in his face and being cleaned) Well there is water and wash cloths involved, connect the dots. He is so excited for bath time because he can finally clean. And when we get his brother out of the bath because obviously he doesn't need to sit in the bath tub for the 45 minutes of cleaning frenzy that takes place, Nolan cleans his chair. 

Since I finally found my camera (that will HAVE to be another blog...men are hilarious btw) I can now post daily pictures, hooray! So here are tonight's pictures of Nolan's bath time cleaning! 

{must clean Kaleb's seat}

{can't miss the sides of the bath tub}

{inspection, must be perfect}

{gotta wash the cup used to wash the seat}

{scrub a dub}

{squeeze out the excess}

{so happy!}

{handsome}

{hard work}

{ta-da}

The End

Today was my first day of my last week at work. I've decided to be a stay at home mommy to help care for Kaleb's special needs and spend more quality time with my kiddos while they are young. This has been a very hard decision. I love my job. I've always wanted to be an investigator and I have met amazing people in the process. I have seen amazing things and also terrible things that people can do to each other. I have seen my clients on television. I have felt joy, sadness, anger, and compassion for all types of people. I fight for children everyday and now it's my time to focus that energy on my little men. Each time I do something at work I think, "this is the last time I will.....".

I know people must think I'm crazy but even though my job can make me absolutely bonkers, I love it and I'm proud doing what I do on a daily basis. I've never been a stay at home type of mommy. I'm no Suzy Homemaker and have always been terrible with laundry, cooking, cleaning, picking up, blah blah blah. BUT, I have made an effort to change my ways lately, I have been cooking a lot more and I can't wait to be a SAHM. Think of the fun we can have!

The kids can also go to daycare as many days a week as we want, probably 1-2 days for the most part. They have amazing teachers that we will miss and amazing friends. Nolan constantly talks about his best friend Will, then he also has his lower level totem pole buddies, Juju and Lolo. I love that little boy.

Sincerely, 
Erin...S A H M 
:)

Fill in the Blank Friday

Fill in the blank Friday

1. A nervous habit I have is     twisting my engagement and wedding rings around. I never really noticed this until my first time on the witness stand for one of my cases. I also do it during job interviews, when I'm on the phone, and other obviously anxiety ridden moments.

2. Something that makes me sad is   seeing the Orange County Sherrif's Office Chaplain car parked in front of the children's hospital that we are at. It brought me chills when I saw it. I prayed instantly for all of the families of children in this hospital, especially the family that the chaplain was there visiting.

3. Today I am thankful for my marriage. We are silly and bicker over the smallest things but we have a great relationship. I don't worry that he is going to leave me and I find comfort in the idea of growing old with him. We have already been through so much I feel like we can get through anything. We both realize that if we want to make it through a particularly difficult situation then we know it's pointless to argue. I love my hubby.

4. My favorite room in my house is    front room...aka man cave. Obviously it shouldn't be my favorite but we just moved in not too long ago and we haven't really had time to decorate like we want. That is the only room we have decorated and made it the way we want (minus putting some things on the walls in there). But it's nice and cozy and comfy.

5. I can't stand    people that don't have children and can't understand why you make certain decisions when it comes to your kids. Those people will see that they would have made the same decisions during those difficult times when they have children.

6. If I had an extra $100 to spend on whatever I wanted today I would    really probably just put it in my purse and slowly use it over time.

7. The last person I hung out with was    Tiffany came over again tonight to spend time with me and Kaleb while we are being held hostage. :) We got Jason's Deli and watched the crazy 20/20 special on polygamy. Wow, just...wow.

Day 6 of APH

Today is somewhere around 6 days of being in the hospital. Yuck. Get me out of here. May have been a little better if they would bring me the damn recliner I keep asking for as I see them in the open rooms. BTW, I was totally pissed off tonight when I saw some newbie family next door request a recliner on their first night here and what do yah know, their nurse rolled it from the empty room right into their room. I almost tripped her as she walked in front of us (me and Tiffany in the family TV room). Damn newbies.

On to the important stuff....
The Blood Stuff
Kaleb was given a blood transfusion about 24 hours ago now to prep him for his procedure and anesthesia this morning. Anesthesia said they would not do the procedure if he was not given blood, which I was happy with because the pediatrician has been telling our Hematologist that he needs a transfusion and she has refused because he acts just fine. So I was happy for him to get blood and stop hearing the doctors talk about how white and see thru my child is. But when they brought the bag of blood in, different story. I can't explain it, I felt really weird that someone else's blood was going into my baby's body. I know it's really stupid but it was just weird for me. I think blood donors like my hubby are amazing, even more so now! The good news is that yesterday his hemoglobin was at 7.2 and today it was at 10.3 after the transfusion (normal is 11-15). Also, I no longer have a super white baby, or as someone recommended his nickname be "Kasper"...get it...like Casper the ghost but with a K because his name starts with a K. Haha.

The Cleansing
I opted out to stay over night with him in the hospital last night, not only because someone else's blood was going into my baby's body which we have already discussed but also because they started the cleansing process for him to have a Colonoscopy and Endoscopy. Which in lamens terms means, poop, poop, and more poop all night long. Oh and on top of that his blood transfusion was set at around 5 hours to complete, so that meant he needed to be hooked up to his line for that entire time which simply meant he would NOT sleep in his jail crib. I don't do well with children sleeping on or near me, sorry if that offends you.

The Toddler
Since I opted out to stay at the hospital last night I went home with Nolan. And we went home at 1am. Yep. The latest the kid has ever stayed up. {gasp} This morning he woke up in a terrible mood, not much new there though. But he has a "boo boo" on his leg which is a boil that is coming to a head and I need to get him to a doctor to have them take a biopsy of it to make sure it isn't MRSA. Nolan has had a couple of these before which were NASTY but I never knew they could be MRSA until a friend talked to me about it. Great. One. More. Thing. It took us forever to get out the door and to the hospital but when we finally did I had a really happy mommy moment. The hospital has been having this book fair all week and I've been wanting to let him pick out his own books to spend some time with him and only him. So we finally got to do that today, yippee!

The Procedure
This morning Kaleb went into the OR for a Colonoscopy and Endoscopy from his GI team. They biopsied some areas but overall everything was normal. They did find that he has something like pyloric stenosis which may need to be addressed with surgery. But they also had a minor concern for something very serious called Malrotation of the bowels. Very serious. So they ordered a swallow study to look for this. His study went well, he doesn't have malrotation but they did find that his stomach does not empty correctly into his small intestines. This is finally the answer we have been looking for regarding his reflux. It's not all reflux after all. We noticed the past two weeks his spitting up and throwing up food has been much much worse. Because the stomach isn't emptying properly his stomach continues to fill with food and then reflux begins. This will hopefully be addressed upon out patient followup with GI, different medicines etc. I'm so excited. When I read the symptoms of what he has it described him exactly, YAY!!!

The Discharge
We have been told we will probably get to go home tomorrow unless Hematology has any objections. But what can they say? The hematologist has not been coming to our room when she is supposed to during rounds, grrr. I'm hoping we can get discharged in the morning so then I have the rest of the day to clean up the house (which has become a DISASTER and dumping ground for all things in between hospital shifts, toys thrown everywhere, mail in different places, dishes in the sink, clothes thrown all over the place, is that enough?).

I should probably get to bed seeing as how the nurses will be waking us up at 5 am to give Kaleb his IV antibiotics, hopefully for the LAST TIME!

Finally!

This morning the pediatrician came in with some good news finally, the labs that were drawn yesterday came back looking pretty positive. His abdominal sonogram was perfect as well, his kidneys and spleen look perfect. The numbers for his reb blood cells came back low again, the first test they were 7.4 and now they are 7.2...normally is 11-15. So he is still very anemic and on top of that his bone marrow is still not producing the red blood cells that he needs so that is an issue for Hematology, the one group that hasn't been working that well with us.

His doctors have gotten together and decided that GI needs to step back in to do the colonoscopy and endoscopy to see if there is bleeding in those areas that are being missed. The hematologist said they wouldn't do a blood transfusion until his GI track was looked at to make sure there isnt any bleeding there that needs to be fixed.

Then another GI doctor came in and said "wow, he's pale, we won't be doing the procedure until he has a blood transfusion". Grrrrr. First off, yes I know my child is white...I always thought that I just had a really white kid. :) Secondly, I guess he will be having a transfusion now but thats for the hematology dr and gi dr to figure out.

I'm tired of all of the back and forth. I think that happens anywhere you go though when there are too many cooks in the kitchen...well you know.

Here's Dennis' morning status update, it explains in a little more detail than my stuff does.

Morning Update - Kaleb's doctor came in this morning to update us on the labs that they pulled yesterday. The white blood cells that were at 23 are down to 6. The inflamitory labs (i forget the name of the actual test) are down as well which is good. His kidney and liver labs came back normal. His electrolyte test came back normal. The anemia came back at 7.2 which on Sunday was at 7.4. The doctor... is not concerned with the drop. Kaleb had a couple fasting labs that were ran this morning that we will not get back until later today.

The doctors plan is to get with hematology to see what they are thinking. Yesterday they were supposed to do a blood smear test to look at Kaleb's red blood cells. The doctor wants to get at the root cause of why Kaleb is anemic and so I think that he will be presuring hematology to get some answers.

        

Antibiotic Ups and Hemoglobin Downs

It looks like the antibiotics are finally working their magic on that mysterious infection. He hasn't had a fever for a day and the swelling has gone down in his right leg. He is also more active, even with severe anemia.

The Hematologist came and finally spoke to us this morning. She is waiting on the blood transfussion until another round of labs can be done tomorrow to see if his bone marrow has started working more or not. If Kaleb's hemoglobin numbers still aren't higher then he will need the transfusion. More waiting until tomorrow's labs are completed and read...

The Infectious Disease doctor came in this morning and said that there was clearly a large infection somewhere and they need to find where it came from. He ordered abdomen sonogram, chest x-ray, and a virus workup. This should be fun.

Everyone seems pretty stumped. The GI doctors have backed off a little bit and said that if the other bazillion results are negative and we are all still confused then he will do a colonoscopy to make sure there is not more bleeding in the intestines than we think there is (we are pretty sure it's minor bleeding and wouldn't be causing the crazy blood loss.

{i never finished this blog and will continue with more recent updates in the next blog post}

Hospitalization and the Nolan Dance

"Painful as this time is, you will one day see the reason for it. Not cruel testing but tender preparation for the wonderful work you are to do."

Here is a quick rundown of what has happened for the past 72 hours with our little man.

Saturday:
Kaleb had a fever of 103.5 and was very lethargic. We treated him with Motrin and Tylenol and lots of rest.

Sunday:
He took a nap around noon and about 4-5 hours later I decided it was time for him to wake up. I took his temp and it was 104.2. While changing his diaper I noticed that both of his legs, below his knees were swollen. We called his pediatrician on call number and the nurse told us to go to the hospital. I took Kaleb and the hubby stayed with our toddler. We sat in the waiting room for a few hours and finally went back. X-rays were taken and lab work showed there may be an infection in his soft tissues and bones. Kaleb was admitted. Kaleb's white blood cells were 23, normal should be around 10 or lower.

Monday:
We didn't get our hospital room until 5 am. Kaleb was admitted to the Ortho Neuro Unit at Arnold Palmer Hospital. Kaleb had an MRI which showed there was no infection in the bone but possibly some in his soft tissues. Monday night his orthopaedic doctor came in and said there is absolutely nothing wrong in his foot and feels confident that is not the location of the infection. More blood was taken for more in depth studies on his blood.


Tuesday:
The results from last night's blood work came back showing that Kaleb is severely anemic and there is bleeding somewhere in his body. At the same time, his red blood cells should be higher than normal to compensate for his loss of blood. However, his bone marrow is not adequately producing red blood cells to help the situation. On top of that blood was found in his stools which raises even more questions. With all of that his pediatrician on the unit decided it would be best for Kaleb to have a blood transfussion. He made sure hematology came in to speak to us along with infectious disease doctors. They both asked a bazillion questions about our families and health issues within the family. The main hematologist who has the final say in whether Kaleb gets a transfusion at this time never came to see us before she left for the night. What the hell lady? Before the end of the day Kaleb also had a renal ultrasound (kidneys). Kaleb finally slept in his hospital crib [he hates that thing]. He slept for a good 6 hours before some crazy night nurse thought she should wake him up for his antibiotics. He did go to sleep for a little bit more after she left as long as I was holding him in my bed so that was nice.

Wednesday:
 The pediatrician on the unit woke me up out of a dead sleep, I was probably snoring with my mouth wide open and maybe some drool coming out. I apologized a million times to him. He said Kaleb's renal ultrasound looked good but did show that he still has hydronephrosis in his left kidney and it's a little bit worse than when he was 3 months old and he had a renal ultrasound then. He expressed being upset that the head hematologist did not come see Kaleb last night because he has labs he needs to draw before the blood transfusion and everyone is basically waiting on what hematology does. He said that GI told them after their consult yesterday that if tests continue to come back negative they will go ahead with the colonoscopy.

And here we are...Wednesday morning at 8:29 am. We have no discharge date in site and still so many answers to get for little man. Kaleb came up to the hospital last night and was excited to finally see his brother, he kept asking for where baby was. Nolan is so sweet. Speaking of my Nolan, we went to Best Buy yesterday with our dear friend Tiffany to get her a laptop. During her search Nolan heard music playing from the car area and ran over there. I took the following video there. Listen really closely at the end of the guys who are laughing at Nolan. He's such a little entertainer!

Thank God for my big man Nolan to help keep me grounded. Who doesn't like dancing in a store? I danced a little bit with him yesterday and it was great. We should all take some time out of our day today to dance silly with our kids. What a great feeling!!

Aquatic Therapy and Playstion Issues

On a weekly basis we are running around Orlando taking my baby cakes (not to be confused with my toddler cakes) to therapies, appointments, tests, and fittings for orthotics. Kaleb is currently in physical therapy and occupation therapy once a week. He does pretty well during his occupational therapy (less work on his part) but cries normally throughout his physical therapy. We were excited when his physical therapist told us about a new therapy the hospital was going to be offering at the downtown YMCA, aquatic therapy. Kaleb started about three weeks ago and I couldn't wait because I know how much the water can help someone with muscle issues and if you know my baby like I do...he has muscle issues, he's hypotonic to be medically correct. Basically...he has very low muscle tone. I could tell from the first times I held him when he was born, he was more "floppy" than other babies...if that makes sense. He has almost no muscle tone in his right leg from that damn 6 month casting and very little in his left leg. His back and shoulders are even worse, his shoulder blades stick out and it's hard to pick him up...almost feels like he will fall out of your arms.

Anyways, I knew aquatic therapy would be the "answer" and help these issues AND I already knew that he loved water. My friend and I take him to the pool and he just sits in his little seat calmly and kicks away. He also loves bath time.

{Kaleb first getting in the pool, he's a lady killer}

Wow. Could I not have been more wrong? He hates aquatic therapy. To the point where he's not even getting any therapy because he gets so tensed up that his legs stick straight out and are hard to bend. There is no kicking. He did however bare weight on his legs today so I guess that's a plus since he isn't doing that out of the water. As soon as I hand him to his therapist, he SCREAMS and pouts his lower lip. It doesn't help that we are now in the indoor pool so everything echos in there. [Sorry senior citizens who try to do water aerobics next to us].

Kaleb is very attached to us so normally I understand when another person holds him and he starts freaking out but he has been in physical therapy since he was a month old and she does his aquatic therapy as well. Hmph. I'm sure it will get better but just a little frustrated with the constant crying during some of his therapies, you need this dear child!! For now he is my little turd but I love that little turd.

{the ONLY time he was not crying}

{kick baby kick....Kaleb you need to kick....KICK!!!}

Oh not to mention when I got home late from work my husband told me right away he was playing a game with his coworker in a few minutes and would be ignoring me. Yes, he actually said that. He is now in his man room with his HEADPHONES on and his MIC yelling cuss words and screaming at his opponents. I keep having to shush him because from what I understand we have two children sleeping, maybe that's just me though.  Just now, after getting a beer he puts his headphones back on and says, "this is what i need after a long day, some man time and killing people". Oh how he makes me laugh. For now he is my little turd #2 but I love that little turd. 

Birthday time!

Birthday
I had such a great birthday weekend. My mom came in town to go shopping with me on Friday and she stayed the entire weekend. Loved it! Then last night Tiffany came over and we all had a big dinner and "coldstone" type dessert. Complete with bowls of things to add to the ice cream and Dennis mixing them in. It was great. Now Nolan and I are just wrecking the house (more him than me) and reading about organizing things (more me than him). 


Convo between me and Nolan a few minutes ago-- 

Nolan: where's dada?
Me: At work.
Nolan: where's mimi?
Me: At home.
Nolan: Where's Titney? (<--- yeah Nolan can't say Tiffany yet, sue him)
Me: At work. 

I'm sure the previous conversation is going to repeat several times today. Those are his three favorite people besides his mommy...of course.  


Organizing
I'm in a very organizing kind of mood. I wish we had a container store, although that would probably end up being a terrible very bad thing. I'd love to organize the pantry, it really bothers me and it's oh so small. If only I could knock down the wall and extend it into my dining room. I'd rather have a smaller dining room and a larger pantry. 


Man Cave
We have now finished our "man cave". It looks very nice and doesn't have a man cave feel to it at all. We ordered a leather couch that pulls out into a bed. Dennis has a flat screen TV in here along with the computer and his gaming systems. We also can't forget the head phones that go with the gaming systems, one night a friend and I found Dennis hunched over in a chair with these huge things on yelling at people through them. Hee-larious. Well now at least he can do that in his stylish man cave and maybe won't look AS silly, nevermind...he will always look silly with those things on. 


News
I also have some news coming within the next few weeks. I'm not sure why I don't just talk about it now but I guess I figure there are so many people on facebook and blogger and maybe I want certain people to know before others? I'm not sure. It could also be that I won't believe it until it actually happens so I don't want to jinx anything? And NO, I am not pregnant. But I am oh so giddy and such a lucky girl. ;) 

Oh how...

Now, what if I'm too tired to do all of them except sleep when tired? It says I should sleep. 

I should have had this as a kid. Shouldn't we all have? 

So true. Everything to me is coke...pepsi, dr pepper, etc. 

Oh so true. I love my Denny! I'm such a lucky girl <3

I miss our basset Sadie, I love you girlie. I used to laugh when your rolls would dance :) 

Well even though this has been fun, apparently the baby feels that 10pm is wake up time? He's slept through the night since he was itty bitty...what the heck? Lets hope he doesn't wake up the other stinker. 

Halloween Fest

Last night we went to Halloween Fest in downtown Winter Garden (the new town we moved to, since I forgot to blog about that part of my life). I read about it being lots of fun with a petting zoo, live band, face painting, and trick or treating at the shops down there. When we got there...Wow. That's all I could think. There were hundreds of people there. Streets blocked off. Adults in slutty costumes, teens in slutty costumes, huge dogs dressed up, police, EMTs, and people everywhere I looked. I loved it, don't get me wrong. But I guess I never thought what it was like to CHASE a 2 year old from shop to shop looking for candy and trying to not lose him in the crowd. Of course said 2 year old was screaming at me not to hold his hand and "me do it". I never knew he could run so fast. I actually had to run. After my kid. At one point while he wasn't looking in front of him he almost ran into a woman dressed as a slutty officer with her butt cheeks hanging out. That would not have been pretty. I'm pretty sure I would have washed his face in anti-bacterial gel.

It really was a lot of fun. He was super excited. Of course there was a melt down on the way to the car and that same two year old nearly running into traffic. I think I remember at that point pushing the stroller and quietly yelling at Dennis, "get him get him, going into traffic, go, NOW".

Once we got back to the car we let him have his pumpkin with his candy in it. I didn't think there would be any harm in it, he's only 2. I mean how much damage can he do right? WRONG. We recently put him in the VERY back of my car in the third row seating so I'm not as privy to what goes on back there. At one point he was telling me something was gross and I looked back and he had some gooey-ness all over his face and his fingers were sticking together. I couldn't figure out for the life of me what he had gotten. I also still think the wrapper was on half of it, hopefully the half he ate was already de-wrapped. Dennis looked back and said, oh he got a Charleston Chew. A what?! All I knew was it looked gross. When we got home I saw that he had dumped some of his candy into the cup holders in the back so I told him to get the pumpkin so I could grab the candy and put it back. I put my hand in one of the holders and all I felt was ewww stickiness. I guess I found the other half of the Charleston Chew. I didn't even turn on the light to look, I knew I needed to sleep before I saw that mess.

Of course when I got there my phone died so I don't have any photos of the maddness...but really what time would I have had to take pictures? All I would have gotten would be his back and a running motion type look to the picture. BUT I do have his photos that his teacher posted on facebook...that was the less risque Halloween party of his day.

Nolan, Sanela, and his girlfriend. 

My hunka hunka man.