After hours

After putting Casey to bed for the evening, I went about putting the girls to bed and cleaning up the house. After about 30 minutes, I went to check on all the kids, and this is what I found. Casey had climbed out bed and onto his dresser. Then, he turned on the lights and opened up a tube of diaper cream which he then proceeded to apply liberally to his legs (and a bit on his face). When I asked him what he was doing, he told me he was fixing his "owies."

Where did he learn this behavior you ask? Bugs love Ava and often leave her with lots of itchy bites all over her legs, for which I will apply Cortisone cream to sooth the itch.

It all makes sense now.

Cortisone cream for bug bites.

Diaper cream for scrapes and bruises.

No one can steal MY Boots!

He speaks!

Casey is really making a lot of progress in speech therapy. I got the good news today that in a few months he will go down to only one visit a week, and he should be discharged around his 3rd birthday. They still want to clear up a few things in his speech, but it is really awesome to hear him clearly pronounce bi-cyc-le.

The Naked Cowboy

Everyone needs a reason to smile on a Monday. Have a good week.

Growing Older

While we were out at the park enjoying the brief return of 70 degree weather, I realized that Casey was no longer 18 months. People at the playground would ask me his age, and I had to stop and think. Casey is now 20 months old and much closer to being 2 years old than every seeing one again. My baby is no longer a baby. His lack of vocabulary, small size, and blonde fuzz throws me off sometimes. I keep thinking that he is younger than he really is. However, he really is a toddler now. He can drink out of regular cup, jump with both feet in the air, and can almost keep up with his sisters. He still loves to sleep with a 2 hour nap each day and 12-14 hours at night. He is growing, thriving, and rather eat cookies than carrots.For the most part the girls are very kind and helpful with Casey. They will pick up his laundry and throw dirty diapers away for me. They will also report to me every instance that Casey finds trouble which is about every 2 minutes. Ava can't wait to wake Casey up each morning, and loves to help me put him to bed at night. Elizabeth is very considerate. She will share her snacks and toys with Casey. Both girls enjoy their one on one time with Casey and will play silly games with him to get him to laugh. Casey is very lucky to have such great big sisters. He shouldn't think it is so funny when he hits them on the head with toy frying pans or steasl their favorite blanket and runs away. It is going to be fun to watch them all grow up together.Speaking of kids getting older, I also just realized that Elizabeth is going to be FIVE in two months. I don't know where the time has gone. I remember her being 10 months old and just learning how to walk. Now, she learning how to read.As for Ava, I always think she is older than she is that is probably because she and Elizabeth do almost everything together. It seemed to take ages for her 3rd birthday to roll around, and I keep thinking that her 4th is just around the corner, not 9 months away. For the most part she is a very happy delightful girl (very stubborn though), and no worse for wear after falling on her head.

Headbangers

First, it was Casey. While we were at Canyon Lake, Casey tripped on a concrete picnic pavilion and got one humdinger of a bruise on his forehead. A day or so after we got home, he was playing under a table and stood up and spit that big blood filled bruise right open. I yelled for the girls to get Ryan, not because I was overly concerned about Casey's head, it was more that fact that I needed an extra set of hand to wrestle Casey because he was bleeding ALL OVER the carpet. The girls were less then helpful. They stood there playing twenty questions about Casey and blood before finally getting Ryan who was half sleep from working the night shift. The words "blood" and "eye" finally got him out of bed. Then instead of helping me control the bleeding, he grabs the camera. After grabbing this great shot. We bandaged up Casey's head, cleaned the carpet, and did some laundry.He is doing fine, no glue or stitches on the kitchen counter needed. He has just a small scab left. One of these days he will learn to control that big head of his.

Ava on the other hand, looks perfectly normal on the outside. However, she received a much worse injury. She was at her best friend's birthday party, which was being held at an indoor swimming school. The kids were taking turns on the water slide, and had already completed many successful trips. Next think we know, Ava is flying through the air off of this 8ft tall water slide and lands flat on her back at the bottom of the ladder, luckily on a 1/2 inch foam mat. Ryan picks up a crying and stunned Ava, checks her over, gets her (and the staff) calmed down, and lets her have some juice. However 10 minutes later, Ryan gives me the nod that it is time to go. Ava started vomiting profusely. Elizabeth wanted to play twenty questions again, but some how I manage to get her and Casey changed and ready to go. I never thought we would get to the hospital. The drive seemed to take forever and Ryan is trying everything to keep Ava awake. I drop Ryan and Ava at the door and by the time we park the car and get inside they are already in a room. Sometimes, it is good to have a husband who is an ER doctor. She gets scanned right away and that is when we found out she fractured her occipital bone (blue line). Here is your quick anatomy lesson. The occipital bone forms part of the base and the back of the skull. The basal part of the bone forms a ring (the foramen magnum) through which passes the spinal cord. On the inside surface of the occipital bone venous drainage from the brain runs in the transverse sinuses. Ryan can answer any further questions you have.Now Ryan is really worried. He is thinking of every possible bad outcome of traumatic brain injuries. Sometimes, I think no medical knowledge is a good thing. I thought, how bad can it be? There was no blood or bones coming out, and her head wasn't dented. She is just tired and her head hurts. I also didn't realize the crack is about 3 inches long and in a place where a lot of important things run down and out of the brain. Ava had to be transfered to a hospital that had a trauma team and pediatric neurosurgeons, so Ryan and Ava took an ambulance trip over to University hospital. Elizabeth really wanted to go for that ride. I got the other kids settle in back at home with a family friend and then rejoined Ava and Ryan at the hospital. They were still in the ER, Ava had received another head scan and a couple of bruises were noted on the front part of the brain and some minor bleeding. The trauma bay was starting to fill up with gun shot victims (Saturday night 10pm), so they finally got Ava moved up to the Pediatric Intensive Care Unit. Poor little girl was so tired, scared, and hurt. Plus, she was still throwing up. She would answer Ryan and I with a head movement or maybe a one word answer but that was it. She was hooked up to machines that tracked her heart beat, blood pressure, and pulse. She also had an IV and the nurses came in and checked on her every hour. The worse part was that Ava just wanted to curl up with her blanket "Ba" and suck her thumb, but every time she tried to bend her arm she would kink her IV line and set the alarms off. I spent the night with her in a chair next to her. It was tough form me to hear that their was nothing that could be done for her, and that they were just watching her so they could intervene quickly if something bad happened. I finally grasped the severity of the situation when Ryan and the neurosurgeon were looking at her head scans, and the doctor was saying that he was most concerned about a vein bursting near her fracture line, and that would become a surgical emergency which didn't always have a good outcome. That is something, no parent ever wants to hear. Ava spent two more days in the hospital under surveillance. On the second day, she started to eat some food and keep it down. Ava also started talking to us and laughing. Yeah! They let me sleep with her in bed the 2nd night, something that I hadn't done since she was a newborn. Her hourly checks, became every 2 hours, and finally every 4 hours, and most of her wires were disconnected. Her head had not magically mended itself, but the risk of very bad things was diminishing. Here she is in the PICU on the road to recovery. I am glad I don't have a picture of her hooked to all the wires, looking so sad and pathetic. It really isn't an image that I want to remember. When she got to the Transition Unit, Ava and Casey came for a visit to entertain and terrorize her. She was discharged from the hospital after a 3 day stay with no restrictions on activities. Just the stern warning not to get another head injury in the next 2-3 months. Easier said then done with an active three year old, but we are trying to get her to slow down. We took the ladder away on the trampoline, enrolled her in dance instead of gymnastics. She is not allowed to run on hard surfaces or climb on or jump off of anything over 3 feet high. So far, so good. She will go back in mid-September to make sure everything is healing correctly. We are just very thankful that she can walk and run, no seizures, she doesn't have her head held together with plates, screws stitches, and staples, and she has stopped complaining that her head hurts. It could have been so much worse, but she should be just fine! The most we had to do was re-teach a little potty training after the hospital stay. My co-workers at Deloitte were great and brought us meals for the week. Plus, enough leftovers that I haven't had to cook all this week. Ava got lots of cards and little gifts from friends and family. She thinks that she has been celebrating her birthday all month long. For those doctors out there, here are Ava's official CT findings: There is a non displaced fracture in the midocciptial bone extending to the formaen magnum. There is posterior scalp soft tissue swelling. There are small foci of high density superior to the left orbital roof and along the right ryrus rectus. No evidence of mass effect, midline shift or hydrocephalus. No abnormal extraaxial fluid collections are present. The visualized paranasal sinuses and mastoid air cells are clear. Bilateral globes, optic nerves, and retro-orbital soft tissues are unremarkable.

Mr. Brown Can Moo! Can You? by Dr. Seuss

If Casey were a book that would be his title. Casey is the King of Noises. As soon as walk in the door after school/work, Casey stops in the laundry room to beat on the washer and dryer. Then he walks over to the fridge and sends all of the alphabet magnets skittering across the floor. He then pulls the electronic Leap Frog toys off the fridge and plays the ABC song and Animal Matching song over and over before he tires of them and throw the toys on the ground. During dinner, he will dump his food on the table and play his plate like a drum. As well as bang his cup and spoon on the table to the point that even the girls tell him to be quiet and that he is hurting their ears. Once I put him down in bed he will rattle his crib bars or rake a toy across the bars until he gets tired enough to fall asleep. He may not say anything right now, but he finds plenty of ways to make himself heard.

Some Bunny's One!

Casey got double the fun with his birthday falling on the Saturday right before Easter. The girls enjoyed the week of activities as well including four Easter egg hunts. I am sure they rank Easter right behind Christmas. I have taught them the religious significance of Easter, but they were much more impressed with the amount of candy that came along with this holiday. Easter Sunday was overload. The morning started with an egg hunt at Grandma and Grandpa Friesenhahn's house with all of the extended family: cousins, aunts, and uncles. This being only their second year of egg hunting, the girls were not to sure what to do. But thanks to the help of some of the older girls, they walked away with a full basket of real and plastic eggs, bubbles, and other goodies. Even Casey got a couple of eggs that were promplty snatched away by Ava.

The morning was good practice, because in the afternoon most of the party headed over to Gram's house for additional Easter activities. This time the girls were on top of their game, and really got into running around the back yard scouring for eggs. The Easter Bunny has gotten much more generous in the 21st century, and the girls not only got an Easter basket full of candies, but they also got some bigger toys as well.Ryan had to work during the day, but was able to join the rest of us in the evening to help celebrate Casey's birthday. By this time, poor little C.J. was exhausted and the girls were hyped up on suger after eating nothing but candy all day. Nothing like cake to round out your daily caloric intake. Sometimes, you just have make exceptions as a parent.Happy Birthday Baby Boy! Bouncing like bunnies.

Major Milestones

• In mid-December he started crawling.
• In late February he started pulling himself up.
• By mid-March he was cruising.
• At the end of March he could stand on his own.
• Now he is walking (and shopping).
• Still no hair.

The last year has flown by. Casey is now testing the water with walking, which has lead to a bunch of bumps and bruises. I got to sign 3 accident reports at school this week. He is eating a variety of table food. He still hates green veggies. He is transitioning to whole milk and s sippy cup. Soon he will switch to just one nap a day and move to the Tiny Tot's room at school which means sleeping on a cot instead of a crib. Our Baby Casey is quickly becoming Little CJ, as Ava now like to refer to him.

Sick Days

Courtesy of cousin Milo and his germs that he picked up some some little kid on the airplane, I got a call last week to pick up Casey from school because of a fever. Milo was really sick (fever, very cranky, and not sleeping) for about a week, so I was fearing the worse. Luckily, Casey's virus was much more mild, and after a fun day at home with mom he was able to return to school.

He really is the happiest baby I know.

Helping me, while I worked from home. Look, he is standing on his own.

Then at the beginning of this week I got a call to pick up Elizabeth at school because of fever. Unfortunately, Elizabeth caught a much nastier virus that brought a high fever and hacking cough, which led her to spend two days at home watching cartoons. She was shooting for a third but I told her that there was no one to stay home with her other than Sam the dog. I do have to thank the makers of Tylenol and Motrin. I will proclaim them as wonder drugs. They worked wonderfully for Elizabeth's fever, and she was jammin' by evening number 2.

However, now I am getting a headache from listening to the same songs over and over again since Christmas. Thanks Beau and Alli, don't be surpise when this guitar show up in your mailbox.

The Knight Family Vacation

This pretty much sums up our vacation.

Tired, uncooperative children, never sleeping in past 7am, hand foot and mouth disease, and the list goes on. Okay, maybe it wasn't all bad, but it was certainly memorable. We started our trip when the alarm clock sounded at 4am, and piled everyone into the car to the airport. American Airlines charges $15 to check each bag, so we decided that we could do a five day cruise with just carry on bags, so Ryan was loaded down like a pack mule, and I looked like Old Mother Hubbard with the kids. We flew to Miami to jump aboard our ship. The flight was uneventful, finding a cab driver to take us to the pier was a little trickier since we didn't bring the car seats for the 15 minute drive to the port. At least embarkation went fairly quickly, since we were all pretty frazzled after a long day of travel. Once on board, we got the girls tucked in for a nap. Their bunks were a bit tight, but they didn't seem to mind. Everything is tiny on a ship. Actually, we reserved two rooms with connecting door, and that worked out perfectly. We bolted the door to the kids room and just kept the connecting door cracked while they were sleeping. Casey's crib was wedged between the closet and the bathroom, and the girls had their own twin beds. Our rooms even had windows, so that we had some sense of night and day. After getting a nap in, we were ready to find some food. I think that is one of the main reasons people come on cruises. We were on Norwegian Cruise Lines, home of Freestyle Cruising. We took that to heart and did meals a bunch of different ways during the cruise. We had some family dinners in the main dining room, so nights we fed the girls early in the buffet line and Ryan and I (plus Casey asleep in a stroller) went to dinner on our own later, we mixed up breakfast and lunch as well with some sit down and some buffet. The buffet worked really well, until the ship instituted additional sanitation measures due to a reported outbreak of a GI virus. Here is my band of misfits practicing their modeling faces...Blue Steel while waiting for dinner to arrive. We had a day at sea before pulling into Grand Cayman. So took the girls for a swim and let them play in the kids club for a few hours. Ryan and I did some trivia and beer tasting where we walked away with 1 quart beer steins and both won t-shirts. Casey was too young for the kids club so he was a long for the ride, literally, we borrowed a little umbrella stroller and Ava push him all around the ship. We also saw a great show that night with the ship band and dance troupe. All three kids were amazed. I think it is the longest I have every seen the 3 of them sit still. Our first port of call was Grand Cayman Island. The girls have been asking for the last 6 months to go to the beach, so they were very exited to get off the ship. There isn't a deep water port on that island so we had to use tenders to get to shore. Even that didn't curb their enthusiasm. Casey was still along for the ride, his mode of transportation just changed. He switched from stroller to backpack. They had a blast on the beach, building sand castles and playing in the ocean. Even Casey got into the fun, and remembered not to eat the sand this time. However, after a few hours of fun in the sun, the youngest two were wiped out. Casey was smart to nap in the shade. I ended up with a nasty sunburn on my back. Side bar: When we got back from the beach and were hosing off the kids we noticed a rash on the kids legs and butts, and Casey seemed rather warm and crabby. We gave him some Tylenol and chalked it up to teething, sand fleas, and possible ear ache. The next day the ship stopped in Cozumel. This was my 3rd time to this island and Ryan's 2nd, so I wanted to do something other than just the beach. So I signed us up for a 7 hour shore excursion to see Tulum (Mayan ruins) on main land Mexico. By this point in the trip the girls were suffering from the cumulative effects of lack of sleep, so they were whiny, argumentative, and just plain difficult. Casey who is typically the happiest baby on the face of the earth was absolutely miserable and refusing to eat, drink, or take his pacifier. I really can't tell you a darn thing the tour guide said but here is a picture of Tulum. Tulum over looks the ocean, and all the girls wanted to do there was go to the beach, so we hiked down to try and salvage this shore excursion. Looking back on my decision making, I shouldn't have spent a ton of money on the trip to Tulum, we should have just taken a $10 cab ride to the beach in Cozumel. After our two stops, we had another day at sea. Casey was still absolutely miserable. The girls were relatively well behaved. They took a nap every day, but didn't go to bed until 10/11pm every night, and were up before 7am every morning. Plus, when we need a break from they, we could send them off to the kids club for a few hours to be entertained with movies, crafts, games, and a jungle gym. Then Ryan and I could escape for another round of beer tasting. On the last night, the ship put on another fantastic show with aerial acrobatics and some other amazing stunts. The kids were enthralled again, and I even took Elizabeth to the show twice. The flight home with three whiny, tired kids was not very enjoyable. It made you ask yourself why you every bother leaving the house in the first place. However, we survive it and I don't think we annoyed our fellow travelers too much. The day after getting home, the girls stared complaining that their mouths hurt and they didn't want to eat. When I took a look inside, their mouths were plastered with ulcers. Finally, putting two and two together. The doctor in our family came up with hand, foot, and mouth disease (rash, fever, mouth ulcers). It still didn't make it any better that Casey, who were were banking on being a perfect angel on the cruise, was a miserable mess, but at least it gave us a reasonable explanation why he didn't want to eat, drink, or be consoled. Ryan was spared, but Elizabeth, Ava, and I spent the following week miserable because our mouths hurt so much. At least I lost any weight that I might I have put on during the cruise. I don't think we are going on another family vacation anytime soon, maybe not until the kids are all over the age of 7. And as much as we love Chaos, Destruction, and Mayhem, ( I mean Elizabeth, Ava, and Casey) we are still dreaming of the day that we will take a vacation without them.

Roller Mania

The girls are adjusting to daycare. Elizabeth still cries every morning when I drop her off, but she is making friends. On the other hand, Ava's teachers told me they were worried that Ava wasn't playing with the other kids. I told them that is just who she is. Ava marches to the beat of her own drum. Elizabeth's new best friend, Mandy, invited us to her 4th birthday party held at a local roller rink. This was the 1st time the girls got up on skates and for Ava it didn't last for more than about 3 minutes, but Elizabeth got the hang of it and had a blast hanging out with her new friend Mandy (girl in green in the videos). In fact, both girls proclaimed that it was the best birthday party ever. Ava had a blast dancing, and Casey was mesmerized by the Disco ball. Included are three videos for those of you who have the ability and inclination to further investigate our adventures at the roller rink.

The first is of Elizabeth getting the hang of her roller skates.

The second is of Ava getting her groove on. I think she went the Milo Knight School of Dance. This is a much watch video. Absolutely hilarious! (or maybe that is just her mother's opinion)

The third is of Casey chasing after the disco ball lights. I think these are the first action shots of Casey crawling that I have posted. He is really zipping along now.

He moves!

It is official, upon me returning from Washington, D.C. Casey is on the move. He can now crawl all over the house, and even climb the one step up and out of our sunken living room. He can even pull himself up and get into all sorts of trouble. He isn't climbing out of his crib yet, but he is pulling stuff off of bookcases.

Here are a couple of pictures of our happy little guy, and I will post some video of him on the prowl soon.

Beach in November?!?!

While my sister who lives in upstate New York enjoyed a foot of snow before Halloween, and even our beach condo in North Carolina had a dusting of snow last week, we were able to relax on the sunny shores of Texas beaches this past weekend. However, I do have to admit that we did have a bit of a cold snap and the highs were only in the low 70's and Saturday was pretty gusty. Still, it was great to be out at the beach in mid-November.Lizzy came up with the idea the other week that she wanted to go to the beach, we all agreed that it wasn't a bad idea at all. Luckily, Ryan had a free weekend (this was the first time he's had two consecutive days off in a row since starting in July), so we were able to meet up with Gram and Bub at their place in Port Aransas. We check out the Texas State Aquarium on Saturday, and took in some of the local dining establishments, and played at the beach on Sunday. It was a nice weekend get away, and we had a good time with the kids.