More pictures of the kids!!!!

Here are Rebecca and Matthew as we celebrated his 1 month anniversary of GOTCHA DAY with us! You may not see it, but Matthew looked at the cake I made with WIDE OPEN EYES!!!!

Couldn't resist these pictures! Can you tell they JUST got up?! LOL

Roy gets his AWARD!!!!!!!!

On Wednesday, May 23rd, 2007, Roy was asked to attend a Convocation at CSM (College of Southern Maryland) to receive an award with the High Honors of having Academic Excellence from the Dean of the school. This award is ONLY given to those who have a 3.75 and above!!! We are so VERY proud of Roy!! Go daddy, go!
Matthew chillin' out at Dad's Convocation. It was warm, but a nice cool breeze hit us from time to time.

Rebecca was having TOO MUCH FUN! (with the kids behind her, the people in front of us, the one's beside us, on the next isle, with the folks on the stage......UFF DA!
We are so VERY proud of daddy and what he has achieved! This Academic Excellence award was given to Roy with the High Honors of having a 3.83 out of 4.0 while getting his Drafting degree. As the kids yelled out while daddy walked across the stage, YAY DADDY!

Matthew's visit today!!!

Ok, this might be long, but stick with us. Matthew didn't like going today. He let the urologist know that too by "saying his HELLOS" from down under.....ROFL Matthew "christened" the doctor! *that's my boy* (snickering) Hey, she was poking, prodding, squeezing, kneading, you name it trying to "find" certain parts in the abdomen and well? Matthew said his, "how do you do's" without saying a word! Guess you had to be there.......

Matthew has "boys" down where they should be, (stay with me here) except one of his "boys" couldn't find his way HOME! So, the right "boy" is just where he ought to be and we say HALLELUJAH LORD! But the left "boy" just WOULD NOT STOP AND ASK FOR DIRECTIONS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! ROFLMAO!!!!!!!!!!!! (Ok, it's not funny, but, you have to admit, YOUR LAUGHING TOO AREN'T YOU!?!?!?!?!) So, henceforth, since the left "boy" wouldn't ask for directions, and plant himself at home, he's floating wherever he wants to be on a given day! Today he got a workout from the doctor! (Matthew didn't like it.)

Ok, in a normal world, the left "boy" would be left alone until he FOUND his way home, BUT.........the left "boy" has brought his own living room set with him, (ie, the lower intestines) and MUST have surgery to set the living room set back where it belongs and to put the left "boy" where he belongs. GOT IT? Because I'm not saying all that again!!!! *Not even in REAL terms*

So, this means that Matthew MUST have surgery quicker than the Craniofacial team would like. We will be in constant communication to schedule surgeries for both as soon as both can do it on the same day! We would like to put Matthew under only one time for all of his craniofacial surgeries/urology issues. So this will happen sooner rather than later.

Please pray that everything will run smoothly with both teams to get Matthew what he needs. Daddy and Mommy are making some huge decisions for Matthew right now. As soon as we know what we are doing, we'll let you guys know!

Matthew and Rebecca's Mommy

PS, if you want to know in layman's terms what is going on, EMAIL me privately please.

Tomorrow is another big day for Mr. Matthew

......we go to Children's Hospital for a whole 'nother reason. We get to see a person in Urology! Oh boy! Hopefully everything will be a ok, but we need a few things checked out. For the sake of Mr. Matthew, if you know what a Urologist does, then you know why Matthew is going there. :o)

*disclaimer - because my son shall have a certain bit of "privacy", this is why we WILL NOT go into detail what this concerns! *


Other than that, hopefully it will be uneventful and the doctor will say everything is ok, he's just a "late bloomer" and leave it at that. Mom and Dad will be happy!


FOR THOSE WAITING FOR PICTURES? THEY ARE TRULY COMING! DAD is getting them together! Time is just the issue......nothing more. Hang tight. They're a coming...........

Kristen

PS, those inclined? Please pray for a good visit both tomorrow and Friday!

What a GREAT time!

Well, Matthew and Rebecca had FUN, FUN, FUN at their Godparents house over the weekend on Maryland's Eastern Shore. We ended up spending the whole day at Ocean City, MD and the kids got to see the ocean and sand. Matthew got to see it through virgin eyes and was just astounded by sand and the shops and people and, and, and, THE RIDES!!!!!!!! Oh yes, we had to get tickets and let the kids ride the rides!

Rebecca is our little dare devil! She will try anything and she did on Saturday. Even the ferris wheel for the younger kids. SHE LOVED IT! She laughed and giggled and yelled and did everything momma use to do when she got on those rides!

Matthew? Well, let's start out slower here. Remember he's NEVER been on anything like these before. We started with the BIG Carousel. (for everyone) He loved it, and so did Becca, but after about 6 or 7 go arounds, Matthew looks at me, (I'm in the middle of two horses that Becca and Matthew are riding) and says, NO NO, Momma, NO NO. He starts to get off the horse! *AHHHHHH* As short as I am, 5'4, if you can picture me going UP and DOWN with the horse that he is riding trying to keep him on the horse so he doesn't fall off and telling Becca to hold on......Glad that the Carousel stopped a little bit after that.

THEN, we moved to the mini ferris wheel, inside, where the younger kids can go on and they are totally enclosed. Both of them LOVED that. Then they did a smaller nothing just go round, and round ride of cars.

THEN, we headed outside.........OH BOY! BIG RIDES EVERYWHERE! Becca said, "Momma, I wanna go on THAT!" (she's pointing to the HUGE roller coaster ride) And what do you think Momma said? Ha! I told her you aren't tall enough yet. (I got away with that alot because of the height requirements!) Whew! Anyway, they then went to the BALLOON ride! Ha......Becca LOVED IT! Matthew? Was hanging on for dear life and about to bust out crying before the ride ended. (The lady saw he wasn't a happy camper, I think.)

After a few minutes, we went to the tea cups and Momma went with Matthew and Aunt Sue went with Becca. Matthew liked the tea cups! Becca wanted to turn more and go faster! *oy*

From there, we were running outta tickets, so we found one last inside ride to do and the lady there was SOOOOOOOOO cool! She let the kids have an extra ride she loved seeing Becca and Matthew having fun. It was the ride that goes straight for a little bit and then WHIPS you around the corners. Matthew was hugging Becca and then at another point, Becca was hugging Matthew. It was so cute!!!! We do have pictures but you'll have to wait for them! ;o)

Ki

Never a dull moment for us........

Well, Rebecca and Matthew are doing well at daycare and at home. Nothing new to report on them. This time it's MOM's turn for something unusual.

Being a diabetic, everyone always told me in my diabetic education classes that if you get a wound anywhere on your body, to make sure it starts healing up ASAP! Well, apparently I hurt my finger (right index finger) on Saturday and never thought again about it. **I slammed it in the cabinet while putting away some glass dishes.** It didn't hurt, it wasn't red, nothing.

FAST FORWARD to Monday morning......

I wake up, my hand or rather my index finger on my right hand is throbbing so I look down to see what is going on and lo and behold, I have an infection that is already warm and a little bit big. Ok, I put antibiotic goo on it and cover it up and go to work. Around 2pm, I ended up going to the nurse at our work because it's HUGE! I'm talking HUGE and getting bigger, but what was worrying me was that the "heat" was going down my finger. (along with the throbbing) She said to "get to my doc".

Tuesday, I give in, go to the doc and he says I most likely bruised it inside and that the infection is part of it. So..........short end of it? I'm on 2000mg of Keflex antibiotics and he splinted it to keep the infection from traveling! Yep, 2000!!!!! My finger is already down in size though. It doesn't hurt as bad, but it's still nasty! A little purple, a little red, a little white (as in pure white from infection still in there).........nice, huh?! I know most diabetics can lose their fingers/toes easily, but this was darn too close!!! And from a squish in the cabinet? Wow.....

Anyway, Roy gets to wash dishes and get his hands WET for awhile! YEAH! YEAH! *doing the cabbage patch* Hey, anytime I don't have to wash dishes is a good day to me!

KI

Scary...........

Today I stayed home with Rebecca because she was coughing and had a fever last night into this morning and just would not sleep. She "tossed her dinner" last night because she was coughing so bad. Once she would get her breath, it would start all over again. Well, this morning, as soon as her pediatrician's office opened up, I was on the phone with them trying to get an appointment for ANY time possible. Lucky thing I did.

Rebecca went to the office at 1pm, and we were there early. Rebecca's breathing just sounded weird and was so "tight". Nothing was working over-the-counter wise. As soon as the doctor heard her breathing, she immediately called for a nebulizer treatment to be started on Rebecca and a strep test was given to her. IT WAS POSITIVE, by the way. In came the nurse with a dinosaur head mask, tubing and the nebulizer machine itself for Rebecca. After about 10 minutes of breathing in the smokiness of Albuterol, Rebecca's breathing was 100% improved!!!! In a matter of minutes! So, I was told either Rebecca has the beginnings of Asthma or she has allergies and asthma. *oh boy* After 3 prescriptions later, one nebulizer machine, she's back on the mend. We did have to go to the hospital, but it was worth it!

I tell you, this happened back in January (or February) at the Urgent Care, but this came on so quickly! It's kinda scary because you never know when Rebecca is just coughing to be coughing or something more to it. Being her mom, I tend to allow her time to try and get rid of things by herself before intervention with meds, but today was a "mom's intuition" thing. I'm glad the Lord gave it to me!!!

She's had 2 treatments so far and we are ready, tonight, if she needs more. We have 25 vials if need be! *God I hope we don't use them all tonight!* Suppose to be every 4 hours, but we were given instructions for use of them for more severe stuff.

Hopefully, this too will pass.

From the mommy files

What a LOOOONNNNNGGGGGG day!!!!!!

Ok, let's give the run down. Hang tight.

We went to the Craniofacial department and it was packed (so many kids need help in this area, it's unreal! *kinda sad*). We waited for awhile and our name was called. We got a red folder with a routing slip on it and OFF WE WENT. We had to go all over the hospital to find the folks we needed to see. Thank goodness most of them were on the first floor, but GOODNESS! They may be on the first floor, but do you know how HUGE this hospital is?!?!?! Needless to say, the welcome desk helped us with just about every room we needed to go to. (Thank you Lord for those wonderful ladies!)

First up? Dentistry and Oral Maxio whatever.....(forgot who they were) Anyway, we were taken right in. Poor Matthew, I knew this was going to be a "good" one! He was half alseep when they wanted to "poke" around at his teeth and see what was going on. (oh yeah, side note, momma gave him animal crackers about an hour earlier, NOTE TO SELF, don't do that again because they STICK TO YOUR TEETH/GUMS! *duh*) Needless to say, we were told that Matthew's gums/teeth needed some help and to find a pediatric dentist pretty quickly. (already have one in Hughesville, MD) Matthew's cleft part of his mouth, the teeth are growing in sideways *north to south instead of west to east like us* which is normal for "cleft kids". (cleft kids is NOT a derogatory remark, it's the truth and this is what the team calls folks like Matthew, so if I can get over it, YOU CAN TOO! ;o) We were told there is lots to do but mainly when Matthew gets his adult teeth in. So we have a while before that happens.

Second up? Hearing/Speech. OH BOY! This is where it gets interesting. Matthew had a standard hearing test in a sound proof room with him on my lap and daddy in there too. He heard NOTHING. Daddy heard almost nothing and momma? I heard the lady twice and that was about it. VERY INTERESTING! So, the audiologist decided to give Matthew a pressure test on his ear drums. Right ear? Good. Left? Um, not so good. Okay. Next? Matthew was given a test they do on newborns (because he couldn't grasp the concept of one of the hearing tests). He can hear out of both ears, but they couldn't tell us if there was any hearing loss. Good news, yet, huh? He can hear. Just won't know how much for a while. He'll be evaluated in 6 months again.
SPEECH? The man was really nice. BUT.........Matthew was TIGHT LIPPED and wouldn't say a THING to him! OH mommy was not happy and was afraid of this. Yep, it happened. Nice......the speech dude asked us lots of questions about Matthew and he was graded a fair rating for what we told him Matthew could/couldn't do/say. (will be evaluated again in 6 months)

Third up? ENT.........HA! Matthew was running on NO SLEEP, hardly any lunch (just a hot dog) and mom and dad were SPENT! The ENT told us that Matthew's throat looked good, his nose was ok except for the flattened part of his nose from the cleft, which we know and it will be corrected and his ears? Well, they looked good but we were told that over 80% of cleft kids need tubes in their ears at some point because of the eustationary (sp?) tubes from the ear to the throat are shortened in cleft kids and that fluid builds on the ears alot. (already has with matthew when we got him) Otherwise, come back in 6 months for another evaluation)

So.........then we go back to the Craniofacial dept. and they review what was written down and we see two more docs including the doc we saw in the first place the first time we went to Children's. Dr. Murthy. VERY NICE man! The other dude we saw, forgot his name, told us not to do anything until Matthew is like 7 or 8. Dr. Murthy said NO, not to wait that long because the tissue in Matthew's mouth will become more rigid and less to work with.

Short end of it? We wait to hear from the "team". We should know something in about 30 days. If Dr. Murthy gets his way, (which I'm hoping for), Matthew's fistula and nose, and lip will be repaired/nipped/tucked and NO MORE FOOD OR LIQUIDS will come out of his nose FOREVER!!!!!!!!! YES! Trust me, seeing rice come out of Matt's nose is GROSS enough. *but we're getting use to it* Once this happens, Matthew will have stints on his little arms for a FULL 2 WEEKS, DRINK ALL OF HIS MEALS via the blender!!!! and be a BEAR for 2 solid weeks after surgery! Oh boy! Momma will have fun with him!!! I'm looking forward to it actually! Just so my boy will have normal eating/drinking capacities like you and I.

Ok, this is long enough, so I'll end it now.