And we started with a bang!

January has been a big month for us.  Lots of up and downs, and lots of doctors appointments.  Here's the summary:

-Found out Josh has Melanoma.  Got sent to M.D. Anderson(cancer hospital in Houston).

-Joss had her 3 month post cast check up for her leg.  X-rays look amazing and her femur is healing up perfectly.  Unless a problem pops up with her leg, or she breaks another bone(Please, God, NOOOOO!), then we are done with the leg doctor.

-Danil had his hearing tested at Texas Children's Hospital.  Perfect hearing.  That's not common for kids with DS.  Another little miracle for my little guy.

-Joss was refferred to a hematologist at Texas Children's because of some abnormalites with her blood.  We loved her hemotologist.  He went over every possible concern that we have about her and addressed each and every thing, and then did some very detailed blood work.  Everything came back excellent and the abnormalites with her blood are caused by her medicine.  Absolute best case senario.  Oh, and her abnomality is with her red blood cells.  Apparently they are enlarged, but that is a side effect of her ARV meds.

-Danil had his 2 month check up after getting his glasses.  Glasses are working great and the Rx hasn't changed, so that's a good thing.

-Kellen got off paci's.  AND we took down the baby bed. *tear*

-Ray had a bladder and kidney ultrasound.  This is a one year follow up after finding out that she has bladder reflux(her urine flows from her bladder back up towards her kidneys).  She was supposed to have another bladder test done on the same day, but that test is done under sedation and I had accidentally given her a banana that morning so they wouldn't do the test.  We are going back to TCH, yet again, next Monday to have the other bladder test done.  If she still has the reflux, then she will probably be having a bladder surgery in the near future.

-Danil had an echocardiogram done.  We will get those results next Thurs when Alik, Danil, and Joss have an appointment with the dr at TCH.

-Josh had his appointment for the melanoma, at MD Anderson.  We got the GREAT news that it was caught early!!  Josh has an outpatient surgery at MD Anderson on March 1st, and no other treatment is needed!  What a relief to get that news!!


-My brother got stabbed 7 times on the way to his car a little over a week ago.  Like I said, a lot of ups and downs.  He is out of the hospital and recovering at home.  All stabs missed vital organs and it a miracle he is alive.  Two cyclist saw the incident and broke it up and called for an ambulance for my brother.

-Luke turned 9.  N.I.N.E.  Wow.  Where did nine years go already?!

-We are in full swing with the therapies.  Joss has speech therapy once a week, and Danil has speech, occupational, and physical therapy once a week.

-Alik.  Don't really have any news on him, but didn't want to fully leave him out.

-We have a few more doctors appointments next week, then I'm hoping our year slows down some.

-Alik and Ray started doing some kindergarten work.(I guess I did have some Alik news).  They are doing great doing Saxon K math and Get Ready for the Code for phonics, but both their motor skills aren't quite kinder ready, so we're taking it slow.  They LOVE school though.

-I've been making more and more of my own household and beauty products.  Lovin' it.  My list of the things I've made has gotten kinda lengthy, so I'll probably just do a blog post that has all the links to the recipies I've used.

-Josh and I did a partial fast for part of January.  We did some "spiritual" house cleaning during that time.  We got rid of about 100 cd's, 20-ish dvds, 13 video games, several books, toys, clothing, and other "junk" that we had let creep into our home.  For the most part it felt really good to let that stuff go.

-I fasted from Facebook and TV for over 3 weeks.  I do have to say that I was much more productive while I was "un-plugged".  I didn't feel like either of those things took up alot of my time, but I did realize that I used them as fallbacks to avoid doing things that I didn't feel like doing.  Like laundry.

I'm sure I forgot something, but for the most part that sums up our January.  Hopefully, I will get back to blogging before it is time for a February summary.....