VOTE!

I entered Julia in a photo contest for the Children's Eye Foundation.  They are going to pick 12 photos to be in their promotional calendar.  That would be awesome!

What would be more awesome is to win the voting contest.  The top 10 pictures receiving the most votes win a new digital camera.

So take a moment and go to this website and vote for Julia.  You can vote once every 24 hours.  Her pic is labeled "Fall Fun."

I would appreciate it!  Thanks!  Here is the website:

Vote for Julia Here

Just living life

Things in our household have been good.  The weather is finally getting warm, the kids have been behaving (most of the time) and school is almost out for the summer!

Summer starts next week!  I will have 9 weeks at home with my kiddos and we are planning all kinds of fun activities this summer.  We are already signed up for swimming lessons, and I am hoping to be able to go to the zoo, Purina Farms, Grant's Farm and other local attractions.

It is warm!  Julia decided it was more fun to play IN the sand table.

 

Cooling off in the heat!

 

 

Jed had a great birthday. I will have to post some pics later. He got an awesome Lightning McQueen bike and helmet. Everyday, when I pick him up from daycare, he immediately asks to go outside and ride his bike.

 

Playing in the sprinkler!

 

Julia has started preschool! Well, sort of. Because she receives services from First Steps (early intervention), she qualifies for a weekly class at the local early childhood special education center. My wonderful mother has been picking her up from daycare and taking her there every Friday. Next year she will have class 2 times a week. We are still trying to figure out the daycare situation, but overall, I think this class is great for her. It is social activities with other toddlers her age. The class is run by a certified special education teacher with training in vision impairments (she has tons of training in all kinds of disabilities).

 



She found a patch and tried to put it on herself.

 

We love the new patches from Ortopad.  Julia thought the block needed to patch

 

 

Jed and Julia had their check ups at the pediatrician.  Both kids are growing and healthy.  Jed weighs 32 pounds and is 37 inches tall.  He is only in the 30% for height!  My little peanut.  Julia weighs 22 lbs and is 32 inches tall.  She is closer to 50% in height.  They are both growing so much and I am constantly amazed at how much they understand and talk!

 



Waiting for the doctor.

 

Julia is talking more.  She can say mommy, daddy, cup, down, outside, baby, night night, bye bye and a few others I am probably forgetting.  He doesn't say "no" yet (and I am thankful for that!).  When you ask her something, she says, "uh huh, " instead of yes.  It is so cute and my heart melts every time.  She is a snuggler and loves to be held.

Jed is talking up a storm.  Complete sentences and phrases and asks lots and lots of questions.  I swear his favorite word is "why."  He loves his bike and his favorite movie is "Wreck it Ralph."  He likes to pretend he is shooting the cybugs during the movie.  I swear he can quote the thing he ha seen it so much.  He can't wait to go deer hunting with daddy and I don't have the heart to tell him that it will be many years before he is big enough for that.

Ready for church!

Hanging with the bears.

 

Julia got herself a shiner!  She ran into a wall at daycare and her glasses pushed into her face.  She had a small cut and a large bruise.  She is pretty klutzy, yet fearless, which isn't a good combination.  Right now her knees and legs are completely scraped up from climbing and jumping off of things.  The lack of depth perception doesn't help either!

You should see the other guy!

 

I promise I will post some pics from Jed's birthday soon!  Hopefully I'll have more time to blog once school is out for the summer. 

 

All is well with the EYE.  Patching is going okay (it could be better, I'm not going to lie) and she is wearing the bifocals like a champ.  We see the eye doc in July and will have more EYE info then.







Birthday

Jed is 3!  I don't know where the time has gone.  He is so independent, talkative, handsome and smart (and I am not biased at all).  He had a great birthday with cake and a few presents.  He also will be having some small get togethers with the rest of the family next weekend.

 

 

He got some sunglasses that have blinking lights.  He thought they were fun, and so did Julia!

 

 

 

 

 

It has been such a privilege watching Jed grow.  He teaches me everyday how to be a better person and to love more.

 



 



Finally...a good appointment

Julia had a great appointment with her pediatric opthamologist!  Finally!  No surprises, no bad news, no scheduling surgery or anesthesia.  I was so happy and relieved.  Here is the rundown...

Her eye pressures are 14 and 17.  Normal is 16 +/- 4.  So these are great!

Her right eye has grown a millimeter and a half!  This is a front to back measurement, not side to side.  Basically this means her prescription has changed two diopters in that eye.  The left eye only grew a half a millimeter, so the prescription really didn't change.  This is very strange...but good!  It means the prescription in each eye is getting closer and closer which is a good thing.  It also means the right eye is catching up to the left eye in size. 

Her cornea is still SUPER steep (hers is a 56, a normal adult is a 43). 

Doc says it seems like her visual system is trying to find an equilibrium.  He is stumped, but pleased.  It seems Julia's eyes are not behaving like he would expect.  We are just going to keep checking in every 3 months to see how it goes.  At this rate, it is quite possible that she won't need the implant because the script in each eye will be so close together.

So her new prescription is a +10.75 in the right, and +5.25 in the left.  But this is just for near vision.  She is getting a bifocal in her right eye, so it will actually be a +8 in the right and a +5.25 in the left with a +2.75 bifocal in the right.  We are getting her new glasses and had them made as transitions so she isn't so affected by the sun.  (And the best part is First Steps is paying for them!)  Here is a pic:

Obviously the color is a bit off in the pic.  It is going to be a burgundy pearl color.  I hope it looks good on her skin.  We also got a sheet of pics to start working on with Julia.  We are hoping to get her to be able to point to or name a pic when she sees it so we can get a better estimate of her acuity.  They look like this:

 

 

We are still patching.  We had a nice discussion on patching with the doc.  It has been pretty rough lately.  Hopefully with the new glasses things will go a bit smoother.  Her current prescription has her clearest point only 3 inches from her face!  No wonder she rips the patch off!  We are going to try for 3 hours.  I asked if we needed to do more and he said that obviously patching 6 hours a day will get more results, but we are in this for the long haul.  He said we need to balance quality of life and also not damaging her sound eye.  So we are going for a solid 3 hours a day.

 

So there you are!  A great appointment!  Thank you for all the prayers.  I know they helped.  I'll post a pic as soon as her glasses are in.

Easter

Easter was awesome.  The weather was perfect (the kids not so perfect - but that is to be expected).  We started with dyeing eggs last Sunday (while it snowed 14 inches).

I know I shared egg dyeing pics in the last post, but I had better ones on my camera that just got uploaded.

And of course, the Easter Bunny came and brought awesome baskets.  (The Easter Bunny really shouldn't go go Target anymore - he really goes overboard).

Then it was time to find all the eggs the Easter Bunny hid.  Julia wasn't super thrilled, but once she realized there was candy in the eggs, she was all for it.  Jed was very excited, and had to dump open every egg as soon as he found it.

He is a little ambitious.  What can I say?

Then they attacked their baskets.

 

 

Yes, I got Julia "egg" glasses for Easter.  You know it's funny.

And they got bunny ears.

And then they started eating candy.

Time for church!  We tried to get a pic of them all dressed up, but that is about as easy of pinning down an octopus.

So instead we had a family member take a family pic after church.  Not too shabby.

There was another egg hunt with the Schultz cousins.  I can't even tell you how perfect the weather was! 

As you can see, Jed ran everywhere...too and fro, running, running, running.  Julia stayed close to the front door.  I think the sunshine was bothering her eye.  And while the camo patch was gone, she was still sporting a camo basket for camopatch Sunday!

Time to see what we got!

Notice the chipmunk cheeks that are full of jelly beans.

She is probably eating a jelly bean too.

And a pic of all the Schultz cousins!

My kids never cooperate for photos.  Sigh...

 

And then another egg hunt with the Gierer cousins.

 

The bow was long gone by this point.

And Jed had lost his sports coat.

And finally, checking out the next haul of candy with some cousins.  Just hanging on the front porch.

By the time we got home the kids were overtired, over sugared and just plain crabby.  But I would do it again in a heartbeat.  Jed loved the entire day and Julia seemed to enjoy herself too.

Now we get to enjoy a week of spring break.  Poor daddy still has to work.  Julia and I will be heading to the eye doc tomorrow, so keep us in your prayers.

More snow

Seriously, I am sooooo ready for spring.  Next weekend is Easter and we are hovering around 35 degrees here.  And to top it off, we got over 12 inches of snow on Sunday!  So, we ended up with a snow day on Monday. 

This is not even the full amount!  It was still snowing at this point.

 

Don't get me wrong, I love being able to stay home with my kids, but I would prefer to stay home in May when the weather is better. You see, every snow day we have adds an extra day to the end of our school year. So now we are at May 23rd as our last day. Boo.

 

So the day it snowed, we decided to go ahead and dye our Easter Eggs.  Nothing fancy, but we sure had fun.

 

 

Julia is definitely becoming more aware.  She understands that she needs to wear glasses and is definitely becoming a pro at all things related to the EYE.

 

 

 And with having to stay inside comes the multiplication of germs. Both Jed and Julia have been through two rounds of antibiotics for ear infections. Julia and James both had the stomach bug. Julia's was really bad and she ended up in the emergency room. So glad that spring is around the corner. Maybe I can teach the kids to clean up their germs?

Nerves have set in. Julia is seeing the Pediatric Opthamologist on Tuesday and I am nervous. I seem to be more nervous when I think things are going well. It is like I am waiting for the shoe to drop. I am praying that this appointment goes well and there are no surprises. I am kind of hoping for a new prescription so that we can get new glasses. I would like Julia to have transition lenses for the summer, and since First Steps is paying for a pair, I figure this is as good of a time as any! Not sure if she will graduate to a bifocal yet or not. We will have to wait and see what good ole' Dr. H says!  The bad thing is Julia is fighting the patch again.  And boy can she fight!  We've been using the arm braces again because otherwise she will rip the patch off every 2 minutes.

Cheese from the cheese ball!

Patch off.

Here mom - I don't need the arm braces.

Here, you can have the patch too.

 

So wish us luck.  We will head to Children's on Tuesday (thankfully we are on Spring Break) and see what the docs have to say.  We also will be having therapy with the Occupational Therapist and vision specialist this weekend.  Hopefully spring is coming soon and we can put all the snow behind us!