Our day at the Pumpkin Patch

Since Daddy was gone on a trip this week, I decided that Landon and I needed to be kept busy.  It always makes time go faster (and it's more fun) if we have something to do.  It's nice to have something to look forward to.

I decided to ask my friend, Megan, if her and her cute little boy wanted to go and do something with us.  We decided on going to the pumpkin patch with the boys.  Her little man, Nevin will be a year old in November.  Landon just loves Nevin.  I'm not quite sure why...maybe they knew each other in a past life. :)

Anyways, we went to the Bellevue Berry Farm and Pumpkin Patch.  Neither one of us had been, so it was fun to get to experience it together.  They had some fun stuff for the kids, like play equipment, a pirate ship, indian campground, an old west town, and an enchanted forest.  They also had a petting farm with ponies, horses, cows, an ostrich and a peacock.  The kids rode in the wagon together and later we all rode on the hay ride to go and pick out a pumpkin.  Nevin didn't make it...it was his naptime. :)

Here are some cute pictures from our day with Nevin and Megan...(I'm not going to take credit for these pictures.  Megan is an awesome photographer!)  I'm not quite sure why but they got saved to my computer from facebook and they ended up being really small so i had to make them bigger.  That's why they are a little fuzzy....sorry.

Landon and Nevin sharing the wagon

"Wanted" cowboy Landon

Landon and Mommy

Trying to get Landon to go into the indian teepee

Stood there just long enough for a picture...then was "all done" :)

I was trying to show Landon the sleeping doggy at the top of the hill

My cute little man

ARRRRGH!!

Cute pics of me and Landon

He thought it was funny that I had yucky stuff stuck to the bottom of my shoe.

Snack time waiting for the hay ride

Cutie-pie Nevin

Mommy and Landon on the hay ride...the sun was very bright

Landon found his pumpkin...

...and pointing it out to us

Taking our pumpkin home

Landon in the wagon with his pumpkin

Megan and I did a little shopping...Landon got to hold it all

He even wanted to get a pumpkin for baby sister. :)

We had so much fun that we decided to drag the guys along again before Halloween....we need to get a couple more pumpkins for some fun carving later. :)

Never a dull moment...

So, we had another crazy day at the Walsh household.  Last Friday Braydon left on a trip for work.  I was hanging with my little boy on Saturday and Sunday.  Sunday morning we went to a pumpkin patch with my friend Megan and her little boy Nevin.  I'll post pictures of that later...

Sunday evening, I gave Landon a bath and fed him some dinner.  He had chicken with corn.  He was eating his chicken and I was helping him with the spoon to get some corn.  He was doing well with it.  I turned on an episode of "Blue's Clues" (cause that's Landon's favorite right now) and we were eating together.  Well, I gave him another bite of corn and he got excited about something on tv at the same time.  When he got excited he took a deep breath at the wrong time and he started to choke on the corn.  Normally, if he starts to choke, just some pounding on the back helps him to get it out.  This time, that didn't help.  I immediately took him upstairs to use his suction machine to see if it was in his trach.  That didn't help.  I tried everything to get it out.  Thankfully, Landon can't turn blue or anything from choking...he just coughs a lot.  So I decided it would help to plug his trach when he coughed out and maybe that would help get it out.  Well, after a few minutes of that he started to sound a little better.  I called one of our nurses, Theresa, and asked what her "nurse opinion" was.  She said she would come over and listen to him and if need be we could change his trach if it sounded like it was in there.

When she got here, Landon was doing fine.  He was talking and acting like himself.  Every once in a while though he would have a coughing fit, and then his trach would sound like it was plugged off.  We tried changing his trach, but that didn't help.  So we decided it would be best to take him to the ER to have him checked out.

When we got to Children's ER, it was (of course) one of their busy nights.  We waited in the waiting room for about an hour.  Luckily, after I told the receptionist what happened one of the nurses came to see if his oxygen was okay.  They put a little band-aid looking thing around his toe that has a red light on it.  It measures how much oxygen is in his blood and is measured up to 100 (100 being the best).  He was running in the mid-90s (which is still really good).  He is normally in the 90s, so they figured out that he wasn't in immediate danger, but told me that if he started showing any signs to let them know immediately.  So, Landon continued to run around the waiting room being his normal self waving to everyone.  We finally got a room and had the privilege of sitting in there for another 3 hours.  Thankfully, they got us a tape of "Blue's Clues" to watch while we waited.  Landon was still awake the whole time and it was about 130am when he finally fell asleep in Theresa's arms.  He's such a partier!! :)

After taking some x-rays, they figured out that they were going to have to go in and see if they could physically see anything...which meant another broncoscopy.  The on-call ENT doctor was the same guy that was there the night Landon's trach was out.  He was really nice about explaining what he could do and why.  He told me that he was going to go in and see if he could get it out.  He could only go so far with his instruments, but he was getting a pulmonologist (lung doctor) on board.  He said that if it was further than the bronchioles (where your lungs split to go into the two lungs) he could have the pulmonologist go in try a hand at it.  They scheduled the procedure for 7am on Monday morning which meant that we had to spend the night in the hospital...yippy!  So about 3 in the morning we got into a hospital room and I went to the house to pick up some things for me and Landon.  When I got back, it was around 4am and I got a few hours (off and on) of sleep with Landon before we had to get up for Landon's procedure.

The procedure went well.  They got a kernel of corn out of Landon's right lung....stupid corn.  They even showed it to me in a specimen cup.  We won't be eating corn for a while. :)

We got home yesterday evening after Landon suffered a temperature in the hospital.  It was controlled with some Tylenol and now today he is doing great!  He's still coughing and such just from the irritation, but with some time should go away.  I'll probably be taking him back to school tomorrow.

What a crazy day!!!!  Here are a couple of pictures of my little man in the hospital.  He was such a trooper and enjoyed showing all the nurses his iPad. :)

My Trip to Atlanta

On my way home from New Orleans, I scheduled to fly through Atlanta so I would be able to see my dad and some of my friends that I hadn't seen in 3 years.  I spent one night there before heading home.  I met up with some friends at Dave & Busters just to hang out and get a chance to talk and catch up.  My friend Kelly brought her 9 month old triplets (thank you Kel!) and I got to meet them for the first time.  Some of my other friends from high school came as well as a couple of my sorority sisters.  I had so much fun hanging out with them and I was so grateful they made the trip to come visit me for a few hours.

Me, Kelly, Janna and Carla

All of us with the triplets, (from front to back) Jake, Luke, and Sarah

Jessica, me and Laura

Of course I had to get my Waffle House fix while I was home. :)  After we were at Dave & Buster's, Carla and I headed over for a quick midnight snack of eggs, raisin toast, and hash browns with a chocolate milk to drink.

Yum....I think my mouth is watering right now. :)

The next morning, I got to spend breakfast with my dad and the Walsh family.  We went to The Diner at Sugar Hill and had delicious french toast with strawberries and bananas, banana nut pancakes, eggs with home style potatoes, and biscuits and gravy.  It was delicious!!!  If you live in the area, I would highly recommend it!  Here were some pictures we took after we got fat and happy. :)

The Walshes - (from left to right) Bonnie, me, Rhea, Joe, Bridget and Heather

Me and my dad

Thank you again to everyone that came out to see me!!!!  I loved seeing everyone and I'm hoping it won't be another 3 years before I get to see you guys again!  

First Parent/Teacher Conference

When I got back from my trip Braydon and I had a meeting with Landon's teachers (including all the therapists that work with him at school).

The whole thing went really well.  They said that Landon is very smart and is capable of a lot, but also has his own agenda (which we are FULLY aware of).  They said that he is doing good with following directions.  I was so happy to hear that because I have a hard time with him sometimes, so I was glad he's doing it for someone. :) He is doing great with sticking with tasks for a longer period of time and has good problem solving skills.  He's doing really well with recognizing letters and numbers and some environmental signs.  He's almost learned all of his shapes and can point any of these things out when asked.  The teachers said that this is pretty advanced for his age and they didn't expect him to know these things coming into preschool.

His teacher, Mrs. Sanders, said that during circle time in the morning they have a sentence written on a board which she shows the class.  She will have one letter missing from the sentence and Landon always seems to know the answer.  She said that he tells the other kids they got it wrong by shaking his head no when they answer.  He can show her the correct answer on his iPad. :)

Mrs. Sanders also said that Landon is very social with the other kids.  He initiates playing with them by bringing them a toy or including himself in activities.  She said there is still the communication bearer with his peers in keeping conversations going.  I can't wait till we don't have that problem.  We've been working really hard to teach Landon his iPad and we're going to try and incorporate some new signs into his language.  I've been pushing him to try and say sounds vocally, but they are still pretty hard to understand.  We'll get there with some practice.

I was so glad to hear that he was doing so well and that they had so many good things to say about him.

A trip away from my little man...

At the end of September, my step-sister, Nicole, was getting married in New Orleans.  She asked me to be a part of her special day as one of her bridesmaids.  We thought about taking Landon with us for the festivities, but with all the medical supplies and machines, we thought it was best for him and Braydon to stay behind.  Braydon told me that I needed a vacation anyways, so I embraced it and decided to invite my best friend Carla to be my date.  I was so excited when she agreed to go with me!

We had a lot of fun hanging out with my mom and Paul seeing the sites of New Orleans.  We stayed at the Royal Sonesta Hotel which is off of Bourbon Street.  Here are some pictures I took:

Me and my mom in the hotel room

Paul, me and my mom in the lobby of the hotel

A couple of pictures of Bourbon Street

Yummy beignets from Cafe Du Monde

My beautiful friend Carla

Canal Street

Night of the Rehearsal dinner...waiting by the fountain at the hotel

Me and my step-sister Kelli at the rehearsal dinner

Carla and I at the rehearsal dinner

Taking a ride on the trolley car, which we found out was pretty pointless

I'll have to put up some pictures from the wedding later.  Carla has all of those pictures on her camera.   All-in-all, we had a great time. It was fun to get away for a long weekend.

Just a tummy check

We took Landon to see Dr. Zapata today.  His last appointment was six months ago, so we were due to go in.  Everything went great!  Landon's following the growth curve very nicely now since we gave him a couple extra ounces of formula during the day.  Even with not feeling well the past week and a half, he has kept up with where he needs to be!  That's really nice because normally he would lose a little bit of weight or stay the same while he was sick and then we'd have to play catch-up.  Who likes doing that??  ...not me!!

Dr. Zapata seemed pretty impressed with how much food Landon was taking orally.  He said to just keep it up.  I wanted to get an idea of how much food a typical 3 year old eats because I wanted to have some sort of goal for Landon to get to.  Since I don't have anything to compare him to, I rely on the doctors to give me this insight.  I feel like he should be eating more for his age, but I don't want to be pushing too much if there is no need for it.  He said that the dietician could give me a better answer on that, and he would have her call me.

All-in-all, he didn't seem too concerned about Landon or his growth.  He said to keep doing monthly weight checks just so we could keep track of his weight in case he was to lose too much.  Other than that, we don't need to see him for another 9 months!!!  I was excited to hear that cause that means he's doing well enough to not need to be seen as often...always a good sign. :)

As we were leaving the office, Heidi and I were expressing how excited we were to not have to come back for a while.  I got to thinking about where we would be in 9 months.  Landon will almost be 4 and we will have a 5 month old little girl.  How exciting!  I'm so excited for the changes in our family in the upcoming months.  Life is good. :)

Oops!

Last night I was getting ready for bed and realized that I forgot to post a picture of myself.  Here we go...this is a picture of me at 20 weeks.  Not the best, but it will do. :)

I feel like I've definitely filled out just in the past couple of weeks.  I'm hoping I'm going to fit into my bridesmaid dress for my sister's wedding coming up at the end of the month. YIKES!