Coburn Kids

Things have been crazy!  Daniel and I have been have been working like mad on so many projects.  We’ve gotten the front yard in shape, I bought and painted some trim for the garden area, we pulled weeds, laid mulch, pruned and more. We were set to start on the backyard then it snowed for a few days so we moved inside.

We’ve gotten the paperwork from Gena’s school, and her last day was yesterday.  She was off track starting this week. We’ve arranged for Adessa to have her VIP day at preschool and her last day is April 8th.

April 2nd-5th Daniel and I will be out in Illinois to search for housing, because April 11th we pack the truck and April 13th we move!  Crazy, I know. We’ve all ready contacted the properties we are interested in, setting up dates to see the home. Flights/hotels/rental car are all done and covered. Moving truck ordered.  My Mom is going to be able to drive out with us, which is fabulous (thank you mom!).  My Dad is flying out that Thursday we move to help.  Then they will both fly home on Sunday.

We’ve got the carpet ordered for this house, have started spring cleaning all the toys, clothes, and more. I got Caden’s last Dr.’s appointment scheduled for April 6th. We’ve started pawning off the furniture we can’t bring with us as well!

Everything is happening fast but I love it. I thrive in this fast paced planning stage, I go “control freak” on everyone.  Okay, maybe not lovely for my family who has to deal with me but I’m thorough and I know I have all the bases covered… I swear!!

The Draper Temple dedication is now done and over with. Daniel and I brought the kids and went with my parents to walk through the temple a few weeks back. Gena and Adessa were so thrilled to go! They loved it. They asked lots of questions and were just generally enthused to see it and how beautiful it was. My Mom and Dad also came up this last Sunday to watch the kids so that Daniel and I could go to the dedicatory services for it. Again, wonderful and so special. We were there an hour before it began in our Stake Center and still sat in the overflow, but that hour before was so quiet and peaceful. I forget sometimes with 3 kids running around how valuable and precious that much quiet time can be! So I sat and meditated on life, on my children, on the gospel and about my wonderful husband.

In extremely exciting news, after 5 months we now have an official job offer and we’ve accepted! It is out of state but we are blessed because we will get to be near family still, which is invaluable to us. So come mid-April we are packing up the family and headed to Chicago, IL. Daniel has a great new job with Sears and I can’t tell you how grateful and enthused we are about it. The fact that we will have good health insurance again also brings a smile.

Of course, the coordination of the move wipes that smile right off!! I have to now get in place all of Caden’s new doctors and reschedule all his upcoming appointments. We’ll be able to do his Swallow Study here in Salt Lake but his ophthalmology, cardiology, ENT, GI doctor, geneticist, therapists, preemie clinic, cleft clinic, and all other appointments we had upcoming here now have to be redone. Which is a very daunting task. Not to mention getting Gena into her new school and all the fun moving things such as utilities and the like. I’m up for it though.

It’s exciting and scary to move all at the same time. You get comfortable in a place after a few years. You settle in, everything becomes familiar. There’s a pattern and a rhythm that life develops. Then you have to uproot and everything is new, different, and you feel out of place for a bit. I’m teaching the girls that this is a new adventure for us. One chapter of our lives closing and a new one beginning. It’s hard to leave so much behind though. Family, friends, a fantastic ward who has helped us out in ways I can’t even begin to thank them. The mountains… I’ll miss the mountains. But we have new experiences and opportunities before us and I acknowledge and realize just how lucky we are to get this great job offer. Times are hard and scary, so to have that bit of stability back in our lives is something I am grateful for.

So we have 2 very important milestones to share about Caden in the last few days.  First off, his first haircut!  We buzzed his little head, because his hair is so fine and all-over-the-place he looked like a wild child.  Now he looks very handsome.  You can see the undertaking below:

He was such a good little boy and sat there the whole time patiently.

Here’s a close-up, you can see how his hair stuck out all over.

Next is the most exciting news, CADEN TOOK HIS FIRST STEPS!  He’s been practicing all this week standing up and moving his little leg forward.  Well today he did it, he took those few steps.  We caught it on video below while we were watching a movie and cleaning, and I apologize for my baby in a diaper, he likes to take his pants off any chance he gets! It’s a new skill.

First off, cute random pic of my kids to the left!

We had Caden’s Occupational Therapist and Speech Pathologist here today and we talked with them some about Caden’s left-sided weakness. When trying to walk with him he’s dragging his left leg, and since his thumb x-rays came back structurally okay we think his left hand and not doing a pincer grasp correctly either is all connected. If you recall, when Caden came home from the hospital he couldn’t turn his head to one side because of some tightness and weakness at the same time. This could be because of some mild cerebral palsy, and just to clarify since there is a lot of misconception about cerebral palsy I’ll give a definition: a broad term that describes a group of neurological (brain) disorders. It is a life-long condition that affects the communication between the brain and the muscles, causing a permanent state of uncoordinated movement and posturing. So it’s a catch all diagnosis that doesn’t necessarily mean any type of mental handicap (it can though) but is rather more typically related to the muscles. If this is the case we wouldn’t get a diagnosis for a few years because it would appear to be mild and we’ll just have to wait and see what he’s able to do in the future. We never really held any hope for our son to become coordinated enough for sports anyway, since his eyes and risk for retinal detachment would actually be more concerning.

We’ve got Caden’s swallow study scheduled for April 9th. His Speech Therapist is going to try and make it up there with me as well to observe it. It should be amusing, trying to force feed a child who hates drinking to swallow some chalky not-so-cleverly-disguised-liquid that is suppose to taste like a variation of cherries or bubblegum. I mean, for a regular child who could drink, it would be difficult. Add in a child who refuses for liquid to touch their lips most days… and I guess I won’t be dressing Caden in any cute/good clothes that day! If you are curious as to what a swallow study is here’s a great explanation below:

What is a swallow study?

A swallow study (also known as a videofluoroscopic swallow study) is a procedure used to test children experiencing difficulties with feeding and/or swallowing.

* The swallow study is performed in the medical imaging department with a speech-language pathologist and a radiologist. Special equipment is used to provide a “moving x-ray” of the child’s swallow.
* During the test, the child is placed in a chair next to the x-ray equipment. The speech-language pathologist feeds the child a variety of foods mixed with barium. The barium makes the food visible during the x-ray.
* The speech pathologist closely watches the x-ray to see how the food and drink move through the mouth and into the esophagus during chewing and swallowing. She also watches for any signs of aspiration (when the food or liquid goes “down the wrong way” into the airway).

With Caden we are also going to be watching his nasal area as he is still getting food coming out of his nose every time he eats.  He may have a fistula or other hole up there so that will be informative.

Not much to report.

Job search continues, it’s been 5 months! Hard to believe. For updates on the states, since my mind has melted with the sheer number of companies and people: North Carolina, Illinois, Florida, Utah, Washington and Texas are the contenders right now.

Caden continues to learn more signs. No new sounds yet, still just Ha, Ga, Ge and… that’s about it.

Parent/Teacher conference for Gena went well. Her only struggle is handwriting, but she is a full year younger then the other kids.

Adessa loves preschool, loves her teacher, loves her friends. Though she is mad at her preschool best friend Peyton for telling on her because she wasn’t sharing. Preschool drama, I love it.

All right, just to show all of you how close Caden is to walking all by himself, I uploaded a video of him pushing a chair around in the kitchen.  He’s not walking independently yet and he’s still a little shaky but he was having such a grand time I had to show it. He’s 19 months old and I think… I think in a few weeks we may get those first steps all by himself!!

We’ll start with Gena.  Daniel had a phone conversation with Gena’s principal today at the school and they brought in a bunch of kids to find out what happened and who exactly it was. They were able to identify the boy and they talked to him.  The custodian also went out to the playground and filled in the hole in the woodchips that they had been playing in. Hopefully that’s the last of the incident.

On Friday I went up to the hospital with Caden and got his thumb x-rays done. The bones look fine and Caden’s odd lil’ thumb is actually “soft tissue swelling”. Make of that what you will.  Since he’s had it since birth it’s not really any swelling that will go down but just the way his thumb is and will always be. A little odd and off-kilter. This doesn’t help us figure out why he’s not using the thumb correctly unfortunately.  So we’ll wait and see.