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!