Summer, Summer!

Nothing like trying to do family photos with two small children

I'm embarrassed it's been since April since I've updated the blog. Hard to believe the summer is almost over and the kids just have a few weeks until school starts. Yes, I said kids, plural, we have two kids in school this year. I can't believe it! Henry is going to start morning preschool in the fall in our local school district. I'm so excited for him, because he is just going to love having new friends to play with and he truly does enjoy organized activities. At the same time, I'm going to miss him terribly in the mornings. Chad has asked me several times what I'm going to do with myself and I find it a little hard to even think about it. The last four and half years my time has been consumed with taking care of kids. I don't know if I'm ready for the new chapter, but I'm also excited to do some new things.

Look! Dad caught Nemo!

Let me see if I can update on all the happenings in the Stewart house over the last few months. Josie finished summer school at the end of June and we've had a great time since she's been out. Chad took a week and half off around July 4th which he hadn't really had a lot of time off since Christmas break. It was a really great time. We traveled to see both sides of the family over the 4th and then did a little stacation in KC. We went to the zoo, the farm, the aquarium, and local pool. I have to say this summer has really been different. For the first time, since Josie was born it is easy to get out and go places. Her health was great the whole time and both kids really enjoyed seeing new things. Chad and I really enjoyed the time too! (Except for a few kid fits here and there:) We ended the week with an impromptu get together with a couple of Chad's old high school friends and their families who live close to us. They have all really made an unbelievable effort to start learning sign language and it was so neat to see Josie communicating with everyone and really being a part of the group. We cooked out at the house and the kids played outside until dark. It was a blast. There have been many times over the last few years we've felt like our lives are so different from our peers because of the situation we have, but that week it really felt like we were just a normal family. We are so blessed to have great friends who make us feel that way:)

Henry, or should I say Hank, has had a pretty unbelievable summer. Chad keeps telling him what a great life he has. I think secretly Chad would like to trade places with him some days:) Henry and I spent most of June outside working in the garden, swimming, going to the farm, and the park while Josie was at school. He really wants us to call him Hank now and he's convinced Josie that is his name. If we ask her what Henry's name is she fingerspells Hank.  He has just continued to become such a sweet and compassionate boy. The other night Josie came out of the bathroom having just put on her PJs and Henry looked at her and said "Oh, Josie pretty" and gave her a hug. He very much worries about Josie still if she isn't feeling good. I've been teaching him about her feeding tube and how it works. He thinks it hurts her when we feed her, so I've taught him how to give her water through her tube and he's starting to understand it doesn't hurt. He has made some great friends at church, in particular, a set of twins about his age. They've been over a few times lately and he just has a blast with them. It is fun to see him develop these relationships and have something of his own.

Josie, well what do I say, the girl is really developing a personality:) She had a little bit of a rough time at the beginning of the summer with ear infection issues, but (knock on wood) she has been doing really well lately. She had a great time at summer school and has really been working hard on school stuff at home this month. Josie is ecstatic to play school all day. I think she is definitely her mother's daughter:) Right now, she is doing a lot of tracing and her writing has gotten so much better since May. She also enjoys giving me assignments, luckily most of the time the consist of tracing letters or cutting things out of paper:) She is a pretty bossy teacher, but I tend to follow her directions. Her signing is getting so much better and she is really practicing fingerspelling. She's pretty much grown out of naps, so while Henry sleeps in the afternoon I work with her on school stuff. We practice fingerspelling a lot during that time and she is really doing well. In the spring she began to show a lot of interest in eating and we were really excited. Unfortunately, she really struggled with it and has slid back to not eating much. We had really taken a break from the whole feeding thing over the last year, but decided it's time to reevaluate whether she needs additional surgeries to make eating safer for her. Basically, right now when she eats the food go into her sinuses and comes out her nose. We met a plastic surgeon at Children's Mercy who felt like her palate issues were minor but thinks having her tonsils removed would help this tremendously. That is basically the first step. Once we get the food going down her throat we need to fix her laryngeal cleft that is allowing food into her lungs. That is something that just may be too extensive to be repaired, but we are in the process of getting her into an airway specialist at St. Louis Children's Hospital for a second opinion. I was hoping to have an appointment before school started but this whole thing is moving at a snails pace. Long story short, she may have surgery this fall to remove the tonsils and then this would give the surgeons room to work on her laryngeal cleft. It seems to be a fine line on what to do. We almost hate to mess with her when she's doing so good, but we don't want to look back and think we just become too comfortable with the feeding tube and didn't really give her the best chance to be a lifelong eater.

Chad had a super busy spring at work and we didn't see a whole lot of him until into the evenings. This summer things have slowed down a little so it's nice to have him home at a regular time. He's been busy in the yard managing the gardens and built a pergola over our back patio to give Josie some shade. She really refused to play in the backyard because it was too sunny for her. We've just about lived out there since he finished the project. He really did a great job especially since he doesn't do construction stuff to o much anymore:) He enjoyed the trip down south to the lake over the 4th. He discovered that Henry is going to be an early morning buddy for him down there. They often were up before everyone else and went fishing or on a jetski ride. I have to say I enjoyed waking up and looking outside to see them down on the dock together, father and son. It seemed just right.

I've just been busy hanging out with the kids. I told Chad the other day I feel like we've moved on to a different stage with them. They are becoming a little more self sufficient and I have a couple little buddies to hang with during the day. I'm trying to figure out what I'm going to do with myself when school starts. I'm doing a little technology work for Josie's school and hope to continue to do that. Also, talking with our church about starting a support group for parents of children with special needs and I think that is going to keep me busy. This year I've also taken more of a leadership role in our churches Mother's of Preschoolers group too, so every week I'll have things to do with that which is a lot of fun and it is a great group of moms.

Well, that's what the Stewarts are up to. I hope everyone is having a great summer! The next post may very well be first day of school photos! Where does time go???