March 14th, 2010 at 9:42 pm
(Day to Day, Douglas, Sabrina)
Molars look huge in a little mouth. The second set of molars are on their way in. Right now she is sitting with Heather clapping as the little Fischer Price dog finishes singing its little song about counting to ten. We are about to take her upstairs for night three in the big girl bed. The crib side has come off. Sabrina has officially been promoted to big girl status.
Speaking of big girl status; we have our first meeting with the school district at the end of this month. Sabrina will transition out of the First Steps program in the beginning of October at which point our school district takes over. It looks like a four day a week program for a few hours each day. This will coincide with Douglas starting Kindergarten. I don’t know if they are ready for this, but I am certainly not ready to send my 5 year old (6 by then) off to school, let alone my 2 year old (3 by then) off to school.
Doug is spelling, adding, subtracting, telling stories, using words that 5 year olds don’t generally know let alone use. He is working on his video game skills and tonight, rather than a story book, he had me finish a booklet I received at a Microsoft Technet presentation on the Microsoft Azure Cloud.
Sabrina seems to be gaining ground in some areas, physically she is on schedule or possibly ahead. Little kid has a grip that would make a wrestler envious, she can pound on her brother like a professional linebacker. She climbs in and out of everything (part of the reason she was promoted to big girl status). She claps, dances, mimics, she is paying attention to her stuffed animals, she seems to be playing dress up with coats and jackets. Though at this point her communications skills are still lacking. She gets a message across but some of that message comes from knowing her. No one who isn’t Heather or I will get the message. Still working on it. She is definitely listening to things… making some kind of connection with sound. Nothing will get her stop and stare like the theme song to Phineas and Ferb. She will stop whatever she is doing and listen till the song ends. Still waiting for momma and dada… eventually.
We are finally redoing the master bath. We have been planning on doing it for years and it is finally going to happen. New cabinets, counter top, fixtures and our dying shower is going to get repaired. It’s been on the to do list and other things kept coming up. We have hired our contractor, picked out the new gear now we just need to wait a few weeks for the work to start. Nothing much else to report, daylight saving time is catching up with me, and I am going to give in to the effects and go to sleep. Should be a rough morning… stupid clock change.
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August 23rd, 2009 at 3:46 pm
(Day to Day, Douglas, Sabrina)
We still have not received the genetic and metabolic test results. We have been back in for surgery. We have a new pair of hearing aids. Um… what else… We have something that resembles the beginning of word formation.
In the order listed above; We will call again this week to see if the genetic and metabolic results are back in yet. So we have not learned anything new on the possible autism side of things. We are in a holding patter on that one till we get a bit more information.
We were back in for surgery a few weeks ago but it was unrelated to the CDH. She had something to do with a urachus. This is the link between bladder and umbilical before birth and it is suppose to go away. In this case it didn’t, if not taken care of it can increase cancer risks later in life. It manifested its self in the form of a cyst on Sabrina’s belly button. So we went in and Dr. Coln took care of things. He went in through the belly button and now her belly button looks different than it did. He told us it would, and the total lack of a visible scar is a nice plus. I have said it before and I will keep on saying; That doctor is an artist.
Our hearing aids have been upgraded to a newer lighter smaller model. Based on the results of the test a few weeks ago they have turned the level on them way down. We are still seeing multiple therapists and the new global therapist seems to be working wonders. Sabrina is putting things inside other things now, for example, Legos in a box, or stuffed animals in a box, or a paci. in a box or boxes in a box. This new skill seems to be box related. We also have something that seems to represent the beginning of words. Strange as it is, we have gotten the best response with the word concrete… don’t ask why, we don’t know. She is moving right along, not as fast as I would like, but still moving.
Doug is getting ready for year two of preschool. Three days a week rather than the two we did last year. The different classrooms are split by color and there is a little bird of that color outside each room. Last year he was a blue bird, for summer school he was a purple bird and now he is a pink bird. I am not particularly in to the masculine/feminine definitions of color, but I have not quite adjusted to hearing him say he is a “pink bird”. I want him to say it with an Austin Powers accent. “I’m a pink bird, baby. Yeah, groovy.” Err… maybe its just me.
As for us, not too much has changed. We recreated the planters in front of the house with new landscaping bricks and are trying to find a reasonably priced sliding door so we can stop freezing in the kitchen in the winter. I am in the process of switching from a management job to an engineering job. I won’t miss management at all, I would rather be elbow deep in a server. Maybe in a few years I will go the management track, right now the technology is more fun. Thats about it for now. Till next time… probably next month, but who knows.
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February 20th, 2009 at 9:49 am
(CDH, Day to Day, Douglas, Hearing, Page Updates, Sabrina)
It’s been too long since updates again so here I go. Sabrina is walking all over the place. Nothing is safe anymore. We have her new hearing aids and have not had a problem with them since they arrived and yesterday she got new ear molds. As you can guess a growing child will outgrow ear molds on a regular basis. They have been lasting a few months and then new ones need to be made. Once they start getting too small we have a product called oto-firm that keeps them from feeding back till the new molds are made. The oto-firm is a cream that fills the gap between mold and ear.
We have reached one of our least favorite times of babies lives. She has started hollering when she wants something. The problem is, no one knows what she wants. At this point in communications learning, her brother would at least grunt and point. She just hollers till you get it right. While we are way in communication skills we are making progress. Shes not doing too badly for someone who has only been hearing for a few months now.
We are over 16 months out from her birth, about 14 months out of the hospital and we have no complications from the CDH. Near as we can tell, other than the external scars, her insides are working exactly as they are suppose to work. We have some issues we are still working with physical and occupational therapy plus the weekly time with the teacher from CID but these are all peripheralissues. These are issues from being in the NICU, issues from the surgery (large incision through a large section of chest muscle) and her hearing is a side effect of the machines and drugs that saved her life though we do not know specifically which machines or drugs may have done it. But for us, no other CDH issues have appeared. We go in to see the geneticist at the Children’s Hospital at the end of March to make sure there are no other hidden issues. Till then everything is peaceful (except for the hollering) and normal (for us).
Next weekend CID is having a parents seminar day. A few morning sessions and then an afternoon session/panel with past students/graduates from the school. Should be interesting. We have been a bit short on guidance and what to expect in the future. Hopefully this will provide some insight.
Doug is still four. He runs, he yells, he crashes, bangs, throws, rips, shreds, hides, tunnels, all in the living room… did I mention he yells. We have been back to the doctor for his breathing/coughing/sleeping and we are hopeful that what he has is not asthma. The doctor thinks it might be just a seasonal infection. We will keep going with the inhaler and see what happens once spring/summer set in.
Other than that, my websites have been migrated again. I started off running my own web server out of the basement… it was a bad idea. It was fun, but far too much work. Then I moved to a small hosting company run by a guy who really knew what he was doing. Then someone offered him a pile of cash and bought him out. That someone isn’t as impressive. So I have moved to a mainstream large hosting company. The link seems a tiny bit slower but it should not been noticeableunless you are running tests like I was to compare the two. So now I am with hostgator.com. Sabrina’s pictures are back up and I hope to add some new pictures this weekend. I have upgraded Doug’s site from my HTML to a gallery program. I am going to add more pictures of him and I have set up a section to upload some of the pictures he has taken with his Fisher-Price digital camera as well. Things look good with the new site so far, hopefully it stays that way.
4 Comments
December 27th, 2008 at 9:09 pm
(Douglas, Hearing, Sabrina)
I can’t believe I have not written an update in two months. I would say, We have been busy, but that would be repeating several other posts so lets just assume I was abducted by a traveling troop of mimes and just recently escaped. Actually, if anyone knows a traveling troop of mimes that is abducting, please let me know, I could use the break.
Lets start with Douglas, he may have asthma. He has spent most nights since September coughing while he sleeps. Turns out after trying several dozen different things, we took him to a specialist, tried his first suggestion which did not help. Since the testing with the specialist only has some minor indicators of asthma but nothing conclusive, we did not start with the inhaler. After the first attempt failed we called the doctor who started him on the inhaler twice a day and the coughing has ceased. The boy is getting sleep for the first time in months.
Sabrina has been a busy monkey. Physical Therapy, Occupational Therapy, Doctors appointments, RSV shots, CID appointments. Her hearing aids came in and quickly went back to the manufacturer. One of the devices would stop working after a very short period of time. So we spent a few more weeks with the loaners. We have continue to have problems with one of them since we got them back but with the holidays we have not been able to get them back in for maintenance. To add to that we have a torn tube on the ear-molds so we are using one of the molds from her first set. It is a bit small but better than nothing. The audiology departments voicemail says they are out till 2 January, so we may need to wait a while to get these problems fixed.
It’s frustrating. We are becoming dependant on these little pieces of silicon, metal and plastic and they seem to be letting us down. Makes me feel like we are letting Sabrina down, just a little bit.
She has changed. She smiles more, she laughs more, she is moments away from walking, two more teeth came in. She has had her bottom teeth for months now, the top two both came in together in the last week. She is eating everything… everything. Today she tried honey mustard pretzels. Later in the day I was having a few more and she was looking at me with an expression that said, “Where’s mine?!?”. She yells and squeals and hollers and giggles and to think how close we were to losing her. It’s been a little over a year since we brought her home. Gets more interesting every day. Here’s to the year ahead, lets see what’s next.
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March 15th, 2008 at 11:21 pm
(Douglas, Sabrina)
We have just passed the 5 month mark a few days ago. She rolled over for the first time the evening of her 5 month birthday. She has rolled over one other time since then, but I missed that one… and the first two. She will only show her mom how to roll over. That or she hasn’t quite figured it out yet and the first three times were accidents. She tried sweet peas for the first time yesterday, she was not terribly impressed. They are green and mushy… though I must admit they taste pretty good… err… or so I would assume. Really, it’s not like I sampled the cats food.
I have new pictures that I have uploaded and hope to get posted tomorrow. I am working on standing up a real gallery rather than my quick and dirty HTML page.
In other news… the boy is potty trained. Yay us. I was starting to think it was never going to happen, but he got ambitious and got his act together. He has been diaper free for over two days now with no accidents. Now to work on the baby… Hey, Sabrina… wanna watch Elmo’s Potty Time…
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February 13th, 2008 at 9:49 am
(Douglas, Page Updates, Sabrina)
I updated the pictures on Sabrina’s page on Sunday. So I am a few days late in reporting the change. I moved her older pictures to a second page so the first one would load faster. Nothing much to report. We have been trying her on rice cereal with only minor success. It takes a different set of skills to eat from a spoon and she is not terribly interested yet. We will keep trying. Her brother went nuts on the cereal the very first time and it was two weeks before we were able to get him to try it again.
She has her four month doctors appointment today and the next in the series of standard baby shots. Let me just say, she is not a fan of being poked with needles. She has probably been stuck more times in her 4 months than I have in my entire life. Hard to blame her for the lack of fandom.
Douglas is making great progress on potty training. We were starting to think it was never going to happen, but it has. A few more weeks and we should be done with it. Yay, progress.
- EDIT – Forgot to mention, I added a new link to the McDaris Family Blog on the right side of the page. Visit this page for Cadenne’s story.
- EDIT 2 – I should have just done a new post for these edits. Liviana is going home Saturday. Congratulations.
1 Comment
February 6th, 2008 at 9:30 am
(Douglas, Sabrina)
It’s been a few weeks. I have new pictures that I will try and post this weekend. Sabrina is doing great. We are trying to start her on rice cereal. She is not thrilled. She tries to take the food off the spoon like a bottle. Last night she blew cereal all over the place when she tried to get suction built up. She had an RSV shot last week and weighed in at 11lbs 11oz. She’s happy and healthy and so different than her brother at the same age. She is not as physically active as he was but if I had to guess I would say her mind is taking it all in. She likes to be in a place where she can see whats going on. She also likes to talk to people… loudly. If you walk away from her, she will hollar and chatter till you return to talk to her. She really likes to talk to her brother but he is too busy being active. When he does stop to talk to her, she loves it. She looks at everything, but if he is in range, she stares at him and watches everything he does.
Douglas does not stop. He does not stop, he does not stop moving, he does not stop talking… he does not stop. Unless he is sleeping… though I am not usually in the room at those times. He may be moving and talking and we just don’t know it.
It looks like Liviana is doing great. Congratulations Amy and family.
So all things considered, it’s been a pretty good few weeks.
1 Comment
January 10th, 2008 at 11:37 am
(CDH, Douglas, Sabrina)
I have a story to tell. It’s about a boy and his two grandfathers, two grandfathers who think that they are funny. We bought the boy kitchen toys for Christmas. He likes to pretend he’s cooking so we decided to help him out. He was in the basement playing with his new toys Christmas afternoon. He took a wooden tomato, that he received in a set of fruits and vegetables that are held together with Velcro and can be sliced with a little wooden knife, and put it in a pot to make soup. My father-in-law, tells him, that tomatoes are good for his prostate. At which point, he turns to my father and says, “This is good for yourpwostate “. To which my father, a survivor of prostate cancer, replies, “I don’t have a prostate.” The boy countered with, “I have apwostate.” Now when he cooks he can occasionally be heard to say, “This is good for your pwostate.” Thanks Papa Jim. I won’t even go into poo stew… Thanks Papa Steve.
The above story was not what I was originally posting, I was going to comment on how gassy babies are. I was going to comment on how the boy likes to tell us “Daddy, Sabrina tooted.” But then I remembered that today is her three month birthday and I decided to change the topic for her sake. Here’s to at least 1000 more months baby girl. Happy three month birthday. (1000 months would get her to 84, not a bad run in life)
We are having some concern about her hearing. Hopefully we are overreacting. There are times that we think she is reacting to sound, but she could also be reacting to other stimuli. She received a musical toy for the side of her crib for Christmas that she seems to enjoy, however it also has flashing lights and we know that she likes light and light up things. I clapped loudly next to her head when she was looking away from me last night and got no response. So I have a call in to our doctor to see if our concerns are justified. It’s also just as possible that she was being a daughter and ignoring me. The baby book seems to say babies will tune out sometimes, so perhaps that’s the problem. Overreacting or not, we are going to get it checked out. If there is a problem, it is probably a limited loss that can be corrected with hearing aids. If we wait, we could be looking at developmental delays. It may be nothing, but if this is our lot and we have a perfectly healthy little girl with some hearing problems, we got off easy. Sometimes Congenital Diaphragmatic Hernia babies don’t make it to their third month, I don’t get to complain.
1 Comment
January 3rd, 2008 at 8:16 pm
(Douglas, Sabrina)
There are 7 new pictures of Sabrina and 2 of Douglas on their websites. Take a look at this big girl. There are pictures from the gap between mid November and the holidays, they will find their way here eventually. Things have been a bit busy lately.
Sabrina had her second RSV shot yesterday, she was not thrilled, but if we can avoid RSV or at the very least limit it, it’s worth the needle stick. We have been seeing statements from the insurance company trickle in for the last several weeks. They have been pretty impressive. With the one that arrived this week we have jumped well past a “half million dollar baby”. I am not sure if this will be the last one, but it looks like it included the bulk of her stay at the hospital.
3 Comments
December 19th, 2007 at 2:09 pm
(Douglas, Sabrina)
It’s hard to find enough hours in the day to get anything done. Sabrina is doing great. She will be off the methadone next week. She is eating and asking for more. She is a healthy kid. I took her to her appointment with her surgeon on Monday. She had a chest x-ray and an exam. The x-ray looked great, her heart is still a bit off to the right but that is not a problem and her lungs look good. She has a bit of a bump on her scar that he said was a suture location and it would go away. She is sleeping pretty well, usually one long stint and a short stint during the night. Douglas appears to have adjusted and the cat couldn’t care less so long as her dinner shows up on time.
I tried putting her in the jump-a-roo that we have from her brother. It was his favorite thing his first Christmas, the boy was a jumper and a kicker. She wasn’t terribly interested. She still thinks her mobile is the greatest thing ever. It makes her happy when it’s running. I have plenty of pictures and I will try and put a few up this weekend.
2 Comments