D-TaP, shmee-tap

There is huge controversy over vaccines. Big, friendship ending, up in arms controversy. This is not the place for that. This is a place for a story about our little Fish, and her first vaccine in nearly two years.

We stopped vaccinating our little Fish (after previously doing a delay schedule which was our pediatrician's recommendation) around 6 months old. This was the time we were trialing her on food, and she was a mess with allergies. I think back to what life was like in the Clorox wipe filled days, and I can hardly fathom it! We stopped in hope of letting her little tummy heal itself(vaccines, as well as allergies, are drains on the immune system), and had all intention of starting back up once she was "out of the woods".

So she went for her good old 2 year well check, brave as can be, and got her "poke". Not a big deal right, every other kid does it too. The big deal came after. The past two weeks we have watched our little Fish have slow changes in front of our eyes. Less interacting with friends, more sensory seeking, and the thing that made me take notice, hour or more long tantrums on almost a daily basis. I don't care what you say, that is not normal!

I feel like both camps of the vaccine debate can agree on one thing, there is some part of the population that cannot get rid of the junk in vaccines. They harbor it somehow and it sends them into a funk. (I know I am sooooo scientific!) Quite frankly I don't care why, in our house we are more worried with "how to fix it".

So that is what we did(or tried...) today. Off to see good old Dr. Cheryl, both kids in tow, to get the girl and the boy straightened out(she was *hopefully* straitening out seizure triggers for him). It gets a little "black magic" from there, but we should know in 24-48 hours if we have our "old" Fishy back. I sure hope so, because the current one has been breaking my heart!

Pup the Kitchen Elf

The Chicken Post!

Sometimes I wonder what it would be like to have the simple life of a (laying) chicken. I have no desire to be a meat chicken... all know how their short lives end!

Our Little Puppy keeping himself entertained while we were doing our "chicken chores", feeding, watering, and collecting eggs!

Fish "helping" feed the baby chicks.

Baby chicks... 50 in all! I dare say they will be delicious this winter!

The outside pen.

Dancing

I was scouring the Internet earlier, doing what I do best, researching the boy, what we can do for him now, what to expect as he gets older. Oh and being constantly plagued by the image of the girl last night and her "not normal" tantrum. (I shudder to think of our lot with her had we not been turned on to slightly alternative care early on...) Anyways, I came across a quote that I dare say may become my motto.

It's not about getting to the other side of the storm, it's about learning to dance in the rain.

Somehow my lot in life has become stormy, and for the next however long I'm looking at, I would say that I will be in the storm more than in the sun. So I better learn to dance in the rain. That's what I'm trying to do. Look at the blessings I have as opposed to the hindrances. (I mean he is living right? By all accounts he shouldn't even be with us right now.)

But life will be bleak if I am blinded by the storm. Because as much as we want to say things will improve, you can't grow out of a significant brain injury. Gains will be made, he will continue to astound us all, but almost always a new storm will be lurking around the corner.

So I'm getting my umbrella, and putting on my dancing shoes.

Just Have to Laugh...

Pup has mastered the art of torturing his sister. On the way home this evening Fish was very distraught. The type of distraught that is generally the result of massive amounts of gluten, and would make any passer-by assume that she was not the very typical happy-go-lucky type of girl that she is. She was mad that she threw her DVD player on the ground and could no longer watch Dora, whoops!

Anyways as she is screaming I start hearing a mimic scream coming from the opposite side of the car. Followed by laughing.

Fish Screams (so mad, angry, very serious, tears rolling down her face...).

Mimic scream. More laughing.

Every time she screamed or got mad, he copied her and then laughed. The whole way home. Then I started cracking up. You have never seen a two year old scorned as much as she was at that minute.

To bad there was no gluten today... but there was cheesecake. Happy birthday to me.

SERIOUSLY???

We met with Pup's pediatrician today and guess what we learned? Anything that causes a kid to go "wonky" can cause a seizure. Allergies really make the boy go wonky. The whole is allergy theory with seizures is one that is controversial... but, hey, what do we subscribe to with our kid's care that isn't?

Off to see Cheryl again in hopes of straightening him back out. He may just eat banana, avocado, and Elecare for the rest of his life. Seems better than the alternative.

Have I said before I love his doctors? (okay well Dr. Carine and Dr. Cheryl... I could do without the others).

A little parched...

Here at the zoo we are currently in the desert. The middle of the freakin' Sahara if you will. (I really need to stop the use of freaking as an adjective, as Fish so eloquently pointed out by repeating, "are you freaking serious?"... But I digress) It is dry, it is dirty, and it is UGLY. We need rain, we need rest. I need rest.

But we have appointments. You see, Puppy had a seizure on Friday. It wasn't "long" in terms of seizures, lasting roughly a minute total, but in terms of making my heart stop it was about a minute too long. I'll spare the visual but if your really curious you tube grand mal seizure in infant, I'm sure you'll find many disturbing images. So he has started meds, and we have his emergency "stop seizure" meds (kinda like an epi pen for allergies) if one lasts too long, and my all time favorite, more appointments with specialists.

I am thankful for his specialists, for his pediatrician (who talked to me many times during our squad/ ER adventure Friday night), but I wonder when it will stop. Will we have "hiccups" every few months for his entire life? And if so, what is the next? And where is the rain in the midst?

Because life in the Sahara isn't very much fun...

Happy Birthday Fish?

Oh man, so I just realized I failed to post on the wee girls birthday. Whoops. The Internet issues went back that far! She had such a great little party with her friends and a little celebration with my parents after my dad "rang the bell" for his last radiation treatment. June 25 really was a great day!

And I'm BACK!

Where you ask have I been, blissfully living in the dark ages! After months of fighting with our Internet company, and about two weeks of paying for Internet that NEVER worked, I finally called up said company (cough cough... Time Warner), and cancelled our Internet. This is where most people would just call up and get another company out. I guess I'm not most people, because we just got it back, a month later. Oh well!

So just an update on our summer...

The kiddos are great, growing and changing. Our Fish, well she is as rotten and adorable as ever. She has some impressive "moves" that she shares with us constantly. Between that and her nonstop chatter (complete with teenage angst) I am fearful for what our teenage years will bring!



Pup is more of a miracle boy with every day that passes. He has been achieving new milestones with each passing week! He is crawling UP on all fours (as opposed to army crawl), and is pulling up on everything. He is also a pro at sitting to crawling and crawling to sitting. These things take tremendous trunk (core) strength, so HUGE deals for our little man. We (okay well his team of docs) have also started rooting out the reason why his stokes happened in the first place. He had two rare clotting antibodies, and currently still has one. The fact that he has these and survived at all is a miracle in itself! I love when we go to appointments with new doctors and they say, "He's doing really well". My usual response is , "Yeah, he's doing pretty good." They generally stop and look at me amazed, "No, he's doing REALLY well!" Anyways I feel pretty blessed to have such a precious boy, thank you all for your prayers all throughout his life!



Besides the kids I have been busy canning and freezing goodies, and raising (and killing) chickens. But not growing said goodies, I failed at home gardening. I much prefer to beg, borrow, or steal! Oh and the pool, I have a couple water babies! Look for more fun summer happenings to come soon, I promise!