Her Last Day Being Three

Lauren turns four years old tomorrow.  We're taking her to IHOP for breakfast since Ben has to work tomorrow night.  I think I'm looking forward to that as much as she is, if not more.  It's a pretty fun weekend for her with Easter today and her birthday tomorrow, lots of presents and treats and fun.  We're going to have her birthday party at Chuck E. Cheese next weekend.  Lauren is all done with soccer now, she did such a great job this year.  She was by far the smallest kid on her team, but loved playing goalie. Somehow her team only ended up with five kids on it while the other teams in the league all had 10, and even with that huge disadvantage, they won a few of their games.  She got a medal and a certificate at the end of the season and they had a pizza party at the bowling alley after their last game.

Natalie has an evaluation for Occupational Therapy tomorrow.  We'll see if she starts doing regular work with them.  That is for more fine motor skills than the Physical Therapy she does already.  They changed the setting on her shunt when she visited her neurosurgeon a few weeks ago.  They upped the setting to a slightly higher pressure.  She's been doing pretty well with the change, which is good, and in June she'll go back and have another MRI to see how it's going in her head.

I have to get a crown put on my tooth in 10 days.  The dentist thinks I cracked it.  I was in such pain and thankfully they got me in the same day.  I've been doing ok with tylenol and learning to avoid the tooth, I hope the crown does the trick and helps me out.  I always get so nervous about the dentist and every time I go it's awful, then I avoid going and the next time it's bad again.  It's an awful cycle.  I do really need to get better about going regularly.  I just hate it so much and avoiding it only makes it harder on me later.

Ben's been making some really great food lately.  Tonight he made pulled pork and last night chicken caesar salad and bread.  We had strawberry shortcake for dessert both nights.  I made the Pioneer Woman's Hot Cross Buns on Friday and they were really good.  They make a great breakfast.  I didn't realize Hot Cross Buns were an Easter food, but now that I know, I think I'll have to make them every year.

Easter and her Follow-Up

Easter morning was a pretty good day. I woke up with my sinuses really congested from all the pollen in the air - I've never had allergies like this until we moved here. It took us a little while to get going that day because we were all feeling like our heads were foggy. Lauren dove right into her Easter basket and then waited not-so-patiently for Natalie to wake up so she could show her what the Easter bunny brought for her, too. Here's Natalie, still in bed, and Lauren showing her a wrist rattle and rattle socks set.

Once we all got up and going, we headed to Katherine's house for brunch and an egg hunt. Here's Natalie all dressed in pink with her new wrist rattle. She knows how to accessorize already, just like her big sister.

She was feeling pretty good. And here's Lauren in her dress. It had a castle drawn on it, something that looked like it was out of the French countryside. Lauren called it Cinderella's castle.

The kids had way too much fun with the hunt and were all really good. My job was to take pictures, but between someone else's memory card being full and then my batteries dying (hey, it was a long week for my camera in San Antonio) I didn't get a whole lot. Ben helped Lauren look for eggs. The day started out kind of chilly, but was in the mid to high 80s before too long.

Things wrapped up around 4 and we headed home.

On Monday, Natalie and I headed back to San Antonio. She had a CT scan Tuesday morning and then we met with her Neurosurgeon for her follow up. It was great news all around. Everything healed up much better this time. The CT scan looked great and he said he thinks he sees some Cortical Mantle forming! There aren't enough exclamation points to get across how happy I am about that, so I'll just use the one, but know that even now, retyping it, I'm jumping up and down inside. We've stayed really hopeful for her long term prognosis and to know that her brain is increasing in size is WONDERFUL, WONDERFUL news. The week after surgery she was already vocalizing more, and I think I've even noticed an improvement in her eyes - they don't seem to go lazy as often. I hope that now that the pressure has stabilized, it will relieve some pressure off her optic nerve and maybe her vision will improve and the muscles will follow.

She had another appointment with Early Childhood Intervention this week and has another this Tuesday. Her therapy is coming along. There's no magic to it, we're just doing lots of different positions to help encourage her to move and get her muscles going.

Our house had two showings this week. Ben restained the deck today and trimmed branches from the trees in the back. Hopefully that will help whenever the next showing is. I'm trying to remain positive about it all, we knew going into this it could be 3 or 4 months, but it's easy to get discouraged. The hardest part is that our realtor is telling us there isn't anything we need to do to improve the property... it's basically the best it can be, but that still isn't bringing in offers. Frustrating!

Happy Easter!

Saturday we went up to Waco to the zoo again. Lauren seemed to have a pretty good time. We got there late in the day so we didn't have time to do the whole zoo before they closed. We missed out on seeing the Bengal tigers, but we pretty much saw everything else. It's always a nice day when we go walk through the zoo.




We had a nice Easter. We woke up and went to Katrina's house for donuts, then went to church. Afterwards, we came home and had lunch, then Lauren opened her Easter basket before taking a nap. The rest of the day was spent hanging around the house.

Now we're just counting down the next week and a half before Lissa, Sarah, Evan and Ben get here. It's hard to stay patient, but we're doing our best, and we're keeping busy. Tonight we're going to go to Katrina's house for pizza. I need to start getting some party planning done for Lauren's birthday party, too. I think we'll probably grill some burgers and have bbq type food and a cupcake cake. Hopefully it doesn't snow again this year the day of her party.