Valentine's Day 2017

Happy belated Valentine's Day! Our boys love Valentine's Day and are not shy about sharing their love for everyone. Yesterday after school they put on a "show of love" in our living room where they sang and danced for me for 40 minutes. Sammy kept writing down lyrics and professing his love for mama. He wasn't always comfortable performing so he'd make Elijah sing on those songs while he took care of drumming or dancing. It was great and I soaked in every word!

Dan and I celebrated in typical fashion with a steak and crab leg dinner after the boys were in bed. YUM!

Two weekends ago the boys and I visited the Stillwater ice castles. They were so cool! Elijah and Sammy had fun navigating their way through the castles with maps in hand.

And the cutest little first grader ever had his Valentine musical performance at school on Friday. It was ADORABLE. Sammy participated in the singing AND actions for the first time ever! He kept glancing our way with a cute, toothless smile on his face. This boy melts my heart!

My boys are constantly making me laugh, but this is the one thing I can think of from recently. Sammy has been crawling into bed with me early every morning. If it's before 6:30 I ask him to be very quiet, no talking, sleeping only. One morning he agreed to that request and after lying next to me quietly for a minute, he loud-whispered, "MOM. In the morning, can I tell you about my nose?" It was so funny and random that we both laughed forever.

Elijah has been doing great in school! He's had many great days and we are so proud of him! We had stellar conferences recently for both boys. Elijah's grades are AWESOME for Elijah and Sammy's grades are AWESOME for Sammy. We learned that Sammy is in the 99th percentile for math (wow!) and that he is excelling in every subject.

Elijah has had a few specialist appointments recently that have gone great. He has a few more in the coming weeks. In the next few days we'll be gearing up for his TENTH birthday! Crazy!

Thanks so much for reading and my apologies for being so scarce recently. It's been a bit of a rough start to the year, but things are looking up!

One more puzzle piece clicked into place

Dr. J's nurse called today. The 24-hour EEG monitor that Elijah wore last week showed NO SEIZURES! This is great news. We can scratch seizures off the list and move forward. We did "mark" one of E's eye fluttering episodes while he was wearing the monitor, and Dr. J said there was a spike that showed (again) seizure tendencies. At this point, though, it's nothing at all to worry about or address.

We called and had the EEG results sent to E's sleep specialist in hopes that she might be able to gain insight from his overnight readings. We'll give her a chance to review them and follow up. We are determined to get him sleeping better. It just has to happen! Dan and I will continue to pursue options until we can figure something out.

Elijah and Sammy are both feeling a little bit better today, although neither of them is 100% back their usual spunky selves. E had another good morning at school today (at least according to him)! Yay! We spent some time this afternoon making valentines for his classmates and decorating a valentine box. We're hoping he will be able to attend the school party on Friday! His teacher had told us that she didn't think it was a good idea for him to come to class in the afternoons for the next few weeks, so we are hoping she will make an exception since he has been so excited about the V-Day party.

Thanks for checking in and we thank you all for walking this journey with us!

Croup: Season 3, Round 1 (Samson)

Sammy has been sick for the past few days. I think he caught my flu bug. He has had a low-grade fever and a croupy cough. Last night after I got home from shooting a wedding, he woke up with severe stridor which is always scary. Dan and I stayed up with him for a few hours, taking him out into the cold and giving him medicine and letting him watch tv to help calm him down. (Now that we have new insurance, the ER is very much a last resort.)

By 1:00 am he was still croupy (but better), so we put him into bed with us which ensured NO SLEEP for any of us except Elijah who was soundly sleeping in his own bed. The three of us were exhausted this morning and Sammy was still croupy and sick. Despite our efforts to keep him resting today, he still sounded croupy at the end of the day. We gave him a preventative neb tonight and some oral steroids and hopefully we can avoid another night like last night.

Cool Sammy.. :)

The other day, Elijah said, "Look, Mom! I'm taking care of Sammy!" E has been showing signs lately of caring for his family members. It's nice to see.

Our little thumb sucker.

For once, Elijah has been the only spunky, rested, healthy person in our house lately. I finished off a full week of the flu only to get a horrible ear infection. Hopefully health for all of us is in our future!

Our Valentine's meal, courtesy my wonderful husband.. :)

Elijah turns six years old on Wednesday of this week! I can't believe it! I get to go on a field trip with his class on Tuesday (snow-shoeing...this should be interesting) and we have a day "off" tomorrow. Now that my cookbook is done, I have much more free time which is a bit strange. I need another project!

Thanks for checking in! Dan and I are off to watch Walking Dead. :) More later this week, once we have a six-year-old in the house.