The past month gave us Spring Break, an unfortunate injury, Easter and some very big life changes. Eep! We are just destined to be overprogrammed for life it seems!
Spring Break went well. We didn't travel that week, electing to stay home and hit some area attractions while also celebrating Daddy's 40th birthday.
We started Spring Break by making sure we got our matching outfits Bunny visit in!
Hello Easter Bunny!
Daddy took the day off of work for his birthday and decided he wanted to celebrate by going to the Houston Museum of Natural Science. It was a lot of fun checking out the Matter and Motion hall that had opened since our last visit.
Learning about the universe!
Enjoying the dinosaur and prehistoric mammals hall!
Learning about engineering!
Great day with Daddy!
Happy 40th birthday to the best Daddy in the world!
We spent the rest of break taking walks, resting, and enjoying St. Patrick's Day!
Ready for another day of break!
Walks on the Waterway with Little Sister!
Big boy taking advantage of recliner naps while on break!
Pancake brunch on St. Patrick's Day!
Happy St. Patrick's Day from these two little leprechauns!
We also had Time Change over Spring Break, which unfortunately contributed to a scary accident for our Little Buddy. Thankfully all ended up ok, but it was a very rough night on Palm Sunday.
Little Buddy hadn't been sleeping well following the switch to Daylight Savings Time and when he doesn't sleep well his involuntary muscle jerks increase. Well, after shower one night, his involuntary muscles jerks accidentally jerked his head into a shelf corner. There was so much blood and it was terrifically scary. Thankfully Ms. A was home next door and could watch Little Sister so we could take Little Buddy to the emergency room. Even though the wound was mostly superficial, it was a significant laceration and our poor guy needed 6 staples and it took 6 grown adults to hold him down and get it done.
We were fortunate that he was taken care of quickly and we were able to get home that night. The injury healed well but may have taken several years off of my life!
Not a fan of emergency room visits, but thankful we live in driving distance of the Children's Hospital!
First night with staples.
Poor baby.
Utterly worn out.
Finally resting.
Looking better.
Grover's taking care of him.
Staple removal day!
A week later the staples were able to come out and he healed up well! Thankfully they were much easier to take out than to put in.
After all of that, we were very excited for a long Easter weekend and to enjoy our Easter traditions of strawberry picking, egg decorating, Mass, and Easter Egg hunting!
It was a beautiful Good Friday picking strawberries at Atkinson's Farm!
Lots of fun coloring eggs!
Beautiful!
Happy Easter!
Found our baskets!
Little Buddy likes his goodies!
Hunting hard boiled eggs inside!
Hunting plastic eggs outside!
A delicious Easter dinner!
Blessed to be together!
Little Buddy was also excited for a few Hawaiian shirt wearing events this month, since Hawaiian shirts are his favorite!
Looking good in blue and green in honor of our friend R for OCNDS Awareness Day!
Lots of fun at the SECS family dance, where many of our friends elected to wear WILLPower Hawaiian shirts in honor of our boy!
Height and Weight
We are happy to say that Little Buddy is hangin strong at 122 lbs., which is a good healthy weight for him to be at and for us to take care of him. But we can't deny that his getting bigger is getting to be more for us in terms of caretaking.
Thankful for every moment indeed!
Personality
Blessed by a lot of smiles and interactions this month! So happy that is happy!
An overload of smile pictures? Maybe. But I don't care! :)
Developmental Changes
Sanfilippo is a thief and it is slowly stealing our boy away from us. We face it as bravely as we can, but the truth is that he's slowing down. Where it used to be unheard of for him to sit still for long periods of time or to sleep in or nap, that is what's happening. However, he reminds us we can't let down our guard around him at any point! We are just hopeful we can keep meeting his needs where they are at and keep his quality of life high.
When you think he's sitting still on the couch and you turn around he's managed to get himself up on his own and meander into the kitchen!
We tell ourselves he's just a sleepy teen, but it's such a change to see this big boy not rising and shining at the break of day.
Fun Tidbits
So speaking of taking care of his needs and the challenges of caretaking a larger chid, we did a thing...bought a new house!
We asked Little Buddy's physical therapist at the beginning of March about ways that we better support him with his movement and daily activities in ways that were safe for our bodies and she reminded us how big he was getting. If we were going to stay in this house, it was going to be time to talk about home modifications.
We had always said that if we were going to need to modify our home, that was our trigger point to move. On the advice of other Sanfilippo families, we had held off, worried to cause regression more quickly by removing him from an unfamiliar environment, but now was the time.
We reached out to our relator with a very specific set of criteria, sure that the house hunting would take months. Two weeks later, we found a house. It hit all our needs: close to our our current home, extra downstairs bedroom and walk-in shower for Little Buddy, and a more accessible floor plan should he start to need to use a chair more. We also love that the neighborhood has lots of walking paths with lakes and water features for him to enjoy.
After checking out the house with the kids, we took walks on the paths. Little Buddy seems to like them!
I thought I would be more distraught about having to leave our current home, which I love, but I think that God has led us to the right place at the right time and that this home will give us the best set-up for giving our son the best quality of life as he grows up. Crazy to think that by the next blog, I''ll be posting from a new address!
Good night,
