3 days, 5 doctors

Every once in a while I have to check out for a few days and check in with my doctors.  You know the saying, You have to put yourself first and take care of yourself if you want to take care of others.  Well, I have a hard time following that sometimes.  Today was the week, I needed to just go to all my doctors and make sure I'm healthy and up to par for a 31 year old.

Scott had to take some time off and work from home so I could get to all of my appointments.

One of the places I went to was my ENT doctor in NYC.  I wanted to see him because of my lingering laryngitis I had gotten at the beginning of the year.  It's been weeks and I haven't quite felt 100% in my nose/mouth/throat area even after taking an antibiotic.  Because I was on an antibiotic, I had to push back my infusion by 2 weeks which could lead to me having a flare up or symptoms of my Crohn's.  So antibiotics = good for an infection = bad for me if it interferes with my infusion.

Anytime I get an infection I have to take extra precautions because of my already weakened immune system due to my Crohn's disease and the drugs I am on to control my Crohn's.  So, I just wanted to make sure there was nothing obstructing my passage ways.  The doc. confirmed with an endoscopy that I was fine and probably just needed another week or two.

However during my discussions with him, he identified another issue that I was having (although didn't even think of it at the time) and sent me over immediately to get a CT scan done.

He called me back to NYC 1.5 days later to go over the results with me and this is what we discovered.

The above picture is from the CT Scan they took.  Ideally this image if you folded it in half vertically, would be a mirror image of each other.  Clearly, they are not.  The two pockets under my eye sockets are my sinuses.  The sinus on the right (the big black blob) is clear.  My sinus on the left (the gray area) is not draining.  This shows that I've had chronic sinusitis for probably years.  It's never gone away because my body is not strong enough to fight it off because of my Remicade infusions every 8 weeks.

The doctor can't tell exactly what is going on with a scope because my sinus is full of something.  It could be an infection, it could be a polyp or some other kind of growth preventing my sinus from draining.  Over time, this could potentially cause vision problems or even migrate to your brain.  Yikes!  So, this is something that needs to be dealt with and dealt with timely for me because of the medicine I am on for my Crohn's and because we don't want to act in an emergency situation.

I have two options:
Option 1:  Get put on a pretty severe and heavy duty antibiotic for 2 weeks and hope that it clears the infection, if there is an infection there.  The risk is that this antibiotic will wipe out all the good bacteria that is in my body.  If this happens I could develop C Diff which could completely flare up my Crohn's that is currently under control.  C Diff happens when the good bacteria is wiped out  and creates a blank slate for any bad bacteria to filter into and take over.  There is a chance that I'd be "put through hell" as the doctor referred to for nothing.

Option 2:  Get sinus surgery.  Risk: Working in close proximity to eye and brain which could be damaged. But I won't have to be on antibiotics and we'd know exactly what is causing this blockage.

After discussing with Scott and my parents we are going the surgery way.  Which means that in less than 3 weeks I'll be sedated and under the knife and will need to spend 2 weeks at the very least recovering.  We have to act fast because this could potentially turn into something more serious and I need to get the surgery and have ample recovery time before my next Remicade treatment which is in 8 weeks.

So instead of spending Spring Break with the kids in February, we had plans on taking them to an indoor water park in CT, they will be at my parents home and I'll be recovering in my bed.

Band aids make EVERYTHING better

Tonight while going up stairs to get ready for bed Mikey called down to us and said, "There's a crack in the wall!"

Now, we knew it was nothing major since this is an older home and there are a few cracks here or there but nothing structural to worry about.

Then Katie chimes in when she gets up the stairs a few seconds later, "Ut-oh.  We need band aids!"  This is pretty ironic coming from Katie because any time she gets a boo boo and you mention band aids to her she freaks out.  She wants nothing to do with band aids and even if you try to look at her scrape or cut she again, freaks out!  It's as if the band aid itself symbolizes her falling and getting a scrape.

So we did what anyone would do.  We patched up the crack. :)

See band aids do make it all better.

Here's a picture farther out so you can see the crack in context.  It's at the top of our stairs on the landing.

No, I win.

The kids have been pretty competitive with each other lately.  It's starting to drive me a little coo coo.

They both want to be the first at everything, and I mean everything!

They race each other up the stairs every single time.  Usually Mikey "wins" and Katie will throw a fit and say "oh No, Mikey beat me!" "I want to win!"  I then chime in with a "It's okay Katie. You still beat Mommy."

They race to put on their socks and shoes and coats.  Usually I still have to help Mikey put on his shoes and Katie isn't quite there yet so I end up putting one shoe on Mikey then one on Katie, then the other on Mikey and the other on Katie.

They race to go out the side door in the morning.  Katie "won" one morning and was so excited she opened the door and it banged right into Mikey's forehead.  I know, it's getting a little out of control!

They even race to bed at night.....who can be the first to go through our bedroom door on the way to their own rooms.  It's a fight every time.

Things that come out of a two year old's mouth

Scenario 1:
Daddy: "Katie, you're such a little peanut!"
Katie: "No, I'm a big peanut!"

Scenario 2:
On the days when Katie takes a nap, she will usually stay awake for another hour and get some one-on-one special time with Scott and I.  She is always very sweet and lovable during this time.  I gave her a close hug and smelled the back of her neck.....no more baby smell!

Mommy:  "Katie, you don't have that baby smell anymore.  You lost that baby smell!"
Katie: "Ut-oh, where did it go?! We have to find it."

Indeed, we have to find it, but I'm afraid it's lost forever.  She's just not a baby anymore.

Funny Phrases

Mikey has been extra sweet recently, with moments of being, hummmmmm, not so sweet.

Through out every day I hear him say things like this:

Mikey : "Mommy I love you."  "I missed you while you were on your field trip."
Mommy: "You mean cruise?"
Mikey: "Yeah, cruise."


Mikey: "Mommy, I missed you when I was at school." "I love you." "Come here cutie pie." "Let me give you a hug and kiss." "No Mom, on the lips!"


Just out of the blue one day.
Mikey:  "Hey Mom, did you know that sharks poop in the water?!" "Ewww, gross!"


Mikey: "Mom, STOP! I don't want you to talk.............EVER!"

Long break

Sorry for the long break since my last post. I was struck down with the flu and laryngitis for 2 plus weeks and still don't feel 100%. Updates and new posts coming soon are below! I promise.

Making Play doh

The kids love to do play doh.  We usually play with it on the weekends or during the week if it's been a long day and I just need to keep them occupied for 30-45 minutes.  After looking at their store bough play doh I realized that half of it was long ago workable or semi dried out.  Even if it's a little dried out, it crumbles when getting played with into a million little pieces that I then have to sweep up, so I decided to make my own play doh tonight.

It was easier than I thought and the consistence was just like the store bought kind.  I followed this recipe (here).  My only complaint was that my fingers were nice and stained after using food coloring to make the play doh all different colors.

About to color the dough.  The kids liked squirting the colors into the little thumbprint holes.

Katie wanted pink and purple.

Scott'isms

Some things I'm just really loving about Scott right now.

He gets the rock star treatment as soon as he comes home.  Both kids run to hug him and kiss him and say "I missed you Daddy."  "Were you working to make money to buy us more presents?!" "I love you!"


Every night, he plays tackle me on the couch with the kids.  They will start at one end of the living room, run to him and he will throw them on alternating sides of the couch.  The kids really get a kick out of reversing it.  Scott will run to them and then the kids throw him on the couch, well the kids think they are throwing him on the couch when it's really Scott doing all the work.

He has "trained" (maybe not the right word here) Mikey to give him hugs every so often when they are wrestling.  Sort of like feeding a meter.  Scott get's all these extra hugs.

He plays this sleeping game with Katie, where he will lie down and pretend to be sleeping and to get him to wake up, Katie has to kiss him.  It's only Katie's kisses that are the magic touch and will wake him.  He pretends to fall asleep a few seconds after that and needs to get kissed again.  He get's plenty of kisses from Katie this way.

When reading to the kids at night the Berenstain Bears books, he replaces Brother Bear and Sister Bear with Mikey Bear and Katie Bear.

He can impersonate all different kinds of people while reading books, from a female to a western cowboy to a British person.

I love the little things he does and the creative way he puts his own spin on raising our kids.

Escaping the cold.

It has been very cold here in CT, for extended periods of times.  Temperatures in the single digits with feel temps below zero.  We can't go outside to play, even though we have snow on the ground just beckoning us to tramp around on it, so we've been playing a lot inside.


Thursday's after school I've been packing a lunch and taking the kids straight to Stepping Stones Museum in Norwalk to have lunch and let them run around and play.  We even made new friends who are coming over for a play date soon. Pics. below at Stepping Stones.

I also signed up the kids for a sibling class at this place called Great Play in Stamford.  It's really affordable, they have 3 open gym classes in addition to their class every week.  We've been going there a lot and it's so nice to see both Mikey and Katie run around and enjoy themselves.  I especially love it because putting the kids to bed on those days is easy peasy.

Trampoline time.

Swing time at the end of class.  The chains are so long that you really swing back and forth pretty far.  That's Buddy (the projected image on the wall).  They change the images on the walls through out the class and some are even interactive.

She is really good on the balance beam and insists she does it herself.

Standing swing.  They both loved this.

He can run really fast and we always have a little cat and mouse chase.

I think girls are just born to know hop scotch.

See-saw time!

Cozumel

The last island we visited was Cozumel in Mexico.   Scott and I hopped off the ship as soon as it was docked to do a little shopping before our excursion.  The only other place we shopped was at Grand Cayman so I had 2 things I wanted to get in Cozumel.  We spent our day at (Playa Mia).  Click on the link.  It's a really fun place! They had everything there.  Pools, water slides, a huge water adventure course with trampolines off shore, snorkeling, sailing, surfing, paddle boats, paddle boards, hot tubs, a kids water area that was awesome!  The excursion was to last 5 hours  but after 3.5 Scott and I were done with the sun, sand, water, chlorine, salt water and bad food, so we hopped a cab back to the ship. At this point it was raining and would be for the rest of the day so we ran down the long port, with buckets of water falling on us.  It was pretty fun....running in the warm rain.  We were just about ready to come home and see our kids, who we talked about the whole week.

A Cozumel resort.

Pulling into port.

Caught in the rain running down this back to the boat.

Parked next to us.

The one and only picture I took at Playa Mia.  Just so much to do, I forgot to take pics.

One of the many shows we saw.

The captain and his crew. Amazing how the cruise crew is from all over the world.

The Captain and I.  He was from Sweden and had a voice like Arnold Schwarzenegger.

 Scott was in bed sick the last day of the cruise.  Sunday morning we were frantically trying to book him a flight home because he booked his return flight for Saturday and not Sunday and with the snow storm that just hit the east coast, there was virtually nothing from Pittsburgh to Washington DC to Boston.  We were lucky and found one seat.

This munchkin was awake when I got back. We missed her and Mikey so much.

They did lots of this while we were gone.

And lots of tumbling. :) 

Jamaica and Grand Cayman

The first day of 2014 we spent on Jamaica.  Our shore excursion we did was the VIP Bamboo Beach Access.  VIP just meant that food, drinks and transportation was included.  The beach was very different from what we were expecting and so was Jamaica. Jamaica itself was very run down outside of the touristy area and almost 3rd world looking.  The beach was gated with an armed guard to protect us while we enjoyed our stay.  The water was very rough as there was no sandbar, or reef or levy to break the waves from the ocean.  The sand was more pebble like and hurt if you walked on it for more than a few minutes.  We made the best of our couple hours and ate the local food, took a dip in the ocean and danced to some live music.

Sailing to Jamaica.  The island surprised us in the fact that it really rises in elevation not far from the coast.

See how tall the island is?!

Pulling into port.

Wind blown and don't have a care in the world.

Bamboo Beach. 

The end of the beach was this huge cliff.

Eating lunch- Jamaican jerk chicken and lobster tail with rice and these hush puppy things called festivals.

Packing up and ready to head back.

The ship boat and I.  No one was around to take a pic. of both of us.  Boo.

Dressed for dinner.  Don't tell anyone this dress is really old. I mean over 5 years old!  But the Caribbean is really the only place I can wear this dress.

The next day we were in Grand Cayman and again went to a beach for our shore excursion.  We did the Tiki Beach All Inclusive Package.  Again food and drink and transportation to the beach.  Grand Cayman was by far our favorite island we visited on this trip.  We would love to go back.  The sand was so fine and white, the water clear and warm and the sun shining bright!  It's a very British island and very clean.  Everything screamed Caribbean!  It is what I imagined a Caribbean island to look like.

At least 4 other cruise lines docked in Grand Cayman.

We arrived at 8 am.  It's going to be a beautiful day!

At our resort for the day.

 Tiki Beach is part of the 7 mile beach area of Grand Cayman.  There was lots of activity in and out of the water and you could walk the entire beach if you wanted too.

The beach just went on and on and on...

...in both directions. 

Walking along the beach and I caught my shadow.  The sun was so bright.

Taking a break from the sun.

Scott in the ocean.

Tiki Beach with signs to all the other beaches and activities.