Test Results

Here's Ava in the lobby of the Blair E Batson Children's Hospital waiting to register for her VCUG. The test is a voiding cystourethrogram and it can detect abnormalities in the flow of urine through the urinary tract. A catheter was inserted along with dye that distended her bladder and a series of x-rays were taken. Urine back- flow up the left ureter and into the kidney was detected during the procedure. The radiologist told me she has a Stage 2/3 VU Reflux. There are 5 stages with 1 being the least and 5 being the worst. We have not been to the doctor yet to determine what to do from here as he has not received the official report from the radiologist. I don't know if we will be referred to a urologist or not but hope we will. I think the treatment at this point will be a low dose daily antibiotic to prevent further infection. Poor little Ava cried and screamed through the whole procedure and it was all I could do not to cry too but I knew she needed this done. I was with her the whole time and was able to see the reflux on the monitor. The radiologist that did it actually used to live in our neighborhood and Nathan knows him as well so that was a nice benefit. Here is a website if you are interested to learn more about VU Reflux (Mom & Dad). I'll have to say though that during my one hour in the hospital I saw so many sick sick children and am thoroughly thankful to my God for my healthy babies. I will take VU Reflux any day over what some of those precious children are dealing with. I used to see it all the time while I was working in the hospital but it has been awhile and I guess I got desensitized to it while I was there. Now that I am a mother it just makes you see it all differently. Thanks for your thoughts and prayers- I'll keep you updated on where we go from here!

Opposites

I don't want my picture taken.


I do! I do! Take mine! Cheese!


How cute and happy is this baby?

LOVE.

My children love each other so much and it just makes my heart happy.


Don't know if you can tell but Ava has her lips pursed to kiss "Woah"

17 Months

Here we are again celebrating another wonderful month! Ava-fresh from the bath- requested her babies for her photo shoot again. This past month Ava stayed with my Mom and Dad for 6 days while we took our trip to Utah. She did great being away from Mommy and Daddy. However, as soon as we got back she got another UTI and ended up with a fever of 105.3 at one point. After a shot of Rocephin and an oral antibiotic, she was back to herself. We have a VCUG scheduled this week at The Children's Hospital to check to see if urine is refluxing back up the ureters. She will be sedated during the procedure which involves catheterization and a series of x-rays. I hope and pray it's normal- otherwise I think she will have to take a daily antibiotic and I just really don't want her to have to do that so young. Anyway, I'll let you know our results. One major milestone - I guess you can call it that- is that Ava started saying "Noah"! It is the sweetest thing to hear her say "Wo-ah" with different inflections and at different volumes. They really have a lot of fun playing together now that Ava is a little older. It is definitely more fun with two! Ava has also- and I hesitate to even write it- started to give us a little difficulty going to bed at night. She has always just laid down and gone to sleep on her own for the past 17 months when we put her in the crib but for the last 2 or 3 nights she has been crying. I know I have definitely gotten spoiled by that but I went through much trouble getting Mister Noah to sleep for a long time. Anyway, we are just letting her cry and she settles down pretty quickly by herself, so hopefully this is just a fleeting phase. Ava is starting to get more opinionated as in shaking her head yes or no when I offer her choices for breakfast. We were in The Children's Place the other day and I picked up a cute little swimsuit to look at and out of the corner of my eye I see her shaking her head yes. I guess I'm in for it. I thought I had a little longer to dress her the way I wanted. I guess she's like her mama though- I've heard I was quite opinionated in the clothing department myself as a little girl. Ava continues to be such a blessing and the sweetest, snuggliest baby. She is learning so much and saying new words everyday.

Valentine's Weekend

Friday night on our way to the Resident Chili Cook-Off at one of the Attending Faculty's house.
Don't they look precious?


Here's the kids with some of their Valentine loot. Noah is watching the Incredibles movie that we gave him and Ava is eating the conversation hearts as fast as she can that baby Henry gave her.

That's about all we did to celebrate Valentines. Nothing exciting. Just glad we were all together.

A Warm Day in Winter

Just a few fun pics from the park a few weeks ago.


Chasing squirrels

Somebody doesn't want their picture taken!

The Canyons

I think this is the last post from our ski trip. This picture below is of our resort- The Canyons-taken from the Gondola on our way back down the mountain. It was very nice and I would highly recommend it.


Waiting on our cab to take us to the airport.

The whole group:
Tim, Rose & Lily Flowers, The Gills, & Aaron Walpole


The Docs

Ski Day

Don't remember if I have mentioned yet that Nathan was actually attending an Emergency Medicine conference in Utah which was the reason for the whole trip. A fellow resident and his family attended as well. Tim & Rose have a 5 year old little girl named Lily- this made the trip so much more fun for Noah. They really hit it off and enjoyed one another's company. Here we are on the way to rent our skis- Noah is holding Lily's hand.


After much adieu, we finally made it to the slopes. ( It takes forever to those ski boots on and then actually get your skis on especially while helping a 4 year old who has no clue what he is doing.) We decided to bypass ski school for Noah, so here is Nathan giving him his first lesson between the gondola and the lift. So far so good.... right?

Well there is no picture to document what happened next. Somehow instead of taking the lift to the green (easiest) slope, we managed to take the lift to the blue (more difficult) slope for our very first attempt to ski with our 4 year old who has only had skis on for about 10 minutes. The lift kept going higher and higher and Nathan & I started wondering aloud if maybe we had taken the wrong lift. We found out soon enough that indeed we had. SO here we are at the top of the slope trying to decide what to do. There is nothing to do besides go down. Now Nathan is a very good skier and had already been skiing on this trip. I, however, consider myself somewhat of a rookie- it had been 6 years since the last time I skied and then I think I skied mostly greens. We had to go down so here's what we did- I took Nathan's ski poles (so now I have a total of 4) and Nathan just picks up Noah under the armpits and holds Noah between his legs and just takes off skiing. It's fairly steep so I work my way down as slowly as I can going side to side while Nathan and Noah stop and wait on me. Repeat this scene over and over and break in a few falls and that is how we managed to get down the mountain. At one point (see picture below) there is a place to switch from the blue to the green so that is what we did. Noah loved it and Nathan did great (I am so proud of him!) but my out of shape muscles were burning fiercely so I decided that was all the skiing I would do.

So after we worked our way down the blue, we ate lunch with our group at the mountaintop cafe. I let Noah ride the Gondola around and around while Nathan skied the rest of the afternoon since we had paid for lift tickets and all. We finally found the bunny slope and I thought I could manage Noah by myself so off we went to give it a try. I was definitely wrong! He did great skiing by himself down the hill- if that is even what you could call it- more of a slight downward incline- but he could not get the hang of holding on to the lift that pulls you back up. I definitely did not have the patience for that mess so we ended up taking our skis off and walking back up- while Noah was crying the whole time. He didn't want to quit but we had no other choice. I decided to call it a day and we went back to the room.

Picking Back Up

Well it has been awhile since I've blogged.... we've been extremely busy but I'll get to that later. I wanted to finish posting pictures from our trip to Park City, Utah.

This day was Noah's real birthday- January 26th- and here he is opening our card. (Yes, it plays music and he loved it.) And for those of you wondering yes that is Nathan in a robe in the background. Noah wanted to swim in the snow that morning so we obliged since it was his birthday.



I bought Noah a slice of cake from the grocery bakery for him to eat on his special day. Can't you tell he's excited?

We wanted to do something that Noah would really enjoy since it was his birthday so we went snow tubing at Gorgoza Park. SO MUCH FUN! We all had a blast. They had a lift that would pull you up to the top of the hill in your tube. There were 3 lower lifts for the younger children and 3 higher lifts for those more daring. After trying both, they were pretty much similar except that you would just ride longer on the higher ones- didn't really seem much faster. Noah got the hang of the operation after his first slide down and it was all I could do to keep up with him for the next 2 hours. Sometimes we would all hold on to each other's tubes and go down the ramp all together. Noah liked to be spun around right before he was pushed off. I preferred to be facing forward on the way down myself.

Here's the Birthday Boy pulling his tube to the lift


Daddy pulling Noah to the lift