Nice

As we were driving our oldest two boys to their grandparent's home so we could take our littlest to his MRI appointment, we stopped at a light and everyone looked to the left expressing some form of being impressed. I had to take a picture when the catalyst of our exclamations became clear.

Our oldest son in the back seat said in a voice full of awe "Wow! How do they make..." We fully thought he was going to say something about the Audi r8 that had caught the eye of the boy driving in the front seat.

Instead, we burst out laughing as his exclamation ended in "...a purple balloon gorilla so big?!"


So maybe the Big Guy Lowe hasn't finished his work when it comes to teaching his sons about cars. Our first nice car was an Audi, so we have a soft spot for those cars, but I'm afraid that I will always think of purple gorillas when looking at those German cars in the future.

Just for the record, I was impressed with the car, so I guess the Big Guy Lowe has at least taught me a thing or two about cars!

MRI

Today was the day for our littlest Lowe's MRI. Gratefully he was fully healthy this time so we could go ahead and get it over with! He really did great--as great as a little guy can that doesn't like being in any kind of doctor's office.

While waiting to go in we were able to talk with another parent who was waiting for their child's scan to finish. This was their fourth child with TSCS, so she was a wealth of information and comfort. Interestingly enough we share the same neurologist and she couldn't say enough about the doctor. That was comforting to hear as our first experience hadn't been very encouraging. We eventually were called back, had everything explained by a nurse as well as the anesthesiologist. A light sedative was given prior to taking our little guy which made it easier for everyone. Somehow it didn't seem as scary handing him over in a calm state as opposed to his tear-stained face of a few minutes earlier. After they left with him it just felt strange. Gratefully, the hour and a half passed semi-fast and we were called in to be with our sweetie before he woke up.

Coming out of the anesthesia was predictably a cranky experience, but after sleeping for a few hours at home our little guy was just fine. Now we wait for a few days until we can get the results. We're glad today's test is over and all our boys are now comfortably asleep in their beds. MRI...check!

What is a date?

Really, what is a date after you've been married for over 10 years? Wow, I love saying that. I was asked recently what The Big Guy Lowe and I do when we go out on dates and it made me stop and think.
I guess there are the very official dates that we've been on--like when we went to Wicked (unfortunately, we didn't end up being great fans of the show even though we had heard so much about it. Not wanting to get on my soapbox, ask in person if wondering why). We did have a great time together though as seen in a shot from our cellphone (cameras weren't allowed).
Another night we went to see the semifinals for State Lacrosse as the team the Big Guy Lowe used to coach was playing. Go Kings Way!!

Rather intent on the game isn't he? This guy loves Lacrosse! Unfortunately our team was eliminated that night, but we had a great time taking with the parents of the players, the team and just being together.

I know, everyone is thinking "So cute--I wonder who the photographer is?"


Really though, we do spend a lot of time together. We get babysitters--or kid-sitters as our oldest has asked us to call them. They are generally used when we go workout together in the evening or on our twice a month temple trip. We love our time together and make sure we get it. Part of that comes on a daily basis though as our boys have a bedtime of 7-7:30pm.

That's as much for us as it is for them. Looking at it that way, we have daily dates, but we choose to use them discretely. ;)
I like the sound of that!

Another day at the creek

Summer is officially here! What will our boys remember about summer during these early years of their lives? Playing at the creek! What could be better? I know, I know--there are so many camps and classes that I could sign them up for so that they might be ahead in a sport or develop other talents that will assist in the next year of school--these are all good things and we participate in some, but I feel like days filled with discovering and playing with brothers, friends and of course Mommy are just what these Lowe boys need. I hope those feelings don't change as they get older (Okay, so I know things will change as time moves on, but I am loving these boys while it's still fun for us to play as long as I can--hoping that when the older days come, these times together will have helped create lasting relationships--with me as well as with their brothers).
This day was a bit different for a few reasons. Our littlest guy was able to play in the water for the first time on his own!! YAHOO!! With some strageic placement of rocks he had a tide pool of sorts. He loved every minute of it and it was exciting for the rest of us to see too!


Another exciting time today was watching our middle son be more adventureous! While our oldest has no fear when it comes to exploring, our middle son follows, but at a safe distance. Today he was in the water quite a bit more. I guess for not yet being 3 he is as adventuresome as he should be! Yes, after thinking about this more, I am grateful for his level of adventure!!

I love these boys!

The Music Man explanation only works so long

I have a sister-in-law that shared a growing up experience of hers that I loved and we adopted, until the Big Guy Lowe and I were discovered last year. This is how it went...

The ice cream truck comes around our neighborhood often. I don't mean once or twice a week, I'm talking often once a day when the weather is nice. Jaymee shared with me that when she was growing up her parents told her that it was the "music man" coming around for people to enjoy the music. We adopted this practice and were successful at our last home. With the event of moving to our current home and having our oldest recognize pictures and words, everyone in our family now knows that the music man is in fact the ICE CREAM truck!

Last night was pretty funny. First there was the pause in our boys faces and voices. Our oldest (and the Big Guy Lowe if anyone is keeping track) said "The Ice Cream Truck!" Our oldest and middle son had just earned some money helping at Grammy HB's home earlier in the day, and they wanted to use it. As our oldest ran to get his money, our middle son (not yet 3) frantically (or as close to being frantic as a little boy can be) ran upstairs to get his 4 pennies. Oh that ice cream cost 4 pennies!

This was something I never experienced as a child. Five kids (my family growing up)would make this quite an expensive venture, so we were satisfied with our big scoops of ice cream from the gallon containers that my parents bought and always had on hand--in fact, still have on hand! The ice cream truck really is a fun treat for me now though. We don't do it all the time and often the kids use their own money, but it is so fun seeing how excited we all get when we hear that music!

It promotes sharing...

happy, quiet moments...

and great family home evening treats!

We highly recommend it!

Fruits, er, veggies of our labors

This is the second summer we planted a garden at this home. Last summer our garden was planted too late, but made for a good family home evening activity none-the-less. Add in a new little baby and the poor garden just didn't stand a chance!

This year we were poised and ready; our garden was going to work, or at least we were going to be ready to work in our garden! Tonight was our first feast! Our oldest was especially excited about being able to eat from our garden--and that made the Big Guy Lowe and I especially excited!

Aren't these little sugar snap peas beautiful?

Our oldest actually ate this entire peapod--first the peas he found inside, and then the edible shell (after some convincing that he could actually eat it).

Not everyone was as interested as our oldest son though. Our youngest chose to play with the non-edibles. First the frisbee.

Next, flowers. He found these flowers especially fascinating and stayed with them for some time. He would reach out and hit the flowers and then watch them move, wait for them to stop moving, and start over again.

Just a bit of an update on this little guy--we had our MRI scheduled for this morning, but had it rescheduled after finding that he had double ear infections this past friday. We're on for the 30th now!

End-of-the-year Kindergarten Luau

It's hard to believe that our oldest son's first year of school is coming to an end. What a wonderful year it has been. He has had a truly wonderful teacher (Thank you Mrs. Anderson!!) and made many good friends. I have especially loved the recent months as he has started reading--what an exciting time for all of us! We read the scriptures every night as a family and our oldest is able to read on his own without too much help! We're so happy for him and he is pretty happy about it all too.

To celebrate the end of the year, all of the kindergarten classes joined together and had a luau. Lots of fun food and games. It was a great party.
It is hilarious watching boys be friends. Here our oldest is sitting next to one of his "best" friends Sam S., and Logan E. linking his arms over each of them.

This elementary school's mascot is the beaver. When our oldest was "Beaver of the week" he was described as being helpful, energetic, and a good friend.

Who wouldn't love playing with a parachute and multi-colored rubber chickens tossing around?

We're looking forward to having a big First Grader next year, but for now we will just enjoy the time we have before us through the warm summer months. I love this boy so much and feel so grateful that I get to be his mommy.

Chillin' with a dum-dum (lolipop that is)

I never get texts during church, so you can imagine my surprise when my phone vibrated letting me know I had received one during the last hour of church. It was from the Big Guy Lowe! He was just informing me that he was out in the car with our Littlest for the last few minutes of church. I was a bit concerned, knowing how our littlest gets very tired and cranky during church as it coincides with his nap time. I quietly excused myself from Relief Society meeting (a class for all women 18 years and older) and headed out with the plan of providing any source of help I could offer. What I found made me laugh and laugh--two boys, chillin' with a dum-dum.

It has been said that music soothes the savage beast (a common mis-quote actually). I would like to add that lolipops do as well.

The Littlest Gardener

Just a normal Saturday activity for our family--gettin out to do some yard work. Nothing crazy, most of the time, the ususal activities. I do have to say though, I think 14 months might be a little young, but we believe in learning to work at an early age!


Such cuties! You can't help but feel good after a job well done!

Beware when children ask "What's that smell?"

The other Saturday our oldest son came inside after a short time playing in the back yard. He let us know that something smelled bad under one of our decks and that he could see "white little worms moving all over". The Big Guy Lowe and I looked at eachother with that look and I said "it sounds like the smell of death". Does that sound morbid of me? It was.

Flash back to years in the desert. When out hiking there were many times we would come upon a decaying carcass. We didn't need to see the animal's remains to know what was happening--there was that smell that would give it away. If you don't know that smell, consider yourself lucky.

Present day. It was that smell.

The Big Guy Lowe is so good. Have I mentioned how much I love this guy? He headed out to see what was causing all the commotion, but the boys wanted this to be a complete family activity.

Alas, a little bunny had not made it out from under the deck. And just as our oldest said, there was the smell as well as the maggots. Nice. The Big Guy Lowe got out the power tools and removed some planks.

No need for me to get a close up, this is of course a family blog with a G-rating (in case you were wondering). The Big Guy Lowe took care of business and all was well.

This event did remind me of something my Anatomy professor challenged each of his students to invest in--an exploration kit. This kit would ideally consist of rubber gloves, scissors, tweasers, and anything else that one might use to inspect ROAD KILL. Can you believe that? He did have a point about learning from our environment and the benefits of studying muscle, tendons, bone structure and numerous other items from a recently deceased animal. I guess I don't have that kit handy anymore, and really, it wasn't road kill anyway.

Next step...

Friday we had the opportunity to bring our littlest guy to an initial assessment with three pediatric therapists. I can't express how impressed we were with the time we spent with them. They were so good with our little guy and communicated to us their observations, concerns, and reasons for different activities. I think I was also more prepared for this meeting in that my expectations were more realistic than they were on Monday--I'm learning, even if it is slowly, but in my defense--this is my child that we are talking about here!! Following the assessment, one of the physical therapists returned and explained how they scored our little guy and shared their accompanying recommendations. It was so good to hear their excitment about the things that he was doing and the progress that we have recently seen. They have assigned us to a physical therapist twice a month in their office and then we will have our own homework too. I LOVE homework like this!! The things that they are asking us to do make sense and we can already see how they will be assisting our sweetie in making progress! YEA!! On the other side of things, we were told that there were a few signs of Tethered Spinal Cord Syndrome (TSCS). Interestingly enough, the way to confirm or reject this diagnosis is through an MRI. We were given a short information sheet on TSCS along with the recomendation that we contact our neurologist. After getting home and leaving two messages at our neurologist's office I hit the Internet to learn as much as I could on this potential cause of these challenges. I'm not going to go into detail on it all, but I do know we will be able to handle whatever any of this ends up being.

So, we actually are going to have the MRI done, not just of the brain as had initially been ordered by our neurologist, but of the brain and spinal column. I had to make some calls to the MRI center at Emmanuel as well as to our neurologist (who called me back in person!--I was impressed) to get things in place. If in fact TSCS is our challenge, it is very beneficial to take action as soon as possible to stop further damage to the spinal cord, nerves and associated muscles.

Whew!

I'm actually feeling pretty calm about all of this right now. There are so many other things that could be on our plate that I am thankful for our own set of challenges. It's hard to think that things could be too bad when we see our little guy making as much progress as he is. Just yesterday afternoon he was walking unassisted with a 'walk-along' toy he received for his birthday from Grammy and Grandpa HB. Even though the picture is blurry you can see his big smile!

We were THRILLED and so were each of our boys!

We're going to be okay with all of this. Of course I have my desires for how all of this will turn out, but even if those need to be put aside, we're okay. We are greatly blessed to have each of our "Little Guy Lowes" and I am excited for our family to continue growing together!

One step at a time

I'm not sure what I want to write today. I have many different feelings and the thought of trying to get them down on paper is a bit daunting right now. I guess I was hoping somehow to have the doctor tell us that all our concerns would be okay, that our littlest guy was progressing with his gross motor development at a rate that would catch him up to where he should be. I just wanted the pediatric neurologist to say that there were no concerns that she could see. On the other end of the spectrum was the thought that she might find something, even give a diagnosis that we would be able to work with--move forward with--know how we could best help our little sweetie with. Instead, we left with all the same questions we entered her office with. She acknowledged that something was wrong--was it central nervous system or peripheral nervous system--no answers. She acknowledged that from our accounts there had been great progress in the past month--crawling on hands and knees, pulling up to standing, pushing up to sitting...but said that one month wasn't enough and we needed to see this kind of progress for at least two or three months. She suggested having a MRI as well as blood tests to check how the muscles are working, but gave the suggestions with such a lack of confidence that we don't know if she was just suggesting something to say something or if she thinks that they could actually be beneficial. We want to do all that we can for our little guy, but the thought of sedating him for a test that she acknowledged might not be useful isn't very encouraging. I will choose to be grateful that she didn't have a clear diagnosis--I guess I just have to remind myself of that periodically.

Our next step is meeting with a group of pediatric physical therapists this friday for a three hour evaluation/assessment. I'm hoping we'll have more direction after that. At times I just feel like crying. I don't like being in a position of not knowing what we can do. I need to focus on the HUGE progress that has been made this past month. I am grateful for the beautiful smiles and good fine-motor skills that our little guy has. I am grateful for his excitement at playing with his older brothers and other examples of social skills. I love his first morning smile as we go into his bedroom--he is so excited to see us. I love his happy conversations throughout the day (it will be nice to understand them someday! :). I've been saying for awhile that I felt a calm optimism about all of this, even though I recognized that might not mean all would be perfect. No one wants to hear that there is anything wrong with their child--there are enough challenges they will face in this life without these additional things, but I do believe that our Heavenly Father is truly aware of each of us and He knows those challenges as well as those blessings that will help us become the son or daughter that He sees we can be. I know He loves our children even more than what my mother's heart feels, and that amazes me, so I can be calm as we continue to try and figure things out. I'm not good at waiting, so this will give me the opportunity to get better at applying patience and I'm sure there will be many other blessings that will come from this current challenge. The thing I like about challenges is that they can be overcome--regardless of the outcome. This is a challenge that will provide growth for us all. Oh the gratitude of facing challenges together as a family with the knowledge that we have a loving Heavenly Father and a Savior that knows how to soothe, comfort and direct. I guess it is literally one step at a time.