One of those Days

Ok, Owen is officially walking now, with a little prompting of coarse. Its so exciting, no matter how many kids you have had, to watch their firsts! I have really tried to cherish every moment with him, I realize how fast they grow and that there is a high probability that he will be my last. He has definitely been a high maintenance kid, dealing with all of his sickness. So we were suppose to go in for a bronchial tube scope last Thursday but he was running a high fever so it was cancelled. A trip to the pediatrician resulted in a tonsillitis diagnosis and another trip to the hospital for more testing. They are doing more test to determine if he has any metabolic diseases that we might be missing, but she also said she was concerned about cystic fibrosis. I called my GI doctor and got him in on Friday to be seen about the loose pooh for over a month and she sent us back again to the hospital for a sweat test. The results came in around five this afternoon and luckily we are friends with one of the nurses, so they called us right away. NO cystic fibrosis. Daddy and I are so relieved! I knew it was a far reach, but I was really starting to get scared. So now we are hopping he is well enough to do the scope which was rescheduled for this Thursday. Hopefully we will be able to figure all of this out soon. Or maybe he will just grow out of all of this and it will be a mystery....that would be the best result! He is doing ok right now, I am crossing my fingers that he can hang in there and not get sick until after Thursday. Wish us luck!

On another note...today Justin has been quite the handful. He had one of his best buddies over to play, Charity and she brought with her a dead lizard. I was thrilled! They decided that they were going to dissect this lizard on my kitchen table with a table knife, until I realized what was going on and quickly disappointed them. So now I have a dead, sort of cut up lizard in my trash can. Later that afternoon he came to me with a bloody nose. No big deal, you kids get them all the time. Daddy and I are experts on getting them stopped. In the process of cleaning him up, he explained that he was trying to stick gum up his nose and that's why it started to bleed. I explained to him how stupid that was, of coarse in a nice way, but come on....who does that! Only Justin! During dinner Dad saw something up there.....Justin told us that he stuck some tissue up there to stop it from bleeding so we keep having him blow his nose to get it out. We finally were able to see it, so I got the tweezers to pull it out....

GROSS! I pulled out a chewed up, full piece of gum out of his nostril. Amazing! I don't think I have ever heard of someone doing that. I couldn't believe it so I had to take a picture to document. So we had another talk with Justin on how if that was left in his nose, it would mold and grow things and we would have to go to the doctor and the doctor would have to operate to get it out and it would hurt really bad and to never never never do that AGAIN. I think he got the message because when we were done, he was so sad and started to cry, saying...Sorry Mommy.

After FHE tonight he showed us a splinter that has implanted itself in the palm of his hand. Dad and I have tried to dig at it, while he screamed and cried. But Justin is now in bed fast asleep, with the splinter still implanted. We realized he has had enough trauma for one day and we will try to dig it out tomorrow. I love my kids. They are so fun! Not a dull moment! Luckily every Mom and Dad goes through one of these days at least once a week. Knowing that makes it a little easier to cope with!

Nothing but Love

Look how happy Owen is pulling my hair. Everyday I have to endure this kind of torture.

It all started with my own habit of twisting, pulling, tugging ,and playing with my hair. If I am bored, tired or just have nothing else to do, I play with my hair. Lots of girls do this. My sister-in-law is guilty as well. If I have a good piece I like to tuck it around my ear, to save it for later....I know I am a little nutty, but this is where my children get this. Owen is pretty bad. He has to have my hair in his hands in order to fall asleep. He wakes up looking for it, if its not within its grasp he freaks out. Today was pretty bad. He has been pulling and biting my hair all day and its driving me crazy! He reminds me of Jake so much. Jake has the same problem. I thought it was so cute when he was little but to this day whenever he gets nervouse or he's just sitting there doing nothing, he will take his hair and flip it in and out of his fingers. I know it bothers him that he has this habit, because he tells me he needs a hair cut when it gets long enough for him to be able to "play" with it. I guess its not too bad of a habit to pass along. It could be something worse, but it does get annoying.

Here are a couple of pictures of Jake trying to get a hold of his cousin Katilyn Kirchners hair. They are old, so sorry for the poor quality. He wasn't trying to be mean, its all out of love. Thats what I keep telling myself whenever Owen is trying to pull all of the hair out of my head!!!!

Laser Tag Night

We went out to Main Event last night for FHE. Jake was promised a night out, where ever he wanted if he did well on his TAKS test. I was so proud of him, he did more than well, he did great so he chose laser tag. Ethan and Justin were not tall enough to go in and participate so we spent tons of Daddy's money on arcade games while he and Dad played. On the way home Justin started to cry..."Mom, Ms. Becki won't give me an A" I started to laugh silently. It was so cute. He thought he couldn't play laser tag because he didn't get an "A". So I explained everything to him and he felt better. The picture is Justin's first day at preschool with Ms. Becki. She taught Ethan the previous two years and we love her dearly. She's been great for our kids and I'm sure she would give Justin tons of A's if he was graded. He's such a good kid for other people, a handle for me, but does really good at school. I love spending time with him. Now that Owen has gotten bigger, I noticed that him and Justin play together a lot more. I love watching this, because it was really hard on Justin when Ethan first started preschool. He misses Ethan so much more now that he is in kindergarten, so I am so pleased to see that he is now able to play with his younger brother. He's had to grow up so much faster than a normal four year old, just to keep up with Ethan and Jacob. Watching him sort of re-vert back so that he plays on Owens level is so cute. After laser tag we came home and had a lesson on how your family will always be there for you. I am constantly telling you boys to be nicer to each other, because your brothers ARE your best friends! Hopefully I can instill this message so that it rings true when your older. I love you guys so much and I am so lucky to have you!

Owen's sick again. It started with a mild fever and a couple of nights with projectile, but on the way back from Houston he really started to go down hill. I took him into the Dr.'s Monday morning. Lately when I call, they all know who he is. All I have to say is, Owen Wall and they have me come in right away. I get to the window to sign him in and they don't even ask me his name...they recognize him by now. So off we went for another chest x-ray. The Dr. put him on albuterol and steroids and when the chest x-ray came back she called and put him on Augmenton. The results showed minimal change since the last three months. I couldn't believe it! This meant he's had pneumonia this whole time and it has not gone away! I got another call from my doctor, wanting me to take him to another specialist. This will be his fourth trip to a specialist...lets see, he has a neurologist, an ENT, a GI, and now a pulmonologist. I called and they got us in the next day. I was hoping that this would be "the one" who would figure this mess out. As we told our story to Dr. Dyson, he went out and came back in several times, re-did a chest x-ray and still was stumped. He said he was waiting for an uhhuh moment but it never came. So now we are trying to get him better and gathering all of his old chest x-rays from all the different radiologists so that in about two weeks we might be going in for another test. This one, he will be sedated for with an IV. I hate watching them try to put an IV in this little boy. It usually takes three or four tries. It makes me so sad to watch him go through so much pain. He's such a trooper though. He just lies still and cries. The paramedics are always saying what a calm baby he is. Anyway, they will be putting a scope down his bronchial tubes and checking out his vocal cords and if they need to, go down further to see whats causing the coughing, the swallow dysfunction and the pneumonia. Hopefully they will find the answer. Right now he is not wanting to eat again and is coughing when ever he puts something in his mouth. His fever has gone down, but not completely gone. You can tell he's not feeling well. He cuddles with me a lot more, so there are some good things coming from this. He's definitely a MAMA's BOY! Tonight we were watching American Idol and every time a song would come on he would go nuts. He loves music and loves to dance so I caught some on video. Its so funny! I love watching this over and over!

WEEKEND AT THE ROBINSON'S RANCH

This last weekend Emily invited us and the Eastman's up to her father-in-laws ranch. "We had a blast!" is an under statement. The boys had so much fun and so many great experiences. We were outside doing something the entire weekend. The ranch was gorgeous. Its a 149 acre horse ranch. Emily brags about it, but you really don't comprehend until you see it. It made Dad and I want to win the lottery so we could get one of these. On the first day the kids rode bikes, played ping pong and rode around in the "mule". When we first heard about the mule we thought, " a donkey?" Nope, it wasn't a donkey! Joe took the kids back in the woods and got it stuck in the mud and had to get it towed out. The kids thought that was so fun. Flying around in the mule was definitely one of the highlights of our weekend. Joe's dad went out the next day and bought two more! We brought Jake's four-wheeler out and all the kids rode around on it. When it was Ethan's turn, I had the video camera rolling and captured Ethan actually rolling the four wheeler on top of him. He took off to fast and was trying to turn it around and it tipped over and rolled on top of him. I was freaking out. What scared me the most was that gasoline was pouring out. I was afraid that it was going to catch on fire and I couldn't get him out from under neath of it fast enough. I think I was more scared than he was. He ended up with just one big bruise on the side of his leg. That wasn't the only exciting scare that we had. After letting all the kids ride the horse and pony in the show room, Dad, Emily, and Joe took them in the fields. All the horses decided to have a competition to see who could buck off the first person and Joe's horse won. When Daddy's horse started to buck, I was sure he was going to fall off, but he was amazing! He stayed on even when the horse was only on his back two feet. He was a true cowboy! I was so impressed by his skills.
We also fished. They had a beautiful pond with an island in the middle. The fish had not been feed for over four months and they were so hungry they would bite the hook alone! It was so much fun watching you guys caught fish after fish. I have never heard grown men say...."STOP FISHING WE CANT KEEP UP." We could have had fish for dinner for weeks!

We also did some clay pigeon shooting. We had so much fun. These are memories that we wont
forget for a long time. Its nice to get away and forget about school, work, house work etc....We have such good friends, and by the way most of these pictures were taken by our wonderful photographer...Becky Eastman. She was so nice to keep her camera around her neck the entire time to capture all of our adventures. The pictures are great, but doesn't do any justice to how much we enjoyed ourselves. Thanks Emily and Joe for showing us such a good time! And thanks so much for Joe's Dad, Elmo. He was so nice to the kids and was so kind letting us use all of his cool toys!

I wanted to add this to my blog. It seems as if this is all about Owen. I do have three other boys, but right now Owen seems to have the most events going on. Owen came down with pneumonia back in January and developed a weird case of swallow dysfunction. The doctors are still puzzled by how this happened but he has been doing a lot better. He was on a feeding tube for over four weeks with one week hospitalization. My friends were amazing to say the least. I had no idea where my other three kids were, but I knew that someone was taking care of them. They eventually sent us home with no real answers but with a stressful task of keeping a feeding tube down his nose, leading to his stomach. Once again I was blessed with amazing friends who had the knowledge and skills to be able to put the tube back down when Owen "accidentally" pulled it out. I did go into the ER once to put it back down, which took over eight hours so I am very grateful to my nurse and doctor friends! We went back to the doctor for another swallow test on March 5th, and was able to bottle feed with thickened liquids. We are still on thickened liquids and will continue with that until his next swallow test on May 5th. Along with that he was diagnosed when he was about four weeks old with a milk protein allergy. He will be on nutramagen for a couple of more months until we can figure out if he will tolerate any form of milk. I tried giving him yogurt the other day and realized he still has not "out grown" the allergy. I am hoping he will , but time will only tell and right now its telling me NO. Since April 2, 2007 Owen has blessed our lives in so many ways as well as drained our pocket books, but he's worth every single penny....right DADDY! :)

Papa Wall gave Owen his very own swing for the swing set! He loves it. When its time to go inside, I hold my hands out to get him out of the seat and he just shakes his head...No!No!No!
Thanks Papa, I love watching him laugh.

Owen is One today!

Owen turned one. Time goes by so fast. He took his first steps yesterday and I wanted to cry. He wasn't feeling very well so he was a little fussy at first, but once I put some sugar in his mouth he perked up.