School Days...

Today this kids were up and ready to go to school by 7:30. I am pretty sure this will NEVER happen again this school year. When I asked Eve what she was most excited about this school year she said "seeing Chloe every day." Her friend Chloe has been out of town this past month and that is about the most tragic thing Eve can imagine. She came home from school excited about the school year and then we got to head off to start another year of after-school activities... ballet tonight.

Ezra was so excited for school. With him it is harder for me to just let go and send him off to school. I felt like there has to be more than just sending him off to school. I mean you can't send your kid with hemophilia off to school without filling out some paperwork and informing teachers right? So of course we did that. I don't know if the teachers think that we are some crazy overprotective parents or what... but really who cares?

Ezra had a blast his first day of school. When I asked him what his favorite part of his day was he replied "playing with my new friends." Well play on my sweet little boy.

In summer...

We had a nice stretch of sunshine this past week. It was much needed!!! Lots of sunny days on the beach, in the yard, or anywhere outside. I actually had to buy a second bottle of sunscreen... what? That almost never happens.

With the sunshine and increased outdoor activity we did welcome an ankle bleed for poor Evan. Just call him the dread pirate Evan... or hobbles. While treating his bleed we were running low on factor. Ian called and ordered some up from the blood center. They were ready to send it out to us until they were informed by our insurance that insurance will no longer pay for them to supply us with factor. Well... that was unexpected. Do they want us to send it anyways? Ummm.. no thank you. We can't afford to pay for that out of pocket... pretty sure the cost of the month's supply of factor for the two boys is more than Ian makes in a year.

Poor Ian spent a stressful day arranging for factor delivery from the only place that our insurance will now approve to supply us with factor. Luckily they got us the factor in time and there was no tricky business while treating Evan's bleed. Actually we were pretty impressed with them, just an inconvenient time to have to switch. Evan's bleed seems to be getting better, it isn't over, but his limp is much less noticeable than before. Now we are enjoying a day off from feeling like we have to be out because it is a little bit rainy. Hopefully we get another stretch of sunshine here soon after Evan is all healed up. If not I will just put him in the backpack and head out with the kids berry picking.

Time flies...

We have been BUSY these last few months. We got chicks that Eve's kindergarten class hatched from eggs.... pretty cool. This meant that we had to build a chicken coop and a run. Which took way longer than we thought it would. Eve had her end of the year ballet performance. Which meant we spent a lot of time in the car driving to rehearsals and waiting in construction. Somewhere in there I made time to paint our kitchen cabinets... never want to do that again EVER!! I also painted most of the bathroom, if you look from the door it looks done... and that is good enough for now.The weather has been pretty nice a lot of the time. Which means that we head out on scooter walks pretty often. While Eve was in school we would cart her scooter to the bus stop and meet her to scooter back home. It was awesome. We planted a small garden. (with a baby doll in the front pack). Right now my sister is here with her kids and we are getting our cousin time in... yay! Oh and we have swimming lessons every day of the week and we are enjoying the days of the week by theme. Make something Monday, Time to read Tuesday, What's cooking Wednesday, Thinking Thursday and Fun Friday. We will just say this mom is exhausted. The second I sit down in the evening I usually take a little cat nap on the couch... Eve is begging to get the chance to tuck mom into bed. We are just loving our Alaskan spring and summer!!!

My knight in shining armor.

 We got home from Seattle with colds. No surprise there, it seems to happen every time we travel. Then Sunday night/ Monday morning Evan's cold turned to yuck. At the time he was just vomiting... no fever. Then we called our hemo nurse. We didn't know if he had hit his head on the ice when he fell on our skating rink of a driveway or not so she wanted us to take him in to be evaluated for a concussion just to be safe. Ian is my hero and automatically packed Evan up to go to the emergency room for that while I stayed home with our other 2 sleeping children. Evan was fine, as we suspected, but it was good to at least have him checked out to ease everyone's minds. 

Then of course Monday he got a fever. It has totally been drilled in my head do not pass go, go directly to get blood drawn for cultures the moment his fever hits 101.5. I wish that I could just go directly to the labs. Our usual pediatrician is awesome about understanding this is just protocol... it doesn't matter if he obviously caught the flu that is going around town we just need to make sure that his port is not infected. Port infections can be super scary and you just don't mess with them. Well the pediatrician in the office yesterday is more of the mindset that cultures are totally unnecessary when he sees a reasonable cause for fever that we should just watch his fever at home. I left the pediatrician's office so confused... I don't think I normally would have left without being sent to the lab but I was so sleep deprived that I was second guessing my understanding of the fever protocol for ports. A quick email to the hemophilia nurse confirmed that my understanding of the protocol was correct and by this time it was after office hours, so hello emergency room for the second time in less than 24 hours. 

Once again Ian was my knight in shining armor. He decided that I could get the other two kids to bed at home and he would brave the emergency room again. His account of the experience did not sound fun and I am so grateful that he was willing to go because I hate it when the doctor's basically tell you that you are being a worry wart and wasting their time. The doctor told Ian as he left that the justification for blood cultures was marginal at best... grr. I would have been pissed to have the doctor tell me that. Ian said overall it went well because he was able to get them to do the cultures we were instructed to get by the hemophilia nurse. I am so glad that I married someone who can be so calm and collected... because that is totally not me. Ian totally deserves something special for the back-to-back emergency room visits. I am just hoping that Ezra doesn't get the same bug as Evan... because I know what we are supposed to do if he does and don't want to have to fight so dang hard to get it. 

Sunny Seatte

We got back last night from the boys' checkups with their hemophilia care team. What a crazy but fun time. First off the weather in Seattle was amazing!! It was so nice and springy it was kind of a downer to come home to our frozen driveway.

The flight down was kind of a surprise. We have been flying with Evan since he was 3 months old and he has been the model flyer. I guess he was just saving up for the opportune moment. Which was this flight. The first flight since he turned two. I thought having his own seat would be a huge bonus. It was, until he realized he had to be buckled up. Then he screamed, and screamed until he fell asleep. I would guess it was at least a half hour of screaming. Then he woke up and was fine while he could be unbuckled. When it was time for landing it was the same screaming experience all over again. Yuck!

We landed in Seattle with just enough time to get a rental car and drive straight to our appointments. Grandpa Lynn met up with us there to come along for our wild ride. The appointments went pretty well. The boys are looking good. Our nurse could not believe that Evan was a wild child. He was glued to me most of the time. I think she thought I was exaggerating. I only wish I was. They also let us know that Evan's behavior during infusions is typical for his age and that Ezra is just amazingly behaved. They say that usually poking a 3 year old is a 2 person job, at least, not the one person job it is with Ezra. At least we luck out with something. After meeting with the crew it was time for blood draws. We got our favorite phlebotomist, Hector, I swear he is a magician. He just throws the needle like a dart and magically every time he is in. I love him.

After lab draws it was time to party with Grandpa. Off to Target to get some much needed energy out and prizes for good behavior. Then dinner time. Then a nice night drive back to the hospital pharmacy because they take so dang long to fill a prescription. 

Yesterday we woke up and got ready for another busy day. We did our big Costco run. Then went to Toys R Us to play. Lunch was at the Rainforest Cafe and then it was time to say goodbye to Grandpa Lynn and head to the airport. Or so we thought. We were already on our way sitting in traffic when we found out that our flight was delayed for 2 hours. Oh well. That just meant we had time to play in the awesome play area and get dinner before the flight. The flight back home was much like the flight down for Evan but luckily Ian took a turn with our crazy monkey and I got the easy kid.

Hooray for being home!

Life

Eve and Ezra have been taking swim lessons. Swim lesson nights are so horrible for poor Evan. As soon as I tell Eve and Ezra to suit up Evan runs to get his suit on and pack his swimming bag. He has tried many times to blend in with his siblings as they head to their teachers. Does he honestly think we are that out of it that we wouldn't miss him? Then he cries and plasters himself to the glass watching them have all the fun. The last ten minutes of swim lesson the kids get free time. Which is basically party time. This is usually when we head to the edge of the pool so that the kids know exactly where to find us. This week after seeing Evan suited up and us holding him back from jumping into the pool for a month straight the swim instructors took pity on Evan and let him in during free time. I hope that they know he now has that expectation. 

So I am laughing pretty hard about my day right now. I spent most of my day changing poopy diapers, poopy clothes, pretty much dealing with poop. I think I changed more diapers (Evan is the only one in diapers) than when I had a newborn. It was ridiculous. Not too far into the day,  probably only 2 poopy diapers, Evan started pointing to his tummy and saying ouchie. He even made me get a band-aid to put on his tummy thinking that would make it feel better. He started off the day with some apple juice, which does usually clean him out. So I thought okay no more apple juice for you today. But still the thunder down under continued and the diapers continued to pile up outside the house. The poor boy couldn't nap because there was something seriously going on with him... it sounded horrible! So by the end of the day Ian and I have to figure out what is going on... is this the flu? is is something he ate? So we started analyzing the few things that he had today. And then I started thinking about something that I cleaned up today. I cleaned up an empty container of IceBreakers Duos. Wait a second wasn't that container brand new this morning during prophy? I double check with Ian... why yes it was. A quick google of the sweeteners in there reveals that they have maltitol in it and the google results for it are not good. A bell goes off in my head. A couple months ago there was this post on facebook about the Haribo sugar free gummy bears and their extreme laxative effects. The amazon reviews are hilarious. If Evan could write an amazon review of Icebreakers Duos I can just imagine... needless to say I am cancelling my subscribe and save for them. I think there has to be a better treat for prophy day than that.

My baby is 2!!

Yesterday was Evan's birthday. He is growing up so fast. I feel like he was just a tiny little newborn and in reality I have a stubborn little toddler wandering around the house. He was so happy to blow out his birthday candles. He immediately started blowing the candles out before we could get both candles lit. Then he dug into the ice cream... ignored the cake that went with it. 

Evan is a stubborn guy. He really gives us a run for our money. If he had his way his diet would consist entirely of fruit snacks and cheese sticks. He is such a sweet little guy with tons of attitude and we just love him.