Coburn Kids

The past 2 weeks the girls and I have been doing a lot of arts & crafts that I had to share. First up are Daniel’s birthday presents that the girls were so excited to paint and do. Daniel was so excited to get them and see the effort the girls put into them:

Adessa assembled and painted the birdhouse and Gena helped mix and mold and painted the stepping stone

Next up are the school projects Gena needed to do so I got Adessa in on it as well:

We dyed the soap and then poured it into the molds. Gena mixed together Orange and Adessa did the purple.

We did these T-shirts with fabric paint. Gena did the left one tracing the dog and bone with a template. And I did the outline of the flowers while Adessa colored them in.

These are the suckers we did.  I wasn’t able to grab a picture of the red vanilla ones Adessa did, but Gena choose to do Peanut Butter.

Both my girls were in bed by 7:30 PM tonight!  We couldn’t find Gena and there she was dead asleep in bed.  And Adessa came and asked to go to bed. Gena’s got some allergies or a cold because she has the sniffles and is, clearly, tired and doesn’t feel well. Having them want to go to bed so early was a nice surprise though.

Caden’s Early Intervention evaluation was today as well, they do it yearly. Let’s give Caden’s developmental age in months below:

Gross Motor (crawling, walking, etc.) – 12 months

Fine Motor (pincer grasp, picking up small objects, etc.) – 12 months

Cognitive (responds to name, imitates) – 10 months

Language (speech) – 6 months

Self-Help (feeding self, pulling socks off) – 15 months

Social/Emotional (smiling, separation anxiety) – 10 months

So he has an average developmental age of about 10.8 months old. Not unexpected, he was right where I thought he would be in all areas.

Very exciting news though, Caden is starting to do sign language!  Daniel and I are ecstatic about this because he’s finally starting to communicate.  So far he can do ‘more’, ‘eat’, and we believe ‘Daddy’ and ‘all done’. This is huge, it’s the first sign that he’s beginning to comprehend and understand.  It’s completely amazing to see a child that can not say a single word actually tell you something he needs. Needless to say, Daniel and I are really pushing for more sign language and even Gena and Adessa are learning and helping him. We have some kid videos and they watch some on the internet to learn. They think it’s cool too that Caden is interacting with them and they have a “secret” language, as Adessa put it.

In regards to his upcoming appointments, his Geneticist appointment is 8 months off.  Apparently the first opening they have isn’t until Oct. 17th! It’s really not something we need to rush though so I’m not concerned. I couldn’t get his Swallow Study appointment in today, waited on the line for almost a 1/2 hour, so I’ll have to try again tomorrow.

So little Caden has this thumb on his left hand that’s a bit off.  I noticed it when he was a baby.  To describe it, I would say it looks like one side of it got smashed and flattened a bit.  It’s got a hump on the top and while it’s not that noticeable it may be as he gets older.  Our doctors and Caden’s plastic surgeon know about it, it’s fully functional.  All the joints move correctly, he can flex it and it’s just another lil’ odd thing about him.  I’ve noticed over the last couple of months some odd behavior he does with that hand.  When he was younger, before he would pick up an object with that hand, he would rub the object with the side of his thumb… almost like he was trying to feel it.

Yesterday, I noticed that he picks things up strangely with that hand as well, he’s tucking his thumb under.  I have a video below to show what I’m talking about.  My first instinct is that he doesn’t have as much feeling in that thumb, especially in the pad of the thumb.  So he’s using the sides to feel it.  It would make sense, if there’s decreased feeling the proper pincer grap might be difficult as he couldn’t feel if he had a grasp on the food. He can’t, certainly, tell us if anything feels different then the other side but it caught my attention.

The other day, when Grandma Warner was over, I decided to get crafty with the kids and we made popcorn ball snowman.  Check out the masterpeices below:

Popcorn Snowmen!

Well, little Caden has some type of full-body rash going on right now.  Really no idea what it is.  We went to the doctor and because of Gena’s history of eczema she gave us some steroid cream but it hasn’t done anything.  So over the past 6 days we’ve been watching it spread.  Started on the back of his neck, then moved to his ears, then arms, then face, then sides and it just keeps progressing.  Doesn’t seem to bother him too much though. No fever, no runny nose, no cough.

Then there’s Gena.  She has a sore throat and cough that started 3 days ago.  No rash.  I’m thinking 2 totally unrelated things.  The rest of us are doing all right though.

We had Caden’s Preemie Clinic and his hearing tested okay! So thankful for that. I also was able to see Caden’s little girlfriend he had in the NICU.  Which was very exciting.  They roomed together nearly the entire time Caden was there for 4 months.  A little 24 weeker, 6 months in the hospital, little 1 pounder just like Caden. She’s tiny but doing fabulous.  Walking and babbling everywhere.  Just goes to show how much those surgeries have set Caden back but it was great to see them.  Incredible story too that I’ll have to share sometime.  She didn’t even know she was pregnant when she delivered her little girl.

On the job front, Daniel has so many interviews and phone calls going every day it’s like he HAS a job.  This is, of course, good news but no bites yet.  The problem being that a lot of companies want to wait until the first of the year to hire anyone.  Which is understable, but crappy all at the same time.  More and more people are losing their jobs every day, can’t tell you how many stories and people I know that have.  I like to see companies though who are actually making efforts to let people keep their jobs.  By enforcing paycuts, getting rid of company match 401k and just generally being responsible in these times to see that even more people don’t lose their healthcare and homes.  It’s encouraging to see some employers actually thinking out-of-the-box and not contributing to the economic struggle right now.  That there are other solutions then just slashing payroll. So kudo’s to those companies and their management.

Here are what some companies are doing to manage:

“In a recent interview with Tom Brokaw, President-elect Barack Obama urged business owners to “figure out ways in which workers maybe have to take a haircut, but they can still keep their jobs, they can still keep their health care and they can still stay in their homes.”

• Some companies like Toyota keep workers busy during downturns with training sessions or classes. Hypertherm reallocates employees to departments where there is a greater demand for labor. Others choose alternative cost-cutting methods like hiring freezes or shorter work weeks.
• Dean Gruner, CEO of ThedaCare, a Wisconsin-based health care system provider, instituted a no-layoff policy 18 years ago. To slash expenses in lean years, the company slows the hiring process and redeploys workers to other areas. “We can manage our staffing levels by being thoughtful about our turnover rate and redesigning the work that we do,” Gruner said.
• Jason Zickerman, president and CEO of the alternative board, a business coaching group, advocates this approach for all types of companies, even in times of financial hardship. Zickerman suggests offering employees shorter work weeks at reduced pay, encouraging employees to take sabbaticals or extend year-end breaks to avoid cutbacks. If 20 workers took two weeks unpaid at the end of the year, “you’re talking almost a full-time salary,” he said.”
• One of Utah’s largest employers, Intermountain Healthcare, has told its 28,000 employees it will not contribute its share to their 401(k) retirement funds next year. Physicians and midlevel managers will forgo small, end-of-the-year “thank you” payments this year in order to provide more for those payments to rank-and-file employees, Cowley said. Those bonuses range from $85 to $250.

All right, a few updates first.  Caden still has another 1-2 weeks until he can eat solid food, per his plastic surgeon. He weighs in at 22 pounds and is 30″ long now. I had Gena’s parent teacher conference and she’s doing great.  She’s a talker in class though, big surprise with her Dad and I.  I always got in trouble for talking at school.

We went to pick up Caden’s glasses today and the guy helping us was so impressed with Caden.  We put the glasses on his face and he didn’t even touch them.  Just started looking around.  Usually kids try to rip them off and the guy said this was his first kid today that didn’t just scream when they put them on!  He was so impressed he started showing Caden off to all the other people working there.  It was funny and sweet.  Below you can see the pics of Caden in his new glasses!

The cutie smiling.

 He looks so much older!

Halloween was so fun!  And for some reasons the pictures I took on my camera have mysteriously disappeared.  Bummer. But I do have individual pics of all the kids so I’ll post those below.  We went trick-or-treating around the neighborhood with our little cousin Ethan.  It was kind of funny because we had 8 adults walking around 4 kids. It was fun to see their excitement over everything.

We also had Caden’s eye appointment today. The good news is that he doesn’t have Strabismus and doesn’t look like any evidence of lazy eye.  The funny news is that he does have to get glasses! He’s very near-sighted, it wasn’t that surprising.  So Daniel and I had to go eyeglass shopping for him today and I do have to say, his cuteness factor has increased significantly! Babies look so cute in glasses.  He’ll get the glasses at the end of this week so I’ll be sure to post pics.  His blood vessels in his eye are straightening out a bit too much, they like to see them a little lax, but the blood vessels in his left eye are a bit too tight.  It’s just something to keep an eye on, as the blood vessels tightening like this are a risk factor for retinal detachment and can really affect his vision.  We have a follow-up appointment in 3months again, so sometime around Feburary just to see how his vision is doing!

I can hardly believe my little girl is 7 years old now! Well, Gena had a wonderful 2-part birthday. On Oct. 18th we decided to go down to Frightmares at Lagoon instead of having a full-blown birthday party for her. Adessa and her loved it!  You can check out some of the action below:

Adessa and Gena in a plane

Gena convincing Adessa that this ride will be fun. (Yes, that’s a look of terror on Adessa… but she did indeed have fun!)

On the swings!

Next I have some pics from Caden’s surgery.

Getting dressed in his surgery PJ’s

Playing in the waiting room before surgery

After surgery in his hospital room

Then we have the big day of Gena’s birthday. I have to give some explanation with these pictures though, there was a Halloween Carnival for the Jordan Child Development Center (Caden’s OT and Speech Pathologist) that we went to last night. So the girls were able to get dressed up in their costumes so here’s your sneak peek.  Just to give an explanation on these costumes too… *ahem* I told the girls they were going to do Halloween right this year.  (Plus, I really doubt next year I’ll be able to pick what they can do for Halloween now that Gena is getting older, so this was my last year to pick anything out.) Which means none of the all ready dozens of princess costumes they can wear any other day of the year in their dress up clothes, and just add to that collection.  (I sound so mean, but there has to be another mom out there who has dressed her daughter up for one-too-many princess parties like I have!) They still wanted to be pretty though so we compromised and did midnight fairies.  This is the result, and they LOVE IT!

Gena pulls off Goth a little too well….

And the pictures from her family birthday party are below, because we celebrated that right after the carnival:

Gena with her cake

Eating cake!  It was a Hannah Montana cake.

We got Gena her own set of scriptures with her name engraved on them. She went to bed last night reading them… it was enough to bring a tear to my eye! 

First off, the girls primary program on Sunday was adorable.  The girls looked great and they did their parts perfect.  Adessa didn’t even need her teacher’s help as she had memorized her part.  They sang beautifully and Grandma and Grandpa were able to come and see them.

Caden’s surgery was at 8:45 AM in the morning and he was just so happy to have all of mommy and daddy’s attention. What was really cool is that we were able to go back with him this time.  Since it was only being done in the dental operating room both Daniel and I went back and were able to hold his hand as he went to sleep.

Caden wearing his surgery PJ’s and in the waiting room

We spent only a 1/2 hour in the waiting room. Dr. Romney, who removed his palate prosthesis came out first and actually gave us the piece.  I thought it would be larger, and those screws… owwww. Dr. Park, who did the ear tubes, came out next and Caden did great.

Caden’s little palate prosthesis, look at the screw!

I went back to the recovery room with him and he was awake. Once again, his nurse couldn’t believe how wonderful he was. No crying or fussing afterwards just checking everything out.  Back in the post-op room I swear every single kid in there was crying or screaming.  The noise level was incredible.  Caden fussed a bit but never cried. What a great lil’ guy huh?!

Caden after surgery, no he does not look happy.

So he’s home and doing great. We’ve got him on just a bit of Tyelnol.

Labor Day weekend was wonderful. The girls and Daniel spent Friday boating at our lake, which they loved. Saturday we decided to take the girls up to the mountains for lunch.  They did not want to leave! We were enjoying hiking around and seeing all the trees and plants. They really loved the river too. Later that day the girls and Daniel went back to our community pool while Caden took his nap.

Daniel and the girls in the mountains

Sunday was my little nephew Ethan’s 3rd birthday party. We started out at a park but the wind was terrible so we headed over to their house for cake and ice cream. The girls always love to see their cousin and play with him.

The girls at Ethan’s Bday

Grandma with Caden

Cousin Ethan with Aunt Angie and Uncle Ryan

On Monday, we headed to my Dad’s Labor Day Picnic he has for his union. It was rainy at the start but turned out wonderful, even a little cool. They gave away some awesome prizes of books and games and there were some blow-up slides to keep the girls entertained.

It was so nice to spend the weekend with the girls and they certainly enjoyed themselves.

Adessa also started dance classes on Thursday.  She was so excited to get all dressed up in her dance clothes and had a blast.  Her teacher said she was just great, following directions and was all smiles and giggles the whole time.

Adessa in her dance clothes

Caden and I trekked up to Primary Children’s again today… and I can tell we have been going up there too much because the guy who hands out parking passes didn’t even ask me which building I was visiting today.  Just handed over the pass since it’s the same guy there every time.

Caden’s ENT is Dr. Park and after waiting for 1 1/2 hours we finally got in to see him.  He was surprised at the amount of paperwork that is there for our lil’ guy. But we were able to schedule Caden’s ear tube surgery on the same day of his palate prosthesis and will be coordinating with Dr. Yamshiro. That’s a great relief that we can combine those 2 surgeries since they are so minor.

He’ll have to see the ENT about once a year to check on his ear tubes, and about a month after the surgery they’ll want to do another hearing test. According to Dr. Park doing the hearing test directly after the ear tube surgery isn’t really reliable. Those surgeries, by the way, will take place Sept. 29th.

Also, the girls hearing results came back fine.  Great news!