The Jackson Family

Summer fun

2008-06-27T08:30:00.001-07:00

Summer has officially started, and we had a visit from Ron, Angie, Anna, and Luke to get us started. They drove all the way from Tennessee to see us! The guys were pretty worn out as you can see.

Benny loves his Aunt Angie - she knows all his favorite games now like clapping and peek-a-boo.

Will and Luke got along really well when they weren't biting each other or smacking each other in the face! LOL

The kids had a lot of fun at the children's museum being scientists and stars of their own TV shows.

And of course we made a trip to the beach! We got lucky and the weather was really nice. We finally got to fly the awesome kite grandma and grandad gave Will for his birthday.

We were really sad when they left - the cousins had such a great time playing together! But we'll be out to TN soon to visit them this time.

Time flies

2008-04-22T14:06:00.000-07:00

Three big holidays (at least in our house) have gone by since I updated this blog! Crazy. First was St. Patrick's day. A naughty leprechaun came to our house and made a big mess the day before! He turned the chairs over, left green crepe paper everywhere, turned the toilet water green, and left footprints all over the kitchen table. He also left Will a little pail of treasure for not trying to catch him. :)

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Then came Easter. Will loved easter. He's a real candy fanatic, and he'll tell you so himself in those exact words. Ben could care less of course - he's down to strictly water by mouth. And it has to be in a clear glass with no ice cubes. He's a demanding little thing! We didn't do anything super special, but the easter bunny did come and leave baskets, and we had an easter egg hunt in the jungle in our backyard. There are a lot of good hiding places there. Will had so much fun we had easter egg hunts every day for about a week.

And then of course it was Will's birthday! He had a fun little party with a few of his friends. All of his friends were girls, so I wanted to avoid a superhero party. So we ended up having a fish party. He had a shark cake and we hung fish and blue streamers from the ceiling to make it feel like we were underwater. The kids got paper scuba masks that had blue film to make everything look blue and they had a great time with those.

Will is 40 pounds now and he's a talking machine. He starts talking when he wakes up in the morning and he talks himself to sleep every night. In fact he's talking right now as I write this post. He's also stopped taking his naps. So it's 12 hours of talking, all day every day. Going out to teach is a real relief these days! LOL I still have 9 students who have stuck with me through all the chaos of my schedule this year, bless their hearts. I'm an itinerant teacher at the moment so I can't teach many students in one day, so I'm teaching 3 or 4 afternoons a week. It's a nice break from being mommmy. Brian is still doing well at his job. Things are a little complicated there right now because we found out the reason why the guy before him left the position was that it was enough work for two people. (Great to know, right??) But he's working to try and delegate some responsibilities so he can actually do a good job and not have to work 60 hours a week.

Ben had a G-tube placed in February and it was not a fun surgery. We had three days in the hospital and about 6 weeks of vomiting until he finally settled down. We've started feeding him slowly overnight and just a little during the day. At first that didn't really help and he was throwing up once or twice every night. But as of today it's been 5 days since he threw up - keep your fingers crossed! His weight has yo-yoed from 18 pounds 2 oz up to 20 pounds, back down to 19 pounds, and now he's back up to 20. But since he's stopped vomiting I'm really hopeful that we're on a schedule that works for his tummy. He's started crawling now! We have some cute little leg braces that we're using to practice standing, and he has his first pair of glasses as well. When he has all his gear on he's quite the sight! LOL But we can't keep the glasses on him for more than 15 seconds at a time, so I can't get a good picture of him in them. He'll get used to them eventually. We saw his cardiologist a couple of weeks ago and they said his valves are functioning just fine and his aortic arch actually looks better! So things are looking great for Ben right now.

Visit from grandma and grandad

2008-01-09T07:06:00.000-08:00

Here are some pics from Steve and Cindy's visit here after the holidays. I was too busy making Lego forts to take many, but here are the good ones I got. :)

The holiday fun

2008-01-02T13:10:00.000-08:00

We had a very fun and festive holiday season this year! Thanksgiving wasn't much fun as I spent it in the hospital with Ben for RSV, but everything got a lot better after that weekend. Will decorated his first gingerbread house - of course being Will it had to be a gingerbread TRAIN. Here he is with the finished product and Nana.

"> There was a huge buildup to Christmas this year because Will finally kind of understands who Santa is and that he's about to get a bunch of presents. We spent a nice Christmas Eve at Nana and Papa's house but got home early to hop into bed before Santa showed up. Of course we had to leave out some cookies and milk, and the first thing Will did when he got up Christmas morning was look to make sure Santa had eaten his snack. Here he is digging through his stocking!

Here's one of his favorites, his new Brutus GeoTrax train from Uncle Ron and Aunt Angie.

I think Brian had as much fun as Will did this year playing with the Hotwheels tracks and building train sets. Here they are setting up some of the new wooden tracks he got from Uncle Mike.

Our Christmas day was pretty quiet - Nana came for a little visit and brought over Great Grandma and Great Grandaddy. Papa ended up getting really sick and didn't see much of the kids again so he wouldn't infect them with anything. Of course Dorie thinks everyone's coming over just to visit her. :)

Ben's birthday is two days after Christmas, so nobody really has any energy left at that point. If he develops enough to know what's going on next year I'm going to see what I can do to actually have a birthday party for him at some point - I feel bad that his birthday gets pretty much ignored right now. Luckily Ben's too little to know the difference! Nana and Papa came over for a little visit, Uncle Ron and Aunt Angie sent him a b-day present and we saved one of his Christmas presents for him, and we sang Happy Birthday. He really liked the singing part!

Here's his cute little Pooh birthday cake. Of course Ben wouldn't eat any of it - he wouldn't even let me put any icing in his mouth. But Will got many fingers full of icing before it was all over. You can see him sneaking one in the above picture. :)

Here are some random pictures of the kids enjoying their presents. Happy Holidays everyone!

Halloween Fun

2007-11-06T11:41:00.000-08:00

Halloween was a real blast this year. Will is a great age for it - completely obsessed with both candy and Buzz Lightyear. So this is his idea of the perfect holiday. Here he is practicing his costume wearing with his Papa's motorcycle helmet:

Here are Will, Kinley (the cowgirl) and Mia (her version of a ballerina), TJ (the Blue Brother) and Whitfield (the scary green skeleton). Kinley and Mia are Will's "favorite girlfriends". They stay next door with their grandmother during the day while their mom teaches school, and Will has become really good friends with them.

I dressed Ben up but he wasn't really into the whole trick or treating thing so he stayed home with Daddy handing out candy and watching scary movies!

Here the kids are trick or treating. Will had such an awesome time! He said trick or treat and thank you at every house (after I reminded him about 50 times).

The kids were riding in style with Kinley and Mia's dad John Paul pulling them around on his hand truck. Our neighborhood is kind of big, so I was wishing I was riding by the end of the night!

Peek-a-who?

2007-08-16T08:57:00.000-07:00

Click on this to see a hilarious game of peek-a-boo. :)

Getting back into the swing of things

2007-08-16T07:49:00.000-07:00

That's for you Papa! :)

Well we're pretty much back to normal now and are settled into a good routine. Ben has therapy on Monday morning, Tuesday morning, Wednesday afternoon, and Thursday morning, and I teach Tuesday and Thursday afternoons. Monday the therapist meets us at Nana and Papa's house, so we usually spend the day there and Uncle Mike and I cook up a nice dinner. Friday I try to find something fun to do for Will, which usually involves either our neighbor's swimming pool or Nana and Papa's. There are a lot of fun things to do in Wilmington. There's a nice aquarium, rivers, beaches, and good public libraries. Of course we don't spend much time at the beach because Will still hates it there. He mostly either wants to go swimming in the pool or "fishing" in the creek - he uses his Uncle Mike's old fishing pole to catch sharks, turtles, whales, you name it. One day we'll take him fishing for real.

These next couple of pictures aren't the best quality - they were taken outside and it was so humid the lens fogged up on me, then I had to try and fix them in photoshop. Anyway, Will's vocabulary is really hilarious right now. He uses big words like unfortunately and concerned but he's not quite sure what they mean. He'll say "unfortunately, you need to come and play with my train track." He's learning to spell and can spell his name, Nana, Papa, and of course Poo-poo. (thanks grandad!) He's not too interested in drawing and would rather run around the yard with his lawn mower mowing the grass or explore the "jungle" in our back yard. As I type this he's very involved with his Thomas train track - he makes up stories and talks for the different trains. They have very interesting conversations, mostly about crashing.

Ben is coming right along. His head finally grew in diameter - it was 45.1 from last November until this June, and now finally it's 45.5. .4 isn't much but it's something! We have him on a series of probiotics, vitamins, and detoxifying supplements. We had him tested and he had an unusually high level of arsenic in his system - I found out recently that small animal owners are being discouraged from giving their pets tap water in Charlotte because of the high levels of arsenic in the water. Would have been nice to know while I was making Ben's formula out of tap water! But anyway he's a sweet and happy little guy as always. He uses some sign language now - he'll sign for milk and sometimes he'll use the "more" sign. His favorite thing right now is patty-cake, but he wants to hold your hands while you do it. If you try to clap his hands together he yanks his hands away and grabs yours and makes you do it. He knows all the motions too - he's an excellent director. :) Still no babbling though.

Brian loves his job here and I have 11 students now, so things are going really well with Brian and I! It took me 2 years to get 11 students in Charlotte, so I'm very happy. And I have an orchestra gig coming up, which I'm really excited about. Hope everyone is well!

Settled in to our new home

2007-07-15T12:31:00.000-07:00

After a few months of upheaval we're finally settled in our new home! We stayed with my parents for about 3 months (thanks Ma and Pa!) until we found our own place. It's a nice little place in Rocky Point, NC a half hour or so north of Wilmington. I didn't get many pictures while we were living with my parents - everything was packed away! But here are a couple I did manage to snap. Will with Nana and Papa:

and Will "burying" Dorie.

We had a nice visit from grandma and grandad and got to go to the beach! We're about 30-45 minutes away from Wrightsville beach but we prefer Topsail because it's much less crowded. It takes 45-60 minutes to get to Topsail Island from our house. Will really hates the beach and mostly stayed inside the little tent we brought, but the rest of us had fun! (Ben stayed home with Nana.)

Ben had more fun with the pool grandma and grandad brought for Will's belated birthday present. He LOVES the water and will splash and kick as long as you let him. He flops down on his belly in the bath and scoots all around the tub like a little fish. Here he is having fun in the water with grandma and Will:

I'm a slack blogger!

2007-02-26T08:42:00.000-08:00

Sorry it's been so long since I posted pictures! We've all been busy around here. Will is peeing in the potty, Ben is starting to commando crawl and push himself up to sitting, and Brian is interviewing for a job in Wilmington. We may be making a big move soon - keep your fingers crossed for us!

Here are a few pics from our trip to grandma and grandad's house. The last ones are for you grandad! I know how you love those liberal rags!! ;)

Here's little Ben with his great-grandma. He's a handsome little devil!

Daddy and Will making play-doh art!

Ben's hair is out of control!! I decided to experiment with some gel - it calms it down some. I've also trimmed a little off the back and the sides. It's really hard to cut his hair - he's really weird about having his head touched. For obvious reasons I guess! He has two little teeth busting through on top as well as of last week.

Snow Day!

2007-02-01T13:24:00.000-08:00

We actually got some snow this morning, and the boys had lots of fun playing. Well, Brian and Will did anyway - Ben pretty much sat in the stroller and kicked his feet. :)

This is Will in his typical "CHEESE!!!!" pose:

Daddy and Will making snowballs - we had to take them down to the street and throw them on the pavement according to Will.

Will REALLY didn't want to take this picture - I had to threaten him with a timeout to get him to stand next to Ben, and he stayed there for exactly one picture before he was running off again.

Ben is such a little cutie. He's on a steroid now that stimulates his appetite and he's finally putting on some weight! He's also starting to sit up on his own and we have a great new physical therapist so hopefully he'll be crawling in the next couple of months.

Happy Holidays!

2007-01-06T18:41:00.000-08:00

I hope everyone had as much fun over holiday vacation as we did! We were lucky enough to have Brian's parents, his Aunt Ann, my parents, and my brother come and visit. I think I was more excited about Christmas than Will was this year! We counted down the days, and for the few weeks before Christmas day Will would say "We have to get this for Christmas!" whenever he wanted something. He still says that, actually. And I just say OK! Here are some pics from Christmas morning:

This is a gummy tarantula that Will got in his stocking - it was a big hit. :)

Will got lots of cool toys but I think his favorite part of the whole season was having so many fun visitors. He's been asking to go to grandma and grandad's or nana and papa's house for a couple of weeks now.

Picture with Santa

2006-12-08T09:21:00.000-08:00

Well here it is, our annual picture with Santa:

It's not the best picture ever but at least nobody's screaming! This is the same Santa Will took his first Santa picture with:

Will was such a chunk - he was so cute! Ben is so much smaller than Will was. He's actually about the size at 11 months that Will was at 7 months. We got all of our Christmas decorating done! The boys had a good time helping Daddy put the lights on the tree.

Ben is doing great and as you can see he's sitting up well on his own. No signs of crawling yet - he kind of rolls where he wants to go right now. He's probably about 3 months behind in most areas. But he's had three surgeries so I say we're pretty much even! :) We did some genetic testing to see if he has any chromosome deletions or anything of that nature and hopefully we'll get the results back before Christmas.

Will is a hoot as always. His new phrase is kind of. You'll ask "Will, what do you want for dinner?" and he'll say "Ummmm, kind of... mac and cheese!". It's so cute. I'm leaving him pantsless in the house and he's doing great peeing on the potty. No pooping yet, but there's hope.

Fall fun

2006-11-22T20:55:00.000-08:00

Brian has spent a lot of time cleaning up leaves for the past few weeks! But I think the worst is over. Of course Will and Ben didn't mind, as you can see.

OK, here are the Christmas lists...

2006-11-16T14:12:00.000-08:00

By popular demand I'm posting Christmas lists for the kids here on the blog - I hope this isn't tacky or anything! LOL

Here are some thoughts I had for Will. I saw a Leap Frog toy that goes on your refrigerator called the Word Whammer (I think). It has three spaces for letters and all the letters of the alphabet are magnets, so you can spell simple words. I think it would be a great way to learn his phonics, because he REFUSES to watch the Leap Frog video. Won't even look at it!
Any kind of play-doh set that lets you create food would be fun for Will. He's always making me do hot dogs and hamburgers and whatnot.
Here's a list of Thomas trains that Will does have:

Die-Cast: Thomas, Percy, Gordon, Molly, James, James and the Bees, Murdoch, Bertie, Bill and Ben, Ned, the caboose, Jack, and the troublesome trucks. We have the roundhouse and the take-along set that has the washing shed.

Wooden: Thomas, caboose, Bill, Murdoch, Neville, the troublesome trucks, the recycling cars, and the breakdown train. We have the figure-8 track set with the water tower.

He really likes the Duplo lego Thomas sets. We have the one with Thomas and Tidmouth Sheds, but not any of the other ones.

There's a feature-length Thomas movie out there somewhere that we don't have - they advertise it in the back of his Thomas books so he really wants it. I think it's called the Magic Railroad or something. We got Will the Cars movie and we're going to save it for a Christmas present, so any Cars toys would go over well I'm sure. He's kind of obsessed with the tow truck. He also likes toy dinosaurs and animals - those little plastic ones. He's always trying to get me to buy them at the grocery store. He likes lizards too.

As far as Ben goes, it's really difficult to pick something out. He's not really doing much yet, so most of his toys are little shiny, sparkly, or crinkly things. He really likes crinkly - it's his favorite sound. I can't keep him off the disposable wipes packages. He LOVES books - Peek-a-Who is his favorite. Any litte colorful board books would be great - we don't really have any with textures in them. He needs clothes and he's in a 9 month size now, so probably by Christmas 12 month clothes would fit well.
We don't have many of the Little People things - we have the schoolbus and the farm. I think he would like any of those sets and he could also grow into them. We have the Incrediblock and the Peek a Blocks train, so any other Peek a Blocks toy would be cool.

So that's about it - please don't take this as a request for presents from someone who wouldn't normally be getting the kids one!! This is strictly informational for anyone who was going to get them something anyway. I told Will I was making a list for Santa when he asked me what I was doing. :) Here are some gratuitous pictures to make up for the lists:

A visit with Grandma and Grandad

2006-11-08T12:25:00.000-08:00

We took a trip to Georgia this weekend to visit with grandma and grandad and to see great-grandma too. It's always so nice to stay in Steve and Cindy's house - it's very peaceful and everyone sleeps well there. Ben ate like a little piglet there, which was awesome! He's still having problems with the skin under the helmet getting irritated and breaking out, so sometimes he's in the helmet and sometimes he's not these days.

Ben thought grandad was a real hoot! Will had a lot of fun with him too; grandad has lots of cool things like an electric train and a drumset. Will is really obsessed with grandad's train. He pretends to call him on the phone and asks him if he's playing with it. Before we left we told Will we were going to see grandma and grandad and Will says "See grandma and grandad and Katrina and TRAIN!".

Grandma is good for all kinds of hugs and kisses, so Ben was a happy camper. He's the snuggliest little baby you ever met. Will hated cuddling and mostly still does - Ben will pretty much sit with you all day. Grandma also makes yummmmy scalloped potatoes that Ben seemed to enjoy gumming, as well as baclk eyed peas. He got to taste all kinds of new things this weekend.

We had a nice visit with Ma too. Will didn't want to leave! Ma has saved a lot of really cool old toys like original Legos (the really small ones) and real metal Tonka trucks. Will usually naps at 1 and when we tried to get him to leave at 2:30 or so he was laying down on his belly on the carpet trying to stay awake so he could play with the tonka trucks some more.

Happy Halloween!

2006-11-01T10:51:00.000-08:00

We had a blast last night. Once we got past the first couple of houses Will started saying "Want more!" and we had to bribe him to get him to come back home without a tantrum. Ben rode along in the wagon and had a lot of fun playing with his "lightsaber" (glowstick). He was an angel as usual and didn't fuss a bit. Although he has discovered his voice and has started going "Ahhhh" REALLY loudly. He's basically yelling. There's no more rolling over in bed and catching a few extra minutes of sleep once he's awake - he just starts yelling and I rush to get him before he wakes Will up. He's not upset though. Usually he's smiling while he's doing it.

We decorated the house for Halloween - you can kind of see in this picture. But you can't see the carved pumpkins on the porch or the spooky ghost hanging from the flagpole. Will "helped" Daddy carve the pumpkins this year, which mostly consisted of him trying to grab the knife and stirring the pumpkins seeds around with the big spoon.

Back to normal!

2006-10-29T07:45:00.000-08:00

Things have been so normal lately I don't know what to do with myself! I've been teaching, Brian's been working, the kids are fine, everything's good. Will and Ben have been trading off a head cold for a while, but that's totally normal for this time of year too. Woo-hoo!!

Ben is starting to sit up a little bit. You have to set him up in just the right position and hover over him because he'll just flop over and smack his head on the ground. But he stayed sitting on his own for 45 seconds the other day! Which is a big step for him. He's a very happy, social little baby right now and LOVES Will. When I hear him waking up from his naps I'll being Will in the room and pop him into Ben's crib - Ben smiles and does his version of giggling, which is really hard to describe. His favorite toy is paper of any kind. He'll spend lots of time rolling around on the newspaper and rattling it. Luckily the Charlotte Observer doesn't transfer ink onto you the way some papers do.

Will is talking up a storm and into everything. I HAD to practice the other day because I had a faculty recital coming up - he completely destroyed the studio while I practiced. Every drawer was open, every book was out, he found some wrapping paper and unrolled it and ripped it up... it's like having a 35 pound puppy that can talk back. At night before he goes to bed he's started listing all the things that scare him and explaining to himself why they can't be in his room. He'll say "Sharks swim in the ocean. Puppets are on TV. Claude's not in here. (he had a bad dream once that our cat Claude bit him)" Apparently it works because he hasn't woken up with a nightmare in quite a while. I took him to a nearby Barnes and Noble yesterday because they have a train table in the children's area, and we stayed there for a LONG time playing trains. We got a new little Thomas book and I have literally read it to him 20 times in the past two days. When I checked on him last night before going to sleep he was asleep with the book over his face (he had gone to bed with it of course!).

We went on a trip to Nana and Papa's house recently - it was really fun! Maggie and Scooter (their dogs) were very interested in Ben although Scooter wasn't really sure what to think about him. He kept standing about a foot from him and reaching his nose out to sniff him - it was really cute. Will had a great time driving Papa's truck. He's decked out in some fresh Harley gear! It's really funny to see all the men who smile at Will at the mall when he's in all of his Harley clothes.

Our day out with Thomas

2006-09-29T14:22:00.000-07:00

We took Will to see a real Thomas the Tank Engine today. He had a blast, mostly. He's 2, so of course we had a few meltdowns because he was so excited. It was at the NC Transportation museum in Spencer, NC, which is about 45 minutes north of us. The museum itself is really cool and we'll definitely go back. It has trains everywhere and a roundhouse with a working turntable.

Will was in heaven. They had a Thomas engine pulling coaches, Sir Topham Hat, temporary tattoos, bubbles, sidewalk chalk, a bouncy thing, and lots of train tables set up with trains to play with. Will got a Harold the Helicopter tattoo on his cheek. There were lots of booths with fair type food - he also had his first funnel cake! And of course a huge tent set up as a gift shop, which caused our first tantrum. Will wanted to go look at toys instead of getting in line to ride Thomas. He really didn't want to leave the train tables either - I think they may have been his favorite part. Although he did enjoy waving to people from the window of our coach while we were riding with Thomas.

I think eventually it all just got to be too much for Will - trains and toys everywhere! Little Ben was an angel as always. Part of the time he rode in the stroller and part of the time carried him in his mei tai - he was just happy to be outside. It was exhausting for everyone and the kids both napped in the car on the way home.

Here are some other random pictures for the week - nothing else new to report! :)

Fall is here!

2006-09-26T11:13:00.000-07:00

It's been so nice out lately I've been able to take Ben outside with Will and I to play. If it's much above 80 Ben's miserable outside - the helmet makes him really hot and he's already hot-natured. I put his Bumbo seat in Will's wagon and pulled them around the neighborhood a few times last week and Ben had a blast. He also got to try out the swing for the first time and really liked it. Will is getting too big for it - he's too heavy to push in that thing! We've got to get a swingset. Will was less than excited about having to share his wagon, but I was proud of how well he tolerated Ben's presence. :)

Ben still isn't sitting up or babbling, so he's pretty delayed at this point. But he's very social and smiles a lot. He loves to read books and he's really interested in different textures right now. He spent about 15 minutes crinkling a plastic bag of wipes to hear the cool crinkly sound. He uses his thumbs a lot to touch and feel things. When we're reading books he takes his thumbs and rubs them across the pictures to try and feel them. He loves this little sunshine because it has crinkly parts and makes a funny sound when you squeeze it.

Poor Will woke up with nightmares about scary puppets last night. There was a particular puppet on the Baby Mozart video that jumped onto screen and really scared him when he was 18 months old - he's never quite gotten over it. He has a really good memory for a 2 year old I think. He saw a toy that he used to play with at his friend Mason's house before Ben was born, and he remembered it and said Mason's name. He's definitely starting to use his imagination. I think that's where all the nightmares are coming from.

We're going to Music Together classes once a week, and Will loves them. The first class kind of freaked him out - there's a lot of singing and dancing and he didn't really understand what was happening. At the end of every song he would say "Yaaay, bye-bye" and try to climb in the stroller. But this week he stood right in the middle of the circle for the whole class and kept grinning at all the babies. He would also go sit right in front of the teacher and sing along with the songs. He's going to have a pretty good ear I hope - he can already carry a little bit of a tune. Ben gets to sit in on all of my violin lessons, so hopefully he'll have some musical ability as well. We'll see!

Brian didn't have such a great week - his grandfather passed away this week. He's been down in Columbus GA for a few days to be with his mom and his grandma. We were so sorry to lose Papa. Our thoughts and prayers go out to Cindy and her family.

Check out Ben's new helmet!

2006-09-22T07:55:00.000-07:00

Well technically it's known as a DOC Band, but it sure looks like a helmet. Ben sweated like a madman for the first few days, but he seems to be getting used to it now. He slept through the night for the first time since the surgery last night. which is a promising sign.

The helmet has been a great help when it comes to Ben and Will playing together - it's great protection. I think Ben realizes this too because he's a lot less scared of Will than he used to be.

He'll be in the helmet for 2-3 months depending on how fast he grows. It's only been a week and there's already a shift in the shape of his head, so hopefully it will be a quick treatment.

Finally another update

2006-09-15T08:16:00.000-07:00

Sorry it's been so long since I've posted anything new! Ben's not been sleeping well since the surgery and we've been really busy with follow-up appointments and band fittings. Ben had his DOC Band and we brought him home in it yesterday. It's making him sweat - a lot. Sweat was literally dripping off the back of it last night - poor kid. So we obviously got very little sleep last night! But he's napping peacefully right now and the doctors say in a couple of days his body will adjust and he'll stop sweating so much.

Other than that Ben's doing great! He'll eat some small pieces of solid food now like pieces of green bean or northern bean, bites of bread, pieces of banana, etc. They have to be suoer small (like half the size of a pea) and I have to put it in his mouth because he can't pick them up yet. But it's definitely progress! His scar is healing really well and the swelling is almost completely gone.

Will is a hoot as usual. His new word is "can't". If he's watching a movie and gets tired of it he'll say "I can't like this mama". He's started calling me mommy sometimes - he'll run around the house calling "mommy! mommy!". He's watching Babe for the 10,000th time right now. He's learned to use the fast forward button on the VCR and he fast forwards through the scary parts. Which can be pretty much any part these days - he burst into tears watching Sesame Street the other day because Cookie Monster showed up suddenly and it scared him. He literally screamed and ran to me sobbing. Sharks are the scariest thing though - he has nightmares about them. He'll tell me he had a scary dream about sharks and when I ask him what they were doing he says "making noise". I'm not sure what that's about - it would be really interesting to know what's really going on in that little head.

I introduced Will to Tom and Jerry the other day. He LOVES them. He laughs out loud watching them. But I'm thinking this was a mistake because he appears to be acting out some of the stunts using dolls - like knocking them off counters and stomping on their faces and cackling hysterically. So I think we'll be sticking to Thomas from now on. :)

Here are all the pictures - I'm too lazy to arrange them right now! The first are photos from Cranial Technologies; they take pictures every time we have an appointment.

Ben's new head

2006-08-30T16:10:00.000-07:00

Here's a pic of Ben's forehead before surgery:

And here's one of him afterwards:

He's still pretty swollen, but I'm really amazed a the difference. His face is still a little crooked - his nose slants slightly to the right and his jaw is a little crooked.
Ben's doctor said we'll just have to wait and see if he grows out of that or not - if not we may have to make some more corrections later to make sure his jaw is lined up properly. He was super cranky for a few days and his sleep schedule is really messed up - he was awake from 12:30-3 last night - but he's already starting to get back to his old self and it's only been a week!

Will has been a real angel through all of this. He's being so good and gentle with Ben, which kis kind of unlike him. :) He gives him hugs now and actually seemed happy to see him when we got home. He got a stylish new haircut before we went for Ben's surgery.

Everything has really worked out so well for us - Ben has been through a lot but we're keeping our fingers crossed that the worst is over and now he can get down to just being a regular little baby.

We're Home!

2006-08-28T07:30:00.000-07:00

We're back! Ben had his surgery last Wednesday and we got home from the hospital on Sunday. Everything went as well as it could have. It wasn't easy for poor little Ben - his eyes were swollen shut for days and the dressing on his head was covering his ears, so he was really freaked out. He's been super velcro baby ever since and has to be held constantly. But I think he's entitled!

He has to go get a helmet now because the doctor couldn't get his head exactly right in the surgery - it was too crooked. But they shaved all of his hair off, so at least the helmet will keep his little bald head warm. If you'd like to see pictures of Ben in the hospital you can see them here. They aren't gory but they are really sad - poor little guy.

Thanks for all your prayers and positive thoughts everyone - they seem to have worked! :)

The ultimate nude photo

2006-08-16T09:52:00.000-07:00

These are the pictures of Ben's skull taken with a CT scan. The black lines that look like cracks are open sutures and are supposed to be there - they're what allow the skull to expand to leave room for the brain to grow. You can see that over his left eye there's a smooth ridge instead of an open suture like over the right eye. That's where the plate over his left eye has fused to the bone behind it prematurely - it's pulled everything else on his face slightly askew.

This is a picture of the top of his head with the bottom being his forehead. You can see a suture line running off to the (Ben's) right and one going down the middle of his forehead but not one to the left - there's an indentation where it's supposed to be but the surface is smooth. You can also see the bulge that's above his right eye - it looks like a goose egg. I'm not sure if the main suture running down the middle of his head is supposed to run that crooked - I sure hope not!

They've scheduled Ben's surgery for next Wednesday, August 23rd. They're basically going to take his forehead off, reshape the bones, and reattach them with dissolvable plates. It's so bizarre to me that you can take a bone out of someone's body and then put it back in and it will continue to grow! All of this has been a real crash course in medical technology.

I got a new baby carrier for Ben called a Mei Tai. The sling wasn't working too well - since Ben has low muscle tone he kind of flops around a lot and doesn't hold himself upright as well as some babies, so I needed something that was a little more secure. He LOVES this thing and insists on taking his afternoon nap in it. That will be a lot more pleasant when it's under 80 degrees outside!

Well despite everything else Will's doing great. Here he is with his daddy drawing choo-choos and signals (his two favorite works of art). Whe we draw with sideawlk chalk our driveway always ends up looking like a roadmap with lots of different trains, cars, and crossings.

Here's a cute picture of him and Ben together. It's always a challenge to get them together because Will doesn't really like the camera and really doesn't like Ben touching him. So this was a great accomplishment! Will's new word for the week is "sometimes". He'll say "Claire bite you sometimes!". (Claire is one of our cats) He usually deserves it if Claire bites him, by the way.

We got him a rubber booster seat that sits in a regular chair so he doesn't have to use a high chair anymore, and he's totally obsessed with it. It came UPS and he was there when we got it, so I told him it was a present and just for him, a special big boy chair! Which worked a little too well, as he had to sit in it while I read him his bedtime stories and he insisted on taking it to bed with him as well. I snuck it out of his crib before I went to sleep - he had it cuddled up next to him like a stuffed animal or something. And guess who woke up at 3 AM asking for his "booter seat"?

2 surgeries down, 1 to go!

2006-08-10T08:45:00.000-07:00

Little Ben did very well with his testicle surgery. They found it and brought it down where it's supposed to be and tacked it into place. He has two incisions, one tiny one and one slightly larger one on his abdomen. They didn't put any stitches in it - it's just sealed shut with dermabond! Anyway everything's healing beautifully and he's pretty much back to normal as of today. I haven't heard anything yet about exactly when the next surgery will be (the head one) - I think it's going to be in October sometime.

Will had a great time with Grandma and Grandad last weekend while we were at the hospital! They played trains and made brownies and generally had fun. Can you believe I didn't get the first picture of their visit? I know I was distracted, but still!

OK this is why I don't get to update this blog very often - while I was typing the two paragraphs above Will somehow found a bottle of apricot oil and poured half of onto the recliner upholstry. Anybody kow how to get apricot oil out of chenille? Well at least it smells good. I'm just going to pretend it's not there for a while so I can finish this.

Last week was very exciting for Will. We got to play in the fountain at Northlake Mall with his friend Kaylee, and we also found a caterpillar in the garage. The caterpillar was a source of great amazement and excitement. We had to bring him inside and put him on the table. According to Will he was hungry, so we tried to feed him some lettuce, or "salad" as Will calls it. Eventually we took him outside and let him go on a tree. Will sometimes still goes looking for him there. :)

Seven months old!

2006-07-27T08:04:00.000-07:00

Well little Ben is 7 months old today! Time sure does fly. Although I've been ready for this year to be over for quite a while, so it's not been flying as quickly as it usually does lately. Ben is doing really well! He's eating better, his weight gain is on track, and he's generally just a happy little baby.

We're having to leave him on the floor a lot more to build up his arm strength, and he's not very excited about that. He puts up quite a fuss and it's hard to make him stay on his tummy - time for some tough love I guess. All of the doctors and therapists keep telling me he has low muscle tone, so he needs lots of exercise to build his strength up. But his weekly physical and occupational therapists are happy with his progress - he's behind but he's been progressing consistently so it's not anything that's getting any worse. So we're happy!

He had a CT scan on Tuesday and hopefully I'll hear from his cranio-facial surgeon sometime soon about exactly what type of surgery he'll need and when. We already have the testicle surgery scheduled for August 5th, so hopefully he'll get plenty of time to recover from that before they get to work on his head.

Will is such a cutie pie these days. I don't know what it is but he just seems a lot cuter lately. Of course as I type this he is flinging himself on the floor and whining because his pretzels aren't staying in the bowl. Well most of the time he's cute! He got ahold of some sidewalk chalk and decided to color his face the other day. He likes to watch me put on makeup - I think maybe he thought that's what he was doing. I made him go and look in the mirror thinking he would be upset, but of course he thought his face decoration was AWESOME. Which is a word he uses on occasion now, along with "disgusting". He's getting quite the vocabulary.

He loves corn on the cob but he always has to have my piece - as soon as we sit down at the table he's fussing for "Mama's piece! No Mama have it!". So we switch pieces and all is well. "No Benny have it!" is also one of his current favorite phrases. He's really into his books as always - He loves to go into Borders and browse the Thomas section. He has a lot of his books memorized and will finish sentences for me. He's also started singing along with his silly song CDs - it's hilarious. He only really knows the last couple of words of each line, so he kind of mumbles his way through every line and then shouts the last word or two. He also loves to go help Daddy water the flowers in the morning.

Brian is feeling much better as well. He had his latest blood test a few days ago and he's still considerably hypothyroid, so they're upping his dose of synthroid. Hopefully within the next couple of weeks we'll have his dosage right and he won't feel so sluggish anymore. But overall he's really feeling good these days. His tomato plants have FORTY-EIGHT tomatoes on them. :)

It's so nice to hear from people we don't even know who are thinking about Ben. We really appreciate all the prayers and positive energy everyone's sending his way. Thanks everyone!

Another surgery for Ben

2006-07-12T06:24:00.000-07:00

Well thank goodness I went ahead and made an appointment with cranial technologies even though most of my doctors were telling me to wait. It turns out that Ben has coronal synostosis, which basically means the skull plate above his left eye has fused prematurely and isn't growing with the rest of his head.

The good news: It's fixable and it's not progressive, so once it's fixed we're done with that problem. It's also not associated with any syndrome that Ben might have, so it's an isolated problem.

The bad news: It's a "big surgery" according to his doctor. They're basically going to have to open his skull up, reshape the bones, and put it back together. Apparently there's a less invasive procedure that can be done, but it's not as effective - we're going to get a CT scan done soon and at that point we can decide which way we need to go.

His dr. said he usually does the surgery around 8 months. So Ben has a surgery scheduled for 8/5 to bring down his undescended testicle and then he'll have another one sometime in September. Poor baby!!

Here's a textbook picture of a baby with C.S.:

And here's a picture of Ben's head:

See how you can't even see his right eye because the forehead is bulging so much? Once again I'm so grateful to be living in Charlotte where there are so many great specialists. None of his other doctors picked this up, including his neurologist (Who, BTW, kept telling me to wait on going to cranial technologies.).

A week of firsts

2006-07-10T05:22:00.000-07:00

This was a really big week for Will. He got to see his first movie in a theater and his first baseball game (sort of). They show free movies on Wednesday mornings at the mall down the street from our house, so we took him to see Muppets from Space. He had a great time and sat through about 45 minutes of it, which I thought was really good. This week they're showing Wallace and Gromit, which Will has seen and likes, so I think we'll check it out on the big screen again.

We tried to take him to a baseball game, but we got rained out. Not that Will cared - he had a great time running around in circles and eating junk food - he got to try his first cotton candy. The Charlotte Knights are our minor league baseball team and they have a nice little stadium about half an hour from our house. We got raincheck tickets to go to another game, so we'll probably try again in a couple of weeks.

Ben had a first this week as well - he got to meet his great-grandparents and his Great Aunt Ann on Brian's side. We took a trip to Georgia and stayed with Grandma and Grandad this weekend and we took a side trip to visit Ma and Papa. Will loved the olf-fashioned Legos Ma keeps around - they're the tiniest Legos I've ever seen. Of course he loves any toy that he could potentially choke on, so he had a great time. Will was in a pretty bad mood the day that Ann came over, so it took him a while to warm up to her. But before the night ended he was banging on a steel drum and performing his repertorie of songs for her, including "Twinkle Star", "ABC" and "Dr. Suzuki". Ben loved his Aunt Ann and especially loved her glasses.

We had a great time visiting with Grandma and Grandad. Will got to play with grandad's battery-powered train, which was a huge hit. There were lots of train tracks on the way to Ma and Papa'a house too - Will has been on train overload this weekend! He would point out the tracks and keep a running monologue about "train tracks" and "crossing signals" and "better watch out, train comin".

Another first for Ben was that he actually OPENED HIS MOUTH for the spoon last time I fed him! He had sweet potatoes for the first time last night, and apparently they were a big hit because he kept opening his mouth up waiting for the spoon. I got so excited I started yelling for Brian and he came running over thinking something was wrong. Ben is on a real feeding frenzy right now. He's taking 5-6 oz bottles, which is a major step because just a few weeks ago 3 oz was his max. And he was tolerating me shoving bananas and oatmeal in his mouth but he wasn't very excited about it, so this whole mouth opening thing is a big deal.

Fun Family Weekend!

2006-07-03T07:44:00.000-07:00

This weekend Brian's brother Ron and sister-in-law Angie came to visit us with their two kids Anna and Luke. We had a blast, although it was pretty chaotic with 4 kids in the house! Will had a really good time playing with Anna - he kept calling her "Aunt Anna". Eventually we got him to say "cousin Anna" but he never quite got it right. He's been telling me all about how they played on the air mattress and had pillow fights and Luke played with cards (flashcards). Our refrigerator looks lovely now with all the Dora pictures Anna colored for us.

I got to take Anna and Will out to Target for icees - it was my first glimpse of what it will be like to have two older children. It was awesome! There were no slings or car seats to lug around, and nobody lunging to rip toys off the aisles. And I started to realize that when your kids get older they can actually HELP YOU with things!! Crazy. I'm looking forward to that. :)

Ben's crooked head

2006-06-26T07:09:00.000-07:00

Well we went to see the baby-helmet people (otherwise known as Cranial technologies) and had the shortest doctor visit of all time. My appointment was at 9:30 and I was walking out at 9:35! The therapist I saw there thinks we need to consult with a crano-facial specialist before we make any decisions on how to straighten out Ben's head. He doesn't have a typical head-flattening because of his sleeping position, so she wants an expert to look at him before we go forward. So she basically looked at Ben, gave me the cranio-facial guy's card, and we were out the door. We go to see him in July.

We had a really nice weekend here. It's been raining a lot so we've been hanging out at the house watching movies and playing with the kids. Yesterday they slept for 2 hours at the same time in the middle of the day - it was like a mini-vacation! :) Will and Ben played together so well yesterday! Ben sits in his exersaucer and watches Will as he jumps and runs around the room. If Will stops Ben starts yelling and Will comes over and says "Whattsamatta Benny?" and sometimes brings him a toy. It's very sweet.

Will's turn

2006-06-24T09:06:00.000-07:00

Well I've told you all about how Ben's doing, but nothing about Will! Will is doing great. He can count to 13 now! He's using sentences like "That's a big ol' truck right there!" and he sang happy birthday to his Papa this week. It's amazing how much he's learning. We're starting to learn how to count to ten in Spanich (thanks sesamestreet.com!). Here's a pic of him before his last haircut and one of him and his friend Cayly taking a bath.

He's really obsessed with sharks right now - he watched a nature show on them and saw them eating things and now he keeps talking about how sharks bite and will eat birdies. I was afraid it would scare him, but he doesn't seem bothered by it - more like really obsessed. :) He insists on sleeping with his toy sharks and they have to take baths with him too. He's also discovered Blues Clues - somehow we ended up with a Blues Clues Christmas DVD and he's watching it nonstop right now. We got him a Blues Clues flap book and we've read it about 100 times already.

Will is getting much better about Ben. He doesn't shriek every time Ben cries, and he tried to "play" with him now. Which is just as bad as him trying to hit him sometimes, but at least the intent is better. We pulled his old baby toys out of the attic for Ben recently and he's having a lot of fun playing with the baby things. He tries to sit in the exersaucer and everything - it's really funny.

Welcome to my blog!

2006-06-24T08:00:00.000-07:00

Well, instead of trying to e-mail out updates to everyone I thought it would be easier to just start a blog! That way I'm not cluttering up people's e-mail boxes with tons of cute but big pictures of the kids. And this way I'll feel like part of the 21st century! :)

I hope everyone is able to see the page ok, and if you want copies of pictures e-mailed to you so you can save them just let me know and I'll send them to you. Thanks for looking everyone!

We had appointments on T, W, and Tr for Ben on top of his regular PT and OT this! week - it was crazy! Tuesday we went down to the Watkins center ( a county agency that works with disabled and delayed kids) and Ben passed his vision test except his left eye is alightly askew from his right. Thinking that has to do with the misshapen skull, but as long as he can see out of it I'm good!

Wednesday we had our genetics appointment, which was great. We see Dr. Wagstaff - I love everything about him and his office. The lady who drew Ben's blood was the best I've ever seen - she didn't even have me restrain him, which saved a lot of screaming. The news is there's no news - typical Ben! He doesn't have all of the signs of any particular syndrome. They're testing him for Noonan's Syndrome but odds are he doesn't have it.

Thursday we saw Dr. Perez (his urologist)- stupid undescended testicle!! We're going to have to have surgery to go and get it. I hate for him to go through two surgeries in one year - he's so little. I wonder if it's somehow harmful to him? Maybe I should wait until he's bigger. Of course then he'll know what's going on and will freak out in the hospital. Arghh!!

So anyway things are overall really really good right now. Ben's up to 12 pounds and is developing quite well. He's still behind physically in his arms, but his legs are doing great and he's doing well cognitively. Keep your fingers crossed for us!