Story Time and Outside Time

The weather has been either really great or really crummy, but the kids have fun either way. It's great to see them all outside, but we'll settle for storytime with Mom.

A day trip to Ocean City!

St. Patrick's day in the yard

Easter Egg hunt at the park

Don't forget to vote for Gee-off to win the Dad's Point of View contest for South Jersey MOM Magazine. The voting on www.southjerseymom.com isn't as unbalanced as it appears. Despite the numbers and percentages that appear on the site, the decision for who will win the monthly Dad's POV column votes will only be counted one per IP address. If you haven't voted, Please do(It'll only take a moment)! If you have voted, please share this with friends and encourage them to vote for me! Thanks,
Gee-off

Really???

We couldn't ACTUALLY be asking our friends and family to vote online for another family member just days after our unprecendented victory with Next Direct, would we?

Well, in a word, yes...

In January, before I knew that I was losing my afterschool program job and the many training opportunities that went with it, I answered an ad in South Jersey MOM magazine to write a monthly column from a Dad's point of view. I was named a finalist and the decision has been left to, you guessed it, an online vote. You may only vote once per computer and I do not encourage shenanigans to give me any advantage. In fact, I'm even sharing the writings of each of the other finalists, so if you think they are better suited for this you should vote for them (however, as fair as that seems, I'll definitely take you off our holiday card list).

You can place your vote at http://www.southjerseymom.com/ (along the left sidebar towards the bottom)

Aimee was right!

What can I tell you? Women's intuition can go a long way, especially when that woman has an army of support in friends, family, and just about anyone those family or friends could convince to vote for our big man. Thanks so much for the overwhelming support! We received a call today and lots of forms to fill out and mail tomorrow. At the end of April, Aimee and Drew will be off to LA on an all expenses paid trip to compete in the finals. Drew and each of the other 49 finalists will have an opportunity to win the grand prize, a $100,000 scholarship and a 1 year modeling contract with Wilhelmina Models!

$100,000 for college?

As many of you know, Aimee signed Drew up for an online competition for Next Direct to be a model for their clothing line. I, being the cynic, never believed at all that he'd have a chance to be selected. It isn't for a lack of being cute, he's got that in the bag. It's because it is limited to the top 50 kids out of nearly 4,000 that are eligible for the grand prize. I figured the top 50 would be filled with technology savvy parents who would cheat their way to the top.

Well, Aimee has exhausted her facebook friends with constant reminders and several friends have been recruiting people to vote and some have gone above and beyond to encourage voting(Thanks Marie, Ann, Pamela, Lindsey, and others I don't even know about).

The contest ends at 7am on Thursday, and this morning he was in 49th place. He's since bounced back up to around 200, where he had been for the last few days. If he manages to make the top 50, Aimee and Drew will get to go on an all expenses paid trip to Los Angeles for the final competition to compete for a $100,000 college scholarship.

The larger prize, however, may be that Aimee would be right and I would be wrong. I know most of our followers are female. C'mon ladies, this is a great opportunity to prove men are wrong about things like this and mothers intuition goes a long way.

We all know Aimee and the best big brother could use a vacation! Let's make it happen!

You can vote quickly with as many e-mail addresses that you care to use (each counts as one vote) every 24 hours. Thanks to anyone who takes the time to do this for us.

To vote for Drew now, click here!
http://apps.facebook.com/next_direct/gallery/show_entry/26303

or go to www.nextdirect.com, find the view gallery tab, search Drew (or #26303), wearing a black, gray, red sweater vest!!!! Click to vote!!!



Thanks,

Gee-off

Vote for Drew!!!

I entered Drew in a modeling contest on Facebook for Nextdirect, a clothing company out of the UK, but coming to the US. They are doing a FB search/contest for models ages 4-7 and the top 50 kids who get the most votes will get to travel to LA for the final competition and could possibly win the grand prize of a one year modeling contract with Wilhelmina models and a $100,000 college scholarship!

Right now, Drew is only somewhere around 475th place!!!!! We need as many votes as possible to get him into the top 50! You can vote every 24 hours here until March 18.

I know many of you who read the blog have already seen my frequent (annoying) FB messages to vote for him, but I'm trying to think of any avenue possible to get more votes!!!

Thanks so much!

Update on Emily

The doctor covering for Emily's neuro (who is out of town) called me Tuesday morning, of course while I was at ShopRite with Carter and Brenna and had a hard time concentrating! After explaining the episode to her, she said she can't really say that it was a seizure at all, though Gee-off and I are sure that it was. Also that she wouldn't change any of Emily's medicines and that we should be fine to wait until her appt on the 22nd. If she starts having more of these episodes or we have any other concerns, of course we can always call back.

Thanks always for keeping our little girl in your thoughts and prayers!

No laughing matter . . . not really punny either.

We think Emily had a new kind of seizure on Saturday night.

Let me rewind just a little bit.

Emily has been doing really well lately developmentally. She has been sitting assisted and even unassisted for longer periods of time, her visual awareness and focus has continued to improve, and she has been vocalizing and responding to me, Gee-off, her brothers and sister, and her nurses more and more often with kissy noises, babbling, smiles, and laughing. Lots of laughing. We've found that if Gee-off is snuggling with her and starts kissing her cheek and neck she really laughs, that nice big belly laugh. It's so nice to hear.

Sometimes she seems to bust out laughing for no reason though too. And until Saturday night, I was happy to hear it anyway. "Oh she's laughing again!" And I'd run to grab the camera or video camera to record it. This time, Gee-off was making her formula in the kitchen and I scooped her up from her crib in the den and brought her out to show him. But she was slightly shaking by the time I got down the hallway and had stopped laughing that fast. So I continued to the living room to do the last diaper change of the night, but then realized she was still shaking. And then she closed her eyes and mouth tightly and wouldn't respond to us talking to her. Her arms were shaking the whole time, for about 2 minutes. Afterwards we waited to see if she would go back to "baseline" (her "normal"), and she did, trying to mouth her fingers, eyes open and looking around, not shaking.

We talked for a while about calling the on-call neurologist at CHOP to see if we needed to go to the ER, but she seemed fine and was sleeping normally within the hour so we decided to take a wait and see approach unless it happened again.

But, I couldn't sleep right away and in the back of my mind I remembered reading a few times about laughing seizures. So, I did what I shouldn't have, and Googled "laughing seizures". Sure enough, there is a type of seizure called a gelastic seizure that seems to be what Emily had. The person will burst out in a belly laugh for seemingly no reason at all, but it is actually a seizure. It also said that gelastic seizures can be caused by a benign brain tumor, and that removal of the tumor through surgery could stop this type of seizure completely. Surgery is not a great option for Emily since she coded during her gtube surgery in July of 2008. For her, it will probably mean a change to the diet or another med.

I'm waiting for a call back from her neurologist to see if we should bring her in sooner than her next appt on March 22nd. I'll keep you updated.