Attitude!

ATTITUDE

Definition: A ballet pose performed by balancing on one leg while lifting and bending the other leg either in front of, behind, or to the side of the body.

ATTITUDE Addy Style!

And then it got silly.

And of course the leaves to help her keep her balance!

How's this for a little 'tude!How's this for a little 'tude!

And a few random shot because she was just too cute to resist!

Man I love this kid!

Hiatus!

Apparently the blog went for a short hiatus! I seem to have zero time to post! So here's a few from the last week!

Took a trip to the apple orchard and picked apples! I made 6 apple crisps to freeze for the long winter! We even ran into Mallory and Brooke there and rode the hay ride with them!
We did the corn maze which was super fun for the kids!
Dance class has started for the year. Addy is in Ballet and Tap this year. I attempted to take a quick pic before class this week but she was not having any part of it for some reason, but her feet didn't need to smile so I grabbed one of them in their cutie petutie taps

a few new pics

My little AJ... Where do I even begin... she is so bendy! She's pushing up into back bends, hanging upside down from bars at the park, and sliding down really big poles. She loves to try new things and has no fear!Every hair blog talks about banding to stretch the hair prior to styling. I typically either do her hair wet or stretch it by doing a couple big cornrows. I haven't done banding before, seemed like an extra step that takes a lot of time... So far I was right! I only did six sections and it took a while to put in. I put it in last night and was going to do hair tonight but then realized that she has swimming tomorrow so I'll leave it in for swimming, super condition and rinse after, and then do her hair monday night instead. It did make her hair look long although already today it is recurling up!

Here is half way, you can see how much shorter her hair is although I had clips holding the ponys down to stretch it before doing the banding. Typically her hair wet without the clips is only 2 inches long!
Last weekend we signed up the girls for a preschool class at the zoo about dolphins! They had a blast!
Before the class :)
JT got some special time seeing the animals with Shawa and I!
And they all got lollipops before we left!

She's Crafty!

Dear Pintrest.... I LOVE YOU!

I've always had bookmarked sites with projects, lists of fun crafts to do, memories of my days as an arts and craft director at a physically disabled and deaf camp, and high hopes of someday having actual time to figure out how to do fun projects. I never can remember which bookmark is what or what my ideas were.....Well compliments of PINTREST, its a million times easier. I can "pin" pictures of future projects, easily scroll through to see what I want, click on it and TADA, instructions! Now if anyone knows me well they know that when I cook I cannot follow a recipe, I see it more of a guide to steer you in the right direction but I tend to take a lot of detours adding in whatever I feel like, not measuring out anything, doing my own thing and being creative. Well I'm the same way with crafts, I see something I like, read how they did it, and then alter it according to whatever I am feeling!

So here are a few of our recent projects!

Necklace charms... there is this great new Modge Podge that is raised and gives a raised smooth shiny finish...

Hopscotch mats... The one on the left is for us the one on the right is for Benjamin W.J.! I altered the ones I found online, got one of those by the foot runners at Menards for 79 cents/ft, got felt squares at Hobby Lobby for 4/1$ and they were onsale and then free hand painted the numbers (cause I dont have time for stencils!). Then used fabric glue to glue them down... hot glue was not working! They turned out GREAT and my kids love ours! After heavy playing at somepoint it

may need a little touch up glue but for now is holding up well!
Fabric handprint trees... I hung this in our downstairs bathroom. We made one of just the two kids hands for Meena and Aunt Robyn for their birthdays. Also made one of each kid to send to their birth moms! They turned out super cute! Looks like I forgot to add the date to the one of all four of us so I'll have to go back and add that!
Made a super cute card using the kids handprints for Robyn...

Took a Goodwill frame....

Painted and clear glossed it... added some ribbon and Voila! Hair clip holder! I made one for a friend who is adopting a little girl but failed to take a picture of it before I gave it to her! Hers was a more traditional frame and it turned out super cute as well!

A couple other projects still in the works.... One of them is JT's room sign! I got the letters ready but need to make a board and hook them all to it etc.

Project by Meena... She refinished the top of this cute red desk which now resides in JT's room!

And so the craftiness continues! We've got a bunch of fun stuff to easily do now and with winter just around the corner we are set for those cold indoor weekends!

Meds...The big debate

So we got all of JT's labs etc back and he has a duplication of the end of one axon on one gene. Its not a gene that we know much about but it is related to neuron development, apoptosis, etc. No syndromes or symptoms have been linked to this duplication yet either (that's a good thing). It could be hereditary or could be a random duplication. The good thing is that if it is hereditary, we know his birth parents are both normal without issues so that would lead us to believe that if they had the duplication that it's not expressing itself with any issues and hopefully means he wont either. Its not worth testing them to see if they have it because it won't really give us any helpful information since even if they do have it they could express it differently. Since they don't know much about the duplication, it may or may not be the cause of his seizures. He also has the meningitis history which is also a likely cause and really we will never know which it is if it even is from either of them. Many childhood seizures have no known cause.

So after having a LOT of resident issues (we hadn't seen the consultant/staff physician at all just the resident), we finally saw a consultant (who I also was not impressed with and who blamed me for not hearing the resident except that the resident obviously told her a different story than what really happened). But that aside, we have a plan and I feel much better getting actual answers to my questions.

So our new plan... Start meds (Keppra) and stay on them for 2-3 months. If the seizures decrease in frequency or go away then he will stay on the Keppra for 2 years and if still seizure free then we will attempt to wean off and hope he grows out of them. If during the 2-3 month trial they don't decrease or go away, then we will up the dose once and if no results then we will need to be admitted for 24 hour EEG monitoring for a period of time to see if we can catch one on EEG to determine if they are forsure epileptic in nature or if there is another cause. Staring spells are much harder to diagnose than tonic clonic seizures. We know he is non-responsive during them and with the one that he slouched to the right it makes us pretty sure that they are.

So I'll be filling our prescription on Monday and we'll start the med and see how it goes.

Please say some extra prayers for ZERO side effects and good seizure control!

Belated 2 year pic posting!

A while ago we had JT's two year pics taken and I now have the CD with the pics on it!

Here are a few of them!

Love the precious pouty lip.

Big Hair!

Addy started her new "school" (aka daycare) a couple weeks ago and has pretty much given up naptime. Today she must have had WAY too much fun because I was taking her braids out at dinner and after giving her the plate of food and getting everyone elses ready this is how I found her.... ASLEEP!After we got her braids out, we headed to the park for a bit. We met a little 4 year old there who after seeing Addy ran to her grandma and yelled, "grandma, that girl has curly hair like me!". She was SO excited. Addy and her hit it off and played the whole time. It was hair night for the other little girl too so her hair was in a big poof with a couple little braids left to take out.

Look at this volume! BEAUTIFUL!
My curly girl!
And my curly boy!
And my bad parent of the night event.... Look closely at JT's top lip on the right side of the pic... See the little red cut....After putting him to bed, I heard him upstairs doing something and went up to change clothes and found him at the top of the stairs with a bleeding lip. I figured he had bonked it or something but when I asked what he did, he smiled and said, "shaving"..... yep, he found Jareds razor in our bathroom and "shaved" a nice slit into his lip.... Note to self, anything that may be a hazard needs to be kept up really high or locked up! Oddly enough, he seemed very proud of himself.... a bit too early to start shaving!

Trip as documented in pics!

Here are the brief details of our trip up north last weekend!

My little pirates (compliments of arcade tickets)..

Pretty boy at the rock beach!
JT's favorite part... seeing all of the big ships!
Motorcycle... Cool dude!
Fun at the park!


Another rock beach... So peaceful and relaxing (minus rocks being thrown by the kids near our heads!)... Poor Addy even took a little swim! She was trying to reach a rock she dropped in the water and slowly slid in. She was not too thrilled with being in the cold water!
Thier favorite thing to do!

I LOVE THIS BOY!!!!
Cutie Petutie!
Mandatory backward picture!
My absolute favorite pic of the whole trip!!!!
Attempt at auto shoot....

Little man... might be a cute one in B&W.
Climbing the tower!
Autoshoot take 2....
Look closely for little man in lock up!

AJ loved swimming at the waterpark!
Exhaustion at the end of the day!