Out of the mouths of babes

Not to much going on in the Rice household. We have been keeping ourselves busy though. On Saturday we took Nikki to dance and I told Cj that we would not be staying at the studio since I needed to go home and clean the house and he asked me who had messed it up. I thought it was cute. It also made me stop and think for a moment that maybe I keep my house too clean. (who knows). Needless to say I decided that maybe the house wasn't as dirty as I thought it was (and it wasn't) so I didn't clean the house. That day anyways. I know that I have OCD when it comes to cleaning the house and it kinda drives everyone crazy so to my family I promise to try to not clean the house so much and spend more time with you. Off to another note James shot his first deer of the season Saturday so I drove out to where he hunts and dropped off CJ so he could go help track down the deer. Besides being really cold that day CJ had just finished eating and really wasn't in the mood to go look for any deer even if he did get to ride the four wheeler, but we made him go anyways. When James saw the deer he made CJ get off the four wheeler and walk (CJ had not seen the deer yet). James showed him the blood on the ground and told him to follow the blood which he found interesting to do. I guess he looked up and saw the deer and was all excited. He just thought that it was so cool to get dads deer. Looks like we have a hunter on our hands. Nikki is doing great also we went to her Christmas program last night. It was so cute listening to them singing their Christmas carols. She was also very excited to get a new christmas dress. I did not get any pictures though because I didn't realize that the batteries in my camera were dead. O well. Nikki had to go to the doc today though because she had a wart on the bottom of her big toe so she had to get that burned or frozen off so she is kinda down in the dumps since it kinda stings really bad. (my poor baby) I just hate to see my children in pain even if it is just a little.

O Christmas Tree O Christmas Tree

FINALLY!! We finally went and got our Christmas tree last Saturday. We always go to Fontana Pines ( a tradition) and this year the choices were pretty slim. Almost all of the trees were dead. We thought that maybe they had a disease go through but after visiting with them we found out that the hail storm that we had back in June had killed the trees. So sad. We felt really sorry for them since that is probably the majority of their income that is just gone. After looking for almost an hour we did finally find a nice 9 foot tree that everyone agreed on. No my house is not tall enough for a 9 foot tree, although we do have 10 foot ceilings, anyways we planned on cutting it down to an 8 foot tree which would have been just about right but James got carried away with trimming the tree and so now we have a 7 foot tree. I had to laugh and said the positive thing was that he would not need a ladder to put the topper on. I love to decorate the tree it is one of my favorite things about Christmas. The kids were so excited to be able to hang all the ornaments and then turn on the lights and just watch. They make sure that all the lights are on as soon as we get home. They were also excited about our snow today we got about 1-2 inches, not much but enough to start planning what our snowman is going to look like when we do get enough snow. I can't say often enough how much I love my kids. It is just so much fun watching their excitement towards everything. While I was driving home on the horrible roads tonight I just kept thinking about how excited the kids probably were that we got snow.

Christmas Lights and Pajamas

Not to much happening around here. I finished the class I was taking and passed (yeah!). We are also finished teaching our financial peace class, so our days are starting to slow down a little and I am really glad about that. I started cleaning and organizing our home to get ready for Christmas last weekend and actually cleaned out our closets. I guess I overlooked the fact that CJ was still wearing his 2T pajamas. I mean, I knew that they were getting a little snug, and he never complained that they were too tight so I just thought that they were OK I felt so bad for him. Now Nikki on the other hand is very specific on what she wears and everything must always fit just right. Meaning that it can't be too tight, short, long, bumpy, silky, loose or anything else but perfect. Needless to say buying her clothes is next to impossible but she always lets me know when she needs new ones so this is good. So anyways I went to Walmart to get CJ some new jammies and went ahead and picked Nikki up some also (which I ended up returning because they didn't fit right!! O well I should have known better). CJ on the other hand thought his new jammies were the bomb. I ended up getting him some Iron Man jammies (I have no idea who this is but he did) and he was so excited. He grabbed them and ran to the bathroom and squealed, hooped and hollered the whole time he was putting them on. We were all laughing, he is so silly. It was neat to see him get so excited over something like pajamas. (maybe I just don't buy them clothes often enough). After everyone got their pj's on we decided to have the kids put up their Christmas trees since we didn't get the big one put up and all the decorating done last weekend (so sad). Conrad has a blue tree and of course Nikki has a pink tree. It's fun watching them decorate their trees over and over as they try to make it just perfect for them. James did finally put lights on the house for the first time in 3 years last night, I was so happy to come home from work and see the lights going up it just puts you in the Christmas spirit. Especially to see how the kids eyes light up with the excitement of whats to come. CJ asked me when it was going to snow and I told him I wasn't sure we would just have to wait and see. He said it would snow on Christmas because it always snows on Christmas. I cherish his innocence. I wish it would snow on Christmas, I believe that if it did snow they would be more excited about the snow than they would be about the packages under the tree. I didn't have the heart to tell him that it only snows on Christmas in the movies, I just said we would have to wait and see.

Lets Luau

Today was Nikki's 7th birthday party and I think it turned out to be a success. On top of having a turnout of 14 friends she also had a surprise guest, which turned out to be another best friend Tori. They had moved to western Kansas a couple of years ago and we just found out a couple of days ago that they have moved back into town, and we are all so excited. It was so great to see them again. Well as you can guess from the title we had a luau and it was so much fun. I made a cupcake cake topped with the blue ocean and sandy beach (ground icecream cones). For the Hula girl I used one of her polly pockets and stuck it in a cupcake that I had put on the top of the cake. I made the grass skirt with a grass decorating tip, and for the blanket I used a grahm cracker and stuck an umbrella over it, the grahm cracker had pink frosting with a number 7 wrote out in decorating flowers. We had also found a barbie ball in the toybox to add to the scene. It turned out really cute. We also played many games including the limbo,volleyball and monkey in the middle, we also played a stop and go game. To add to the beach scene we had some beach boy music playing in the background which helped put everyone in the mood to boogie. I love having birthday parties for my kids, it is so much fun watching the excitement in them build as the party comes together. I asked Nikki what her favorite part of the party was? Her comment was that she was able to play with all her friends. It makes me feel proud to know that she has such a loving heart, she is such an amazing person.
Nikki I love you so much and am so proud of who you are. I never knew a love so deep until the first time I held you in my arms, it was such an overwhelming feeling that I cried tears of happiness, it was so wonderfull to finally be able to meet you. I am so proud to be your mom. I hope that all your wishes come true. xoxoxoxo

Happy Birthday Nikki

Yep!! We are celebrating Thanksgiving today as well as Nikki's birthday, and I can't beleive that she is already 7. Born at 27weeks gestation she weighed a whole 2 pounds 13 ounces. I remember the doctors telling me that she had less than a 5% chance of surviving until birth. I suppose she fooled them. When she was born she was only on oxygen for less than 24 hours and only went forward from there. I don't remember her having any steps backward when she was in the NICU and I had to beg the doctor to let her go home early because she had reached her goals with everything except her weight. The doctor did agree to let her come home but made the comment that they did not usually let babies go home before they reached what would have been their due date. She came home only weighing 4 pounds 2 ounces. I remember the car seat just swallowing her. She was only in the hospital for 7 weeks when we came home on January 11th 2002. She has turned out to be such an amazing person. She loves everyone and just has a pasion for life. Her teachers always comment that she is like a sponge and just absorbs everything. She has always been determined and head strong and will stand her ground I suppose she learned to be a fighter at early age. I am always amazed at her and love watching her grow even though sometimes I wish she would slow down a little and let mom catch up.
Nikki,
I love you so much and feel so blessed to have you in my life. Your toothless smile just brightens my days and nights. I love who you are becoming and hope you never loose the child you are today. Watching you grow and learn has been nothing short of amazing. I love you always and forever. xoxoxoxo

Happy Thanksgiving

Happy Thanksgiving! I hope everyone's thanksgiving turns out to be wonderful. When I reflect on what it is to be thankful for there is so much, but I must say that I am most thankful for my family and the gifts that they give me every day.

Las Vegas and the Hoover Dam

We're Home

CJ did so great today I am so so proud of him although we both did allot of crying. I thought it was horrible. James said that it wasn't as bad as I think it was but I beg to differ. While we were waiting I asked CJ what kind of day he was having and he replied a bad day since he wanted to go home. It was really hard leaving him with the nurses this time (the worst). When the nurse showed up to get him he took one look at her and said oh no. I felt so sorry for him. While he was in surgery they put a very large tube with all the probes down his nose through the esophagus and into the stomach. This of course was to monitor his esophagus while he swallowed, it also had several ports that dripped water to also measure the motility. They also removed his mickey and put another large tube with probes through the hole from his mickey into the stomach and about 3-6 inches into his small intestine (I'm not exactly sure how far it was). This would test the motility of how his stomach digests food and then empties into the sm. bowel and also the motility of the small bowl. After we got back to our room from the O.R. we met with the RN who would be staying with us the whole time and the Doc who would be in and out. This was a 4 part test first they hooked each probe from his mickey(8 of them) to the monitor which would measure different waves of the stomach and sm. Bowell while fasting (part 1). I may have to have James post one day to better explain.
This test only took about 2 hours instead of the predicted 5hrs. since they saw what they needed to see early. I was really excited about that since CJ pretty much slept through all of it.
His stomach processed the food and emptied in the correct rhythmic pattern that it was supposed to as did his sm. intestine. After this fasting test we were then supposed to feed him his regular bolus feeding to see what happened when he had food in his stomach. This is when it got horrible for me because he finally started really waking up and realizing that he was hurting and that the tube in his nose hurt really bad. He was crying saying that he wanted to go home and then he would point to his nose and just scream owe over and over. It was horrible. The doc felt bad for him at least and let us do the testing out of order. So we finally got CJ to calm down and went to (part 3 & 4) of the tests which was testing the motility of the esophagus. First he had to dry swallow a few times with the port going down his throat dripping water which he hated and started screaming again so they had to turn the water off. Then we had to get him calmed down again to get him to wet swallow by taking a drink. He had to do this 12 times. He did such a wonderful job and took good big swallows we were so proud of him and thought that we were finally done and could take the tube out. Then the doc said that the tube was not placed right and needed to be pushed down in order to measure the pressures by his fundo. This was horrifying not only to CJ but to me. It must have hurt real bad because he was screaming so bad. I had never heard him scream like that and I started crying and James told me I needed to step out and calm down. I realize that my getting upset wasn't helping the situation but I was not leaving him for nothing. They finally got good enough results and was able to pull the tube out. What a relief for us both. They then finished the other test which was to watch his stomach pressures while he was eating. After all this I am not sure we are any farther ahead than we were. Although we now know that the retching is not because of his stomach or intestine we still don't know what is causing it. The swallow part of the study did show that he was having some kind of problem swallowing because he always double swallowed but what is causing the double swallowing could be a number of things. The doc wanted to study this a little more before he gave us final results. Hopefully next week some time. I thought it interesting though that he mentioned it could all be a result of his FUNDO which has been a concern of mine all along. I am glad that we did the tests in the sense that we were able to delete some possibilities as to what might be going on. On the other hand I am so sorry for him to have to go through all of that and still not have any answers as to why he retches so bad. Maybe there will never be an answer, and this I suppose is hard for me to except when I have to watch him retching and gasping for breath and not be able to do anything to help him. The doc mentioned doing other testing to find out why he double swallows and what is going on with that but I can't do it any more. I'm not giving up on him and I would never do that but at the same time I can't put him through more pain that will not deliver any answers. I think we will re-evaluate the situation in a few years when he gets older maybe the only answer is more time. As the saying goes only time will tell. As for now I love you so much CJ. I will always be here for you and will always do what I have to do to help you move forward in life. You were so brave today and did such a wonderful job. Mommy and Daddy are so proud of you. On another note he is already back to his sassy self. He asked to watch a movie that I don't care for, so when I told him this he replied with you don't have to watch it. I love my children so much they amaze me in so many ways every day. Well hopefully this makes at least some kind of sense. I have been up since 4:30 this morning so I feel as though I may have rambled since my thoughts seem scattered, so I am going to head out to pick Nikki up from dance and then going to bed.