look what i can do!

i've learned how to go down the stairs on my belly.  and he somehow learned this all by himself!

for the longest time he would try to go down head first.

he's a quick one too man!  he'll be up those stairs in a flash and then already coming back down before you know it!  thankfully he hasn't fallen down any....although i'm sure the day will come!

test #1

today was test #1 of 2 for the dude.  the upper gi series.

i was pretty worried about how well today was going to go.  first up, not letting the dude eat anything after he ate lunch (11am or so).  all he could drink was water.  i had to pick him up at 1, so i was hoping he would nap for most of the time and he wouldn't have to think about eating.  yeah, no luck!  he fell asleep at school at 940 and woke up around 11.  so when i got there at 1 (while all the other kids were sleeping), graham was laying on his back playing with ms. patricia.  he looked so happy and i hated the thought of taking him away from this and subjecting him to the hospital, barium and xray machine.  i reminded myself....this is necessary.

so off we went.  we arrived at the hospital and got right into registration.  'okay ma'am, all i'm going to need now is your orders for the upper gi.'  D'OH!  yeah, it was at home in my purse because the night before i had transferred everything from my purse to my diaper bag since i knew i didn't want to be left ill prepared for any of the dude's surprises!  luckily the pulmonologist office is literally right across the street from the hospital and a nurse was kind enough to fax over an order for the test.  yeah..not feeling so great about this whole thing since our day just seems to be off.

we only had to wait in the waiting room for about 10 minutes and got brought back to a pediatric xray room...the same one we were in back in august!!  the dude was VERY interested in the IV pole and wanted to push it around everywhere.  the doctor arrived 10 minutes later and was ready to start.  no turning back now!!

the nurse had mixed a bottle for graham, half and half with milk and barium.  i was worried the dude wasn't going to drink from the bottle since he hasn't in so long, and also because of the taste of the barium.  NOPE!  i think he was so thirsty and hungry he would've eaten anything at that point.  we laid him down on the xray table, laid him on his side and on his back while the doctor watched the path of the barium through the screen.  i had to hold graham's shoulders and squeeze the bottle for an even flow, so it was cool to watch the screen and see exactly how the dude was digesting everything.

RESULTS:

everything looked as it should be.  the only thing the doctor noticed was slight reflux, which could be contributing to the dude's wheezing and coughing, but it wasn't significant enough that it would be the sole cause.

NEXT STEPS:

the hospital will send the results to the pulmonologist and we'll go over them when we go to our next check-up on february 3rd.  we also have one more test to get done before then, the sweat test.  that one will be on january 10th in the morning.  the results for that should be pretty quick as well, so we'll definitely keep everyone posted.

THANK YOU...

for everyone's thoughts and well wishes.  they really do help us stay positive through everything.  luckily there are no needles involved in any of these tests, so it makes things much easier!

we <3 all of you!

**ho ho ho**

santa has come to town (well the suburbs technically)!!!

the dude was up at his normal time (645 or so), so we got him changed and ready for the morning and then brought him downstairs.  i don't think he understood what happened last night, but those eyes of his sure did get wide when he saw all the goodies underneath the christmas tree! 

the dude is definitely a dude though.  he went straight to the dump truck full of blocks!  (probably helped that that was one we couldn't wrap)  he eventually got the hang of ripping the paper, but he was more interested in petting rudy and just walking around.  we took a break for breakfast and then went back at it.  kudos to aunt tim and uncle andrea for REALLY making the dude's eyes light up.  he must have seen the pictures of the tunnels and tents and knew exactly what the box was!  and when we finally opened it...oh boy...watch out!  

graham went down for an earlier nap and then was up around 130.  everyone came over in the afternoon and we had a nice evening of appetizers and chili!  it worked out perfectly because everyone was able to graze and no one was tied to the oven.  we all enjoyed hanging out with everyone.  thanks aunt sue, grammie, bruce, justina, sam and garrett for coming over and celebrating the holiday with us!

here is the link to enjoy all of the photos from christmas:

https://plus.google.com/photos/104616318260086788090/albums/5692841344496633745?authkey=CI6HqtWApJeVxAE

christmas eve

'Twas the night before Christmas, when all through the house

Not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse;

The stockings were hung by the chimney with care,

In hopes that St. Nicholas soon would be there;

The children were nestled all snug in their beds,

While visions of sugar-plums danced in their heads...

and what a christmas eve it was!

it was just the three of us and we had such a nice time.  in hertel family tradition, we had lasagna for dinner.  but not your regular lasagna...ravioli lasagna!  yup... a ton times easier and quicker (although, nothing can beat my dad's lasagna) than making regular lasagna!  the dude was in bed by the time we ate, but he had pasta none-the-less.  oh...and he helped me cook our dinner as you can see by the photos.

all our presents were wrapped and ready.  and the dude must have been a VERY good boy this year since santa came to our house first to drop off his gifts before mommy and daddy went to bed!  thank you santa! something tells me the dude is going to be occupied for quite some time with all these new toys! 

bubble boy

why do i have a feeling that the dude is going to have more fun with the tissue paper and boxes on christmas than the actual toys?!  if this is any inclination!

video recap

so as most of you have noticed, i've been a little delinquent in updating my blog recently.  disclaimer, it's been busy at work, busy at home, busy going to doctors appointments, busy with derby, etc.  all in life has been a little hectic lately.  throw in the the holidays and WOAH, i need a vacation!!!  

soooo, what being delinquent in postings means is being delinquent in taking pictures as well.  luckily we were able to capture some fun moments in the dudes life on video.  enjoy this video recap!

(as another disclaimer, please note that you can change the resolution of each video to 1080p for more clarity, and please ignore.....ME!)

showing off his dancin moves!

ants in our pants

using a spoon

our little daredevil

playing with our favorite pink ball

happy birthday daddy!

happy birthday daddy!

we hope you have an extra special day.

today we will let you sleep in, play records, play video games, go shopping and basically do whatever you want to do.

today we WON'T let you change a single diaper, feed a dude, cook dinner, clean-up or worry about anything.

we are so lucky to have you in our lives.  you make us smile, laugh and sometimes drive us crazy.  :)  but no matter what happens at the end of the day, we are a family and will always love each other. 

oh yeah, and thanks for having a birthday so that we can eat cake!!! (ps...this is the first time graham actually ENJOYED eating cake of any sort!)

(please ignore my voice!)

lost in the hustle

so somehow in all the hustle and bustle at home and work i forgot to mention a HUGE milestone accomplishment.  the dude is a full time WALKER!!!!  

here are some of graham's first steps that were taken on november 26th.  i'm calling that the official first steps date, since he's been running ever since.

no more crawling for this dude!

the word on the street is....

pulmonology!

yup, we had our first pulmonologist appointment today and everything went great.  the dude still wasn't sounding great, so we were happy the doctor got to see him in action.  the first thing they did when we got there was listen to his chest, give him a duo neb (mixture of two medicines, but i forgot which two!) and then come back and listen to him again.  the medicine definitely helped, but it didn't clear much up.  he still sounded pretty snarfely in there.  

after the neb we sat and talked with the doctor for awhile to give her the history of our dude and his breathing trials and tribulations (i won't go into that again since it's all documented in this here blog!).  what was strange to think about though, was the fact that this has been going on since he was about 5 months old.  that's EIGHT MONTHS we've been dealing with this!!!  the sad part, it's kind of become a normal for us now.  i remember being so worried about doing nebulizers, will he stop breathing at night, etc.  and now we're pros at this!  i honestly think if we've gotten through all of this so far, i'm not sure what we can't get through!

  i think everyone was in agreement though that the alubuterol (fast acting attack medicine) wasn't really helping, that maybe we need to try something new.  we should still keep giving him the pulmacort (inhaled steroid) though since it does prevent the episodes from being horrible.  soooooooooooo....we are now going to start giving the dude singulair which helps treat allergies and asthma.  we're all crossing our fingers that this new medicine will help!

finally, in order to rule things out so we can figure out what's causing all the dude's breathing troubles, the doctor has asked us to get two tests done.

1 - an upper gi series: a radiological test used to visualize the structures of the upper digestive system (the esophagus, stomach and duodenum).  for the dude, they'll actually be looking at the trachea and seeing if anything is pressing up against or blocking it.  which could be causing him to not breath as he should be.

2 - sweat test: this test measures the amount of salt chemicals (sodium and chloride) in sweat and is used to diagnose cystic fibrosis (CF).  during my pregnancy the CF test came back negative, but again, just to rule everything out we're going to have this test done.  the doctor reassured us that she really doesn't think the dude has CF because most patients diagnosed don't gain weight as well as....ahem...well, as well as the dude seems to be gaining weight!!  25 1/2 pounds currently!!!  

so those are the updates.  we're going to try and schedule the tests as soon as we can, so that i don't have to stress myself out about waiting for the results.  we'll also be going back to the doctors office next wednesday for a follow-up.  until then!

holy molar!!!

during the meltdown graham decided to have at the end of our doctors visit today (granted it was 11am, which is his normal lunchtime/naptime!) i got quite the surprise.  i was looking down at graham's wide open and mouth and WOAH!  

hello upper left first molar!  

it's not completely in, but the two of the four points are poking through!

update

so i decided to stay home today since the dude hadn't been fever free for 24 hours.  he woke up not having a fever, but still coughing and wheezing.  i called the doctors office and got an 845 appointment.  score!  got to the office and got brought back.  no big surprise, he sounded junky and was wheezing.  we gave the dude another neb treatment to see if that would do anything.  15 mins later, better, but still not great.  

apparently the doctor thinks graham might have had a touch of pneumonia, but there's no way of really telling unless they did a chest xray (yeah, didn't want to have to do  that today!).  so our diagnosis...nothing really...but we're starting an oral steroid once a day on top of the albuterol and pulmacort to see if we can stomp out whatever this thing is!!  i think the doctors and nurses were all relieved to hear we had made an appointment for the pulmonologist on wednesday.  i think they're just as anxious as us to see what they say! 

fever and chills

so it's been a LONG weekend with a sick kiddo.  not so much the throw up sick, which poor andrea is dealing with, but fever, chills and cough sick!  started on saturday, we skyped andrea, tim, olivia and mason to wish olivia a happy birthday.  graham was in his chair eating his dinner, as was mason who was quarantined from olivia.  we lost our connection and then i made a comment on how pitiful mason looked.  not more than 15 minutes later graham was still in his chair but not eating anything?!

i had made him pasta, and we all know how he LOVES pasta, and nope.....didn't touch ANY of it!  very strange.  i also had heated up a spinach nugget which he loves and nope....didn't touch it either.  hmmmm, something's up.  i just felt like something was wrong and grady tried calming me down.  then he made the comment "uh, his his leg twitching?"  yup, sure was.  me "uh, are both his arms shaking?!"  yup, sure were!  took a closer look and he was shivering all over.  :(  i took him upstairs to change his diaper and get him into some pj's and took his temperature.  101.2!  YIKES!  how did that happen?!  

side note, he's in a fleece foot sleeper, and still shivering.  so i wrap him in a blanket.  still shivering.  wrap him in another blanket.  still shivering!!  wrap him in a THIRD blanket.  better, but still shivering a little.  since he had fallen asleep and was in his crib, i figured i would let him be for 15 minutes or so to see what would happen.  i walk back into his room after 10, because i couldn't wait, and he was shivering again!!  so i picked him up and put him on me, which i think my body heat coupled with his blankets worked wonders.  but...

...since the dude had never had chills before i got a little nervous.  called the on-call line and they said because of his weight we could give him children's motrin and to give that to him for the next does to see if that works better than the infant stuff i had given him before.  i decided i was going to let the dude sleep with me that night since i wanted to keep a close eye on him.  so around 1030 pm for his next dose i took his temp since he felt warm.  103.2!!  OMG!!!  took the blanket off him, turned our ceiling fan on a little higher and gave him the motrin.  30 minutes later he was better.  not great, but at a low grade fever at least.

he tossed and turned throughout the night and at 6 he was up for the morning.  since i hadn't gotten any sleep, and grady had slept in the other room, i asked him to take care of graham so i could try to get a couple hours of sleep.  throughout the day the dude was still running a low grade fever and then before his motrin dosage it would spike up.  no chills today, but i was still nervous that even with the motrin, his fever wasn't going away.

paranoid me, called the on-call again.  same nurse, so she knew i was a little concerned.  i knew she didn't want to have us go to the hospital, so she asked if i thought he would be okay overnight with the motrin, albuterol and pulmacort treatments we had been giving him.  i was pretty sure he would be, i think i just needed reassurance.  so she said, keep doing what we're doing, maybe give him a warm bath, and call the doctors office in the morning for an appointment.

hopefully we'll get some sleep tonight!

we'll update everyone tomorrow!!

derby meat-up

had a ton of fun tonight with my derby girls!  

the fresh meat decided to have a meat-up and i think it's safe to say we all enjoyed ourselves.  no kids.  no husbands.  no significant others.  no pets.  etc.

only good drinks, good  food and good company!

hopefully we'll get the whole group together next time (this is only about half of us).

oh christmas tree!!

now all that's left is for santa to bring the dude lots of present!  :)  he's been pretty good this year, so something tells me it's going to be a good year!

oh, and i should mention...all the ornaments on the tree this year are hertel family heirlooms!!  i found the bag of all the ones my mom gave me from their house and it was so fun to decorate the tree with memories.  i always love hanging my 1981 birdhouse!  graham's 'g' that grana gave him last year is hanging proudly on the front of the tree.  we're working on finding the perfect 2nd year christmas ornament.  think i might have found it, but i'll wait to post until we actually buy it.

hunting

christmas tree hunting that is!

we've had such good luck at home depot in the past, we decided to get ours there again this year since we aren't sure what graham will do with a christmas tree?!  maybe next year when he's walking around we'll go to a tree farm and cut one.

for this year however, we stuck true to the sanner christmas tree hunting tradition:

drive to home depot

walk into the lot of trees and find the balsam fir's

grady picks one up and says "this is the one"

i say "hold onto it, i want to look at one more"

i pick one out

i look at the two of them and have ALWAYS gone with the first one grady spots

we asked the dude what he thought.  we think he likes it!

we went with a shorter tree than normal...in honor of our shorty dude!!

zoolights

dude's first trip downtown!  dude's first trip to the zoo!

zoo lights...how cool!  i love the national zoo to begin with, nevermind when it's full of christmas lights!!

we decided to head downtown a little early so we could walk around during the day and show graham some cool animals.  mind you, it was pretty cold during the day today, so not all the animals were out.

first up...the zebras!  i really don't know what he was thinking.  he couldn't stop looking at it.  helps that we talk about a zebra in one of the books he has.

second stop...an emu!  it was doing funny things at the fence, so we all enjoyed watching him.

third...small mammal house.  phew...we needed some time to warm up too!  we saw a couple small monkeys, several porcupines, but the one the dude loved the best was the small armadillo!!  the exhibit glass was just the right height for him, and the little armadillo was burrying around looking for food.  graham loved it.  

fourth...APE HOUSE!  little did i know there was a baby gorilla too!  graham LOVED watching them jump around and play with each other.   he could have stood at that glass for hours.  

it was starting to get dark, so we made our way to the mane restaurant to meet up with some friends.  we walked around a little more, this time admiring the lights, then we decided to call it a day.  we had been there for several hours and it was getting pretty cold.  and all the big kid things (train rides, ice  skating, etc), graham was too little for.  until next year!!!