Thanksgiving 2008!

I hope everyone had a Happy Thanksgiving! We spent the day with my family because we spend Christmas day with Jon's. It gets tricky when you have kids and everyone wants to see the baby!! We had lunch at my Mama Mary Kay's. I made a peppercorn ranch dip, cheesy potatoes, and a strawberry dessert cheese ball. Drew enjoyed Mama's sweet potatoes the most (probably because they are fried and sprinkled with sugar and cinnamon!) For dinner, we went to my aunt's (on my dad's side) and enjoyed some more yummy food. And Drew got to play with his cousins, which he loved!!

And here is a cute picture of Drew right before we headed out to dinner last night...

17 Months Old!!!

Today, Drew turned 17 months old -- it's hard to believe how fast he is growing! Jon and I are having so much fun with him!!!!!

Motor Skills: He is walking really good now and is always SO BUSY! He loves walking around while carrying his big blue ball which I'm sure is a disaster waiting to happen!!

Eating: Drew is a great eater! For breakfast most mornings he has oatmeal, fruit (usually a banana), and juice. On the weekends, he is "treated" to McD's hotcakes with Daddy on Sunday and he also enjoys waffles, eggs, and toast and jelly. His favorite veggies are sweet potatoes, carrots, and peas. He doesn't like green beans though... He also seems to be a huge fan of Mexican food -- he especially likes refried beans!!!!! He is also doing better about not choking so much when he eats, but he still does get choked occasionally.

Speech: Drew's receptive language is great! He seems to understand so much. We have some "first word" flash cards and we will lay three of them out and ask him where the "cow" (for example) is and he will point to it. He can identify almost everything on the cards! He is also really good with puzzles! As for his expressive language, most of his sounds are still "m" and "b," but he also is making some "w" and other sounds. He has speech once a week and we may bump it up to twice a week soon.

Childcare: I work four days a week. Drew stays with my mom three of those days (which means he also gets to see his grandpa, great grandma and great-great grandma as well as my sister and brother -- so he stays busy there!). He stays with Jon's sister and mom the other day. He is currently on a waiting list for a local child care center for just one day a week. I think it is important for him to be around other kids his age.

Misc: We are trying to limit Drew's TV time (not that I think he watches it a lot, but I know that we use to always have it on). So Jon and I decided that we would leave the TV off from the time we get home from work until Drew goes to bed. So far so good!

Well, that's just a little update about what is going on with Drew. Now for some cuteness...


Oh how I love this boy!!

Wanted (Wanted!) Dead or Alive...

We went out to eat last night at O'Charlie's and Drew was so good! He (like me) loves bread. When I asked Jon if he wanted a roll, he said he was trying to get use to not eating bread b/c he knew that when Drew got bigger, he would never get any anyway since Drew and I both love it so much!! He also had mac and cheese (something else that Drew and I both love!), mashed potatoes, and oranges. Then we headed to Sam's for a little shopping!


When I went to check on Drew before going to bed last night, this is how I found him sleeping, so
I had to snap a pic!!

Never Take for Granted Your Smile!

One thing I am doing this year is donating to Operation Smile. Some of my colleagues are donating too! We are hoping to have enough to give someone a new smile, which is $240. To see Operation Smile's Holiday Gift Catalog, click on the below link...

https://secure.operationsmile.org/site/Ecommerce?ecommerce=store_list&ts=1220980463910&store_id=1321

I think about how fortunate Drew has been to receive such top-notch medial care and it literally brings tears to my eyes thinking about all of the kids that must wait for their surgeries and endure "being different" just because of where they live.

My blogging buddy Darcy recently had a link on her blog where you could follow an Operation Smile mission and it was very touching, but also very sad because of all the kids that had to be turned away. (403 patients were screened, but only 111 patients could be operated on.)

It's great to know that the donation we will be making will have such a huge impact on someone for the rest of their life!!

ER (and no I'm not talking about the TV show)

My mom (who lives about 30 minutes from us) typically keeps Drew on Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday. So on most Thursday nights, Drew stays the night with them so he doesn't have to be on the road so much. Plus, it gives Jon and I time to "do our own thing." I usually choose to go shopping(!) while Jon prefers to go to his friend's house to work on the Bronco.

So, while peacefully sleeping on Friday morning, the phone rings at about 3:15am. First, let me say, that I HATE middle of the night phone calls because it always seems to be bad news. This time was no different. It was my mom and she said that Drew was running a really high fever (104) and was throwing up so she was taking him to the ER. Jon and I hopped up, got dressed, and drove the 30 mile trip to the ER in my mom's town. When I got there (Jon and I drove separate b/c I knew I would stay the night at mom's while Jon would need to go back home so he could go to work) they had given him Motrin and were getting ready to do a chest x-ray, which was clear. He ended up having strep throat and ear infections in both ears (which I'm not sure I understand since he has ear tubes???). We were there for about 2.5 hours. They drew blood and gave him an antibiotic shot in both sides of his booty, which made him very mad!! When we got back to my mom's, I laid down with him and when he woke up at 9:30am, he was back to his usual self! I decided to go ahead and go into work and my mom kept him. His fever did come back up later that day, but he seems to be doing pretty good. He is on an antibiotic for 10 days and we're giving him Tylenol and/or Motrin as needed.

Here he is yesterday -- his normal happy self!!



And how funny it is to just see Drew strolling around the house!!

Speech Appointment at St. Louis

Today Jon, Drew, Jaci (Drew's local speech therapist) and I traveled to St. Louis for an evaluation with the speech therapist on his craniofacial team. It was a two hour session in her office and it went pretty good...at first. Drew was interested in all the "toys" she had and her little chair and table, but grew tired of it all pretty quick, so then he started fussing and trying to drag us to the door. While Jon was on a bathroom break, I was trying to calm him down by getting in the floor with him and in the time I went from the chair to the floor, Drew feel and cut his eye (top and bottom)! So of course he started whaling and his attention was pretty much shot after that... Anyway, she seemed fine with Drew's progress and wasn't worried at all that the only sounds he predominately makes are "m" and "b." She gave us some activities to work on -- including some to help with his low frustration tolerance!

After his appointment, we had lunch at Fazoli's and then went to Barnes and Noble to get a few new books. Luckily, Drew peacefully drifted off to sleep when we got in the car and slept most of the way home.

Here are some pics after we got home...including some close-ups of his wounded eye!

And here's a cute one of him in the bathtub (inspired by Heather!).

Drew "Reading"

Here is a cute video of Drew "reading" the book that we bought him at the zoo. Most of his sounds are still "m" and "b" but you can definitely tell that he is trying to say lots of things!! He is also very persistent and if I don't immediately tell him what something is, he just keeps pointing and looking at me until I do!

~Our Pictures~

Thanks for all the comments you guys left on my blog and on Clary's. I'm glad you liked the pics!! Now for the hard part...I haven't even seen them all yet and I'm already wondering what I should order. Did you have any favorites that screamed 16x20? Or maybe you thought a couple grouped together in smaller sizes would be neat. If you have any ideas, I'd love to hear them!!

As for our outfits, since you all helped picked them out, I wanted to explain why we ended up wearing what we did... A lot of you loved the red and brown stripped sweater for Drew and I was going to go with it until I tried it on him. I didn't like how the collar came up around his face. So that was out. Then, because it was suppose to be so cold that day, I ended up buying the brown sweater I wore on the night before the pics, which meant that Jon didn't really have a choice other than to wear the cream! (I also had Jon's Under Armor pants on under my jeans to keep me warm!!!)

We Love Clary!

I just checked Clary's blog and she has pictures from our family session posted!! Here is one of my favs! More to come later...

Drew's First Trip to the Zoo!

And what a wonderful day it was! The weather was perfect and he was surrounded by some of his favorite people...Mommy, Daddy, Grandma, Mama MK, and Whitney! I had a hard time just picking a few pics to post, so enjoy all these!!





And don't worry, I totally disinfected his hands after he fed the goats! :)

Drew reminds everyone to...

Tag Game Again!

Janeen has introduced another fun game of "tag!" and I thought I would play along... The rules are:

1) Go to your My Pictures folder on your computer.

2) Open the 4th folder.

3) Post the 4th picture you find.

I was delighted to find that my fourth folder was called, "2007-7," which meant that the picture would be a little bitty baby picture of Drew! Here it is...when he was just 10 days old!

Treak-or-Treat Part 2

On Halloween, Drew wore his monkey costume for the third time and did some more trick-or-treating. Then we went to a local Halloween party where Drew won a prize for "cutest animal!"

Here he is holding his "prize money!" (with my mom)

And here he is still looking cute as a monkey!!