Merry Christmas

MERRY CHRISTMAS and HAPPY HOLIDAYS from our family to yours!

Oh I love these boys!!!

 Spencer's photography skills.

While taking family pictures Spencer got a little silly.

Aw, there's my sweet boy.

Cute little Preston.

He's so happy!

What our family has been up to this year:

• explored more of New York City; saw more parks, museums and things come down the Hudson River.
• sailed for a week on a Disney Cruise (highly recommend)
• saw more Broadway plays, which kinda becomes addicting
• had lots of visitors (which we love!)
• HAD PRESTON!!! We welcomed a beautiful baby boy into our lives on Aug. 13th after four long years of wanting him to come.
• Spencer is an AMAZING big brother, he does anything and everything for Preston
• Spencer turned 8 and was baptized at our church
• Spencer started 3rd grade, and did fall soccer
• Survived Hurricane Sandy, and feel so blessed to have no damage to our place
• took a trip to Vermont and want to go back, it was beautiful in the fall
• We are all healthy and so happy to be so blessed for the things we have, especially two fabulous sons who make us smile everyday. 

Thanksgiving and Christmas prep!

Our Thanksgiving this year was very small and not very eventful. It was just our little family. It was nice though to watch the Macy's Thanksgiving Parade on TV this year (we went to it last year, which was fun also). Then we cooked and whenever it was done was when we ate. It was pretty good. 

Then we decided that after we ate we wanted to put Christmas up!! So....we did! It was so fun. Spencer was super excited to put up all the ornaments and have our home look magical. 

And of course I have to share some more pictures of cute boy Preston. He holds his fingers the same way Spencer did when he was a baby. 

And he's super cute...did you know that? 

I sew can!!!

One way to find out if you can sew or not is to have to get these bad boy patches on!!!

I dreaded trying to figure out how to get through the thick patches, but with some guidance from my mom, who quilts and sews and finds this all easy, I figured it out. It took a little time, and I was so proud of myself for finishing it and doing it all! Then I thought of something....something dreadful....I get to sew patches on for the next 18 years. sigh....

Precious moments

I love it when I can catch these cute moments between the boys. 

We are STILL trying to figure out what color hair Preston has, or will have. Red? Brown? Blonde? Who knows?!

 He loves going outside, and whenever we go out he falls asleep. So by the time we come back from dropping off Spencer this is what usually happens. Too cute!

 Aw, cute baby!

For some reason I feel like his hands are HUGE! Long fingers and a long palm, great for basketball!! 

Halloween 2012

The week of Sandy was also when Halloween was! So it was a little bit different, but still fun!

Spencer this year wanted to be a ghost, and he called it a tablecloth ghost, which I had to keep reminding him that it would be a sheet ghost. He loved it! 

I made both costumes. Why two? Because we had a Halloween party at our church and you can't cover your face, so we did this costume for the church party. Very ghostly, yes?

 Here he is for a night of Trick or Treating!!! Spencer was very specific about his costume, even down to the pointy edges at the bottom. 

Grandma sent Preston his costume, which was big enough to hide the harness under it. Here are our boys all dressed up!!! 

Preston helped me hand out candy to all the trick or treaters. 

Superstorm Sandy

Superstorm Sandy was not fun, and we had the pleasure of going through it. We knew she was coming, but everyone around us was wondering how strong she would be. On Sunday we went to church waiting to hear if Zone A (where we live) would have to be evacuated. Halfway through church we looked at our phones and saw that we would be. So Tyler went and got us a hotel before they all became filled up. We decided to go up to Times Square, which turned out to be really smart. 

As soon as we got home from church I started packing and the boys started getting their stuff together. Here is Spencer with his stuff he had to carry.

We were going to bring lots of water bottles with us, but knew we might need them more after we got back, since most likely the hotel would make sure it had water. But we were prepared!

We made it to the hotel and Preston was zonked out. Luckily we did bring some games from home so we could do something while in the hotel, especially since everything outside in Times Square was closed down. 

Spencer let Preston hold on to beary at one point, it was super cute!

Two days later we found out that we were able to head back home. We were SUPER blessed. Our building got no damage at all, in fact the area where we lived never lost power!!!! Although the school that is nearby had 1-3 inches of water on the first floor. Also the highway near us had five feet of water when the storm surge came in. It was so sad to see all the devastation around us. Even Spencer's after school place had 20 feet of water in the basement and he still has not been able to go back to do swim lessons. 

The ball field next to us also got destroyed. They had to cancel soccer for Spencer also for the rest of the season. It was crazy!

Yep, that's the portable bathroom laying on it's side by the fence! It was all the way at the other end of the field. 

 And yes that is a rip in the turf. One month later and the field still looks like this. There is so much still not fixed around here. Not only here on the island but over in the rockaways in Brooklyn, and in New Jersey. 

When we got back to our apartment, we had heard about all the power going out in the downtown area.  It was VERY weird to see one side of the highway in darkness and the other all lit up. 

We are slowly getting back on track. Spencer was out of school for a week, still no swimming yet, still no pier 25 with mini golf, tunnels are just now getting back on track, it took the subway system at least 2-3 weeks of getting back to normal too. Again we are so thankful that we got through it with little disruption to our lives. 

Our Newest Adventure

 Back in September we took Preston to his pediatrician and she was examining him and started to check his hips by bending his knees and pushing down on them to see if his hip joints were okay. Well, when she did this his hip joints were "clicking". She told us this and I didn't know what it meant, so she explained that something could be wrong with his hip joints. The pediatrician asked us to take him to get an ultrasound of his hips and then also to see an orthopedist. October came and we went to the orthopedist and she did another ultrasound on his hips and found out that he had minor hip dysplasia. 

She explained to us that with the hip joint we had a ball and a cup. The ball is suppose to be at least 50% sitting in the cup of the joint. His left hip joint was 56%, which was good, but his right hip joint was 39 or 43%, not good enough. We had some options, because it was so minor we could just not do anything and hope that it would grow into the joint more, because as a baby his bones are still a bit soft. So we could 1- do nothing, and hope it grows back into the joint, if that didn't work then he could have arthritis in his hip by the age of 30, or if it got worse he would have to have surgery at the age of two and break bones to fix it. or 2- we could put him in a Pavlik harness, and it should be taken care of within 6 weeks. 

We decided to go with the harness. As soon as the pediatrician told us what this "clicking" could mean I started researching and saw the Pavlik harness in my research. I understood what it would mean and we decided that we really didn't want to gamble that it would get better on it's own nor did we want him to have surgery in a few years. So we got the harness!! Which was interesting.

Here is Preston at home after getting the harness on. Made the clothes on him look weird.  

This is what the harness looks like. We had to keep it on for 23.5 hours a day, so only enough time to take it off to give him a bath. Which he looked forward to everyday. 

The best thing is that the harness did not bother him too much, and since he is so young he won't remember it. 

It was a little weird to hold him, because he always had his legs spread. 

 He was only 2 months old when he got the harness on, and we had been swaddling him to sleep at night. Well....we couldn't do that anymore, because we had to keep his knees apart. But it seems that it didn't disrupt sleep too much either.

Clothing on the other hand was not easy. Finally I just decided to put his sleepers on half-way. I didn't want to stretch the clothing and also didn't want to constrict his legs or have them come together. 

 The harness did make him quite flexible though. He learned how to kick with the harness on, even though it was out to the side and looked really awkward. 

 Soon he just got used to it and not much changed. Preston even kept trying to turn over with it on!

 We went back three weeks after getting the harness to check how things were, and he was back to normal!!! YAY!! But the minimum amount of time to have the harness on is six weeks. So we had to keep it on for three more weeks. Finally at the beginning of December he was able to get it off!!!! He smiled the entire day, it was so cute!

 He also FINALLY was able to get back into his swing and sleep all snugly with his bear.