Easter Weekend

We had a wonderful Easter weekend which started out with a trip to the Reston Petting Zoo!  Grandma, Uncle Josh, and cousin Katie came with us and the kids LOVED it!

Greeted in line by a ferret!

We fed baby lambs bottles!

And Andrew loved to give the goats first fulls of food:)

There were lots of hungry animals!

Our little lamb:)

There was an Easter Egg Hunt!

But Andrew preferred to take eggs out of his basket instead of putting them in...

Katie and Paige

The Easter bunny was very generous this year...and so were other relatives that sent us awesome Easter packages!

Easter baskets!

This was the first holiday that they really seemed to understand!

Paige clapped for all her presents:)

And Andrew screamed with excitement!

Cute pajamas

Bunny pancakes

The cutest little bunny boy

Look Mama!

Being shy in the big girl chair at dinner

Yummy cake!

Our little bunnies:)

Happy Easter!

(lots more pics in the Picasa album!)

Medical Updates

What a mess.  Literally! Paige started throwing up last Thursday night.  Everywhere. And continued until yesterday.  She would throw up at night, be cranky and sometimes sick again in the morning and would then improve in the afternoon, tolerate food and play.  We would think she was better and then she'd repeat this performance starting around midnight again.  It was very odd.  And it came at the worst time possible - Mommy's first trip away when Daddy was alone!  Poor Daddy.  But he did an awesome job managing these two alone for 2 1/2 days.

Since yesterday was day 5, I decided to take her to the pediatrician.  They were slightly alarmed at the duration of her vomiting and the fact that it was only occuring when she was laying down.  The pediatrician recommended a head CT scan and we decided that she had 48 hours to improve or that was the next step.  We were really hoping this wouldn't be necessary, especially since it requires sedation at her age.  Luckily, we finally had a vomit free night last night. And we've hopefully escaped that test.  She is definitely feeling a little better but is still not our normal, easy Paige.

Andrew finally got to see the gastroenterologist today.  Jack took the day off to bring him in and Nana (thank goodness for her!) came up to help and stay with Paige.  We talked to Dr. Darbari for a while and reviewed Andrew's test results.  His sweat test was negative, preliminary tests for Celiac Disease were negative and fecal fat repeat was more normal.  All good.  But leaving us again without answers.  We weighed him at their office and compared to the last time we was there in January.  He dropped again on their scale and confirmed his weight loss/lack of gain issue.  Dr. Darbari feels that its time to do an endoscopy/colonscopy to take some pictures and get some biopsies.  Their wait time for this to be done is likely 4-6 weeks.  So we wait.  Again. For the scheduler to call us and give us a procedure date.  It will require general anesthesia but will hopefully be a same day procedure. 

It seems like our lives are consumed by doctor appointments and medical issues lately.  Every Friday for the next six weeks, we have medical appointments - developmental assessments and county evaluations, ENT visits, pediatrician visits, Paige's ear tube surgery with pre and postop visits, Andrew's endoscopy/biopsies, gastroenterology followup, and weight checks.

We really thought we'd be done with all the medical issues by now.  It is a bit frustrating that our lives are still so wrapped around their health.  We are just hoping that all this attention now will find any problems so that we can address them early.  So until Andrew's procedure, we will focus on bulking him up by sneaking in lots of extra calories - butter, sugar, eggs and extra cheese added to everything.  High calorie milk shakes.  Fatty foods.  Dr. Darbari told us today "there is no such thing as bad fat with weight loss.  Give him Krispy Kreme!" Wouldn't we all love to have his problem?!?  Here's to our "Tank" gaining his fat belly back:)

Ring Around the Rosie

17 Months and we're finally starting to play together!  Their favorite dance is "Ring Around the Rosie" and we do it about a dozen times a day.  This may not be a favorite for very long though...we sing it in swim class and DUNK THEM at "we all fall down!"

Happy Saint Patrick's Day!

We had a great Saint Patrick's Day at our friends, Brian and Alisa's house.  We ate lots of yummy food, drank green beer and the kids ran around.  Not quite the pre-children festivities that we are used to, but fun nonetheless:)

Our true Irish Redhead:)

Celebrating in style!

Jack and Baby Alex!

Paige with their new twin Irish redhead dolls - Thanks to our Great Aunt Anne!

Close up of Baby Alex!

Chocolate Stout Cupcakes with Bailey's Frosting - not so much for the kids!

Green beer!

Kiss Us We're Irish!

Weekend Distractions and Andrew Update

Swim lessons were a total success.  They LOVED them.  And we were pretty impressed with how they were done.  We alternated between circle time with songs in the pool and "exercises" on the side.  We worked on kicking, floating on their backs, splashing and falling into our arms from sitting and standing on the side.  They were two of the most cooperative babies in the class and the only ones that were comfortable enough to really splash, laugh and enjoy themselves.  We were pretty proud of them:)

Saturday night, we celebrated their Uncle Josh's birthday and went to Outback for dinner.  I'm not going to lie - I was a little nervous about how this was going to go.  We had to wait 45 minutes for a table and were then there almost an hour and a half.  They were on their very best behavior though and ate and played happily the whole time.  It was a small miracle:)

Paige dancing while she waited to leave for dinner:)

Andrew with Uncle Josh and Daddy at dinner

Happy birthday, Uncle Josh!

Sunday, was their very first birthday party!  It was for my co-workers son's 3rd birthday and it was at JW Tumbles - a kids indoor play arena.  They had a blast and it was so fun to watch them explore everything.

We climbed!

Went down LOTS of slides!

Rode on "space shuttles":)

Drove on race tracks!

Made new friends!

And made silly faces in the mirror;)

We ate yummy pizza and cake

And wished Kannon a very happy birthday! (Too bad its dark and you can't really see his awesome cake...)

Unfortunately, this week was back to reality and Andrew started his battery of testing to try to figure out his weight loss and abnormal stooling.  Today, he did a sweat chloride test to look for Cystic Fibrosis, blood work to test for Celiac Disease, and abdominal xray to look at his stool burden.  We also got a collection container to start a 72 hour stool test.  Yes, you read that correctly.  We have to gather up all his poop for 3 DAYS.  And this is the container they gave us:

Its about the size of a gallon of milk!!!

Poor guy had to sit with these bags to collect sweat (after some tortuous "sweat stimulation") for 30 minutes. He was not a fan!

But he found ways to drink despite not having his hands;)

In the xray suite - he was hating life at this point since we just finished his blood draw.

Good news is that the sweat test already came back negative - we are very relieved by that. Now we just wait on the other results and start crossing things off our differential list one by one.  We're just hoping that we find an answer quickly without too much torture and that he starts packing on those pounds!

White Coats Galore

Lots has been going on recently in the medical aspect of our world.  We returned for what I hope is our last visit to the Georgetown NICU follow-up clinic two weeks ago.  They were pleased with their progress but advised a comprehensive developmental evaluation.  I called to schedule this unaware of what was involved.  Apparently, it's a multi-specialty appointment with a developmentalist, occupational therapist, physical therapist, speech pathologist and child psychologist.  The appointment will last at least 4 HOURS! I went ahead and made the appointment since the first available wasn't until the middle of April but I'm thinking this might be a little much.  We are already linked into services in our county and our PT is happy with how they are doing.  I guess we'll see how they are doing over the next couple weeks but I may end up canceling...

Paige went back to ENT last week for another hearing evaluation.  She failed her hearing screen again and they are thinking this is due to the chronic fluid they are seeing in her ears.  Her balance has been a concern of our's for a while, too.  She has much more strength and support with her walking but falls all the time and often staggers like she's drunk.  While she has only had one ear infection in her life, these two other reasons are indications for myringotomy tubes.  I talked with the ENT Nurse Practitioner for a while and she told me that we have two options.  We can go for the tubes, immediately clear the fluid and hopefully get improvement.  Or we can wait until the weather warms a bit, recheck her one more time and gain some confidence about this being the right decision.  Well, when I called just to see when the first available surgery slot was, they told me April 20th.  So the decision is made.  We booked the surgery for that day but will have her seen again and rescreened two weeks before (when its hopefully warmer and she isn't congested) to make sure nothing has improved before going forward.  Of course, this means a prescreen appt, surgery date and then follow-up appts and hearing screens which equals an excessive amount of time off work!

Andrew also had another doctor's appointment last week with the pediatrician.  You may remember back to my previous post about him having lost close to 2 pounds between his 12 and 15 month well check.  Well we went back last week for another weight check and found that he hasn't really gained any weight since his 15 month check... He has also been up to his old tricks of being up all night (although we've had some better nights this week. Thank God!) with what seems to be pain and having abnormal stooling patterns.  He will have harder stools and then HUGE (and I mean HUGE) very loose, foul smelling, head to toe, throw away clothes and bath required for all stools.  And that's not exaggerhating.  He's also eating like we are starving him.  He bangs on our cabinets for food, has several helpings at each meal, and even daycare is commenting on the excesive amount he is eating.  Dr. Arnold decided to do some stool studies on Friday and the one that tested for fecal fat was abnormal.  What does this mean?  That he has some problem with absorption.  So now we are anxiously awaiting some recommendations for Gastroenterology about what our next step(s) will be. 

So needless to say, we've got lots going on right now.  And everyone told us that it all got much easier after their first year!  But we do have some fun stuff planned this weekend -- their first swim lessons are on Saturday morning (at 9am for the next ten weeks - what were we thinking?!?!) and then their first birthday party on Sunday! Hopefully this will all be a good distraction while we wait to figure out what in the world is going on with Andrew.... We'll keep you posted.

It's A Good Thing They're Cute....

Because tonight, their gift to us was poop in the tub (for the very first time - maybe we're actually lucky...) and puke in our bed! 

But how can you get mad at this face?

Or this cheesing one? :)

Don't worry.  This is just Andrew "kissing" his sister.

16 months is a fun age.  Despite the clean up process we just completed:)