Trip to Pittsburgh

Last Friday the kids and I got into our car and I drove to Pittsburgh for an LPA regional.  (Mike was working two of the three days.)  The trip took about 5 hours with a short lunch break.  Feeding both kids at a fast food place by myself went pretty well.  Maddy only took a 30-minute nap and was a bit cranky by the end of the trip.  The conference was held at a hotel that was just down the road from Aunt Becki and Uncle Jim, and they let us stay at their house again.  They. Are. Awesome.  Here is Ben trying to sneak Aunt Becki's phone.

Maddy decided to scream and cry every time she saw the dog (who was nothing but sweet and quiet).  She was pretty high-maintenance for most of the weekend.  Lots of whining and crying.  Here's a calm and unusually nice brother/sister moment.  I stopped by the hotel to register and ended up meeting a bunch of people.  Then we relaxed at the house for the evening.  On Saturday I brought both kids to the hotel and dropped Ben off in the children's room so I could go to some seminars.  It was great to hear from other parents about their experiences.  The biggest part of the event for me was getting to see my friend Kate in person.  We had only ever written to each other by e-mail and she lives in another state.  Not only was it great to hang out with her, but she helped to keep Maddy occupied during the seminars.  Thanks, Kate!

I brought the kids back to the house for lunch and we spent the afternoon resting.  Thankfully Maddy took a nap - she had a terrible night's sleep, and therefore so did I.  In the evening we went back to the hotel for the LPA banquet.  Ben was upset that he couldn't go to the children's room again and nearly burst into tears several times at the table.  Maddy was tired and kind of squirmy.  Kate and her mom helped me with both kids.

Kate's mom, Sandy.  She took Ben on several walks out in the hotel lobby to keep him from imploding.

This photo was taken by a cute and clingy 5-year-old who took the role of Maddy's mom for the evening.  Here's one exhausted and slightly frazzled Maddy.  Girl needs her sleep and just wasn't getting it.

After dessert it was obvious that Maddy needed to go back to the house, so we all walked out to the lobby.  There had been a raffle, and someone gave a strip of raffle tickets to Ben who thought it was the best thing ever.  He would have been happy to hold Kate's hand and do math problems out loud for several more hours, but I made him leave with me.  Ben got a nice surprise when we returned to the house because Emily was there (he has a bit of an Emily obsession).  He stayed up way too late but at least he slept in until 7 the next morning.  Yes, that's sleeping in for him.  Emily told him to go back to bed until 8 and he did!  And Maddy slept through the night.  Double win.

She was so tired by Sunday that she took a nap in the morning.  This is the sleep tent we used when we moved from Germany to Ohio last summer.  She loved it at the time.  But she hadn't used it in a while, and when I tried to put her in it on this trip she freaked out.  She hates it.  If I zipped it up, she screamed as if she was being tortured.  So I left it open, and she crawled out and slept outside the tent almost every time.

Ben adores Emily.  But he also loves the games on Emily's phone.

Getting some lovin' from Aunt Becki.  She totally spoiled us all.  We left right after lunch and got back to Dayton around dinner.  I was going to stop along the way but Ben really wanted to get home, see Daddy and play his computer games.  He was so tired that he took a nice, long nap in the car.  Little Miss Crankypants didn't sleep one wink.  But she napped as soon as we got home and she was put in her crib.

I'm still exhausted from this weekend.  But it was totally worth it.  The kids and I had such a fantastic time with family and LP friends.

Sixteen Months Old

Madeline is 16 months old today!

She has shown many moods lately.  One of our favorites is her silly mood.

Her angry moods are quite impressive.

Here she's just slightly perturbed at being given an apple when she probably wanted something like ice cream.  This was when she had just caught a nasty bug a couple weeks ago, followed by her first ear infection.

For a long time it was a challenge to get Maddy interested in books.  She's just recently started getting into them.  She raided Ben's bookshelf and loves the Dora the Explorer books.  At least it's not the TV show.  She also loves any books with pictures of cats or bears.

Again, the face.  She likes to cruise around the coffee table.  It's the perfect height for her to stand up straight.  And there are usually all kinds of goodies for her to grab off the table.  She loves finding mugs of coffee.  The carpet in the family room is such a disaster.

I'm thrilled that we're allowed to start letting her sit up with some back support.  But here she was trying slide to the floor and accidentally got into a sitting position, then couldn't figure out how to get out of it.  I snapped a photo, then rescued her.  Bad momma.

She spends a lot of time during dinner sitting up in her high chair with some blankets behind her back for support.  She lets us know when she gets tired of it.  Sometimes she gets a little punchy, as seen here.

Other things this month... She asks for "more" by saying "my" and refuses to do the hand signs  anymore for anything other than "milk."  When Mike leaves for work in the morning, Maddy routinely waves and says "bye" to him.  She climbs the stairs A LOT.  She has settled into one nap a day; if I'm lucky, she sleeps for 2 hours.  She is still resisting the sippy cup and sometimes cries for her bottle.  Or her pacifier - that's an addiction that I'll be addressing soon.  She is slowly warming up to strangers and acquaintances.  Now that the weather is (too) warm Mike has brought her into the yard and tried to put her down on the grass - she's not at all a fan of that.  But she does love being outside, playing with leaves and plants, and feeling the breeze.  She can't have enough teddy bears and sometimes hugs two at a time.  We are amazed on a daily basis by how adorable she is.

Mmm, FOOD

Maddy is at the stage where she eats almost any food we give her.  She often eats whatever Ben leaves on his plate.  However, sometimes she doesn't have the patience to wait until he's done before swooping in and stealing his food.

Benjamin thought he had eaten all the chocolate pudding in the cup.  Maddy somehow found more.

Fortune cookie.

Ben's leftover meatballs.

 Two reasons I like this picture: 1) She likes to eat wheat bread.  2) She's sitting up in the high chair!  She has limited tolerance for it but she has a much easier time eating when upright.  So glad we are now allowed to do this sometimes.

Going to great lengths (and strange positions) to sip some milk.

Raiding the pantry.

Super Reader

Ben delightedly reading a new book from the library.  It's from a series of "Elephant & Piggie" books that he loves.  He astounds people with how well he can read at this age.  The cough at the beginning is because of his allergies and asthma, and he had his medicine right after this.

Visit with Dr. P

This week we drove up to Akron to have Madeline evaluated by a well-known dwarfism specialist who lives in another state but has clinics several times a year up in Akron.  The drive from Dayton was supposed to take about 3.5 hours.  It took a little longer because we stopped for lunch at Wendy's and then again to clean up the car seat and change Maddy after she threw up everything she ate that day.  At Wendy's Maddy instinctively dipped her fries into ketchup.  She really wasn't all that interested in eating the fries (or any of the fast food), but she liked the dipping.

Dr. P is known for doing a thorough examination of kids and then giving detailed explanations to parents. He did not disappoint.  Here are the main points of what we learned:

* Maddy's kyphosis, the outward curve in her lower spine, is mild.  He thinks that there is very little chance that she will need any major intervention as long as we continue to be mindful.  He said that she is old enough and has developed enough that we can start sitting her up a bit.  For strollers and high chairs he recommends keeping her reclined at 30 degrees.  Umbrella strollers, the kind with no back support, are still not to be used.  (Dr. P gave us much more information than our local orthopedic doc who told us at our last visit that "this will be the quickest appointment ever."  It's not a race.  Apparently patients who aren't surgical candidates just don't interest him much.)

* Dr. P was not surprised by Maddy's history of vomiting.  He said that reflux is quite common in kids with achondroplasia.  (I don't recall her local dwarfism docs ever mentioning this.  Interesting.)  The exact cause isn't known although there are several theories that he explained.  But he also said that we can't know for sure if it's reflux in Maddy's case - her improvement could be a delayed effect of her decompression surgery, or maybe she just happened to "grow out of it" at the same time she started taking the reflux meds.  Regardless, he was very pleased at how she's doing since being on the meds and recommends we continue with them.

* Her gross motor skills are delayed, as is expected with all achon kids.  He is not at all concerned that she is not sitting up yet.  He doesn't expect her to ever do a typical crawl.  She does have very loose knee and hip joints, and she will probably sit up and walk later than other achon kids, maybe when she's around 2 or 2.5 years old.  Although he did say that if we hadn't already told him that Maddy is cruising - standing and taking small steps while holding onto objects - that he would have predicted she would be delayed in that, too.  He said she must be very determined.

Dr. P spent about an hour and 45 minutes with us.  It was amazing.  He gave a more thorough and down-to-earth description of achondroplasia than we'd ever heard.  He gave Maddy a head-to-toe physical evaluation and she screamed her way through it.  He then waited for her to calm down and talked to us at length, answering all of our questions.  He said that Maddy's personality will serve her well when she gets older.

Dr. P and his staff were just fantastic.  They gave us some brochures and will be sending us a report detailing everything that was discussed at the appointment.  We are so glad we made the effort to get Maddy seen by him.

Up the Stairs

Last week Maddy starting climbing this whole 8-step staircase by herself. This is the second time she did it. One day she did it three times. That must be very tiring. Maybe that's why she's been sleeping better.

Wicker Chair

Maddy trying to climb through the hole in a wicker chair.  Her head almost got stuck.  This kind of thing is happening a lot lately.  She almost got her head stuck under the coffee table twice.