Trying out our new camera! I like it!
Saturday, November 29, 2008
Sunday, November 23, 2008
Hello! I have not been so great about updating out blog! I can just as easily upload pictures on Facebook and have then neglected this blog
! We are doing pretty well. Kjersten has adjusted very well to her Spanish Immersion kindergarten, which is an all-day program. School starts very early in the day and ends early afternoon. I know being immersed around another language can be tough, but it'll be a wonderful thing for her long term. She is, more and more, speaking in some Spanish at home spontaneously and frequently sings songs in Spanish too. Her teacher states that she is now able to read more in Spanish than some of her Spanish speaking classmates!
Tianna attends a speech therapy group through Minneapolis Public Schools a couple days a week and then goes to all day preschool two other full days of the week. She loves it and wishes she could attend every day, I think! We've noticed an improvement in the clarity of her speech over the past couple of months, likely in part due to her having speech therapy four times per week (2 times are outpatient therapy). Tianna is slowwwwly moving out of her destructive stage and more into learning to take better care of posessioins. She's full daytime potty trained very consistently now.
Nathaniel is still a sweet one year old, though he certainly is finding his share of trouble to get into-- raiding the trash or recycling, climbing on things he shouldn't, throwing books on the floor in big heaps... At least he's willing to help clean up! He runs around the house and loves to chase our cat, Jasmine, whom we adopted into our family in Sept. He jabbers a lot, with quite a few distinguishable words to familiar listeners.
Carl just started a new job as a custodial assistant night supervisor at Augsburg College. His commute is much less, has chance of advancement, increase in pay, sundays off, plus education benefits. The only real downside to the job is the graveyard shift- it's been hard for Carl to adjust too. It is nice to have him home in the early part of the evening, when I get home from work. The only other adjustment right now is to, yet again, find dependeable long term babysitting for two mornings a week. The sitter we had works her other job until 3 AM and can't make it here for the 7:15Am time that I need help. I can't add another stop to my already hectic mornings, and with Carl not getting home until 4:45 Am, it's too hard to put any responsibility on him at that hour. I'd appeciate prayer for this! Dependable, long-term babysitting has been a tough thing for us-- when we find them it seems that schedule changes occur which prevent them from providing ongoing help!
On the whole we are doing well and looking forward to going to spend Christmas with the Jensen side of the family (as opposed to the Erickson side). That's a first since the year 2000! A long 9 day vacation sounds pretty fantastic as well!
! We are doing pretty well. Kjersten has adjusted very well to her Spanish Immersion kindergarten, which is an all-day program. School starts very early in the day and ends early afternoon. I know being immersed around another language can be tough, but it'll be a wonderful thing for her long term. She is, more and more, speaking in some Spanish at home spontaneously and frequently sings songs in Spanish too. Her teacher states that she is now able to read more in Spanish than some of her Spanish speaking classmates!Tianna attends a speech therapy group through Minneapolis Public Schools a couple days a week and then goes to all day preschool two other full days of the week. She loves it and wishes she could attend every day, I think! We've noticed an improvement in the clarity of her speech over the past couple of months, likely in part due to her having speech therapy four times per week (2 times are outpatient therapy). Tianna is slowwwwly moving out of her destructive stage and more into learning to take better care of posessioins. She's full daytime potty trained very consistently now.
Nathaniel is still a sweet one year old, though he certainly is finding his share of trouble to get into-- raiding the trash or recycling, climbing on things he shouldn't, throwing books on the floor in big heaps... At least he's willing to help clean up! He runs around the house and loves to chase our cat, Jasmine, whom we adopted into our family in Sept. He jabbers a lot, with quite a few distinguishable words to familiar listeners.
Carl just started a new job as a custodial assistant night supervisor at Augsburg College. His commute is much less, has chance of advancement, increase in pay, sundays off, plus education benefits. The only real downside to the job is the graveyard shift- it's been hard for Carl to adjust too. It is nice to have him home in the early part of the evening, when I get home from work. The only other adjustment right now is to, yet again, find dependeable long term babysitting for two mornings a week. The sitter we had works her other job until 3 AM and can't make it here for the 7:15Am time that I need help. I can't add another stop to my already hectic mornings, and with Carl not getting home until 4:45 Am, it's too hard to put any responsibility on him at that hour. I'd appeciate prayer for this! Dependable, long-term babysitting has been a tough thing for us-- when we find them it seems that schedule changes occur which prevent them from providing ongoing help!
On the whole we are doing well and looking forward to going to spend Christmas with the Jensen side of the family (as opposed to the Erickson side). That's a first since the year 2000! A long 9 day vacation sounds pretty fantastic as well!
Sunday, August 17, 2008
It's too easy to be serious and not notice the funny side if life. Today Kjersten made a couple comments that were pretty funny:
I had told Kjersten she would give the offering to Jesus. When offering was being taken at church she commented to me after looking around, "Jesus is going to have a lot of money!"
During one of the prayers I whispered to her that they were praying for people who were sick and that she could pray too, she responded "I want to pray for myself because I have booggers!"
Tianna has picked up the habit of telling everyone that she gets mad at, "You're fired!" I have no idea how she picked that expression up unless she saw some commercial for The Apprentice (which we don't watch).
I had told Kjersten she would give the offering to Jesus. When offering was being taken at church she commented to me after looking around, "Jesus is going to have a lot of money!"
During one of the prayers I whispered to her that they were praying for people who were sick and that she could pray too, she responded "I want to pray for myself because I have booggers!"
Tianna has picked up the habit of telling everyone that she gets mad at, "You're fired!" I have no idea how she picked that expression up unless she saw some commercial for The Apprentice (which we don't watch).
Wednesday, July 30, 2008
Pre- 4th of July fireworks from our back yard. They kids thought they needed to hide behind our swing for safety and had Alejandro go back with them!
Finally brave enough to sit ON the swing, from the view of Cristiane
This was one of the smaller, quieter fireworks-- progressively building up to larger ones
Don't they look excited? The camera didn't capture it in still shots, I guess. Cris did get some good video footage with sound on her digital camera but don't think I can post it on here.
Wednesday, June 04, 2008
Wednesday, May 21, 2008
Tianna's surgery went smoothly on monday! We'd had some concern about whether it was a go when she was diagnosed with an ear infection the previous week and developed a cough on that saturday/sunday. But her ENT and plastic surgeon both said that her ears wouldn't be a problem-- the ENT could just clean out and culture whatever might be in there. So, she has new PE tubes in her ears (hopefully her hearing will improve again-- she had quite a bit of hearing loss to low tones in one of her ears) and her pharyngeal flap proceeded without a hitch. I got to go into the OR with Tianna and help ease her when they gave her the anesthesia. Once she was out, I went to the waiting room to wait it out while Carl went for a walk. I could sense more peace this time than on previous surgeries-- I think partly due to having been through this before and partly due to the prayers of others on our behalf! Anyway, when the recovery room paged us, we were able to be in there to sooth and console her as she was arousing and system was stabilizing again post surgery. Once she seemed adequately stabilized we moved to the inpatient unit. Tianna had to be on oxygen (blow-by oxygen, no mask) for several hours after surgery, but during the course of the night they switched the air to room air, which she did just fine with. She started arousing some later in the afternoon, when she noticed that Dragon Tales was on TV and was just awake enough to express interest in that show! By Tuesday morning she was more herself-- singing, wanting to go for walks and to assert what movies she wanted to see (and what she DIDN'T want to see!).
Tianna came home Tuesday afternoon. She's on an all liquid diet for 2 weeks and then 2 weeks of soft mechanicals after that. She has been having a bit of a hard time with this- she snuck a french fry yesterday and nearly choked on it so we're having to keep an eye out. For the most part she's been good about not rubbing the spot where she had her surgery (granted, being in the back of her throat/mouth it would be hard to get at). The real challenge has been getting her to get adequate fluid and nutrition as she has little interest in ingesting much. I tried making vanilla ice cream into chocolate ice cream (putting instant breakfast into it for more vitamins and protein) in the blender and boy was she mad about that! Hopefully this will pass and she'll be willing to enjoy these tasty treats we're trying to give her!
Kjersten and Aunt Janel both say that they understand Tianna better. I can't tell a particularly huge difference, but that may be due to her having more congestion right now and also due to the fact that i understood quite a bit of what she said prior to the surgery as well. I'm sure we'll be witnessing changes more over the long term than the short term.
Overall we're doing well- thankful to have this surgery behind us and just trying to get enough rest and all that. Nathaniel and Kjersten are both a bit needy for mommy time right now, but that's to be expected.
Well, I better get to bed so this is all i will write at the moment.
Tianna came home Tuesday afternoon. She's on an all liquid diet for 2 weeks and then 2 weeks of soft mechanicals after that. She has been having a bit of a hard time with this- she snuck a french fry yesterday and nearly choked on it so we're having to keep an eye out. For the most part she's been good about not rubbing the spot where she had her surgery (granted, being in the back of her throat/mouth it would be hard to get at). The real challenge has been getting her to get adequate fluid and nutrition as she has little interest in ingesting much. I tried making vanilla ice cream into chocolate ice cream (putting instant breakfast into it for more vitamins and protein) in the blender and boy was she mad about that! Hopefully this will pass and she'll be willing to enjoy these tasty treats we're trying to give her!
Kjersten and Aunt Janel both say that they understand Tianna better. I can't tell a particularly huge difference, but that may be due to her having more congestion right now and also due to the fact that i understood quite a bit of what she said prior to the surgery as well. I'm sure we'll be witnessing changes more over the long term than the short term.
Overall we're doing well- thankful to have this surgery behind us and just trying to get enough rest and all that. Nathaniel and Kjersten are both a bit needy for mommy time right now, but that's to be expected.
Well, I better get to bed so this is all i will write at the moment.
Thursday, April 24, 2008
Tianna's surgery has been officially scheduled for May19th (a monday). The surgery is to be a pharyngeal flap, which basically is designed to help her be able to close off the airway between her mouth and nose when talking and thus have a lot less (more normal levels) of airflow coming out through her nose when talking. In turn, this should help her speech to be much more clear both to us and to less familiar listeners. Some of her current speech issues may actually be a product of compensation- of her using her tongue to help control air flow through her nose and thus leave it less able to be placed in the correct parts of her mouth during speech. Her recovery is expected to be more difficult than with previous surgeries though this surgery is considered less risky than her palate repair was. It'll be a few days a very painful throat and mouth; but we sincerely believe that this will be more than worth it over the long haul. We're glad to have this done sooner than later, and give her one less thing to become self-conscious about as she grows older. We're thankful for a good insurance policy and very competent medical providers to help our little girl!
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