Christmas Morning!!! Could there possibly be MORE presents!!??

After going to bed at 11pm on Christmas Eve, Jack actually slept in until about 8. We were up with Elie, anxiously waiting for him to wake up and check out his presents! Santa brought Jack a new bike and helmet, some stocking stuffers, and helped set up the wonderful tent and tunnel from Gaga. Lets just say it did not stop there......more and more pressies from gaga, a wonderful Brio train set from Uncle Jeddie, great clothes and gifts from Grandpa John and Claire, cars and a carrier from Great-grandpa Al, and more great presents from Uncle Mike and aunite Fawn. Jack and Elie are two of the luckiest and most spoiled kids around! To watch Jack open each gift and want to play with just that, was priceless. Also, totally unsolicited, he came up to me and said "Thank you so much for my bike mama"...I teared up of course and said, "You're welcome Jack, but its from Santa!" What a lucky family we are for such great kids....and such great family to spoil them :)

Christmas Eve

Our little family of four started our Christmas Eve celebration by attending the children's mass at our new parish, the Madeleine. It was a beautiful mass and Jack did so well.... minus the many times he asked me "can we go to Grammy and Pa's now??" when there was complete silence in the church :) We headed over to my parents for the gift extravaganza....Jack did so well and was up until 11pm...the official latest bedtime ever recorded for little Jack W! Everyone's gifts were a hit that night, but I have to say Uncle Matt's train set and the train set Grammy and Pa gave Jack were pretty amazing. I have never seen our son play for so long, so contentedly, with anything before that.

Happy Holidays

Even though our family has had a tough couple of weeks. we have still found some time to do special holiday things. Thanks to my wonderful husband who always keeps a positive attitude, does so much around the house, takes care of the kids whenever he can, gives me "breaks" as much as possible, and is just the best! We have made "ginger houses" as Jack says, decorated the tree, and went to Zoolights with my parents. Jack LOVED the animal and lights, but the steam engine train ride took the cake. Even though it was pouring down rain we had a lot of fun. Now that everyone is feeling better I can't wait for Christmas!

Elie Bell Update

First off, I want to say thank you SO much to all of my friends and family who have had us in their thought and prayers this past week. It meant so much to me, and made something difficult so much more bearable to know that I have so much support and love. Not to mention....I think the prayers worked. On Thursday, Elie did phenomenal with both of her procedures. In typical Elie fashion, she chilled on her tummy looking around and smiling at the ultrasound tech as she was getting her kidneys looked at. THen we proceeded into the next room and the only time she really fussed is when the catheter actually went in....then she was fine. They injected the dye and we could immediately see that the dye was headed from her bladder back up the wrong way to her kidneys. Within 2 seconds, the radiologist confirmed that she did indeed have bladder reflux on both sides. Not at all what we wanted to hear. I was very sad and of course the thoughts of many more UTIs, probable surgery, and 6 months of daily antibiotics ran through my brain. I tried to put things in perspective, mainly because of the horrific things that I see children go through via my job, but it just does not help when its your own child. Tyee was strong as usual, and knew that we were going to deal with whatever hand we were dealt and stop at nothing to help Elie.
On top of everything we were dealing with, Elie woke up the next day covered head to toe in a horrible rash. Tyee and I thought she was maybe allergic to something from the procedures, but it was getting worse. So back to the pediatrician we went to learn that she had/has a virus on top of all this!! While I did not know if I could take one more minute of stress, Elie was kicking, smiling, and laughing at her brother. We were sent away with the knowledge that Elie's reflux was "Grade 2" on a scale of 5, with 5 being the worst. So the good news is, she probably will not have to have surgery! Hopefully she will "grow" out of it, and it wont be that much of an issue. We do have to go to a Urologist in about a week to decide if we need to start the preventative antibiotics to make sure bacteria does not reflux back up to her kidneys. Her kidneys looked good and they were not damaged. This was all very good news to Tyee and I, and we will now wait until we meet with the urologist in a week. Thank you again to everyone for your thoughts, we love you all!!!

Prayers for Elie

Just a quick request to some of my loyal followers (Jeddie, gaga, John and Clarie, and all of my wonderful cousins and their kids, and if there is anyone else!) to say a quick prayer today for Elie. To make a very long story short, she has to go to the hospital today to have some pretty scary (scary to me) procedures done. Her illness a couple of weeks ago turned out to be a UTI/Bladder infection so she needs to have some stuff done (a kidney ultrasound and VCUG--you can google it if you really want to know :)) to make sure that she does not have something going on that puts her at greater risk for more. I know this is the right step and trust our pediatrician with all my heart, it is just so hard to watch our baby girl go through this. I know she won't remember, and this is for the best, but to be honest I am fearful. I know ELie is strong, smart, happy and can get through anything....she sent me a signal that she needed to come out 3 weeks early! Annie is coming over to help take care of Jack while Tyee and I take her to Emanuel this morning. I will keep everyone up to date, as everything will be fine!!!! Just sneak a thought up to God for us today around 11 am. Thank you.

Could it already be 5 months!!!???

Soo sorry for the delay in blogging.....long story...kinda funny...kinda not...more to come on that. In the meantime, I missed posting about Elie's 5 month birthday a couple of weeks back. She has been growing growing!! She is now 15.2 pounds, just got over her first major illness (fever of almost 103), and is teething like a maniac! She is laughing daily when she is not sick, smiling and talking a ton! Chelsea tried to tell me the other day that she was saying "mama" and I laughed, but indeed of her various coo-ings, ma ma ma ma is one of them!! She is sitting on a flat, hard surface for about 10 seconds by herself, still does great with tummy time, and continues to LOVE LOVE her brother. He makes her laugh, gives her the bink when she needs it, and is such a wonderful big brother. Elie loves her two days a week of special alone time with auntie Moo, where she gets held all the time and gets to nap in the sun on the couch :) She is definitely NOT sleeping as well as she used to, getting up at least 2 times to nurse and trying to charm her way into our bed, which usually works. I love her dark brown hair and huge brown eyes and she has even been sneaking into her first pair of Uggs that aunite Annie gave her. We could not ask for a more beautiful and wonderful daughter and son, and I can't believe by next month's birthday she may be sitting and eating solid foods.

Thank you Deb!!!

Call it fortunate timing for an incredibly unfortunate event.....Gaga was here to save the day for our family!!! She took care of the kids (mainly Jack) while our family mourned the loss of my grandpa, attended his rosary and funeral, and were just sad! I appreciate her so much and don't know what we would do without her.

My Blue Gramp

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Its been exactly one week since my dear Blue Gramp lost his short, but fierce, battle with cancer. I am still in shock, but am so glad to have spent some quality time with him before he passed away. As Jack would say "Grandpa Mac is on an airplane to heaven". That's for sure Jack.....we love him and miss him so much already.

Tyee's Kids!!

OK....I am a pro-Oregon sports girl, but I must say if it is Beavers vs. Ducks, I go for the Beavs. I can't erase all of those years of my mom yelling at the radio when the Beavers were so bad! They deserve to win too!

Monkey Man and Banana Girl