This is how I sleep.

On the Daddy Monster.

On Ronan the Destroyer

And he loves it.

So, this is some cute for the day. Just thought I would share before the computer comes down and moves to it's new location. We'll be back up and running shortly. <3

Cleft Clinic!

Yesterday we had Kaylee's cleft clinic. That's an appointment where we see all of her team of doctors who help with her cleft. We saw Dr. Allen, her surgeon. Dr. Meredith, her dentist. A bunch of other people including her audiologist, speech pathologist, and a psychologist (because they just always send one for support or something). She saw a lot of people. Overall we were there for about 8 hours. We left home at 9 am and didn't get back until 8 pm. Ugh, and it was hot so Kaylee was not happy on the ride home :(

Anyways, how are things going for her? Dr. Allen says she is looking great as far as her lip repair and palate repair goes. He sees no reason to do any extra repairs to her lip or her palate. He might think about starting to do some nose repair for symmetry, but wants to look over her case a bit more first.

Dr. Meredith says that Kaylee's teeth are in great shape. No bleeding gums, no major problems. She still has four molars that need to come in, and she is missing an incisor. It will never grow in, because it isn't there. So, it's not a problem, she'll probably have a fake one implanted later, when she is around 17 or 18, after her braces come off, and the bone grafting. But overall, good healthy teeth.

As far as her ears go: she might be hearing impaired in her right ear. She passed the hearing test in her left ear with flying colors. But her right ear didn't pass, at all. So, they took a look at her ear, sucked a lot of fluid out of it (which she did not enjoy and screamed for a long time because of it), and tried the test again - no go. So, we are being given some drops to clear her ears of any fluids/wax etc for a month and then she will get retested. We will find out at that point if she can hear out of that ear.

As far as her speech is concerned, everything seems normal on that front. The pathologist said he wants us to work on consonant sounds, but for everything else she is doing just fine. She has a great vocabulary, and since I can decipher a lot of what she is saying, there isn't much we need to do except watch our language (oops!)

So, that was the cleft clinic. A long hard day of doctors and specialists, just to tell me what I already know: Kaylee is perfect. :) Talk to you guys later!

Just Because.

It's like she crawled halfway up and said "screw it," then started snoring. Adorbs.

Monster Learns Stuff.

So, it has been a busy, busy week here at the Monster household. Momma Monster (that would be me) has spent the last week filling out forms, and registering, and signing papers, it has been busy. Momma Monster is going to finish getting her Associate's Degree. Just got registered for fall semester, and wrote, edited, deleted, re-wrote, re-edited, re-deleted and wrote another essay for the scholarship I applied for. It is for mother's of children with cranio-facial conditions. I hope I get it. It's $5000 a semester. Wish me luck on that front. :)

Kaylee had a fun week, although I think she may have some heat rash on her leg, I don't know. It looks red and raised, but doesn't feel hot to the touch and it doesn't seem to itch or bother her. *shrug* if it gets any worse we'll be taking a trip to the doctor today.

So, what has Kaylee been up to?

Learned how to climb into a cabinet.

Narnia?!?!

Learned that playing with a box on the head is the funnest game ever!

Well, hello.

So, there is this box on my head.

Learned how to save her pennies.

One penny.

More pennies.

Fell asleep on some pillows in her room.

This seems like a good spot. *falls over*

Yep. That's been our week so far. We're gonna go for a walk now over at the ponds by my house. Since I will have the Kaylee Monster, I probably won't be able to take many pictures. You know, because, ponds. Danger. That kind of thing. Anyway, that is all for us today. <3 you!

Today, We COLOR!!!!!!!!!!!

Every single time I sit at my computer to start making some cards or get a scrap page done, I have this little monster at my chair begging to come up and sit in my work space. :( I have three grad cards to make, a boat load of late mother's day cards, the boat load of father's day cards, and even a few birthday cards (in all I'd say about 15-20 cards total) to get done, and I have a monster in my space. *sigh* I guess when she goes to sleep then.

Lately, she's been wanting to use my metallic markers to color with, along with my set of cute kitty highlighters. So, without any ado: Monster Colors.

Kitty Highlighters!

Coloring! YAY!

Trying to get a hold of these things.

LOL.

So, I take this here...

color everywhere...

This is the lid??

So, this goes in here. Got it.

I made ART mom!!!!

So, that's what we did today. <3 you guys.

As May Comes to a Close...

I just want to say, that, no, I am not abandoning the blog. Truly, I am not. It's just, life. It gets busy, then it gets slowed down. Whether by illness or tragedy, random injuries, and total mayhem, blogging tends to take a backseat when things get rough. For that, I apologize my dear friends and readers. I am sorry. Hopefully, with the summer and fall seasons coming up (my absolute favorite times of the year) I will have more awesome material rather than boring material to go over with you all.

Suffice it to say that this month is not a month that I want to repeat. Ever.

So, on to the subject at hand: Kaylee Monster. Oh, this thing. This adorable little thing, the joy of my life: is an ever living monster right now, and not in the cute way. *sigh* She's cute most of the day, then one thing will go wrong for her and bam! temper tantrum. A full out, face in the floor, limbs everywhere, screaming at the top of the lungs - temper tantrum. I've yet to catch a picture of her full on tantrum, but it is not a pretty sight.

Developmentally, she is doing quite well, as usual. Considering we were told she was supposed to have all this speech therapy and constant ear tubes, she is doing really well. We've not needed a speech therapist yet, and her first set of tubes fell out, but we have been told she doesn't need them right now, and they will recheck her end of next month so that will be fun. But yeah, she's talking, walking, climbing, eating, pooping, etcetera.

Her vocabulary has increased so much during this past month or two it is amazing. She can say Winnie the Pooh, Tigger, and Piglet. She says toes, nose, ears, ouchy, puppy, fishy, kitty, up, down, stinky,  honey, milk, eggs, cheese, hotdog, ice, eat, Ronan, mommy, dada, wow, hi, bye, please (although she doesn't quite know when to use it), love you, ducky, socks, diaper. So many words now. Lots of them. She's starting to say her little sentences here and there, things that mean nonsense to anyone else but her. She tries to sing little songs, and plays out the songs with her hands (Itsy Bitsy Spider, Pattie Cake, etc), she can sing the Winnie the Pooh part of the chorus of the Winnie the Pooh song. She likes to dance to everything, still. It really is awesome.

She's climbing more and more complex items throughout the house now. For instance, I found her climbing up the large bookshelf we have in the living room, she was on the second shelf off of the floor, trying to get her hands on a bottle of my nail polish. She uses her slide, a box and her bus scooter thing to get up to higher shelving that she couldn't reach otherwise (problem solving is a good thing, except that it gives me a heart attack). A few mornings ago I woke up because I heard her yelling from her room, but not from her crib -

- from here.

-the top of her changing station. You can see her tears from realizing she couldn't get down. She had the lights turned on, in addition to -

This.

-that would be the contents of her diaper wipe package, a bottle of powder, her comb...ugh. But when I looked at her face, her reaction -

*grins*

-one of pure joy. Sleepy, and swollen faced joy, but joy nonetheless.

So, yeah. I mean, that's about it. Really, she's doing well so far. We've had a busy and emotionally draining month, but we are all going to be okay. Everything is going to be alright. We always are. Love, us.

May - Really...already?

It is May! Happy Cinco de Mayo!

Its to early in the am for me to have any Cinco de Mayo celebration pics, but I will have them up probably on Sunday night. I've just been mulling around and trying to figure out this new Google+ integration. :)

But I just wanted to say that yes, we are alive and doing well. Just busy. Working and raising a kid is no easy task, though I wouldn't trade it for all the things in the world. Anyway, gotta go. It's late (or early) and I have a couple things I still need to do before bed. Night...oh hell, here is a picture of the Monster to make your night even better!

Yay! Slides are awesome!

JOY!!!!!!!

The joy of a new camera. I say, it is a great feeling. So, I found an awesome 14 megapixel camera from Sanyo on sale at Wally-World for 79 bucks. It is a great camera, it has a 3.5 inch touch screen and all kinds of goodness. Yay us! It's blue and it's pretty, the only thing is: I can't take a picture of it, with it. LOL.

So, things with Monster are good. She is growing like a weed! She had her 18 month physical and shots last week. She hated me for a while because of it, but that's okay, I love her no matter what. So, she is 28 pounds (probably a few ounces heavier since then) her head is huge and she is getting tall. Developmentally, she is doing amazing. Her speech seems to be right on track with children of normal palatial births. There are some nasal-y sounding noises that she makes, but that was totally expected and okay. So, yep.

That's pretty much it. Except.........PICTURES!!!!!!!!!! I just took a few tonight to check out how the camera actually works so, yeah. A few of Monster before bed! Have a good night!

Daddy! Look at me Daddy! Hi!

Mommy! I wanna climb up!

Hi, can I see what you are doing on the other side of that blue thing?

Hi! I am just gonna hang out right here.

Mommy! You're in my shot!

18 Months Young! And some pictures!

So my Monster girl is officially  a year and a half. OMG how time flies. It really truly does. :) I have some pictures. Not many, I wasn't able to download all of them from my phone because my phone is a jerk, but - the ones I do have are from today and last week when Monster girl and I went to the park...she loves the park.


She has her 18 month check up and shots in a week or so :( we don't like that, but she is doing amazing and growing so big. We are coming up on potty training now, I think. She likes to take her diaper off and run around without it for a while and shows interest in what one does in the bathroom. So, maybe we'll be potty training soon, who knows right?


Anyway, things are good for the moment. Daddy and Mommy Monster are hard at work and the Monster is amazing as always. I just wish I had my camera :( It's cool, I am saving up for it. Developmentally my kid is doing well, as far as I can tell. She's expanding on her vocabulary everyday and is becoming quite the lady: she says "tanku" and "peees." She signs hungry, more, eat, thirsty, and diaper. She can show where your head, shoulders knees and toes are; but also your mouth, ears, eyes and nose. She takes off her own clothing and attempts to put it back on. It's awesome.


For her half  year birthday we went to the park. She likes to swing and can go down the slide by herself, then she runs around and around and around for hours. Today we had fun, until evil five year old jerk kid thought it would be funny to swing a stick at the kids on the swings because "look! Pinatas!" He got Monster girl in the eye and now we are working on our first injury related black eye :( She won't sit still enough for me to get a picture so when she's sleeping....). Made me sad. He hit two other kids and jumped into a car with some woman, I don't know if she was his mom or not, but I only got a partial plate and the other mom's did not catch any of it. Hopefully he won't come back to the park, but I am going to find a new one anyway.


So yep, that is all I suppose. So nice to see you all again...Pictures!

Mom!

I do not know how I feel about these bars.

Down the stairs like a pro.

Today I am a year and a half. I am soooo old.

Swinging, right before the kid hit me. 

Hey Hey Hey~

Apologies for our absence. We've been busy. With two parents working and a baby in day care, well, things get busy and it gets hard to blog every week.

So, still no camera so no new pictures. However, it has been one year since Kaylee Monster's first surgery. This time last year I was such a wreck with worry. I couldn't sleep because the hospital was not conducive to sleep at all. And every time she would whimper in pain a little I would panic. Ah, now I just worry if I can't remember the last time I changed her diaper was. LOL.

In any case she is a giant and she is so funny and loud and vocal about her needs. It is good because now we know when she is hungry or thirsty and she makes it known when she wants a cookie. Ah, my little Monster is becoming a bigger Monster :) I love it.

So, yep, we doing well. Just lacking on sleep, and time as a family since Daddy Monster and I have practically completely different schedules so we see each other just before I go to bed and on Saturday nights and Sunday. Hard, but necessary.