Saturday, November 22, 2008

Kaiden is a natural....

Today Kaiden went with Mommy to the ranch. It was COLD! Kaiden had so much fun though. The ranch is a rescue that also has boarders like me there. I put Kaiden on Bonita and he did great! He was holding the reigns like a pro. He stayed very balanced and was smiling and laughing. Bonita didn't seem bothered by him at all. She was very relaxed. I decided to get up on Bonita with him and we rode around the arena for about 45 minutes. He was pointing at the birds, cats, dogs, and the other horses. Bonita did great! She didn't try to test me or get nervous that Kaiden was up there with me. Debbie (the owner of the ranch and rescue) said that she hasn't seen a child as young as Kaiden do so good on a horse. She wants to start giving him lessons next summer. They have a couple of small ponies at the ranch that she wants to work with him on. I think he would absolutely love it. The next time I go out, I'll be bringing Kayley so she can get a turn on Bonita. I had a wonderful time bonding with Kaiden on our little ride. Here is a picture, it's not great, it's from my cell phone. Bonita was half asleep she was so relaxed.

Thursday, November 20, 2008

I'm STUCK!!!

So Kaiden decided he wanted to try and climb over the fence. What he wasn't counting on was how to get down the other side of the fence. He screamed and screamed. Because he got stuck. He was afraid to get down the way he got up, and was afraid to climb down the other side because he had nowhere to put his feet. I let him sit there and scream for about 10 minutes before I put him back down on the fenced in side. He was not happy being stuck and hasn't tried to climb back over since, lol. I think I "tortured" him by letting him be stuck that he doesn't want to try it again. Hopefully that plan works. Kayley tried but didn't get her leg over the top. Which is FINE by me!

The 2 pics above show what the kiddos look like when they eat a banana. It doesn't matter how small I cut the banana, they still stuff their face :P
On the potty training, Kayley is doing AMAZING! She hasn't had really any accidents for over 5 days now. She has been pooping and peeing in the potty. She is starting to let us know when she has to pee instead of us always taking her every hour. She had somewhat of an accident last night. But that was because I was making her laugh so hard she couldn't hold it...my bad :)
We are all getting better now, the sickly bug is going away. Clint and I have some sinus stuff lingering, but we're all MUCH better now.
Next week we will all be going to Clint's parents house for Thanksgiving. It's only about 7 hours drive to get there, so not too bad. It may be a little longer since we'll have to stop and take Kayley potty. Something I didn't have to do on any other drives. We'll see how it goes. I hope that the trip doesn't set Kayley back with her potty training.
We have put Kaiden on the potty a few times and he pees for us, but I'm not going to go extreme training on him until after their birthday. It's going to be hard enough keeping Kayley on track while away from home, let alone both of them.
I have jumped on the Twilight bandwagon, thanks a lot to my sisters Kaci, Jessica, and Ashley. As well as my step-mom Karen. Hehe. they tried for months to get me to read the Twilight books, but I kept saying I didn't care to read about vampires. Well, they got there wish. I saw the previews to the movie and decided that I would give the books a try. I have finished the first and second books, and now waiting on the 3rd and 4th ones in the mail. Clint and I are going to see the movie when we go to his parents house so they can watch the kiddos.
That's about it I guess. Hope everyone is well! Take care :)


Friday, November 14, 2008

Sickly

Sorry I haven't posted much. All of us are sick. Ky had a fever of 103.6 and we took her in. They put her on antibiotics for an ear infection.
Kd is doing fine. Hopefully it was just a fluke and won't happen again. My concern now is that my brother was Kd's age when he started having seizures regularly until he had brain surgery at 19 years old, and he is a twin too. So it's a little unsettling if it was a seizure.
So the kids are getting better, but neither Clint or I have slept really the last week. Now Clint and I are sick, so we're up coughing all night. At least we can take cold medicine to ease our symptoms. Not many options for the kiddos. Mucinex didn't do anything. Benedryl helps them sleep a little but doesn't help the symptoms. They don't need motrin/tylenol because their throats don't hurt anymore. We just have to ride it out. Although I gotta say, I don't think the antibiotics really make that much of a difference. Ky and Kd have the same thing, and they have been sick just as much as the other. They are both healing at the same pace. Makes me wonder if the antibiotics are even doing anthing, since Kd isn't taking them and he is healing just as fast Ky and she is taking them.
Overall, we're hanging in there.

Sunday, November 9, 2008

Concussion, ambulance, and ER for Kaiden

SO, last night was quite the adventure.
I went to put the kids down to bed. Ky had a fever of 102. So we had her on motrin. Kd didn't have a fever but he was getting motrin because they both are sick. Full blown nasty coughs and noses.
Their bedroom is completely child proof. Or so I thought. That didn't stop them from not being child proof from each other. We had taken out the toddler beds and just put the mattresses on the floor. Since Kd had fallen out of his crib we went to toddler beds. Ky fell out of her toddler bed, and hit her head and woke up with bruises. So that's when we decided to put the mattresses on the floor.
Anyway, so they were running around the room and ran right in to each other. No biggie I thought, they do it all the time. But then Kd went to step up onto his mattress and slipped. The thing is only 5 inches high. I noticed right away something was wrong. Usually when he falls, he either cries or get's back up. He didn't do either.
I called his name, and his body flopped over. I ran in the room and called his name. He didn't respond. He was face down, so I did the best spine protecting roll over for him as I could. But I was worried that he wasn't making any noise. As soon as I turned him over he went completely stiff. His whole right side of his body contorted behind him. He turned the deepest purple and blue I have ever seen. He completely stopped breathing. His eyes rolled back in his head and was getting even more blue. DH was already on the phone with 911 by that point and they were sending an ambulance out right away.
I started giving him mouth to mouth for about 10-15 seconds and his color returned. Then his body went limp and he still wouldn't respond. He finally would open his eyes, but then he would black out again. The whole ordeal lasted about 1 minute. That was the scariest minute of my entire life. The ambulance arrived within 5 minutes of the call, thankfully we live on a military post with an ambulance on standby.
By the time they got here, he was mostly awake. Still kind of lethargic. He wouldn't talk or anything. He didn't make a sound.
I was in the back of the ambulance. There was an ambulance, fire engine, and military police on scene. Then more firetrucks came in addition to another ambulance. Apparently the call we put through to 911 got confused because instead of just the military emergency response team coming, the Washington DC response team came.
The DC team was called off and we headed lights and sirens to childrens hospital. We were put through triage quickly and sent to the back. They did all the neuro tests on him and by then he was back to acting like his usual self again.
The docs were confused as to how exactly he ended up unconconscious and not breathing. We think it was the way he fell that maybe gave him a concussion. They also said it could have been a febrile seizure, but I explained to him that I used to be a medic and my brother used to have seizures, and that was definately not a febrile seizure. I also explained that I had just taken both of their temps about 15 min. before the episode happened because I knew Ky was running a high fever. But Kd didn't have one.
So around midnight we got home. Ky was still having a fever of 102 and she was shaking like crazy. They were both coughing horribly. DH and I have been up all night with both of them.
That was the absolute scariest night of my life.

Thursday, November 6, 2008

I'm a dork...


I feel like I should be writing with a lisp, because that's how I am talking right now. Last night, oh so graceful me decided to do what humans do, eat dinner. I put a pepperoni in my mouth, bit down and tried to bite the tip of my tongue off. Ever heard of the expression "Bite your tongue" who knew that it was a figure of speech. I took it literally. So uh yeah, I couldn't sleep last night because it hurts THAT bad. If you look at the picture, you can see where there is a red circle, yeah, that part hurts bad. The white part, well, that part is dead, it has no feeling in it anymore. It's numb. Maybe with time new taste buds will grow and I'll get feeling again there again. Oy.


Kayley is doing GREAT with potty training. We haven't had any pee accidents in almost 3 days now. Only 1 poop accident too. She has pooped twice in the potty. I think we're actually getting somewhere now!

Sunday, November 2, 2008

It's come to this...







Ok, so the reason for my caption...

We have been racking our brains coming up with a cheap solution to child proofing the window in the kids bedroom. By looking at the pics, you may be saying that's a little extreme. But when you have 2 toddlers scheming together, it is a necessity. Anyway, they kept destroying the blinds, we tried stapling and nailing a blanket on the wall, but they just kept pulling it off. They can unlock the windows, which is definately unsafe. The other problem...they take after me, it has to be pitch black in the room in order to sleep at night. They come by it honestly :P

So we finally brainstormed and figured it out. The result works perfectly. The other problem was fire safety. We couldn't just nail up some boards, otherwise in a fire, we couldn't get out. So we came up with a sliding mechanism with wood flooring. It's easy enough to just slide it up. It's hard enough that the kiddos can't lift it up, but easy enough for a teenager/adult.

In order to get the idea across better I added some pics. Clint did the handy man work.

So a little extreme? Maybe, worth getting a full night's rest over...priceless. Ok, it cost a little bit of money, I think the supplies cost under $20 for the whole thing.


Potty training is going great! Kayley has pooped and peed in the potty with no accidents in her underwear for 2 days. She only had 1 poop accident and that was in her pull up while we were out. She is peeing right away on big potties when we are out and about. We were at church and had a dinner at the church after, and Kayley did great. She only had the one accident, and that was the poop one. Last night and earlier today she has pooped in the potty right away!