3rd Soccer game

For our third practice we played "Blob!" Where if the "IT" person or "the Blob" kicks your ball away from you, you join to the Blob and try to get more balls away.  Then in partners we did "quick draw" where the line up in front of each other and when I say "go" they try to be the first person to back kick the ball to their side keeping to away from their partner. Then we worked on passing to each other. I think the kids got a little bored of that and wanted to play more tag type games.

April 28th was our third soccer game. Robert's game started at 1:00pm while Hailey's started at 2:00pm. While Robert plays, the other two kids play at the  playground that is close by. Shortly after Robert's game started, Nathan who was sitting by me but watching the playground said that Hannah was in a seizure. She was trying to climb up a small step and paused funny and fell down stiffly. He realized something was wrong when her legs stayed in the air. He picked her up and brought her close to us where I had a small bundle of blankets. The seizure lasted maybe a minute. It was a chilly day and she has been a bit congested. On top of that, 1:00pm is generally when she naps though she doesn't usually have a seizure just because she missed her nap it just made her seizure threshold lower. The seizure was really no big deal, I talked with the other soccer moms to see if they could watch Robert while I ran Nate and Hannah home. She needed to be out of the wind and time to sleep. It is time like these where we have to just live life and go on as normal and take Hannah out on a cold day instead of living in fear of a possible seizure and trying to prevent them. They happen and though there are indicators of when she most likely will have one, we never know exactly when. Sometimes she is really sick and doesn't have a seizure and sometimes is is just a little bit sick and does.

I made it back shortly before the game ended. The moms said that Robert did great and was excited to play.

Then we had to go to a different school for Hailey's game (every other game was played at the same school but this one.) Rachel was in the front pack asleep and Robert played at the playground.  Hailey's team did really well. The other team seemed a bit unorganized and wild but they were very excited to score once. They might have gotten two goals but I'm not sure. I also don't remember how many my team got but it was a good handful. 

After half time, Rachel woke up and one of the moms was more than willing to hold her. I have a very supportive and understanding team of parents.

Quilt

Starting in January, I've been taking quilting lessons from Carrol. During nap time (1:30pm) she would came over and teach me a new skill and pattern. The biggest thing that I need to work on is keeping my seems consistent. I did 21 blocks, which we used 20 to put together this sampler quilt. Then since my house is full of kids, we laid out the pattern at Carrol's house and added the brown sashing and the borders. It made a queen size quilt top. I love how it turned out and am excited to do more quilts.

MRI

Hannah had her MRI done at Primary Children's on April 23rd. The appointment was at 6:30am. So that Sunday, I took the kids down to SLC with me so Grandma Cherie could watch them during the appointment. Rachel generally wakes up at 8:00am and is pretty happy for a while before I feed her, so I got to leave Rachel at Gramma's too.

Hannah had to go at least 4 hours fasting which was why we had such an early appointment. She was really happy in the waiting room.

 Then they took us back to explain everything. I read books to Hannah to entertain her. Then came the IV! I sat on the chair with Hannah facing me on my lap. I had my arms over hers to help keep her sit. It didn't work. She freaked and wiggled too much. The two nurses tried the other side and still no go.  Then the brought in warming pads for her feet and left us for a while.  Hannah just wanted me to see to her. She loves books but at that time didn't want any. I found it special and touching to sing comfort to her. It reminded me of my dad singing and when I felt scared and going through a rough time at school, how much I appreciated getting a CD of my dad singing.

Finally, the IV specialist came to help. We tried once again to get an IV in her while she sat on my lap but that wasn't successful either.  The big problem is that Hannah's veins are really deep and hard to find. Then once the finally find a vein if she moves and thrashes around while they stick her, the blood stops flowing and the site is no good any more. So for her fourth poke, she was laying on the bed while I was laying over her legs and holding one arm. One of the technicians held her arm they were going to poke still, while the other stuck her. That time it worked!!!

After a bag of fluid, we went to the scanner bed were they added the anesthetics to knock her out. After about 5 minutes we thought she was asleep so the nurse put in her ear plugs, Hannah freaked out and kept screaming. It took a little bit to calm her back down. She eventually got hooked up to all the monitors and got sent through the machine for 45 minutes. I ate breakfast during that time.

 She was hard to wake up after the testing.  She drank her juice in the sleep. The nurse tried to give her a Popsicle which Hannah would react to and just kept turning her head side to side to get away from it. I played with her and she even laughed at me but just wouldn't open her eyes and act awake.

So after giving her Keppra, we got a little wagon to take her to the car. She was in and out in the wagon but still it didn't do the trick. At Grandma's she just laid asleep on the couch while I fed Rachel and packed the other kids up. Putting Hannah back in the car woke her up enough to give her Depakote with applesauce (it's a pull apart pill). I just feel more comfortable when she has her medicine. The ride back was so easy. Hailey and Robert entertain themselves well and Hannah and Rachel slept the whole time.  Then like a switch, when we arrived home, Hannah just woke up and was completely fine. Somethings to be worried about is an upset stomach and a loss of balance for the first little bit but Hannah acted completely normal.

The result of the test is that her brain is completely normal but showed that she was a bit congested. Having a normal test is great news because it leads to further evidence that she'll out grow her seizure but at the same time, I wish we could actively do something to help her then just waiting. Oh well, it was a good testing experience and she is very cute asleep.

2nd Soccer game

For the second practice we played Shark attack where the "shark" stayed on the island (in a jump rope circle) while the players dribble the balls. Then the shark yells "SHARK ATTACK" and the shark tries to kick the balls out of the field while the players try to stop their ball on the island. If their ball gets away from them, then they turn into sharks too.

We also played kick the couch, where I try to dodge the ball and if they kick me, then I make an animal noise that the player chooses. The kids likes both games and wanted to be "IT".

 Robert does really well in soccer and stays with the game with same encouragement from us and his coach.

 Hailey was playing with the camera.

Hailey's games was fun. We had a lady bug incident though where Alyse found a ladybug and both teams stopped to check it out. The funny thing was that the other team was really close to their goal but that didn't matter to them. I quickly took the lady bug to put it in a safer spot. After the game a girl from the other team asked where it was.

The other interesting thing was one of the parents who coach a younger soccer team, noticed that we weren't really following soccer rules with what to do when the ball goes out of bounds. So he refereed the second half of the game. That was a little strange but I did learn a lot. The biggest thing is you have to pay attention to who kicked the ball out which is difficult with so many tiny feet all around the ball. We only scored once and that was at the very end of the game.

Trip to the ER

I'm still updating my blog. This happened on April 20th and everything worked out fine.

Hannah added Depakote, a new seizure medicine, on April 9th to the Keppra she is already taking. She did one dose at night for four days then went to two doses a day. Though I've been trying to avoid playing the medicine game my new thought process is that since she has more medicine Hannah shouldn't have any break through seizures. 

On Friday (April 20th) everything was pretty normal. We did a few errands in the morning then since it was a nice day outside we walked to Hailey's school to pick her up.  I noticed that Hannah seemed to be tripping over her feet more but thought it was because her pants are too long or she was running too fast or she's just getting tired since it's nap time.
Since it was close to nap time, Hannah was a little clingy and followed me downstairs to get paper towels. I ran upstairs to get lunch done (just mini corn dogs in the microwave) when I heard this strange sound like Hannah was gagging. Hannah was still downstairs distracted by Rachel's exersaucer. I thought she must have thrown up since she was a little bit sick and had snot in her throat (a common thing that Robert does).

I ran downstairs with the paper towel and found Hannah completely supporting her own weight but in a seizure. She had mild shaky and was a little bit responsive.  I thought that it was pretty strange but maybe her new medicine lessens the seizure now. I carried her to the couch with me to sit down (she is very stiff in a seizure which makes changing her position difficult.)

She seemed to relax a little and since her eyes were opened still, I asked her if she was all done. She nodded slightly and so I carried her upstairs to keep an eye on the other kids. Before I was even upstairs she was in another seizure or most likely just continuing the first one since they were so close together. It was just mild shaking so no big deal.  I hate that her lips turn blue but that doesn't make me as nervous as it used it.

Then she sat up, tightened her grip on me and started this awful screaming. Her seizure became more violent and the stiffening is a very normal reaction but it unnerved me. I started crying and trying to tell her that she's okay. I just repeated that over and over until I realized that I was trying to convince myself we were okay. I just wasn't handling it well so I called my visiting teacher who I just saw driving to her house. She came right over and helped get the kids their lunch. After a few minutes, I told her that Hannah's been in her seizure for 10 minutes now. I called 911 after that and they sent the ambulance.  Before the EMTs arrived Hannah's seizure stopped but lately she's been having seizures back to back within 10-30 minutes of each other.

There were so many people there. One guy was talking with me while another was checking her stats and trying to find an IV spot while another guy was assisting him with the equipment. There were two guys just sitting around. We had an ambulance and a fire truck at our house (a couple of people found me later in the week wondering if we were okay since they noticed the commotion.)

Though Hannah was out of her seizure, stable and her stats looked good, we decided to bring her to the hospital for further observation. Hannah was mad whenever someone tried to touch her so the EMTs couldn't get an IV hooked up. The IV is to get her medicine to stop the seizure. She has very deep veins that are difficult to find even for Primary Children's who work on small veins all the time. I am so glad Hannah did not have another seizure because they most likely would've had to drill in the leg to get the IV like what happened to her at 9 months old.

The hospital was boring since there was nothing they could do for her but wait and watch.  With the MRI scheduled for Monday (it was Friday) I had them do a chest xray to make sure she wasn't going to develop pneumonia again (if that happened she would have had to wait another month before we could do the MRI.) No other testing was done and her xray looked great. She had a peaceful nap in mommy's arms and we were discharged around 3:00pm, which was pretty convenient for Nate since that's right after Rachel woke up.

By dinner time, Hannah was talking, signing and was pretty happy. Generally it takes her a couple of days to recover after a lot of seizure activity.  Maybe this is another effect of the new medicine.

First week of Soccer

Robert was in soccer last year and has talked about it ever since. I thought that Hailey should have a chance to see if that is what she likes also. Well, a couple of weeks after I signed them up, I get a call informing me that Hailey's team doesn't have a coach. I told them that I could do it if no one else would but to keep calling. She said there was only two left to call and she has left messages with them already (not a good sign). I thought it over then talked with Nathan and decided that I could try. So that's how I became Hailey coach.

I schedule my practice time to be right after Robert's so we would have only two days of soccer (practice and games are once a week). The first practice was interesting. I wanted them to learn each other's names first so we got in a circle to kick the ball to each other while saying the names. No one really said each other names, so I said them. Then we tried Red Light, Green Light but the kids did hard kicks and the balls were out of control. We then paired up and passed the ball to each other then took a step back. Finally, we played Bunny Tag where the IT person hopped to tag the other players while they dribbled their ball.  By the end of the 30 minute practice I felt a little discouraged about how practice went and how to do another. My games didn't take as long as I hoped they would.

Robert had his game first. His team is blue. Whenever his coach knelt down to talk to them, Robert went to sit on him. It showed pretty quickly that Robert has done soccer before and none of the other kids have.

 Robert did great and kick the ball from the middle and just missed the goal by two feet.

 Then at 2:00pm it was Hailey's turn.  Our game consist of four 8-minute quarters. There is supposed to be a 1-2 minute break between each quarter and about 3-5 minutes for half time. So the total game should take 40 minutes. Our first game took about 1 1/2 hours. We had a late start due to field confusion. Also we are supposed to sub out players every 4 minutes which takes time. Neither coach really knew how the game was supposed to go but the kids did have fun.  We aren't supposed to keep score but the kids did and told me that we lost 4-7. 

Since I can't really take pictures during the game and Nathan is busy watching Hannah, I could only take pictures during half time. The kids wanted to practice scoring.

 One of the girls has the bad habit of picking at her nails, so during the game she started bleeding. Also another one of the boys wanted so bad to be the goalie (which isn't for our age group yet). He got very upset when the other team started scoring. I'm kind of glad to see that melt downs are just apart of Hailey's age group and not specific to her.

Easter

The ward held a neighborhood Easter Egg Hunt in a small park. The park was divided into 4 areas, and the big kids (9-11) went up on the hill behind the neighbor's backyard. Carrol lives right there so the kids use her backyard to go through.

I stayed with Hannah and was really wasn't into picking up the eggs. I had to point them out to her. We are staying downstairs at this point and maybe she is just trying to catch up on all the lost sleep that the bed bugs caused her.

Robert and Hailey had a lot of fun running everywhere for eggs.

Nathan's job was to keep Rachel warm since it was a bit chilly.

This picture of Hannah shows how out of it she was. She is surrounded by eggs and she won't even pick up any.

Hailey and Robert went to Hannah's section to help out. They got too much candy in my opinion.

There was an Easter Bunny there. Then we had cookies and milk in Carrol's garage. I had all the blocks to my quilt put together at Carrol's house (we ran out of room at my house to put it together). So Carrol invited my friends in to see the progress. It was fun having it shown off.

On Sunday after church, I took all the eggs the kids gather the day before and hide them again in our backyard. However, Hannah fell asleep at this point and we had to wait until she woke up. By that point, most of the chocolate melted a little (nothing that the refrigerator couldn't fix).

In their baskets were a shovel, a sand bucket, and a chocolate bunny.

Hannah again didn't do much since she just woke up from her nap.

Hailey, Robert and I dyed eggs during Hannah's nap which was a good choice. I don't think Hannah's ready to have the patience to dye eggs yet.

After the egg hunt, we went to the back room and opened up our twelve plastic eggs that contains a symbol and a scripture describing Jesus's last week. I think I really like this tradition. I know Hailey understands the process of the resurrection, that Jesus died and then His body and spirit joined together and He was resurrected. I hope that I'll be able to help them understand why that is important while they are still young.