Merry Christmas!!

Just wanted to say Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to all our dear friends and family! Hope you all have wonderful and safe holidays!

Happy Fourth Birthday Ansel!

Our handsome little boy turned four yesterday! He's big into legos right now.. so I made him a huge lego cake he was pretty excited about! He's so much fun. He gets so excited over the littlest things. He's also always been precise about some things... for example, he was opening his presents and he would stop after every piece of paper he pulled off to make a neat pile of paper. Then before he opened the gift up to play with he'd go throw away all the paper first! I think I may be a little spoiled sometimes! Don't get me wrong.... he has his angry frustrated moments still.. but really he's a pretty easygoing kid (except for when he's tired and SUPER cranky :). I've never even thought about him coloring on walls or anything like that because he's so precise about things having their place and purpose and will comment on things that are "out of place". (he's always been obsessed with shutting toilet lids, doors, and stuff like that too. such a funny boy :) He's also really good at entertaining himself easily and quietly. It'll be interesting to see what the next little one is like! I might be in for a big surprise! I'm so glad he's come so far from four years ago!!! We're very blessed. Oh, and his growth is still quite consistent.. 3 more pounds this year! (we're up to 27lbs now!) He's also around 37 inches tall.

Here's a link to some more birthday pictures, along with a few other Christmas pictures. He was so funny after seeing Santa (there was a Parents as Teachers Christmas activity we went to.) As we walked away he told me, "I asked him for legos, but he didn't give me any" He just said it so matter-of-factly with such a funny little tone in his voice it made me laugh.

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=355432&id=576240252&l=9ec4008ef9

Happy Fifth Anniversary (and Thanksgiving!)

This was of course a couple of weeks ago.. but our fifth anniversary fell on Thanksgiving this year! Seemed appropriate to me as our marriage is definitely one of the things I am most thankful for! It's always nice too (well.. for now since we live near family!) because not only do I know Cody will have some time off but so will family who can watch Ansel so we can have a date!
It's crazy how much can happen in five years! We've been through a lot together and have grown stronger through it all. I'm very lucky to be blessed with such a great husband who's also such a great father, and I am grateful to him for all the support he gives me. Our decision to have another baby after the crazy pregnancy with Ansel wasn't an easy one (esp. with the incredible support from doctors... haha), but talking and praying together about it reminded me of how important marriage is. (Not just by having a family, but by growing together through making those important decisions together and helping each other strengthen our faith.) Before I got married, it seemed so easy to just pray about things and make my own decisions about what I would do in life... but it's definitely been a learning experience to have to work with someone else in order to make those important life decisions! I'm so grateful though I've been blessed with the opportunity to do that, and for someone who shares my same goals, values and beliefs. It makes life much easier! I love you babe!

It's a BOY!

Well, Ansel has been calling this baby his brother from the beginning so I'm glad I didn't have to regear his thinking! (or mine truthfully.. I would have been shocked if he'd been a girl too just because I've pictured this baby being a boy the whole time!) So much to update on since I haven't been on here in ages!! I'll start with the pregnancy I guess. So far things are looking great still! I do heparin shots three times a day (blood thinners to hopefully help prevent some of the craziness that occured with Ansel's birth!) I really think they're helping. My high risk doc raised the heparin dosage again today (still just 3 shots... just more in each dose) It's nice they're keeping a good eye on all my levels and adjusting things as needed! My wedding ring still fits perfectly at this point and the water weight gain hasn't started yet.. all good signs! (And I haven't had the constant headaches like I did with Ansel's pregnancy either) So that's exciting. I'll put up a link to all the ultrasound pics at the end of the post!

As for other things in life.. October was a pretty crazy month! First we had Rachel's wedding! (Cody's youngest sister) I'll put up a link for those pictures (along with some halloween ones as well!) Sorry I never got a post about it Rachel! I've really been slacking on my blog!! Ansel was the little ring bearer at the wedding.. he was pretty cute :)

Also in October Cody broke his arm and had to have surgery on it! His workplace had a family night at the Bridge in Joplin (a place that has a variety of games, wall climbing, skateboard courses... etc.) Needless to say he should have steered away from the skateboarding. He fractured his radius on his right forearm and ended up with metal plates and screws and everything. He finally has his arm splint free again, which I think he's grateful for! It seems to be healing well post surgery, so that's good. How fun that we both are not supposed to be doing heavy lifting right now! Hah.. what timing!

The other big thing is that I got into the nursing program which I'm quite excited about. I started classes up again this past summer (Getting my Anatomy and Physiology one and two both out of the way) and with my classes that transfered from my previous degree I shouldn't have too many classes other than just nursing ones to take. However it does start in January.. so that could be quite an interesting semester to say the least. I talked to the department though and they said they'd work with me.. even with the c-section. Worst case scenario is that i'd have to quit and reapply next year (which is what I'd have to do if I decided not to go next semester anyway). They said I should be able to get through the classes fine (there are only two next semester) but i might have to end up doing the clinicals in the summer since I'm having a c-section. At least there's only 4 clinicals the first semester of the program!

So.. that's a bit of our crazy busy life these past couple of months!!!

*Feel free to view the extra pics through the links below!

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=344630&id=576240252&l=38c45f5c82


http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=344620&id=576240252&l=e274a08db7

Wind Rivers Wyoming!

We had our family vacation this past week and went backpacking in the mountains along with Cody's parents and our niece Jewell. We had a great week! (although morning sickness did hit a little harder while I was there! I seemed to do pretty okay though as long as we were hiking. The day we didn't hike at all I felt the worst! So apparently I just need to make myself walk all day long!)

Here's a link to the pictures from the trip!

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=298997&id=576240252&l=068f3b96ba

Make new friends .. but KEEP THE OLD!!

I had a fun surprise this summer. One of my old roommates said she and her family were driving through our town! So we met up for a few minutes! This is my roommate Katie.. and her three cuties, Lily, Eve, and Abigail. (and one on the way!) The last time I saw her, her oldest was about 6 months old.. so it's been a few years! It was fun to see you again KT(and your family)!

Sneddon Family Reunion

So this was from WAY back in June (hmm.. kind of like my last post was..) ... but I thought I'd still put up some pics! Thanks to Cody's sister Melinda for getting this all together! It was great to get to know some of the extended family better.. we had a lot of fun! So I'd been slacking on updating here because it was easier to just put up the pics on facebook.. (not that I put them on there until today either... haha.. I have no excuses..) but still, they now let me put a link to the albums so even those without facebook can see it...Yea! That makes it easier and then a million photos don't take up the whole blog post!

So here's the link for those who want to see the other pics..

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=299329&id=576240252&l=72996e10fe

Very Interesting...

Ansel's Dr. called last week and said he wanted an appointment to discuss Ansel's growth. So that was today, and he said at this point (with his current pattern of growth) he'd probably only end up around 4 foot something (and he wanted to just cover all areas since he's not even on the charts at all). He said he wanted to get an x-ray of his hand and that would tell us what age his body thought that he was (Seriously.. how cool is that.. that you can find that out from an x-ray!) He said if his body actually thought he was 3 1/2, then he'd refer us on to an endocrinologist to at least discuss the human growth hormone options. (Don't want to go down that road if we don't have to!) He said if his body thought it was younger, in the two year range somewhere, then that meant he was just having delayed growth issues (and usually will play catch up at some point).

Well, we had the x-ray done today, and just a couple of hours later his doctor called back with results. Good news... his body only thinks he's about 2 1/2 years old!!! So on the 2 1/2 year charts his height is okay (around 20-25 percent or so) and his weight is close to 5%. He said we'll retest every 6 months or so just to make there is still improvement in growth. Anyway.. quite interesting news to get today.

I've kind of thought a lot of this was somehow preemie related (although he's still on the small end even of other preemies at his age) but I was worried that all his immature stomach issues could be affecting his growth. (That maybe he wasn't absorbing enough of the right stuff or something due to all the stomach irritations). Quite interesting to learn about all of this! I guess he didn't really associate this to preemies in particular, it can happen to non preemies as well, but from things I've read it seems to be a fairly common trend in preemies during early childhood! I personally think the whole "preemies catch up by the age of two" thing isn't all that accurate (especially for micropreemies!) My friend said the place they were at for one of her preemies told her really they don't catch up until age eight or so. Crazy how three little months can make such a difference for years to follow (or for some even just 4-6 weeks early can also make such a difference too!) I find it all quite fascinating to learn about!

Fun Camping

I'm so terrible at updating lately! Sorry... Well, now that Cody has Tuesday's off (a lot of his dept. got cut recently :( .. and those that got to stay were cut to 32 hrs) we ended up with a nice four day weekend with memorial day... so we went camping for part of it. Ansel was so excited about it and kept talking about it for weeks (even though I don't think he really knew what camping was) and he was quite upset when we took down the tent to go home! I think he had a pretty good time!

We brought Lexi with us too.. who had a few first experiences of her own. She went and chased some cows in a field. Who knew she was a cow herding type of dog? (esp. given her fear of cats!). She also went on a nice LONG hike (good thing for the cool weather or she never would have made it..she's not exactly a long distance dog breed, and she overheats easily!) and she even took a swim (not by her own choice.. Cody thought she should try it :)

Anyway.. here's a few pics!

New Pediatrician

Ansel got to see his new pediatrician today. Ansel weighed 25 and a half lbs and 35.5 inches. (So, another pound and another inch since January!) I did like his old doctor.. she was really nice and I loved her staff (anytime I'd call to ask something.. medicine dosage, etc... they'd ask, "Who's the patient?" and every time I'd say Ansel they always would say, "Aww.. Ansel, we love Ansel". (We'd gone there ever since he got out of the NICU) So, I do miss some aspects about his old office, but his office shut down and we had a to find a new doctor. The one thing I didn't like about the last place I went was I didn't feel like his last doctor was great with following up on things. (When we were supposed to do follow up blood tests or anything I always had to call to see if we were still supposed to do those like we'd talked about and even if she'd mention something that seemed like a concern she'd never have me bring him in for a follow up to keep an eye on things (it was just always... "see you in a year at his next appointment" type of thing.) Anyway, I feel bad that her office got shut down but hopefully the doctor change will be a good thing.

His new doctor seemed really good though. He asked me a bunch of different things (I'd made my little list of things to cover just in case so I didn't forget but didn't even need to use it because I think he pretty much covered it all in the things he asked!) We talked about the asthma thing (we'd just still been doing breathing treatments at night.. which with a home nebulizer they take about 2o minutes or so) Anyway he switched us over to an aerochamber thing (that has a little mask on it too) and you only have to have a couple of "puffs" of medicine a day (so I guess you get the inhaler medicine and attach it to this device and it's supposed to diffuse the medicine properly through a little mask.) We haven't tried it out yet, we still have to pick up the medicines for it. It's much more portable though and will be quicker to use too. His doctor added a medicine to help prevent asthma stuff too instead of just treating it.
Then, while he was talking to me he heard Ansel making this little clicking noise at the back of his throat and started asking me questions about that and asking if he had allergies (which he'd been coughing a ton the past few days again), so he prescribed some Nasonex to help with the drainage from allergy stuff. He said a lot of times kids will make that noise when their throat is getting kind of itchy from the allergies. Oh, and the part I really liked (well, not money wise but I think it's wise) is he said he wanted to see Ansel again in a month to see how the medicine changes are going and if there's anything that needs to be changed at all. (Follow-up.. and I didn't even have to ask!) So, so far I like his new doctor! The medicines are sure expensive though!! (Well, they have been for awhile though.. I wish the insurance covered a little more on them!!)

His doctor seemed pretty funny too. He came in with Ansel's 3 inch (or more) stack of paperwork and said, "Obviously there's history here! How about you give me a good summary of it to begin with!" (Seeing as how a good chunk of it was likely NICU stuff!) Ansel was pretty funny too. When he came over to listen to Ansel's heart, check his ears, nose, etc. Ansel kept saying, "No, it's not my turn, it's Mommy's turn. You can't get my arm!!" (Yeah.. he had more bloodwork done recently) Then the doctor asked to look up his nose and Ansel said, "I don't have boogers.. Mommy does.. check her nose.. it's her turn!) He doesn't like to be messed with.

Also, Ansel has an appointment with his GI doctor next week. All the bloodwork (and samples, etc. that were done a few weeks ago) went to him so he should be able to tell us more there. (We hadn't picked out a new pediatrician at that point yet.) Hopefully the blood tests are more normal this time!

Video trouble

Well, I have actually tried to do a few posts... but they were all video posts and for the life of me I cannot seem to get my videos to upload with my newer camera. I can watch them on the computer.. but have tried uploading through blogger and youtube with no luck. (I don't have this problem though if I use a video from my older camera.. that I no longer have) I really like my camera.. I'd just like to figure out the video part of it!! When they save to the computer.. it shows two different icons (one with a picture for it and another blank looking one with a play button.) Both of them have the exact same file name... but it's almost like I somehow need to try to combine the two in order for all the information to be there to upload right!! Hopefully I'll get it figured out one of these days. If you're better with this kind of stuff than I am and have any ideas I'd love to hear them!!

We're all doing well though. We just got back from our trip to Utah on Sunday. Cody's grandparents live out there so we drove out with Mom over her spring break. Our niece Jewell got to come too. Ansel and I went out with them last year, but it was nice that Cody got to come along with us this time! I think Ansel enjoyed all the extra Daddy time too! We also got to see Cody's sister Melinda and her family! They live in Idaho so we don't get to see them too often. The weather was amazing this year! I brought warmer stuff after last year, but didn't need a coat at all and rarely even needed a jacket! (Luckily that meant perfect weather to drive in as well.. last year was a little crazy in a places and it was hard to see driving at times with all the snow!)Yeah.. we got lucky this year! I'll try to post some pics from the trip in after while. I usually put some on facebook too... which is partly why I've been slacking with pictures here.. because it's easier to just post the pictures with a caption of them on there! I'll try to be better though. Hopefully I can figure out the video thing soon too.. I've had some cute ones. Ansel does a cute "thriller" dance!

Abnormal blood tests

I just hate it when Ansel's blood tests come back abnormal. It's a little unsettling, even if things are completely fine (or at least seem fine).. it makes you wonder why the tests were abnormal in the first place. The first time this happened was when Ansel was about 10 months old... 6 months after his last transfusion they did blood work to make sure things looked good. His doctor said something was abnormal but she looked through lots of stuff trying to figure out what the codes meant and wasn't coming up with much. She sent that test to Kansas City and they replied that as long as the child seemed healthy not to worry about it. So I tried to drop worrying about that one even though it always bugged me a little bit.

After Ansel's last appointment with Dr. Porte (his NICU doctor who he saw for developmental follow up) he thought it'd be a good idea to have some blood work done. I'd asked about Ansel's slow growth, (at 3 years old he's 24lbs and 34.5 inches tall) and how should I know if it was just preemie related or if there were other issues (like his cousin who has celiac's disease (gluten allergy that highly affects growth and proper absorption of nutrients). Dr. Porte thought it'd be good to atleast rule that out since it was in the family and that maybe he should go see a GI doc also. To be honest I felt like Ansel had some kind of issue (stomach wise.. perhaps some type of allergies..or something that's maybe aggrivating his stomach lining?) I didn't really think it was celiac disease, yet I really felt like if he had the blood work done to check for c.d. that perhaps it would reveal something else (I was thinking like some other type of allergy or something). Nearly every day says he says he has a hurt tummy (which has improved a lot with the new reflux medicine though).

Anyway, at his doctors appointment this past week she said it didn't look like things indicated celiac's disease (which is a relief because I've seen my sister deal with that with her little girl and I know it's not easy... not to mention expensive). She said the weird thing was that in fact he had quite high B12 levels (and usually when there's issues with growth and such the levels run low and that's why those levels were checked). She kept saying how odd it was for someone.. especially someone his age to have high B12 levels. (low levels are fairly common but I guess high levels aren't often seen unless there are certain drug treatments which would make it high.. which Ansel obviously isn't on anything like that!) I guess the other thing is that just because the levels show high doesn't necessarily mean that his body is still absorbing all the necessary B12.. it could just be getting discarded.. I'm not really sure how all this stuff works.. just trying to sort out what bits of information I've gotten so far!! Also his doctor kept saying that high levels could indicate some different things, but things that didn't at all match how he looks and everything so those other things are likely not it because he doesn't have the symptoms, coloring, etc for them (really don't remember what all they are as I was getting a bit of info and not having the background on this, I didn't really know what everything was that she was talking about. She said what we're hoping for is that it's just some kind of transitory thing where he happened to have some high levels.

The other factor, that could quite possibly be related is that he's been (off and on) having reddish brownish sediments in his urine the past few weeks.(the urine color is still normal but it has all these sediments that fall to the bottom) I got a picture of it to show her.. and she said.. "Yeah.. that is NOT normal", but haven't been able to get a sample of it yet. Last week it only happened once or twice.. although the week before it probably happened at least five or six times (and just a couple of times the week before.. so it's very sporadic). I guess the plan is we'll redo blood tests at three months to see if the levels are still elevated, but his doctor really wants a urine sample (one of course that has the abnormalities) before the blood test is ordered because the outcome of the urine test could change the order of the blood test a little. I would imagine the two things are interrelated somehow. The thing is he doesn't seem like he feels sick at all... so that's good, (and hopefully this is all some odd random abnormal thing that just goes away!) I also hope that if there is some issue we need to deal with that we can figure it out and treat it!! (Oh, and also with the urine I ask him if it hurts to pee and he always says no, and he hasn't had fevers or anything to go with it, so it doesn't seem like normal symptoms for just a typical infection either) So, with all of this it's just kind of waiting on timing and tests and stuff to see if there's anything to it or not. I would imagine that if the tests are still abnormal next time around then we'd go see the GI doctor (and atleast we could then go to him with all the tests that have already been done) to try to sort it out better.

This really all is probably not a big deal, I just thought I'd write about it as it is on my mind at the moment especially as there doesn't seem to be a lot of info about high B12 levels (just low levels). The thing is B12 is a necessary thing to have and those who are low have to supplement to get their levels up.. and in their case if they get too much it's no problem they just get rid of the extra in the urine.. it's just odd though when your doctor tells you it's real unusual, especially for his age. Oh, and if anyone's heard of this happening before (with either the weird urine or high b12 levels) I'm always up for added info!

Christmas pics

Christmas was fun! We hope you all had a great one too! Here's a couple of slideshows from our Christmas :)

Christmas morning:

My little rockstar! Ansel was all about the guitar. It was his cousin's Christmas present.. (hence the Hannah Montana on it) but he sure had some fun with it.