We've been sick...

Sorry I've not been blogging much - Stephen was down with a sinus infection, and now I have some respiratory thing going on...

Stephen had his well-child check today, and everything is good.  He weighs a hearty 48lbs, and is 43.5" tall, which means he has gained 4lbs, and grown about 2" since last year, which is great!  Everything else is going well too, so I have nothing interesting to report from his appointment.

Something exciting that is happening at swimming, however, is THIS:

Sorry it's a bit fuzzy - I took it with my phone, and then cropped it so you can see what he's doing.  Stephen is HOLDING the kickboard!  This is a very new skill for him, and has always been difficult due to his poor hand strength.  However, he started doing this last week, all on his own.  His teacher, Miss Carrie, is holding him at the hips, to remind him to kick at the top of the water, instead of underneath, where he wouldn't be able to propel himself forward.  We are very excited!!

Stephen has also been having fun playing Uno Moo, as well as playing with his Green Lantern toys, and after we find the right kind of card holder for him that we can set on the table, we'll start trying some card games too.  It's been a great 2013 so far!!

Christmas and New Year Recap

We had a fun-filled holiday break here!  On the last day of school before break, SANTA drove Stephen's bus!!!!  Despite appearances in this picture, Stephen was actually really excited.  He also helped decorate some cookies to share with Santa, and managed to NOT spill sprinkles all over the kitchen this time.

We also met Santa at a local store.  We'd never gotten around to this childhood rite of passage before because we just never had time for it.  Stephen, as expected, wasn't upset at all, but wasn't quite sure what to think of this guy - he was a great looking Santa, though, wasn't he?

We also met a talking reindeer while we were visiting Santa, which was extremely amusing!

This year, Stephen really got in to doing the Advent Calendar, particularly the countdown aspect.  After we would choose the ornament for the day, we would count how many days were left until Christmas day.  And Stephen chose the location of most of the lower ornaments, as you can tell by the cluster of ornaments at the bottom of the tree.

We went to church on Christmas Eve, and Stephen was well-behaved as usual.  It's so nice to see him happy and engaged again, now that he's sleeping better!

We tried out a new location for our Christmas Tree this year.  I think I like it, even though we couldn't get into the cabinet behind it if we wanted to watch any movies.  Stephen helped us a little bit with the tree, but he was more interested in watching Christmas cartoons and movies while he ate dinner.

 

 For Christmas this year, Stephen accumulated a LOT of books.  He LOVES reading and being read to, and I think we're set on new books for many, many months!  The book he is looking at in this photo is a seek and find Backyardigans book (of course!).  He also got 3 new games (UNO Moo, Trouble, and Twister), some really cool handmade Backyardigans puppets, and some other fun stuff - it was a great Christmas!

We didn't do much for New Year's Eve, and Stephen went to bed at his normal time.  Given all of his sleep issues that he was having prior to surgery, he has still been catching up, and is ready to go to bed between 7:30 and 8 every night.  Now he is back at school, and enjoying his time with his friends and teachers!

Six

We have a six year old in our house.  Yep.  He's six.

He had a pretty good birthday.  We didn't have a party this year, opting instead to put that money towards something BIG that we are doing in March... we went out to dinner (sushi - his choice, of course), but by the time we got home, he barely had energy for cake, so we opened presents on Saturday.  So in honor of being six, Stephen came down with a cold.  

Stephen is recovering beautifully from his surgery a few weeks ago.  He is sleeping pretty well, although I think we'll see even more improvement in a couple more weeks.  Even better, he is much more aware, and engaged, and more interested in playing, instead of just being a couch potato, and he is attempting much more speech.  

He is also more interested in all of our Christmas preparations this year.  Stephen has especially enjoyed his advent calendar - he pulls the little ornament out each day, and picks where it should go on the tree, which explains the cluster of little ornaments at the bottom.  And then we count down each day until December 25th, giggling away!

We are SO PROUD of all of the progress that Stephen has made this year.  He's just come so far, and we are so happy.

Picture post

I decided to post a few surgery pictures, and some others that are pretty fun.  Stephen no longer has any restrictions with regards to food textures, and he was VERY happy to use his "talker" to ask for graham crackers.  :-)

This first one was before surgery.  Stephen was very anxious about surgery, but enjoyed the free wi-fi!  Those socks didn't stay on for long at all, though...

This was a few hours after surgery.  The DVD player in our room wasn't connected to the TV (THAT was an interesting discovery!) so Stephen was watching Elmo's Christmas Countdown on my laptop.  I think we watched that 3 times while we were in the hospital.  He had his two favorite buddies there keeping him company, and his Granddaddy to later help him with some pudding.

This is our annual family portrait.  It seems to represent us pretty well - Erik and I look exhausted while Stephen laughs hysterically at something.

And the obligatory Birthday picture.  Our photographer got some REALLY great shots out of him this year - and he didn't even cry!

Feeling better!

I'm going to spare you all of the sad pictures of Stephen while he was in the hospital.... he's feeling MUCH better now, but isn't still 100%.  The scope found that not only had the adenoids grown back, but they were ENORMOUS!  The surgeon also found that the lingual tonsils were enlarged, and he cut those down too.  Stephen's oxygen saturation levels were between 95 and 100% while we were at the hospital, even while he was sleeping, which means that surgery was a success!  

Stephen went to school for a few hours today, because he was bored being at home, but I'll pick him up before lunch, since he's still not eating a normal, solid diet yet, and I didn't want to send him to school with a lunch he probably wouldn't eat.  As for his sleeping... it's better, but not yet great.  I think he's just used to getting up during the night, so that is continuing, but now we know it's behavioral, so we'll work past it.  

I have to give a BIG THANK YOU to my Dad who came out for the week to help while Stephen was recovering.  I was able to keep going to school, which was important, while Stephen needed to stay home still, and it allowed me to be able to maintain what little bit of sanity I still have, and allowed Erik to work as well.  THANKS, DAD!!!

Beautiful weather

It was so nice here on Sunday that we decided to load up and go to the zoo.  The animals were enjoying the weather too, and the giraffes were hanging out right at the fence, like THEY were watching US!  Stephen loved it!

His favorite, though, was the swimming Grizzly Bear.  He just wanted to sit and watch him swimming and playing in the water.

This happy boy will not be very happy with us for the next couple of days... tomorrow (Thursday), Stephen will be checking in to the Children's Hospital for an airway scope, and then potentially (likely) cut out the enlarged tissue that is causing his sleep apnea.  So that means an over-nighter for Mommy and Stephen at the hospital tomorrow night, and probably several days of recovery for our little guy.  But hopefully, in the end, this will result in better sleep for all of us, and a happier family.

Busy times!

We've been keeping ourselves pretty busy here in the Heine house!  But we still managed to find time to visit our local fire station last weekend.  When Stephen was in pre-k last year, they'd had a field trip scheduled to visit one, but Stephen was sick and couldn't attend.  After a neighborhood kitchen fire 2 weeks ago, we decided it was time to go!  Stephen loved looking around the truck, of course, and the fire fighters were super nice to let us come look around - THANK YOU to Station 17!!

We also had a bit of a scare last week as well.  As if Stephen's sleep apnea issues weren't enough to put us all on edge, I noticed on Saturday that Stephen had developed a twitch that affected his left arm and hip/leg. It got worse as the weekend went on, and on Monday, after letting his teacher know about it, she contacted me to tell met that it was almost non-stop during recess.  I got Stephen in to see his pediatrician early Monday afternoon (how's THAT for service?!?!  I love them.), who confirmed our suspicions that it was a TIC.  She referred us to a neurologist, with instructions to video tape Stephen's tic, in case it took a few weeks to get in.  Luckily for our anxiety levels, we were able to get in the NEXT DAY, thanks to a cancellation.  She also agreed that it was a tic, and said that it would start to subside, and that Monday would probably be the worst day.  She was right, of course, and we have only really seen it pop back up when Stephen is really tired.  Yes, being tired can exacerbate the tic, as can stress.  This may be a one-time occurrence, or it may come back, but even if it does come back, he will most likely outgrow this in a few years.  There's very little that can be done; it can't be prevented, but if it interferes with his life too much (if it comes back), we will look into medications.

So that's what all we've been up to.  Pa and Kim are coming for a visit this week, which should be fun, and then the next week is the visit to the ENT, and Thanksgiving!  We are also planning on taking Stephen to see his first movie in the theater - Wreck It Ralph!