Another Week Gone

Life is speeding by right now. I get so frustrated with my kids sometimes and then I sit back and realize that this precious time I have with them, will be gone all too soon. Caden won't want to snuggle in bed with me anymore and Tyler won't hang on my legs while I'm cooking and Cierra won't need me to tuck her in anymore and Kenz won't be excited to see me when I'm at the school for different things. Kenz won't even need me to drive her places for very much longer. She will have her permit in just two, short years!

Last night I was looking forward to a trip to Walmart by myself. I was getting ready to pull out of the driveway when Kenz came out and asked if she could come. And of course I said yes and she ran in to get her shoes. Cierra followed her out and begged to go, too. In she came. Then little Caden, with those big blue eyes, was at my window pleading to come with us. How could I resist? Erick was standing in the doorway holding Tyler this whole time. We shrugged at each other and he brought Tyler out and they joined us. So, my alone time didn't happen, but there is going to come a point in my life that I won't have little people begging to come with me. I am so grateful for the four, beautiful children that I have. So many people don't have children at all or are missing little ones that have passed on. And while we have had many, many trials, I am so blessed that I have these four amazing kids here with me, who love me unconditionally and are always willing to forgive my shortcomings.

Kenz and Cierra are having the Color Expo at school this week and are both looking forward to it. On Wednesday they get to Tye dye t-shirts and on Friday they get to wear them to school. They are both really excited about this because they normally have to wear uniforms. So, anytime they can get a break from the polo's, it's a good thing.

They are both doing great academically. Kenz wrote a story for one of her classes recently and was worried that the teacher had lost it because she had a zero for it on her progress report. But she found out on Friday that the teacher loved it so much that she had taken it to make copies of it because she wanted to save it for her future classes to read. It is a pretty funny story....I'll have to post it on here sometime. Kenz is a natural at writing.

Cierra is learning Spanish this year and is excelling. She is at the top of her class for reading and Spanish. She is growing up way too fast and has been begging us to shave her legs recently. Is she really that old all ready?! She is still having seizures, despite frequent med increases. I'm really starting to think that they should have investigated the cyst in her brain better when they found it 2.5 years ago instead of dismissing it as an incidental finding on the MRI. It might have saved her (as well as us) a lot of pain and suffering. Time will tell and we'll see what the week long EEG turns up in June.

Caden is doing really good. He is finally staying in Primary and class every week and as I posted last time, doing great in school. He is addicted to the Wii and anything Batman related. He is very literal and makes us laugh all the time. He is getting really good at imaginative play, but insists on having someone play with him all the time. It's too bad that I can't convince Megan and Tanner to move down here :)

I can rarely get Caden to look at the camera, so this is what you get

Tyler is doing good as well. When we went to Walmart last night, he got really excited about all the balloons and it sounded like he tried to say balloon. It was adorable. It sounded something like "ladlad....loooooo!" I really hope that he will start bringing his speech back soon. I am dying to hear him talk again. We bought him some Stride rites last week and he is all ready walking more steady and not in-toeing quite as much, so we are hopeful that his foot issue will correct itself.

I think I am finally ready to talk about all the other issues that we have been dealing with. I needed some time to digest them and be at peace with them before I could write about all of it. So here it goes. When Tyler was born, the hospital pediatrician told us that he had epicanthal folds on his eyes. They can be associated with some types of syndromes, but since he didn't have any other markers, they told us that it was nothing to worry about. Well EI is concerned that the folds might be an indicator that something else going on. They have referred him for an evaluation with the NM School for the Blind and Visually Impaired. They will be coming to our house at the end of March to check him out. The evaluator will be checking his vision (they are concerned that he's not seeing very well,) but she is also very knoweldgable about syndromes and should be able to shed some light on that situation. EI has also put in a referral for Tyler to have an eval with the ECEP team that comes down from Albuquerque once every few months. It is a team of doctors and therapists that can diagnose kids with a range of problems, autism included. Tyler is very social and I know if they evaluated him right now that they would NOT diagnose him with autism. He has some concerning behavior (near constant hand flapping and lots of tip-toe walking, lots of meltdowns, lots of spinning, biting, eating issues, language regression, ect) but he is SO social. We were hesitant to agree to the referral at first, but he won't be seen until late summer or fall because the waiting list is so long, so we figured that it can't hurt anything to put him on the list and see how he's doing when the time comes. If he is doing great, then we just pull his name off the list. The ECEP team includes a developmental pediatrician who is an expert in diagnosing syndromes, so they also encouraged us to allow the referral, so that she can see him and give us her opinion about his eyes and find out if further testing is needed. Tyler's eyes are unusual, but I love them. They are my very favorite feature about him.

Hanging in the Wiener-mobile

Tyler's hand is doing great. He can put all of his fingers to neutral with ease, but can't hyper extend a couple of them. The scar tissue is pretty thick in a few spots and his hand is still pretty sensitive. He fell the other day with his glove off and caught himself on the tile with bare hands and it stunned him for a second because it hurt his little hand to have such hard contact. I doubt that he will need surgery during our next visit to Utah, but I'm wrong a lot, so I guess we'll see what the surgeon decides. I'm hoping and praying that it will just continue to heal and never need any surgery.

Can you believe how amazing his hand looks?!

Caden's P/T Conferences

This has been such a crazy, emotional week! I completely spaced all of my homework that was due Tuesday night. I had it done, but never once even thought about going on the computer and submitting it. So, I have a few zeros now. No worries though, I'll still pass.

The kids had P/T Conferences this week, so they get a four day weekend. I went to Kenzie's yesterday, Cierra didn't need one because she is doing really good, and then I went to Caden's today. I have been worried about Caden's because his teacher and I don't always agree on Caden's progress and how he's doing. I know that he is doing great at school and making great progress, but he still has some serious learning disabilities that he will probably battle for the rest of his life. For example, Caden has every movie we own memorized. Not just I-watched-it-so-many-times-that-I-know-some-of-the-lines-from-it kind of memorization. He knows EVERY SINGLE LINE. He knows what voice that they say it in, he knows the expression that they have on their face when they say it, etc. But if you ask Caden what happens in the movie, he can't tell you. He can repeat all of the lines, but he cannot tell you the the basics of the movie. He knows, but for some reason Caden struggles with taking information in, processing it, and then explaining it in his own words. He also will use movie lines in place of his own thoughts or answers during a conversation. So you might think he's answering appropriately, but in reality, he's just repeating a movie line. This is something that happens at school and home frequently. Another example, if you ask him what an object is (such as a house or a bike or a leaf,) he can't tell you. He knows what they are, but he can't describe it to you. Right now in preschool with ten kids and three teachers, he is doing great. He gets a lot of personal attention and is excelling. But come August, he will be in school 7 hours a day, 5 days a week with 25+ kids and one teacher and we have been really stressing about it.

So I was worried going in there today. I was worried about kindergarten. I was worried that they were not going to renew his IEP without a fight and I was worried about Caden and what's best for him. I was pleasantly surprised when I got there and discovered that not only will they be renewing his IEP, they are working on getting him an aide that will go to school with him 1/2 day, everyday next year! I could not be happier. Caden will do SO good in kindergarten if he has an aide with him everyday. I feel like a huge weight has been lifted off my shoulders.

So nice to have some happy news this week :)


This is how Caden eats all of his meals lately. Breakfast, lunch, or dinner you can find him squatting on the table like some kind of jungle man, hovering over his food like someone is going to come along and steal it.

I have a couple of blog posts that I've been working on this week, but they aren't ready yet, so you get my ramblings instead. It's late and I can't sleep. So much on my mind this week.

When Tyler had his 15 month check-up, the pedi referred him to Early Intervention for an eval. I put it off because I really thought she was jumping the gun and that he was just fine. I finally called them and scheduled an appointment and they came last Tuesday. He definitely qualifies for services for various reasons. They also have some other concerns and have put in referrals for us to see some other providers. I don't really want to get into all of it. Or rather, I refuse to let myself think about it and be in reality about it. But basically, our Ty baby is struggling. I'll write more about it in the coming months when we see how things play out. We're hoping and praying that he's just having some temporary setbacks.

One of the things they mentioned was his "unusual gait" which I had failed to notice. They asked me to have the PT look at it at our next visit. I really thought they were making something out of nothing, but I asked him anyway. The PT had noticed the gait and had charted it and is keeping an eye on it. If it doesn't start to improve soon, then he will refer us to the orthopaedic surgeon. He believes that Tyler may have a bone deformity in his right foot. Lucky for us, there is a fabulous pediatric orthopaedic surgeon IN Carlsbad. We have so few specialists here, so if Tyler's foot does need to be worked on, we feel really blessed that it can be done so close to home.

The other kids are doing good. We had three snow days a couple of weeks ago and they loved that. It was too cold to go out and play in it (-15 with the windchill) so I don't have any pics, but we really did have a fun few days together. I love being their mama <3

Happy Vday!

The Best Medicine