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.