Seattle Weekend

After our Elegant Valentine's Day Dinner, James and I put the babies to bed and proceeded to stay up till the wee hours of the night packing like the procrastinators that we are. Then we slept for what felt like about 5 minutes and stumbled out the door with our babies and luggage and headed to the airport just 10 minutes after we had planned to leave. (Unlike the last time, when we left about 90 minutes late!)

We were still the last to board, thanks to long lines at check-in, but after a quick flight we were soon on the Light Link Rail in Seattle on our way to meet our friend Dave. Dave is a good friend from Atlanta who just relocated to Seattle and we jumped at the chance to spend some time with him and to take a quick family vacay.

Our first (rainy) afternoon there we headed to the Seattle Aquarium. Calvin had so much fun! He especially loved the tropical fish - so colorful! - and the underwater dome.

Cool green anemones

Mooooooooooooon Jellies!

#cheeksforweeks

Felt board fun

Fish gazing

Crazy beautiful. The tropical fish are just amazing.

Calvin was making friends with the fishies.

Nemo? Is that you? Also, photo cred to James for a great shot :)

Octopus dance party! Oh my little toddling octopus, you are so cute!

Dave and Calvin check out the seal. 

Back at Dave's place, Calvin made friends with Izzy. Calvin loves dogs. He was thrilled to play with her. And Izzy, to her credit, was very friendly and patient with Calvin :) Here's Calvin getting a kick out of feeding Izzy: 

The next day we went to Seattle Center to check out the Space Needle and the EMP museum. As we stood in the long line waiting to get on the elevator at the Needle, Calvin kept asking (signing) "more fish?" Guess the aquarium was memorable for him :)

Another gorgeous photo from James! Looks like a postcard.

It was sunny when we arrived but by the time we made it to the top the clouds had rolled in and it started to drizzle. Before too long, the sun peeked back out on one side and soon there was a rainbow stretching out over the city!

View from the top... a rainbow over the rainy city!

A rare chance for a pic of all 4 of us! Thanks Dave!

Henry snuggles with Dave

Off to the EMP museum...

#calvinzilla

Doing a little construction of his own

The music exhibit had instruments to jam on

The next day was Monday and Dave had to work. James and I took the babies over to Pike's Place Market. We started out with coffee from the original Starbucks (I mean, we were tourists, it's like the law for tourists to get coffee there) and uh. ma. zing. pastries from Piroshky Piroshky next door. Dave had told us about Piroshky Piroshky and how you can smell the yummyness from the street outside and how there's often a line wrapped around the corner.

After we ate, we started making our way through the crowds of the market.

Gorgeous wall of fruits and veggies!

Calvin was scared of the monkfish. Can you blame him???

Play time at Dragon's Toy Box, a shop near the market

After spending all morning at Pike's Place, we trekked across town headed back toward Seattle Center. The plan was to stop for food then go on to the Children's Museum for the afternoon. We ended up grabbing a bite at Bambino's.

Calvin is eating a leftover piroshki.

There was something special about this particular moment for me. James and I were drinking our microbrews and enjoying our bread and cheese plate while Henry had his bottle and Calvin polished off his piroshki. The sun was getting low and the room was all glowy. The babies were being adorable as usual. And I just had this thought that this is just what I wanted for our family. This is it. This is the dream. To enjoy meals together. To be able to go out to restaurants like we did before the babies, only now with the babies, and still enjoy it. To travel as a family. Be touristy, be outdoorsy, do hobbies, eat yummy food... together. Whatever challenges we've got behind us or ahead of us, we've got this. We'll still be able to do this. Or at least something resembling this. Somehow we'll figure the rest of it out if we can just hang on to moments like that one.

Shortly after this magical moment, Henry massively spit up all over himself and me. And a little on the floor. 

But it didn't ruin it :) We just changed our plans a bit. James and Calvin went on to the Children's Museum and I took Henry to Dave's apartment to get cleaned up. 

Judging by how wet his sweater was when they got home, Calvin loved this water table!

#splishsplash

On a mission.

He's so cautious and deliberate and it takes him so many tiny movements to get turned around at the top of the slide!

That evening we braved dinner out. Dinner out with the babies is a little scary because it's pushing bedtime and therefore pushing the probability of baby cranky-ness. Everything went fine. Maybe it helps that our kids are so darn cute. I like to think it makes it slightly less annoying when Calvin is throwing crayons on the floor.

I was sad to say goodbye to Dave and to Seattle the next day, but it was time to head home. Despite another rushed entrance onto the plane and some minor drama when the airline people couldn't figure out how to fold up our stroller, the flight went great. Both boys slept almost the entire time. Nothing like the Crying Episode of 2013. 

It was so great to spend some time with a friend we rarely get to see and also great to explore a new city. I hope we have many more family trips like that one ahead of us. Someday I'd really like to do a long road trip up the coast from here to Seattle and maybe even on to Vancouver. When the kids are older, maybe. In the meantime, Dave, please come visit us down here in Cali! 

I Heart Valentine's Day

I heart Valentine's Day. I pink-puffy-heart Valentine's Day. It's my favorite holiday :)

(Note: Christmas doesn't count as a normal holiday. Christmas is a whole other level of holiday.)

I'm a sucker for all the cheesy romantic cliches and all the pink and red decorations, but mostly I love the idea of a holiday that's all about celebrating love! And not just the romantic kind. Having a life filled with love, being loved, feeling loved and feeling love for others is worth celebrating! I know, I'm a total mush. You can barf if you want.

I guess it was ok for our usual (and totally awesome) babysitter, Hartley, to spend Valentine's day with his girlfriend. This, however, meant that James and I had to spend Valentine's day with our children. Which I guess was also ok.

Actually it was great. I got inspired to set up a special Elegant Valentine's Day Dinner (which is exactly how my very fancy invitations put it) for James and myself and the boys. I figured we could mark my favorite holiday by making family dinner extra-special.

A few days before the 14th, I presented James and the boys with special early Valentine gifts along with fancy invitations to the Elegant Dinner.

The gifts were red clothing items for them to wear to the dinner. (Yes, I micro-managed their wardrobes. I mean, I'm the one who picks out all their clothes anyway! Even James'!)

On Valentine's morning I got up early with Calvin and baked some Sweetheart Cinnamon Rolls (thank you Pillsbury!). Calvin was devastated when I pulled them out of the oven and didn't let him eat them right away.

How can you do this to me, Mama????

I added red sprinkles on top of the icing. You can see my little mini bunting strung between the candlesticks in the background. I made the little flags out of washi tape!

And here he is tearing into that delicious, tiny cinnamon roll that he waited so long for! 

Henry joined us for breakfast even though he is too nittle for cinnamon rolls <3

James went off to work, but the Valentine festivities continued for the Henry and Calvin and me. I made Calvin a hearty lunch...

And then we did some Valentine artwork and made a gift for James from the boys. The writing around the edge says "The best and most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen or even touched. They must be felt with the heart."  - which is a quote attributed to Helen Keller. I wanted to make James something he could use to brighten up his cubicle.

When James got home from work we all got dressed up in our fancy reds and took some family photos.

<3   <3   <3   <3

Look at these adorable knuckleheads.

For our Elegant Dinner, I served a salad with heart-shaped beets and a bowtie pasta dish (kind of a copycat of Macaroni Grill's Pasta Milano). And for dessert, mini fruit pizzas!

Sugar cookies as the "crust", then yogurt or chocolate pudding topped with fruit

 

Ok, they didn't really turn out like pizzas because the cookies were so small... but they were adorable and delicious - whatever you want to call them!

I like the idea of doing a fancy family Valentine dinner every year. Valentine's doesn't have to be just for couples! I say spread the mushy gushy sugary sweet Valentine's day love all around! Clearly I can't get enough of it :)

Pinching, Picking, Poking... And Other Fine Motor Skills

Fine motor control is what kiddos need for skills like self-feeding, dressing, and writing. Calvin was able to figure out the "pincer grasp" needed to pick up small bites of food and feed himself pretty easily. As for dressing, he doesn't do much yet, but he can Velcro and un-Velcro his shoes. And as for writing/scribbling, I let him try it pretty regularly, but he's not into it. He can't really press hard enough to make much of a mark with crayons so I think it's unsatisfying for him. I should let him try markers, but I haven't done that yet. To help him work on fine motor control so that eventually he will be able to press hard enough with crayons, button his shirts, and zip his pants, I like to I like to give him fun things to do that get him using those little fingers of his. Tasks like picking up small things, pinching or grasping... Wait, now that I think about it, Calvin gets lots of fine motor practice: Pinching my nose... picking his own nose... pulling my tiny earrings out... poking his brother in the eye... Hahaha.

Well, in case that's not enough, here are some other fine motor building activities that he likes!

Poking sticks into a shaker

These are lollipop sticks (baking section of the grocery or craft store) and a Parmesan cheese shaker. The next level of this activity would be putting toothpicks into a salt shaker.


Threading beads onto a stick

Of course the day I try to get pics of him in action he's not into this activity. Luckily, Piggie was there to help!

Then I got out his favorite animal beads to try to entice him to do it himself.

The next level of this would be something like putting beads onto a pipe cleaner, and then eventually threading beads onto a string.

Pushing things into a bottle

Calvin LOVES doing this. He fills up the bottle, then shakes everything back out and does it again. And again. And again. He just needs help getting the puff balls back out (I use tweezers). This bottle is one of those travel shampoo bottles from Target and the items I give him include small puff balls, different kinds of beads, plastic jewels, and sequins or confetti. Those sequins are tough to pick up! But they are so shiny and irresistible that he does the work and gets them eventually :)

I got the idea for this at James' office Christmas party where one of the kid crafts was filling a clear plastic ornament ball with the same kinds of small, colorful items.

Picking things up with tongs

Calvin is working so hard on figuring this one out! He hasn't yet been able to actually use the tongs to pick up the pieces, but he squeezes the tongs to make the hands clap (aren't those tongs adorable??) and as you can see him doing in the pictures, he puts the puff balls in between the tongs with his other hand and tries to hold them. It works with the bigger puff balls. One day he will figure out how to use those tongs!

Putting stickers on paper

Stickers drive Calvin CRAZY. He can only stand to do this for a little while. It's so hard for him to figure out how to get the sticky side onto the paper and off of his fingers! Problem solving and fine motor control all in one very frustrating task! But he does like those colorful stickers, and I am so proud of him when he does finally get one to stick to the paper :)

Pushing items through a slot

I found this little Valentine's mailbox in the dollar section at Target, and we used the same little foam heart stickers (also from the dollar section at Target) to put into the slot. These stickers each have a backing so they weren't sticky when Calvin was doing this activity. A piggy bank would be perfect for this and you could use coins, buttons, or even tiny things like sequins to make it really challenging.


I love this kind of stuff. And Calvin likes it too... except for those darn stickers! What other activities should we try?

White Bean and Kale Soup

James has a cold! Yikes. We are all hoping the babies and I don't get sick. We'll see how that goes...!

Soup ingredients were on my grocery list this week anyway, so I went ahead and made soup for dinner tonight. I don't really love cooking, but I do love good food and it makes me happy when I find ways to make a yummy meal with very little effort. I am intimidated by recipes with long ingredient lists and very detailed instructions. I like to cook things that are hard to screw up. Like soup.

Last year, a friend gave me this awesome cook book called Feeding the Whole Family by Cynthia Lair. She's all about eating whole foods and cooking from scratch. The book goes into detail about nutiriton and even explains how to cook different kinds of grains and beans. The really neat thing about this book is that it includes suggestions for adapting the recipes for babies and toddlers. I was immediately intimidated by it. But I was also compelled and since this was back when I had only one kid to take care of, I put on my big girl apron and tried out some of the recipes. They are delicious and not nearly as hard as I'd been afraid of! I love the quinoa chili recipe because I almost always have all the ingredients on hand in my usual pantry stock. And this white bean and kale soup is my favorite.

Cynthia Lair's recipe for this soup involves starting with dry beans, soaking them, doing the whole nine from scratch. I realize that soaking dry beans is not that hard, yet I never pull it together to do it. They just sit in my pantry until I give them to Calvin for some sensory play (read: he pours them all over himself and the floor). So here is how I actually make this soup... not quite from scratch, but still yummy! Full recipe is at the bottom.

Two cans of white beans - this time I used great northern beans but I usually use cannellini, chicken broth or stock - this one was very flavorful, kale, garlic, olive oil, lemon juice, salt and pepper. It would be better with a fresh lemon, but I forgot to buy one!


You start by mincing the garlic and sauteing it in a little olive oil. Then you basically add all the other ingredients, except the lemon juice, and bring it to a boil. Lower the heat and continue simmering it until the kale leaves are softened. It doesn't take very long.

My chicken broth from TJ's looks very yellow! 

When the kale is wilted and the broth and beans are heated through, I take it off the stove and then whiz it with the hand blender a few times.  I don't completely puree it. My goal is to break up the kale into tiny pieces without completely pureeing the beans. Please be careful when blending hot soup! It is probably more responsible to let it cool down, then blend it, then reheat it. I'm not that patient :) If you don't have a hand blender, you can blend it in batches in a regular blender or just chop the kale really fine to begin with and leave it un-pureed.

Add the lemon juice last. Its nice to serve it with some grated Parmesan or similar cheese. We like the Parmesan, Romano, Asiago blend from TJ's.

This soup is so yummy! James said it made him feel better, so, mission accomplished. I was skeptical about whether Calvin would eat any of it. I'd never offered it to him before. He wasn't a fan of the kale (he usually has a hard time swallowing foods with that type of texture), but he did eat the beans. And it's ok, he had kale in a smoothie at lunch anyway.

White Bean and Kale Soup

Ingredients:
1 Tbs extra virgin olive oil
2-3 cloves garlic, minced
4ish large kale leaves, chopped; or about 1/2 bag
2 cans cannellini beans, or other white beans
salt and pepper to taste
2 Tbs lemon juice, or to taste
(optional) grated Parmesan cheese for topping


Instructions:
Heat olive oil on medium heat in a large pot, then saute garlic until fragrant (1-2 minutes).

Add beans, broth, kale, salt, and pepper. Raise heat to high and bring to a boil. Lower heat to medium and simmer until kale is wilted. (It may already be wilted from boiling.)

Remove from heat and pulse with hand blender until partly pureed. If you do not have a hand blender, separate the soup into two batches and pulse each in a regular blender.

Add lemon juice and serve with grated cheese, if desired.

Enjoy!

Keeping it Together (in a 3-Ring Binder)

We had a medical appointment every week in January. Last week we had Henry's therapy evaluation the same day as his sleep study! This week we had Calvin's cardiology check up. In February and March we have upcoming appointments with: speech & language pathology (Calvin), ENT (Henry), neurology (Henry), and our pediatrician (Henry). I am waiting to hear back to schedule appointments with a feeding specialist (Henry), a physical therapist (Henry), nephrology (Calvin), and endocrinology (Calvin).

I know, right?

Keeping up with the scheduling is crazy. Keeping up with the info from all of our specialists is even more crazy. At every medical appointment, the doctor/nurse/therapist asks questions about the other specialists and past appointments. It's important for me to have information on hand about both boys' medical histories including their (long) list of doctors and scheduled appointments. It's way too much to keep straight in my brain!

To keep all this crap everything organized, I took the advice I read in the Special Needs Parent Handbook and I put together a binder.

I made one binder for both boys and I divided into these 5 sections:
1. Calendar & Contacts
2. Calvin Medical
3. Calvin Services
4. Henry Medical
5. Henry Services

Under Calendar & Contacts, I have:
- Calendar pages for the whole year so that I can easily jot down future appointments. James and I keep shared Google calendars for both boys, but it is nice to have a paper copy to look at and to keep with the rest of our paperwork. So I make sure to keep both the online and paper calendars updated. It's not that big of a deal, and it's handy to have both.
- Two pages of contact information. The first page lists caregivers and social workers: name, relationship or organization, and phone number. Since our boys have sooooo many doctors, the second page has spreadsheets of contact info for all our doctors: one table for Calvin's doctors and a second table for Henry's on the same page. The tables include each doctor's name, specialty, medical center affiliation, as well as the phone and fax numbers for their departments. Here's what a contact info sheet might look like  for a kid with fewer doctors than mine :)

Under the Medical tabs I keep:
- A copy of the test results indicating their diagnoses (22Q Deletion and Dup15q)
- A table listing important events in their medical histories along with date and location. This includes things like their births, procedures, surgery, tests and diagnoses.
- Immunization records
- Growth charts
- Prescription info
- Handouts from the doctors
- Blank paper for taking notes during appointments
- My own notes from past appointments

Under the Services tabs I keep/would keep*:
- Paperwork from/about our regional center
- Paperwork from/about insurance to cover therapy
- Notes from therapy evaluations
- Notes and handouts from therapists*
- Info about classes and groups that might be beneficial

*I say would keep because neither of the boys is currently receiving therapy.

Lastly, I have a pocket in the back that holds the boys' insurance cards and some sticky notes.

In the future, I can transfer papers from the binder into our family filing cabinet as they become outdated. It may eventually become necessary to have a binder for each kid (I hope not!). If I was keeping a binder for each kid, I might make a section for each specialty. Or do something like this:

1. Schedule & Calendar
2. Contacts
3. Medical History
4. Recent Appointments
5. Services (classes/groups/therapy)

The Binder is definitely helping me keep it all together - literally and figuratively :)

It keeps the sheer number of doctors and appointments from overwhelming me. It gives me a place to stick all the paperwork I don't know what to do with, but think I might need again. It has been so helpful at all our appointments since I put it together.

When I brought it to our first appointment with the new pediatrician, her secretary made a photocopy of the page with the spreadsheets of contact info for our doctors. They were impressed. The doctor even literally said that I was very impressive. Not that the binder was very impressive, but that I was. And I thought, thank God I at least look like I've got it together! But I felt really proud of myself. I'm proud of that dang binder! I feel like it is concrete evidence that I've got something together, even if I don't have everything together. And some days, that's a really nice reminder!

Sensory Balloons

In my past life, I was an elementary school teacher. I didn't do much work in preschool classrooms, but I did a little and I even got a tiny bit of experience in a Montessori preschool. There were so many hard things about being a teacher, but I loved it and I hope I get to return to it one day. The weird thing is, I don't really miss it - but not for reasons you might expect! I don't miss teaching, because I haven't really given it up! I've got a whole new teaching gig cut out for me with the best two little learners I could ask for!

Calvin is at an amazing age (maybe all the ages are amazing??) where he is learning things quickly and eager to explore and I am super excited about putting together some learning activities for him. I have in mind lots of sensory and fine motor skill types of activities, similar to the DIY baby toys I posted a few months ago. So here's a DIY sensory activity I managed to get photos of today.

Sensory Balloons
Materials: 
- Balloons (I used all the same color so the textures would be the distinguishing difference.)
- Funnel
- Fillers: I used rice, black beans, millet, and sand. You could also try lentils, beads, baby powder, even liquids like hair gel, shaving cream, or just water... though that may be a whole other sensory experience ;)

Fill 'em up, tie 'em up, and you're all set! The idea is that kids can experience different textures and weights by squeezing and squishing the balloons. Experiences with different textures helps promote sensory integration. The more kids use their senses, the better they become at sensory processing. Here's a better explanation on why sensory play is important.

I was so excited to make these for Calvin! Fun! Activities! Funtivities! Yay!

And this is how excited Calvin was about the sensory balloons...

Yes, with a look of disgust he chucked them across the table.

So we made a game of chucking them into the wooden tray. #whynot #justgowithit

Maybe they'll grow on him? #smh

Henry's Sleep Study

It was every bit as bad as I was expecting. I'm just glad it wasn't worse.

Why did he even need a sleep study? His ENT said he might have sleep apnea because he snores and because it's common in people with hypotonia. As much as I didn't want to do the study, I couldn't deny that it might provide important information about Henry. As much as I don't want him to have sleep apnea, if he does, it'll be better to find out soon.

You can probably imagine about how much fun a sleep study on an infant might be. On top of that, Henry is fussier in the evenings than most babies probably are. Definitely more than Calvin ever was. Bedtime has always been super hard for Henry. He has been a great sleeper for the most part, but falling asleep that first time in the evening is hard for him. But the real problem is that out of nowhere, the night before the study, Henry became a terrible sleeper! Could be a growth spurt or a cognitive leap or just terrible timing, but the night before the study my little guy who would ordinarily sleep 4 or 5 hour stretches was waking up every 1-2 hours. So I'm thinking, "Great. This sleep study is going to be a disaster."

It wasn't a total disaster. But the bad experience started even before we arrived at the sleep lab. Henry started crying as soon as the car left the garage and proceeded to wail the entire hour long drive. The drive could have been slightly less than an hour, but I got lost because like an idiot I didn't realize my lane was becoming "exit only" and I got forced off at the wrong exit. #facepalm

When we finally made it to the pediatric sleep lab, at least we weren't late because I'd left really early. The lab tech who worked with us, I think her name was Adriana, was very sweet and friendly, so that was a blessing (although she still got irritated later on in the evening... I'll get to that). There was a long hallway lined with small rooms for sleeping. There were also bathrooms, a kitchen, and the control room. Adriana showed us to our room and showed me how to raise and lower the sides of the crib. She told me to get Henry dressed for bed. The room had a hospital crib - the tall kind. The room also had a chair that unfolded into a very uncomfortable bed, a small desk, a TV, a sink, and table full of wires and small monitors. Adriana went to help another family check in. There were three babies in the lab that night. When she came back, she started attaching the wires to Henry.

One wire attached to his foot to monitor his oxygen levels. 3 or 4 attached to his shins to check for restless legs syndrome. 3 more on his abdomen and chest... can't remember exactly what those were for! Heart rate? CO2 levels? Sorry. Anyway, she put his pajamas on over these wires and pulled them into a bundle behind his head. I was thinking, "oh, that's not so bad!" She wasn't finished.

Over his pajamas, she added two elastic belts to monitor his breathing and there were wires attached to both of these. Then she started to attach wires to his head with this white, goopy, paste and gauze. She did a few, then had to go help another family. I thought again, "Ok, still not too bad..." She still wasn't finished!

At this point, I was thinking it wasn't too bad.... But I had no idea how many more wires were coming!

Henry was totally in a good mood as he was having the wires attached! 

Adriana came back and added more wires to his head Then she started on his face. The wires attached to his face with little foam sticky pads. There were wires to check eye movement and jaw movement, there was a "snore mic," and one of those little nose things with the two tubes that go up your nostrils (I'm pretty sure that is the technical name for that thing).

As Adriana started putting things on his face, Henry started getting irritated. Who could blame him?!
This still isn't all the wires, BTW.

I actually didn't get a good pic of Henry with all of the wires attached because he started getting fussy. But, you get the idea.Once Adriana turned the lights off and left, I fed Henry a bottle and he actually calmed down and went to sleep pretty quickly (whew!). I was praying that he'd stay asleep for a few hours, but it just wasn't meant to be. After about an hour he woke up and he. was. pissed. 

Adriana had told me I could stretch the wires out and sit down on the fold out bed with Henry, but I didn't want to mess with them because there were so many! So I would stand and hold him and give him the bottle or pacifier, and he'd calm down and fall asleep, but every time I put him back down in the crib he'd start screaming again. This went on for about an hour. I was starting to despair. I was thinking we were going to have to bail out completely and do it all over again another night. I was getting worried that even if we did stay, he might not sleep at all and they wouldn't get enough readings and we'd have to do it all over again. And I was feeling so sorry for my poor little Henry! He looked so uncomfortable and upset.

I noticed that a wire had come unstuck and I was worried about it (I didn't want anything to go wrong that might make them ask us to do the whole study over again!) so I went to the control room, which was right across the hall, to ask Adriana if it needed to be replaced. Here's where she got irritated. She came back to the room with me and exasperatedly told me that he was sweating off the goop holding his head wires on and that she really needed him to calm down before she could re-attach anything. I could have gotten irritated with her for being irritated, but I didn't. I managed to stay calm and she helped me move the bundles of wires so I could sit on the fold out bed with him. It took more time, but eventually he did go back to sleep and I was able to put him down. Adriana came back and re-attached the wires that had come off. 

That was the only major cry-fest of the night. He still woke up every 1-2 hours as he had the night before, but it wasn't toooooo hard to get him back to sleep. I managed to sleep in short stretches in-between soothing him. The study was supposed to end at 6am. Henry woke up at 5:40 and Adriana told us we could go ahead and go. She said they got some good readings and that it was ok that it was broken up instead of longer stretches of sleep. Henry was smiley and content as Adriana removed all the wires. After she was finished, Henry still had those round stickers stuck to his legs and torso. His face was sticky from the sticky pads holding the wires on and his hair was full of that white goop. My poor little guy. He seemed happy, though, and he didn't cry during the drive home. 

I'm just glad it's over! I know we'll likely have to do it again one day, but I'm not going to think about that right now. This one is over at least, and we'll hear the results when we see the ENT for our follow up.