To catch you up...Post-surgery check up with the ENT Dr.

1.27.12
We went back to Dr. Regehr to have a post surgery check up. Ashley had been feeling good and so I expected this to be a simple and routine appointment. It is routine to what for awhile in the waiting room, but for this appointment (the first one I went to without Nate) we waited for 50 minutes! I was starting to think they forgot about us. I should have gone to the counter after 30 minutes, but a 30 minute wait is typical. Ashley did good for the first 30 minutes, she played with other kids. She "colored," she got in and out of the kids chairs, she walked around the waiting room, she played in the water fountain, she washed her hands in the bathroom, she had a snack, she had milk, she had another snack. :)  And on and on. Finally they called our name and we waited for about 5-10 minutes for the doctor to come in. That was easy! :) Doctor looked at her ears and thought they looked great, the tubes were still there and he anticipates/hopes they will stay in for a year to a year and a half. He said we didn't have to worry about getting the water in her ear anymore (which is good because it was hard to wash her hair and worry about water getting in her ears). I don't recall that he said much about her breathing...it's still loud! :)    He said to continue with her acid reflux medicine. He wants to see us back in 6 months. Next up, we did a re-check of her hearing. We waited for another 15 minutes or so to be called back for the test. I'm not really sure what to think of the testing process. This is done with a small portable machine, with a small earbud headphone type piece that goes in Ashley's ear with a wire which connects to the machine. Somehow noise is transmitted and I think the machine reads if the ear drum responds to the noise? Basically, Ashley just sits there and has to be still and quiet. This is the same test we did in December which she failed on every level. The test goes through 4 levels and she should pass each level. When we went into the room, the technician mentioned that Ashley was breathing loudly, I told her this was normal and asked if it would be a problem. She said "we'll see, it might." She started with the left ear and began blowing bubbles to keep Ashley quiet and entertained. The earpiece fell out a few times and what it did read, she said she didn't pass. We switched to the right ear and I could see the machine for this one. Ashley kept wiggling though and the earpiece kept falling out. I decided to nurse her to keep her still. That worked much better, I could see the screen show that she didn't pass the first level, passed the second, "noisy" on the third, and then the piece would fall out and the fourth level would never finish. We did this 3-4 times and pretty much the same result each time. We decided to try the left ear again since she was being pretty still. We did the left ear and she passed all 4 levels! I was happy to see that. The techinician said she would let the doctor know the results and if he felt the need, he would let us know he would like to do a more extensive hearing test. If not, we would just retest in 6 months.
The technician asked if Ashley passed her hearing test at birth. I recall that they did have trouble with the tests at birth and did have to come back after an extra day to retest, I am pretty sure it was the right ear they were having trouble with too. But, I believe that she did eventually pass it.
I hope there is nothing more to it and the test was just not the best way to get results, but we will see after 6 months how she does.

to catch you up...we went to a ROYAL party

1.21.12
Princess Callista Jane and Sir Carver Levi celebrated birthdays in January. Callista turned 3 and Carver turned 1! Chase and Annie put together a ROYAL party celebrated their two littles. It was very creative and very fun! The invitation suggested that Royal attire was preferred, so the girls took that seriously and we got all dressed up! Here is the sweet birthday princess (and her frog)...

and the birthday boy!

Here are the other ROYAL princesses that came...

Annie, Cassie, Christin, Celeste, Traci, Princess Callista, and Sir Carver

Yes, Cassie and I wore our wedding dresses! When else would we get to where them again? Callista was very excited to see all of us so dressed up! And Aunt CJ curled her hair and gave her a tiara and she loved it!
The theme of the party was princess and the frog, so there were lots of girly princess things including a castle for the kids to go into and there were also lots of frog things as well. Cassie made the blow toys that Callista was playing with in the first picture and then Christin put together the "pin the lips on the frog game" Callista took it literally...

if only we would have had some red lipstick for her!

that's better!

Ashley dressed up for the party too!

Awma got this dress for Ashley while she was in Mexico last year. It was a pretty cute dress. I say was because it was a little tight, not sure she will get to wear it again!  :)
Daddy came to the party and he looked very handsome...

I can see a lot of resemblance in this picture!

Annie made a princess cake for Callista and frog cupcakes for Carver, they turned out very cute!

Ashley had fun coloring and playing with her cousins.

I think Ashley's favorite part was her candy necklace. Gigi gave it to her and she stood in one place for a good 10 minutes chewing on it. Not sure that she ate more than a few pieces, but she thought it was great!

By the end of the party, you could tell Callista was getting tired. She went from a princess to, bridezilla?  :)

 

 

Happy Birthday Callista and Carver!

to catch you up...Ashley is 14 months old!

1.20.12
My Ashley girl is so big! It is crazy to me how much you are understanding what we say to you!
I told you to throw something in the trash the other day and you walked right over and threw it away! I was quite surprised. In the mornings I ask if you want a diaper change and twice you have gone straight over to the changing table and laid down for the diaper change! You respond in excitement when I ask if you want to go play in the basement. There is a bird in the basement and you always like to go down and check on him. In the end table downstairs there are some DVD cases in the two drawers and every.single.time we are down there you always open the drawers and play with the cases or add things to the drawers. You like to sign "milk," "more," "please." You sometimes can sign "thank you."  You will blow kisses at people, you don't really "blow" the kiss though, you just kiss your hand. You wave bye bye all the time when we leave or someone else does.
At bed time when you are nursing you like to take a break and talk about "da da" and play peek-a-boo. It makes mommy laugh when you do that and then you laugh too. You are still waking up at least twice sometimes three times a night. I think it is getting a little better though. I can tell your crying is not so desperate for someone to come in, but just more of whining, just letting us know you are awake.
Your favorite foods right now are bread, grapes, spaghetti (or pasta), oranges, yogurt, and your absolute favorite is CHEESE. For snacks you love goldfish and cheez-it crackers. You are starting to like chicken more than you used to.
You are still in 12 month clothes, but some of those shirts are becoming belly shirts, so we are starting to move into 18 month tops, the pants are a bit long still for 18 month. Your hair is still growing, we have finally been able to put your hair in a pony tail or in pig tails and it.is.adorable!

You know where your belly button is (you have known this one for a couple of months I think) and where your hair is. If we ask where your eyes or nose or mouth is, you usually point to your hair/head. You can "meow" like a kitty cat. And you can "moo" like a cow. The meow is not really recognizable out of context and the cow sounds like "mmmmm." You can pick out a cow from the magnets on the fridge too.
You love bath time, Gigi gave you a tea set for Christmas and that has been a fun new toy to play with it. It seems like from that you have also realized what a cup is and when you have one, you always pretend to drink out of it.
You love to read books and when you pick one out, you bring it over to me and then hold your hands up so you can sit in my lap and we can read it together. I love that!
You love to dance! Anytime the music comes on, you immediately wave your arms or move your legs and dance! You have quite the moves too. You also like the ringtone on mommy's phone. When we get a phone call you like to start dancing to that. You also have an elephant toy in the basement that plays music when you push a button and you typically turn that on at least once while we play downstairs.
I love you Ashley girl, I am so thankful to have you in my life and to watch you grow and learn new things everyday.

to catch you up...First Word and hiding places!

1.15.12
One thing that we were hoping would change after surgery was Ashley's babbling and talking. She really didn't seem to make an effort to talk to us. I did notice a few times after surgery that it seemed she was hearing something new. One time in the high chair she was looking all around for something, and I think she was hearing the dishwasher running through a cycle. This isn't a very loud noise, so it probably is not something she ever noticed before. We could tell also that she could hear different noises and people talking in other rooms of the house. She occasionally could hear those things before, but not as consistently as she does now. Even just 2 weeks after surgery we could tell a difference. She even said her first word!!!
Ashley and I were playing in the basement waiting for daddy to come home so we could go to dinner. I had been talking about daddy and where he was and telling her he would be home soon. She loves playing with cell phones too, so we had also been "calling" daddy on her cell phone. She had her phone in her hand and she looked up at me, pointed at the stairs and said "da da."  I was so shocked! It was a cute thing, because she knew he would come down the stairs when he got home! I wasn't positive at first if we could say it was her first word, but it is obvious now, when the garage door opens, she says "da da" and as soon as she sees him, she says "da da." I love it...and so does daddy!
After we put the Christmas tree away and put the living room back together, Ashley figured out a fun little spot she likes to sit and hide.

Papa Rog made this clock for us, it has the perfect little "shelf" for Ashley to sit on!

She loves this spot!

 You might ask what is in her hands? Her favorite toy right now...my eyeshadow application brushes. I bought a bag that had about 20 in them. I think I used 2 of them, she picks them up and carries them all over the house. She LOVES to have something in her hand all the time and it's perfect when it is something little.  :)

to catch you up...Ashley's recovery from surgery!

Ashley did okay the couple days following surgery. She came down with a cold, so she had a terribly runny nose. She didn't seem to be all that uncomfortable or in too much pain. I did notice she didn't have much of an appetite and wouldn't eat much of anything when in the high chair. She did want to nurse all.the.time. Which was good, made me feel like I was making her feel better. The doctor said it was normal to see some drainage from her ears, we really didn't see any though. She had some dried blood. I ended up staying home with Ashley on Monday after surgery, just to give her an extra day with mom. Tuesday and Wednesday she went to Maria's and did okay, but she sure was ready to nurse by the time I came and picked her up!
Thursday and Friday was spent with Awma and Gigi and they took good care of her too. I remember on Sunday night (1 week after surgery) she could not seem to get to sleep. She would wake up every 20 minutes or so crying. I would nurse her and she finally would go back to sleep. She did this until about 10:45. I thought that was weird. Another thing that changed for her from the surgery was her sleep pattern. She still doesn't sleep through the night, but she would go about 4 hours between waking up, the week (actually longer than that) following the surgery she was up every 2 hours to nurse. I tell you, she likes her time with mama. And I like it too. That was very tiring though, it's been a long time since we had to do 2 hour intervals!
Monday morning I noticed a lot of discharge in Ashley's ear, I thought this was weird because she didn't have any the prior week. I assumed though it was normal and from the surgery. She didn't have a very good day on Monday at Maria's. On Tuesday morning, the same thing happened and there was even more drainage! Then I realized that there must be something wrong. I also remembered how fussy she was Sunday night and decided she could have an ear infection again! On Wednesday we were able to get back in to see Dr. Regher. We were right, ANOTHER ear infection, and he also thought she had an airway edema. Which I took as just meaning that her airways had some swelling from the surgery. Her breathing had been a lot noisier than she was before the surgery. So, he gave us another round of antibiotics, a round of steroids, and ear drops! The poor girl! I felt so badly for her, but she is quite the trooper! She did really well through all of this and once that week was over, she seemed to be back to her normal self again, sleeping pattern included! So glad all of that is behind us!

to catch you up...Ashley had surgery!

1.6.12
Remember that Ashley was not feeling well at Christmas and had a terrible cold? Well, it didn't get any better, so we took her in to see Dr. Newlin and found she had ANOTHER ear infection and had adenovirus as well as a yeast infection. The poor little girl. We started up another round of antibiotics and tried to get her all better before her surgery on Jan 6.
The surgery was scheduled for 7 AM, we were to check in at 5:30. No food or drink after midnight the night before. I knew this would be a challenge because Ashley still wakes up multiple times at night and I nurse her. (I know I'm a pushover and I have a thousand excuses as to why I don't let her cry it out) :)
She is very consistent at waking up between 12:30 and 12:45. I told myself if she happened to wake up before midnight, I would feed her, but if it was after, I had to let her cry it out. Well, she stayed on her normal plan and woke about 12:30. I went in and held her and comforted her, but no luck. She wanted to nurse. So, I put her back in bed and she cried and cried. I went back in after prob. 10 minutes and comforted her again. Still no luck, just crying. I put her back in bed and we did this for the next 3 HOURS! She would kind of stop crying and be quiet for a few minutes, but then would start up again. I tried at one point to bring her in to our bed and let her sleep there. Nope, she didn't want that either. Finally by about 3:00 she was so exhausted from crying that she fell asleep. Then we had to wake her up 2 hours later at 5. She slept the whole way to the hospital. Once we got her out of the car she was awake and never slept again the whole morning. I knew she was exhausted, but for as little sleep as she got, she did great. Also, she did great not having any milk either. She asked for it occasionally, but never got too upset.
We checked in at the hospital, which took about 5 minutes...

Next, we were given a room. So, the nurse came in and took all of Ashley's stats and vitals. This took about 20 minutes.

Isn't this little hospital gown the cutest thing!?!? She looked adorable. After we were all finished with the nurses, we had about an hour to kill. We found a car to play in and Ashley loved it! We walked around and around and around in the car. Awma came to stay with us and when Ashley got fussy because she wanted milk, Awma took over and drove her around in the car. Nate felt miserable. I had a cold the week before and then Nate caught just a day or so before the surgery, so he was exhausted from lack of sleep and just not feeling well, so he sat in the room and rested.

Eventually, daddy came out to play. They found the coloring pages and crayons and Ashley loved it! She held the crayons in her hands and played with them until we left her for surgery to start.

This is her saying, "mom I see you, I need milk!"

At one point, one of the nurses commented to us they we came really early for a 9 AM surgery. We were quite surprised! We told her our surgery was scheduled for 7 AM! She checked the schedule and said they had it listed at 7:30. I was annoyed that we still had an extra 30 minutes to wait, but I guess that was better than 2 hours! We kept Ashley busy for awhile longer with the crayons.

They were finally ready for us. So, we put Ashley in her crib and wheeled her through the hospital to the pre-op room. She thought this was a pretty fun ride! She kept playing with her crayons, and trying to stand up while we were moving.

When we reached the pre-op room, I was surprised to see it was an open room with all the patients in there together. There were curtains separating each bed, but not many of them were pulled shut. Not many of the patients paid any attention to Ashley, but the nurses all thought she was pretty cute. And, how could you not when you see this...

She ended up writing all of herself, the crib, and the sheets with those crayons. But, they kept her well distracted from what was going on. We realized that her adeniodectomy was not listed on her release forms, but it was on the schedule, so we waited for Dr. Regehr to come by and add that part to the form. It took awhile for everything to get organized. Ashley had fun though.

Why is this thing on my toe?

They gave her a relaxant and it was obvious about 10 minutes later, it hit her and she was getting tired. They were ready to get started and we had to leave. That was a very hard thing to leave her in there. But, we had a big group of prayer warriors, and we knew that Ash was in God's hands. We went to the waiting room and had breakfast with Dianna. I managed to spill an entire cup of Dr. Pepper all over Nate's pants. And he didn't even get mad! Chase came by and waited with us too. Dr. Regehr came out after about 30 minutes, I can't really remember. He said the surgery went well and that she did great. He didn't have any trouble. He said to make an appointment to see him after 2-3 weeks. She was in recovery and they would call when she was awake and one of us could go back. It was probably another 30 minutes later that they called for us. I went back to check on her and by the time I got to the recovery room, she was asleep again. They said she was starting to wake up and was fussy, so they called for me, but she was still pretty wiped out. She had an oxygen mask on and they commented how loud her breathing was. It was hard to tell if it really was worse than normal. They ordered a breathing treatment for her, and a nurse came and did that, she slept through all of it. I think I stood by her bed for about 20-30 minutes before she really started to wake up. Once she was awake, I held her and she was so exhausted she kept falling asleep, but as soon as I or one of the nurses started talking, she would startle and wake up. She was pretty restless. Eventually she started signing for milk, so I nursed her and I noticed that as I did, her monitor was alarming, I could see that it was alarming for a high heart rate, which I think was around 190-200, but I didn't know what anything else was on the machine. A nurse asked me if she usually had low oxygen levels when she nursed...how would I even know that? So, then I realized that one of the measurements was for her oxygen and it was at about 60%. So, they said to go ahead and keep the oxygen mask near her face (not on since she was nursing and since she was awake she wouldn't keep it on anyway). So, once I did that her levels went back up to 100% pretty quickly.
The patient next to Ashley was an ederly woman who was not recovering well from her surgery, her oxygen levels kept dropping and she kept removing her mask. She also must have been a diabetic because they kept doing finger pricks on her. Our nurse had her hands full with these 2 patients! I continued to hold Ashley and she could not get into a deep sleep, she was very restless. She ended up drinking 3 bottles of pedialyte and gulped them all down. After awhile the nurse decided to call the anesthisoligst back in so he could take a look at her. When he came, he agreed she was not doing well enough, and wanted to consult with Dr. Regehr on what the next step was. Everytime the oxygen mask was moved away from her face, it didn't take more than 30 seconds and her levels would drop into the 70's. They debated on sending her to PICU or to a room to be observed. He did say that he did not want her to go home. It was about 11:30 and I had the nurse call for Nate to come back since it was obvious we weren't going anywhere anytime soon. Nate came in and held Ashley  for awhile and we tried putting her in the crib to sleep, but she still could never get comfortable.

The doctors decided to send Ashley back up to the pediatric floor (where we were earlier in the morning) and they would give us a room with an extra bed to stay in for the night. We were just getting into the room and getting settled when we had 2 visitors...

Aunt Christin and Gigi. Ashley was happy to seem them. She couldn't really decide what she wanted though, she wanted CJ, and then Gigi and then mama...and around the circle again. Her breathing was actually doing much better once we were settled in the room, we didn't have to use the oxygen for too long. We though Ashley might be hungry, she still had not had anything to eat, in over 12 hours. We gave her some Jello which she thought was pretty good. 

But, she was barely awake to eat it. We decided she just needed a good nap, so mama held her (one of my favorite things!) and she eventually fell asleep and took a good 2+ hour nap.

She took it easy for the next few hours. We had lots of visitors come throughout the rest of the day and evening. Papa Bear, Gigi, Awma and Papa Rog came later in the evening. Ashley was feeling MUCH better by then. She seemed back to her normal self and had a lot more energy.
She convinced Papa Bear and Gigi to play with the car

She convinced Papa Bear to read her a book

this is only cute on one so little!

 Besides the purple car, one of Ashley's other favorite things was her balloons! Awma brought her a balloon and Hudson and Tate sent her one too. She carried them all around with her! (And they last forever...one of them is still floating after almost a full month!)

She loved all of the attention she got from her grandparents!

Look how wet her gown is! I'm not surprised though, I checked recently and she has 14 teeth!

Ashley was doing fine by evening, it almost seemed silly to even stay overnight. But, the doctor wanted to be cautious and that was a good thing. It is never fun to stay the night in a hospital. We were not interrupted too many times by nurses, but everyone was restless.Ashley had to have the monitor on her toe all night long to continue watching her oxygen levels. This meant she was not free to move around in bed. Anytime she did move around the monitor would either fall off her toe or would lose connection and then the alarm would go off. Surprisingly, the nurses didn't even come in when the alarm was going off. Nate ended up just turning off the power to the alarm. :)  And they still didn't come in to turn it back on. When the new nurse came in the morning, she turned it back on though. Nate was on a pull out chair "bed" and it was not comfortable...he was right next to the vent too. Normally he likes the room cold, but not when it is blowing right on him. We kept having to get up and mess with the temperature because it was too hot without the air on and too cold with it off, it only had the option of on or off! We were eagerly waiting for the doctor to make rounds so that we could be dismissed. She made it by around 11:00 and said we were good to go. So, we finally left the hospital at noon. It felt so good to get home!