Videos: Addison

I am way overdue on videos. I always take a million pictures but forget to take videos of the kids. This weekend I captured Addison singing/spelling her name and being brave in the pool by holding her breath and opening her eyes underwater.

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Watch Me Grow: 8 Months

Weight: 20lbs

Clothing: 18 Months

Diapers: Size 3

Feeding: Cereal in the morning with fruit baby food.  Vegetable baby food for lunch.  Fruit baby food at 3p. Vegetable & Cereal for dinner. 20 oz formula per day.  He drinks from a sippy cup with water at each mealtime.

Night time Sleep: Half of the time he sleeps through the night the other half he wakes up once a night.

Updates: He is :this close: to crawling.  He scoots and rolls all over to get where he wants to go.  He no longer uses the baby tub and takes a bath in the big tub with Addison.  He has started eating grapes, apples and bananas via the net feeder.  He cut his top two front teeth last week so he's now up to 4 teeth.  He laughs anytime someone sneezes and thinks his sister is hilarious.    

Gizmo is home!!

We brought Gizmo home yesterday afternoon.  He still isn't walking and can only stand with assistance.  He has to be hand fed and hand watered.  He will only eat 2 tbsp of wet food at a time.  He's on 3 different meds which he doesn't like to take.  We carry him outside to pee every 4 hours.  He's still in alot of pain and that was definitely evident this morning.  I had taken him outside before administering his pain meds and he wouldn't even stand to pee.  He laid in the grass and went and when I picked him up he moaned and whimpered.  He lays on his blanket and will raise his head occasionally if we pet him or talk to him but spends most of the day sleeping.  

Addison has been such a great little helper.  She tries to feed him and will bring a pile of books over to him and will "read" to him.  When Nana called this morning, Addison told her "We can't come over today because I'm taking care of Gizmo."

Addison trying to feed Gizmo

Gizmo's stapled neck laceration and drain.  The drain has to be cleaned twice a day.

Gizmo is in the Doggie Hospital :-(

Tuesday morning Fedex delivered a package and in the process let our dog out. Of course no one notified us and they aren't admitting to it but when I came home and the entry gate was closed and there was no other place for him to get out of the yard I can safely assume he got out during the delivery. If they saw we had an entry gate and a dog why did the driver even open the gate to delivery to the front door? Couldn't he have left the package outside the gate? The delivery happened at 11a and I didn't get home until 6p so by then he was already loose for 7 hours.

We looked for him that night, filed a lost pet report with the local humane society, notified neighbors and posted an ad on craigslist. Addison was so upset that she sat outside the front door crying for what seemed like forever and refusing to come in the house until Gizmo came home.

Yesterday around noon I got an email from my craigslist ad letting me know a dog had been hit on a street close to our house and was at the local animal hospital.  

Wednesday Update 1:  His right leg was crushed and will likely need to be amputated. His neck has a large laceration and his major arteries are exposed. They said he is in critical condition. I'm beyond hysterical at this point. Fedex-I'm about to be your worst enemy!!

Wednesday Update 2: I just spoke with the vet again and they are monitoring his brain functioning before doing any surgery to close the neck laceration. She said he also has a large laceration on his head as well as his neck. My parents are out of town until this evening so once they get back we are having them watch the kids so we can go to the hospital to visit. They are slowly weaning him off the opiates to see how he responds. 

Thursday Update 1: Brian and I went to visit Gizmo last night. He actually tried to get up and started wagging his tail when he saw us. The vet was very inspired by this because she said it's the first time she saw any real movement out of him. He still isn't standing for them and even though he has feeling in his left front leg and back legs he's making not attempt to get up. She showed us his x-rays and said that the right leg is not crushed but he has no feeling in it so there is nerve damage and he may or may not regain feeling in it. She said to give the leg a few months and we could have accupuncture done on it before making any rash decisions to have it amputated. As far as the neck laceration it is so deep that it is literally 1mm from his jugular. It's really a miracle that he's alive. She said that they will run some bloodwork this morning and if the organ functioning is fine and there are no unseen issues because of his age (kidney disease,etc) that they will schedule the surgery for either today or tomorrow to sew and repair the neck laceration and insert a drain. If all goes well with the surgery he will have 2-3 days still in the hospital post-op then we will need to have 24 hr care for him the next 2 weeks(So thankfully my parents are still here for a few more weeks.) My parents are going by this morning to visit him and I'm going to stop by over my lunch break again today. I really hated leaving him last night...my heart is still breaking over all of this.

As far as Fedex is concerned, Brian worked his way up the chain of command and the driver is claiming he didn't see a dog(of course) but their risk management department will be contacting us today or tomorrow to discuss a settlement. All I have to say is that they better be willing to pay all or some of the expenses. My husband is far better at negotiations and getting his point across than me so he'll be dealing with Fedex from this point on. 

Thursday Update 2:  I just went to visit him again over my lunch hour. His surgery is supposed to start at 1p. Their main concern at this point is the infection caused by the laceration in the neck. The surgeon said he will spend most of the time cleaning the wound before he stitches it up. He said we may have to do another surgery if the wound doesn't heal properly due to the amount of infection. As far as his right leg there is still no feeling in it but the Dr said we'll give it time before making any decisions to amputate.

Thursday Update 3:  Surgery went well and he may be able to come home late tomorrow or early Saturday. The drain will have to stay in place for 10 days. They believe they got most of the infection out. So excited for good news!!

Thursday Update 4:  The Dr just called back and said that Gizmo had some difficulty breathing after surgery so they took more x-rays and found a contusion and bruising on his lungs.  They said time will hopefully heal these items.  She also said that she is not optimistic that he'll regain use of his right front leg but there are plenty of happy 3 legged dogs so it won't be an issue if/when we decide to amputate.

Phone Fun Friday

I went to Ohio this week on a business trip and met up with some friends in Dayton

 

The night before I left on my trip Brian surprised me with a lobster dinner

 

Addison modeling her new "Hello Kitty" pajamas

Addison having fun in her new kiddie pool

 

Enzo being his usual happy self

Phone Fun Friday

Food Poisoning

The reason for my lack of posts has been food poisoning.  Tuesday morning around 3am Brian woke up not feeling well.  He was having pains in his stomach and chest.  I noticed that I felt nauseated but I blamed it on worrying about him.  Around 4:30a we were both starting to get sick and continued to be sick for the next 17 hours.  I would not wish food poisoning on anyone!!  It was the sickest I've ever felt.  Thankfully today we both feel back to normal.  Also a big thanks to my Dad for helping out with the kids Tuesday night.
 

Phone Fun Friday

Addison giving her cheesiest smile while playing dress up

Enzo at daycare

Brian and the kids playing in their new room on the 4th of July 

Butterfly Roll and Pina Colada Roll enjoyed during lunch with Mom this week

Watch Me Grow - 7 Months

Weight: 19lbs 15oz
Length: 29.75 inches

Clothing: Shirts - 12 Months
Pants - 18 Months

Diapers: Size 3

Feeding: Cereal in the morning with fruit baby food.  Vegetable baby food for lunch.  Fruit baby food at 3p. Vegetable & Cereal for dinner. 20 oz formula per day.

Night time Sleep: In the process of sleep training.

Updates: He started blowing raspberries, sits unassisted, started sleeping on his stomach at night, claps, holds his arms up when you say "So Big," and waves bye.  He has said "Mama and Dada" a few times.  We moved him out of his infant car seat and into the convertible car seat.  He loves the pool.  

We started sleep training a few weeks ago.  After 3 long nights he finally started sleeping through the night.  Once we moved into the house we had another 3 rough nights but thankfully he is back to sleeping through the night the last 2 nights.  Crossing my fingers that he continues STTN.

Wordish Wednesday: Moving Pics

We moved over the weekend and I'm so glad that it's over with.  Moving is so exhausting mentally and physically.  Thankfully the renters moved out a week early so that gave us extra time to paint before moving everything in.  All the boxes are finally unpacked and the house is looking somewhat organized minus bare walls.  We still have the tedious task of sorting through all the toys.

Addison loves the house.  We moved out when she was 8 months old so she has no memory of it.  Now we are moving back in when Enzo is 7 months...kind of ironic.  Thankfully we had good tenants over the last 2.5 years and the house is in great condition.  

Our house is a 3/2 so there's enough room for the kids to have their own rooms, but Brian felt as though they needed to share a room.  We gave them the larger of the 2 extra bedrooms and turned it into their room/playroom.  The spare bedroom will remain that for any guests/visitors(hint hint to all my friends and family...come visit us!!) 

Below are several cell phone pics of the last few days.  The white dresser was mine as a child that my parents brought down to Florida with them and re-painted it for Addison to use.