It's only 10 AM...

I thought having one child at home was going to be so much easier and require less energy when David and Christopher started school. Boy, was I wrong! With the brothers here they would all play together and keep each other entertained. It's only 10 AM and all I have heard all morning is, "When can we get David and Christopher off the bus?", "In five more minutes?", "Why?", "Nooow can we see if the bus is here?" We've tried to find fun things to do during the day to make the separation anxiety that both of us are 'suffering' from a little easier, but today it is raining and I am feeling soooo lazy!

Last Wednesday, David started the second grade. I can't believe it! He wasn't exactly excited about starting school again. In fact, for the past few days, he's been trying to convince me to home school him! That is not an option for this Mom! Once school started, he was happy to see that a few of his friends from last year are in his class again. After only three days of attendance, he had his first illness in years. He had been complaining of a sore throat over the weekend. Since he never complains, I knew he was sick and brought him in to see the pediatrician yesterday. Turns out he had strep throat. He ended up getting a shot and is back to school today! Christopher started Pre-K on Friday. He was so excited to go. I had my alarm set to wake him (and David) up at 6. At 5:30 Christopher came in our bedroom fully dressed (including his belt, socks and shoes!!). As you may remember, Christopher is our child that sleeps until at least 8. I don't think he has ever been up that early in his life! Well, the early rising caused a slight problem at nap time. He laid down to rest and fell asleep. When nap time was over, the teacher could not wake him up. She got worried, thinking it was heart related, and called in the principal. She wasn't sure what to do either, so they called in David!?! David told them, "Oh, yeah-we don't wake him up!" :) And he was right! Five minutes later, Christopher was still sleeping and started crying so they called me to come wake him. Those of you who have heard Christopher cry, know that should not be a school activity. When I arrived at the school I could hear him in the office. I walked back to his class and he was standing up, still asleep, crying. It was the most heartbreaking thing (well, one of them!) I have seen. As I walked back to his class, the teachers were standing in the hall at their doors. One of them smiled and asked if that was my kid crying! I held back the tears and put on a fake smile and as proudly as I could, said "YES, it is!" even though I really wanted to say, no, I'm just the babysitter...or step mom. :) I felt horrible, he had disrupted the entire school and slept right through it!

In my last post I mentioned that Christopher had an upcoming pulmunolgist visit. We went to tell them that he was off of all of his medicines! He suggested getting on a sleeping medicine since school was starting. I declined and if we continue to have problems with him waking up, we MAY consider it, but not at this point. They ran a lung function test and warned us ahead of time that since he is off the asthma medicine and because of his health history, he would not do well. Christopher ended up scoring 97 out of 100!! He did GREAT!!! We'll see the cardiologist next week for a check-up with him. We don't anticipate any new problems there either, but as always, the anxiety level is up for Momma!

Our Last Weekend Before School Starts

Julie and Jacob floating in the lake. This was when we first got in and Jacob was a little scared. He wanted me to keep "two hands" on his floatie.

I can't believe that summer is already over! Sure, there have been some days (OK, quite a few) when I was thinking year round school was a great idea (yes, even for three year olds!). But today, not so much. I'm sitting here thinking of back in my "crazy" days of how I dreamed of this time. The boys are now old enough to get themselves dressed, wipe their own hinneys, put their shoes on and buckle their own car seats. They are actually little people now and I love it! :) ...What I didn't dream about was how they can talk back, refuse to follow directions, argue and fight with each other and...take an eternity at those previously mentioned tasks when we are already late!!! My brave middle man jumping off the top of the party barge into the lake.

Since this was the last weekend before school starts, we wanted to try and do something fun and that all three of the boys would enjoy. Some of our neighbors have a camp on Lake Vierette and invited us over there for the day. We went boat riding, tubing, swimming in the middle of the lake and alligator "hunting". As in we saw an alligator in the ditch and their fathers (yep, the really mature 'boys') ran and grabbed a fishing pole and some meat to try and catch it. Good times!! David and his friend, Abby being towed in the tube.

We stayed home today as a family and grilled, fished and set up the slip and slide. I love lazy days like today and I think the boys do too!

Lazy Sunday afternoon at home BBQing, slip sliding and fishing.

A few months ago we met with Christopher's pediatric pulmunologist over my long term concerns of him being on so many medications (especially the ones that had some dangerous side effects and were suppose to be helping him sleep-but were not). We set a goal of Christopher being medicine free (NO asthma, reflux, sleeping, heart, etc) before he starts school. He starts school on Friday and I'm super excited to say he is not on any medicine and has not been for a couple of months!!! Since we've moved in about three weeks ago, he has stayed in his bed all night long and we've not had to go up there! I'm not saying he 'sleeps' all night...but he does stay in his bed and has learned how to get himself back to relaxing and sleep. He does not wake up as cranky as he used to. I guess we should have moved a long time ago!! :) Even though I don't anticipate any problems tomorrow these "big" doctor appointments always cause anxiety for me. Please keep my middle man in your prayers tomorrow!!

A year later....

So I haven't updated the blog in quite a while. Here's a quick overview of what we've done over the past year...

August 2009
David started 1st grade

September 2009
Christopher and Jacob started Mom's Day Out three days a week. I worked on the three mornings they were in school.

Christopher ended up having an overnight sleep study performed to try and figure out why he was waking up so often at night. We found out that he was actually waking up far more often than what we thought. The pediatric pulmunologist described his sleeping disorder as a type of seizure (sounds worse than it is). He does not have any control over his limb movements and that was waking him up. There were times he was waking up four times an HOUR! He was put on some anti seizure medicines (and they didn't work). So they kept trying with some different medicines. He was also diagnosed as having reflux (duh!) and asthma and put on some preventative medicines for that.

Christopher strapped up for his "sleep" study. I'm not sure how anyone could sleep wearing all of that!

October 2009
We visited an area Pumpkin Patch with my parents and for Halloween. For our family Trick-or-Treating party, I dressed up like Nadia Sullman (OctoMom)! I guess I live a boring life for that to be one of my highlights for October!! :)

This is me as Octomom. I had two more babies strapped to each ankle! :)

November 2009
Brad and I went on a much needed solo vacation while Brad's parents watched the boys. We found a cheap cruise to Mexico. This was our first (and LAST!) cruise. For some reason, after no hurricane activity all summer...a hurricane decided to come through the gulf in NOVEMBER! We just happened to be on a cruise ship in it's path. So the boat was extremely rough which made it to dangerous for the shows to go on, it also made it to dangerous to be out on the decks, it also made it to dangerous to swim (so they took all of the water out of the pools)... It was still nice to get away, but I think next time we'll find an alternative means of transportation to get there! :)

After ten years of living in Maine, my twin sis decided to move down to Baton Rouge. Being the great sister that I am (and someone that looks for any reason to travel!) I decided to support my sis on her new adventure! I flew to meet her and we drove her car from Maine to Baton Rouge! We took a few detours (New York City, the Biltmore Estate...). It was a great road trip, if you can get past my sister's driving skills - or lack thereof!)

Julie at the Statue of Liberty Park with NYC in the background.

December 2009
Every member of our household is an official member of the "Underwear Club"!! :) No more diapers!!!

We enjoyed Christmas at our house. My twin sister and parents stayed the night and helped look out for Santa. It's great having my twin sister in town!!

January 2010
David turns seven years old!?! How can he be so old?? He wanted a rock star party and so we did! It was a blast to plan. I'm not sure who had more fun - the kids or me!?

Dave Man and his fanclub.

February 2010

Brad and I went to Washington DC for a mini vacation before his Chick-fil-A Conference. It was right after their huge snow storm so the snow was still everywhere, but thankfully a little warmer. The city was beautiful! After all of my letters to my senators, they were able to get us in to tour the White House!! And that my friends, is one of the reasons you should always keep in touch with your Senators! :)

Christopher turned four years old and Jacob turned three!! They still mostly share the same friends, so I had their birthday party together. They ended up having a snow birthday party! Yep, we had a guy come in with a snoball machine and he made "snow" in the backyard! We made snowmen and had snowball fights!

March 2010

We celebrated "Christopher, the survivor" at the American Heart Associations Heart Walk. We joined a group of other families that have children with Congenital Heart Defects (or diseases). It's great to see how active these CHD children are, especially considering how much these kids have been through!

The boys each had their own Easter Programs at school. It was a blast to see them stand up on the stage and perform. None of my kids seem to have a shy bone in them...not sure where that came from! :) We also did our annual tradition of dying our hands...uh, I mean easter eggs! :)

It had been quite a while since I had a girls slumber party, so I gathered a bunch of my girl friends and we had an "old fashioned" slumber party. It was a blast-complete with the same games we used to play as kids and we threw in a few adult activities too! A friend of mine came and taught us all how to paint.

April 2010

Spring baseball season begins! All three of the boys were able to play this year. I coached Christopher and Jacob's team. This was David's first season to play coach pitch. He played in Gonzales this year, it is a lot more competitive (and organized) than the Y.

We took a family road trip up to Indiana to see my big sis and her husband. I have to admit, it was much prettier than I thought it was going to be! We stopped at a few places in Tennessee and Kentucky on the way and really enjoyed our spring break!

Brad and I went on a couples trip to Rome!!! ...georgia... :) We went to the Winshape Retreat Center for a couples retreat. It is a retreat center that Chick-fil-A sponsors and it was awesome! Anyone can go and I would suggest it. Each session has a different theme. We went on the Romantic Adventure. They had a ropes and obstacle course set up for us. One of the challenges was climbing a really tall telephone pole, standing on top of a small 8X12 platform that is on the top of it and then jumping off to reach a trapeze...oh, did I mention both of you do it at the same time??? Yep!!! I was scared to death and the entire pole was shaking, but we made it alive.

We had the fourth annual LPCF Tennis Tournament and Fundraiser, as always, it was a great hit and very successful thanks to the generous families and businesses in our area. The money raised and the Foundation was created to help support families affected by CHDs that have to travel for medical care. Baton Rouge does not have a pediatric cardio-thoratic surgeon and most of the children in our area with complex heart disease travel to Boston for their medical care. The last thing that these Moms and Dads need to add to list of worries and stress is how are they going to afford the meals at the hospital or a place to stay while they are up there...that is where LPCF comes in to the rescue! :)

May 2010

The boys did their annual swimming lessons and then we took a beach trip to Destin.

The boys finished up school with end of the year school parties and awards programs. David earned A's in every subject all year long! He's quite the little academic student! I'm pretty sure he got those skills from his Mom! :)

For Memorial Day, the boys and I went down to the National Cemetery in Baton Rouge. It was quite touching to see all of the tombstones there. I think it was a real eye opener to David too as I explained that people had to die for us to have the freedoms we have...so we can go to church where we want, say what we want, go hunting-if we want...

June 2010

My brother came back from his tour in Afghanistan. While on leave, he was able to go to my parents house. My sisters and extended family were all able to go. It was the first time in many years (7 or 8, I think) that all of my siblings were all together at the same time. It was great and I hope we're able to do it more often.

After almost a year of keeping our eyes open and trying to decide what we should do about our living situation, we finally found our dream house! The only bad thing was another couple also wanted the house as bad as we did and were in the process of negotiating a contract when we went to see the home. The seller was not wanting to wait until the buyer could sell their house (and ours wasn't even up for sale!!). So we did what any crazy irrational competitive couple would do and made a non-contingent overpriced offer so we would "win" the house. The next day the offer was accepted and Brad and I just looked at each other like "uhhh, duhh...what do we do now?" So we quickly got rid of a BUNCH of stuff at our house, took pictures and posted them on the for sale by owner website. The stress set in...we did NOT want to be stuck with two house notes and the expenses that would go with both of them!! So thankfully, six DAYS after putting our house up for sale - we received an acceptable offer on it!

July 2010

We went back to Destin for the Fourth of July. The beaches were still clean and the water looked great. The waves were rough, but clean! :) The boys all had a great time. It's always entertaining when you have five little boys ranging in age of 3 1/2 to 7 (my nephews were there too!)

We moved!!! After seven years of living in Longwood and many memories, we moved into the house we have dreamed about. Each of the boys have their own bedroom (all upstairs so we don't have to trip over their toys or hear them argue!), a huge backyard (with plenty of room for a pool!), a ski lake (yep, it is a water skiing lake - but you can fish too!) and wonderful neighbors. I have to admit, I was very sad to leave Longwood. That was our first house and where we met our best friends; the place where my babies 'grew up'. The potty training days, the sleepless nights worrying about kids, their first steps...

Brad and the boys in our new backyard (along with the fish they caught).

Holiday Update 2009

Ok...so my Mom has been asking me when I am going to update the blog!?! I just did it! :) Here is a copy of my recent Holiday letter that was enclosed in the Christmas cards....

Merry Christmas, Happy Kwanza, Happy Hanukkah,
Happy “Winter Break”, Happy New Year...
What ever you celebrate this time of year –
Have fun celebrating it!

Well, well, well. Here we are again! The year 2009 was so much like 2008, it was hard at times to even tell a difference! It all started with January, just like the year before. And before we knew it, February came along and then March. Our plucky yet uber-intelligent and gifted and talented children soon recognized the pattern, and we were able to confidently predict April and May. It was all downhill after that, barely even a challenge! David a future mathematician pursuing a PhD and an office all to himself, soon hypothesized that Christmas would fall in December this year, and sure enough, here I am writing to you and it will be Christmas soon (in December!!!).

Our children have excelled in absolutely everything this year, embarrassing themselves (and everyone else) with their extraordinary abilities. Fortunately, they have level headed and objective parents who maintain their feet firmly on the ground. We do, however, have them attend elocution and deportment classes in preparation for the various prize and award ceremonies we anticipate they will have to attend over their lifetimes. They have been enrolled in Swedish language classes for some time, because, after all, we would hate for them to be at a disadvantage when they travel to accept their Nobel Peace Prizes!

We were able to squeeze a little traveling in this year in between the children’s studies. We started in Aspen, went to Belarus, the Congo, Denmark, Ethiopia, the Falklands, Greenland, Holland, Italy, Japan, Korea, Malaysia, New Zealand, Venezuela and Zaire. Our trip sailing our new yacht around the world was a great experience for the kids. We learned to communicate with the dolphins and even discovered a new region of deep water volcanoes.

I, of course, am still the envy of everyone with my perfection. Martha Stewart will be visiting our estate next week to get some more recipe ideas and decorating tips from me. She is just lovely and I enjoy teaching her many of my tricks, so they may be passed on to the more “common” folks around the country. In other news, I will begin an ancient Greek class next year, so I can see if the Bible was properly translated.

Brad has been immersed with another graduate study program. He has managed to co-author a paper on Multidimensional Customer Attribute Analysis by Conjoint Survey and has accepted a Nobel Prize for his discoveries in Quantum Physics. We are proud of his work serving on the Board of Directors of IBM, Coca Cola, and Walt Disney.

Well I could go on, but I don’t want you to feel inadequate at this very special time of the year. I do hope you have reached at least a few of your objectives and performance indicators you have set for yourselves.
Much love to you all, and do feel free to bask in the glow of our glory….

The Arton Family

Maybe I should explain...when I was younger, my parents had a friend that would send out a two page Holiday letter that was not a joke but a real bragging letter about everything their kids did for the year. Every year, when the Christmas Cards started arriving, we would look for theirs! This is my lame attempt of copying their annual holiday update! :)

Last Trip of the Summer :(

Christopher and Jacob playing in the sand

Christopher

Jacob kept putting his face down in the water but didn't want to get wet.

Last Thursday, the boys and I (along with Nana) headed back to the "Happy House". I worked that day so we weren't able to get out of town until about 6 and then began the long five hour trek to Destin. The boys fell asleep on the way and when we arrived at midnight Jacob and Christopher kept running around the house looking for Pop and G'ami. They were there last time we went and I guess the little boys thought they would be there again this time. Jacob ran around the house screaming "Paaaaaaaaaaaaaaaapppp". It was really cute...but after a few minutes and after having a long day at work and the long drive, the cuteness wore off pretty quick!

I think on my last post I put how much easier it is to travel with the boys...maybe I spoke a little too soon. This trip wasn't bad, but Jacob has been wanting to be held all of the time! So that on top of Christopher being too exhausted to walk because of medical reasons has TOTALLY exhausted me! I carried Jacob down to the beach, pushing the beach stroller (not a stroller for kids, but a special stroller to push the beach toys and junk down that rolls smoothly in the sand). On the way back to the house, he wanted me to carry him. I refused and so he cried the entire...I mean ENTIRE way back to the house. It was a long walk home! :) Thankfully the lesson was learned and the next day, no fussing and he walked the entire way there and back! The next day we went to the outlets and bought Jacob some big boy run fast shoes. They are "special" shoes that can not come off of the ground. You can NOT be held in them! They are soooo cool and seem to be working, so far...

the boys walking down to the neighborhood pool

David doing an awesome jump trick into the pool

Brad ended up driving down the next evening to join us. It was nice to have Nana (Stephanie) there too. It was man to man defense. It was nice for all of us to be able to go go-cart riding together instead of me (or Brad) having to stay behind with two kids while the other rides with one. Stephanie watched the boys one night so Brad and I could go out. It was super nice, I think we are going to have to start traveling with a friend to help out with the boys...or to allow date nights on vacation! :)

Brad and Julie

Summer is over now, this morning we went to David's school to drop off his school supplies and meet his teacher. It was tough to get up this morning (not just for him, but for me too!). He'll start school on Wednesday so today he wants to "just stay home" and tomorrow we'll head over to the Children's Museum in New Orleans. They love going over there! I'll post again later this week to show you pictures of David's 1st day of 1st grade...I can not believe he is going to be a 1st grader!! Time Flies!!

Brad and Jacob Go-Cart Riding

Update on Middle Man...

On Friday we went and saw Dr. Brumund. He ended up doing an EKG, echo and checking Christopher's O2 saturation levels. Christopher's pulmonary valve and tricuspid valve are still leaking and stenosed, but not significantly different from his last visit. Dr. Brumund does not think that is what is causing Christopher to be so exhausted. His O2 levels were lower than they've ever been since his surgery and his heart rate was significantly higher than it has been so he was sent home with a monitor to check for rhythm issues. We'll have those results later this week. I had mentioned how Christopher is still not sleeping through the night and waking up a lot! Dr. Brumund sent us to the Pediatric Pulunologist for him to check for sleep apnea.

Today Christopher and I met with the Pediatric Pulumologist and he said that Christopher does have sleep apnea. There could be many things causing it so we are going to do an overnight sleep study at their office to try and determine the cause. He mentioned that it could be something as minor as reflux...and we ALL remember Christopher's problems with reflux!!! It could also be heart related...we have a higher chance in that aspect too!! He also mentioned that it could be neurological. They'll place all kinds of wires on him and watch him sleep all night. Wow, what a fun job to watch people sleep in the middle of the night! :)

The Pediatric Pulmunologist also diagnosed him as having asthma. He explained that when they broke his sternum to get into the heart it could have messed up his tracheal tube and with his previous reflux problems on top of that it could be causing the asthma. I haven't had a chance to google asthma so I am really clueless what it is...but from what this Dr. said it is not anything too serious. It may affect him playing sports, but we are already limited in that area because of his heart. We were sent home with quite a few medicines that he'll be on for at least a year. He did mention that it is a chronic disease and we will have to visit him regularly for it to be monitored. We saw Dr. Thomas, he spoke on my level and explained everything in layman's terms. I really liked him and I'm glad to have another good doctor on our "team".

Since Christopher has been so puny we haven't been doing to much. Yesterday afternoon we were going to do touristy stuff downtown. We started with the USS Kidd. The boys loved it. By the time we were finished there, Christopher was too tired to walk around downtown so we just headed to Dearman's (the BEST burgers in the world!!) and then headed home for naps. Here are a few pictures.

Cardiac Christopher is back!

David, Andrew, Jacob and Bailey (Christopher would not get out of stroller)

Since we had a "cold" front come through this past weekend, we decided to take advantage of the 87 degree weather! Brad and I brought the boys to the New Orleans zoo on Sunday afternoon. We met Brad's sister-in-law and her sons. Her sons are close in age to mine and love hanging out together. We checked out all of the animals!

David and Jacob

For the past couple of months, we've been noticing a decrease in Christopher's activity levels. On Sunday, he did not even want to get out of the stroller to walk around the zoo! That is not like Christopher. Later that evening, I was looking for him and found him asleep in the middle of my bedroom floor. On Tuesday, his teacher mentioned again that he was resting a lot more than normal and more than he was playing. That afternoon I called to set up an appointment for Dr. Brumund, the pediatric cardiologist. As my luck would have it he was working in the Hammond and Lafayette offices later this week and the day he was in the Baton Rouge office he was booked. So why not just wait until next week...I would have, but he is on vacation next week!! I went ahead and made an appointment to see the pediatrician since she has a daughter that has the same disease as Christopher and could advise us if she thinks we should see another cardiologist in Dr. B's office or if we could wait until after he is back from vacation. We went to see her yesterday and she ran all kinds of test on him just to see if maybe something else was making him tired. She did blood counts, flu and mono tests and they all came back normal. She thought we should see the cardiologist sooner than later...so she called Dr. B and he is going to meet us this afternoon in the Baton Rouge office after he finishes at the Lafayette office. He is so awesome! We are thankful to have such a great team of doctors! I am anxious to see what he says! I'll update later....

Happy 4th of July!

After that last post from the heart conference, I probably should update you after a few e-mails I got...I am OK!! :) I just have sad days sometime and I chose that night to share it with y'all. Sorry to be so depressing. I am feeling happier now and we went to the "Happy House" (that is what G'ami named the Beach House) for the Fourth of July so I am back to a happier mode.

We went to Destin for the Fourth of July weekend. The kids had a great time. I mentioned this when we returned from the mountains last month, but it is amazing how much easier it is to travel with the kids since they are a little older so we are taking advantage of it this summer! Brad ended up coming home a few days earlier than I did, so I actually drove home with the three kiddos solo...and it was not bad at all! Jacob is able to walk (even though he still wants to "hold you me") and is getting much better about following directions not running away. We are still working on quiet voices though, especially in the car! They can get a bit loud and rambunctious! We have had a fun summer so far and this past week was no exception!

We headed to Destin last Thursday, along with the rest of the country. The traffic was pretty heavy and what usually is a five hour drive ended up taking much longer with potty stops, dinner and traffic! We arrived late and the kids didn't get to bed until midnight. We don't usually go by a strict schedule, but they are always in bed before midnight (usually around nine)...except last week! Jacob and Christopher loved playing in the sand. I tried to help them build sand castles, but I was about as much help as another three year old. David brought his boogie board and was pretty good at it. He would go out and ride the waves back in to the beach. It looked like a lot of fun so I made an attempt at it...it is not easy! Thankfully I don't have the video to prove it!!

On Saturday night (the 4th of July) we ended up grilling and then heading down to the beach for fireworks. Brad's brother's family and his parents were there too. It was nice to have the entire family together...even though with five little boys it got a little rowdy...ok maybe a LOT rowdy!

It was a nice week away from home and I really enjoyed the opportunity to take an afternoon nap each day! Now back to summer reality of heat with no beach, chauffeuring kids around, t-ball and no naps! :)