Baseball Banquet

The Angels celebrated their year with a big banquet.These sweet boys helped with the Angels all season and made them each pennants.I think he was Shane's favorite Angel...And Callie came for the cake.
There was a DVD presentation and it was the cutest thing with pictures and videos from the season. We had a great year!

Sidewalk Chalk

Last Game Of The Season

Cade had fun playing with the Angels this year!

Playing With The Neighbors

AKA cousins. My sister is living with my parents until their move to Colorado at the end of June. We love having them right next door!

Callie loves to care for Allie and always tries to get us to leave her in her care.

MRI / EEG / CT Scan

WARNING: tons of boring medical info in this post.
Cade's developmental pediatrician wanted Cade to have an EEG (electroencephalogram-measures electrical activity of the brain) because of Cades history of 2 grand mal seizures. She wanted to make sure Cade wasn't having little seizures daily that would effect his development. She also wanted an MRI to look at his brain structure. He has an MRI in the NICU but none recently.
Cade also had a dentist appointment and x-rays revealed that he is growing malformed, pre-cavity clumps of teeth that are erupting bilaterally on his lower jaw where his six year molars should be. He determined that Cade should see an oral surgeon and these teeth should be surgically removed. We saw an oral surgeon and another pedi dentist. Cade of course was uncooperative for the x-ray they needed. So they ordered a CT scan to get a good look at Cade's teeth. We were already signed up for the MRI and EEG with sedation so they just tacked that one on. So here we were, NPO again for another long day of studies.Cade loves to get sympathy for his owies so he was milking this IV (that took 3 sticks) for all it was worth. Typically when Cade has sedation for procedures, they will use Michael Jackson's drug of choice, Propofol. However, Propofol happens to be an anti-seizure drug so that would make the EEG invalid. So the anesthesiologist used a different drug Cade has never had before, Precedex. During Cade's procedures, his heart went into a scary arrythmia called prolonged QT syndrome. So a stat 12 lead EKG was ordered to look into this arrythmia. The results were immediately faxed to Cade's cardiologist and Shane took Cade the next day to see the Cardiologist. His EKG in the office was normal. He thinks Cade has something called medication induced prolonged QT syndrome and gave us a list of meds to avoid. On the list is Benadryl and all of Cade's asthma medicine. Can this kid get any more complicated??? He had a very rough time and took two hours to wake up from anesthesia. He couldn't even walk to the car :( We have follow up appointments for all of these results and I will get back to you on that.

Happy Mother's Day To MeeMaw

We had a great lunch at Sylvias

I think my kids are pretty lucky to celebrate all of these mamas on mother's day, even their GG and granny.Someone looks like her granny...

Happy Mother's Day To Grandma!

Callie loves to help cook so she jumped right in to help with brunch.

Her favorite kid is the one on the left...

Grandma is pretty proud of these grandkids. Missing a couple here though...Balloons from the kids that they assumed were theirs

Mother's Day

These sweet babies bring me more happiness than they will ever know!

Sleep Study/ Cranial Facial Update

We had an appointment with another cranial facial surgeon in Austin for a second opinion regarding Cade's soft palate and swallowing difficulties. I was hoping for a quick fix but of course that was not the case. This doctor thinks Cade's palate does need to be fixed eventually but not now. He still feels Cade is a huge surgical risk due to his small jaw and low muscle tone. He also believes that Cade's swallowing problems are due more to muscle tone than to his soft palate anatomy. He noticed that Cade has partial paralysis on one side of his palate which he assumes continues down the muscles of the throat. He recommended VitalStim therapy which uses electrical external stimulation combined with traditional swallowing therapy. His hope is that the extra stimulation will strengthen Cade's muscles. We have had a difficult time finding this therapy but will hopefully begin that soon with Himmel Home Health.
Another issue that concerned the doc was that Cade had never in his life had a sleep study. He said a kid as risky as Cade, especially a kid who had a trach and then a trach that was removed required a sleep study. So Cade and I signed up to stay the night at Dell Children's Hospital.
We went around bedtime in our pajamas. They had me put Cade to sleep and then tried to hook up electrodes to his face, chest and legs. They monitor things such as breathing, oxygen saturation, leg movement, etc. This study was mainly to determine if Cade was having periods of apnea. Cade did not like being hooked up and pulled the electrodes off many times during the night. We did not get much sleep. We have only heard unofficial results but everything was fine. I hope we don't have to repeat this little study any time soon!

Sip and See For Jamie!

I think we did a good job without our mamas... Meet this sweet sweet baby girl Jamie Katherine!