Christmas Traditions

Christmas is almost here and we have been getting ready for the big day for weeks now! I love this time of year, and we have lots of old and new traditions that go along with it.

This year we started a new tradition with my parents of baking Christmas cookies. It was a little difficult to find recipes that we could use to adapt to Hayden's allergies, but through some research we found some great alternatives. Almond milk has been working great as a substitute for milk, and we used coconut oil as a replacement for butter. Hayden had a blast sifting the flour and eating the dough. And not that I am biased, but our oatmeal raisin and peanut butter cookies turned out great!

Another new tradition was to go over to our good family friend Terry's house and made gingerbread houses. She was kind enough to already have all of the houses made for us so all we had to do was put our creative touches on the decorations. Hayden lasted about 2 seconds decorating and then figured out he could eat all of the decorations!

While my mom and I were busy working on the gingerbread houses (which were actually made out of chocolate!), Hayden was busy pointing at all of Terry's Christmas decorations and having her show him how they all work!

An old tradition we have is to go with my parents to pick out our Christmas trees. Hayden was a little preoccupied playing in the water puddle, but we had a good time searching for the perfect trees!

When we got home Chris went right to work at getting it all ready for decorations. It went as good as to be expected and I think we only had a few casualties!! It only took once for Hayden to realize that these were fragile balls and couldn't be thrown. Then he was obsessed with taking the tops off the ornaments and then trying to put them back on the tree. But after a few days the tree was old news and he hasn't really bothered it since :) (His newest fun thing to do is to pull the bows off all the presents!)

We have been going to the Union Christmas parties since I was a little kid and it has been fun these past few years to take Hayden to them. He did okay with Santa once he gave him a candy cane, then they were best friends and he kept walking up to him and giving him a high five and pounding it!

We hope everyone has a great Christmas and a Happy Holidays!

Busy Bunch's

The days are getting shorter and darker, but time is flying by so quickly. It is hard to believe that it is already the end of November!

Despite a rocky start, Hayden is finally getting used to his winter gear! The picture above is him playing outside after our first big snow fall. Well, playing isn't a good word because once he realized his boots were a little hard to walk in he wasn't too thrilled. So he just stood there and scooped up snow with his gloves and ate it!

Now I can't keep him inside, he points to the door and wants to go outside and play. We've been sledding a lot and going on snowmachine rides. Chris got his kitty kat snowmachine running and we take frequent trips down the driveway!

We've had ample opportunity to play outside because of this crazy weather we are having. It has been over 30 degrees above zero all week and raining. The roads are ice rinks and the town has been shut down for the past few days. It is supposed to start getting colder, which is good because we won't have freezing rain anymore but it also stinks because I was enjoying the warm weather.

We finished up Hayden's swim lessons for the year, and will start them back up in the Spring. It was a blast to see him get comfortable with the water and start to kick and paddle.

We have been visiting Anchorage a lot lately these past few months and have met some great doctors and specialists. It has been a very long journey, but we are finally getting somewhere. They determined that Hayden is allergic to cow's milk and soy. It has been challenging as well as interesting to read labels and find new recipes that he will enjoy. The hardest part has been cooking food for him and him refusing it. Which leads us to our next discovery, apparently he has had acid reflux since birth (although he never spit up), and since it wasn't diagnosed there was damage to his esophagus. So whenever he did eat (which was months and months ago) it hurt to swallow from the acid reflux and hurt his stomach because of his allergies. So we have him on medicine, have switched his diet, and are working with an occupational therapist. Hopefully in the next few months we will get him eating and growing!

We are very lucky to have Danielle let us stay at her condo during our monthly visits. Hayden enjoys playing with the dogs but most of all having Danielle read to him over and over again. She was great company to us and a very gracious hostess!

Hayden was a trooper with all of the tests and doctors visits. The above picture was him playing in the hospital room right before his endoscopy. He was such a happy baby and actually fell asleep right before the procedure and didn't even wake up when they put his iv in.

Chris and I took him to the indoor water park in Anchorage, H2O Oasis, and he had a blast. He loved going down the slides with his dad as well as splash in the pools. He surprisingly loved the wave pool and giggled every time the waves crashed against him!

I apologize for the disgusting picture, but I thought you might need a visual of our last exciting adventure. Soon after our last Anchorage visit he sliced open the palm of his hand. He was cleaning our chimney stack and when he was coming down the ladder it kicked out from underneath him. He grabbed the gutters to catch his fall and when they started to bend he let go of them. He then fell into the window, breaking it, and then slid down it. The window basically sliced the skin off his palm. It was extremely disgusting, and looked very painful because it cut his palm and wrist. I couldn't look at it the whole night until they were trying to clean out the glass and asked him to turn his hand over. When he turned his hand over I looked and all I could see was the skin hanging from his palm. Yuck, sorry for the details! 3 hours in the er and 21 stitches later he was back to normal. He is captain tough guy and said it didn't hurt (except for when they shot him repeatedly with Novocaine) and was back to work the next day. He is doing way to much, hopefully it heals quickly and his stubbornness doesn't cause it to open up.

We have so much to be thankful for this year and are very blessed. I hope that everyone has a great holiday:)

Dr. Q.T. Patootie

I figured that Hayden had been to a ton of doctors this year and that it would only be appropriate if he was a doctor for Halloween! His little lab coat said Dr. Q.T. Patootie! We had a fun Halloween weekend full of activities!

On Friday, we went to Gym Inc. and met up with Tripp, aka the little lion, and the kids had a blast running around and playing on all of the equipment and toys.

On Saturday we went to the carnival at the elementary school down the road from us. Hayden had a lot of fun playing the bean bag toss game as well as the fishing for duckies game. He had a little doctor bag and took it around to the trick or treating room; the people dressed up in costumes didn't even phase him, he was more interested in what they were giving him!

Speaking of doctors, on our last trip to Anchorage we discovered that Hayden was allergic to milk and soy (I will elaborate later, we have another trip planned at the end of this week to get some more tests done). Anyways, I figured that he probably couldn't have a majority of the candy that people were handing out, that and it was 5 degrees outside, so we decided to stay at home and hand out candy instead.

We did our annual pumpkin carving with my parents, and had a blast watching Hayden mimic us. He had to do everything that we were doing and "help" us out!

I tried to get him to gut a pumpkin with me, but he was more interested in playing with the scoop.

He got really serious when it was time for carving the pumpkins and helped each one of us out and gave it his own little touch!

Chris's job in Ft. Greely is winding down, so we were able to spend the whole weekend with him. We really enjoyed his company and I was able to get caught up on a little housework while the two of them played! Chris taught Hayden how to listen to people's heartbeats with his pretend stethoscope! Add to all of our festivities a few Nanook hockey games and a birthday party for his aunt Brittany, and it was an action packed weekend!

Fall Fun

I love fall in Alaska and the beautiful colors and activities it brings! We have had a fun month and Hayden has been enjoying the last few days of being outside without having to be bundled up!

Hayden and Tucker have had fun playing with the fall decorations...those two are trouble! Hayden throws my fake pumpkin off the porch and Tucker chases it and brings it back to him!!

Chris has been working down in Ft. Greely for the past few weeks and so we have been trying to pass time without missing him too much....it's been pretty hard! He has a few more weeks of working down there, but we luckily get to see him on Sunday's.

We are ready for winter, all of the wood is cut, split, and stacked thanks to Chris's little brother, Tyler. It was really nice to have it all taken care of and for Chris to not have to worry about it.

We were able to make one last trip up to the cabin a few weeks ago, and had an amazing time. It was so nice to get out to town and to have a fun relaxing weekend.

We were able to fire up the hot tub and Chris was able to see all of the progress we have made with Hayden's swim classes. We have been going two days a week to a mom and tot class, and it has been so much fun. Hayden loves the water, and has learned to kick and move his arms. It has been a great activity for us to do together and hopefully we will get Hayden comfortable with the water for next summer!

One of the great things about the cabin is the four wheeler, which Hayden and Chris love to ride! They had a blast going all throughout the woods and down on the riverbanks.

Fall brings the fair, and it was a lot more fun with a kid!

Chris took Hayden on the go karts and it was hard to tell who had more fun!

The petting zoo was awesome and Hayden couldn't stop chasing around the goats. They ate his shirt and he thought that was hilarious! We had fun walking around with my dad and enjoyed the best part of the fair, people watching!!!

We head to Anchorage on Sunday to meet with the immunologist for three days of testing. Please say a little prayer for us, we hope that they will find some answers for our little guy and get him feeling better.

Summer Flashbacks

We are currently having an Indian summer and are having beautiful fall weather. It makes me sad to think that summer is wrapping up already. It has been such a fun summer full of lots of great memories.

Although I am sure that my husband would say that we didn't get to take the boat out as much as he would like, I thought we made lots of fun trips fishing and enjoying the rivers. Hayden loved to fish, or shall I say carry around his fishing pole!!

My parents live right next to a park and we live about a half a mile away from one as well so we all made lots of trips to the playgrounds with Hayden.

He loves the slide and over the summer has gained way to much confidence on it. He climbs up the jungle gym all by himself and then sits his butt on the top and scoots himself down the slide. I swear the child has no fear.

On an 80 degree beautiful weekend we decided to make a little road trip to Birch Lake (about an hour away.....a very long hour with a bored one year old). Needless to say once we were there, we had an awesome time knee boarding and tubing. Friends of ours came out and we had a blast together, good company and good times!!

Let's just say that once Catherine and I figured out how to get on the tube, we had fun....although we were exhausted from our mile long swim (okay I might be exaggerating a little, but it felt like that after my dad was driving like a maniac and flipped us off the tube!!!)

As you can see, Hayden was in good hands with grandma, grandpa, Vern and Rhonda while we were out on the Lake. He was exhausted from boozing it up in the sun:)

We are currently busy getting all of our summer projects done before winter...as you can see we were way to busy having fun to work on our house chores!!!

Hayden's New Hardware

We had to make a trip down to Anchorage this past weekend to get a heart procedure done for Hayden. We've been dreading the procedure, but it needed to get done sooner rather than later. He was born with a heart murmur and it lead us to find out that his pulmonary duct never closed after birth. The pediatric cardiologist has been monitoring it for the past year and came to the conclusion that it wasn't going to close naturally and we needed to close it because the blood was flowing through his heart twice and it could lead to infection or an aneurysm. We needed to do it while he was young because as they get older then the duct gets more brittle.

So, we flew down to anchorage for the cardiologist to perform a procedure to close it with a coil. He put a catheter into his main arteries through his leg and then inserted a stainless steel coil with what he described as baleen on it into his pulmonary duct. The coil stopped a majority of the blood flow within 10 minutes. We will find out in a month whether or not it completely closed the duct.

We flew down to Anchorage on Thursday for Hayden's pre-op and thought we would stop in at Build a Bear and get him a special animal to bring with him to the hospital. He had a blast running around the store trying to pick out what animal he wanted. He had a hard time picking between the monkey and the puppy and drug them around in circles.

On Thursday night we took Danielle and Hayden to Walking with Dinosaurs, and we all loved the show. It was amazing to see the life size dinosaurs....they were huge and really realistic.

Hayden was enthralled the whole time and didn't take his eyes off of the dinosaurs. Chris bought some popcorn and they both sat there eating the popcorn staring at the stage!!

Friday was a long day, we had to be at the hospital at 7 am and get him ready for his iv and whatnot. They gave him a medicine to help relax him before the iv and the doctor warned us that we will figure out whether he was a mean or happy drunk when he gets older. The medicine really made him act drunk, thank goodness he was a happy drunk! It was really cute, he was being super goofy and was happy through all of the tests and poking and prodding. The hardest part of the whole thing for Chris and I was when we went into the operating room with Hayden and they put him under. We got to hold him through it, but afterwards they put him on the table, and he was very lifeless laying there and the doctor told us to give him kisses goodbye. Ugh, pull at your heart strings. Then we had to wait two hours for the whole thing to be done. The hardest part of the whole thing for Hayden was that we had to keep him laying still and flat for 5 hours after the procedure. It was really hard for an active 13 month old to lay down, let alone not move. They didn't want the clog in his artery to blow out and him to bleed so it was really important. We pinned him down and he cried so hard that thankfully he went to sleep for most of it!

We were discharged on Saturday and Hayden was doing great. He was up and playing Friday night and we all got some much needed sleep. It was a beautiful day so we decided to take him to the zoo. He really enjoyed looking at all the animals and sitting on his daddies shoulders to get an extra close view!

On Sunday he got really sick and the doctor said that he probably picked up a virus from the hospital. Sunday and Monday were filled with lots of clothes changing for me and him and lots of resting. But I am happy to report that today he is feeling much better and is almost back to normal! A special thank you to Danielle for all of her hospitality and for being there for the little H man all weekend! Thank you to everyone for all of their thoughtful messages and prayers. We really appreciate all of your support and for getting us through this :)