Leata, Two Days After She Hit Her Head

Leata's first stitches

Leata has had a crazy couple of months! At the end of October, she had a seizure at school caused by a high fever and the fever was caused by strep throat. She apparently had been having constant throat infections. We got her into the ENT quickly who said she needed her tonsils and adenoids out ASAP. She got them removed the week before Thanksgiving.

Leata's been doing really well since then but yesterday she was running to her bedroom and tripped on a Train that Mark got for Christmas (he got several but this was a big one) and hit her forehead right on the corner of her bed. She hit so hard it made a big dent that broke through many, many layers of skin. It looked like a big hole! It wasn't a pointy corner either. She just hit hard! A.J. rushed her to the ER for the second time in just over two months. There they numbed it, cleaned it out, then they had to numb it some more because the numbing meds just weren't working very well. I think they tried 3 times before it was numb. The doctor had to do some trimming and stretching to make it as straight a scar as possible. I think he did a pretty good job.

Christmas in Pictures

Christmas Eve we had my family minus Adrienne and all her boys (when I say all her boys I am including Sheridan) and A.J.'s parents over to our house. We had a roast dinner and lime salsa chicken (interesting combo, I know) and lots of fun desserts. We read Christmas stories and opened a few presents and just enjoyed time together. 

Grumps reading The Night Before Christmas

Grandma reading a Christmas story

Grandpa and Gran 

The girls watching Gran open a present.

Kendall and Casey

Stockings

Santa Visited

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A Visit With Santa

Decorating the Christmas Tree

Here are some pictures from decorating the Christmas tree. For the first time in a few years We got it up and decorated all in the weekend after Christmas.

         Taylor decorating the tree.  

 Leata putting an ornament on the tree. Behind her is her own little pink tree that she decorated herself. It's definitely interesting and changes daily.

 Mark helping to decorate the tree. He had a lot of fun but he thought the lights on the tree would be hot so he was a little concerned about that.

Leata Trying on the tree skirt. I told the girls it wouldn't fit them. They proved me wrong!

Leata helping Taylor trying on the tree skirt. 

Thanksgiving

A very full and happy Luke. His bib says "I'M STUFFED"

 For Thanksgiving it was the 6 of us, my mom, Collin, Ann, Kendall and Casey. It was Luke's first Thanksgiving and he was happy to eat anything that was handed to him.

Here he is eating Ritz crackers. One of his very favorite things!

 The girls enjoyed hanging out with Auntie Ann. They were very picky and didn't eat much dinner or dessert. I love how silly all three of them look in this picture.

 Taylor and I made these turkeys and used them to hold place cards. They were fun to make and fun to eat!

Taylor wearing her apple dress that she absolutely loves and would wear every day if I let her!

Mark was waiting patiently to eat here. His fingers had to do until the food came.

Luke love to stick that little tongue of his out. He is constantly sticking it out. He is so silly!

















We had a nice quiet Thanksgiving and had a fun day. Now Christmas is coming up fast!

Leata's First Grade School Picture

I think it's turned out great!

Leata's Surgery

Today is the day. Leata is getting her tonsils and adenoids out. I will update as soon as I can to let everyone know how she is doing. She's not worried at all so while it is hard for me, that does help. She's excited that she will get to eat popsicles and ice cream. She doesn't want to miss school though. That part is going to be hard for her and of course recovery.

Ok, we are home now and Leata did great! She was in and out of there in 3 hours. :-) The doctor said that her tonsil had as much scar tissue as a 13 year old who had chronic tonsillitis all their life. He said they were very enlarged (both tonsils and adenoids) and it was very apparent that all of her infections had done a lot of damage and that damage was making her even more susceptible to infection. A vicious cycle.

Everyone said how great she did and were amazed at how extremely calm she was and also how polite she was. They said that kids her age usually freak out and cry and have a lot of issues. They told us  that when she woke up, she had tears running down her face because it hurt so much but she was still very calm and said her pain level was only the middle one. They could tell she was really hurting and gave her morphine though. She's here drinking grape juice and watching TV on the couch. She doesn't want to sleep and she keeps getting up to do stuff. Six year olds are pretty resilient

Halloween

At Church, on Halloween, we did trunk or treating and then when it was done we went to grandmas house and went trick or treating just on her street. Trunk or treating wasn't really planned out well so there were just cars there for about half an hour and then everyone left so we decided it would be fun to go to Grandma's street too (since we had already gone to everyone we knew in our ward at the trunk or treat). In the afternoon we went to Leata's school for the Halloween parade.
Taylor was Tinkerbell during the day (Leata's old costume) and a purple spider witch at night. Luke was Mickey Mouse (Mark's old costume) during the day and Candy Corn at night. Leata was a pink fairy and Mark was Wolverine.

                                                                           

 I didn't have my good camera either time and so didn't get great pictures and many are blurry but here are some of them.

Leata's Adventure

I guess adventure would be one way to put it.  A week ago, I got my first call every from Leata's school. It was carpool time so I thought it was funny they would be calling when they knew we were right there. I answered quickly because I knew something must not be right. A very frantic receptionist had called to tell me that Leata just had a seizure at carpool. I was at home but A.J. was waiting in the carpool line. I called him on his cell phone. He rushed through and parked and ran to the office. They told me they had grabbed Kendall to be with her so I knew she was there. When A.J. got to the office, Leata wasn't actually there yet. Quickly he saw that she was on her way though. When Leata got there she was not really responsive but soon after, she started moaning. The administrator/head receptionist had Leata go into her office and lay on her couch for a few minutes. Her son has seizures so she knew what to do and also that Leata was ok. They hung out there for about 10 minutes and then A.J. and Kendall too Leata to the ER. When they got there, they rushed her back. She still wasn't really responding to anything but soon started talking a little. She had a fever that was 104. Likely it got higher and the seizure brought it down some. Remember the first day of school I posted about a little while back when her fever got over 106? Yeah, she's prone to high fevers. She's been sick with a sore throat twice since then making that 4 times in 2 months. This time it was strep throat. The time before they didn't test her for it but could tell it was some sort of tonsillitis and treated her for it with antibiotics. Every time she gets off of the antibiotics, her throat infection comes back in one form or another. So anyway, they gave her motrin and tylenol and antibiotics at the hospital and watched her for a couple of hours. Once she was perking back up and the fever got below 102, they sent her home. She was miserable the rest of the week but by the weekend she was feeling much better.
On Monday Leata went to the Ear, Nose and Throat Doctor. This is the same doctor who did my sinus surgery and he is fantastic. I really trust and feel comfortable with him. After seeing that she has had multiple throat infections, with very high fevers and a febrile seizure there was really no question in his mind that she needed her tonsils out. Because she snores badly and has sleep apena and never seems fully rested even after between 10-12 hours of sleep, she is also having her adenoids out. They are coming out November 16. This way, she should only miss about 5 days of school instead of the 2 weeks she normally would because she will take her three day Thanksgiving break as part of her recovery time. She will have the surgery on the Wednesday the week before Thanksgiving so she will miss, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday and then the following Monday and Tuesday. The hope is she will be able to go back the Monday after Thanksgiving if she is feeling well enough. We will just watch and see. We are just hoping this will help her avoid more strep and more illness and also help her sleep better once she has it done.

9 Months Old!

Today Luke is 9 months old. He is growing so fast and gaining weight well since his scare at the end of September. I still need to make his 9 month appointment here soon. He needed to wait until he was ready to get the second half of his flu shot. He is talking some saying Dada, Mama, NO, yeah, and hi. He waves and is working on clapping. He is really fast with his wounded soldier crawl and working on a real crawl now. He can also pull himself up to his knees now. He will be on his feet soon. He loves chasing and playing with his older brother and sisters and only occasionally gets dropped. ;)
Before we know it, it will be February and he will be a year old. The time has really flown!

8 Months Old and Luke's Hospital Stay

Poor Luke started having congestion and  tummy issue last Friday. By Monday he was not looking well in the evening and since the last time I had weighed him he lost over a pound. While our kids all have gained weight slowly and lose a little when they are sick none had lost this drastically. He went from 11 lbs 11 oz to 10 lbs 6 oz. First thing Tuesday morning I called Dr.Taylor's office to see if he had any appointments available as soon as possible that day. At first they said he didn't have any appointments but as I was on the phone someone canceled and we were able to get in. When we went he could see how poorly sweet little Luke looked. In the two days he had barely kept anything down. He was keeping pedialyte down though so at least he wasn't too dehydrated yet. Dr.Taylor decided that Luke needed to see a pediatrician. We went to make that appointment and there was one available that day also but the insurance wouldn't cover two appointments for the same thing so I took him home with instructions to take him to the ER if he did worse before his appointment Wednesday afternoon.

We worked on just trying to keep pedialyte in him that night and he took enough that he was doing ok. Definitely not great though. He was so weak and so skinny (he was already so skinny but he lost so quickly that he did not look good). He was truly lethargic and miserable.

We took Luke to the pediatrician the next day and he was really worried about him as were we. At first he was going to do all the tests there at his office (in Spanish Fork) right then and send us home to try and rehydrate him at home that night. As we watched him during the appointment, he got worse. He was doing strange things and seemed kind of loopy and it was obvious he was dehydrated. The doctor decided  that it was time to get him rehydrated with an IV and have him watched very closely and have him see a peds GI doc while there. So we went to get Taylor and Mark at a friends house (she was kind enough to watch them while we went to SF for the appointment. She was my visiting teaching companion but our war boundaries changed last week and we are in a different ward now). When I got there she told me to leave them as long as we needed to get Luke settled at the hospital. That was so very helpful. I was grateful to have A.J. there with me while we got checked and got our stuff there. I stayed with Luke and he went to get Mark and Taylor and my mom who had picked Leata up from school dropped Leata off.

After A.J. left, Luke had his IV put in. He didn't even fight it. He was too weak. He was visibly upset, just didn't have the strength to fight. We got settled in the room and I nursed him and he immediately threw up. After that the pediatrician wanted to know exactly how much he was taking so I had to pump and give him a bottle. We did that and they added some formula to make it higher calorie. Again, he threw it all up. It was so sad. We let him be the rest of the night and didn't make him eat anything.

They next day Dr. Taylor came to see us in the hospital. He was making sure both Luke and I were ok. Later the nurse asked if Dr.Taylor came to see Luke. I told her he had and she said he must really be worried because he leaves things up t the peds in his group or at the hospital and hadn't been there on peds in over a year.
Luke did a combination of my milk and formula to see how he tolerated things. He again wasn't tolerating anything. By the evening he was tolerating some. We talked to the Peds GI who said he was short and skinny but him being short was not caused by him being skinny (sometimes kids who aren't getting enough for whatever reason will not grow). He decided we should look into giving him formula that has finely ground rice cereal in it that gels once it is in the stomach to see if it would stay down. With this formula, mixed half and half with my milk, he was able to start keeping it down. A.J. spent the night with him that second night since he was taking everything from a bottle and I stay at home and actually got some rest.

When I got to the hospital the next day Luke seemed to have perked up some. He had gained some of the weight back from being rehydrated. The pediatrician saw him and said he could go home that afternoon if he was keeping most of his feeding down. Of course we couldn't leave without one more blood draw too, that was his fourth blood draw. It was so sad because he knew what was coming. All of the basic tests came back normal except for his ferritin level which means he's anemic. There isconcern he has some sort of endocrine or metabolic disorder. They did finally let us go home with an appointment and another visit for a weight check with Dr.Taylor every week (so down to Springville twice a week) and then we will also be seeing the GI ped and possibly some other specialists.
Sorry the picture quality isn't any good. I only had my cheap phone to take pictures with. I am going to get some that A.J. took with his fancy phone though.

And Sunday Luke turned 8 months! All 11 lbs exactly (which is over a half a pound bigger than Wednesday). He's very vocal and can move across a room quickly and loves to play with his brother and sisters. He has the biggest toothless grin too! :)

First Grade!

Leata started first grade almost a week ago now. Her first grade teacher is Mrs.Benjamin. She really likes Mrs.Benjamin and we are glad that Leata is in her class.
Leata all ready to go!

When we got to school we went and said hi to Mrs.Harris.

Then we went to Mrs.Benjamin's class right next door to get Leata settled. Her desk is right on the front row!

Leata loved her first day of first grade and then daddy went to pick her up from school and took her to the Juice Press to get a smoothie before taking her back to work with him. Poor girl hardly drank any of her smoothie and was falling asleep while she was at work with A.J.  When she got home I could tell she didn't feel well. I took her temperature and she had a fever of 105.8! So off to the doctor we went. In the end after all the results came back, she was starting to get pneumonia. She started her antibiotic on Monday night missed her second day of school and went back for her third day. She finished the first week Friday and is mostly ready to start back tomorrow. She is still adjusting to being there almost 7 hours a day (except the 4 hour day they have on Fridays) instead of 3 but that will come with time. She loves her teacher and that she gets to see Auntie Kendall every single day. 

Six Months Old

They grow up so fast!