Sunday, October 27, 2013

Family Photos::2013

Every Fall, just before Colin's birthday, we call on our favorite photographer to capture our family. We keep our photo sessions very casual - we wear clothes out of our closets and drawers, and keep the locations limited to an open field or pumpkin patches. Nothing crazy. Just our family. As we are.

This year, pictures were a little more difficult. Salem was ready to go about five minutes into it. Here he is giving his best 'all done' sign...


Colin has figured out the art of making funny faces...




 and Chris still cannot understand the concept of always being camera ready. Exhibit A...


or B...


or C (the Chris and Colin combo)...


But, as usual, Anna manages to capture such sweet moments out of all the craziness...








Those two make me smile. We are so thankful for these photos. Chris and I are TERRIBLE about getting in pictures with our kids. Terrible. These photos mean so much to us. And I am thankful that my boys will rally together for their momma at least one time a year :)

Now for fun, let's compare this year, to last year...


Salem has grown up SO much! Up next, a 18 month and 5 year update. About a month late.

Monday, October 14, 2013

Kinder- WHAT??


I will admit, I've been putting off this post for far too long. For about six weeks now (maybe more, I've lost count!), Colin has been in KINDERGARTEN! With an October birthday, he misses the deadline by a few days but we decided to have him start kindergarten early this year at Little Red so that he will be extra prepared for kindergarten next year. We weren't sure if he would be able to handle it, which is part of the reason I have delayed posting this. But he has adjusted to the structure and the workload and is doing so well! We are very proud of him!

On his very first day of kindergarten, Colin picked out his entire outfit. Including the tie. He said he wanted to look just like Dad because he had to 'go to work'. So sweet! 


Stay tuned for more kindergarten adventures!

Sunday, October 6, 2013

Health Updates

Some REALLY fun news and some not so fun news.

First for the FUN news- Colin can now have egg, as long as it is in baked goods! I know, not completely life-changing. But, for the first time in his entire life, the kid has been able to have delivery pizza! Woohoo! Donatos, thankfully, has started to offer a gluten-free product, which, of course, is awesome. However, it has 'egg' listed in the ingredients. So, until Colin was recently tested, he couldn't enjoy this treat but now he can! And it is YUM. We are excited to try new foods with him now. 

Now for the not-so-fun-news. In April of this year, Salem was diagnosed with ITP - idiopathic thrombocytopenic purpura. He had been sick for a while and then started developing what we thought was a rash but we later found out it were small, broken blood vessels. His pediatrician immediately sent us to Children's Hospital Outpatient to have some blood drawn. We found out that Salem had an unusually low platelet count (28,000, at the time, normal range is 120,000 -150,000) and this is what had led to the broken blood vessels and bruising covering his body. A visit to a hematologist at Cincinnati Children's Hospital confirmed that he did in fact have ITP.\
 
 
Now, what is ITP? It is a blood disorder that can cause unusually low platelet counts. Basically, Salem's immune system confuses his healthy cells for bad cells so when he gets sick, his system works in overdrive and depletes his platelet count.
 
How do you treat ITP? There isn't really a treatment. Crazy, huh? Try telling that to two pharmaceutical reps! Chris and I are so used to having a drug to treat or prevent almost every disease or condition out there. This one had us stumped. Other than wrapping our boy in bubble wrap, there is literally nothing we can do to prevent it. However, if his platelet counts do drop too low, there is a treatment available called IVIG that helps to pump up his system. This is an infusion of platelets that is given intravenously over a couple of hours. Not so fun. Salem has had two of these treatments since his diagnosis and although it can be a struggle with a toddler, they have worked well for him so we cannot complain!
 
 





Currently, we are keeping our fingers crossed that this will all go away within the next few weeks. If not, we are looking at possibly having to face this long-term (it goes from acute to chronic after 6 months). In the meantime, we are in good hands at Children's Hospital!