Brielle is 1!!!

 Our girl, too, is growing up oh so fast. I can easily recall the day we found out the baby growing in my abdomen was a girl. I cried tears of joy, what a blessing to have two sweet children, one a boy and one a girl. And she has proven to be a blessing. She is such a sweetheart, very social, loves to be held and around everyone. She is brave yet cautious, taking one step then waiting a week until doing it again, and continuing that process for a couple of months before she finally began to really walk at 11 months. She is very stubborn, just like her brother. She was truly a piece of cake for 11 months. She's still good, but we have seen the stubborn streak come out, even throwing a few tantrums when she doesn't get what she wants (three months earlier than my firstborn) and almost always refusing to sign, preferring to whine for what she wants instead. Im certain she understands, though. Today she was holding her Jessie doll and when told to pull the string she found it and obliged. I don't think I've ever told her that was the string before, yet she seems to have strong receptive language. She is also already starting to talk. The two words she uses frequently and discriminately are "lala" for Bella and "baba" for baby. She loves babies, anytime I pull out a doll she takes it and quickly hugs it to her saying "baba." She also adores her older brother, frequently trying to join him in play and kiss him. If he wants to, he can easily make her laugh. And she also adores Daddy, running to him when he gets home from work. She's a great sleeper, taking two naps a day and sleeping 11 hours each night. She's never used a pacifier, preferring her index and middle fingers, and recently also has a little pillow she likes to snuggle with. She has six teeth and is working on the next two. Her hair seems to have settled in at a very light brown, some even say blonde, although not as blonde as Wes. It is also becoming increasingly curly. Today I noticed that when wet it actually reaches her shoulders, but the bottom is now so curly that it rests up near her ears. She is also a very big girl, at her last check up she was in the 97% for height and 95% for weight, still holding on to her adorable leg rolls. And she has stunning eyes, I frequently get comments from strangers when we are out. (In her one year pictures you'll notice a mark on her nose, in typical child fashion she scraped herself up two days before the picture appointment). She is one happy little girl. Her favorites right now: giving kisses, bananas, grapes, eating in general, Wes, reading books, music and dancing, grandparents, baby dolls, crawl chase, necklaces and the pool.  We absolutely love our sweet little girl.

Weston is 3!!!

As every parent says, "I just dont know where the time has gone." In many ways these last three years have flown by, my life before kids seems very distant, yet at the same time it has been a long road to get to this point. My little guy has turned three. He sure is a treasure to us. When we recently took him to get pictures I hesitated at choosing my favorite because I thought it looked too much like his 2 year picture, then I pulled it up and boy oh boy has he grown and changed in the last year. He now weighs in at 35 pounds and it just over three feet tall, he'll pass me up before I know it. In the last year his vocabulary has exploded. He started speech services just before his second birthday and had one word, "yeah." Now he has too many words to count. He still gets speech services, but instead of his toddler, one on one therapies, he is now a big boy who goes to preschool! And he seems to love it, he even takes the bus home from school. He also gets 18 hours of in home behavioral therapy a week, which I can already see making a difference. Im not going to lie, it can be hard, but its paying off, in the last couple weeks alone we have seen his imagination take off. It seems like every hour he is coming to us playing a new character... "Im Peter Pan, Mickey Mouse, Dinosaur," etc. Brielle gets jealous of all the playtime attention he gets from the therapy, but its also hard work for him, they push him so that we will see the growth. In recent months he has also given up sleeping with a pacifier. Occasionally he tells me he's sad without it, but he seems to have adjusted well to it. He also seems to be mastering potty training, after nine months of hard work we are seeing the payoff. Another big boy step, he is learning to dress and undress himself, and has really stepped up in the last week with a token system we've set up where he earns minutes of his favorite tv show by doing these things on his own. Speaking of favorites, here are some of his currently: Chuggington, anything trains, corn dogs, fruit snacks, grandparents, running around, hide and seek, tea parties, pretending, going to Ethan's house, reading comic books with Daddy, riding the bus, going to the cabin, fountains, and being a big boy. We are thankful to God for the blessing He has given us in this little boy.

Ooops

Well, can you tell I've been a bit overwhelmed lately? My last post was before Christmas, I've got a lot of ground to cover so I had better get blogging. We are in the midst of some big transitions which have been dominating the majority of my time. Weston turned three this week! Not sure how that came so quickly, but with his birthday came the close to his time at Progressive Steps, where he has been getting therapy for speech, sensory processing and social play. I cried on his last day because they have helped us so much. Now he moves on to preschool four days a week at a local elementary school. He will start next Monday. He is excited and so am I. I think he will really enjoy it and will learn a lot. It will also be fun for Brielle to be an "only child" for a couple hours each day. I definitely want to put up some of the pictures from all the fun we've had since my last post, for now, here area few... enjoy :)

Brielle's Hospital Stay

We had a very scary occasion over the weekend. A lot of people have asked about details so I thought I would explain how everything happened for those whoare interested. Wes had come down with a cough last week and Bri started to seem fussy on Wednesday, it appeared she, too, was catching something. On Thursday night she had a low feverand on Friday when she was still feverish and very fussy (which is very odd, she really is almost always happy) and Wes was still sick I took them in to the dr. Wes was prescribed antibiotics for a sinus infection, but since Bri really had no symptoms and only a low fever there was really nothing to do for her. On Saturday her fever rose to 100 and she was again very fussy and lethargic. Kurt and I actually went to Magic Mountain, but when we got her at 5 she really didnt seem like herself. Shortly thereafter I thought she seemed to be breathing very fast and grew concerned. It even seemed like she was regularly neglecting to breathe for a second or two at a time and her fever was up to 102. I put her in the car and drove to urgent care, but they had closed about an hour earlier so we went back home and I let her nap in my arms while I continued to monitor her. At 8 I decided to wake her for a bottle since she hadskipped her last meal, and when I came back with her bottle she had woken, but was clearly not okay. She was trying to move but couldn't really, her head bent slightly back, and this time my thermometer read 106, so we ran to the ER. I was terrified, I had had an uneasy feeling since 5ish but now I thought I might lose her. When I ran into the waiting room I was crying and the guard told me to fill out the paperwork.I was floored, and I told him we need to go in right away with increasing anxiety in my demeanor. When he slowly picked up the phone to call about it I lost it. I started screaming that someone needed to open the door, she was shaking and didn't appear to be breathing, almost everyone in the busy room jumped up and started to yell in my defense. It was only about a minute, but probably the longest in my life. The checked her out and reassured me that she was breathing, but admitted she didn't look well. Whilehooking up the iv she did stop breathing, and then began to seize. By then the iv was in so they were able to get drugs in her right away to stop the seizure, which also knocked her out. From there the administered tylenol and motrin, then did a chest xray, blood and urine culture, cat scan, and a spinal tap to rule out all serious diseases. After she was stable we were transfered to the pediatric icu inTarzana by ambulence. We arrived at 2:30 am. Her fever spiked again that night but went down with meds and from there she continued to improve, so we were moved to the regular pediatric unit. At this point she was really doing well, but they were adamant about keeping her 48 hours to keep rechecking the labs and make sure nothing else showed up. The real challenge at this point was keeping a new crawler content staying in bed for two days. We were released last night and by this morning Bri has been doing great, you wouldn't even know she was sick at all. There is still no answer as to what caused all of it other than to say it was a virus that she reacted badly to. We are so incredibly thankful for all of the prayers and support we received during this scary time, they were a tremendous source of comfort.

A few pictures from the ordeal after things calmed down:

In the picu, you can see in her eyes the remnants of the drugs they had to give her for

the spinal tap.

Also in the picu, continuing to get happier and back to herself.

In the peds ward, we got creative and put a blanket on the floor so she could have a little crawling space.