Happy Birthday

Happy 6th Birthday Michael!
We love you,
Dad,Mom,Mattie and David

Reason Number _____ you don't leave Mattie & David in a room by themselves

Michael's Lego

Michael loves lego's and I decided to show some of his creations that he asked me to take pictures of.

New Haircut for Mattie

Mattie got her haircut today and I love it. The pictures really don't show how cute it is. In some of the pictures you can see bald spots. In the past few weeks her hair has been falling out like crazy. She has a autoimmune disease called propecia which causes bald spots. There is not much that can be done but we do have a appointment with a dermatologist just to make sure it is nothing else or related to some other stuff she has going on. The hair loss comes in spurts and unfortunately this is the time for it to happen. Her hair is thin and brittle and tangles easy. At first I was going to get it trimmed but the lady talked to me about doing a bob style and defining the bangs that were growing. She looks so cute and I think it makes her look a little bit older. I love Mattie with her pig tails but she is not the girl who keeps her hair done, she was always pulling the pig tails out. I've tried ribbons and bows and barrettes and she pulls them out. This new style is easy to maintain, less combing and Mattie won't have to pull anything out.

We call her medical Mattie

Will post pictures later... Having a hard time up loading from blogger site. Does that make sense?

The past week Mattie has had a few medical procedures. Mattie had ear tube surgery last weeks ago also she had a ABR Hearing test after the tubes were put in. ABR stands for Audio Brain Response. ABR is performed while the patient is asleep. It requires silence and the patient to be still. It measures the vibrations of the ear drum to the brain response of different sounds and pitches. Don't ask me how because I don't know. Anyways usually her hearing test come in around the 45 mark and after the ABR test she was at 30. The normal range is 15-30. Yea Mattie can hear! Well she could always hear but with all the goop that is in her ear that does not drain out it sounds like muffled under water talking. (that is what the doctor said). Anyways for different reasons Mattie is a hard needle stick.

I have to add a quick note. To the few adults that say I'm a hard stick to please don't, I think Mattie is harder than you and really you are comparing yourself to a 3year old.

.....Anyways sorry for the rant..............

It took the doctor 45 times to finally get the IV started. We did not know it at first but when we got home we were looking at her feet and at first I thought it was a little rash but nope it needle marks. I felt so sick to my stomach. The good thing is she was asleep. The doctors gas the little kids first get them to sleep and the start the IV. So at least she did not feel the pokes but she was a little sore after the surgery. To top it off the next morning she woke up crying and Dan went to check on her and she managed to get her arm stuck in a crib slate and between the wall. The pressure was on one of the needle pokes and it came open and was bleeding. Dan said it could be marked down as "not one of the best parenting moments".

Well to add to the fun of surgery the next week (fast forward to this week) she had to be put under anesthesia again for a MRI/MRA scan. I was a little nervous for a few reasons and when we showed the doctor and nurses her needle marks. They were in shock and a little worried about getting a IV because the bruising and scarring on the veins. It took 6 times to get the IV started. All in all the good news is and this is what we wanted she has no changes with her brain arteries. Things are stable and still look good. She is due back in 6 months for another scan and we get to repeat this procedure again.