Mishmash

It occurs to me that it's been a couple weeks since I updated this blog. Even though I've had it for a couple of years now, every post I put up feels like a big task so once I hit "Publish", I tend to rest on the laurels of my accomplishment for a few days. Is that even a saying? Well in this case it's been a couple of weeks so I'll fill you in on the mishmash that has happened since Halloween.

First, Ashton had his first appointment with a pediatric ENT. He has always been a drooly kid and as he has gotten older and more active, things are just very wet all the time. Oh to have a picture of him without a bib or a saliva-soaked shirt! Besides that (and really the impetus behind his appointment) is the fact that he is in speech therapy and having difficulty making proper sounds. I wondered if perhaps his perpetual inability to breathe through his nose might have something to do with it. Just to rule out any larger medical issue (like adenoids), I made an appointment and off we went. The doctor was really nice and used an endoscope to take a peek up Ashton's nose. It was very thin with a little light on the end.

I really should have known.

It took three people to hold him down - he was petrified. I don't blame his little 2 year old self one bit. It turns out his adenoids are quite large, which was both good and bad to hear. Good in the sense that I was right to bring him in, bad in that he has had legitimate trouble breathing :( He also has rhinitis, which, given his allergic nature, definitely factors in as well. So the plan is to have him on Flonase for 4 weeks, see if it helps with the inflammation/breathing and if not, adenoids will come out. The Flonase does seem to be working so I'll have another update on that in a month or so.

Back to speech therapy. We have Early Intervention on Wednesdays at 8 am with Fran who we LOVE, and we started speech therapy with Shelby on Tuesdays about 2 months ago on Fran's recommendation. Shelby didn't quite hit it off with Ashton in terms of being able to fully engage him/control him, and Jason and I were worried that we weren't making much progress. We had asked if maybe Shelby and Fran could come together so Fran could teach Shelby some tricks to be more effective at winning Ashton's attention. But we recently found out that Shelby is no longer with the group (we don't know what happened) so we are starting with a new speech therapist next week. I hope it's a better fit!

What else. Oh, we took a long weekend last weekend for Veteran's Day and traveled to NY to visit Jason's parents and hit the Giants game on Sunday! This has become a yearly tradition whereby Grandma and Grandpa get to watch Ashton allllll day while Mommy and Daddy tailgate with their friends :) It's about a 2-2.5 hour trip from their house in Hampton Bays to MetLife Stadium so it makes for a long but super fun day. We met up with Jason's best friend Evan and Kaelyn and also Chera and Eric, who you guys all know. Evan and Kaelyn are recently engaged and Chera just found out she's having a baby GIRL (due 3 weeks after me, April 1) so we were all in great spirits!

The next day we attempted to get a christmas card picture of Ashton and my nephew Owen. It did not go so well.

A preview of what was to come. We traveled home on Monday and rolled in around 6 pm. I wasn't feeling great and went to bed early, which proved to make no difference because that famous 24 hour bug had bitten me. I was up all night and woke up Tuesday, November 12, my 33rd birthday, feeling terrible. I had already called out from work and expected to sleep in peace all day when we went in to get Ashton up and lo and behold, he had gotten the bug too :( Poor baby needed a bath and all his bedding, pajamas and his rug... it all needed to be cleaned and scrubbed. I felt so awful I hadn't noticed he had been getting sick too. But he hadn't made a peep! :( Anyway, my planned day of rest went into the wash with everything else. We spent Tuesday at home together in our sweats and watched an ungodly number of Mickey Mouse Clubhouse episodes. We have seen finer times, him and I. Jason came home around 5:30 pm and made me french onion soup for my birthday dinner, which I didn't want any part of, which sucked. What I DID want a part of was my present which was the new iPhone 5s! Woo! Jason used his upgrade with AT&T to get me this very coveted life-altering device :) I told him that was true sacrifice and a sure sign that he must love me very much. I went to bed happy and things have been on the up and up for the past couple of days.

And that's about it since Halloween - although speaking of Halloween, Chera has a blog (link above) and I stole this picture she posted because Ashton and Owen were just that cute together :) Be back soon!