Guess What I Got Today?

I got a text from Jayna today ordering me to update my blog.  So here I am.  Listening to my little sister.  Sorry I haven't been updating it.  I haven't felt like there's been a lot to say, but I guess there have been some cool things.

First off, Natalie got glasses!  We took her to the pediatric opthamologist here in Albuquerque for a follow up for her eye patch therapy, and he said she didn't need eye patch therapy anymore, and he thought her eyes were crossing because she's extremely farsighted.  His theory is that she was trying so hard to focus on things close up that she was crossing her eyes.  Hopefully the glasses will let her eyes relax.  I think the glasses are super cute and she looks just adorable:

I also did my 5K last Sunday.  I finished in 39 minutes, 43 seconds.  It was a better time than I thought I'd get.  It was hard, but fun, and totally great.  I'm signing up to do another one on July 19th.  I also registered Lauren to do the Kids' K after my race.

I think she'll have a lot of fun with that.  It'll be so cute to see her in her little number.  Less than three weeks to prepare for that race.  My only goal is to improve my time over the last one, which I think I can do.  I go to the gym nearly every day.  Right now I'm just working on endurance, and I'm up to running 20 minutes straight on the treadmill.  I go really slow, about a 12 minute mile, but that's ok, the speed can come later.

Ben took his checkride this morning for the days portion of the IP Course.  He passed, of course.  In a few days they'll start on nights and hopefully they'll have good weather and will be able to finish up sooner.  I'm really looking forward to getting into our new house and setting things up.  As for our house in Texas, it's off the market and is being rented.  It's not what we really wanted to do, but that's ok, we can try to sell it again later, and for the time being, someone else can pay our mortgage down.

Splash!

On Saturday we all got together for my friend's son's second birthday party. They rented a giant inflatable water slide and everyone got in on the action. I think the adults made just as many trips on it as the kids (if not more). We all had a blast.

Sunday was Mother's Day and it was pretty quiet here. Ben worked on my car for a little while during the day and we had a nice dinner. On Monday evening I drove back to San Antonio with Natalie. She had a CT scan Tuesday morning because I was concerned about a little fluid build up she had. Dr. M said everything looked great and that her CT scan showed "dramatic improvement" over the CT scan from last month. He showed me the two scans and I was able to see the difference, too.

Yesterday Natalie had her last PT session with her PT therapist and she was impressed with Natalie's progress. She said she thought that at the rate Natalie is improving, she won't need PT anymore by the end of the summer. That's great news, and we'll have to have her checked out once we get up to Washington.

This weekend Ben and I have to get our stuff together for the summer. On Monday I'm taking the girls down to San Antonio and picking up Lissa at the airport. Natalie has a few appointments on Tuesday again and hopefully we'll be able to get on the road Tuesday afternoon to head to Albuquerque. Ben will stay at the house to oversee the packing and loading of all of our stuff.

The lady who put an offer on our house officially rejected our counter offer/withdrew her offer. So the house is still on the market for now. We're hoping to sell it, but we're going to put it on the rental market as of June 15th. Maybe another year of paying the mortgage and waiting for the housing market to stabilize will work out for us.

I'm getting really excited to head to Albuquerque next week, it's going to be a fun summer!

This Week

This week started out with my birthday on Sunday. Ben made breakfast and we spent most of the day playing in the front yard. Lauren got a t-ball set and has been learning how to use it. She can hit the ball, which is pretty amazing since she closes her eyes every time. :) She has fun chasing and throwing the ball as much as hitting it.

Natalie and I sat under the shade of the tree while Ben and Lauren played. Some neighbor kids from up the street came down and got in on the action, too. They all had popsicles before we called it an afternoon.

We did a quiet dinner at home on Sunday. On Monday night we went to my friend Mandy's house. Her birthday is May 5, so she invited our friends over for a joint birthday celebration. We had lots of good food and cupcakes for dessert. Here's a picture of me and Mandy.

On Tuesday we had Tumblers as usual, and then lunch as usual. On Wednesday, Natalie had PT and did really well. That night we drove down to Austin to visit Ben's cousin, Jason, who was in town from New York. They were thinking it had been about fifteen years since they had seen each other last. We went to dinner and then took Lauren swimming at his hotel and just hung out most of the night. We stayed up way too late.

We got an offer on the house last week. It was really low, so we countered it, and we're waiting to hear back. We had another showing yesterday that we haven't heard about. I hope things happen soon.

On Sunday night I emailed Natalie's Neurosurgeon about some fluid that I've been seeing build up under her scar again. He called me back that night and she's going to go in this Tuesday for another CT scan and a visit with him. If she needs another surgery, she'll probably have it on Thursday. I'm hoping she doesn't, but there is a chance. Monday night I'll drive down to San Antonio and if she doesn't need surgery I'll come back on Tuesday. If she does, I'll come back on Friday and pack Saturday and Sunday, and then we have to go back to San Antonio on Monday either way. Natalie has appointments all day long on Tuesday the 19th and once we're done, we drive straight to Albuquerque for the summer. I have just over a week left in this house. I'm really going to miss it.

But, I'm also looking forward to spending the summer in Albuquerque. Sarah and I are signing up to do 2 5Ks this summer. One is the Cherry Garcia 5K and the other is the Chunky Monkey 5K. I don't really know why I want to do it since I hate running so much, but I think it will be fun, and I'll feel like I really accomplished something. My goal for the first one is easy, I just want to finish, and for the second one, I just want to improve my time. I'm not going to knock myself out over it.

Natalie had a big accomplishment today. She rolled onto her stomach (which she's been doing for a while) and then lifted her head all the way up! That's such a milestone for her, and a great improvement and I'm so proud!

It's MAY!

This month comes with a whole lot of stuff to do! On the fun side, I have my birthday, Mother's Day, and our 9th anniversary. We also have Natalie's last (and really long) appointment in San Antonio, a house to pack up, two cars to load, and moving out to do. That's on top of hoping the house sells.

We officially dropped the price of our house yesterday. It was a little painful to do it, but we need to bring in more showings if we want to get an offer. Please say a little prayer that the next owner makes an offer this week or next week.

Natalie's eye appointment went well. Dr. R thinks now that her vision is ok but that she's showing a preference for her left eye and that is why her right eye is weak. He started her on eye patch therapy. She has to wear an eye patch 2 hours a day, 5 days a week for probably the next year. She doesn't love it, but she does tolerate it ok, and two hours isn't that long. She has also shown some really good strides with her PT. Her head is stabilizing so much, and she even lifted it when she was on her belly on Wednesday! That was the first time and it was great to see! We have some homework for her PT and we see the PT Therapist next Wednesday.

And here is my favorite recent picture of Natalie because I actually caught her smiling!!

Isn't that a great grin?!

I've been working on Snapfish making photo books. First is "Freakin' Delicious" which is our family cookbook. As of right now, I'm just waiting on two recipes and then we'll be able to order them. It's become a hybrid cookbook/photo album, and that's really fun. It's going to be totally cute. The other one is a book full of the old pictures I scanned in last year at Mom's house. Lots of my baby pictures and pictures of my parents and a few of my sisters. That will be really nice to have in print.

Sunday is my birthday, and we don't have anything planned for that day. Monday we're going to go to Mandy's house and grill. Her birthday is Tuesday, so it's a joint birthday celebration. I think we're going to have cupcakes and just a really good time.

Next Wednesday or Thursday we might get to meet up with Ben's cousin, Jason. He's going to Austin and we're going to drive down to see him. I didn't get to meet him at the big family party in Albuquerque last fall.

Lots to keep us busy over the next three weeks! Looking forward to the bee on May 25th!

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!

Day After Surgery

Natalie's surgery went great.  She lost very little blood when they removed the teratoma and they were able to release her spinal cord and examine the cysts.  He thinks the cysts are benign and the teratoma was sent off to pathology.  While she was sedated he also tapped her shunt and confirmed that it is working and drained the area under her skin where some fluid was building up and wrapped her head in an effort to get the skin to heal back down.

I stayed at the hospital until 7:45 last night.  They ran her blood after surgery and her hemoglobin levels were low, so they gave her some blood to raise those levels before they took her breathing tube out.  She was stable last night when I called, but had thrown up after they tried feeding her.  She is moving her legs and toes which confirms that they didn't damage any nerves during surgery.

They said she'd be out Saturday at the very earliest, but I'm still going to plan on Monday just so I'm not disappointed if it isn't earlier.

As for the house, the same couple who had a showing on Wednesday went back yesterday for another showing.  Word is they LOVE the house, but they still haven't placed an offer yet, so we'll see.