Wills' 2nd Birthday Party!

Today we got to celebrate Wills' birthday with friends and family at our house. We got so lucky with the weather today and we were able to be outside for quite a bit of the party.

Here are some of the details:

The entry table

The party favors were either The Bernstein Bears Catch the Bus or Maisy Drives the Bus and a classic wooden bus toy. We have so many friends with two children, so that is why there were two book choices. The bags were also labeled with a bus name tag. 

This is actually our giant clock.  I just covered it with a peel and stick chalkboard for the party. 

The food table. We just did "school lunch" food. Ham and cheese and peanut butter and jelly sandwiches with a cheese tray, a fruit tray, a veggie tray and chips. 

My sister made this amazing bus pinata for us. After seeing how awesome it was, we decided against using it as a pinata and used it for decoration instead. Wills' new room is transportation themed, so this will be perfect in there!

"Happy 2nd Birthday Wills' pennant. 

Vanilla Bean cupcakes.

Amazing cookies made by Cupcake Kisses.

Chocolate cake with mint buttercream frosting. The school bus on the cake is the same one that was in the party favors. They were made by Ann at Green Bean Toys.

What may be a birthday party tradition much to Charles' dismay, the balloons!

Charles and I made this over a few days. The hardest part was getting the giant box. Thankfully Larry at Metro Appliances was kind enough to actually return my phone call and give us a box. 

Eating, playing, more eating and gifts!

We had a great time at the party and are so thankful for all the family and friends that were able to join us!

3rd trimester!

We are officially in the third trimester!

I had my glucose test a couple of weeks ago and I don't have gestational diabetes. It did show anemia though, so I have had to add a daily iron supplement. It's so weird to me that this showed up because I eat more meat now than I did when I was pregnant with Wills.

I had my monthly perinatal appointment on Thursday. Charles couldn't go with me, so my mom and sister came up. A definite benefit of these monthly appointments is that they do an ultrasound every time and switch in to the 4D mode on occasion. It is a lot of fun to get to see our little man growing. The ultrasound tech and Dr. Smith, our perinatologist all remarked on his size. He checked in at 3lbs 3oz, which is apparently on the large side for this point in the pregnancy. Dr. Smith wanted to know if I had done the glucose test yet and what the results were since large babies and gestational diabetes happen together a lot. Since the main reason for these visits is to monitor his growth, we certainly confirmed that he is growing!

He puts his hands and feet in front of his face all the time. He is a pretty limber little guy. Luckily he moves around A LOT, so if you just wait a minute, he will be in a different position.

In this picture you can actually see the cleft lip some. They think it goes up into his left nostril and that is why they believe there is palate involvement as well. 

We have our appointment with the baby's physician on August 5th. It will be so nice to get some answers regarding surgeries and to get a loose timeline of when things will happen. 

Wills' 2nd Birthday!

Happy Birthday to our sweet boy! I cannot believe how quickly the last two years have gone.

We tried to make today a little extra special for Wills, even though we both had to work. Charles actually got to go in late today, so he got to be home for the morning festivities as well.

Wills' morning started off with a camera in his face.

He got to open a couple of gifts.

Then he had a big boy breakfast made by Daddy, which consisted of toast, vegetarian bacon, blueberries and scrambled eggs with candles.

After work, we headed to the pool to play and have dinner.

Then we went to Braum's so he could have his very first ice cream cone. He was a fan. 

He got to go to bed past bedtime tonight too. Hopefully this won't cause an earlier wake up time tomorrow!

Florida 2013

Our annual trip to Florida for the week of 4th of July was wonderful. There was some rain, a few bruises, and an odd floor plan for the house we rented, but otherwise Santa Rosa Beach surpased where we were last year!

We were a little delayed out of OKC, but the boys just needed their iPads and it was all good.

We celebrated Grammy's birthday while we were there!

We built sand castles and played in the water.

We decided not to let Wills wear his glasses to the beach, so he decided to confiscate Clara's pink sunglasses. I think he pulled the look off quite well.  

Buckets make great hats! 

We ate lots of good seafood.

We played in the house. 

We celebrated the 4th of July.

It was super windy.

Borrowing Clara to practice as a family of 4.

Cousins!

Too young for sparklers, so Grammy brought red, white and blue glow sticks.

We watched fireworks on the beach. 

And we flew home without any delays! 

Update on Te2

We had our second ultrasound with Te2 at 19 weeks, on March 29th. I think most parents go into this ultrasound primarily concerned about what sex the baby is going to be. Thinking about the anatomy scan is secondary, or at least it was for us. Unfortunately, this time around, finding out that Te2 is a boy was secondary.

Our ultrasound tech left the room a couple of times during our scan. As health care providers ourselves, you would think this would have clued Charles and I in to the fact that something wasn't right. Needless to say, it didn't. When the radiologist walked back in to the room with the ultrasound tech, I was wondering why this guy was busting in on our appointment. The reason was that he was there to tell us that Te2 has a cleft lip. At this scan, they told us it looked like unilateral and left sided. They could not tell if there was any palate involvement. They assured us that everything else (kidneys, heart, spine, etc) looked great and this was the only thing they were seeing. We were then sent directly over to our OB's office to talk with her. There is a small chance of other genetic abnormalities, so we opted to go ahead and have a blood test done that would test for Trisomy 21, 18, 13 and the presence of Y chromosomal material. We figured if it came back positive this would help us be more prepared, and if it came back negative then this would be one less thing for me to obsess over.  It took a week for the results to come back, and thankfully they were negative. Our OB also referred us to a perinatologist, who is essentially an OB that specializes in high risk pregnancies. The soonest they could get us in was a month out, June 26th. We decided that other than immediate family, our OB and our pediatrician, we would wait to share the news until after this appointment. That way we would have more information and know exactly what we were going to be dealing with.

There were lots of tears for a few days after finding out.  I also went through a bit of a mourning process. I know that Te2 is the perfect baby for us and that God does not make mistakes, but I still had to mourn the idea of the perfect baby that I had been visualizing. It would hit me at the most random times too. Once during swim lessons, Charles was in the pool with Wills and I was thinking that next summer we would both be in the pool because we would have two boys. And then I started crying because I was thinking that people would be staring and judging our little one.

Over the next few weeks I did a lot of research. As an audiology graduate student, I was actually part of a cleft palate team with speech pathologist, ENTs, oral surgeons, dentists and social workers. I think this was good and bad. Good in the sense that I knew how successful these kids turned out to be, and bad because I also knew how hard it could be on them too. The surgeries and recovery periods can be extensive. By far the most helpful things I read during my research were actually the blogs of other moms of children with cleft lip/palate, particularly this one and this one. Getting to read about the process from the parent point of view was so comforting.

We finally had our perinatolgoy appointment yesterday. They confirmed the unilateral cleft lip and said that the palate also appears to be involved. Due to the negative blood test and all other anatomy looking good, they believe it is an isolated finding and there are no other concerns. I will follow up monthly with the perinatologist for ultrasounds to monitor Te2's growth. This will be in addition to my monthly OB appointments. We will also meet with the oral surgeon in a few weeks to map out the plan for Te2 in regards to appointments and surgery timeline.

It is going to be an interesting journey and I know we are going to learn a lot about ourselves. Please keep us in your prayers!

Summer Fun

Wills is a busy boy this summer.

He is taking swim lessons.

He started gymnastics.

He has a pass to the zoo.

He has lots of people that like to come visit him.

He had his first sno cone and popsicle.

And we are only halfway through June!