Wyatt at Fantastic Sams

The boys desperately needed haircuts so off we went to Fantastic Sams.....Wyatt looked so cute sitting in the chair.....until he started whimpering! It was so sweet and sad at the same time. The stylist gave him a sucker and he was good to go......now my boys look so grown up!!

Shopping with my boys.....

I have to laugh because a friend of mine just posted about hating these cars at the grocery store. I must admit, I too despise them, however they are the only thing that help to keep my boys occupied while at the store. But I refuse to pay for them, I think that is absolutely ridiculous.....so I only use them when they are free! So anyway.....hope you enjoy this picture of my boys driving their way through Kroger.

Owen riding his bike with NO training wheels!

Well it isn't a great picture but you can see that Owen is riding his bike all by himself......we are so proud of our boy!!

Wyatt 15 month STATS

Here's our cute boy....

When he gets hot and sweaty his curls really standout!!

STATS:

Weight: 25lbs 12 oz (65%)

Height: 35.8 inches (99%)

HC: 19 inches (78%)


Kris was 32.25 inches tall and 27lbs

I don't have 15 month stats for Owen marked but I do have stats from 18 months and he was 25 lbs and 33 inches.

Wyatt is going to be our tall boy apparently! We always guessed Owen will be like Kris and Wyatt will be like Uncle Steve.....only time will tell!!

Regressing...

I'm bummed to even write this post. I was hoping that I was trending in the right direction in regards to my medication. I was feeling really good for a while. Had almost my full range of motion back and was running once a day, sometimes twice! But something happened in July that made be regress in my progress. I'm not sure if it was my tapering of steroids.....or what...but either way things have been more of the same lately.

I saw my Rheumatologist today who is still pretty stumped. We know that my "label" or diagnosis right now is Urticarial Vasculits (which don't attempt to Dr. Google it because there is NOTHING about it anywhere online.) But the arthritis is what is throwing her for a loop. And the way I flare up and how it affects me is just a big "WHY"!

She will be testing me again for everything (hopefully) but she said even if I do get a positive blood test it won't matter because she will still be treating my symptoms. Right now I am being treated for vasculitis, rheumatoid arthritis and inflammatory bowel disease. SO....... on to more medications.

She increased my steroids from 2mg to 20mg....it is medrol so it is a higher dose than prednisone (apparently). I will start taking my Humira injections once a week instead of once every two weeks. I will likely start back on Methotrexate injections. I'm still on plaquenil. And the newest medication besides vitamins and all the other supplements will be Fosamax. This will help to harden my bones since the steroids are just thinning out my bones each day.

We also discussed me becoming pregnant down the road. Though she said that it is not TOTALLY out of the question. I will have to talk to a high risk OB before trying, to discuss my current situation and medications.

I SO badly wanted to try for a GIRL......but at the end of the day I have to remember that God is putting this auto-immune disorder/disease in my life for a reason.....I just need to figure out why. And I also have to remember that God is Good all of the time, All of the time God is Good!

I will follow-up with my rheum again in a month as wooo-hoooo I am a high complexity case!! Doesn't get much better than this!!

Thanks as always for your prayers and please pray for comfort and energy for me as Kris goes back to work next week.

Preschool

In three weeks I will be taking Owen to his first day of preschool....I'm not really sure how I feel. Owen and I are buds. We hardly ever spend any time apart and we bicker and laugh and tease and pick on daddy....he is just a good boy. A great brother to Wyatt and a perfect son to me and Kris.

I will be sad but also so happy for him knowing that he will be socializing with kids his own age. After all I must say that I get pretty boring fast and Wyatt too....he needs kids his own age. I can't wait to see all of the friends he will meet. I can't wait to watch him come home with birthday party invitations from all of the other kids in his class. I can't wait for him mature into a little man instead of a sweet little innocent boy like he is now. I can't wait for all of these things to happen to him, yet at the same time I never want him to really "grow" up. I want him to stay my sweet, innocent little boy forever. I want him to be my buddy forever. I want him to want to do things with his mommy forever!

We picked out his backpack the other day. A CARS backpack with a CARS lunch box attached. Appropriate for him. He will love it, he will do great! I on the other hand need to learn how to adjust that my boy is 4 and ready for preschool.

Kris and I picked a nice Christian school for him. We are hoping we will be happy there and keep him at the school through 8th grade. (there has been talk about making in k-12 so we will see if this will happen)

I will obviously post again once his first day comes and take pictures of him but for now I just wanted to get these things off of my chest and on paper.

Owen's 4 year old stats

This picture is a little dated (fall of last year, but I love it so I thought I would use it for his stats post)

Weight: 35.8 lbs in the 44th percentile
Height: 41.5 inches in the 70th percentile
BMI: 14.61 in the 16th percentile

His BP was 86/54 (the cuffs are so cute!)

So he is trending properly. He is a little light for his age but he is also a bit tall so I think it evens out. He had a hearing test at this visit and passed with flying colors....now when he says "what" all of the time we don't have to worry about if he really heard us or not.

He got four shots at this visit and hated all four of them. He was pretty miserable for the rest of the day so that was a bummer.....but on the bright side NO shots at his 5 year old check up!

Wyatt's first dentist appointment

Poor kid....he actually did quite well other than the fact that he was being held down beyond his will! Owen had an appointment the same day....he has been going to the dentist for a few years now.....ever since he fell down the stairs and pushed his front tooth back. Owen hates the dentist, so it wasn't much help to learn at the appointment that he has a cavity! When will he catch a break?

We do love our dentist though....they specialize in kids and are great with them....so we couldn't ask for a better team of people to be working on our boys mouths.

We already have to start flossing Wyatt's teeth. It seems goofy since he doesn't have very many...but we don't want cavities for him so will take the advice of the dentist and floss away!!

A nice little surprise.....

When we came home from our last camping trip this is what our backyard looked like...... It took almost a week for it to dry out all the way!! The water was so warm, Owen actually kind of used it as a swimming pool.

Lovely South Haven blueberry fields...

We went camping to South Haven and had no idea we would be smack in the middle of blueberry country. I mean this blueberry field was less then five feet away from our camper. In fact our campground was surrounded by blueberry fields. So we picked some and ate some and picked some more and ate some more. Finally we decided to get some cups to put them in so we could save them. Owen helped me put fresh blueberries in our ambrosia salad that we had with dinner tonight......and tomorrow morning we are going to make blueberry pancakes....yummy!!!

Wyatt was napping when we were picking so we saved some for him to have when he woke up from his nap. Tomorrow we will take him too and see what he thinks!

What a neat little find....it made this campground a bit different and added another element of surprise to our trip!

Motorcycle

Kris recently inherited 4 motorcycles....yes that is 4, FOUR, however you read it 4 motorcycles. The story behind the bikes is a sad one. They were my uncles bikes. He unexpectedly passed away and so my aunt has been maintaining them in her barn until she decided she was ready to see them go.

Here is a picture of Kris cleaning my uncles bike up with the help of the boys. I can honestly say that I'm not crazy about him having one motorcycle let alone four but I know that he will take really good care of it and that's what Chuck would have wanted. So here is just a picture of one of the new additions to our family.......the bike that Uncle Chuck and Aunt Theresa rode on together for many years.