Kathryn and Kimberly

Thursday, April 17, 2008

Botanical Gardens

Here are some pictures from our trip to the Riverbanks Botanical Gardens. The girls had a GREAT time walking around and smelling all the flowers. They are just too cute!

We had to stop and sit on every bench we passed. (Kathryn has on the yellow sunglasses, Kimberly the pink...although the sunglasses didn't last the whole trip)

"Hey Sister...let's Dance"

"Mommy I don't want to stand beside sister for you to take a picture, I want to run around!"

"Hey COME BACK! Mommy wants to take a picture!"

Thankfully no one tried to go IN the fountain

"Come on sister, lets go this way!"
"But, I wanna go THIS way!"

"Whew, we need a break!"
"No, we don't, come on lets go!"

We like rocking chairs

Yay! Daddy came to meet us after he got off work. We had fun walking with Daddy!

"Us sisters always stick together!"

"Hey, Mommy and Daddy are you coming?!"

Kathryn stops to smell the flowers

And then Kimberly stops to smell the flowers

"Hey sis, these smell better, come smell these!"

Mommy and Kathryn

Kisses for Kathryn and Mommy

Kisses for Mommy and Kimberly

Mommy and Kimberly (Singing "If you're Happy and you Know it)

"Ohhhh Daddy whats over there?"

Thursday, April 10, 2008

Just a few pictures....

Just a few pictures for you to enjoy!

Tortellini is meant to be worn as a ring?

I love my sister!

We like rocking in these chairs, they're just the right size!!

Sunday, April 6, 2008

Hey! Long time no post, so I figure I'll put something up here. The girls are doing great! They're teething pretty bad...working on numbers 15 and 16...and I think these have been worse then all the others. But, other then that they're doing pretty good. They are learning so many new things everyday, I just sit back in amazement! Kimberly has learned that the stove is "hot" and is "danger" so now whenever we are at the stove she likes to continously yell those words at us. Both girls LOVE to read. We can spend many hours a day just reading books to them. They will walk up to me with a book, and when I'm all done she'll take it back to the shelf and bring me a new one. They are also known to just sit on the floor and "read" books all by them selves. Sometimes they will just sit there looking at pictures, but sometimes they will actually jabber their way through the book like they think they're reading it. Its too cute!!

Kimberly did one of the FUNNIEST things I have ever seen her do last night. I was laying on the couch and she walked over and was talking to me. So, I was playing the game of "where's Mommy's nose?" "Where's Mommy's ear?" etc. Well, then I asked her "Where's Mommy's toes?" Normally she just has to look straight down to find toes, so thats what she did (but remember I was laying down on the couch so my toes were not straight down). She looked so confused when she couldn't find my toes, she dropped to her belly and spent a good 2 minutes looking UNDER the couch for Mommy's toes. It was sooooo funny!

Well, its hard to get good pictures of them anymore, they don't like to sit still long enough for the camera to flash, much less sit close enough to get them in one picture together. But, here are a few that I have:

Friday, March 14, 2008

Another round...

Hey! Well, we have completed another round of hospital visit and multiple doctor visits. Last Wednesday, as we were about to have dinner Kathryn had a couple differene episodes of a seizure. The nurse of course sent us directly to the ER. After running some tests at the ER they decided they wanted to admit us to the PICU (Pedatric Intensive Care Unit) so that she could be monitored some more and also run some more tests. Thankfully she only spent 1 night in the PICU, and then 1 night in a regular room. They were never able to determine the cause of the seizure. They do know that it was NOT fever related...1. Because she was not running a fever and 2. Because it was very localized to the right side of her body and a fever related seizure would be more uniform across the whole body. We did spend some time talking to the neurologist and he assured us that it is not uncommon to have a seizure and not be able to find the cause. He words were that it might be better that we didn't find the cause, because when they DO find something its usually something serious like a tumor or malformation of the brain. However, he was a bit concerned when he learned that she had some issues with her blood sugar a few months ago. He said that the main symptoms of a beta oxidation disorder are low blood sugar and seizures. So, we are going to meet with him again in a couple of weeks to follow up more thoroughly on this issue.

We are still working to figure out whats causing their GI issues. Poor things are still having some awful weird bowel movements. But, we are keeping track of things in a journal and hopefully we will be able to pick out the foods that irritate them the most soon!

On the VERY POSITIVE side we did get some good news from their doctor this week...they are BOTH gaining weight again! :) They are not back up to the same percentile they were in before they got sick, but at least the scales are moving UP and not down anymore!! YAY!!!

The girls are just growing up and changing so fast! Every day they learn something new and I am just so amazed with them. I feel so blessed to be their mother and am so Thankful that I get the joy of staying home with them each day to watch them grow.

You would love all the things they are learning to do....lets see...they found the oreos Mommy left in the living room the other morning and had a pre-breakfast snack. (And they sure know how to eat oreos, the first thing they did when they got caught was to ask for some milk.) They learned that if they push their chair down the hallway they can climb up on it and open doors that they want to go in. They have learned what it means to "spin in a circle" and LOVE to do that outside on the front lawn until they get dizzy and fall down. (Which is quite amusing to watch!!) They also love airplanes and when one flies overhead while we're outside they'll point at it and wave to it and follow it all the way across the sky and then when it is out of reach they say "bye-bye".

Well, that is all I have for now. But of course, here are some pictures for you....

Take a moment to notice what is going on in this picture....See the cracker on the floor over to the right. Yup...that cracker was laid down for the sole purpose of attacking sister to steal hers!

I love Aunt Michelle!

Poppa lets us sleep with the remote when we stay at his house.

Our version of "wheres waldo"...Can YOU find the babies?

We love our big fluffy soft doggies!

Thursday, February 21, 2008

Good News all around!

Hey everyone! I just wanted to keep you all updated on the girls tests results. First, Kathryn's alkaline phosphatate recheck came back "significantly improved" so the endocrinologist felt that no further testing was needed!!

Second, we got the results of the biopsy from their upper endoscopy yesterday and they came back normal! :) The test did show that Kathryn has some minor reflux issues, but none for Kimberly. The doctor says that the biopsy checks for the big things...like celiacs disease and lactose intolerance. So, they have been cleared from either of those being the problem. (HUGE sigh of relief). He suspects that they have some kind of food intolerance, but there is not a test that he can run to figure out to what. So, for the next 6 weeks we are going to be keeping a detailed journal of what they eat and what kind of diapers they have. Hopefully we will start to see some kind of pattern and will easily be able to figure out what needs to be eliminated from their diet. He says that usually it turns out to be something simple like a particular food COLOR. So, we'll see what happens.

Third...they are gaining weight now and not losing it!! YAY! :) Giving them the carnation instant breakfast seems to be working, so we are quite excited about this. We're going to keep it up for a few more weeks to help them regain the weight they lost and get them back on track! :)

Now with all that good news, I of course have to share some pictures. So, here is a random sampling of pictures from the last few weeks. I hope you enjoy!

Happy Valentines Day! :)

We recently got to visit with Miss Abigail...Kimberly was in love! She just had to "hold" the baby (Or in her words ba-ba)

We also got to play with Uncle Scott and Elijah!

And we got to love on Aunt Bri too!

More of Kimberly loving on the ba-ba (is she trying to tell us she wants a baby in the house?!)

Sunday, January 27, 2008

FINALLY an update (and a long one...)

WOW! It has been a long long long time since I have updated this blog. Please forgive me! A lot has happened in the last couple of months.

First, the girls had their first birthday!! What a celebration we had!! We had their party in NC so that it would be easier for all the grandparents to come. The girls really enjoyed their cake and opening all their presents!! Thanks to everyone that showed up to help us celebrate! On their actual birthday, John took off for the day and we took them to have pictures made and then went downtown and walked around some at the SC State House. We got some really great pictures! We tried to walk around inside, but the girls quickly learned that the hallways echoed, so we didn’t get to spend a lot of time inside.

The month of December brought a whole new world of challenges for us. First in December, we celebrated our 2^nd anniversary! Thanks to a lovely gift from a dear friend we were able to enjoy a semi-formal dinner and Mark Schultz concert in Charlotte. It was nice to be able to spend some quality time with just the 2 of us. Thankfully our celebration was the weekend before our anniversary, because the night of our anniversary (12/10) the girls got sick. At first we all thought it was just simply a 24-hour stomach bug, but here we are almost 7 weeks later and still dealing with it. (We won’t even go into the fact that Mommy and Daddy both got sick as well).

At first the girls were just vomiting, but it got to the point of dehydration and we needed to go to the day hospital to get IV fluids. While there, they learned that the girls blood sugars had dropped dangerously low. Thankfully they were able to get them back up and rehydrate the girls. But, that was just the beginning. The next day the girls were turning blue around their mouth and nose, and on their lips. So, this resulted in another trip to the day hospital to run a few more tests. They didn’t find anything that was the cause of this, so they sent us home.

After a week of vomiting, we thought we were about to see the end, and then the diarrhea started. (The diarrhea actually started while we were in the ER and Daddy had to come home wearing scrubs that night.). Over the next 3 weeks, we ended up making 7 trips to the ER and 1 trip to the urgent care. The problem was, we were unable to see our pediatrician. Right before the girls got sick, their pediatrician left our practice to go to a new practice. So, every time we called the doctor’s office we got someone new to talk to and they would always send us back to the ER. Although we probably would have ended up in the ER anyway because the girls continued to get dehydrated and needed more IV fluids.

Finally on 12/31/07 we were able to get into to see their normal doctor at her new practice. Finally, someone that has worked her hardest to figure out what in the world is going on with my poor little girls! However, the first thing she did was admit the girls to the Children’s hospital to run some tests and get some continuous IV fluids. We ended up staying for 2 nights. Yup, we spent New Years Eve and Day in the hospital. While we were there the girls saw someone from neurology, cardiology, respiratory, and endocrinology. After 2 days, lots of blood work and lots of IV fluid, they sent us home with glucometers for the girls so that we could monitor their blood sugar for a couple of weeks to see if there were any problems there.

A week after leaving the hospital, the girls still had pretty bad diarrhea, so we were sent to see a pediatric gastroentrologist. So they did some more blood work and told us to come back in 2 weeks. So, this past week we went back and they informed us that the tests they ran came back negative, but they are concerned because the girls are still not eating normally and are losing weight. So, they suggested that we have an upper endoscopy test done.

We also met with the endocrinologist this week too, and after looking at the girls blood sugar readings for a couple of weeks, they feel pretty confident that their blood sugars are normal, that the drops were just due to the illness. They did however discover that Kathryn’s alkaline phosphatate levels were elevated. So, they’re going to have to re-check those in a few weeks and if they’re still high then we will probably be in for some more tests.

During all of our multiple doctor visits, the girls also managed to pick up some kind of respiratory virus, that turned into ear infections. That resulted in another couple of ER trips as Kimberly was unable to catch her breath and was turning blue and having retraction breathing. They have been on nebulizer treatments for the last couple of weeks. Thankfully, now we’re down to only one medicine 2 times a day and the other medicine only as needed.

The girls are scheduled for their upper endoscopy test on Thursday 1/31/08. This is an out patient procedure, but they will have to put the girls under IV sedation for the procedure. John and I (ok probably most me) are a little nervous about the sedation and the procedure, but we have talked to a lady who’s son had to go through this at the same age as the girls and so we’re feeling more comfortable.

In the midst of all of this, the girls are just growing and developing quicker then I ever thought possible. They are walking everywhere and have recently tried to run. They love to climb, so don’t get in their way! They are 2 of the sweetest girls, always offering hugs and kisses. They are so smart too (of course I’m not biased at all!). But, they are starting so express their differences as well. Kathryn is our mobile child. She doesn’t like to sit still for longer then 2 minutes, and she doesn’t really think before she acts. If it looks like something fun to climb on, she’s all over it. Kimberly is our more observant child. She likes to sit back and watch Kathryn to make sure something is safe before she climbs on it. Kimberly is also our reader. She will bring you a book and you can read it to her multiple times before she gets bored.

Ok, well I’m sorry for such a LONG update!! I will try to get better at this and keep you more up to date with whats going on in our lives. I’ve got a lot of pictures to share. However, the girls won’t sit still for long, so a lot of them are probably action shots! Please drop us an email and let us know how things are going for you. (We have a new family email address: jones.family@earthlink.net).

Take care!!

Happy 1st Birthday Kathryn and Kimberly!!

Getting ready to open our presents

Getting ready for cake in our t-shirts that were meant to keep our outfits clean..they didn't work
(They say "Happy Birthday to my Sister! (Oh and me too!)")