easter egg art

We take our egg dyeing seriously at the Schultz house. We break out our crafting (snowman)table cloth, sharpies, stickers, rubber bands and mini paint rollers. We are not so much Martha Stewart as we are her younger, awkward step sister.

I always wish that I had boiled more eggs when we are done. We have that much fun.

WOW, I look pretty frazzled in this picture. I am pretty sure I look like this 80% of the time.

And I am pretty sure Harper is Nakey. He has not been liking clothes so much lately.

I have no idea why I had my kids bath before we dyed eggs. Not my best idea.

Harper Dynamite

A couple of weeks ago Scott took the boys to the snow. They LOVED it. But ever since then Harper has been obsessed with his snow boots. Even if it's 80 degrees he still rocks the boots. This would not be that weird if we lived in a place that actually snowed, shoot even rained. But So-cal is the land of one season and snow boots are not required.

Walking in snow boots is really not that easy, especially at the park. He was falling down all over the place. It was making him really mad. I tried to take the boots off of him and I got a boot in the face. I blame myself on that one. Harper can be quite the trouble maker but with a face like this, it's easy to forgive.

And no I have not bought locks for my cupboards/refrigerator and yes, he did help himself to a bag of wheat thins and fruit leather.

The Queen of hearts

For a baby that never leaves the house, Davy is pretty popular. The morning of her birthday we woke up and found this.

 So cute, huh? A little birdie told me it was the youth at my church. Then the next day the party kept a going, cuz we got another heart attack. Davy is so loved. It was a million paper hearts all over our house and car, with sweet messages all from the young adults at my church. Unfortunately the rain got to them before I could take a picture. :(
It made me a little teary eyed that everyone thought of her on her special day. I still get choked up when I think of it. 

M.I.A

SO........ I have been M.I.A lately. The repercussions of the swallow study was a million doctor appointments for Davy. But all is good in the hood. The good news is Davy's G.I Doc and I have decided that we will still give Davy some Purees by mouth and all liquids by tubie. When it comes down to it, Davy has a better chance of aspirating on her throw up or saliva. But fear not, we are being extremely cautious with her feeds. We also will be upping her therapies to almost 6 times a week. I am just waiting for our insurance to give us clearance and then it's full steam ahead(choo choo).

After all the sadness of last week, Davy pulled out all the stops to cheer me up. She definitely succeeded. I just have to show you her latest trick, I think this might be the cutest thing ever. Plus you get to hear Scott sing, kinda. The first time she did it, I cried. I have been working on this with her for 6 months.

Enjoy..................

Isn't she a classy little lady.

P.S I am officially a member of the BLOGHER network!! I am really excited and hope i don't disappoint.

set backs

Here are some things you should know about Davy........ 1. she is very inconsistent, 2. expect the unexpected and 3. that we are always doing two steps forward and then two steps back. So when these thing DO happen, I really should not get upset because it's really her M.O.

I also notice(and tell me if this happens to you) that as soon as I really start to brag about a child's accomplishments, they quickly stop doing the accomplishment. SO NO MORE BRAGGING RUTH!!! When am I going to learn?

Alrighty then, we all know how well Davy has been with eating her grub. We have been working on this for the past couple of months. She has surprised pretty much everyone by how much she loves it and her actual ability to eat. I have to say it has been so freeing to not have to hook her up to machine every couple of hours. I swear Davy even seems happier since she has been eating by mouth.

When a baby has eating issues like Davy, you first need to make sure that it is safe to feed her. A test called a modified barium swallow is usually done before feeding therapy starts. We obviously are a little late with this as we just had it done on Tuesday. During the test, they feed Davy 3 consistencies of liquids, a puree and a solid, all while taking an x-ray of her throat.

I have to admit I was WAY confident walking into this. Davy has been doing amazing with purees and showing NO signs of aspirating. Then, during the test they even spoon fed her the liquids, So I knew we had it in the bag. The test lasted all of 5 minutes. I even joked to the doctor on how fast it was.( I am so dumb) The therapist had me go to the waiting room to wait for the results. While in there I struck up a conversation with a NICU mom. She was telling me all about her sweet baby and how he could go home as soon as he learned to eat. I told her all about Davy. And how some things turn out a little differently then you expect, but that it's OK. What seems scary at first becomes completely normal. Like feeding tubes, not so bad, right?

Well then the therapist came back and asked me to step outside...wait, what?!!!! Outside?!!! I know what that means..... baad news. I don't wanna go outside!!!

She told me that the test can be very quick for 2 reasons; the baby is a champion eater or it is too dangerous to continue. And unfortunately it was too dangerous for Davy to go on. She was silently aspirating on everything they had given her. Cue shocked face, followed by Mom tears.

I did NOT expect this. I was SO sure Davy was doing well. She said that we couldn't have known cuz she should no outward signs, hence silent aspiration.

So we are no longer able to feed her anything by mouth. And she will need to have a lot more therapy. I was completely devastated. Especially seeing how miserable Davy is being back to only tube feeds. She really is missing her cheetos. We are trying to distract her when we feed her by taking her on walks. You all know how Miss Davy has a love affair with her stroller. It seems to do the trick.

Now I am just focusing on the positives. Thank heavens we caught this before Davy got pneumonia. We really avoided a catastrophe. It really is a blessing.

Modern medicine is amazing. I am thankful for tubies, without it my daughter would not be here.

Those are some pretty convincing positives.