Fun in the sun

Caitlin Caitlin Caitlin. she has been talking so much lately. I love listening to her little voice. She has a few different ones. She of course has her normal cute little voice, then she has her oh so tiny cute voice whenever she sees something cute or she talks to her baby doll or just a baby. she says really tiny and pitchy, Hiiiiii Babyyyyy!! or Ohhhh how cuteeeee!!!! Then she has her monster voice and says raghhhhh I going to get youuuuu!!!!!! Then her Other voice of anger which normally says STOP Diddon!!!!! Leave Me Adoone Diddon!!!!!

I have to say i had a my favorite moment yesterday. Me and Dillon went to go pick up Caitlin from group and her speech therapy and she saw Dillon and said "Hi Diddon!!!"I missed you Diddon in the cutest voice then she grabbed his hand and said I wubv you Diddon!! Ahh talking about heart melting that has to be my favorite moment and its so cute because Dillon will say the same stuff to her sometimes when we pick her up and I love love it!!!!

We have been trying to do some potty training and its coming along so so. She has gone poopoo a few times in the potty and peepee and gets super excited but she is not crazy about the whole idea of ditching the diapers and going full force with it. The good news is that I have time. At first we thought that once she gets dismissed from early intervention we would put her in preschool so at 3 they have to be full on potty trained but I think we are going to ditch preschool for now and I am going to try to work on a lot of stuff with her and have some bonding time with my little lady. Since October she has had therapy 3 x a week for the first month and then after that she has had it 4 x a week so I kinda miss her then. I love the program she is in right now. She gets so much help and she has achieved so much since she has started these services. A total 360 actually. I am already starting to get choked up about her leaving in December when she does turn 3. She gets so much special attention there and it is just so much fun for her. I love all of her therapist there and Caitlin has an absolute favorite that she has grown extremely attached to ( Therese!!!) so once it is time for her to go I am going to be balling like a baby I get very emotional and attached. I think sometimes it is much harder for the parents who get attached to their therapist because these are the people who have helped get your children to where they are at and you appreciate them so so much that you just end up loving them so much but then you wonder what its like on other side because they see so many children. She has come a long way since then. Especially her eating has been a lot better. She still pockets and will have trouble chewing but she can definitely eat a lot more variety of things.

I was actually thinking back from day 1 of Caitlin's life and we have had so many Dr's that I never even knew existed. so here is the line up

NICU Dr's so we had about 7 different ones at different times of course along with nurses

PDA ligation Surgery Dr

Then her Ophthalmologist Dr who did her ROP Surgery

Also we get seen every 6 mos from another Ophthalmologist for her eyes to keep track of them

So then we of course have her Pediatrician

then remember the good ol kidney stones we had so we had a nephrologist and a urologist Dr

we went through 2 of the nephrologist Dr's because the first one we had I didn't care for to much.

We have a Gastroenterologist Dr

then we saw one ENT Dr again not crazy about him so we went with another and loved him

we also have a Endocrinologist Dr Who we love as well. Have to say this Dr is awesome and very on top of things!!

then we have our genetics Dr and I think that is all.

So lets count them

So that is 12 Dr's not including the different Nicu Drs so adding the 6 more of them that is 18 Dr's Caitlin has seen in her lifetime!!! Crazy!!! that is in less then 2.5 year lifetime.

I have to say though that I feel 100% blessed with our baby girl She has been so strong and such a fighter. She is so happy all the time full of this most beautiful laughter and so funny. She has the cutest personality and is filled with so much life. We have been extremely blessed by how well she has turned out. We do know a lot of preemies that do not have it as easy and who do have a lot of disabilities. There are times that I will get a little down because of her eating or minor things that come up with Dr's or what not but I always end up remembering well you know she isn't able to do this just yet but she will and she can do all this other stuff so well. I have to remember to keep my faith and know that everything is going to be ok.

When I first ruptured with Madilyn I was told by a few Dr's that I should terminate my pregnancy and that my girls were not going to survive and that I had a big risk of even an awful infection that could lead to possible death for even myself. Also that if my girls were to survive that possibly they would not be able to walk, talk, and see. So many things were against us and we defeated each and every single odd. I am so glad I did not listen to the Dr's because then we would not have Caitlin here today. I am very sad that I lost my daughter and I miss her so much. But I feel so happy Caitlin is here and that she is walking and talking and she can see and sing and dance and even tease brother!!! I often wonder how the girls would be together and how things would be but I really try not to dwell( which can be hard of course) on it and appreciate what I have right now I have 2 kids who need their mommy and not just half but all of their mommy. I am so thankful to God every single day I get with my children and realize how extremely blessed we are to have our family. Dillon as well he is such a beautiful little boy also filled with so much energy and the hugest heart. He is funny and kind and very animated.

He also cracks me up every single day. the things he can come up with make me laugh so hard. Kids are so innocent and can say the funniest things and have the biggest imaginations, its neat just to listen to what they have to say and how they view the world.

Ok so just some fun pictures of the kids. It has so far been a nice summer and all though we have had some hot days we have had some really nice beautiful weather where its not to hot and with a bit of a breeze. Its been in the mid and higher 70's which is perfect to me. I am sure we will be getting some hot ones coming soon!!!!

Gastro Appointment

These photo's crack me up because Caitlin actually has a full belly

You hardly ever see her with a big belly. But we have been having this

more and more lately now that she has been eating a little better

it is a very full belly!!!!!!!!

We had our Gastro appointment last week to check in on Caitlin. We had made it the month before because we had started to have concern for Caitlin's weight. Last month she had only weighed 21 lbs 6 oz. It was a concern because since November she had barely gained around 1 lb. Well all of a sudden she just started putting on this weight. We had got her to gain almost 2 lbs by the time we had her appointment. So here is her weight and height

23lbs 5 oz and 33 1/2 inches long!!! Yeah no G-tube. That was actually a possibility and we were nervous but the Dr was so happy with her weight and just her overall being. She saw Caitlin jumping around, talking, laughing and said that she just doesn't look at numbers she looks at the whole entire picture. Caitlin is catching up and she said she is just petite and coming from just being 1 lb 4 oz she is doing really well. We are still on Periactin which is such a big helper. It really does help with her hunger.
I am so glad we didn't have to G-tube because yep that idea was brought to our attention again which was super frustrating.

OK so other then that we are just waiting on our results from the genetics Dr which has actually got me a bit frustrated because I found out that he is only in 1 office 1 day out of the month and then in another office 1 more day out of the month then doing procedures and emergency room the rest of the time so it definitely makes it hard to get our results a lot sooner. I think her testing will show everything normal but if something were to come up i am not sure if we will continue on with this Dr or switch to someone else who has more time in their office. We will see.

On other news everything is still pretty much the same with both Dillon and Caitlin. We have been going to the beach a lot more since it has been pretty warm out. The kids love it. Caitlin has been covered in the sand and Dillon has been in the water the whole time playing in the waves and catching sand crabs with daddy.

Dillon is going to start kindergarten in less then 2 months and will be doing 2 different vacation bible schools during the summer. They are each for 1 week and it is like a little summer camp sort of thing. It will be nice for him to do that because I think he has been getting a little bored here at home since being out of preschool.

Caitlin has around 6 more months before we are released from her global program and her other therapy sessions. I am sure i have mentioned it but she goes to her group(global)program 3 days a week which is 2 1/2 hours long then gets an additional hour of speech therapy and another hour of occupational therapy of course broken up a bit so that's about 9 1/2 hours of therapy a week for her. I love where she goes. All of the therapist are so awesome there. Its very clean and open there and i am going to miss it so much!!!!!I am already starting to feel sad knowing it will all come to a close soon. at 3 years old kids get let go of early intervention and then from there if they need any more services then that's when you have to go through your school district so I think come October we will start having her assessed to see what she needs to be ready to transition in December. Me personally I am not really sure what she is going to qualify for. she has seemed to really caught up to being age appropriate. If she needs anything i would think maybe a little speech but that's it.

We have already found her preschool that we will be putting her in come January. It will be at Dillon's school which is nice having them both there. They will of course have opposite schedules but the reason I like this preschool program so much is because searching around at quite a few I noticed that there was a lot of free play. Well I really don't need to pay for free play when she could do that here. The school seems very structured and Caitlin needs that. Also they said that they would be able to help her going to the bathroom, all the other schools said they would not be able to. She needs to be potty trained by 3 years old in order to go to preschool. so that will be something else we are going to need to work on. She has gone poo poo 2 times so far in the toilet but that's it. We will sit her on the toilet a lot but I just don't think she is ready yet and I don't want to rush her. We will do it when she is ready not for anybody else. I am setting a goal by October and hopefully she will be ready because I think it will be a little easier for her to concept the whole idea and it gives us 3 months to try to get her potty trained. But again if she is not ready then we will have to put preschool on hold until she is, but I think she will be able to.

That's about it. Nothing else has really changed much for us at this time so till next time.

Here are some pictures of us at the beach. We should have some good 4th of July pictures soon.

Happy 4th of July!!!!!

Long time no post. Its been almost 2 months since I haven't posted. So sorry. Reason behind it is laziness and being super busy with appointments. Caitlin has had quite the appointments lately. We had a weight check a bit ago and Caitlin was still on the low end just barely in the 21 lbs mark so our Dr decided that it would be a good idea to see an endocrinologists. What is that you say for some who don't know they are specialist that work with hormone levels. We had to get a full blood panel on Caitlin to rule out she was not missing her growth hormone. The Dr we are seeing is awesome I have to say. She is very patient,understanding, very informative and when I need to call her and ask her a question she calls back in like 5 minutes!!! So we took Caitlin in we went over her growth curve ( Caitlin is not even on the growth chart)and all that fun stuff. We did a weigh in on her and Caitlin was 22lbs 3 oz and just right below 32 inches tall. So we had to go in and get about 7 vials of blood work and a bone x-ray to see how all of her levels were and if her bones matched up with her age. 2 weeks later we go to see our results and everything came out normal. Bone X-ray is normal and she is not lacking her growth hormone. We are a little high in the estrogen level but that will be something we will keep an eye on.
Caitlin had lost about 13 oz in weight though in two weeks so then she went down to 21.6 lbs. She had been sick though so we were blaming it on that and we were having a tough couple weeks of not eating that much. But the good news of that is we had to go for Dillon's 5 year old check up and of course I always bring Caitlin so we can have a weight check and Caitlin went right back up and then some. She weighed at 22lbs 12 oz so she gained quite a bit. I started adding whipping cream again to all of her cups of milk for a little extra boost and it sure did help!!!

Dillon's 5 year check up went good as well. He passed his vision and hearing test and weighed 48 lbs and is 44 inches tall. However he wanted to kick the Dr's butt once he saw the shots. He was really trying to get away and even tried punching the Dr a couple times but once he got them he was OK and he got ice cream for being such a big boy.

OK so we are also going to be seeing a genetics Dr in a couple weeks for a bit more stuff and also we will be having to see our gastro Dr again at the end of the month. We will see if her weight is really a big issue. The good thing is that the endocrinologists says that at least Caitlin is very healthy,happy and very energetic and that's a great sign even though she is on the small side. We were almost having to really talk about growth hormones to help her in the growing part. Her Dr is possibly predicting that Caitlin's height at grown age will be about 5'1 or so give or take. To me its not so bad. I can't imagine giving her shots every single day for who knows how long just to get her to grow a few more inches and Dr agreed as well. She said we can just keep an eye and see how things are going and Caitlin is still really young so we still have time to intervene if absolutely necessary.

So mentally Caitlin is doing really well. She is actually speaking sentences now. Sometimes not so clear but she is trying. One example of a sentence is Diddon hit me ( Dillon hit me) she is quite the tatta teller now. She is able to tell me now when she is hungry and when she is full its really cute. Also she can tell me things she wants like apple or grapes.

Dillon is getting ready to start kindergarten in September so we are trying to prepare him for that with practicing our letters and numbers. We are most likely going to be putting Caitlin in preschool when she turns 3 because once she turns 3 she gets let go of early intervention and I don't want her to go with a gap in between school because I don't want her to fall behind. So downside to that is Caitlin needs to be fully potty trained by 3 years old. We are working on it here and there but she doesn't find much interest in it right now. We did however get her to poopie on the toilet the other day cause I was able to catch her right before. Mental wise though i am just not sure if she quite gets it yet but i am really going to be going full force on it probably come October. She will be closer to 3 and I think she will be able to comprehend a bit more. So that's about it. I don't like going this long without posting because I feel so behind now. Will post once we have our other Dr appointments though.

Oh almost forget to jot down. Caitlin is an offical big girl now. We have moved from our crib into a toddler bed. We got it a couple weeks ago and she loves it so much. She looks super cute in it. The funny thing Dillon never liked his toddler bed. I could not really get him to sleep in it he just didn't like it. Caitlin loves her bed. She sleeps super good in it for night time and day naps. I wasn't sure if I would have trouble with her getting out alot but she stays in it really well. I haven't downloaded pictures of her bed yet but will hope to do that in the next few days.

OMG and another thing almost forgot to add. We got us a kitty cat. Poor kitty has not been left alone since the day I brought him home. He is truely loved by the kids. Dillon carries him around all over the place on his shoulder like the cats a baby and Caitlin has down a few picking up herself.