Time flies...

I can't believe it's already May!  Where did this year go? 

We finally heard back from Shriner's last week - and we go there in two weeks!  Ack!  They had a cancellation for their next clinic, so we had the option of the clinic the second week of May, or waiting until OCTOBER.  So, I chose May.  It's going to make things a little crazy that week, and necessitate postponing our planned garage sale, but it's what we have to do.

I'm excited and nervous all at once for this visit.  In our opinions, Miss Sunshine is doing beyond phenomenal.  Her cognitive abilities are through the roof, her speech is fantastic, she passed her last hearing tests with flying colors.  On the other hand, we are not the medical professionals.  And it's entirely possible that all the things we think are going great are really not.  When you are dealing with something like cleft, things can change so rapidly as our children grow.  Things like scar tissue causing growth restriction on her palate.  We already know that she has a slight underbite, from her dental visits.  We know we are in for lots of (expensive) orthodontic work.  What we don't know is if, as she grows, the size of her palate will cause issues with speech, etc.  It's not something they can predict, they can only take a wait and see approach to it.  So every visit is a little tense for us because the truth is we just never know.  However, I'm choosing to expect that she'll pass everything with flying colors, as she has for the last year, and that our visit will turn out great, as usual.  The stress of traveling with a three year old is really higher on my concern list than anything else right now.  Although, we made so many trips up to now that I pretty much have it down to a science.  I'll be bringing some pullups as a backup, because even though she is potty trained, travel can be disruptive for a kiddo.  But I can pack everything we need into one backpack, with a small backpack for her filled with entertainment items for the flight.  We have the travel rack with wheels for her carseat (that's really the most difficult thing to maneuver on our trips) and typically I would put her seat on the plane since she now has her own seats on the flights.  I learned from experience last time, however, that the new airline they fly us in on has SMALL planes and it's a massive pain in the neck to lug that thing down those narrow aisles - so we will be gate checking the carseat - and I'll be taking my chances that they won't break the wheels and leaving it strapped to the rack so I'm not holding up people at the gate trying to get it reassembled.  This should be interesting, to say the least.  I will admit, I'm looking forward to the time when we can travel without a carseat at all, although that's at least 6 years into the future.  Oh well, you do what you have to in order to make sure your kids are safe.

Of teeth and other things...

So, Blogger changed their posting format.  Bear with me through any technical difficulties we may experience as I try to figure this out!

So, our trip to the dentist was last week.  Miss Sunshine did wonderfully well this go round - last time the most she would let them do was look in her mouth.  This time, she let them do everything (except xrays).  Now that her canines have made their appearances (although they do no seem to have come in fully, or else she has very tiny canines) the dentist was not so concerned with getting xrays and said we would wait until she was a bit older and less fidgety.  But her teeth look fabulous.

Monster Boy did not fare so well.  We are currently going through what I like to call the "dirty boy" phase - the one where they are allergic to water, it seems.  I don't struggle as much to get him to bathe, because he has to use special organic handmade soaps to help control skin issues and he now takes showers on his own, which is apparently a big sign of major adulthood (wink!).  But teeth brushing?  Yeah.  No matter how many times I remind him EVERY morning to brush his teeth (morning routine consists of four things - take a shower, get dressed, eat breakfast, brush your teeth), half the week he seems to leave the house without doing so.  I've told him time and time again the importance of brushing his teeth and how not only does his mouth smell bad when he doesn't, but he'll wind up with cavities.  Well.  Guess who wound up with cavities?  Yep.  Three of them.  Probably not the end of the world in the grand scheme of things, but for someone who has never had a cavity in their life (yes, you read that correctly!), it is very bothersome to me.  Not to mention the whole rabid fear of needles thing he has going on.  We go back the middle of May for his fillings, and I am definitely not looking forward to this experience.  Sigh.  Hopefully it will teach him his lesson about brushing his teeth and we won't have this issue going forward. 

Life is moving right along, as usual.  I have lots of cute pictures from the weekend and from getting to meet my beautiful nephew for the first time.  I have to check with my sister first and make sure she is okay with me posting pictures on here.  If not, I do have pictures of my kids, even if you are tired of seeing them!  I missed a call from Shriner's today about scheduling Miss Sunshine's appointment, so I will call them back tomorrow and hopefully have an update on that soon.  For some reason, these trips are always nerve racking to me, even when I expect good findings.  And it's looking likely that Daddy Mac will be the one taking the excursion with her again - and we all saw how well I did with that last time!  Only time will tell, but I will keep you posted.

We survived a tornado...

That sounds kind of dramatic. Given the fact that the damage to our home is minimal, and our neighborhood fared very well, it seems crazy to say we survived a tornado. But it's the truth. I believe by the time it got to us it was actually no longer on the ground, because it was half a mile wide (at a minimum), so the fact that we have minimal damage just doesn't seem possible. So, here are some photos for you guys of our area.

The Tornado as it first enters the city.  I did not take this photo, this is actually a screenshot from video shot by a storm chaser.  I am not sure where it originated, so I can't properly credit it, but want to make it clear I didn't take it, and am not claiming it as my own property

Damage about one and half blocks from our house - hardest hit area in our neighborhood.

Damage to the park located right next to our neighborhood.  This is directly across the street from the previous picture, and is also less than a mile from our house. 

Look closely, that tree is completely uprooted.  This is about half a block from our house. 

Damage to the gas station located at the nearest major intersection to us.  You can see them working on one of the three power lines that were taken out.

Apartment complex just up the street from the gas station.

Our backyard.  It's hard to tell from this angle, but the fence is leaning severely and is very wobbly in several places.  It also took out our window well cover - it was blown up against the fence at the back of this photo.

Our back porch the day after, before clean up.  That is our gas grill in the background.

Our gas grill, completely blown over.  This doesn't seem that impressive, but considering it's gone through 70-80 MPH straight line winds and hasn't moved an inch, something big got a hold of it.

(Sorry, Blogger decided it would not let me caption that last photo, no matter how hard I tried!)

I would have a taken pictures of the damage in our front yard, which mostly consisted of large branches belonging to trees that are not ours all over the yard and porch, but our fantastic neighbors cleaned all that up for us while we were taking our food to a working fridge.  We are without power and they are estimating 1-2 days before we get power back in our neighborhood.  We have one or two shingles missing off our roof, so we will call insurance and have them come inspect it to make sure that there is not additional damage we are not seeing, or don't know to look for.  Hopefully there is nothing.

We are incredibly thankful that we came through this as unscathed as we did.  We were hunkered down in our basement, as protected as we could make ourselves.  When it got to the point that the tornado was headed for us we put the dog in her kennel, pulled Miss Sunshine in with us (she was not pleased, and wanted to go to bed in her bed - upstairs) (Monster Boy was at his dad's house on the other side of town, out of the path of the tornado, thankfully) and covered up with cushions and watched as much as we could until the power went out.  Shortly after the power went out, we heard lots of loud hail and rain, and then sudden silence.  Daddy Mac and I looked at each other, and right at that moment heard a loud WHOOSH.  A lot of people talk about it sounding like a train, but that is not what we heard, but we definitely heard it.  It was probably one of the scariest experiences of my life, but we survived. 

Easter 2012

Just a quick post to say hi and share some pictures!  I'll get to updates later this week after I HOPEFULLY hear back from Shriner's regarding Miss Sunshine's next visit. 

But for now, I leave you with my rather pitiful attempts at getting good photos of my children.  What is it about kids that dictates that you cannot have all your children looking cute/pretty/not totally ridiculous all at the same time?  These are some quick shots with my phone - I haven't uploaded the pics I took with my camera yet, so I will post those later - I did get better shots with the camera, I think.

Miss Sunshine is starting to get into the silly face stage... This is now what "Cheese!" looks like.

I managed to snap this one prior to any smiles - right after telling Monster Boy to sit up straight because he kept slouching over.

This one would be adorable if Miss Sunshine didn't have that crazy look on her face...

Our pretty Easter eggs - Tie Dyed and glittery - because that's how we roll...

Spring

The weather has been crazy here the last few weeks.  We pretty much bypassed winter altogether and had upper 80's for temperatures last week.  It's going to be a long, hot summer it looks like.

Things are still crazy busy around here. Soccer has started back up for Monster Boy, and he's loving it. I am seeing vast improvement in his ability this go round as well. As long as he enjoys it, I'm happy to let him keep playing.

First practice of the season

His team has played two games so far, and it's obvious the boys have played together before.  All of his current teammates have been on his last two teams as well, and it shows.  Even though they've only had three practices, they play together like they've been practicing together all year. 

Monster Boy in white, heading down field

Miss Sunshine is crazy as usual as well.  We are (knocking on wood) finally successfully potty trained around here.  Even at night!  She has done very well lately, and we are very proud of that.  We also pre-enrolled her in preschool for next year!  I can't believe she is old enough to go to school.  But she is ready, we are confident at that, especially based on her evaluations in November.  She will attend the same private school that Monster Boy goes to, and even has to wear uniforms like Monster Boy does.  We came across some teeny tiny jumpers at the used uniform sale the school had during parent-teacher conferences last month, and we jumped on them.  She looks absolutely adorable and oh-so-grown-up in them.  I can't believe my baby is so big!

Oh so grown up!

We have also been spending lots of time at the park.  Miss Sunshine loves the swings.  Monster Boy is a blur from the second we get there until we leave - so, while I have gotten several cute photos of Miss Sunshine playing, I have zero of Monster Boy.  We have also taken Wonder Mutt, our dog, with us several times.  (The dog's name is actually NOT Wonder Mutt - it is Chloe!- but we frequently call her Wonder Mutt so that shall be her nickname here.)

Mommy playing with camera angles

Loving the swing, the sun - not so much.

Wonder Mutt hanging out by Monster Boy's bike while we play.

We are all looking forward to Easter this weekend - it's an important time for us.  And in two more weeks, we finally get to meet the newest member of our family - my nephew!  He was born at the end of February, and since my sister and brother in law live several thousand miles away from us, we have not gotten to meet him yet.  They will all be coming here to have him baptised, though, and we can't wait!

The next few weeks will be hectic as classes wind up for me and school comes to a close for Monster Boy.  We will have about a week and a half break before summer classes start up for me, but the end is getting nearer, and we are all looking forward to the short break.  I will try to stay up to date on here as we get our next Shriner's appointment for Miss Sunshine, as well as her ENT follow up.  We also have a dentist appointment coming up next week - and her last canine FINALLY decided to make it's appearance last month!  We shall see if we can successfully get a set of xrays to see just what all is going on in there.   For now, though, I'm going to head to bed - we have all sorts of busy-ness going on tomorrow, starting with work bright and early for all of us!

Spring Break

I remember a time when Spring Break meant doing NOTHING for an entire week.  Sleeping in, ignoring school work, hanging out with friends...

That is not what Spring Break is in our house these days!  My children, darling as they are, do not understand the concept of sleeping in.  In fact, they wake up EARLIER than normal for some strange reason!  There is tons of housework to be done - I will be honest here, and admit that I have overwhelmed myself with school, work and kids this semester, and my housework is paying the price for it.  I have laundry to catch up on - it seems never ending, even if it is half of what I was doing this time last year (since Miss Sunshine is now potty trained, no more washing cloth diapers.  Which makes me happy, and kind of sad, all at the same time).  The floors need mopped since it has been raining nonstop since Sunday and my dog simply doesn't understand the concept of wiping her feet (haha!).  I have a goal to finish one of my online classes this week so I don't have to worry about it for the rest of the semester.  I also have two papers I want to get written this week so I don't have to deal further with them as well.  And I need to catch up on listening to my online Nutrition class lectures as well as get to work on the massive project I have due in that class.  Add in to that the 23 hours I am working this week (including two shifts tomorrow - it's going to be a long day for all of us!) and it's just not the Spring Break I remember!

We are still waiting on a call back to schedule the date for our next clinic visit at Shriners.  We need to call and reserve a hotel room for our family reunion this summer.  We have to pay the balance to have our roof replaced.  The van needs a lot of work done to it.  I hate money.  And bills.  And being a grown up.  Sigh.  I just keep telling myself we just have to get through two more years, and then things will be a lot different.  Our income will more than double once I go back to work.  I think we won't know what to do with ourselves with that much money, hahaha!  It will be nice to be able to put money in savings instead of worrying about bills every paycheck, though.

This is turning into a novel of a post, so I'll come back with other posts later on updates on Miss Sunshine and Monster Boy.  They have enough news to have entire posts of their own too!

Wow

So time has totally slipped away from me!  It's amazing, really, how quickly things go these days.

I'm not sure if I updated on here or not, but we made a trip to the original ENT that Miss Sunshine saw for her cleft a while back.  At her 3 year well child check, I mentioned to our doctor that I was a bit concerned about the notes we had received from Shriner's classifying her with moderate hearing loss in her right ear.  Of course, this was all while she had a non-functioning tube in that ear, so I wanted to have her hearing evaluated again.  He was game to send me to an audiologist, but when he took a look in her ears, said he couldn't see ANYTHING but earwax! So off to the ENT it was, to get her ears checked out, see if the impacted wax could be removed and see if the tubes were still functional.  Miss Sunshine did beautifully at letting the ENT dig his little scoop into her ears, even though she was definitely not pleased about it.  He was able to get enough wax out to see her tubes, and they are both still in place!  This is now the longest a set of tubes has lasted in her ears.  So off he sent us to see if they are still functional, and they were.  Not only that, but she successfully passed a booth test for hearing in both ears.  It was pretty entertaining to watch her take it, but she did great.  He said normal range is between 5-15 decibels (I think that's what it was, maybe it was Mhz, I can't really remember now!).  Miss Sunshine tested at 10 in the left ear and 10-15 (because of her age, they do a range if there is some discrepancy, because children at this age are notoriously hard to get accurate readings on) in the right - so normal range in both ears!  Yay for good news on hearing - this is my major concern these days.  Her palate repair was so successful that we likely will not need further surgeries (although this is of course not a definite...) so most of my worry has been focused on the hearing.  Now that we have resolved that, I can relax a bit until our next trip to Shriner's sometime this summer... we will also have a follow up with our local ENT in six months as well, to make sure the tubes are still working as they should and we don't have further issues with the earwax impacting against the tubes.

That was pretty long and I do have more updates to make, so I will try to get back here soon to do that - I've had a post typed up since Miss Sunshine's birthday, I was just wanting to add pictures to it which I haven't loaded onto my computer yet, if that gives you any indication of how behind I am these days!