Isaiah 7.17 : Updates, etc.

Just time for a quick update.  We've made it to our home away from home, the Residence Inn Park Central.  We've probably spent more nights here in the last 5 years than any other hotel.  The drive was mostly uneventful, which is good.  I worked most of the day yesterday and we left Atlanta last night and stayed over at my cousin Walter's house in Tuscaloosa, finally getting to meet his fiance Jess.  It was much too short of a visit, but we're grateful for their hospitality.  We drove the rest of the way to Dallas today and are slowly getting settled into the hotel for the night.  Isaiah is all tucked in and had his story read already so I think that's my cue to get off the lap top and get some much needed sleep myself, while we still can.

Well so much for my New Years resolution. 2 months later and I still don't have photos up and they're mounting. Its takes the little free time I have on my birthday to sit down and write something. We always seem to be busy lately, mainly just trying to keep up with the two year old. This kid is into everything and has been in a screeching phase for the last month plus which has been putting Rachel and my eardrums through some enduring times. Partly its due to his communication frustrations, but mainly its because he knows we hate it and he gets our attention. He is making some progress in speech though as yesterday he had his first two word 'sentence' by saying "lights on" in his bedroom. Speech doesn't count things like "Thank You" because to kids in their minds its just one long word since the two words are always together. Lights On is a big step in him piecing things together to help tell us what he wants. My Mom came to Atlanta last...

Our road trip last week was a blast, other than the 2 day, 19 hour drive each way, but such is life when flying is just cost prohibitive. We're just lucky Isaiah does so well in the car for long trips, that is as long as he has his movies. The main reason we were going was since I was in an old co-worker and friends' wedding, John Yau. We worked together both at TEA 2 Architects and Drive 105 fm and I was honored to do the reading at his wedding. The reception was nice as well and it allowed me to catch up with a bunch of my old co-workers at TEA2. The rest of the time we were in Minnesota was to celebrate Rachel's 31st birthday, catch up with old friends, visit the old haunts, and spend some time with my sister who still lives up there and was gracious enough to host us while up there. On the way up we went a bit out of our way to hit my hometown of Racine, WI where we met up with my Mom and Dad for lunch where they loaded us up with goodies for Isaiah, Kringle and 7 s...

The preop appointments went well for the most part. We do have a bit of a worry though. Apparently the hospital is not considering themselves in network right now because Coventry did not pay them according to their contract for the last surgery (something like only $2000 out of the $35,000 they should have gotten) While we understand why the hospital is leery of getting a letter of agreement worked out again especially since Coventry didn’t honor what they signed last time, but it would’ve been nice to know this before the trip. Instead we learned this at check-in when they asked how we’d be paying the $10,000 out of network deductible. Well we haven’t paid anything other than the deposit to Dr. Fearon and we’re sitting in the surgery waiting room as I write this at 8:45am on the day of surgery. Dr. fearon’s office is making some calls and hopefully it all gets worked out, otherwise we may have a fairly big bill in our future. Before that ever happens we have a bunch of differe...

We got on the road at 11:30 yesterday which was pretty good for us. There was a lot of rain on the drive again, but we powered through at slower speeds and eventually made it to my cousin Angie's in Coppell where we're staying. Isaiah gets to see his older second cousin Karsten who was apparently so happy to see us he decided that clothes were just too much for him so he spent much of the evening running around naked. It was pretty amusing. I don't think Isaiah knew what was going on though, he just kept watching with a puzzled look on his face. Again we had problems getting him to bed. I'm thinking he was sleeping so much in the car these last few days and stuck in the car seat when he's awake that he has all this pent up energy that he needs to get out and it took until 11pm last night, plus he woke up at 2:30 for an hour. This morning we woke up to some horrible screams and we thought something really bad happened. As it turns out it wasn't so...

So day three… This was our supposed slow day since it was just the three of us since Becca and my Mom were swimming with the dolphins. We took our time in the morning and got to the Magic Kingdom around 11am. He was still pretty pooped and slept the whole way into the park and halfway through his first ride, the Pirates of the Caribbean. He finally woke up at the little flume ride down to the pirate battle since all the sudden there was a rush of air and a little mist of water from the boat. He didn’t freak out or anything, but kept nodding off during the ride. We then went next door to the Jungle Cruise which was alright, but he was already getting crabby and had a little fit on the boat thanks to me trying to clean some boogies from his nose. We could tell today was going to be a bit of a battle. We took it slow from there and tried to go on the Haunted Mansion after a leisurely walk, but the ride broke down while we were in line. We went back to the stroller and he promptly fell bac...

We did pretty good today. More than I thought we would. We went to EPCOT today and had a few more firsts. Half the park is Future World and the other half is the World Showcase. We got to the park around 10:30 and after grabbing some fast passes for the Test Track ride we went to Mexico and Isaiah had his first boat ride and helped find Donald Duck in the ride. He liked that alot so we went next door to Norway to ride the Maelstrom. This too was a boat ride, but a bit more adventurous than Mexico's lazy river like ride. There are some trolls, a portion where you go down a hill backwards and then down a much bigger hill to the end. We were a bit worried but he was laughing all the way down the hill. So that we consider his first 'thrill' ride. We continued around the World stopping in China, Germany, Italy, and Japan. We stopped for lunch in Morroco and Becca and Grandma K went to France for lunch. We then went on to England and Canada before heading back to Future World. I ...

My parents are coming in from Racine, WI today to celebrate the New Year and see Isaiah before the holidays are completely over. I found a great Polish sausage place about a half hour from our house and picked up some fresh (unsmoked) Polish Kielbasa and Cherry filled Pierogi (polish dumplings) which has been my family's traditional Christmas breakfast for as long as I can remember. Since my parents weren't here for Christmas we're going to do it for New Years Day breakfast! Anyways I've got to run and pick them up from the airport.

Saturday Izzy had his 4mo check up with Dr. Leonard, his pediatrician and got another round of immunizations. He's officially 15lbs 13oz (the 16lbs earlier this week was with his clothes on) I didn't catch his height, but both his height and weight are in the 75th percentile. His head circumference is 41cm and is only around 25th percentile, but its still growing outward which is good. The doc said he's doing pretty much everything a 4 month old would except turning himself over, but she did say that its not much to worry about yet. Next month we get to start adding some rice cereal to his diet and at 6months we may even start him on the jars of food. Its all pretty exciting. Yesterday night I had a good break and got to go to an Atlanta Thrasher's hockey game with my neighbor Josh. I'm a huge hockey fan if you didn't know already, and its a close third on the things I miss about Minnesota behind my family and friends. The Thrashers lost, badly, but it w...

Sorry for the lack of updates lately. We've been rather busy. I was in Arkansas for work earlier this week and we've had a ton of pre surgery doctors appointments and we've got more before his surgery on Wednesday. Additionally my Dad, my sister Becca and her husband Anthony were in town from Wisconsin and Minnesota Thursday through Sunday night which has kept us rather busy as well. We did take a ton of pictures and he had his first excursion out to the Atlanta Botanical Gardens where he did fairly well so we'll have an update with those pics and more sometime this week whenever I have some spare time to upload them. I'm trying to work as much as possible today and tomorrow before the surgery in case I need to be off more later in the week, but as of right now I've just got Wednesday off for the surgery and tomorrow afternoon for a couple hrs for the appointment we have with the hand specialist. On a good note he is starting to sleep longer in the nights the la...