Aby Today

Funny thoughts from Aby today:
After taking her first recent try of a pretzel pizza Combo, "Momma, I like this! The sauce taste good!"
After seeing a mosquito she went to Daddy, "I want you to dead it with a paper towel."

Kid's Rooms

The kids rooms almost finished!

Nights

Well we've now had two nights here at the new house! The kids have done great. I thought for sure the first night would be bad. New place, new sounds, stressed, & new bed for Aby it all just spells bad night!! But nope, first night they both slept through the night. I chalked it up to being so worn out. Last night they were in bed early and still stayed in bed through the night!
Abygail got up at 6:30a and I told her it wasn't 7 yet and she needed to go back to bed. Off she went, back to bed until I got her when I got up a bit after 7a!! I really do hope this keeps up, Mommy needs some sleep!

AAHHHHHHGGGGG!!

Ok so stressed... Being Monday I thought I had a day to finish getting this house ready to be packed up, since they're doing that on Tuesday. 8:25a come around and I'm just starting my day of cleaning and tossing when Oreo starts barking like crazy. I come up the stairs to the packers knocking on my door! :-0 Wow. So much for that day of cleaning and tossing! I ended up spending the day watching over the ladies pack our stuff. So not what I planned!!

Author

Abygail already wants to write and tell stories like Older Sister. Here's the one she came out with today!

One little horse stepped in the boat. The princess and prince and the baby. The horse takes them to the boat. They sleep on the boat. They wake up after they get off the boat. The princess is already dressed in a pretty blue dress and they go down stairs in the castle. They eat breakfast. They eat cereal and eat it all up. They go outside and play, but the baby doesn't go outside. It stays in the house all by itself. They take a rest because its all sunny outside. It takes a long time. They make lunch and go outside and play.

I'm sure it would have been more complete if something wouldn't have popped onto the TV, but hey!

Our Puppy

Our poor puppy Oreo! We've had issues with his skin lately so a greatly feared visit to the vet was in order. Daddy took him and walked out 1.5 hours, $400, and 3 medicines later... I guess they told him that they weren't sure what is was, but could tell us it wasn't that serious. They were thinking a yeast infection of some sort. So we had to give him a steroid and an anti fungal of sorts twice a day. These medicines made some sort of improvement for a couple days, but then his skin went right back to being dry, flaky, and itchy! The vet called to see how he was doing and I told them not well. So we made another appointment!

I took him last week and they took some skin scrapings and a vial of blood. From the scrapings they could tell me that it wasn't a primary yeast infection, that it was probably more just his glands secreting too much oil. They sent the blood off for all kinds of testing.

Yesterday, I get a call back from the vet with his blood test results. Not good, but definitely not the worst news we could have gotten! We found our poor Oreo has hypothyroidism. From what the vet told me a normal thyroid function level is anywhere from 2 to 4. Oreo's level was at 0.2!!! Yeah practically not functioning at all! So they gave us some meds to help out with his levels, this will be something he'll have to be on for the rest of his life. But like I said it's better then a lot of things he could have been diagnosed with and really it's only $15 for a month supply of meds. Not bad really, especially if its gonna bring our playful puppy back.

In the last year we've really noticed some changes in Oreo. Nothing bad, but we just chalked it up to him getting older! But after we looked up the signs and symptoms of hypothyroidism in dogs... Yep, Oreo has the majority of them. Here's the list:
~Lethargic behavior such as a lack of interest in play, frequent napping, tiring out on long walks (we chalked up to age)
~Weight gain, sometimes without an apparent gain in appetite (we chalked up to age)
~Bacterial infections of the skin (we were trying to get treated)
~Dry skin (yep, goes with the one above)
~Hair loss, especially on the trunk or tail (“rat’s tail”) (goes with the infection from above)
~Discoloration or thickening of the skin where hair loss has occurred
~Cold intolerance/seeking out warm places to lie down (we didn't think anything of this until we seen this... But yes this describes Oreo to a TEE)
~Slow heart rate (we wouldn't know)
~Chronic ear infections (chalked up to him being a cocker)
~Severe behavioral changes such as unprovoked aggression, head tilt, seizures, anxiety and/or compulsivity (he can have a lot of anxiety at times)
~Depression (well... he's been lazier, but again age...)

We're hoping to see some kind of improvement in about a week. Mostly just with his skin, but we're hoping his behavior too!

Easter

Easter morning was kinda leisurely. All the kids sifted through their baskets. Compared what was the same and what was different. I'll tell you, it getting harder and harder for the Easter bunny to shop for Older Brother! Any suggestions? Anyway, I think we did alright this year. The younger two loved those big balloons you blow up with a rubber band on the end, and it kept Older Brother pretty entertained for quite a while too!! LOL Older Sister's favorite I think was the Twilight candy hearts I picked up. Heck, who doesn't love sparkly candy that says "Bite Me" or "Dazzle Me" on it!?! No, literally the candy had glitter or something in it, it was crazy!

Kids loved dying eggs this year. Last year was great but trading 4 cups of color between 4 kids was kind patient trying for a 2 and 3 year old. This year we had 8 cups going around and it went much smoother! Don't even ask me what Jaycob is doing in this first picture!

We joked about going to Chuck E Cheese like last year. Wasn't a bad idea actually, but we decided going somewhere new. We loved this new place for having kids of such varying ages. It had the moon bounces, video games, and go-carts! That was the best! The go carts all of us enjoyed. I think we just really love doing these family activities on Easter because we have Older Brother and Older sister and we know Daddy has the day off! It works for us! And this year we were the only people at this place the whole time!

Watercolor Eggs

Both of them painting here. I don't know why there isn't a picture of all their finished eggs, I'm usually so good about that! Bad mommy!

Painting Eggs

This is one of my favorite projects of the year. I love to see how children decorate their eggs, what's their view of pretty eggs??

Both of them concentrating so hard!

Easter "Up & Down"s

The kids call them "Up & Down's" because that's what I tell them the whole time, "Just up and down!"

Story of a House! (Paint)

Well, here's the kids rooms about finished. Jaycob's is called Sailors Blue and Aby's... Yeah I don't know, but it is purple and she loves it!!

Nasty!

I'm sitting here on the couch with Abygail when I look over and she has her toe up her nose.... Eeewwwww.... I asked her what she was doing and she said, "I'm just picking my yucky boogies with my stinky toes!"
*shiver*

False Alarm

You know that feeling when you wake up and realize your alarm didn't go off?? That was us this morning. Daddy woke up and realized it was right about the time he should have been leaving for work(7:30)!

And of all mornings, this is the morning where I had to be out of the house by 8. YEAH..... Mad dash. Daddy in the shower, me flying through the house picking out clothes for the kids and myself. Getting them up and understanding that we have to move NOW!!! They actually did pretty well. I get them dressing and I come down to put some cereal in baggies for breakfast on the go. I set the baggies on the stove and look up and realize the clock says its only 7:00.... Huh? Turn around, look at the microwave clock, only 7:00.... Double huh??

Whew... Its only 7:00! I go up and tell Daddy who's running around trying to get his stuff together! A big sigh of relief all around. We look at the clock in our room and sure enough it says its 30 minutes later then it is. We don't know how it got that way, but it did and it got us movin' this morning!!

Happy Hump Day!!