What’s been going on during that time? Hmm, well, here’s a short synopsis:

• Ellie got out of the hospital the Friday after she was admitted. She spent three days there, none of which she or Helene enjoyed.
• The following Wednesday Steve was “no longer needed” by his company, whose name he will not speak here. Unfortunately he wasn’t there long enough for FMLA to apply and as Washington is an at-will state the company could let him go when and how they wanted. Needless to say he won’t be recommending them or their products to anyone in the future.
• All in all July was a pretty bad month.
• Ellie went in for an ultrasound after her infection had cleared up and the doctor determined that her left kidney was slightly underdeveloped. This was allowing reflux from the bladder up into the kidney. They will check again when she is a year old as they are expecting she will grow out of it.
• Helene had her XX birthday in October. There was cake, ice cream and much rejoicing!
• Steve got a contract job with Integra Telecom, located in Portland, Oregon one day shy of his three month anniversary of being unemployed. He’s enjoying the work and the people and has received good feedback from them on the work he is doing. It does mean traveling across the Columbia River into Oregon on a daily basis again, but that is minor compared to the benefits of working.
• Josie and Robbie are growing like, well, saplings we guess. Getting taller but not as much around the middle. They are both in the < 20% weight range (Josie being in the 5% weight range for most of the year), although Robbie is turning into a pretty solid little linebacker. They eat how much they want and walk away when they are done. I’d never seen a 4 year old and 2 year old walk away from sweets like these two do. Obviously didn’t get their parents sweet tooth.
• We were fortunate enough to go to Disneyland in December. It’s a tradition that the December, or Christmas season, after we have a child we go to Disneyland. We did it with Josie and with Robbie and we had scheduled the trip back in May, before Ellie was born and before Steve’s old employer did what they did. Fortunately with Steve getting a new job and by economizing during the trip (having a time share at Disney helps cut the costs) we were able to enjoy 4 nights there as well as a pretty nice drive there and back.

Those are the highlights, at least what can be recalled right now. We’re sure there’s more to write and we’ll try to be better about it this year. And we’ll also post more pictures than we have been. We promise!

This will be a short post, just so we can share some videos that we took while we were there. They are hosted on YouTube and linked below.

Josie, Robbie and Dale on Main Street, Disneyland

Jungle Cruise Ride

]]> http://www.the-abbotts.net/2011/03/11/disneyland-we-went-to-disneyland/feed/ 0 http://www.the-abbotts.net/2010/12/31/happy-new-year-2/ http://www.the-abbotts.net/2010/12/31/happy-new-year-2/#comments Fri, 31 Dec 2010 18:54:26 +0000 Steve http://www.the-abbotts.net/?p=498 Continue reading →]]> Boy, our holidays at the end of 2010 haven’t turned out for the best. Robbie visited the ER on Christmas day and here on New Year’s Eve we’ve got a stomach virus that’s hit everyone but Steve. Robbie had it earlier this week and both Helene and Josie were up for most of the night just being plain out sick.

Fortunately Steve has managed to avoid it (knock on wood) and has been able to keep things together and take care of his sick girls. So tonight we’re going to spend it together as a family and get everyone to bed early.

We hope that everyone has a fantastic new year and a wonderful 2011!

Robbie and his bulldozer

Don't you just hate those hospital gowns?

Showing his "Superman" patch of normal skin

Trying to have fun

We thought we’d put up some pictures of our poor boy while we were in the ER. The pediatric ER at our local hospital is fantastic. Robbie even got a new bulldozer that he totally fell in love with. We took him to his doctor’s office today to check in with them and he was sent for allergy testing. We should know in the next day or two if he has a problem with cashews or peanuts (the two suspects). We haven’t given him any peanut products yet but the cashew he had was fried in peanut oil and I didn’t notice that when I gave it to him. We’re crossing our fingers it’s a problem with cashews. That will be a lot easier to deal with than peanuts.

Josie’s with Helene’s parents and we’re hoping to be leaving soon.

Hope everyone had a great Christmas!

We’re going to the 5:30 church service with Helene’s mom and dad, then we’ll stop and have dinner before coming home.

The it will be off to bed for the kids and for mom and dad too! If Josie has figured anything out about Christmas she’ll have us up even earlier than usual.

Hope everyone has a great Christmas!

Helene was holding his right hand while walking him out of the living room, and away from the Christmas tree. After a couple of steps he noticed what she was doing and, deciding that he didn’t want to go any further, he attempted to drop to the floor with Helene still holding his hand.

Long story short he ended up with a condition called Nursemaids Elbow, where when he dropped his elbow popped slightly out of joint and a ligament slid into the space. This made his arm painful to move and also made picking anything up or holding anything extremely difficult.

So after talking with the advice nurse we went into the emergency room where the doctor came in, listened to what happened and after telling us what it was he just popped things back into the right places.

Robbie cried for a couple of minutes and then was pretty much back to normal. By the time we stopped for dinner a half hour later he was eating with both hands again and picking up his milk without any problems.

So now the score is:
Josie – 1 ER visit
Robbie – 1 Fireman visit, 1 ER visit

Let’s hope it stays that way for a long, long time.

We woke to the surprise of a water leak in our ceiling between the kitchen and living room. The contractor that did the remodel is going to come over tomorrow morning to look into it. For now it’s an occassional drip, drip into a bucket. Fortunately it’s not a burst pipe or anything too serious. Hopefully it can be addressed tomorrow morning with minimal fuss and mess.

We’re celebrating Thanksgiving with Helene’s family today, then back to our normal schedule tomorrow. Hope everyone has a great day!

On a side note, Robbie is now in full toddle mode. He walks probably 75% of the time now and would rather stand back up than take off crawling when he falls. I guess we have a walking boy now! He’s losing his “Franken-Robbie” walk though. He’s much steadier than he was last week. He still high steps which is very cute.

Anyway, back to the birthday boy. We took him in for his checkup the following week and he was 29.5 inches tall (50th percentile) and weighed 18 pounds 10 ounces (3rd percentile). Looks like we have another skinny kid. The nice thing with Robbie, though, is that he will eat almost anything we put in front of him. In fact, right around his birthday, he decided he was not going to eat any more baby food and wouldn’t even eat the toddler food (like Gerber Graduates) that we had bought for him. If it wasn’t the same thing that we were eating then he didn’t want it. In some ways this is much easier since we don’t have to buy special food for him or make something different. In other ways it’s more difficult because I have to remember that whatever we are having is something that can be cut up into small pieces and doesn’t contain peanuts or shellfish (two things he can’t have until he’s two years old). Overall I’d rather he not fight us on eating big people food like Josie still does at times.

So far there is definitely a difference in raising a boy than a girl (besides the obvious). Robbie is much more active. Josie was content to sit in one spot and play or read. Robbie is all over the place. We were playing in the yard the other day and he crawled over to the slide but instead of going to the ladder (even when I helped him) he insisted on trying to climb up the slide. He has at least 5 words but definitely doesn’t gain new ones as quickly as Josie did. His babbling has exploded recently. This is all stuff I learned in school but it’s interesting to see it first hand. He loves blocks, balls, and playing peek-a-boo and patty-cake. He has officially taken his first steps but, like his sister, he refuses to walk if he thinks anyone is watching. It took a trip to Disneyland to finally get her interested in walking. Hopefully we won’t have to wait that long for him since we’re not going any time soon.

As for Josie, she is very excited about starting preschool in September. She loves to help me cook in the kitchen which also seems to encourage her to eat what she’s being served. We still struggle with feeding issues with her and the last time she was weighed she was still around the 3rd-5th percentile. She is perhaps the world’s slowest eater. She is very interested in learning to read and write and recently started drawing pictures of her family which vaguely resembled people. I was pretty excited to see that. She has quite a few imaginary friends who come to visit. They are always characters from Disney animated movies. For instance, when we have “Ariel Josie” in the house, then naturally her friends Prince Eric, Flounder, and Sebastian are around. She has full conversations with them and invites them to eat with us, complete with their own chairs and plates at the table.

That’s pretty much the run down of life right now. We’ll get some info about our remodel and addition up soon. And I’ll add pictures to this post as soon as I have time to sit at Steve’s computer and weed through them all. I at least wanted to get something written since I’m already so late.