The Days of Our Lives

Nothing super exciting around the Mathis camp, just the normal.


Caleb riding his motorcycle in the kitchen while wearing half his pajamas, his whitey tighties and his goggles.

Trying to teach Piper to actually OPEN her hand to eat the puff. Haven't succeeded in this one, yet.

The Two of Us - Buffed Edition

Caleb has a few sets of those Imaginex toys. He loves them, and frankly so do we. Each set comes with a little person and some accessories. This is a picture of 2 of his little Imaginex people. He was playing with them today in one of his trucks and he started trying to name them like most kids do at this age.
He called the guy in green on the left Daddy; which I can totally see with the green, Jes's favorite color, and the facial hair. The guy in tan on the right apparently is me. Oh to have that guy's quads.

Proof

This morning, Caleb and I were working on his writing skills. Look what he did! He's been able to write letters for awhile now, but has never put them all together to spell his name all on his own before. He asked me to take a picture and I couldn't say no!

During Piper's lunch, Caleb provided a little lunch time show for her. He was dancing around the kitchen and carrying on, she, of course, was laughing. My two babies...

Brotherly Love and A Little History

Caleb kissing Piper. Oh, if only this mutual admiration of each other would last!

I decided that the kiddos and I would watch the Inagauration today. We didn't vote for Obama, but he's the guy that got elected, so we'll support him. I took a few pictures today, mainly to prove to them one day that their dear old mother did in fact expose them to a little history in the making. Piper couldn't be bothered but Caleb seemed to understand that there was something big afoot. Anyway, this will be good in the future with Caleb becomes president, or as he says "presentdent"!

Story Time

Caleb has been learning more and more words and is reading better and better, so lately he has decided that he will read stories to Piper. I caught him reading one of his Curious George books to her and she seemed to really enjoy it, but then again she enjoys any interaction with her brother!

Oops. I forgot.

So, I guess I forgot to post the results of Caleb's evaluation with the ENT who was supposed to do his sedated ABR. We got to the office and immediately, I knew that it was going to be a good visit. While we love our regular ENT, he's not one who just treats kids. When we walked into the office, I noticed that out of the 3 kids in the waiting area, 2 of them had double hearing aids on. That told me that this particular doctor probably knew what he was looking at when he saw a kid with a potential hearing loss.
When we finally got through all the paperwork and whatnot and got to see the doctor he told me that he wanted to try another test on Caleb. He wanted Caleb to see his audiologist and have the hearing tests repeated. So, off he went to track her down and we got in right then to do the tests. Here's the best part: Caleb passed all the tests and was determined to have totally normal hearing in both ears! I was so excited that I could hardly contain myself! We saw the doctor again after the tests and he said that he felt as if the results would turn out that way because Caleb's speech is so good. I was very confident that he would know what he was talking about since he sees so many KIDS with hearing difficulties. So, the long and short of it is, we don't have to put him through anymore testing for his hearing. Yea!
I wanted to post that quickly because I have to head off to bed. Neither Jes nor I got much sleep last night as he was called into work around 9pm and Piper started shooting massive amounts of snot out of her nose. So, one of us was up with her off and on all night. I figure that if I get to bed now, 1am won't be so so bad!

Emerson

Today I pulled myself out of my pity party (sorry about that, by the way) and looked for things I can be thankful for. For all the health issues we have been through with Caleb nothing compares to the issues of this little girl, Emerson. She has already been through one small bowel/pancreas/liver transplant and now needs another to survive. Her home state of Colorado has since dropped her from Medicaid, even though she relies on it and cannot have the transplany without it. In short, Emerson will die if she does not have this transplant and/or if the state of Colorado gets its way. Go here http://cotaforemersonw.com/node/35 to check out her story and see what you can do to help. I know I'll be taking a few minutes to write a little letter myself.

A Couple of Fun Videos

I got a new camera for Christmas, so I thought I would try out the video recording part to see how it worked. This first video is of Caleb riding his tricycle, and quite well. This may not seem like a big deal to most, but every kiddo has abilities that they are better at than others, and my son has never been all that great on the physical/athletic front. He's just like his Mama. We all worked so hard with Caleb to help him acquire this skill, so we're quite proud.

This next video is of Piper in her swing. Caleb was playing with a ball in the house and she just got so tickled. I got the tail end and it's a little dark and quite grainy, but you get to see my P in action. She even gives you a little "hi" at the end. (Just a disclaimer, she's not really saying hi, it's just the sound she's always made when she sees me. She's always done it.)

Today

Caleb's long awaited speech evaluation was this morning at 10am. We were told to plan on just over an hour, so I was surprised, to say the least, when the speech therapist delivered Caleb back to my mom, Piper and myself just before 10:30. The therapist and I had a meeting and she said that just from comparing his ability before Thanksgiving at his intake appointment and today, she saw a huge improvement in his speech. She seems to think some of it is due to his tubes but also because he is just growing and learning so fast.

The unofficial determination is that Caleb will probably not need speech therapy and is actually scoring above what a normal 3 to 4 year old would in the area of speech. There will be an official report, but no one is expecting that he will need much, if any therapy. While I was there, I also asked about the report from the observation that was done for Caleb while he was still in the Mother's Day Out program. While we don't have an official report from that yet either, the paper work indicated that the lady who did the observation did not see anything that warranted much, if any concern.

I also talked briefly with the therapist about why we decided to take Caleb out of the school and they agreed that what they were teaching was somewhat too elementary for him at this point and that he might need an actual preschool or something with set curriculum in the fall. Maybe they can teach him how to not write a runon like that... :)

Anyway, let me leave you with a couple of cute pictures of the kiddos:

Here's something I never thought I would see, hair! Enough hair to put a bow in!

It's a tiny bow, but it's a bow and it stayed there all day long! This is an exciting day for us! (It doesn't take much to get me excited, now does it?)

Here's Caleb playing with his Click Start, or more commonly called, his computer. He LOVES this and plays it as much as I will let him!

Can We Stop At 2 Please?

So, you know how you have heard that all bad things come in 3's? Well, we experienced number 2 last night and are hoping that we can stop there.
We were having a particularly fun night with Caleb, as we had to wake him up from a nap and he was crabby to say the least. I told Jes to put him in a bath to relax him a little and then it was off to bed for him. He had just finished with his bath and Jes shuttled him to his room when he realized that his lotion was in the bathroom, just next door to Caleb's bedroom. As Jes rounded the corner he saw that Caleb had a can of room air freshener in his hand, pointed directly at his eye and sprayed it. In his eye.
Immediately, the screaming and crying commensed, so I told Jes to put him back in the shower, turn it on and start forcing water into his eye to wash it out. We read the can and it said to either call the doctor or poison control. This was around 7pm, so I decided to call poison control, since it would take the better part of an hour to hear back from the nurse on call with the pediatrician.
Long story short, Caleb sat in the bathtub with the shower running over his head and face, and ultimately into his eye to wash it out. We reevaluated in an hour with poison control and they deemed him ok and we didn't need to go to the ER.
So, let's take score here, 1 call to 911 to rescue Piper from a locked car when it was below freezing and raining outside and 1 call to poison control to ensure that Caleb doesn't lose his eyesight.
Can we PLEASE be done now?

Pediatrician Appointment and Speech Eval Update

This morning, I took Piper to the pediatrician. She checked out and all my questions were answered. Her measurements are as follows:

Weight: 18lb 12oz (89th %tile)

Length: 27.5in (93rd %tile)

Head Circ: 17.75in (96th %tile)

We go back in a month for her booster flu shot and then again in 3 months for her 9 month appointment. I can't believe my baby is so big already!



Yesterday, before all the mayhem and 911 calling ensued, I got a phone call from the school district people regarding Caleb's speech evaluation. I was under the impression that if he failed his hearing test that they wouldn't do the speech eval at all. Apparently, if Caleb has normal hearing in one ear, they can still do it. So the long and short of it is, we're back on for Thursday morning at 10am for his official speech evaluation. If Caleb needs therapy, I think it will be a positive thing to get him started before his ABR and determination on that. If he does need a hearing aid, at least he's on the right path with the therapy and we can hopefully just continue on or tweak as we need to. We're still praying that his ABR comes back totally normal, but I guess I'm just trying to prepare for the worst. Hopefully, that's unnecessary.

I Didn't Want a Post THAT Bad.

Last night, I opened up the blog to post and realized I didn't really have anything to say. I closed it back up with the thought, "I'll post when something exciting happens or when I just have something to talk about". Well.
This morning, we were getting ready to get to MOPS. Since it was our first meeting of the Spring semester, all us girls on steering were to bring the food. That just means one more bag for me, so I loaded everything up in the car and then went after the kids. After putting Piper in the car and crossing over to the other side to put Caleb in, I realized that the keys and P were locked in the car. Evidently, Caleb was playing with the door and locked it without unlocking it again. We got rid of our home phone some time ago and my purse was in the car, so I didn't have my cell phone to call someone. My next inclination was to go to the neighbor's to try to use their phone. Our next door neighbor did not answer the door, neither did the one across the street or next door to her. As I walked away from there in tears, soaking wet, cold and dragging Caleb with me, the meter reader came around the corner. He saw that I was quite distressed and asked me if there was something he could do for me. I explained the situation and he used his own personal phone to call a locksmith, who was none too helpful. They explained it would be about 20 or more minutes before they could come around to open the car, regardless of the fact that my 6 month old was locked in and it was below freezing temps. Sigh. Some people...
The meter reader said he would finish up the street and come back around to wait with me, so I headed back to my garage. About that time, my neighbor came out and asked if everything was ok. I explained what had happened and she told me to come over and use her phone. She was so sweet and watched Caleb for me as I called Jes to figure out what to do. We decided that waiting on the locksmith was not an option at this point, so I called 911. About 5 minutes later I heard sirens coming toward our house and sure enough an ambulance peeled around the corner. They were able to open the car and check on Piper, who was more upset about being woke up than anything else.
Poor Caleb felt so bad because he was the one who locked the door and as I stood in the driveway crying from despair, all he could say was, "I'm sorry Mama, I'm sorry." It all worked out in the end, but this was not the best way to start a Monday. I made it to MOPS, late (!), and won a door prize, at which point our coordinator explained what had happened. She said she was glad she drew my name because she thought I needed a door prize more than anyone else! It seems as I have entered some sort of club now that this has happened to me because around 15 ladies told me they had done the same thing in some form or fashion. I'm so thankful that we live less than a mile from 2 (!) fire stations and have so many lovely women in my life that make me feel better when I do something stupid like this! Here's to a boring afternoon!