Madera

We were back up to Madera today for Mia's GI emptying study. They had her drink some radioactive dye with some pediasure and then had her lay down for an hour and a half while they took video every minute of her stomach as her body empties the food she ate. She wasn't allowed to eat or drink in the morning, so I was rather surprised that she still wasn't interested in eating when she got there. But she did drink the 3 ounces of pediasure. We won't know the results until we hear from her doctor and we don't have an exact timeframe for that, but if we don't have any news midweek next week, then I will call and find out what's happening.

A few Easter Pictures

Here are a few Easter pictures. Mia with her Grandma Cheri getting ready for an Easter Egg hunt and Mia with her Nana making "Bunnies on the Grass".

Happy 8 Months Calvin!

Calvin is 8 months today! Wow, time flies. He's doing great, in fact, he entered the "flowerpot" stage today, where you can sit them down with toys in front and they just stay there and play. It's adorable. Calvin is now 17 1/2 pounds, and 28 1/2 inches. He has just started to really enjoy food, he now gets 3 regular meals just like the rest of us. He also has added a few more sounds, like ma and da, but the occasional buz"zard" like noise still shows up. Of which, Mia promptly says, "No Alvin Sreaming". And I have to tell her that we can't keep him from talking. Calvin also got two more teeth a few weeks ago, his top munchers, and I think a few more in the bottom are trying to come in too.

Here are some photos of the cutie and his sister. Today is the first day Mia actually said "yes" when I asked her if she wanted to hold her brother. That's a big step for her!

Home!

We arrived safely home on Sunday evening from our vacation to North Dakota. Our plane got delayed in Minnesota, so we didn't end up getting home until about 10:30pm. We were tired, but so glad to be home safe. We had a great time seeing the relatives and it was especially sweet to see Mia and Calvin interact with their Great Grandma. It snowed while we were there and it was Mia's first time to see it, she loved it. She wanted to be out in the snow as much as possible. She would tell us "snow" very clearly, it's so awesome to hear her speech progress, we are so grateful for how well she is communicating.

Today at therapy, they even commented how much her speech has improved. Her physical therapist said, "I can actually understand some of what she says." It was confirmation of how well she is doing.

Yesterday we saw an opthomologist in town. He is very concerned about Mia's left lazy eye and he encouraged us to get another opinion regarding surgery. His feeling is that it should be done sooner rather than later. So, we have an appointment scheduled for May down at UCLA. We are also going to get a 4th opinion up in Madera and then we'll go from there. From what I've read though, it's not uncommon to have to do this procedure multiple times because the eye will want to go back to the position it was in. :(

Mia did lose some weight (probably when she was sick and not eating on vacation), so we are back down to 24 1/2 pounds, but we are working on getting her back to 25. We have a study in Madera next Thursday to see how her GI system empties, maybe that's why she doesn't have a desire to eat large amounts. Hopefully that will be fairly simple to determine. We'll let you know how it goes next week.

Calvin is doing great, tomorrow he is 8 months, so I'll give you an update on him then and post some pics of the kids.

An Update.

So Friday Mia started a fever and threw up, we thought she had caught a bug somewhere. So for the next two days her fever kept coming back and between Mia and Calvin, I was up every hour with them. So on Sunday we walked down the hallway to the hospital, my grandma lives in senior housing attached to the hospital. One of the local doctors checked Mia out and decided she needed a round of antibiotics. He thinks it is sinus/ear related. Anyway, she's feeling better this morning, so I think were on the right track now.

There are benefits to living in a town of less than 3,000...when you go to the ER there isn't a waiting line so you don't have to get everyone else's germs and you get seen right away.

More Teeth

Calvin's top two teeth started poking through today. I'm hoping that was the reason he was up so much last night. We've all been in the same room, Mia, Calvin, and myself, so every time he fusses, Mia stirs. I don't think she has gotten very good sleep these past 3 nights, so this morning she fell asleep in Grandma's arms in the rocking chair and now she is down for her nap early. We have some different thoughts for sleeping arrangements so I hope she gets better sleep here tonight. And I hope Calvin does too.

The local elementary school has a carnival this evening, so we are going to go tonight (assuming Mia is up to it) with her second cousins. We went to the store yesterday and Mia got the most perfect toy one could imagine for her. It's a train puzzle, about 10 feet long, that is the ABC's with a different animal in each car. Except for U and X, they put an umbrella for U with a cat under it and a fox for X. I thought they could've been a little more creative, but oh well, she loves it. And she can now say "bear" perfectly.

Flying

So we made it safely to North Dakota. Mia and Calvin both did great on the trip. In fact, Mia probably had the most fun with Grandma Cheri's airplane activities. Believe it or not, but some play dough kept her entertained for hours and it wasn't very messy. The most difficult point was catching our connecting plane in Minneapolis, we had to go from G to B and we had just under an hour to do it. We were practically running, Calvin liked it as I had him in my wrap. And I did get some good exercise at that point. Anyway, we are happy to be here safe.

Mia warmed right up to Great Grandma and she's been playing with her magnets and having her read her books. She loves that Great Grandma doesn't mind if she plays with most of her stuff. She carries her letters and cards all around the house. Great Grandma commented that Mia is "so busy". Calvin just loves being able to roll around again.

Before we left I weighed Mia and she's now 25 pounds! So excited, thank you Lord for growing her bigger.

A Quick Trip

We had a quick trip to LA today, we left at 8 and were back by 12:30. That is really quick. :) Calvin was a trooper and his new car time limit is 4 hours. I guess that means we could officially make a trip to San Diego if we wanted to. Anyway, we went to see Mia's ENT doctor and she's doing great. She's had a blocked tear duct for awhile and his thought is that because her nostril is blocked and not draining properly, that could be overflowing into the tear duct and causing it to be blocked. The plan is for her to have the surgery to unblock her nostril next summer, so we'll just keep monitoring her until then. I was super sad to learn that he is retiring...I knew it was on the horizon, I was just hoping it would be after her surgery. I asked if we should push it ahead to this summer for him to do it and he said that at this point he wouldn't do it, he says it's too much of a job for him and he'd prefer someone younger to do it. I like that he was realistic about his abilities and so we'll now be meeting some of the other ENT's from Children's and then deciding if we want to go with one of them or find someone else. We've got plenty of time to work on that though.

On Wednesday, I (Lisa) am taking the kids with Grandma Cheri and we are flying to North Dakota to see my grandma, their great-grandma. You can pray that we'd have a safe trip and everything would go smoothly. I'm so excited for her to meet Calvin and to see Mia again (it's been several years) and I'm just excited to see her myself. So, if we go really quiet on the blog for a little while, that's why. We'll try to update, but I don't know that I'll get a chance there.