Carter's First School Pictures

A few weeks ago, Carter got his first school pictures done. Yes, it is southern California, and yes, it was like 35 degrees that day....in APRIL.

I am actually very pleasantly surprised they turned out so well.

Enjoy!







ps. Carter won the prize for the roundest head...just kidding.
Not really, he really should win a prize for that. I mean like, someone at a county fair would pay hundreds of dollars to get produce that round...I'm just sayin'.

Happy Cinco De Mayo - A great Day to have your Gallbladder Removed! Ole!

Sorry it has been FOREVER since I've updated everyone. It has been such a crazy week, and I have needed more recovery than Clay did.

Clay had his surgery on Wednesday at ULCA and did wonderfully. We spent the night at the Tiverton House across the street the night before so we could meet our arrival time of 6:00am.
The anesthesiologist looked about 20 years old, but took great care of him and was very informative with us, and very sweet with Clay.
He came back to the PACU several times and checked on us telling us how great Clay did.



When Clay woke up from his EGD last month he was very disgruntled and angry. I have to admit, this was one of my biggest concerns about his surgery this time. Since he has weaned, I don't have the "cure-all" and I did not like that I couldn't get him to instantly stop crying when he was so upset.
He was out of surgery by about 10am and actually very pleasant. He didn't mind when I had to leave his bedside to go the bathroom, or when his nurse changed for lunch, or when they took his vitals 100 times.



After several hours in the PACU he was finally transferred to a peds room at the Mattel Children's Hospital.
He actually had surgery at the Ronald Reagan Medical Center but the Mattel Childrens' Hospital is actually the same hospital. (Just the 3rd and 5th floors) Kind of confusing, I know.



Clay was pretty sleepy and uncomfortable the first day and mainly slept and watched TV.
The nurses came in and gave him pain meds around the clock, and he was up and at 'em the next morning. We had breakfast, took several walks around the 5th floor and played 'how many tissues can we pull out of the box and throw into the trash can'. He was pretty bored, but still took a decent enough nap for me to sneak down to the cafeteria for lunch.


Overall, Clay's stay at Mattel was pretty good, but I'll have a post for another time about my issues with that place. My opinion is that for being the Best Children's Hospital in the US last year, I shouldn't have 'issues' with them. But like I said, another post, for another time.


We will be seeing the surgeon for a follow up on Monday and then be seeing a hematologist in the near future. The surgeon confirmed that the stones were all made of billirubin (basically broken down red blood cells) and that he thinks there is something causing his rbcs to break down too early. We're waiting for the spherocytosis labs to come back and if those come back negative we'll navigate some different paths (as directed by the hematologist.)

Clay is doing wonderfully and we took his bandages off today. He wants to wrestle, play and I don't think he even knows he had surgery.
I definitely think that if you're going to have your gallbladder removed you should do it at 17 months. It doesn't even have seemed to phase him.

Baby Girl at 23 weeks

Everything has been going wonderfully with 'baby girl'. She is 1 lb 4 oz now, and at viability. She is very well behaved (so far) and really likes gummy worms, ice, and would really love a margarita. Every Perinatologist visit I get a CD and a DVD (some of which is in 4D!) and a movie of her. All of her parts and organs are measured and placed in a percentile. I don't think there can be any doubt that everything is PERFECT inside there. These ultrasounds 'xray' her bones, and we can see her entire skeleton. We've followed the blood flow throughout her body and know her heart and organs are getting optimum oxygen. We've seen her face and know it's gorgeous. And we have in fact, checked every time to make sure she's 'still' a girl. :) I will only see the Perinatologist one more time (as long as every thing's going just as wonderfully as now) so this will be one of my last videos/cds of her until she's born.









Yeah, I know, amazing isn't it?

Follow the Yellow Brick Road

Clay's 'super exciting medical drama' continues on, and I feel like we're following the yellow brick road, finding new and interesting things along the way and hopefully we'll reach the wizard within the year.

A bit of good news, NO a bit of GREAT news: Clay does NOT HAVE CELIAC DISEASE!
I can't tell y'all how relieved I am, Not only does he just not have some yucky small intestine disease, but I can feed him macaroni and corn dogs again GUILT FREE!

We saw the pediatric surgeon at UCLA and followed up with his pediatric GI specialist last week. The surgeon was very nice and informative and open to questions. He explained that Clay's gallbladder situation was very rare, especially for his age, and that he was surprised no one had looked into WHY he was getting these huge gallstones. He explained that several of his symptoms (calcified gallstones - which apparently are different than regular ones, it alludes to the fact that they're composed of a different substance entirely), constant anemia, and having a hard time getting over jaundice as a baby points us in a direction of a hematologic disorder. (That's a blood disorder y'all.)

He's not certain that clay has one, but he ordered some blood work to investigate since his symptoms are similar.
One in particular, spherocytosis, was his main focus and hopefully the blood tests will be back within about 2 weeks and tell us he does not in fact have this. (What is is with hematology/pathology taking two weeks for everything!?)

Spherocytosis is a genetic disorder where the red blood cells get all misshapen by the spleen and cause all sorts of issues. I think I'll save the brief for after we know whether he has it or not. Until then, you can get a brief synopsis here. It's a little frightening at some parts and might warrant some removal of MORE organs, blood transfusions, and sepsis complications....so right now, we're just going to assume the best (until told other wise) and plan on Clay's gallbladder surgery in May. (UCLA has yet to call and schedule that) We're waiting until May so we can have the blood results back and change our surgery plan accordingly.

On a much, much brighter note, after the GI doc did some more tinkering with his meds, Clay has been TALKING! He still lacks several vowel sounds, but he is saying words! He is saying lots of them, and the ones he can't pronounce correctly, he is still trying to say them anyway! Woo hoo, awesome.

Hollywood!

My parents are usually only here when there's a medical crisis. Since I've been married, I think they've visited me twice when there was no one in the hospital, a baby hadn't just been born, or some one's life wasn't hanging in the balance.

I was really eager for us to get to DO SOMETHING. They always take wonderful care of me and the kids, but I wanted to show them we're not a bunch of needy, leech-y hypochondriacs.

We drove down to Santa Monica Pier on Tuesday after Easter. We ate lunch at Bubba Gumps and played in the sand awhile.









We drove to Hollywood to check out the hand prints and stars. My family has never been great at directions, or one way streets, or parking...Let's just say we were all glad to get out of the car once we were parked (at a very over priced lot!) in Hollywood.











We took pictures of a bunch of other stars including Britney Spears, Tom Cruise, Gilda Radner, etc. There was one star that was always jam packed, and you basically had to wait in line to get a picture with it. Can you guess who it was?

Michael Jackson


We saw Grauman's Chinese Theatre, the Kodak Theatre, the Wax Museum, Ripley's Believe it or not, and Madame Tussoud's. (That's where they have all the real looking, fake celebrities and you can take your picture with them.) I'd love to go into all of those places someday, but it being 5 o'clock, we were pushing the kids time limit.












We finished the day off at the Disney Ice cream and Soda shop. It was delicious!

Easter

We had a wonderful Easter, celebrated with my parents who finally made it into town.
I know it's hard for them to make it out here, but since it had been 5 months, we were all missing them a lot!

On Saturday they helped with getting our "Reveal" party together. It was so fun and such a good idea. We had so many compliments and I think all of our friends really enjoyed it.









I still can't believe we're having a girl, but that's another post for another time.

Carter dyed eggs for the first time this year. We discovered the attention span for a 3 year old boy and dying eggs was 10 eggs....









The Easter Bunny was nice enough to grace us with his presence. He brought way too much candy....











Since we haven't really found a church yet (and it's 95% our fault we haven't been actively looking for one like we should) we went to Easter brunch at the O'Club, followed with an egg hunt and an Easter bunny apperance.











Trying to take a picture with the Grandparents...was hilarious. I have to post the whole sequence....

"HILARIOUS!"


"Oh my God Y'all, I am making this picture SO FUNNY!"


"Whoa! Oh God, don't fall and break my head again!"


"Whew, that was close!"


"Wha?"


For those of you who haven't spent a lot of time with Carter, This sequence was taken in about 4 seconds and these same 4 seconds are on repeat the entire 12 hours he's awake.

We're having a......