2024 1/4 done

It has been like 5 whole months since I posted on here! Way too much for me to reasonably catch up on but I do want my children to have this to look back on and remember their life, our lives and how they were when they were little. I feel like this is grounding and good for children to have. And so, here are my little snippets of my children!

Levi

You are growing like a weed before my eyes, all tall now and with your face all slimmed out into a big boy face. I feel like I'm catching glimpses of you grown up. But you're still young and I love your sensitive, tender side. You still like to snuggle and you still ask to play with us. I know those days are probably numbered and I could definitely do better at savoring them. You recently discovered Harry Potter and have been flying through the audiobooks. However, we have to be careful around bedtime because they can be a little scary and now that we've moved Emery out of your room, it can be hard for you to go to bed at night. You've also been struggling with headaches so much this year and my heart just hurts for you because we don't know what to do about them. You have them about 4 times a week and so far nothing we've done has helped much. We've got an appointment scheduled with neurology but it isn't till June! I've got us on the wait list though so hopefully we can get you in sooner. We had your eyes checked and your visual acuity is great and allergy medicine didn't seem to help either. We're going to try going gluten-free this week at the advice of our pediatrician so we'll see how that goes! 

In other news, your reading is really coming along thanks to all the hard work of your awesome 2nd grade teacher Mrs. Sullivan who has really done awesome with you! She has been a good partner with us, helping manage your struggles with attention and difficulties with phonics and I can tell she really cares about you. 

Also, your drawing abilities are really quite amazing for your age. You did art camp for spring break and your astronaut picture was seriously so good! I was proud to show it off to our family. I want to encourage you to continue with it as long as it brings you joy. 

You enjoyed basketball with Kyler but I don't think it was your favorite sport. Papi and Nona got you a basketball hoop for your birthday so we'll see if you keep practicing it. 

You and Isla with your Valentines' boxes. I love how you can be so sweet with her! 

You: "hey Mom! Let's see if I can fit in this hole I dug! pew pew pew"

You won an award at school this past week for giving creative suggestions to your group and getting along well with everyone. 

You've been losing teeth lately and sometimes it makes you smile funny! 

Emery

Ah my girl who lives large! You have started cheer and are really loving it. You like to perform and love dressing up! You have a strong sense of fairness lately and are quite competitive, especially with Levi. You are really coming along with your reading and can sound out phonetic words really well! You are very mothery towards Isla still even when she isn't always the nicest to you. You love school and like playing with your best friend Arya. In your own words you are "very into Stella Bats, Junie B Jones and gum." Haha. We are trying hard to get you to stop biting your nails and got some of that bitter stuff to put on them and you just hate it. 

On Sundays or special occasions, you love choosing a special hairstyle from my Pinterest hair board or just making one up or letting me make one up for you! 

You can't really see it in this picture but you love painting your own face! For this Sunday dinner, you were a tiger and your sweet cousins Noah and Silva were "helping" you learn how to ride a bike without training wheels. 

Sweet matchy girls!

One of your school friends had a birthday party at Sweet & Sassy where you got to dress up and get your hair done and put on a little fashion show and it was pretty much your favorite thing ever! You've told me you want to do this at your next birthday party. 

I love how you get proud of yourself when you do something challenging! You are definitely one to push yourself and keep trying hard things. Because you've been diligent at practicing your splits you can get all the way down to the floor now!

You had an absolute blast with cousin Silva at our spring break get-away weekend! 

I loved seeing the two of you playing together! 

Isla

My mischievous little buddy! I absolutely love hanging out with you on Mondays and Fridays and having you as my little tag-along. I tell you how we're buddies and you tell me "I'm the little buddy and you're the big buddy!" You are so strong-willed and independent and like to do things yourself such as take off your own clothes, put on your own clothes, put the lid on your cups, etc. I really have to watch you because you've gotten into the habit of stealing the car keys and leaving the house and getting into the car on your own! You also cause all sorts of trouble like getting water out of the sink and spilling it as you make "tea," getting into my make-up or your Desitin and getting it everywhere, climbing into the fridge (which you have figured out how to unlock on your own by climbing up the face of it all the way to the top!) etc. You are sooo cute and so loving. You give just the best hugs and tell me "I love you so much!" and my heart melts every time. You are such a strong, good climber and can easily scale our climbing wall all the way to the top on your own and can do flips on the bar with very little help at gymnastics. You LOVE gymnastics and excel at it. You love playing with your brother and sister and do your best to keep up with them. Unfortunately, you aren't always the sweetest with Emery and are in the bad habit of hitting her which we are trying to get you to stop doing! We're also trying to get you off your binkie but you definitely have other ideas and aren't ready to give that up yet! 

You love your treats! 

You also love going to the "dinosaur library" (the Frisco library). You can be a little bossy sometimes and told me exactly how to take this picture of you haha

I love these little pink Converse on you but I think you've already outgrown them! 

You were pretty pleased with yourself for climbing up this thing at the park. 

When Grandma most recently came to visit she told you the story of the 3 bears and the 3 little pigs and you LOVED them and asked her to tell them to you over and over again. And you ask me now to tell them to you still! 

You put my lip stain on yourself before I caught you! When I caught you you said "ta-da!"

We went over to our friends the Ennis's house the other day and you made yourself comfortable and started "reading" a magazine. 

You like to be my helper with the laundry and throw the clothes into the washer after I hand them to you. 

When I went to take you out of your carseat the other day, you had taken off your socks and shoes and put your socks on your hands instead! You are just very silly and make yourself laugh all the time. 

Speaking of silliness- you climbed up on the kitchen counter and made yourself a bed right there on the countertop with a blanket and pillow from the couch. 

I love that you're eating your icecream with a fork! 

Family Fun

As always, our family tends to stay busy. We've recently been enjoying playing Just Dance together a lot and hanging out in our backyard. We also went down to Gun Barrel City for Spring Break and stayed in an AirBNB with Matthew, Valerie, Silva and Emma and it was just the perfect get-away. It was so nice and relaxing to be able to hang out together as a family, play games together and just be away from our chores and to-do lists. You kiddos loved the hot tub and times with your cousin and aunts and uncle. We adults loved our adult time in the evening and just being together. 

Our one and only snow day this year! 

It's one of my very favorite things in the whole world to sit on our back patio in the evening and watch y'all play together and Eric play with you. 

All dressed up for our neighbor Ms Joella's 80th birthday party! 

While in Gun Barrel, we all went for a hike near a lake. I'm glad we got at least one picture of all of us together! 

The hot tub was cool enough that it was basically just a miniature pool to you guys haha. 

Just Dance!

Sometimes we go to the library together as a family and you kids really like putting the books in the return slot and watching them get machine sorted. 

I love our life and I am so grateful to have my beautiful, wonderful, amazing children and husband! 

Family Pictures Fall 2023

 The outfits for these family pictures were a bit of a struggle for me to pin down- and Isla's outfit options kept getting lost in the mail, coming in the wrong size or color, etc so had to be ordered like 4 times. But in the end I love how they turned out!!

F A L L

 Wow, I didn't realize how long it has been since I have done a blog post. Our lives always seem to get super extra crazy in the fall. What with Emery in dance twice a week, Levi with soccer twice a week, Isla in gymnastics and the big kids both doing piano, our "free" time has been extra limited. And my half days on Tuesdays have been dominated by a lot of doctors' appointments. I had my annual physical at the start of fall and my PCP and I discussed that I have signs that show likely Ehlers Danlos. Which I have suspected for a very long time but have never been formally diagnosed with. She recommended I see a cardiologist for monitoring of my aorta due to EDS being associated with an increased risk for aortic aneurysms. So I met with a cardiologist who I really like, and he agreed that due to the risk factors, I should have an ultrasound to get a baseline and monitor for areas of distension or risk. I was hoping the ultrasound would show everything is good but unfortunately, it didn't quite go that way. On the ultrasound, I showed a plaque near the superior mesenteric artery where it joins the abdominal aorta. The cardiologist explained that it is unusual for someone my age to have a plaque like that and that the differential diagnosis is that there may be a minor dissection there- which I am at risk for due to the EDS. So he wants me to have a CT scan of the area to get a better idea of what's going on there and develop a baseline. He also thinks I need yearly follow-ups. They said they would send the referral over for me to get the CT but I haven't heard from the hospital for scheduling yet so I will probably have to call tomorrow. In some ways, it is validating because it means I'm not making a big deal out of nothing but also I guess I hadn't planned to have to have standing appointments with a cardiologist! I think I'm still processing that. 

Anyway, in addition to the cardiologist I also saw an ENT/allergy specialist recently and had allergy testing done. Unfortunately, this wasn't a great experience because even though I have what I feel like are clearly allergy symptoms, I didn't react to anything on the subdermal test and then only showed very minor reactions to cockroaches, birch and mesquite on the injections. I just feel like, I know I am allergic to grass and have a distinct negative reaction, especially to being around cut grass, and yet for some reason, I didn't demonstrate any of that on testing! And I know I am allergic to flowers, particularly roses, but they don't test for that on the standard allergy panel. Anyway, so when my allergy testing was so.... inconclusive, the ENT suggested scoping my sinuses, which I agreed to not knowing he would do it right then and there! That was kind of awful. I super hated the sensation. But he said everything structurally looked normal and that he could tell they were allergic -lots of clear drainage and swelling without any signs of pus or infection. So he recommended nasal rinses with saline and also a steroid. So I started doing that even though I super hated the sensation. It definitely helped right away with me being able to breathe through my nose. I loved how my nose felt afterwards. Unfortunately, the stuff didn't seem to drain the way it was supposed to and instead just hung out in my sinuses and slowly dripped down my throat all day which after a couple days was not only annoying but also gave me a sore throat and then a worsening cough. After a week, my cough was pretty gnarly so I stopped doing the rinses. Once I recovered from my cough I decided to try again just in case my cough was actually caused by a random virus I happened to acquire at the same exact time. However, when I tried again, my sinuses really hated it and my right sinus swelled up intensely. It legit felt like I had a sinus infection for a day. So after that I haven't tried again. I have a follow up with him on Friday and I am honestly kind of dreading it. Maybe I'll skip it and go to someone else. 

So not only have I had appointments with cardiology and ENT, I also saw dermatology recently about a suspicious spot on my leg. When I saw the dermatologist she was like, "oh yeah, that's not cancer but it will keep growing if we don't remove it." So obviously I had it removed- which was no big deal. She numbed it up and it was totally fine but then afterwards it did bleed excessively and I had to go back in after I got in my car and realized I had blood running down my leg (I couldn't feel it at first due to the lidocaine haha). But yeah, she had to put a stitch in and so then two weeks later when I went to get it out, her medical tech was so rude! She was like, "This won't hurt at all." But it totally did hurt! And when I told her that she was so rude to me, she was like "I had a little boy in here the other day that didn't even flinch." Which is so inappropriate to say to someone! And then when I mentioned the incident to a fellow dance mom who I'm friendly with and who happens to be a PA for a pediatric plastic surgeon and so does a ton of stitching up and stitch removal she was like, "that definitely hurts!" So again that was validating. 

But yeah, I've basically just had a ton of medical appointments lately. And thankfully the kids have been pretty healthy so far this fall (knock on wood) but Isla had her well child check up, the kids had their flu shots and I had to take Emery in also because she's been complaining of her stomach hurting a lot lately. Turns out it's her old nemesis constipation rearing its ugly head again so we're getting back into a routine of giving her Calm medicine (magnesium supplements) every day and really pushing the fluids again. 

Ok, moving on from medical updates. Here's what's new with the kids:

Levi

Is growing taller by the day I feel like. He is looking very grown up these days. He has had a great soccer season and his teacher reports that he gets along with everyone at school where GT and art are some of his favorite subjects. His favorite thing to do at home is to play Prodigy (a math game on the tablet). He continues to be very creative and loves to draw and build with Legos. We recently implemented a visual schedule for him for the morning and it has helped SO MUCH. I no longer have to tell him to put on his socks 3 times/morning haha. He continues to be a bit chaotic and very messy and his teacher reports he struggles to sit still and listen because he is always daydreaming. He got evaluated by the SLP who reports that he needs speech therapy because he can't say his R's so we are meeting with her and his teacher tomorrow to get that going. Levi is still very cuddly with us family members and loves to come over and sit on my lap and then giggle when I tell him he's smashing me haha. 

He asked me to take this picture and then write "Ultimate Agent Peely" on it. That's an Odd Squad (a show the kids like) character. 

Levi brought me these flowers picked from our lawn and then asked me to take a picture of them. 

Don't know why I didn't do it sooner! Sooo helpful!

Emery

Loves her dance class and kindergarten. She has been very into fairness lately and is quick to point out any perceived injustice. She continues to be very nurturing and also feels all the things big and expresses them big. She is quickly progressing with her reading and also likes to listen to audiobooks, especially the Stella Bats ones. She's our little sweet tooth and quite the negotiator at dinner to figure out exactly what she needs to eat and how much to get dessert. 

Silva, Katie and Emery at family dinner. Emery always finds someone to hold her at family dinner- she is very snuggly!

Emery and I went on a special Mommy-Daughter date the other night. At Emery's request, we went and got Chick-fil-A together and then went and got pedicures. She did so good and was very patient while waiting for her pedicure. 

Isla

Is so very, very mischievous and independent. She climbs EVERYTHING. Her favorite is to climb into the fridge or climb into a sink and turn it on. We have to have child locks on everything including the fridge and freezer and most of the doors in the house! She also recently started climbing out of her crib so we took the crib down and now she sleeps on a mattress on the floor in her and Emmie's room and we had to put a child lock on their door on the inside to keep her contained during the night and nap time. She continues to be a very early riser and usually gets up around 5:20 am daily. I was terrified of daylight savings time today but she went to bed late last night due to Levi's end-of-season soccer party so she actually slept in until 5:20 like normal. We'll see how tomorrow goes. 

Isla started gymnastics recently as a birthday present from her grandparents and she LOVES it. She asks to go every day and she is so good at it! She can do the rope swing into the foam pit by herself, climb the ladder on her own, and even hold herself up on the bars. Her coach is very impressed. 

Isla is also very independent. She likes to put her shoes and socks on by herself, help with washing dishes and get herself her own snacks. The other day she asked for milk and I was too slow in getting it so she went into the fridge and got the milk, then climbed on the counter, got herself a cup, and then poured herself (And the counter) some milk! I was like, how is it that you only just turned 2?!

She loves it when I let her practice stirring and pouring water from one container to another.

Isla also loves music and can sing all the words to abcs, twinkle twinkle, little star and old Macdonald. Her favorite bedtime song though is The Goldfish by the Laurie Berkner band which is so very random. She loves her baby shark blankie, and LOVES stuffed animals, the larger the better. She got a giant wolf dog stuffie from Papi and Nona for her birthday which she loves and also a panda which she picked out from the zoo when I took her on her birthday which she also loves. 

She had a blast playing with cousins riding on her new wolf-dog! 

This is where I found her one morning as we were trying to get everyone out the door for school- just chilling upstairs with some snacks. I love her expression in this, like "you better not be coming up here to make me move" haha

Isla can be bossy and tends to hit, especially Emery, when upset or frustrated. But she is also very loving and quick to say "sorry" if she hurts someone. She talks in full sentences and is very expressive. I super love having her as my buddy at home on Mondays and Fridays and feel so lucky to have this time with her! 

She is unfortunately very fond of sticking things in her nose. We actually had to use the nose frida the other day to get a piece of corn out of her nose that she stuck too far up there! Thank heaven it worked. 

When Levi and Emery have piano lessons, I take Isla to a playground nearby to play. She loves this gray slide and will go down it over and over. 

Isla loves to do airplane with me and then have me flip her over for the dismount! 

I took the day off for Isla's birthday and took her to the zoo, just the two of us! She loved it and especially liked petting and brushing the very docile goats. 

Happy 2nd Birthday Isla!!

Halloween playgroup!

Other happenings of late:

We celebrated sweet Silva's 6th birthday with a swim party at the ranch. The kids had a great time! 

My favorite thing to do after dinner is sit out on our back patio and watch the kids play together on the trampoline. 

Happy Halloween from the Martinos! You can't tell really from this picture but for the trunk we did an undersea Pokemon theme! All of the Pokemon cards are water Pokemon and the roofing piece there was covered in seaweed vinyls that showed up best when lit from behind which would happen with our motion-activated light every time a kid threw the Pokeball to catch a pokemon. And Matthew did an arrangement of a spooky "Under The Sea" which we had playing and it was awesome! 

I accidentally bought way more vinyls than we ended up needing for the trunk so I used the leftovers to decorate the kids' bathtub! 

For FHE the night before Halloween we did pumpkins. The girls painted theirs while Levi carved his with Eric's help. 

 

During Levi's soccer game yesterday, the girls had a blast getting their faces painted and painting others! Emery especially was really into it. 

So yeah, that's our crazy, busy life! Work has been hectic for me and Eric but we're both doing our best to find the balance. And we are so excited that it is fall now and Thanksgiving and time off with family are just around the corner!!