Peyton's 2 & Medical Update!!!!

Our baby boy turned 2 last Monday!!! Can't believe it's been 2 years since we were surrounded by family & friends welcoming him into the world. He arrived at 2:09 pm weighing 7pounds 4oz! He was immediately completely different from Avery, he was lazy where she was a busy body who wanted to be nosy and involved in everything. The biggest difference was that he didn't have reflux!!! This was a huge relief because Avery's reflux was so bad that many days it left me and her both in tears and we became hermits for most of the first two months of her life. It was completely miserable so when he didn't come out puking I don't think we were sure what to do with him. Needless to say he was an awesome addition to our family after we got home and got settled.

Last year, for his first birthday we had a sports themed party & this year his theme was dinosaurs. He has been such a champ throughout the past few months with all of the sicknesses and everything that he has gone through with his ears as well as his stomach issues. I am so proud to say that his second birthday party was one that marked a few weeks without him being sick or throwing up or running a fever! His ears are absolutely wonderful. Major thanks to our amazing ENT, Dr. Pisciotta who has been absolutely phenomenal since January. By far, the most caring doctor ever, in my little ole humble opinion.

To celebrate his second year of life we had his party this past Saturday. Peyton was surrounded by a ton of his friends & he loved every minute of it! He got lots of cool toys including several dinosaurs, both big and small, and lots of clothes which he definitely needed! Here are a few pictures.

 Peyton with his "da-da" opening some of his presents.

 Avery & Peyton

Peyton & some of his friends after they sang Happy Birthday!

I am so scatterbrained! I said I was going to include his medical update then published the blog without putting it in. 

There's really nothing new to report, we haven't heard from any of the results from the specialist at USA and I'm not sure when we will. She told me that if we hadn't heard from her by the first of July to give her a call so I guess that's the plan. 

We do know that he is anemic, his pediatrician ran some blood work for iron and lead that is standard for a 2 year check-up and his iron is way low. So, as of right now, that is all that we know, but he has been doing much better and has not been throwing up. Thank goodness & fingers crossed that the dry spell (literally) continues! 

Ugh...I suck!

Wow...5 months of no blogging. That's pretty much par for the course for me. However, it's been a pretty insane 5 months so I've got some catching up to do.

So, last time I posted, Peyton was sick for the umpteenth time and we were seeing a new ENT. Basically, he stayed sick the entire month of February and he constantly ran a high fever and threw up randomly. On March 15th the ENT went in, removed the set of tubes he had in, cleaned out all of the gunk, put a new set in, and removed his adenoids as well. That remedied the ear problems but he was still throwing up. The ENT thought it was a reaction to the pain medication but after a few days of no meds it was still happening. We were referred to a Pediatric Gastroenterology Clinic in Mobile at USA and have been seeing her since April 23rd. He has been throwing up since the end of January and we still don't have any definite answers.

We've done blood tests, xrays, urinalysis, & stool samples...yummy right? After almost 6 months of him throwing up we still don't have any answers. It is so unbelievably frustrating and I hate seeing him like this.

It's hard to believe that he'll be 2 on Monday.

Avery has been doing great & will be going to preschool in August. She is seriously excited and cannot wait.

Brent has been coaching little league baseball & his team won their championship so he is now coaching All-Stars for the month of June.

It's been the same ole same ole with me. My Pampered Chef business is great & I am absolutely loving meeting all kinds of new people.

That's about all, we've been up to our ears in vomit for much of the past 6 months so I don't really have much to report. Okay, I have a ton to report but it'd take forever and I don't have time for that tonight.

Laid Back Weekend & A New ENT

Sometimes you just need to have a weekend that is laid back and have little to nothing planned. That's exactly what we did this weekend and it felt so good. Brent and I each had one thing to do on Saturday and they happened to be at the same time but that was all. Thank goodness because it feels like we've been running ragged ever since Christmas.

It felt so good to just stay home and decompress so to speak. We laughed and played with the kids mostly and lounged around. We had some good and much needed family time!

Now, onto the ongoing saga with Peyton's poor ears. For those of you who don't know, he had his first ear infection last January at 7 months old. There were no signs other than a fever that was 100.1 one minute and 104.5 thirty minutes later and of course he wouldn't stop crying. Other than that, there was no pulling on the ears or anything that is normally associated with an ear infection. We ended up in the ER & put on antibiotics of course, 5 days later we had a follow up with our Pediatrician, the infection hadn't improved at all and was actually a bit worst. It took 3-1/2 weeks for us to get the infection to clear.

We last saw our Pediatrician on a Monday and Wednesday we saw the ENT, the following Monday we went in and had tubes put in. It was amazing, he was doing wonderful, his ears were normal color and had no infection whatsoever...until July. Here it is, January and every month since July except for November he has had an ear infection in either one or both ears. That's 5 ear infections in almost 7 months, the average that is considered acceptable for children with tubes is 1-2 infections a year as long as the tubes are still functioning properly.

We went back to our original ENT after seeing the Pediatrician and being put on antibiotics who basically blew my concerns off. This was in August so he had already had 2 infections since his tubes were placed. He told me that the tubes were open and allowing fluid to flow away from the ear drum and drain out of the ear canal and that antibiotics are clearing the infection so there was basically nothing he could do. I thought, ok maybe this is normal. I had no clue, Avery, at that point was 2-1/2 and had only had 2 ear infections her whole life so I was flying blind so to speak as to what was considered normal for a child with tubes. Of course after this visit we had 3 more infections.

Our Pediatrician has been great through the whole ordeal and understood how frustrated I was getting. Finally in December after having to take him to an Urgent Care because the pediatrician's office couldn't get him in for an appointment and his fever was at 104 and wouldn't budge with tylenol or motrin I called the Pediatrician's office and requested a referral to a new ENT. This time I requested the ENT that I saw when I was younger, before Brent and I got married, several of my friends and family see him and he has done sinus surgery on my mom twice so I know how good he is and really like his bedside manner. He is the kind of doctor that you rarely find, has awesome bedside manner and is an amazing doctor that will go to whatever extent he has to to figure out what's going on and make you better. Plus, he and his wife have either 4 or 5 kids themselves so that is also an advantage, he's great with kids. His wife was actually going to be my OBGYN when I got pregnant with Avery but she decided to take leave and stay home with their munchkins.

His office called within a few hours of our Pediatrician faxing the referral form over and we set up an appointment. The appointment was a week and a half ago and I immediately felt like he felt my concern as soon as I started going through the history of the infections. Already he had done more than the original ENT did for us, he listened. When I would talk about my concern with the first ENT he wouldn't even let me finish talking, he'd interrupt me and basically tell me what was happening was completely normal and there's nothing more he could do. He never spent more than 5 minutes in the room with us and I felt like he was always rushing us. The new ENT took his time with Peyton, he doesn't like his ears being messed with and with as much pain as he's been through with these infections I don't blame him. It was just a completely opposite experience than we had been having which was refreshing and I actually felt some relief.

Finally, we got some answers! It's actually his adenoids and tonsils that are causing all of the problems. Obviously the solution is to have them removed but he is still too young to have his tonsils taken out because he needs to be able to drink out of a regular cup without a straw since he won't be able to suck on a straw or sippy cup with the stitches on his tonsils. Right now the game plan is to try to wait as long as we can to hopefully do both procedures at once so we don't have to put him under anesthesia for a third time. However, if he continues to get ear infections like he has been we will go ahead and do the procedures seperately. If that's what has to happen then we'll do it, it's in God's hands.

He also wanted to doing a hearing test to see if the infections has affected his hearing as well as his speech development because he has a speech delay. We did the hearing test last Tuesday and it showed that his hearing will allow for adequate speech and language development. They still wanted to refer us to a speech therapist so we should be hearing from them to schedule an in-home evaluation soon. I'm a bit nervous about that because I don't know what to expect.

Other than that things are silent, healthwise that is, in the Allison house which makes this mama very happy!

Pinterest

I'm oficially addicted to Pinterest! If you haven't tried it it's really awesome. They have some neat things that I can't wait to try out and some really cool ideas about stuff.

If you're already on pinterest look me up by searching for Ashley Allison. If not and you'd like to join shoot me an email and I'll invite you. Happy Pinning!

Christian Parenting

This topic has been on my mind a lot lately and with my children being so young I often wonder how in the world I'm suppose to start teaching them about God. I ran across a book at Lifeway called Leading Your Kids to Christ and it is a 30 day devotional with ideas of how to introduce your children to Christ. So far I'm only on day 2 but it has really got me thinking about my own relationship with Christ. I know I have to set an example for them and my realtionship with Christ has been distant lately but how am I suppose to set them up to have a strong faith if my own faith is weak at the moment?

I always thought I had a great relationship with God but of course everybody can always use some work in that area. I still rely on God a lot and pray all of the time but not as much as I use to. I feel so distant from him at the moment but I also know it's my own doing because God never goes anywhere. He doesn't turn his back on me, I'm the one that has pushed him away and I have no clue why.

The second day of devotions opens with this verse from Matthew 17:20 "For I assure you: If you have faith the size of a mustard seed, you will tell this mountain, "Move from here to there," and it will move. Nothing will be impossible for you." This is one of my favorite bible verses and everytime I hear or read it I remind myself that I just need to trust in God and have a little faith and give every little thing to God. In this day and age I think it's hard for anybody to do that because we live in such a world where we all feel as if we have to be in control. When something isn't entirely in our hands we just don't think it's right, but we seem to forget that as Christians nothing is every entirely in our hands. God is in control of everything and we just have to have faith and believe that the right thing will happen. God knows what's going to happen before it ever occurs.

My devotion for today is to examine my own faith and I'm finding it very hard for some reason. So, after reading the devotional several times this morning and attempting to reflect on it a few lines stood out to me. I want to share them with you. On page 17 it says 'Thomas Brooks spoke for believers of every generation when he observed, "Christ is the sun, and all the watches of our lives should be set by the dial of his motion." Christ, indeed, is the ultimate Savior of mankind and the personal Savior of those who believe in Him. As his servants, we should place Him at the very center of our lives and at the center of our households. When we do, we are blessed today, tomorrow, and throughout eternity.'

That statement by Thomas Brooks is so very true and I have never thought about God that way. The only difference that I see is that God is like the sun and the moon because he's always around no matter what time of the day or night. Philip Yancey once said "Faith means believing in advance what will only make sense in reverse." Boy is that true! So, I'm going to reflect on these two thoughts for the day and evaluate my own faith. I've got to focus on myself and my relationship with God before I can help my children develop a relationship with God.

Days 4 & 5

On days 4 & 5 I'm so thankful for my husband and children. Without them I'd be a nobody.

My husband is my best friend, my other half. He is the only thing that keeps me sane on a day to day basis. If I had a dollar for every time I called him during the day just to hear the voice of another adult I'd be rich. Somedays he's the only adult I interact with but somehow he manages to keep me sane.

I'm still completely amazed and gracious that God blessed me with not one, but two healthy children. My children are my world and I've always said that I was put on this Earth to be a mother. I'm lucky enough to be a full-time sahm and spend all of my time with my munchkins. Like every other kid out there my kids can make me smile, laugh, and pull my hair out all within a 2 minute span of time but at the end of the day I know I have the right job.

Of course I need a break from time to time, and between my husband and other family members I'm lucky enough to get that break, but my kids absolutely bring a ton of joy to my life and I am so thankful for that.

I know this was a short post but I've had a long day and we're all exhausted. I'm calling it a night but we've had a great weekend, hopefully I'll get a chance to post about it tomorrow.

Day 3

I didn't get a chance to post yesterday afternoon because I was helping my beautiful little cousin get dressed for her winter formal. So, today I will post days 3 and 4.

For day 3 I'm thankful for my best friend, Samantha Cooley. Once a month we have dinner, just the two of us. Not only is it great because I have a chance to spend time with another adult but I use the time we spend together to kind of bring things back into perspective.

I definitely need to do that more than once a month but she just has a way of helping me do it very easily.

We've known each other for what seems like forever but in reality for over 10 years. When we were 13 and 14 we started taking dance together and did so throughout high school. I graduated a year before her and went to college while she finished her senior year of high school.

I hadn't talked to her in probably a year or more until my second year of college when I almost literally ran into on the sidewalk. We talked for a bit and I went on about my business. Then I walked into one of my classes I think it was my second semester and she was in my class. Come to find out we happened to be going to school for the same thing. That was 2007 & we've been best friends ever since. Heck, she was the second person to know I was pregnant with Ave...she was second only to Brent.

I don't know what I'd do without her.

Now, she's about to become a member of the motherhood club and I'm thrilled. I might possibly be more excited about her going through labor and delivery than I was for myself...that's probably because I won't be experiencing contractions or pain or an epidural or any of the other lovely things that come along with l&d! Of course, all of it's worth it when the reward is a beautiful, healthy baby!

Ok, I have to finish getting ready for a Pampered Chef party tomorrow...I'll have to double up on posts tomorrow. Goodnight peeps and God bless!