March

I really have been meaning to update our blog this month, but it just seems like time is speeding up and there are never enough hours in the day.

Alexis turned 7 a couple weeks ago, and for her birthday dinner she chose Texas Roadhouse...she loves her some steak and of course those yummy rolls (a girl after my own heart).

 She decided she wanted cheesecake for dessert, and then only ate the strawberries and whipping cream.  Alexis told me after we left "Next time we'll stick with the brownie".

Right before her family birthday party we went bowling with Jamie and Steph, while the Ty and Justin stayed home to play videos games-party poopers (as Alexis told them when we were leaving). My little 7 year old definitely knows how to speak her mind and tell you how it is-no holding back-ever.

Our house was crazy when everyone got there to have cake and ice cream. But it's never too crazy for these three to pose for me.

Makenna got two teeth this month and my lack of sleep can prove it. I tried and tried to get a picture of her tooth, but she loves to play with it with her tongue, so this is the best I got. Lucky for her one of her top teeth is trying to make an appearance, one of these days I get catch her off guard and get a picture of those adorable baby teeth. 

She is my most cuddly little squirt, which is saying a lot because Alexis and Kyle were pretty cuddly. But this is my most favorite time...after a long day at work, I love coming home and just holding this little cutie pie.

Lately her personality has just quadrupled and I can honestly say I think she is the happiest baby I have ever met. This little smile just makes my heart melt. My favorite is when you are holding her and she'll smile at you grab your face and then tuck her head into her neck, almost like she's embarrased, it's the cutest thing ever.

Kyle had ear surgery a couple weeks ago to get his tubes removed that were put in when he was about 5 months old.  He was only born with about 40% of his hearing and the tubes were put in to reconstruct his inner ear and to stop the fluid from going directly into his ear drum.  The problem was that you can only have these tubes in for 3 years, and in Kyle's case the tubes had pushed their way deeper into his ear drum and were causing more problems.   They went in and removed the tubes and placed an internal patch to cover the hole in his ear drum, and now it's just a waiting game to see if the hole will heal and to also see how much of his hearing will be permanently lost.  We should know the outcome in the next six months, and if there is the hearing loss that the doctor expects we will most likely have to get a hearing aide implanted. 

A couple weeks ago another mom got in contact with me that had twins born with congential CMV and both of them are severely mentally disabled and have hearing and vision problems.   I am just so thankful that even though he had a rough start to life, things have definitely worked out really well. The hardest part with CMV is that it affects the baby's spinal cord and brain and the long term developmental problems are not known until they baby is 2-4 years old. We used to have a developmental nurse come to our house every month to track how Kyle was doing, and if a problem did arise we could catch it early and start whatever therapy we needed to.  There is no way to know at what point in my pregnancy Kyle caught this virus, but now all of his doctors and specialists are pretty sure that it was within the last week or two of my pregnancy, which explains why he is doing as well as he is. 

On to funner things, we also went to McKadin's birthday party, but anyone that knows this little boy knows that he can't sit still long enough to get this picture taken. But Sophie hasn't quite learned to run away from Aunt Shara when her camera is out.  Don't you just love her brown hair and blue eyes?

 Justin and I also went on a real, true double date when his cousin Erik.  We go to movies all the time, but we are usually only gone for a couple of hours. So to have a true date was really fun. We had a great time hanging out with Erik and laughing at our crazy waiter, who I swear was totally trying to hit on Erik.  After dinner we saw "A Tale of Two Cities" at Hale Center Theatre.  It was probably one of the best plays I have ever seen, I'm going to have to read the novel now.  Justin and I had general admission seats because it was kind of a last minute thing. But it totally worked in our favor because we ended up sitting on the second row. Even Justin said that he really like the play...let's just say those two words have never been spoken by him before, so you know it had to be good.

Just one last picture...it's makes me so sad to see how grown up these two are getting, but I love that are best friends and get along so good. (Definitely polar opposites of what mine and Ty's relationship was like when we were little). I'm hoping it stays this way forever, but I have a feeling that the day is coming when Kyle is going to start putting his foot down and is going to start to want to be the boss too-let's just hope it's later rather than sooner.