6 months

my boys six months after the swap

six months ago i was living at children's mercy hospital being amazed by my little man, worried about nicks growing allergic reaction and grateful to take daily showers. today i'm still grateful to take daily showers even if they are at 5:30am. i'm also still amazed by little man. and nicks allergic reaction has been long gone. :-) it is really crazy to think that owen is upstairs sleeping in his bed with nicks kidney inside of him. nick doesn't like it to be called his kidney anymore, he says "i gave it to owen, it's not mine anymore" but owen calls it his daddy's kidney :-) it will always be nick's kidney to me too :-) it's truly amazing what doctors can do and i thank my lucky stars for them everyday. over the past week i've gone back and re-read my post from the weeks around the swap. those thoughts feel like they were from a life time ago. and lately it feels like those thoughts are hard to come by. today i was talking to my mom about how i find it harder to blog now. i said before i was always up late, couldn't sleep and that was when i would blog. now i don't stay up so late....hence why i don't blog so much. my mom made a comment that has had me thinking all day "before you couldn't sleep because you had so many worries about owen." it's probably true but it doesn't feel possible that i could have less worries about owen now. i wouldn't say i have more but maybe just different ones. a parent always worries about their kids, right? i just need to make sure i'm not letting my guard down with owen....that worries me :-/ may 13th owen has a 6 month biopsy on the kidney. they will do it in surgery under anesthesia because of his heart history. we will stay one night to watch for bleeding.....one night will be a breeze for us. on may 20th we have round 2 with the independence school district to see what their plans are for him next year. i'm actually looking more forward to hospital stay then i am the school meeting :-/ i'll let you know how they both go.

owen loved dyeing Easter eggs
nick and noah making "the Face"

she was so proud of the eggs

the Easter bunny brought them luggage instead of baskets for our upcoming trip to California. owen's Make A Wish is in 20 Days.....we can hardly wait!!!!!

the cute gets cuter

just when i thought that there was no way this face could get any cuter......he gets glasses!!!!! he has been doing great with wearing them. like he has always had them :-) until today.....he broke them :-( a new pair has been ordered. it's amazing the difference they made in his vision!!!

we've had a lot of fun outing with the kids lately. we took them to see toy story 3 on ice. that's our splurge every year on the kids and we love surprising them with it. every year liv sees the billboards and hears the commercials and always says i want to go to that but she never catches on that we always take her. i just love putting them in the car then telling them where we are really going.

owen stayed awake for the whole thing unlike when he fell asleep at the circus before the swap.

noah went last year but spelt thru the whole thing so we were a little nervous taking him with us. i must say that he did awesome. i'm sure the fact that he is really into toy story right now helped. it was so fun to get to see them all enjoy it.

couldn't not get a picture of these three all holding hands. we were heading into the zoo. my mom got us a season pass for christmas so we have really been taking advantage of it every chance we get. we've been bringing a picnic lunch and getting lots of walking exercise. the kids have really loved it and ask us to go every weekend.

Livi turned 7 on the 10th!!! we started the weekend with a slumber party with 4 of her friends and cousins. we took them to get pizza, then bowling and then to get ice cream.

they all stayed the night sleeping on a air mattress in the living room. they made bracelets, played hide-n-seek, colored and watched movies. livi had so much fun. it was a little hectic and trying on my nerves having that many 7 year olds here but well worth it to see liv having so much fun :-)

noah got to ride with daddy on his mower the first time nick mowed the lawn this year. he thought it was pretty cool!!!

i can't hardly believe that liv is 7 years old. where did all that time go?!?!?! how did i get here?!?!? i hope the next 5 years with noah don't go by as fast and i'm not sitting here posting about his 7th b-day saying the same thing. i really need to try slowing down and enjoying the small stuff.

Happy In-Between Day

today's weather was beautiful!!! a great in between day. that's what I'm naming this day.....In-Between Day. and every year from now on I'm going to have the best In-Between Day ever. March 20th is the day after my dads passing anniversary and the day before his birthday....right in between. march 19th i can be ridiculously sad and march 21st even sadder but march 20th will be great. this week really did have an awesome beginning. march 14th my 5th niece was born!!! Karma Marie weighed 7lbs and was 21inches long. a perfect little angel!!! chelsea and baby are both doing great. owen is also doing great. we are only getting labs once a week in the kidney center. and today i actually told nick that soon we need to go out and buy this kid some new clothes. not because he's worn them for two years and i'm tired of looking at them but because he is growing out of them. that is a first with him!!! since the swap he has gained about 6 lbs and grown about 2 inches!!! he finally looks like noahs older brother and not his twin :-) I've been asked a lot lately what is the biggest change in owen since the swap. there has been so many small changes it has been hard to say. i think that him not wanting to drink water was the most extreme change. he now has an extremely large appetite. and his taste buds have completely changed. he used to coat everything in ketchup and now hardly uses it. he has a little bit more energy when playing. he sleep much better at night. right now we are trying to break him from watching the tv at night...:-/ not going so well but its only been about 5 nights so i know it will get easier for him. we have also been working on potty training with both boys. also not going so well but I've got a goal of having them both trained by the end of summer. wish me luck. a few weeks ago we learned from "make a wish" that owens trip to Disneyland in California will be May 22nd-28th. we are so excited. owens aunt nat nat, uncle dom, nannie julie and his cousin megan are all making the trip. plus my best friend from arizona megan, her husband jaafe and their daughter jaaten are meeting us there. it is going to be an unbelievable trip for owen. we are so grateful to be given this amazing wish.

i've been pretty busy with scentsy lately. noah thought it was pretty fun to sit on the boxes
Adaira, Owen and Noah waiting on Karma's arrival. notice the height owen has on noah. :-) plus he weighs 3lbs more than him too

proud big sister adaira with my new little niecey-pooh karma

all the kids love there aunt nat nat and it starts as soon as they start talking. i was on my way to the hospital with the boys and all morning we'd been saying who we were going to see that day....c-ya(chelsea), nat nat, ya ya(my mom) and the new baby. so we are leaving our last stop before the hospital and owen says "now lets go to the hospital to see c-ya, ya ya, and nat nat" and noah points his little finger at owen and says "no...nat nat and baby" very matter a fact-ly...so cute. sorry chels and mom....natalie is the best spoiler :-)

i could really use a "WISH" right now

hello hello!!! life has been moving right along around here. we are almost 16 weeks out from transplant. so hard to believe. owen is doing good. he had an infection again-c-dif-not fun....basically gives you awful diarrhea. which is 10x worse with owens booty. he had some nights spent sleeping on the potty and one where i almost took him to the er. but once on the right antibiotics it got much better. this also meant that we had to continue getting labs twice a week for the last two weeks instead of only going once a week. but no worries, it now start this week. new routine, but easier routine. :-) we've been feeling very lucky thats all owen has gotten around here. we have all at some point in the last few weeks had some kind of bug...flu, stomach, cold or cough but managed to keep it away from him. just keeping our fingers crossed and knocking on wood we can keep it up thru the rest of winter. we've definitely got something cool to look forward to. owen has been granted a "wish" from the "make a wish" foundation. his two wish granters came to the house last weekend to meet him and discuss his wish. his first pick wish is to go to Disneyland...surprise surprise!!! we should find out more within the next few weeks. It's so exciting...we can hardly wait. something else exciting that happened here is that our little man Noah turned 2!!! now thats really hard to believe. everyday he continues to bring so much joy to our family. he has definitely entered the terrible twos but it is all worth it and forgotten every morning when i walk in his room to see his little sleepy, smiling face. we had a great b-day party for him that started with a family trip to the zoo to see the polar bear and ended with the perfect gathering of friends and family at fritz's at crown center. we had such a great time. thanks to all that made it!!!

the polar bear @ the kc zoo swims right up to this window before he does a flip off of it......so cool to see!!!

the big 2 year old!!!!

a few weeks ago i took liv to her first concert. it was miranda cosgrove aka icarly. we surprised her when she came home from school and she had to trade her reward marbles in to go. it was just me and her. i had so much fun spending that one on one time with her and spoiling her just a little bit.

ready for our girls night out....icarly here we come

1st concert

just a little bit spoiled

speaking of spoiled my sister natalie took owen out on his first "date" this last friday. she took him to play games at chucky cheese, to eat at t-rex where he got to build-a-dino and then for ice cream. she bought him a new outfit and cut his hair. she is the best aunt ever!!!

cute words from owen.....owen:mom am i available to go on a date with aunt nat nat on friday? me:yeah i think you can go owen: no mom, am i available? :-)

a pinch to grow an inch

okay, okay...now the voices in my head can stop telling me to update my blog :-) i'm slowing adjusting to going back to regular schedule. owen went back to school the first week of the year and nick went back to work this last week. which ended up a weird week with all the snow days and didn't really feel normal. right now a normal week should go like this....nick leaves monday thru friday around 5am, i have to get all 3 kids dressed and fed by 8am to get liv on the bus, noah to his sitters and owen to school downtown but now the new twist is that 2 days a week owen has to gets labs done by 9:30am at the kidney center. so last week it didn't really run like it should with the snow so we will see how this week goes. owen is doing amazing.....as always. he has even grown a whole INCH since the surgery!!!! he is probably a good 2 1/2-3 inches taller than noah.....yay owen!!! he really is such a trooper, when we go out he only needs to wear is mask when around big crowds and we were just running in somewhere real quick that wasn't crowded and when we got back to the car he said "mom you didn't put my mask on"....there was a time when he would fight me to put that thing on. right now our biggest struggle with him is potty training or even more just him letting us know when he needs his diaper changed. when he goes in his diaper it causes awful diaper rash because of his immune suppression. he won't tell us when we needs his diaper changed and because of his booty problems he goes quite often. :-/ it's a cycle i'm having a very hard time finding a way out of. but on a very good and strange twist in the story Noah went pee pee and poo poo on the potty tonite :-) if i can't get one i'll get the other...lol...i only laugh so i don't cry.

kids playing in the snow....noah's first time. he loved it until it was all over his face.

owen's first day back to school. his friends were so happy to see him.

some of our x-mas pictures i should have posted weeks ago

a silly thing that owen said....me:owen i'll be right back just lay there, don't get out of bed....i come back in his room to find him out of bed.......me:owen what did i say owen:don't get out of bed me:so when are you going to start listening to me? owen:hmmm...maybe tomorrow night. :-) gotta love his honesty.

busy, busy...merry christmas!!!

merry christmas everyone!!! it has been crazy busy around here and time is just flying by. the salon has been really busy the last few weeks. that is always a good thing. :-) my only complaint about that is that i miss nick and the kids. i've been so jealous that he gets to stay home all day long with the boys that i can hardly stand it. but i'm trying to not get too upset because i know i will have a lot to complain about when nick goes back to work in two weeks and my schedule will be 100 times more complicated. :-/ owen is doing really good. we are now doing daily bladder irrigation on him which are super easy because of the bladder access thru his belly button. we are doing these in an attempt to get rid of a bacteria called sudamoundous. he has had this bacteria in his urine off and on for as long as i can remember. the drs thought it was coming from his sick kidneys. so they were a little shocked when they saw it in his urine again now that both his kidneys are gone. now they believe that it has been coming from his bladder all along. since antibiotics can cause such bad diarrhea on him we are trying the bladder irrigations. so far so good. nick is doing good too. he is having a few small side affects but nothing that his drs are too worried about.
a few weekends ago nick and i took owen and liv on a date night. we went to dinner and to see the movie tangled. which was a great movie. we went to the theatre in blue springs and while there nick and i had a surreal and amazing moment. that theatre is where nick and i had some of our first dates over 16 years ago. it was so amazing to sit in the same place with two of our kids giggling and having a great time. and for nick and i to love each other even more than we back then. i truly felt our relationship come full circle that night. can't wait till noah is old enough to go with us.
today nick was asking livi to list 3 things that she is grateful for. when she was done owen walked over and said "i'm grateful for you daddy".............aren't we all :-)

Merry Christmas
Am

we are still here...6 weeks

hi all....i don't know where all my time has gone. we are 6 weeks out from the swap and doing great. we still have a nurse coming to the house twice a week for labs. still changing meds here and there. owen did end up having a virus that was causing the diarrhea and it seems to be getting better now that he is on a antibiotic for it. his appetite is way better now but his taste buds are totally different. he has been craving sweets but can't really have any because one of the meds he is on makes his body retain sugar. so it's been a struggle to get him to want healthier alternatives now. before he would take one nibble of sweets then turn it down or choose fruit which he doesn't seem to want now. it's just all so weird and different and hard to say no to him. beside all that he really is doing good.

we had a great thanksgiving. natalie and i hit up lots of stores on black friday. we've got the house ready for christmas. i think i'm done shopping for the kids but every day owen adds something to his list. he has been staring at the toy-r-us ad for two days. today i actually heard him yell at liv not to touch it because she would rip it. :-) it's really funny to hear him say because nick and i call him "owen the ripper" because he rips all paper.

it's late and i'm tired, so sorry this is a short post. i just wanted all my loving and loyal followers to know that we are still here. i will get some pics up later this week. have a great week!!