Bad Mommy!

OK - I know I am horrible at getting this blog updated. I just do not seem to have the time like I did when it was just Kaylin.

Kaylin is now 3 years old, as of June 21, and is just an awesome little girl! Despite the fact that she is growing up way too fast for me, everything is going great. We celebrated her birthday at a local sprinkler park and she was so thrilled to have so many of her friends join us. She is really into her friends these days and definitely knows who they all are, and who their mommies and daddies are. She prays for them each night and is starting to think they are actually part of her family! She is just too cute.

This summer, we have done a lot of swimming and a LOT of games of Candy Land!! It's just been too darn hot to do anything else. When it's 105 degrees outside, you just really don't want to leave the house - even to swim. She also likes to play Memory card games and loves Diego and reading books. Yes - we finally got her off Barney! Now we're on to the next obsession - Diego. But I will be FOREVER greatful to Diego b/c it has encouraged her to go pee-pee in the potty!!! Yes - I almost hate to even write it here for it is sure to jinx me - but Kaylin is pretty much without fail going pee-pee in the potty now! When she goes, she gets to watch a Diego. Otherwise, no t.v. and it has been just what she needed to get motivated. We are nowhere near poo-poo in the potty yet (she still does that by asking for a pull-up) but we are working on it.

It's hard to believe but Kaylin starts 3 day preschool on August 26! I will be so sad to send her off to school, but am looking forward to some alone time with

Brayden and I also know that Kaylin is just so ready sociall and mentally and will absolutely LOVE it! She will attend Casner Christian Academy and will be close to her Gram who teaches the 4 year olds there. It's going to be a great thing for her. I don't know if Kaylin will be fully potty trained by that beginning school date, but we are sure trying and I'm very proud of her!

Brayden is also doing great and has hit several milestones himself. For one thing - he already at 7-1/2 months outweighs what Kaylin did at 1 year old! He is 15-1/2 pounds!! He is a huge baby to us, but those in public who guess his age still guess him as 2 months younger than he is. That's OK - technically, he is 2 months younger since he was born 2 months premature. But he sure seems to be doing things physically that are on track with his actual age. On July 21, he started sitting up and can sit on his own now for quite a long time! He also cut his first tooth on July 18th! Quite early compared with Kaylin and as much as he likes to chew things and chew on my fingers it sure does hurt!

At this point he is also taking 2 solid food meals a day and LOVES it! He pretty much has liked everything I've given him - oatmeal cereal, sweet potato, carrots, squash, peas, green beans, applesauce, bananas, and avocado - but definitely did not like the egg yolk I tried to give him today! My book said not to try egg white yet - because it is an allergenic food - but that trying egg yolk is fine but I think we'll put that one off again for a little while. He seems more than ready to do 3 meals a day, I just have to find the time to squeeze it in! His 8 month birthday (August 3rd) will be my goal.

It's so hard to believe he is already going to be 8 months old. Seems time for him to sleep a good 12 hours through the night, right?! He currently goes to bed between 7:15 and 8p and without fail wakes at 5:15a!! Then he is not a great napper (though no surprise since Kaylin wasn't/isn't either) and maybe gets 3 hours worth of nap a day. Just doesn't seem like enough sleep for a baby but seems to suit him, unfortunately! Don't get me wrong - I am ecstatic that he goes at least a 9 hour stretch as I know many mommies out there don't get that for quite a while. But of course everyone I know seem to have babies who sleep 10-12 hour stretches so I'm just wishing for a little taste of that!:)

All in all, we could not be more blessed! We have found a great church that we love - Austin Christian Fellowship - and have gone religiously this summer. It has been such a nice feeling to function as a normal family and actually take our babies to public places! For so long we were so sheltered with Kaylin (and I wouldn't change that for the world) and even though Brayden was born prematurely, he has been so much better off that we can pretty much raise him as a normal full-term kid. It's just a weird, wonderful feeling! Kaylin loves going to church and Brayden does excellent in the nursery. Certainly one silver lining of having to go through a stressful NICU stint is that our NICU kids pretty easily go to other adults b/c it's all they knew from birth.

OK - I think that's about it for now. I promise I will get better at posting once Kaylin gets into school and I have a little more time. I am also working a second job (though only a few hours a month) selling products for a company called Thirty One Gifts (www.mythirtyone.com/nancyb) to make some extra money and that has taken quite a bit of my free time as well.

One last thing - we don't expect to have to take Kaylin back to the cardiologist until early October when they will do the routine echo and EKG. They will also, however, have us go to the hospital here in Austin for another CT scan to make sure the fractured stent in her aorta is still looking OK and not causing any more issues. In the meantime, if anything comes up I'll be sure to post. Thanks for your continued prayers for our family!

Everything looks good!

Happy, happy, happy to report that everything looks good with Kaylin! WHEW! After doing the normal workup - echo, blood pressures, and EKG - she looks good and her doctor thinks she has vessel motor control issues which are controlled by the central nervous system, not the cardiovascular system. It's nothing serious at all - just that she has a much higher sensitivity to cold than others. When she was younger, her hands would turn purple if she was out in the cold and her skin would get very mottled and that is just further evidence of this vessel motor control.

So, we cannot wait to resume water activities for the summer! Good thing because her upcoming birthday party is at a water sprinkler park and that was going to put a real damper on that if the birthday girl couldn't participate!!:)

We did learn that the gradient in her arch has gone up from a 2.7 to a 3.5 which you don't want to see. But because everything else looks good, nothing needs to be done at this point. We will return to the cardiologist in 3 months and then do a CT angiogram right after that to take a look at the stent which was fractured open and make sure everything still looks OK. Thanks for all your prayers! Now, if you could just pray that we get this girl potty trained ALL will be good in our world (hee hee)!

Brayden 6 months/Kaylin 3 years!!

On June 3rd, we celebrated Brayden's 1/2 birthday as he turned 6 months old! It's so hard to believe he is already 6 months!! He is doing awesome and weighed in at a whopping 13 lbs 4 ozs (at least whopping for our family!)! He is 24-1/2 inches and in both cases is just below 3rd percentile on his "actual" growth chart, not adjusted. In other words, at 6 months of age he is almost on his regular growth chart which took Kaylin 2 YEARS to get on her "actual" growth chart for her age! We were thrilled to get the "go ahead" from our doc that Brayden could start on solid foods. Again, Kaylin was not able to start them until about 1 year of age because she had so much catching up to do. So this week Brayden had his first taste of cereal and he LOVED IT! He literally lapped it up like a dog would water out of his bowl. It was so funny to watch. It was almost like he was saying - "what took you so long to give me some REAL food"! The next day I gave him 2 bowls of cereal and he lapped it all up and seemed to want more. Each day I add more cereal and he eats every bit of it. If I'm not quick enough with the spoon he starts to eat his bib and then his hand until I get more cereal in there! He also had carrots yesterday and loved those as well. It is just so amazing to experience what a difference this is than what we went through with Kaylin. As I said to Chris, a small jar of baby food would feed Kaylin 3 different times. At this rate with Brayden, it won't be near enough for 1 meal!

Brayden is also rolling over - front to back, back to front, rolling and rolling and rolling! He LOVES to watch his big sister and laughs hysterically if she hides and then plays "peek-a-boo" with him. He also giggles quite a bit when mommy changes his diaper or takes off his clothes and is quite ticklish on his belly. It is so great to hear his belly laughs and giggles! Nothing better than that! He loves to chill in his bath at night and watch big sister splash around like a fish out of water and he enjoys spending time in his exersaucer. He is just so cute and so much fun - oh, and he's already grabbing his toes. I know this may not seem like a big deal to some, but I just remember fretting over Kaylin not grabbing for her toes until she was over 9 months old and I worried about it forever. He's already doing it now and I'm just so happy that it doesn't seem like we will need any ECI therapy for him even though he was 2 months early!

And speaking of big sister - she turns 3 YEARS OLD this coming Sunday, June 21st!! She is such an amazing little girl and I just want to freeze time with her right now. Many of her tantrums have stopped and her behavior has been really good these last few weeks. She is very excited about turning 3 and going to "Gram's school" next year. She will attend Casner Christian Academy in the fall where her Gram teaches 4 year olds and she just can't wait. Before then, however, we must get her potty trained! You probably remember well the potty training sagas I was writing about here. Well.....she completely ceased going potty anymore and I just let it go. But now that we are approaching 3 years of age and have the beginning of school looming over us in August it's time to get back to work. Two days ago we started it up again and I would say it's going "average". She likes wearing panties but it doesn't hinder her at all to go pee pee in her panties so we've had several accidents on the floor so far. Poop is a whole other issue and I don't know how we'll EVER get her potty trained for that. At this point her doc has said to cut a slit in a pull up and let her wear a pull up when she has to poop. At this point, I can't get her to tell me she needs a pull up and he is so attached to her "poop corner" that it's impossible to get her near the toilet like the doc also suggested. If you pick her up and carry her in there, she screams and cries and then won't poop. She has enough constipation issues as it is - the last thing we need is for her to start holding it in now. So we'll have to see how that continues to go. I just never knew potty training could be so hard!!

Now for some health concerns with Kaylin that we would love you to pray about. For the last year Kaylin has taken swim lessons at an indoor pool - one that is heated to 90 degrees and they also keep the building temp at 90 degrees by the pool as well. Well, as Kaylin would wait for her turn in the pool she would just sit on the side and shiver and tremble because she was so cold. Some days were worse than others, and sometimes the instructor would put a wet suit on her because she seemed so cold. It didn't inhibit Kaylin from getting in the water, but she was shivering so much that she just couldn't control her movements as well. Neither of the other 2 kids in her class were shivering like this, but I shrugged it off to her being so skinny and slight for her age. Then came Memorial weekend when we blew up her inflatable pool and filled it with water and let her play around in it in the 90+ degree heat outside in the sun. After only a couple of minutes in the pool she again started shaking and trembling, her teeth chattering (mind you it was 90+ degrees out in the Texas heat) and her lips turned blue. She also couldn't catch her breath and actually wheezed a few times trying to get her breath. We forced her to stay out of the pool, which she didn't take well at all, and she shivered until we could get her dry. Seemed quite odd to me, but we thought the water must just be too cold for her. Then last week we went to swim at her Gram's house (can you see the common theme here - this girl LOVES water!) at 5p in the afternoon when, once again, it was about 97 degrees again. And again she started shivering, trembling and her lips turned blue. Again she also didn't want to get out of the pool but I was getting quite concerned at this point so we made her get out and play in the hot tub which was warmer. At this same time, her 20 pound niece and little Brayden were both in the pool and neither of them were shivering or trembling due to the cold.

The next day I called her cardiologist just to be sure. That's the thing with Kaylin, you just can't shrug things off with her - I feel like we always need to make sure something is not wrong with her heart. In this case, I worry that her blood is not profusing to her extremities correctly which would be due to her heart. I also worry that her getting so cold and shivering so uncontrollably is taxing on her heart. As I guessed, her cardiologist was concerned and determined to see Kaylin before she leaves town this Thursday. She is completely booked before her vacation, but double-booked us so that she can evaluate Kaylin. Needless to say, I am quite nervous and concerned and just hope that everything is going OK with her. We go see the doc tomorrow at 2p - but like i said, we are double booked so it may take several hours to get an echo and get evaluated so it may be a while before I can update. Please pray that everything is OK with Kaylin's heart and that she is just too darn skinny to handle cool water. I can't imagine a Texas summer with no pool time, but even worse I can't imagine something already being wrong with Kaylin's heart after the success we had in March. However, because what we did was experimental Chris and I are pretty nervous to see if some problem has arisen.

I will update tomorrow once we are home from her appointment. Thank you for your prayers! Gotta run as Kaylin is tugging at me now to go play!:)

Been Way Tooo Long!

I'm so sorry it has been so long since my last post. But things have gotten really hectic around here. I started a home sales business and am excited to be doing it. Check out all the ADORABLE personalized gifts, purses, totes, bibs, stationery, etc. that I have available at my website: www.mythirtyone.com/nancyb - you can order from there anytime you want!

Now after that shameless plug....back to my kids! They have both been wonderful and it is so hard to believe that Brayden is almost 6 months old. He is getting closer and closer to sleeping through the night, but it only seems to happen about once or twice a week at this point. Hoping that will get to be more and more! He is a pretty happy baby overall - as long as it's not his witching hour in the evening where he pretty much wants to eat every hour on the hour! Makes it difficult to make dinner, eat dinner, play with Kaylin, etc. But it's getting better and his adorable smiles and giggles are TOTALLY worth it! He adores his big sister (but who wouldn't:) and is grasping and chewing his rattle and enjoying his exersaucer (somewhat) these days. He still can't sit up in it real well, so he pretty much slumps over and whatever is right there at eye level seems pretty entertaining to him! Kaylin seems to have just as much fun with it as she did when she was a baby. She still wants to sit in there like Brayden (and would probably fit) but I have to draw the line somewhere. She already fits in his Bumbo (and I know some 6 month olds whose legs are too chubby to fit!) so I let her get by with that one.

Kaylin is also doing well. I wish I had a further potty training story for ya, but she kind of stopped the obsession. This is kind of a double edge sword for me. I wasn't quite ready to tackle that one when she decided it was time, but I took it on and went with it as best I could having a newborn. However, having a newborn, I cannot lie, I'm kind of glad she let off for now and I feel like once Brayden gets a few weeks older and is sleeping more I will have more patience to really tackle the potty training. The last time she was doing it - a few weeks ago - I tried the ole' trick of putting her in her big girl panties with no diaper or pull up underneath. My understanding is that the wet feeling is supposed to be uncomfortable to them and, so, makes them want to go use the potty and not go in their pants. Hmmmmm....didn't quite happen for us. Kaylin soaked hers and when I asked her about it she said "they don't bother me, Mommy". OK - obviously not the tactic that's going to work for us. So I think to resume we are going to have to go back to "party on the potty" every time she goes, possibly throw in some candy or lollipops, and see what happens. As far as going #2 though - not sure we will EVER get there! This poor girl has been constipated for so long (pretty much over a year) and struggles so much with it already, that I just don't know if we'll ever get her going in the potty.

And I know this will embarass her in a mortifying way when she gets older and reads this.....but what is the obsession with kids wanting to look at poop???? Do any of you run into that with your kids?! She wants to look at bird poop, my poop, daddy's poop, and the other day she was squatting down in the yard directly behind our dogs behind watching him poop!!! DISGUSTING! What is up with that? And every time we change her poopy diaper she says "I want to see"! What - why do you want to see?! I could go with not ever seeing poop again and be perfectly happy (though that is a long way off with a 6 month old!) I just don't get this. I just keep telling her that the only way she gets to see her poop is if she goes poo-poo in the potty. That may be the motivation she needs to do it! Never would have thunk that one!

OK - so now that I have probably grossed you out and you had to put down the donut and Starbucks you were snacking on, I should probably go ahead and sign off and try to get something done around the house. I am posting pictures of the March of Dimes March for Babies we attended last weekend. Nana and B-pa came and walked with us and that is no small feat! It's quite hilly in downtown Austin and I was so proud of them and so happy they joined us. At one point, B-pa was pushing the stroller with Brayden in it, wearing the backpack on his back and carrying Kaylin all at the same time. Mom and I finally realized what was going on and helped out but it was quite a sight! March of Dimes is such a great cause and we love to support it - especially now that we have had TWO preemies! OK - I will try to post again much sooner than last time. Sorry!

Potty training saga continues....

OK so this morning I go in to find that somehow Kaylin has spilled her pee pee all over her bathroom floor and is proceeding to "clean it up" with a wet wipe and her bath towel:) She kept telling me "I clean it up Mommy, I clean it up". My guess is that she has seen her Daddy take the little toss out pail from her potty and put it in the sink to rinse it out and she was trying to copy that. So somewhere between the potty and her climbing her stool to the sink the pee pee ended up all over the floor, and her and her stool! Oh well, the floor needed a good mopping anyway.
Then as I said yesterday my fear was that our next call was going to be to a plumber, right?! Well after cleaning up her bathroom mess I headed into the study and caught a quick glance out the window of water just pouring out of the ground down the sidewalk and into the street. This of course sent me into a complete panic and I ran to get Chris to check it out. My first thought was "what did Kaylin put down the toilet"? So after assessing the situation, Chris comes in and calls our utility district people to come take a look but his guess is that it's on the "city" side and not "our side" so we shouldn't have to worry about it or repair anything. Well, the guy gets there a half hour later and I go with him outside to see what is going on. He asks us to turn off all the water in the house, so we do, and yet water is still gushing all over the walkway. At this point, I am about to panic and am so afraid at what he is going to tell us is wrong now. But then.....he says that it must be the neighbor's side!!! Hallelujah! While I feel bad for our neighbor, I was so happy and relieved that finally something breaking and costing lots of money wasn't happening to us this time! (After the hail damage to our roof and truck, the microwave died, my brakes are going out, we've maxed out all our health insurance deductibles AND our property taxes just went up - I couldn't handle one more thing right now!) Sounds like it will require a plumber but I just feel like we dodged such a bullet this time and I'm just so elated! And, what's even better, it means Kaylin is still minding her Mommy and didn't put anything down the toilet! Yay!!

Potty training

Oh the joys of potty training! As I said in my last post, I wasn't quite ready to start it having a newborn at home right now but our fiercely independent child was and so she has, so I am just along for the ride it seems. We're at a point now where if it's quiet in the house, Kaylin is probably in the bathroom on her potty ,or unrolling a roll of toilet paper, or flushing goodness knows what down the toilet, or playing with her toothbrush in the sink which I am afraid will join the ranks of what gets flushed down the toilet very soon.

Her ritual at this point is to pee pee in the potty (just a couple of trickles), then empty her potty into the big potty, wipe, flush. Then go back to her potty for a couple more trickles, empty into the big potty, wipe, flush. And repeat at least 2 more times! The waste of water and the inefficiency of her routine is causing me to pull my hair out so we are now trying to work on staying on the potty until you think you are done, and then do NOT flush the potty unless Mommy says it is OK. I think it's going to take a lot of practice! She also decided the other day after her nap that she needed to get the poopy out of her pants so she came in, stripped down, and pulled off her poopy diaper inadvertently smearing some down her legs and goodness knows where else! Then as I came running in screaming "Kaylin put the diaper down" she threw the whole thing into the big potty which created quite a splash b/c it was a pretty full diaper. Thankfully I caught her before she tried to flush the whole thing down the toilet!! I'm sure one of my next posts will be how we've had to call a plumber out.....

It is just amazing how grown up she is becoming. Very, very sadly the nap has gone by the wayside. Once, maybe twice a week we can get her to take a good one. Otherwise it has become a time for her to "play" in her room which consists of taking every single toy, book, instrument, stuffed animal and see if she can cover every inch of floor space with them! She amazed me on Sunday at a birthday party where she literally bounced in the bouncy house for 3 hours. Other parents were even commenting on what a "bouncing maniac" she was and I thought for sure after 3 straight hours of bouncing - literally only stopping to hit the pinata a couple of times and to eat some cake -she would take a great nap when we got home. To no avail of course!! So after an hour in her room, she came out and proceeded to fall down and run into things all over the house because I think she truly was so tired. Then she was ready to eat by 5:15 which is about an hour earlier than normal so I made her dinner, sat her down, and after a couple of bites she literally started head bobbing at the table and basically fell asleep sitting up. I came over to unstrap her and she said "hold me" and immediately fell fast asleep in my arms for the next 30 minutes. She just can't seem to stop herself and just take a break unless her body just totally gives out on her. You would NEVER know this child has any cardiac issue! In fact, I'm wondering what in the world happened during the last cath and does she still have some of those drugs in her system because she is just out of control and active as ever!!

OK - gotta run and get Brayden. He doesn't seem to like to sleep past 5am these days. Ugh!

Welcome to our new blog!!

Welcome to our new blog! This will be our new home for updates on Kaylin (& Brayden too) and her continuous journey through life as a child with congenital heart defects. We hope to bring further awareness to the fact that CHDs are the #1 birth defect and that they affect 1 in 150 births in the US! We also have struggled with 2 premature births (28 weeks and 31 weeks) and want to bring awareness to that as well. Please look for the March of Dimes March for Babies near you because the money raised goes to research why premature births are on the rise and how we might be able to prevent premature births in the future.

Now to the latest with us.....We had a great Easter and hope all of you did too! (It's hard to believe we actually got a pic with all of us looking at the same time and at the same camera.) Kaylin really got into Easter eggs this year. She helped me put them together and fill them with fun stuff and then she played with them for at least a week! I am still finding halves and parts and pieces of plastic eggs all over the house! She also helped us dye some eggs and even made some for her baby brother. We had to do an indoor egg hunt at our house due to rain on Easter, but later that day the weather turned beautiful and she had an outdoor hunt at her Gram and Papa's house. It was somewhat of a slow process though because every time she opened an egg she had to sit down and eat whatever was inside. We finally convinced her to fill the basket up with the eggs and then sit down to open them all at once - she stuffed herself with candy, fruit chews, and goldfish for the rest of the day. The day was wonderful and we just celebrated the many blessings in our life

Since our last trip to Houston, life has been pretty hectic but we can't complain because both kids are healthy and doing really well. And the cath must have given Kaylin renewed energy because since our return she only takes maybe 2 naps a week!! Ugh! Such a killer for Mommy because I basically don't get a break all day between her and Brayden, so when Daddy gets home the poor guy gets the "dump off" of kids as I collapse on the couch for a few minutes before Brayden's final feed of the night and our nighttime routine ensues.

Kaylin is also beginning to potty train herself (since Mommy is too tired and brain dead most of the day to focus on it!) and goes a couple of times a day in her "big girl" potty! She wears pull ups with big girl panties over them for part of the day and is just so proud of herself when she goes. I'm not pushing her to do it all the time - just whenever she wants to do it but at least we are moving in the right direction. She is fiercely independent these days and has pretty much figured out how to pull every toy, chair, stool, or piece of furniture in the house up to a counter or tabletop to get to what she wants. Nothing is safe from her anymore! She might be small, but she has certainly figured out how to get what she wants!

That's it for now! Gotta go and get ready for the day. Will update again soon and thanks again for all your prayers and well wishes for our family!