We're back!

Well after a long sick week, we're back! Our week didn't go anywhere near what it was planned to be. The first weekend went great! Tuesday morning about 4 am, I wake up to Joey crying and his bed covered in vomit. So, we took it easy Tuesday and late afternoon I thought he was feeling better so I gave him some baby food. Bad idea.... poor little guy puked all over me twice, the second time choking on it so my father and I took him to Dayton Children's Hospital. In the mean time, I hadn't been feeling too hot all day, but I figured it was me just being pregnant and thought nothing of it. Well, we get to the ER to find out that it was FULL of sick babies with the same thing wrong as Joey. So after sitting there holding the little guy for a hour, I was so nauseated, I had to hand him over to my dad. My mom arrived after she got off of work and took over holding Joey. After 2 hours, we got called back. Once in the room, I started vomiting. The good news was the Joey didn't aspirate. So needless to say, the next couple days were full of me feeling lousy and poor little Joey not able to keep anything down but pedialite. Of course none of our family wanted to be around us except my poor dad who also caught it. Hopefully our next trip will go better.

Well, I'm off to call Joey's pedi to see what the heck to do with Joey. Yesterday I gave him formula for the first time in the airport so he wouldn't scream his head off on the plane and now he has diarrhea again.

But we didn't get to do all the fun things that were planned for our trip and we barely got to see anyone that we were suppose to see. At least I got to see my brother and his wife, and my grandma!

Also, while in the ER, the doctor there detected a very slight heart murmur in Joey's heart. I called Joey's Dr the next day and he said that he was aware of it. Why didn't he tell me about it!? He says it nothng to worry about, but I would have still liked to have known about it!

Back in 9 days!

Well, Joey and I are off to Ohio to see our family and friends till next week! Be back on February 4th! If I get a chance I'll try to post an update while I'm there!

back in the day...

I often sit back and think about my days in high school. My friends, the things we did together (some I regret, some not), and my days in AFJROTC and marching band (yeah, I was a dork). There are some I still have contact with, and some I wish I could be in contact with. Many have grown up, some still have growing up to do. I was part of a very close net group of friends. We all were in either band or ROTC together. I was fit and in shape, not to mention about 30+ pounds lighter than I am now. I love popping a tape in of an old marching band performance and picking myself out. Some of my friends joined the military, some went away to college, and some stayed home and went to local colleges. I wish I could find the few I have no clue where they are. I have a myspace and a facebook account and unfortunately, not everyone is on them.

(I'm the second from the left)

Then I look back on the couple years before I moved up here to Connecticut. I worked my butt off at various jobs, hung out at a local bar (often drinking too much) and taking turns with Patrick flying back and forth so we could see each other every other month or so. I am a much different person I was back then, I have grown up more in the past 2 years than I ever thought I could.

But yet, I look back on the old days, and miss it. Don't get me wrong, I wouldn't change my life back for anything now. Being home all day long DOES get very lonely though, I know I could get out more but part of me just doesn't want to.

I'm not sure where I'm going with this post, but just wanted to let any of my friends from Ohio know that I miss them. If any of you guys stumbled across this link via my myspace or facebook profiles and now read this, be sure to drop me a comment saying hi!

Happy Christmas Eve!

Happy Christmas Eve everyone! Patrick and I just got back from Christmas mass. We left Joey at home with my parents. He wasn't in the best of moods to take to church, hopefully next year he will be easier to take to church with us.

Tonight, my parents, Patrick and I will be exchanging our gifts, then in the morning we're going over to Patrick's parents house to exchange with everyone over there, then have dinner with everyone. Then later in the day Pat's grandma, aunts and cousins will come over. BUSY DAY! I'll be sure to post pictures in the next couple days.

This is my first Christmas away from Ohio. It's really helping having my parents here. But I've never been away from my brother on Christmas. It's weird. I didn't think it would bother me as much as it does. Growing up, Terry was more like a father to me at times. He's 16 years older than me and was always not only a brother, but a wonderful role model to me too. I'm really going to miss him the next couple of days. Merry Christmas Bubba, I miss you!

The Lord works in mysterious ways

The Lord definetly works in mysterous ways... I was so upset yesterday about our car breaking down, and not being able to afford heating oil along with our regular bills. Well, today Pat recieved a hoilday bonus. It's enough toget the car fixed and pay for part of a tank of heating oil. Which I just called and it's $2.39 a gallon! Ouch! Well, at least we're going to have some extra money to help us!

In other news, Joey had a visit today from his physical therapist and his speech therapist, both is which went excellent! Joey worked very hard with his PT is reaching while sitting, attempting to stand and trying to get to the crawling position. He still has a long way to go with the standing and crawling, but he's getting so good with his sitting and reaching! His SLP was very happy with his speech progress. She said he's making all the sounds any infant should be making. She also said his eating his going great!

My parents are on their way to Connecticut from Ohio right now. They're somewhere in Pennsylvania and I'm going crazy! It's not been that long since I've seen my mom but I haven't seen my dad since October! I can't wait to have both of our families together for Christmas!

Also, I finally got my copies of Gifts! I don't care that they have flaws on them, I just wanted a couple copies of them to share with my family! yay!

GO BUCKS!!!

I'm ready for the big game!! Ohio State vs Michigan!!

OH-IO!!!!!! GO BUCKS!!!!!!!!!

We're home!

Wow, after a long 10 days, we're back!! I really went through some blogger withdrawal while we were gone! I couldn't check up on all of my favorite blogs and was going crazy wondering how everybody has been doing!!

Our trip was wonderful! I always love getting back to Ohio to see my family and friends. Saturday the 7th was my Grandma's 80th birthday party, so I got the chance to see all of that side of the family. Along with meeting 2 of my cousins' new babies for the first time! Little Jacob and yes another Baby Joseph!! Of course my Joseph is about 3 times the size of this little guy. The party was a lot of fun and we were all very grateful that we had Grandma after her open heart surgery/ stroke in August.



Monday through Friday was full of visiting everyone and just staying home and relaxing. Except Joey decided that while on our trip, he was going to start getting up at 4am instead of 6am. Luckily, he would go back to sleep around 6 or 7 and my mom would take over so I could go back to bed for a couple hours (THANK YOU MOM!!!)

This past weekend was the Sauerkraut Festival in Waynesville. It's probably my (along with most of my family's) favorite weekend of the year. It is a family tradition to go every year. My Aunt and Grandma have a craft booth at it so, we all gather together, take turns selling things at our booth and stuffing our faces full of various foods... some with Kraut, some without. This year, I ate such a mixture of food: sauerkraut pizza, sauerkraut donuts (which don't really have kraut in them), apple flappins, BBQ pork chop sandwich, carmel apples, peanut butter fudge, ham & soup beans, hot dogs with sauerkraut, fried mushrooms, cheese sticks. Of course some of these things I split with my cousin. I know I ate more, but I just can't think of it all. The one thing I DO KNOW is that I need to diet for the next 6 months to lose all the weight and calories I took in those 2 days!! Every year I look forward to the 2 days I get to spend with my family and pig out. I still have yet to miss a festival and I hope I never have to.

Well, Joey and I are out of town for the next 10 days! We're off to good ol' Dayton, Ohio to see my family & friends! I'll try to update, but I'm not sure how much time I'll have!

GO BUCKS!

Did I forget to mention that I'm a buckeye? GO BUCKS!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Happy Birthday Terry!

My brother was 16 when I was born and unfortunately our father worked a lot of overtime and wasn’t home very much. Terry filled in for Dad. He has been like a second father to me. He took me to my first baseball game (Cincinnati Reds) and first concert (Melissa Etheridge). I would spend almost every Saturday night with Terry and his wife growing up. Many of my best memories have my brother in them. He also took me to about every movie I went to when I was a kid. For some reason one thing I remember more than anything is whenever we were in his car, we would listen to David Lee Roth blaring on the radio (gotta love the 80’s)!

The past year has been so hard being away from my family and friends, especially being away from Terry. You never realize how much a sibling means to you until you’re away from them for an extended period of time.

The day after I got the call from the doctor that Joey has Down syndrome and needed my family more than anything, it was Terry that I called crying wanting to go home to Ohio. He was there on the phone listing to me cry and telling me that everything was going to be all right. I could always count on him for anything, I still can.

When Patrick and I got married last year, I had a brother/ sister dance with him. The song was “Hero” by Mariah Carey. Terry is truly my hero and was who I looked up to growing up.

Today is his birthday and I wish I could be back home in Ohio to spend it with him. Happy Birthday Bubba! I miss you!!

Well, I called my favorite aunt on Monday to see if it was ok to stop by and see her and my uncle. She took a huge breath and said "no, I can't be around Joey for a while". I didn't fully understand at first and she proceeded to tell me that she's been hiding something from me, cancer and that she's on chemotherapy until November and can't be around children. She has lymphoma in her mouth on the inner part of her upper gum. She didn't want to upset me until she knew how bad it was going to be and she didn't want me worrying. Luckily, it's isolated and they were able to remove the tumor. Please say a prayer for her if you could.

THEN, my Grandma has been having asthma attacks one after another for a the past week. She went to her regular doctor and she was told that it was her allergies. My aunt ended up taking her to the hospital on Thursday. During all the tests, the doctors discovered that she had 700cc of fluid around her left lung and 500cc around her right. We were told it was either cancer, a bad infection or possibly her heart. The tests were furthered and she has a severely leaking mitral valve on her heart. Needless to say, she goes in for a heart cath on Monday and open heart surgery mid to late this upcoming week. Pray for her too.

These two women are two of my favorite people in the world and who I'm the closest to out of both sides of my family.

It was so nice to be home minus a couple bad news days, but I'll get to them later. Saturday was my cousin's baby shower. Everything went great, she recieved a lot of the things off her registry. It's so exciting... she's having a little boy September 10 and her brother's girlfriend is due to have a little boy the end of October. We're all going to have little boys!!!

Saturday night I went to my friends' bar and got to see some of my old friends. It was karaoke night, I didn't sing, I usually do, but just didn't have the karaoke itch in me that night. But my friend Josh did sing a very good rendition of "Baby Got Back" that was priceless to watch :)

Sunday we went to the Dublin Irish Festival to see my father-in-laws best friend John perform. He's an incrediable musician and such a fun person. He was the MC for the festival's finale. There were so many amazing Irish musicians on the stage at once... Celtic Tenors, Gaelic Storm, 2 of the fiddle players from "Lord of the Dance", just to name a few. We also ate a lot of great food, I think I enjoyed the corned beef and cabbage the best!

(John is the accordian player in the middle)

So much happened in the past week it's going to take a couple entries for me to update everything!!

I'll go backwards though... today wasn't as crazy as I thought it was going to be at the airport. We arrived at Columbus at 2:00 for our 4:30 flight. Luckily the security checkpoint line wasn't too bad. Joey and I made it through the medal detectors but they saw something in my purse that looked funny so they took us off to the side to search my purse and of corse found NOTHING! The hardest part of today was not being able to take water with me. I had to buy water to make Joey's formula but then couldn't take the leftover water on the plane with us. Oh well... Joey did great on the plane except for the last 20 minutes. He didn't scream his head off but he was definitely not a happy little boy.

After we got back to our house, we weren't even home for 5 minutes and the power transformer blew outside of our house!! I had just turned on my computer and sat down to get online and "BOOM!!!!", it sounded like a shotgun was shot right outside our front door! So needless to say after a day of traveling with a 5 month old, all I wanted to do was come home and get on my computer and we had no electricity!! We came over to my in-laws house until our power wil hopefully be put back on soon! Luckily it's only in the 70's tonight. I just hope my computer didn't get fried in the process!!

I'll update about our trip tomorrow, computer permitting!

Joey and I are off to Ohio tomorrow until next Friday, we'll talk to you all in a week!!

Vacation

Well, I had this awesome post about our trip and somehow managed to delete it (don't you hate it when that happens?!

Anyways, our trip was so much fun. We got spoiled by my mom... every morning when Joey woke up, she would feed him and let us sleep in!! My dad bonded with Joey daily... they took naps together! We went to the pool almost everyday, Joey even got in once!

Friday, we went out to the bar that my friends own. It was nice to see everyone. My cousin's Sara and Carrie were there with us. I even had a couple drinks! Well, a couple too many, but luckly, I felt ok the next morning. It felt so good to be out with my friends and having a good time!

Saturday, we went to church and saw Father Ray. He was so happy to see Joey for the first time.

Sunday, we went to the Cincinnati Zoo. It was 100+ degrees outside, so we left Joey home with my parents. It was a lot of fun though. The zoo had a nice hands on birds exhibit so we were able to feed them and dodge getting pooped on! Margaret and Maureen seemed to enjoy the zoo too!

Monday, my dad took Margaret and Maureen fishing for the first time. They each caught a fish, one caught a couple bluegills and the other caught a bass!!

On the 4th, we went met up with some of my friends from high school at Delco Park. The rain held off until about 10 minutes before the fireworks started so we braved the rain and enjoyed the fireworks show rain and all.

Unfortunatly, our trip went by way too quick but luckly, Joey and I are going back next month for the Dublin Irish Festival in Columbus.

We just got home today from our vacation to Ohio to see my family. It was so nice to be home with my family and friends. Patrick and I took his twin 13 yr old sisters with us. We had such a great time. I'll post details and pictures hopefully tomorrow. Right now, I'm extremely tired, we drove through the night last night then had dinner this evening over at my in-laws THEN I had to go to the grocery so I think it's time for me to hit the sack!!

Our trip to Ohio went wonderful! My family and friends got to see Joey for the first time. My parents had an open house for anyone to come over and see us and it was so nice to see my people I haven't seen since the holidays. Everyone loved Joey to death! Especially my couins Carrie and Sara, and my brother. Here's a picture of Carrie with Joey... He did so good on the plane rides too! He slept almost the whole time and wasn't one of those crying babies that everyone hates to on the plane with. I actully had people commenting me on how good of a baby he is!! I just wish our trip could of lasted longer.

Tomorrow I take Joey to the ENT to see if there's fluid in it. His pediatrician doens't have the equipment to see in his little ear canals. Hopefully we'll get an answer as to why he keeps failing his hearing tests in that ear. He's also been congested since the day he was born so maybe he can help to fix that. I've always had ear/sinus issues myself so it wouldn't suprise me if Joey does too along with the fact that T-21 chldren usually have problems with their ears and sinus too.