Ryan & Katelyn's World: September update

Can you believe it’s September already? We had a pretty busy summer but it’s now back to school, doing homework and running errands on the weekend. We tried to do something fun with the kids every couple weeks during the summer…sometimes that didn’t pan out depending on the weather but I think we all had a good time. After my sis and brother in law went home after their visit, Ryan started camp at the Y and thoroughly enjoyed it. It was a new theme each week so he was able to learn about and have hands on fun with cooking, time traveling, awesome art and many more things. He also got to swim almost every day and most importantly, burn off energy by playing outside! There were a few weeks that he did not go to camp like the week of his birthday but we (or my parents) did other things with the kids. Other Places we went this summer; Went to Busch Gardens, Kings Dominion, Williamsburg, Outer Banks. Katelyn is 35 ½” (just a hair under 36” with her shoes on) so she was able to ride quite a few rides at both theme parks. Ryan just loves all the rides and would stay until the park closed if we were able to! He is tall as well and just under 48” which is the minimum height to ride the Lochness Monster at Busch Gardens…but I would never let him do that right now! I mean, he is only 6! Maybe when he’s 10 or something…haha!

Ryan is now a 1st grader! Where did my little preemie prince go? Time sure does fly by when you have kids. He talks ALL THE TIME now. I look back on some of my old posts when he was 2 and barely talking a few words and think if I had known then I would have nothing to worry about 4 years later, life would have been a lot less stressful. He loves Lego’s, board games & card games and of course still loves playing with hot wheels cars! He also loves to read. He will read road signs, signs when we are shopping and all kinds of books. Imagine our surprise when at his 6 year pediatrician appointment in July, he could only (barely) read the 3rd line of the eye chart! The 3rd line of the eye chart only has 3 big letters! I was dumbfounded. Besides the fact that he would complain of a headache every now and then, there was no indication he had blurry vision. He never sat close to the TV, never squinted that we saw and certainly never told us he couldn’t read something. We passed off his headaches as being dehydrated (since after all he was at camp all day) or allergies. So, off we went to get him glasses. He was pretty excited about the idea of glasses at first but when they came in and he had to wear them all the time, he was less excited (about them). The good news is it’s been about 3 weeks that he has been wearing them and he has adjusted to them well and does not take them off several times a day as he did in the beginning. Dean bought him a strap to wear if he wants and our next item to buy is sunglasses that clip on.

Big news for Katelyn as well! She is now in preschool 3 days a week! I was very surprised at how well she did on her first day. The teacher stands at the door and has the kids walk in one by one by themselves as the parent is telling them goodbye. I think the fact that she knew I wasn’t going to be there but that her Nana (my mom) would be back to pick her up helped a lot. At church, when we drop her off in the nursery she cries but I think it’s because she knows we are there (in the sanctuary) and just wants to be with us (wants us to come in the nursery and play with her). After about 30 seconds though she is fine. Her Omphalocele is getting smaller the bigger she grows. She is 25 lbs. now and right at 36” with her shoes on. The surgeon mentioned the S word (surgery) last month so sometime in the near future we will be looking at closure surgery. We would definitely like to wait longer and have most all of the contents of her O compressed back inside her. We also want to get over the winter cold & flu season before having to stay in the hospital. With that said, we’ll talk more to the surgeon next week at her monthly appointment about the procedure, recovery time, etc.

If you haven't read my last post about making the blog private, please read it. I'll be making the blog private this week so please email me your email if you want to continue reading my updates..even though they are few and far between. Making the blog private might motivate me to post more pictures.

Here are some recent pictures:

First day of 2 year old preschool