Memorial Day Memories!!

I know it is a little late but this week has been Crazy! Here are some pictures from last weekend. We were invited over the Three Peas Household for a cook out and some play time. Drew goes to school with the little boy standing by him on the tractor, they have become little buddies. Drew had a blast playing and fell asleep on our ride home (even though we live just a few minutes away!)

Tony's Surgery

Just a quick update.

Tony had his surgery yesterday on his legs. It took a little longer than we thought it would, but it went well.

He says that his feet have not hurt at all, just the pain in his legs where they did the surgery. He should be sore for a few more days and then he should be good to go! Tomorrow he goes in for an ultrasound to make sure that everything went well and that there are no blood clots. Then we go back again next Wednesday. He is walking fine but he has been in more pain today than he was yesterday. They did give him some pain meds which seems to help, but he can definitely feel them wear off. He has had to wear super cool thigh high compression stockings since the surgery and is not allowed to take them off until after his appt. tomorrow, then he has to wear them during the day for the next week or so. They are super cool (not so much) and he has been wearing them with his shorts and sandals. (silly man) :-)

Houseguest

We have a houseguest and Drew is SO SO excited! Her name is DEA (we call her Dee). DEA is Grandma and Grandpa's black lab. Since they were going out of town, they dropped her off to stay with us for a while. (DEA was a police dog that was rescued, thus the name)

Drew was SO excited the first couple nights. He would not go to bed because he wanted to play with her. Drew read books to DEA, played with her, and did not want to leave her side. When it was time to go to bed, Drew dragged her dog bed into his room and put it beside his bed.

Do you notice that he has a plate out for each of them. Each plate had one banana and one apple. What a good job of playing, sharing, and pretend play! (even if it is with a dog!) He is even trying to share his Thomas blanket with DEA - How Sweet!

The next morning this is what I found in DEA's bowl. I guess Drew was trying to help!

Drew is having a blast with DEA. They are such a good pair. DEA has always been very protective of Drew since Drew was born. When they are outside together she is very aware of where Drew is and if he goes to far. In the house she comes to get us if Drew seems the slightest bit upset. She is so tolerant of him trying to ride him like a horse, laying on him, and playing with him. When they play ball she even drops the ball for him and never jumps for the ball until he throws it for her.

.....and NO..... I am not getting a dog for Drew. He can visit DEA whenever he wants.

(I know, I am a mean mommy)

Let's go Take a Bath....and.....POTTY

Okay so I realize by the title it sounds like he is going potty in the bath, he's not, just hang in there...

Yesterday we were at Grandma and Grandpa's and since it was getting late I was afraid he would fall alseep on the way home so I wanted to get him in his pajamas. He had been playing outside and really needed a bath so I told him he needed to take a bath. He got up from what he was doing and said "Go Take A Bath" and ran to the bathroom. Before I caught up with him he already had his Pull Up off and was climbing on the toilet. I decided to stay back in case he would stop if I got to close. Next thing I know I can hear the PEE in the POTTY!!!

I cannot believe that he went in there, took his Pull Up off by himself, climbed on by himself, and actually Pee'd! Usually any of those steps cause lots of screaming and crying.

WOOHOO! GO DREW!!!

So as he was sitting in the bathtub splashing around I reached over to pick up his Pull Up to put it in the trash (he missed that step)(NOT COMPLAINING THOUGH!!!) There was Poopy in the Pull Up! I can't believe that he Pooped in the pull up then took it off and pee'd in the toilet.

My goal for the summer is to have him as close to fully potty trained at least during the day by the end of the summer. Maybe he is finally getting ready! At his three year check up the doc said with him it was more important to push communication than potty training. We still try to push him to use the potty whenever we change him, at least make him sit on the potty, but he never ASKS to go.

Wish us luck!

Cutie Patootie!

Drew had his follow up at the urologist today (for the kidney ultrasound and the VCUG). The good news is that the tests were great! (we are so relieved!) Basically we don't know what it is that caused the infection but it is gone and we know there are no abnormalities in his urinary tract or kidneys.

They wanted a urine sample....yeah right. What is with these people! After about 20 minutes in the bathroom trying every trick that I could, I decided just to let him go back to the exam room bare butted. Some of the staff thought I was nuts, but whatever. So yet another doctor's office has seen Drew's cutie patootie walking around. Eventually the doc caught up with us and told us not to worry about it since we had him retested a week ago and it was fine.


Two cute things that happened today....

On the way to the doctor's office he says, "go to doctor, then IHOP"
Poor baby.... When he had his ultrasound and VCUG we bribed him with IHOP and look what has happened.

Sitting in the waiting room, a girl sat down across from us (maybe 8 or 9 years old). Drew gets up and goes and sits down next to her. He puts his hand on her arm and just says "Nice to meet you"
(What a HUGE thing that was for him to do!)

....catching up....

I seem to have a habit of saving posts as drafts, thinking I will go back before the day is over and edit them.... not sure why I do this...

So I am catching up right now posting from the last week, so sorry for the delays....

Pictures of my sweetie...d.d.d..drew

So I was taking pictures of fabric today for the website and Drew was feeling jealous and wanted me to take pictures of him.

Drew in his "d" shirt....yes those are bowling pins on the "d"

Look Mommy, a "d" D sounds like duh, duh, duh

Here Drew is doing the sign for "b" not "d".

He was showing me the difference, so I wouldn't get confused. So thoughtful.

Drew was insistent that I take a picture of both of his feet. Like the serious look on his face?

Then he wanted a picture of his nose

Then of him upside down.

Pictures BY my sweetie...

Drew got hold of my camera and was taking pictures, take a look at what he thought was picture worthy.

His Lightening McQueen Slipper and his feet

This is a picture of a book that Drew was reading that was his Great-Uncle Robert's 40 years ago.....

...and one of my sweet brown-eyed boy!

Time for an EEG ....egg?

So Drew had an EEG scheduled for 1:00pm today. He was supposed to wake up early and stay awake until his test. I was so scared that this EEG was going to be a total nightmare. I could just see him pulling all of the wires off of his head and screaming and throwing a fit, I could only imagine what this was going to be like. Turns out it was nothing of the sort.

Drew woke up on his own at 3am this morning. Strange since he has actually been sleeping normal hours lately, but we didn't fight it since he was supposed to get up early. He was so tired on the way to the hospital that we had to really work to keep him awake. We tried to talk to him about the EEG, which he was slightly confused but still convinced it spelled "egg" but yet he knew that egg had 2 g's. We talked about them putting the wires on his head and how we "Don't touch the wires", which he would repeat in a sing-songy voice. Luckily the hospital is pretty close to our house and he managed to stay awake until we got there. We had the sweetest tech. She was so patient and really worked with us to keep him happy. Drew immediately climbed up on the bed and was analyzing the wires (but not touching them) and saying "Don't touch the wires" (while shaking his finger). I climbed up on the bed with him and the tech gave Drew a mirror so he could watch what she was doing to his head and one of the water soluble pencils that they mark his head with. She let him draw all over the white hospital sheets on the bed with the pencil since it would wash right out. After getting all of the wires attached to his head, she began wrapping his head to keep the wires in place and he actually got to the point where he could barely hold his eyes open. Within 2 minutes of being prepped he was asleep! We were so excited, he is Supposed to be asleep for the majority of the test and that could have taken forever!

Of course then they wanted us to wake him up after 25 minutes and then do the whole flashing light in the eyes thing. (He was not happy about the waking up, or the flashing lights!) I had Tony hold on to him, because even though I don't have problems with flashing lights with my epilepsy, it still makes me nervous.

It will probably be 1-2 weeks before we have the results from the test.

Let's go Vinny's Carnival...

One of my close friends here, Sarah, has a little boy, Vinny who is 4 years old. I met Sarah, Vinny, and her daughter Desi, and husband Charlie, through my mom's group and Vinny also goes to the same school as Drew. Vinny is such a sweet little boy and was born with a severe cleft lip, cleft palate and a heart defect. He has had many surgeries throughout his life and is such a trooper. Recently he went in for a quick surgery and ended up finding out that he has Rhabdomyosarcoma, a rare form of cancer.

Vinny has been coping by baking lots of yummy cookies and cakes for the nurses at the hospital. How sweet is that!

This weekend there was a carnival at a local church to raise money for Vinny. They had a silent auction, games, and some inflatables. Drew had a great time and keeps asking to go to Vinny's Carnival. He seems to think it is a regular place to go, not just somthing we did over the weekend.

Please say a little prayer for Vinny and his family and If you want to read more about Vinny, his progress, and more you can read his Caring Bridge Site:http://www.caringbridge.org/visit/vinnydigerolamo

Special Time with Grandpa

On the way home yesterday, Drew is in the backseat of the car, barely holding his eyes open and says:



"I"

"H"

"O"

"P"

"IHOP"

"go IHOP grandpa"



"IHOP with grandpa"



Must have had yummy dreams.....

Rub a Dub, Three in the Tub....

And who do you think they be...

Last night we had BAD storms. As usual when it storms Tony gets all nervous and sent us to the bathroom. Last night we had three tornadoes come nearby and it was really scary. Well Drew was still asleep but we got him out of bed and I held him in the bathtub while he was still asleep and Tony scrunched in with us. He had gotten Drew's old crib mattress out of the garage to use to cover our heads in case the tornado hit us. He had the television in the living room turned up so we could hear them say the road names of where the tornado was at a given time. They kept naming road names that were headed our direction and really had us scared for a few minutes, but it missed us and then we were scared that it was headed towards mom and dad's house, but they were safe as well.

Now keep in mind... We were all three in the bathtub. Not in the nice roomy garden tub in our master bath, but in the small guest bath in the safest room of the house, and remember Tony is nearly 6'3". Drew slept for a while, but when he tried to wiggle around to get comfortable and realized there was no where to go, he woke up and I can only imagine confused as to why he was in the bathtub, with mommy and daddy, in our pajamas. We eventually kept him calm by letting him play with the flashlight. Thank goodness we didn't actually end up needing the flashlight.

There are supposed to be more storms this weekend...

Household Health Update

They treated Drew for a UTI and the culture came back that it was in fact a kidney infection. Hopefully the antibiotics cleared it up. Yesterday he went in for a renal ultrasound and a VCUG. He said that the ultrasound was "so gooey" and watched the pictures of his kidneys on the screen. The VCUG, well well that was pretty traumatic, but he (we) made it through. It involved a catheter, dye, and x-rays....not fun.

We are waiting to go back to the urologist to know the details but the initial report was that yesterday's tests went well. So that is good news.

Other than that Drew has been doing well. No more episodes of not breathing. He is now sleeping in his own bed again. The doctor is trying to convince me that it was all probably a result of his bad infection and to just keep an eye on him.

He has started eating a ton again. His infection must have been part of the reason for all of the weight loss. He stepped on the scale yesterday and was back up to 39. He should be back over the 40 mark soon (at the rate he is going!)

He has also started sleeping remarkably well (without meds) which also makes me wonder how much of it was the infection. At the same time though it has gotten nicer out and he is spending more time outside running and playing and getting more melatonin from the sun. But whatever the reason....I am NOT complaining! The other night he fell asleep at 5pm (after a rough day of playing with grandpa all day!), when he didn't get up at 7pm I thought for sure he would be up at 2 or 3, but no! he slept until 5:30 the next morning! 12 HOURS!! unheard of in this house!

Tony is still having problem with his legs. He is scheduled for surgery on May 28th. So hopefully that will do the trick for him.

I have been doing fine, just ready for everyone to be well.

BIG Hugs! (anyone?)

Drew is going through a hugging phase. It is so cute. He will hug anyone and not just a quick hug he gives them BIG bear hugs and hugs them Over and Over and Over. This weekend mom and I had a booth out at the Farmer's Market for a craft show going on there and Drew was only there for a short while, but he wanted to hug everyone that we knew that stopped in (mostly little girls). It was so cute.

It is amazing though when you think about it. It is so great that he is even aware of other kids being around him. A few months ago he wouldn't have even paid attention to other kids, let alone wanted to hug them.

The hugging phase is so much better than the tackling phase....

Let's do the Pokey Pokey!!

The Pre-K at Drew's school had a performance at the PTA meeting. His class, along with the other 3 year old class and the 2 afternoon 4 year old classes sang 3 songs and they all did so well! One of the songs was the Hokey Pokey, which Drew calls the Pokey Pokey. He even bowed at the end of the performance, it was so cute!

I am continually impressed with Drew's progress! He is doing so well.