Rollin', Rollin', Rollin'

Kamryn is rolling from back to front now. Here is the video, as requested...

PS - we're at 11 1/2 weeks....

Updates, We Have Updates...

So much for doing better about posting regularly...
Oops!

Well, here you go. Updates...
Kamryn is doing very well. This week marked her 10th week without a seizure!
She went to the neurologist on Monday. We didn't see our regular neuro., we saw his PA, which was a little wierd. She was great though. We didn't do an EEG, just a chat with the PA (Tasha), and some blood work. They like to get babies off of phenobarb starting around 9 months. The plan is to go back in 3 months, have an EEG to check for evidence of any remaining seizure activity, and come up with a plan for pulling back the phenobarb. If she doesn't have seizures when pulling back, WOOHOO, and if she does, we'll up the other medication she is on, Trileptal. Obviously, we are rooting for the 1st of the two options. We are on a great track to get there. They measured height, weight, head, etc. She is 22 lbs and 28 1/2 inches. Still off the charts for her age.

General info on Kamryn. She is 6 months old and eating solid foods like cereal and vegetables. She is a great baby...very laid back and happy. She grins all of the time. She is finally starting to roll over. She did her first roll on Tuesday night, and another couple tonight. (back to front)

Kenedy is going well. She is still loving school and never wants to leave at the end of the day. She is going to be a part of our church's children's Christmas musical in a couple of weeks. Her first official showbiz debut. : ) Ought to be interesting.

Trying a new way of posting pictures. There should be slideshows of our pre-Halloween pumpkin patch pictures, as well as actual Halloween pics.

Enjoy!

I'm back already... Back off...

Readers forgive me, for I have sinned. It's been 3 weeks since my last blog.

Alright, alright! Quit harassing me already. I'm blogging, I'm blogging... Here are some updates and pictures since last I posted...

Kamryn...
As of today, she has not had a seizure in 5 weeks. WooHoo! Growing like a weed, but hasn't outgrown this dose. : ) Some of the 6 - 9 month pajamas we just got her are getting too small. We're about to have to break out Kenedy's 12 month clothes box---for the 5 month old! She's having a big old time. She just smiles all of the time. Sleeps beautifully. Is trying to roll over. Started cereal. Tried out carrots and loved them. Got dedicated at church. Drooling like she's trying to get a tooth in, looks like an eye-tooth! Everyday is an adventure. Pics below, videos at the bottom...

Hangin' with Hunter

First try with cereal...

Not a huge fan... Lovin' the carrots though!

Kenedy...
She still loves school. Thank goodness, I suppose. I just hate to be the parent that can't get their kid to leave at the end of the day. : ) Speaking of her school, they've got a fundraiser going on and have even got the 3 year olds hocking the wares! So if you feel the need to support the Giddens Elementary PTA and buy some stuff from Kenedy you can go to the online site (http://www.danielsfundraising.com/store/brochures.php?sID=1507380) and type in her Seller ID, 1507380, and she'll get credit for the sales. She can earn prizes for the number of items she sells. She has her eyes on a set of walkie-talkies...Kenedy is still quite enthralled with her baby sister and wants to help with her often. (a lot of times it is to try to get out of something else). She is also very excited to be a flower girl in Audra's wedding, though she likes to call it a flower princess. She also has decided to be Princess Aurora for Halloween. (Sleeping Beauty for all of you who are out of the know as far as princesses go).
Below are some more recent pictures of her...

Trying on her Halloween costume (just to make sure it fit...)

Notice the cute little bob haircut compared to the raggedy-looking flower girl pics.

Practicing to be a "Flower Princess"

Wylee...

After the round of antibiotics and anti-inflammatories, Wylee's "mass" was no longer red and inflamed. We were waiting for the vet to call us back about the surgery to remove it, and while they were busy not getting back to us, the mass just disappeared. It's like it was never even there. CRAZY! But I'll take it.

Trying to get over, but mostly hanging out on the side and pushing around...

First attempt at cereal. She's wasn't a real big fan. She'd rather had her bottle.

First vegetable...Carrots...Doing a lot better with those. If only Kenedy wasn't such a goober! : )

A very busy weekend & Wylee Update

When last we talked, Wylee had been to the vet on Tuesday with a follow up appt scheduled for Thursday. I never got back on the blog after that with all of the hubbub this weekend. Sorry!

So, Wylee's appointment on Thursday went as well as could be expected. The "mass" looked a lot less inflamed, but was still a little swollen. He saw a different vet than on Tuesday, but apparently the notes she left were very detailed and the nurse guy was the same, which helped. She tried to draw some liquid out of the mass, but didn't get much different than before. When she pulled the needle out of the area though, Wylee's swollen mass area began leaking. They thought it would just stop, but it didn't, so the vet tried to squish all of the liquid out. Wylee wasn't a big fan of that! When it just kept coming out, she asked for a bigger needle and poked him a few more times to help get more out. He really didn't like that. They didn't get it all out, but it slowed enough that they decided to stop.
The slide didn't show any cancerous cells, but there was no indication of what the "mass" actually was either. It think that God is trying to tell me something.
This vet thought that surgery was definitely in order to find out what was causing the issue. She wasn't able to do the surgery, the vet who would do it was not in town that week. They were going to consult with her, make sure she was comfortable doing the surgery, and then they would call us back. That was supposed to be today, but we didn't hear from them. We'll be calling tomorrow.

This weekend's hubbub...
The girls got lots of grandparent time this weekend. Dinner with Pepere and Memere on Friday, Grandma and Grandpa came in on Saturday, with visits from Memaw and Papa, Memere and Pepere, Tiffany, Kevin, Hunter, Mary Alice, Laurie, and Aubrey.
Dedication on Sunday went well. We were worried about Kenedy being nervous about being on stage in front of everyone in that great big church, so we had talked it up all weekend. Who knew it would backfire on us? She did a really good job on stage, but when the dedication was over and it was time to leave the stage, she whined very loudly, "but I want to stay on the stage!" for all to hear. The children's ministry coordinator, went ahead and mentioned the children's Christmas musical was coming up and that we may want to keep that in mind for Kenedy... : ) She is definitely all drama, besides the fact that she sings her way through most of the day, with big showtunes-style endings. I think she'll have quite the time in the musical!
We visited with Janma, Chad and Jamie, went to eat with the family and continued the busy-ness throughout the day.

I'll post pics from the weekend when someone sends them to me, as it is hard to be the one taking pictures when you are on stage.

Kamryn's Stats and The Other Problem Child

Today was Kamryn's 4 month pediatrician appointment. We, and everyone else around us, have been waiting for this one to see how she is measuring up these days. (because it affects the meds and she's just ginormous!)
She weighed 18 lb. 10 oz. and was 27 inches long, which literally put her "off the charts" in both categories. She is above the 100th percentile mark. The doctor remarked that he had a some 1 year olds that were her size. Yikes! He looked at his chart a little more and said that this height and weight was average (50th percentile) for 9 month olds. We knew she'd been growing the last two months, but geez!!! At her two month visit, she was just around the 50th percentile for her age.
He thinks that is a good time to go ahead and introduce solids. So we'll have our first round of cereal this week. Look for pictures soon.
She also got the second round of a set of four vaccines today, one orally and three shots. She didn't care for that much, but settled down fairly quickly. She went to work with me for an hour, since I was running late to a meeting from her appointment. The folks at the campus I was at appreciated her attending the meeting. Of course, we may not have been as productive as normal...
Other Kamryn related stuff:
She hasn't had a seizure since Thursday.
Her dedication at church is this weekend.

On to the other problem child...
No, not the crazy 3-year old, it's the 7 year old, Wylee. Last night, he was his normal busy active self. This morning he woke up and wouldn't eat and was very lethargic and just laid around all morning. Obviously, not his normal self. He also has a booboo on his leg, which we thought could be getting infected making him feel bad. So we scheduled an appt this afternoon at the vet.
At the vet, he was running a fever (whatever that is for a dog) and was walking gingerly. We thought it was due to his leg booboo at first, but it wasn't it. (This will eventually get into "Too Much Information" land, so feel free to skip to the end, if you don't want to hear about doggy insides.)
For a year now, we've been operating under the assumption that he had a small hernia, which appeared to be a bulge on his belly by his rear leg. Today, though I hadn't noticed it when I put him in the car, the "bulge" had substantially increased in size and was red and inflamed looking. The doctor decided that was what was making him feel bad, as it was red and angry looking and much bigger than it has been for the last year. They tapped the bulge to see what kind of liquid was in it, and got nothing but some bloody liquid. She prepared a slide of it to study and then also talked other options with me. We could do a rectal to see if everything was where it was suppose to be, an x-ray to see if they could determine if any organs were in what appeared to be the hernia, or a sonogram, which they were not equipped for at 5 pm. So we did two of the three...
The rectal turned out to be inconclusive, she had small hands and he was too large a dog to really get a good feel for the matter... We went ahead and did the x-ray, hoping to get a good shot of the abdomen to see if we could determine if there was indeed a perforation of the abdominal wall and if there were organs that were trapped in the hernia that could be having blood circulation cut off to them, which could end up being a fatal issue if not dealt with in a timely enough manner.
After the x-ray was developed, she showed it to me and explained it enough for me to understand. There was a very clear abdominal wall, and appeared to be in tact with no perforations. All of the organs (liver, intestines, bladder, etc) were in place and accounted for above the abdominal wall. All of this means that it is almost certainly not a hernia.
The problem is... what is it? (Not that we haven't played that game before!) Right now she is calling it a "mass." It could be a tumor of some sort or possibly be cancerous, but we don't know right now. Most likely he will need surgery, but that can't happen until the swelling and inflammation goes down. So, she prescribed an antibiotic and anti-inflammatory and wants to see him on Thursday to decide how to proceed, but if he isn't back to himself tomorrow afternoon, she thinks we should bring him in.

Hopefully the mediation will do it's job and Wylee will start feeling better. He looks pretty pathetic right now. We'll keep you updated on this saga as it unfolds.