CRAZY HAIR DAY

Today was CRAZY HAIR DAY at School. Katherine usually hates ponytails but I guess several of them are acceptable for CRAZY HAIR DAY. After I fixed Katherine's Hair, she made me do Colin's.

Also last night, an amazing thing happened.. Colin walked over into the kitchen where I was cooking, pulled on my pant leg, and mumbled (but it was clear enough to make out) I wanna drink. He said it twice, Matt even heard him. I poured some juice in his cup and he took it and walked off! WOW, I am just amazed how far he has come!

If they HAD to work, what would they be?

Matt had to work late Friday night and most of the day Saturday. The kids and I just hung around the house and played. I got a video of Colin feeding himself his yogurt, he is moving a little slow because he was busy watching cartoons, but he finished the whole container with no help on feeding!


Saturday afternoon we took the kids to Matt's parents house to spend the night. Matt and I went to the movies to see Inception, it was one of the best movies I have seen in a long time. Well worth the price of going to the movies. Afterwards we went and had a late dinner and some drinks!

Sunday was a nice relaxing day at home. Colin was pretty fussy last night, I took his sats and they were a little low (high 70's when he is usually high 80's). I took them again this morning and they were low 80's. I put a call into his cardiologist this morning just to make sure. There are still sometimes with him, I am not sure what to look for, so when anything is just a little off, I call it in JUST to make sure! It's a learning process for all of us. I am used to it being low when is is sick, but he does not have a fever or cough.

Watching the kids this weekend, I figured out if they had to get jobs right now, what they would be.

Katherine:
- Option 1: Any type of performer: Singer, Dancer, Actress, Broadway. Right now she is so theatrical, loves the spotlight, loves the attention.
- Option 2: Sales person: Katherine like to negotiate. If you tell her to do something, she wants to negotiate the time with you.. I say lets do it in 5 minutes, she request for 7 minutes. If I came up with a plan, she tries to negotiate herself a better plan and then tries to convince me it's better than what I came up with. She has a very charming smile and batting of the eyes that she tries to seal her deals with.

Colin:
- Option 1: Engineer: Colin LOVES to take things apart and put them back together. He loves taking the cap of bottles, then putting them back on, taking the off. He likes to try to make everything fit inside each other. You can just see it in his eyes, he likes to figure out how everything works.
- Option 2: If it wasn't for his heart, a pro baseball player. Man he has an arm! He can throw pretty far and accurate! But this one will just have to be in dream world. We can all have dreams :) Since we are in the "dream world" option 2 can also be supplemented by "Professional Cuddler". I think he would be awsome at that job and make lots of money.

Day at the Beach

Saturday morning we got up early and headed down to Galveston to take the kids to the beach. You should have seen all the stuff we packed for short day trip, but with two kids, you seem to pack the whole house. We got down to the beach at 9:00am, and it was plenty warm enough already. Luckily it was a slight overcast, so it kept the temp down some.

This was Colin's first time to the beach, we have been taking them to the pool almost every weekend, but there is something so special about the beach, the ocean waves, and of course sand. Katherine and Colin had fun playing in the water, but mostly making sand castles, digging in the sand, and making "choc-co-lot-ta" as Katherine called it (sand and water in a bucket).


Matt always likes to look for seashells, Katherine usually will go with him, but she was too busy this time!
After a few hours at the beach, we headed to the seawall to go eat at The Spot. Colin got mad when we put him in the car, but he was sound asleep after 3 minutes, he slept through lunch, he missed a GREAT lunch.

Then we headed down to The Strand to visit a few shops and get ice cream at La Kings old fashion ice cream parlor. Katherine even got a new favorite toy.. A pink ukulele (she calls it her guitar). On the way back to the car, Katherine told us it was too hot to walk, she was right, it was now about 1:30pm and the sun was out in full force. Once we got to the car, the kids were both asleep before we left the island.

We stopped at Russell and Lara's on our way home to visit. Then home to unpack the car, take showers, and relax! We had a great day and we all were pretty tired!

Sunday we took it easy, did the grocery shopping, cleaned the house, and made my mom's famous spaghetti. Katherine AND Colin ate a huge plate, it was a very big hit last night. Katherine played her ukulele all day and made up songs to go with her beautiful music.

This weekend, Colin's food intake really increased! He is wanting bottles less and less, still not off of them yet, but he was drinking more of his milk out of his cup than his bottle this weekend. Sunday he finished his lunch and Matt had to go fix him more because he was still hungry. Katherine has taught Colin to say her favorite saying (and you can hear it pretty clear).. "I wanna snack". He will say it and either stand at the cabinet door or point to it. It's so great to see him eating like that. Anyone who has had or taken care of a baby with feeding issues knows what a blessing it is to watch them want to eat and not have to be forced. Something that most people take for granted with children, I know I did with Katherine.

Quite weekend

We had a very quite weekend, which is unusual for us. I did not take ANY pictures this weekend, which is very unusual for me. Colin was under the weather this weekend, so we took it easy.

To catch up on general things:
Katherine
- Katherine moved into the Pre - K room at school. Her teacher says she is doing really well. She is doing great writing the whole alphabet not just her name and her number look good too.
- Is fascinated about "boyfriend/girlfriend" lately. I know it's all the princess movies she watches. Her teacher said the whole class talks about marriage and becoming a prince & princess. I think we are going to have our hands full.
- Loves to perform and sing lately. She is constantly making up new songs and the same question always follow "did you like my song", which I always follow up with "of course I did".
- If asked, will always pick out a dress to wear, is getting pretty girlie lately.
- We are growing out her bangs, she seems fine with that
- Wants Colin around her 95% of the time, he can sometimes play with her toys, but she can always plays with his.
- When she wants to do something, after she tells you what it is, she says "Is that a good plan?". If I tell her we are going to do something she does not like, She says "That's not a good plan".
- 4 yr old stats - 39 inches (50%) and 33 pounds (50%). She finally caught up after being 20% in both for so long.

Colin
- 15 months on July 3rd
- 20 lbs (10%) and 29 inches (10%)
- New words: Bubbles, PaPa, tickle, mine, no.. Brings all his words to about 15 now
- Walking/Running everywhere

Through my experience with Colin, I have been following many heart babies/children through the blog world. The heart community has been great getting to know other parents that are experiencing the same things we are.

There were many great things that happened lately. One baby received her new heart, another found out he does not need surgery just yet (they were worried about his O2 levels at last visit), another found out she will not have to have her 3rd surgery until she is about 4 (the age range is 2 to 4, in best case- the child is older). Several heart moms are pregnant, so we are hoping for no issues this time around. We have an HLHS baby due in a few days and his mom is just amazing, we wish her all the best.

But with all the great news, there is unfortunately sad news. A baby I was following, before he was even born, did not survive the 1st surgery, which is the hardest on these kids. It is heartbreaking to see that, and know that it could have easily been Colin. Even though I never met these people, my heart hurts so much for them.

Many people always assume Colin is fine, when I tell him he has one more surgery to go, then most replies are "So he will be fixed after that?". I just say , we hope so, but don't go into detail about no one knows. No one knows what his future holds, you can not fix this you can only try to make the body work in a way it was not designed to. In that holds many problems. The oldest survivor is early 30's, after that is a guessing game. Of course I worry about Colin's heart when he's 10, 15, 20, 30, 40, 50 years old. There are many adults out there that are doing just fine with HLHS and medical technology has gotten even better since they had their surgeries. There is so much hope in the vast uncertainty.

So I try to always focus on Colin is here and healthy now! I want him to experience so much in life and want to give him every opportunity to do it. I want him to know no bounds in life, that he can accomplish whatever he wants. I will deal with the tantrums, sleepless nights, the biting that he has started with a smile on my face, because he is simply here with us, and that's a miracle to me. I wish that all parents would get to have all that and more!

America's Birthday - Happy 4th of July

We had a very nice holiday weekend. Katherine liked saying "Happy Birthday America" instead of Happy 4th of July, but who wouldn't, a birthday sounds more exciting!
The days and days of rain finally ended on Saturday, our area of town had 6 inches of rain in three days. So we ended up having nice weather for the holiday weekend.

Saturday - It was time to set Katherine's butterflies free. We thought she would be a little sad, but she did a great job. I think that was a great learning experiment to watch them go from caterpillars, to cocoon, then to butterflies, then to set them free! Saturday night we went to Matt's parents for his dad's birthday. We had a nice dinner, cake and ice cream, and fireworks. Katherine got to do some sparklers, and small fireworks, but her favorite was the snap dragons (the little rolled up paper you throw down on the ground and they pop). Colin enjoyed the sparklers and even tried to grab one for himself. Both kids were passed out on the ride home.

Sunday - Happy Birthday America was the key phrase in our house. We put out our flags and the USA window stickers. We went for a nice hike through the Houston Arboretum. We had fun walking through the trails, seeing all the butterflies, dragonflies, birds, turtles, and interesting bugs. Katherine was having a lot of fun until the last 10 minutes, when she looked at me all sweaty and said, "Mom, it's tooo hot to walk". She was right, it was now 11:30am and getting hot. So off home to fix lunch, play inside for awhile, and get ready for fireworks!

About an hour before we left for fireworks, Katherine was running around, with her flags, singing about America. She was READY! We drove out to the football stadium to watch the show and meet up with some friends. We went into the field we parked in last time, Matt was trying to find a place to park, we went around a truck, and SLOSH, the Tahoe was stuck in the mud! The truck Matt was trying to go around was also stuck, all those 6 inches of rain made it one muddy field! Matt and some other guys tried to push it out, and put boards under the tires, but did not work. But Matt flagged down a guy with a Hummer and he said he would help us after the show. So we grabbed all of our stuff out and went to our friends car to watch the fireworks. Our car was stuck in a water puddle with LOTS of fire ants (Matt and my legs are proof of that)!

The firework show was great. Katherine of course loved the purple ones the best, though she watched it with her hands over her ears because according to her "It's TOO LOUD". Colin loved his first fireworks display. He was quite and still and watched the whole show. He fell asleep right after it was over, it was way past his bedtime. After it was over, the guy in the Hummer did come back and tow us out. It was very funny on the way home, just not while we were there!

Monday we got up and took the kids to our neighborhood waterslide/splashpark. Katherine met some little girls to play with and Colin was running around enjoying all the sprayers. I took him down the little waterslides, at first he didn't know what to think of them, but ended up liking them. I didn't get any pictures, Matt had Katherine and I had Colin, no extra hands for the camera. That night my brother, sister-in-law, and dad came over for dinner, Matt smoked a brisket and I made cupcakes. My dad took a consulting job in Louisiana to help clean up the gulf from the oil and has been gone for 2 weeks, he is home for a few days, then back out for 2weeks. My mom is in Arizona right now visiting with her family.

Katherine's 4th Birthday - On the Island

Thursday was Katherine's birthday, I took the day off so she could have her own special day. Though we were feeling some side effects from hurricane Alex, we were not going to let that stop us. We picked up Russell and Lara and headed down to Galveston. We left Colin at school, though he would have enjoyed the trip, I really wanted the day to be ALL about Katherine.
We went down to the Aquarium at Moody Gardens (thanks Brandon)! Katherine had a great time seeing all the fish, sharks, turtles, penguins, and stingrays. After the Aquarium we had lunch on the seawall and got to see a little bit of the mother nature at work. Even though Alex hit Mexico, we still have had lots of rain and wind the last three days.
We got home an opened presents. Katherine got an pretty pink baseball glove and princess ball, Colin liked it too, a painting set, a new Tinker bell game for her Leapster, and a stencil set to draw with.
I made spaghetti for dinner, one of her favorites. Afterwards the kids were running around crazy. I recorded a little of it, turn your volume up. And Katherine is not wearing any clothes since we were having spaghetti, I didn't want to spend the night scrubbing it out of her dress!



So that brings to close Katherine's week and a half long celebration for her 4th birthday, I think she had a great one. This morning she told me that we were not going to work or school today, but going back to the Aquarium, I promised her we will go again, with Colin, but NOT today!