Catching Up - August and a Half Birthday

September 25, 2016

Catching Up - August and a Half Birthday

So in August the babies turned 6 months - half a year - how is that even possible?!?! And momma turned 34 - holy smokes I'm old!

August used to be my favorite month of the year. Summer winds down - you start to feel those first few cool evenings and you can taste fall. Football starts back up, baseball heats up, and kiddos go back to school. Honestly this August I was dreading the calendar change because it meant the full day of testing and final decision on Max. We spent the day 8/17 at the hospital and Max got a video CMG test with the urodynamics department to determine his bowel and bladder function as well as to assess if he had any kidney reflux going on. A week later and the day before my birthday we spent the day at Lurie's getting various muscles tests, hip x-rays, kidney and bladder ultrasounds and meetings with urology, orthopedics and neurosurgery.

The final determination is that all of the diagnostic signs point to the fact that his spinal cord is tethered. The good news is that there doesn't seem to be any deterioration in his bowel and/or bladder function and he has just slightly elevated muscle tone in his lower half so the good news is that the tethered cord has not yet caused any issues. However, the cross functional team determined that it's best to go ahead and do the cord release surgery now before there is any damage in the future - which is a very real possibility. So we scheduled his surgery for the afternoon of October 19th. I will share in a more detailed update all about the process, next steps and what we are looking at.

We spent a fun day at Woodfield Mall with our city friends playing at Yu Kids Island and riding the choo choo. These kiddos have been friends since they were all 3-9 months old and they are just so damn cute together. I hope that they are always friends. And their mommas have been life savers for me. They were there from day one - when I was an unsure, new momma desperate to make some friends in the same boat. Now I couldn't survive without them. I love you ladies!

Mia started rolling around all over the place and legitimately trying to take off which has made life very interesting to say the least! We also took our first huge road trip to Michigan for Maeghan and Brian's wedding! The drive took almost 8 hours and was one of the longest days of our lives but so so worth it. The Jeffrey family - my dad's side - is amazing and we don't get to see them nearly often enough. This was actually the first time they've been able to meet any of the kiddos. The wedding was perfect and the bride was stunning and we had an absolute blast! Ceej tore up the dance floor as we knew he would!

We also hosted the biggest play date that I've ever hosted! 25 kiddos! Most of the mommas that were here are part of the TTC/infertility community that I met when we were going through our IVF rounds and many have become great friends. It was so great to get all these miracle babies together - especially as all of our original babes are getting siblings! There were even 4 sets of twins there! (Should have been 5 - we missed you guys Shan!)

Nene came and stayed with us for 2 weeks to help out while we took Max downtown for all of his testing and then Papaw, Uncle John, Aunt Marianne and Al came to visit for the weekend and watched all of the kiddos while Chris and I snuck away to the Bears preseason game to sit in the front row! That was the first time we've ever been that close and preseason or not it was amazing! The babies were well loved and well taken care of and momma and daddy got to spend some much needed quality time together - the first time in 6 months! It was nice to remember how we used to feel before kiddos!

And the moment a lot of people had been waiting for - we finally cut Ceej's hair! We went to one of those kids places in the mall - Snippets - and he did great! It took just a few minutes and he sat so still and was such a good boy and damn is he ever handsome!