Big Boy Bed

I have to admit, I do still think of Jacob as my baby (although a very heavy baby), even though he has a baby brother.  I don't know why, maybe it has been everything that has happened to him since he was a little one.  The poor guy has been through more in his short life than me in my 40 years, but I will say, he has managed to handle it like a champ!  I have had to realize lately, though, that he is growing up to be a little boy.  A couple of weeks ago, shortly after starting his preschool observations,  he got a big boy bed.  We were not sure exactly how it would go, although I guess you never are, but he has done very well with it. When it is time to go to bed at night he happily climbs in and falls asleep pretty quickly.  He even has stayed in bed all night, and sometimes even waits for us to come up and get him before getting out.  The only thing we have had a little problem with is nap time.  Jacob seems to think he does not need to take naps every day any more.  I am just not sure I am ready for him to give them up completely.  He starts preschool oficially on the 21st of February, right after his 3rd birthday on the 18th.  Like I said, he is growing into a little boy, and we don't have much say in the matter.

Everyone is doing pretty good, although I wouldn't say that we are at 100% healthy yet.  Rick ended up getting the dreaded cold after me, and then Tucker came down with it (again? if that is possible).  We are all now almost completely healthy, at least for the time being, but as usual, the cold set off my asthma, so I don't sound too healthy. 

The boys all get along pretty well, but I have a feeling we have another little rebel on our hands with Tucker.  He was leaning over to grab Joshua's milk the other night, and every time Josh told him no, he just laughed and did it again over and over.  I got a bit of it on video for all to see. 

A 6 Month Old

 

Tucker is 6 months old (well technically 6 1/2, but for the sake of this post, let's just go with it)!  It is that time when you document that great 6 month achievement of sitting up with, of course, a photo shoot!  Only for this one, poor little Tucker had a bad eye and (later to find out) ear infection.  He was a good sport for the ones we got, but I will have to do some more of him when we are all feeling a bit better.

We started out his 6th month with his well child check trip to the doctor in perfect health, only to have to go back a week later to get some antibiotics for his ear and eye.  That only started our roller coaster of sickness!  From there, Rick came down with the dreaded stomach flu in the middle of the night that has apparently been going around.  I was just hoping and praying that none of the rest of us got it.  Well, my prayers were answered!  The rest of us avoided it!  We were all doing pretty good, until I started feeling like I had a terrible sore throat and was loosing my voice.  Oh well, I can handle that, no problem.  Then it hit me, I had not seen the worst of it yet.  It snowballed into a terrible head cold, cough, fever, headache, you name it.  Unfortunately, it also hit Tucker.  Neither one of us feels very good and he wakes up every three hours because of it (which does make it a bit hard for myself to get the rest I need to feel better).  Luckily though, it has not hit Rick yet (someone please knock on wood) and it has been pretty minor with Josh and Jacob.

I think he likes his brothers

So hopefully by my next post we will all be better again, sleeping well, and maybe I will have some more happy Tucker photos, and maybe even some with his brothers, to share.

Josh and Jacob being good assistants

Preschool for Jacob

It has been an eventful last couple of weeks for Jacob, especially.  Last week he had another EEG for the Dr.'s to see how his head is doing.  I had to sleep deprive him for a day and a half before so they could be sure to get him sleeping for the EEG.  I kept him up from his nap the day before, put him to bed late, and then woke him up early the morning of the EEG.  I had a feeling it was going to be a miracle to get him there in the car without him falling asleep.  I was doing really good keeping him awake too, until the last mile.  I let my guard down and looked back to see him snoozing away.  I was able to wake him up when I got him out of the car, but boy was he grumpy!  He was, lets just say, less than cooperative while the nurse was trying to put on the leads.  I had to hold his left arm down and try to hold his head still at the same time.  It was quite interesting.  Jacob is a lot stronger than he looks!  She finally got them done though without having to sedate him, then I had to get him to sleep.  I laid with him, rubbed his forehead and sang to him.  It took about 15 minutes or so, but he finally dozed off.  He was asleep for about 5 minutes when she came in and said, "OK, we are all done".  so then he was awake for the rest of the day for us to deal with.  Needless to say, he went to bed right after dinner, messy hair and all. We are still waiting to hear results of the EEG, but I am going to assume that no news is good news for now.

EEG hair

We also had a meeting with the school district at the developmental preschool that Jacob will be attending.  It went pretty good and all of Jacob's therapists came which I thought was very cool.  We met his Teacher, his Principle, school Nurse, Psychologist, and other important people that would be involved in his daily activities.  It was a good meeting and they said he was ready for his 2 week observation which could start this week.  So I dropped him off for his first day this morning.  I thought I would be just fine, and I was, until I started driving out of the parking lot and all of a sudden it hit me, I got all teared up.  This is the first time I have ever left him with anyone that was not family (other than his surgery).  I can say I am watching the clock this morning until pick up time.  I am sure it will get easier every day, at least he seemed to handle it well.

I thought I would post a short video clip for everyone to see him.  He was in the bathtub, but I was able to film without showing anything (I think).  It shows him saying hi, and play, and some of his jabbering that none of us know what means (if anyone can figure it out, let me know).

A New Year

I have one New Years resolution:  to keep up on the blog at least 2 times a month.  I don't know how I let it get so that the last post was in September.  I have been a bad blogger, all I can say is something always came up.  I have sat down to update the blog numerous times, I think I even had a draft waiting for me, but every time I started to write it, something distracted me.  Now I am not making any excuses, I truly believe you can always find time for things you would like to get done (and I did want to do it), but something else always became a priority at the time.  Oh well, that is in the past and it is a New Year! I vow to update more. 

Visiting the firehouse in Utah

going for a ride in the firetruck

Anyway, so much has happened I will not bother to write it all.  We had a great Halloween, a wonderful Thanksgiving visiting with Rick's Family in Utah, and a great Christmas and New Year here at home.  Everyone is happy and healthy (after a bout of colds that hit all of us and lingered around for a while) and Joshua even celebrated his 6th Birthday yesterday.

I started to get Christmas cards out in the mail, but then decided that so much had happened that we should write a Christmas letter (Rick also agreed). I did not get it out yet either, so now we will send out a New Years letter (and I hope to have them in the mail soon). 

Jacob is doing well in his therapies and is saying more and more all of the time.  He has shown that he likes to be mischievous, and all of his therapists know it now.  He is still seizure free and we get closer and closer to that one year mark where we will be able to take him off his last seizure medicine.  (It is hard to believe that this time last year we were still finding out whether or not they even wanted to do surgery, we have come a long way!)  He has been approved to start a developmental preschool when he turns 3, and we have our first observation scheduled for next week.  I am not sure how I will handle having just Tucker 4 (half) days a week, but I am sure we can find something to fill our time.

Tucker is growing bigger, but is not as big as either of his brothers were (I guess because he prefers to sleep a bit more than eating all the time like his brothers did).  He is starting to sit up and is very close to mastering it.  He has held his sitting up position (by himself unsupported) for about 10 seconds now without falling, so I know that soon he will be a pro!  He is still the easiest baby in the world, so I guess the 3 time is the charm ;) He likes both of his brothers a lot, and does not even get scared of Jacob coming at him anymore (Jacob has learned to be more gentle with him though). 

 Joshua is doing quite well in Montessori and is one of the best readers in his class.  I have a feeling he will go into 1st grade at public school next year in the top of his class.  Hopefully he won't get too bored.  He is good with both of his brothers and has even made the comment that we should have another one (to which I laughed out loud and said "are you crazy"). I had to inform him that I made sure already that we would not have any more. 

Josh blowing out his candles in his "Handsome suit"

Josh's Birthday "Handsome Suit" #2

Jacob pushing Tucker while shopping

 Well, this post has been long enough now, so I will just end it by saying I hope everyone had wonderful holidays and have an even better New Year!  We send all our love out to all our friends and family!

Baby Tucker

I was finally able to take some photos of Tucker so I can get a birth announcement put together.  I figured I should try to get it done before it gets too close to his birthday.  I thought I would give everyone a quick preview of some of the photos I took.  I don't want to brag, but I think I sure ended up with some cute boys!

Back from Seattle

It was a fast and furious trip to Seattle, but we made it back and settled back into the routine of things.

Before we left for Seattle, though, we had to make a trip to the fair.  Every year we have to make at least one trip to the Western Idaho Fair. We go mainly for the food (cause that is the real reason for the fair, right?), but Josh really likes to ride the rides, and every year since he was two he has ridden the ponies.  This year was Jacob's first year to ride them.  He seemed to have a pretty good time, and hung on pretty well by himself (although Rick walked beside him the whole time to make sure).  It was 98 degrees outside that day, but the boys enjoyed riding some rides anyway, and when we needed to cool off, we went inside the expo buildings to see the award winning vegetables and look at the photographs.  We used to enter all of that stuff, but unfortunately the last couple of years we have had other issues keeping us from getting any vegis or photos ready to enter.  Maybe one of these years we will get back to our gardening and such.  Joshua also got to play ball with a seal.  He had a good time throwing the ball to the seal and then the seal would throw it back to him (how often can you do that in Boise?).

Tuesday morning we left for Seattle.  We rolled out of town at a bright and early 11:30 am.  We wanted to leave earlier, but for some reason (with three boys) we could not seem to get it done.  The drive up wasn't too bad and seemed to go along pretty well, at least the first part of the trip.  By late afternoon, it was evident that neither Jacob or Joshua was going to sleep in the car.  I don't know what it is about my boys, but they seem to have a thing about not sleeping in the car. For the last part of the trip we heard a lot of "are we there yet", every half hour from Joshua, and yells from Jacob (just as soon as Tucker would fall asleep) just because he was bored, which of course would send Tucker into a crying fit.  We finally made it and got settled in for the night, only for Jacob to be up half the night unable to sleep in the blow up bed we had for him (on the bright side, Tucker slept the whole night from 11 pm until 7 am for the first time).

In the hospital gown waiting for the MRI

Wednesday started out at the hospital with an MRI for Jacob.  He had been getting over a cold, so they had some question about whether or not they could put him under the anesthesia, but they decided it was worth it to try.  He did great and came out of it just fine.  We then met with the Rehab Doctor and she was pleased with Jacob's progress.  After that came a meeting with the Neurosurgeon who did Jacob's surgery.  He showed us some of the MRI pictures and told us everything looked great.  We ended it with a meeting with the Neurologist who is also the epilepsy specialist.  He played with Jacob and we talked about when we would get Jacob on a step down schedule for the medicine he is on now.  They want to see us back in 4 or 5 months and that is when we can plan to take Jacob off his last anti seizure med that he is still on.  All in all it was great news and we were all worn out from the day (and all very hungry because they did not plan lunch or a nap in the day for us).  We did make a trip to the rehab floor where we spent a month living to see all of his nurses and therapists.  We were able to see a good number of them and they were very excited to see Jacob walking around their halls.  He was so tired though, he was a bit more wobbly than normal and he did not want to cooperate and say the words he has been using here. 
The drive home was similar to the one on the way to Seattle, but I was finally able to get Jacob to take a nap for part of the trip, so it was a bit less noisy for a while.  We got home and got settled to bed and everyone slept pretty well.  We took Friday to just recover from our short, but long trip.

Sooo tired when we got back from the hospital 

It's Been A Month?!

Rick and Tucker, relaxing

Wow, I can't believe that a month has past since for one thing, since I have last posted, and for another thing, since "a baby boy" was born.  By the way, he did get a name, it is Tucker Clinton Wilkison.  I posted it for those that follow on facebook, but I am very sorry I forgot to update it on the blog.  We did pick it about a hour before we left the hospital, and it has been a bit of a whirlwind since.  We picked Tucker because it just seemed to fit him, and Clinton was my Dad's middle name, and it also seemed to fit with Tucker (Tucker seemed to like the names too). 

We do seem to have finally fit into a routine with everything that we do, although the first week, I had my doubts we were ever going to be on time for anything again.  It took about a week and a half, but we did finally make it to some appointments on time.  I never felt the need to take any time off of Jacob's therapy appointments for any reason (I did not want to cheat him), but Rick did stay home for the first week to help get us to them all. Since then, we have done pretty well settling in to the schedule.

Jacob checking on Tucker

Tucker is doing great, and everyone else is doing very well with him.  Joshua has said (about 15 times a day in the first week) how cute he is, and Jacob even has been very gentle to him (most of the time).  He eats well, and sleeps well (I have even gotten a couple of 7 hour stretches the last few nights), and seems to be very good natured (although sometimes I think I see a worried look on his face when he looks at the rest of us). 

We have had a few events over the last few weekends, like a 40th Birthday party for my sister and I to name one.  Since Tucker was born a few days before our birthday, we did not have time to celebrate on the big day, so Rick threw us a party a couple of weeks later.  We had lots of fun, and needless to say, there weren't even any black balloons around.  His theme was "40 is the new 20" and he prepared all of the food and we had lots of great people around us for the event (sorry for those that had to miss it though, you missed some good food, fun, and drink).

We are now preparing for our next trip to Seattle.  Next week Jacob has some follow up appointments including an MRI, a meeting with his Neurosurgeon, the Epileptologist, and the Rehab Doctor at Seattle Children's Hospital.  It will probably be a quick trip with a day to drive up, the day of appointments, and a day to drive back, but hopefully it will be a good one.  I know that I am a bit exited to see the team of people we spent so much time with, show them all of Jacob's progress and see what they have to say.

Jacob continues to progress well, and he is starting to say more and more words every week.  He still walks with a bit of a gait and still does not use his right hand fully, but is using it more and more all of the time.  We continue to get physical therapy 2 times a week, occupational therapy 2 times a week, speech therapy 3-4 times a week and he does tumble time once a week.  We still keep pretty busy, but it is now a routine thing and we are used to it.

Josh is starting kindergarten in a couple of weeks and is excited.  We have found a way for him to be able to continue one more year at Eagle Montessori and he will be able to stay with the friends and continue learning lots with the same teachers as last year.  He really enjoyed his preschool there and we were very impressed with how much he was able to learn, so we are glad he can continue at least one more year.

I do promise to post after we get back from our Seattle trip with any news and I will try to keep up a bit better with the blog and photos.  Especially now that we have our routine down and we are sleeping a bit better (knock on wood, of course).

Josh thinking about a new hobby

Jacob becoming "interested" in the potty, although we will have to work on technique