Busy, Busy, Busy....

Well, here it has been months again. It feels like the last couple of months I just can't get it together! I feel so distracted! The only thing that I have been motivated to do is get in better shape. I joined the YMCA about 6 weeks ago and have been religiously going to the gym three times a week for the last 4 weeks. Thankfully, the YMCA has a "babysitting corner" for the boys to go to while I work out. It gives the boys a chance to play with some other kids and gives me a total of 3 hours a week with no screaming boys! :) I had also been bringing the boys into the kiddie swimming pool sometimes as often as three times a week. However, recently I have cut that down to once a week. Nathan absolutely loves the "wa-wa" as he calls it. Cole loves just about anything, so he likes it too! I have lost approx 6 pounds. I feel a little disappointed. I feel it should be more. However, I still eat like I love to eat-BADLY! I know it would probably melt off if I ate better. I want to not have to give up eating what I want. I will give it a few more weeks and if I am not losing any more weight, I will regretfully have to start watching what I eat. Either way, I am feeling better about myself by working out. I took advantage of the free personal fitness trainer/program for new members. However, I have had a hard time meeting up with the trainer due to coordinating times. I am determined I will by next week.

Nathan has still been busy with speech therapy. I switched therapists and I feel like it's night and day. The first day I heard sounds coming out of Nate that I do not ever remember hearing before. He seems so much more engaged with her and she is so much more enthusiastic. She is wonderful. She shows up everyday....on time....and with a specified project/toy each session. She always seems to have thought about it a head of time! It's nice. He still has a long way to go, but we will see. As for potty training, we have tried again the last few days and he seems to be getting back into the swing of things! He was doing wonderful until the day Jay's mom was hospitalized and then wanted nothing to do with it. It's nice to see him being a big boy again!

Cole is walking around like a mad man and into everything. He is going to be our class clown. He is just too funny and really enjoys making people laugh....more so than Nate ever did. We had his first birthday in May. It ended up being a pretty quite party, but none the less special. It's amazing to have such great friends and family. I swear he's going to be talking more than Nate soon! I swear I have heard him say "light" and "duck". I guess he will get the benefits of speech therapy too!

Jay is good as usual. Nothing really new to report with him. He has been busy obsessing about our grass and yard this year! :) He now have grass where we had the three trees removed. Perfect timing for Nate's 3rd birthday party this weekend. We also had a new front porch put on. Jay would have done it himself, but with my work schedule, he just would never have the time. Hopefully, as the boys get older, he will be able to do more projects again. The front steps are the composite decking (no maintenance-thank god). They are a little larger than the old steps which make it easier when bringing the kids in/out!

We are going on vacation August 30th to Ocean City, MD and to Washington, DC for a week. I think we are looking forward to a family vacation with just the four of us!

A Long Time....

It has been quite a while since I have posted any updates. It has been super busy!

We had Cole baptized in March....about time, poor kid! It went well and Cole played in the holy water. :) Later that week Jay's mom had gotten sick. She had fallen at home and long story short was septic (blood infection) and was put ICU. She was in acute renal failure and was new onset diabetic. She was septic because a hernia she had for more than 30 years became incarcerated (part of the bowel gets tied off and dies). She ended up going to surgery which they did the day after she was hospitalized because she was so unstable that first night (she was in septic shock). Even the second day the doctor's did not think that she would be able to come off the ventilator post-op. Luckily she did. She has made an amazing recovery. She went to rehab for a few weeks and then was able to go home. Home was pretty rough at first, but luckily she is back to herself now.

Nathan is doing well. He was potty trained for almost a month prior to Jay's mom getting sick (with exception of nap time and bed time). However, once Jay's mom was sick, he has had zero interest. I think it was just getting off of our routine. He continues speech therapy twice a week and has made some more progress. He still has a long way to go...a definitive delay remains. He's just such a little boy now. I love him to pieces....even when he is having a moment!

Cole has been our little trouble maker in more ways than one. He just gets into things and does things that Nathan even thought of. His health still has been an on going issue. With the exception of a few weeks, he just can not seem to come off of the nebulizer treatments. Every time he does something triggers his "asthma"......a cold, the weather, etc. The past few weeks have been particularly challenging. On top of his chronic wheezing, he has also had this chest congestion/secretions that makes him sound like he is drowning. He has no other symptoms of a cold. He got put back on top of the oral steroid-Prednisone along with the 3-5 nebulizer treatments.....not fun! He normally responds well with the Prednisone, this time he was not. After a trip to the ER and his pediatrician's office (again), he ended up having a chest x-ray. No pneumonia thankfully. However, the pediatrician's put him on an antibiotic (Augmentin) anyway and he has responded well to that. Since the antibiotic he sounds so much better....something bacterial was going on. He still has his chronic wheezing, so they have referred him to a pediatric pulmonologist. He will go in June. They also wanted him to have an upper GI series (Barium Swallow test) to rule out reflux. He had that yesterday at Albany Med and they told me unofficially that it looked fine....no reflux. I think I was secretly hoping it would be reflux so that he could be medicated and be better. This asthma diagnosis is just so much more complicated and he just seems to be a very sensitive asthmatic. We will see if the specialist can get it under control better! Good news is he started walking last month and is booking around now pretty fast. He also has his first birthday fast approaching!

As for Jay and I. We are both doing fine. Nothing really to report. We just have been so busy between our work schedules, the kids and Jay's mom. We are trying to plan a vacation right now (with the kids) and can't wait to just get away for a while. We did have three large trees taken out in the backyard thanks to the December ice storm and JJ's Tree Service. We have been busy working on cleaning up the backyard in time for Cole's first birthday party in a few weeks.

Hope all is well with everyone!

9 Months and Counting....

Cole's 9 month check-up was yesterday and he weighs in at 21 pounds 14 ounces and is 28 1/4 inches long. He's a growing boy!! He weighs pretty close to what Nate was at this point (22 pounds and 2 ounces), but is shorter. Nate was 29 1/2 inches long. Regardless, he's doing well. The pediatrician said he has dropped some percentiles for his height and weight, but it's most likely due to the steriods he has been on for the asthma. I had stopped doing them for a short while, but now am back to doing at least 3-5 neb treatments a day. He got a cold on Thursday and it has seemed to trigger the extreme wheezing again. On top of the neb treatments, he is also back on an oral steriod (prednisone) for the next 5 days. Hopefully, this will clear him up again! Poor kid!

Updates...

Well, I haven't been updating on here as much as I had been. Where to begin....
Nate is now attending a library program every Monday morning. Hopefully it will help his speech and his socialization! He has gone two Mondays and I will just say that they have NOT been pleasant. He loves the kids and wants to play....he just doesn't want to sit down in a structured environment. He just wants to run around and play. They start with reading a few short books, then singing and dancing time (which for some reason Nate hates when anyone sings now), and then there is a project at the end. He enjoys the projects. Thank god his speech therapist goes with me, because she at least tends to Cole while I am trying to calm down Nate. I will give it a few more weeks. I hope it will get better, because it would be a nice intro into pre-school in September.

As for Cole, I am happy to say that he is sleeping better. He is still waking up once or twice a night for a quick binky, music, or Tylenol or Orajel. However, I will take it.....compared to what it had been. I am also happy to say that as of last night the boy is finally rolling over from his back to his stomach! It only took him about 9 months. We go for his 9 month check up at the end of the month. As for his questionable asthma....he is doing better. We are only doing the Albuterol treatments as needed.....not even once a day. Sometimes he could use it, but with a little rest, the wheezing stops.

Jay is doing fine....really nothing new to report on him......lucky! :)

I had my cardiac ablation this past Tuesday. I had to be there for 8:30am, they took me into pre-op at 9:30 and I was on the table at 12:00. I slept comfortably through the procedure (thanks to anesthesia). The procedure lasted about 2 hours. I was kind of out of it the first night...especially the first few hours. They did 3 approaches....one in each groin and one in my neck. All three sites are looking good. My groin sites are a little bruised, but looking better. My legs are still pretty sore, but I will be going back to work tomorrow night. I am on a lift restriction until Sunday of 10 pounds. However, I am cheating with Cole.....I can't help that one. However, I have/will not lift Nate. All said and done, it went pretty well. I stayed overnight and was discharged on Wednesday.

Let the Fun Begin!!

Here is the video of Cole crawling. It is dark...I need to use my video camera more often. I wonder if he will only do the army crawl!?! He is now eight months and just seems huge. I can't wait to see what his weight is next month at his check-up in comparison to Nate's weight, because we all know that he was huge! I am trying to get this poor kid baptized and for some reason the church hasn't been calling me back...yet anyways!

I have been busy trying to find a nursery/pre-school program for Nate for the fall. Now that he will be 3 by September, it's that time and it will be great for him to be with some other kids. As of Monday, we also begin "Toddler Time" at the library...we will see how that will go. His speech is definitely improving....he speaks mostly in vowels when he does talk (still not much), but he is using signs. The signs are decreasing his frustrations quite a bit!

As for Jay, he is always the same. He wants to start building some shelves in our basement for storage. He has Monday off, so he is hoping to do some of that. We will see!!

I am doing okay, I had a cardiology appointment yesterday. I am going to have the cardiac ablation on February 3rd. It is inpatient (just one overnight), but that is going to make it interesting for Jay and I. He's definitely going to have to take a few days off because of the kids. I also wonder how expensive it's going to be....it seems like our new insurance (since May when Jay changed jobs) is just not as good as our old one. Either way, I need to have it done to keep this heart rate down. Once it's done, I will be able to lose some weight!!! I hope!!

Holiday Cheer

Well, after a busy few months....the holidays are coming to an end. Thank God!! Christmas was busy, but fun! I know that the next few years will even get better as the boys will begin to understand all of the magic of Santa!! We can't wait. Nathan received a train table set from Santa and he loved it. He was such a tv bug prior to the train set and I will have to say that he has barely watched much tv since Christmas Day. I am not sure if the less tv has been the motivation or what, but I will say that we have been noticing some changes, yet small, in Nathan's speech. His therapy has been going pretty well and he his consistently doing about 5 signs. He also says about 6 animal sounds. The therapist told me last week that she notices him only using vowels to speak....with the exception of "d". Then all of a sudden yesterday he was doing "b", "p", "t", and "w". Granted, he is still behind, but it's nice to hear some new things coming out of his mouth! :) I say that now!! He also had the re-eval for his hearing and he did pass, so no problems there!

Cole is now 7 1/2 months and getting chunkier by the minute! :) What a rolie polie! He is loving to laugh, especially at Nathan. We think he will start crawling within the next month. He started doing the army crawl tonight....I will see about posting a video! Once he's mobile, the torcher begins again! Well, at least until he understands all of the things he shouldn't be getting into. That will take a while. So, in the mean time, I think it will be time to put the gates back up. Nathan is going to love that! :( He is eating quite a bit, but still not sleeping so well. He seems to be my sensitive sleeper. Nathan can sleep through just about anything! Cole can sleep through noise, but not through things like a cold. He starts to sleep well and than he gets a cold, or than it was the steroids keeping him awake all hours of the night, and now it seems to be teething. His Christmas gift from Santa was his first tooth (bottom front). He is doing well, other than that!

Jay and I are also doing well, but nothing really new to report there! Jay is much happier with work since he changed jobs in May. I will have to say, he may even be slightly relaxed!! :) Okay, that might be pushing it! Work has been pretty busy for me....but what else is new! There will always be sick people! I just can't wait for the day that I can finally have a normal Monday through Friday job again! UUUGGHH!! It sounds nice to only have to work two days a week, but the idea is better than the reality of having to give up EVERY weekend! I know Jay can't wait until it's over either!

Well, Happy Holiday to everyone!!

Cardiac Ablation

I forgot to post last week that I had my 6 month post partum check up with cardiology. After developing SVT (Supra ventricular tachycardia) at 10 weeks pregnant, I have been following up with them every so often.

During the pregnancy they couldn't do much other than to give me a medication to take if my heart rate started getting out of control. I tried not to take the medication unless I absolutely couldn't get my heart rate down on my own (usually done with vagal maneuvers). I actually only took the medication 5 times or so during the pregnancy and at that time my heart rate would go up at least 4-5 times a week. Since giving birth, my heart rate only goes up 4-5 times a month. Never going up to the 240 beats/min that I had in the ER.

Needless to say, I now have two treatment options now that I am not pregnant: medication or a cardiac ablation. The cardiac ablation is similar to a cardiac catheritization procedure, but once the catheters are inserted in your heart, they basically re-circuit your heart by killing off or taking out the bad heart cells that is causing the irregularity. It does come with some risks and doesn't always work. As for the medication, the cons are of course cost and just the nuisance of having to take medication every day at 28 years old.

The cardiologist (whom I know very well from work), thinks that it is best to go ahead and try medication for now. If I have any breakthrough SVT while on the medication then I definitely need the ablation. Otherwise, he will follow up with me in 3 months and keep me on the medication for one year. At that point he would try to wean me off the medication. If I had more issues at that point.....once again ablation would be the next step. I have been started on an anti-dysrhythmic Flecainide-to be taken twice a day. So far, it's hard to tell if it's working, because I can't seem to take it regularly. I am going to program my cell phone to remind me. We will see how it goes!!