Happy 1st Bday Sweet Girl

My Niece Tava Rae turned 1 today!! She is the such a sweet adorable baby girl! I wish I could see her a lot more than I do!! We hope you had/have a Great Day!!
All Our Love
Aunt Mel,Uncle Clint,Mallory,Mason,Carter,Cavin,Maxton,Cayne and Maccoy

New Friends!!

Immanuel born with TOF like Maccoy... Isn't he a Doll!!


The support group here in KC for Congenital Heart Defects has given me a wonderful Gift! A new Friend! Her name is Kendra and her son Immanuel was born a few weeks after the twins and like Maccoy has Tetralogy of Fallot and is tentatively scheduled for repair in March at Children's Mercy. Kendra and I have talked on the phone a few times and via email! We have a lot in common and have turned into good friends! It so helps to have someone to talk to that knows what you are feeling. You see if you don't live with a sick baby and take care of them you don't know how much it hurts. To you they are sick but others can forget about it until the next time they see them or talk to them but for us parents we see it everyday, we think about it every min,hour,day. We fear that day when they say its time for surgery, we analyze every breath wondering if it is normal, we look at their skin color every hour to see if we even see a hint of blue we worry and wonder and wait and we know that this condition will never be gone. That our child is forever going to carry this with them. We are forever great full that there is a surgery that can "repair" our child's heart so that he may go on living a "normal" life but in the back of our head I have to assume my child's broken heart will always be something to worry about.. You see even though they can perform Open Heart Surgery on him to repair the defects his heart will always be considered "repaired" and there is always a chance that he could continue to have problems that will need to be corrected. This isn't just a simple hole in his heart that will just vanish this is a Defect that needs to have open heart surgery to be fixed. Oh how we wish one day we would wake up from this nightmare and it would just be gone, but that is not going to happen. Our son is going to have a HUGE Open Heart Surgery in just a few short months to repair this defect, he will be on heart/lung bypass, in the ICU fighting for his life and he will forever have Tetralogy of Fallot in his medical history, he will forever be seen at least yearly by his cardiologist. His condition is SERIOUS it's not just something we can forget about until next week we think about it from morning to night, while he is awake, while he sleeps.. we worry and we worry. I am not asking you to feel sorry for him or us,but please pray that my baby comes out of this okay..and please pray for our new friends

I have to admit...

I have been having kinda of a hard time lately.. A pity party you could say. Poor me has to do 20+ loads of laundry a week, does dishes 3 times/day, picks up and picks up, mops daily, vacuum's daily, does all the homework/school projects, is the one who does all the Dr.'s appts (and there has been a lot of these lately), who cooks 2 even 3 meals/day, baths, reads, plays, breaks up fights... and on and on and on. It has gotten so bad that my once spotless house looks like a trash pile, I JUST CAN'T KEEP UP. I feel like its 1 against 8 and that just isn't fair.. Until one day last week I realized it is worse than that I have given up and well I didn't have 7 kids to just sit here and feel sorry for myself so I moped the floor and thought about everything and realized that I am being to hard on myself! I have only been a mother to 7 for a little over 4months and while having Twins isn't hard it is time consuming, I can't expect everything to stay clean all the time! So I decided to play more and clean less! There will be plenty of time when the kids are grown to clean right now I need to enjoy them! So I am working on a happy medium! so if you come over prepare yourself for a MESS!!!

I have to say that Clint made the kids scrub the floor on their hands and knees on Sunday and it was pretty funny! At supper that night Cavin looks at me and says "Mommy eat over the table we just moped this floor" Oh how I wish he would take his own advice!! so cute!

I LOVE babies!! I would have 10 more if I could!! I love all their little firsts! Cayne just rolled over for the first time and I was right here to see it!! Thank you Clint for making it possible for me to stay home so at least one of us gets to see/enjoy this stuff!!

Mason has been pretty funny lately with his vocabulary!! He told me the other day that Maxton was obnoxious, he told Clint "Mommy saw a mouse scurry under the freezer in the garage" when all I told him was I saw one run under there! He uses these big words, words that I don't even use! I love it! So funny! What a Smart little guy he is!

Happy Birthday!!

Happy 8th Birthday Mason Thane!! You are such a joy to have around, life wouldn't be complete without you! You are sweet, sensitive, polite, shy at times, funny, loving ,caring and smart! The TOTAL Package as far as great kids go!! You are doing so well in school you love Science and are really good at math and are getting better at reading/spelling! You are the Best Biggest Brother all these little boys could ever ask for! You have recently found your love of Legos which is fun! You love playing video games and board games but you are also a baseball, bike riding, pretend playing and fishing little guy!! Anyway Happy Birthday Big Boy!!

We All Love YOu
Mommy,Daddy,Mallory,Carter,Cavin,Maxton,Cayne and Maccoy

Lots..

So it has been a VERY busy and eventful few weeks here which is why I haven't written much!
First off Monday Oct.26th Maccoy had his first TET spell.. I was feeding him and had to get up to turn something off which made him upset and start to scream (which we aren't suppose to let him do to much of) so I raced back to pick him up and took him to change his diaper when I started to take his sleeper off I noticed his legs were blue so I pulled his whole outfit off to look at the rest of his body which was all blue by the time I got the oximeter on him his SATS were 88 then they dipped alittle to 85 within a min of the knee to chest position and me calming him down his SATS were back up in the 90s. It was VERY scary and I was pretty shaken up for the rest of the day. We have been keeping him on the monitor more again just to track his 02 levels which dip below 90 but most of the time sit around 94% to 96% ( a normal person runs 96% to 100%). Other than that episode Maccoy has been doing GREAT!

On Tuesday it was time to take Maxton in to see his Dr. for his Vascular Malformation (he was born with this effecting his right arm its a long story that I really need to write down sometime) anyway he had two new spots on his R elbow and R forearm that needed to be checked basically blood clots pop up in his right arm for no reason. Anyway that visit led to him needing xray and labwork and a pressure garment and possibly to be put on aspirin daily for at least 6mths. That was another big day.

Then Wed was Mallory's BIG 9th Birthday! My how time flies! Seems like just yesterday I was pregnant with her!

Then we move on to Halloween!! We had Thing 1 and Thing 2 (the twins), Darth Vader (Mason) A Ninja (Carter) Iron Man (Cavin) Nurse/princess (Mallory) and a Spider(Max). We trick or treated at Clints office on Friday and left there with 5 full buckets of candy the kids had a great time and I think Daddy enjoyed showing off his kiddos to his co workers! Then Sat. we went trick or treating with our good friends the kids had a BLAST and got another 5 buckets of candy! The Dentist is going to Love us!! Maxton is a candy freak to say the least! The boy could live on candy!

This week has been spent doing the usual junk cooking cleaning breaking up fights! I did find out that Cavin was excepted into Preschool which he is not very happy about even though he had a fun time there he is no hurry to leave mommy! I asked him if he was ready to go to school and he said "no I don't like that guy with the long nose and the long head" which come to find out was the Occupational Therapist that was making him color and use scissors etc.. when I came home and told him he was going to school he said "I will hide from you so you can't take me there"... So this could be interesting!

The babies turned 4 months old on Wed.... They are so sweet! They have found each other and love to be close to one another. They love the sound of my voice and just by saying Hi I can usually make them smile! They love to be talked to and Maccoy is starting to coo back in response. Cayne is close to rolling over but hasn't quit made it over yet! They first slept through the night a few weeks ago and did that for two nights then it was back to one sleeping through the night and the other getting up at 2a.m. they just kinda trade back and forth on that. So I am back to getting a few hours of sleep before I am woke up to feed someone! It is always a surprise as to which one it will be! Who doesn't like surprises at 2a.m.??

I could cont. to go on but I have a ton of stuff to get done today and it is going to be beautiful out so I will post more later...