Another Look

It's been a while since we've updated the blog - suffice to say the kids have kept us busy! Unfortunately, the reason we started this blog has created more concern for us as we start into the new year.  Those of you who have read this blog from the beginning know that we started it to provide status on Lauri's fight with cancer to our friends and family.  Well, we had been cancer free for about 3 years and enjoying life with kids when a spot of interest showed up on Lauri's scans in late November 2012.

The spot in the November scan was inconclusive by itself - it could be due to infection from a cold, or it could be a recurrence of Lauri's cancer.  Additional scans were needed to verify if the spot had grown, shrunk, or remained the same size.  Growing typically would mean a cancer is present, while shrinking or absence from a follow up scan would lead one to believe it was a short term infection/inflammation.  We carried out the follow up scans yesterday, January 14.

The follow up scans show that the spot has basically remained the same size, if not grown slightly.  The scan also shows the spot as somewhat more solid than the previous scan showed in November - although that could be in the eye of the beholder.  Bottom line - the follow up scan left the doctors and us a bit concerned about what it actually is.  Our Oncologist (who has been with us since the cancer moved to Lauri's lungs) recommended a biopsy next week, or the week after, to gather additional information.  Our doctor was not comfortable waiting a few months for an additional scan.  We are waiting for the schedule for the biopsy, but we know it should be an outpatient procedure (in and out the same day).  The large needle will be used to gather tissue using a realtime CT scan to guide the work.  Lauri will be put under for the procedure.  We should get results around 5 business days after the biopsy.

If the biopsy is positive for cancer - then we proceed immediately into treatment, which could mean chemotherapy, surgery, or both.  If the biopsy is negative for cancer, then the doctors will decide if further information is needed (more biopsies, etc) or if observation is sufficient.  Will have to wait for the biopsy results to know what to do next.

Definitely not the news we wanted today, but Lauri is strong and experienced - we've beaten this before, so we are ready for a fight if a fight must be brought.  Hopefully, all this is just a false alarm.  We're hoping and praying for good results, but getting ready for a return to the fight just in case.

It's almost June and I just can't believe where the time has gone!  Teddy is now over 10 months old and I'm trying not to think that my little baby will be a year old in less than 2 months.  He's growing so fast.  He continues to be a very happy, easy going baby.  He has 7 teeth and I think one more coming in.  He crawls everywhere and is pulling up and cruising.  Don't think he's close to walking though.  If you remember, Charlie was 16 months before he was officially walking so I'm thinking we have plenty of time before that happens.  He goes to bed around 7:30 and wakes up around 7am.  Still takes 2 naps a day. He has a big appetite and sometimes eats more than Charlie does. He eats whatever we're eating (for the most part) and doesn't refuse many things.
Charlie is still talking up a storm and has now gotten into horse racing.  And there is actually a channel on Direct tv dedicated to all things horse racing.  It's a good thing this is horse racing season!  We watched the Kentucky Derby and the Preakness Stakes and he loved it.  There is a dog track near us and we need to take him there one day. I think he would really enjoy it.
The boys were going to Mother's Day Out during the school year, but they are now on their "summer break".  We have recently started going to a place called "Jump N Jungle" that has a bunch of bounce houses and slides and things.  The first time we went, Charlie didn't want to go on anything and was ready to go home.  After about 30 min, he was finally convinced to try it and then of course he loved it and I couldn't get him to leave!  I practically had to drag him out of there!  We went again yesterday and he dove right in.  He got tired after about an hour and wanted to leave. Teddy is still pretty little to do everything, but we got in one of the houses and he crawled around in there and had a great time.
In other news, my 94 year old grandfather fell and broke his hip a couple of weeks ago and is still in the hospital trying to recover from that.  During this time, my grandmother also got sick and had to be admitted to the hospital, so it's been a real strain on the family. My grandmother is now back at home and doing tremendously better and we are thankful for that.  Now we just need my grandfather to get better.  We're all praying for a speedy recovery!
We've planted a small garden in the backyard.  Last year when we Jeff put in the flower beds, he also made two garden beds.  We didn't plant anything last year since I was very pregnant and wouldn't be able to keep up with it.  But this year I planted some tomatoes, mint, basil, jalapenos, banana peppers, bell peppers and a bean (or something) that Charlie brought home from school.  We already have one jalapeno pepper growing so we're hoping everything else produces as well.  We're continuing to water and will wait and see.


Now here are some pictures from the last couple of months:

Teddy's school picture. Charlie didn't cooperate so he doesn't have one. 

Charlie hunting eggs

The family on Easter Sunday

Dying Easter eggs

Boys in the bluebonnets

Charlie mowing the grass

Charlie taking a break from mowing

Teddy at 10 months

Catching up...

It seems I can't keep up with the blog! It's been 2 months since I posted last. Sorry! I'll try to do better.

Well, first things, first.  I had my 4 month checkup at MD Anderson about 2 weeks ago.  And I'm happy to report that nothing was found! My leg ultrasound came back negative as did my ct scan of my chest.  This makes 2.5 years of being cancer free! This is such great news and we couldn't be any happier.  My next check up will be towards the end of July and will only consist of lab work and the ct of my chest. I started this journey in 2005 with the surgery on my leg so that makes 7 years I've had cancer.  I know a lot of "statistics" have a 5 year survival rate and thank the good Lord I've surpassed that and plan to continue.  Special thanks to my family and friends for all their support and prayers over the years. I am truly blessed!

Now on to other things. Our little Teddy is no longer very "little" and weighs over 20 pounds at 8 months.  He has 5 teeth (3 on top and 2 on bottom) and started crawling about 2 weeks ago.  He is over his solid food aversion and will typically eat anything you put in front of him.  His favorite I think is pears, but he pretty much devoured a stalk of broccoli the other night at dinner.  He couldn't get enough! So we try to give him a variety of different foods to expand his palate and get him used to the food we eat.
He continues to sleep through the night only waking up around 5:00-5:30am to eat, then he will go back to sleep until around 8:00-8:30.  He still takes 2 naps a day which I love.  I'm hoping that lasts awhile. ;)  He has outgrown his infant car seat so he now has a big boy seat like Charlie.  Charlie was in the infant seat till he was about a year and a half, so we know Teddy is bigger than Charlie was at this age.

Charlie continues to amaze us every day with his vocabulary.  I swear I don't know where he comes up with some of the things he says.  The other day, I asked him a question. He put his finger on his lips and said, "Hmmm, let's see".  Too funny!  He also has a few obsessions.  #1 is the goats at Jeff's parents house.  He absolutely loves the goats and going on the "tractor" to see the goats in the barn and to feed the baby goat.  We made a trip to Fredericksburg in early February so he could see the goats.  He also loves "racing cars". NASCAR, Indy Cars, matchbox cars, if it goes on a track and races, he loves it.  We went to a local drag strip one weekend to see the race cars and he talked about it for weeks! I see another trip in the future. For now we have to settle for the races on tv and watching the same movie over and over. And over again. I taped the movie Racing Stripes for him to watch. I honestly thought it was an animated movie, but it was not.  This is the premise:

In the middle of a raging thunderstorm, a traveling circus accidentally leaves behind some very precious cargo--a baby zebra. The gangly little foal is rescued by horse farmer Nolan Walsh, who takes him home to his young daughter Channing. Once a champion thoroughbred trainer, Walsh has given up horse training for a quiet life with Channing on their modest Kentucky farm. The little zebra, or "Stripes," as Channing calls him, is soon introduced to the farm's misfit troupe of barnyard residents, led by a cranky Shetland Pony named Tucker and Franny, a wise old goat who keeps the family in line. The group is joined by Goose, a deranged big-city pelican who's hiding out in the sticks until the heat dies down in Jersey. The un-aptly named bloodhound Lightening keeps a lazy eye on goings-on at the farm - in between naps. The Walsh farm borders the Turfway Racetrack, where highly skilled thoroughbreds compete for horse racing's top honor... 




You've probably never heard of it or seen it, but it's crazy how many actors are in it voicing the animals. Like Dustin Hoffman, Whoopi Goldberg, Mandy Moore, David Spade, Frankie Munoz. It's an ok movie, but it gets old after watching it every. single. day.  He wakes up talking about the race and the zebra.  He sits and watches the entire 2 hour movie. I need to get him hooked on something else! I guess it could be worse...






Other things we've done recently. We went to the Houston Rodeo. We always like to do that. We went twice to see the actual rodeo and concert (Reba with my mom and Joe and Zac Brown Band with our friends) and then once during the day with the kids.  Next year Teddy will be able to enjoy it more so we're looking forward to that.  


We also went to Louisiana for Mardi Gras and had a blast! Besides the nightmare trip over there (9+ hours to get there, traffic, and car sickness) it was worth the trip.  Charlie had a great time at the parades and enjoyed the horses and the floats.  Teddy even came out for one parade and seemed to enjoy it.  


We have a couple of trips planned for April so we are looking forward to those.  All in all we are enjoying the beautiful spring weather here and loving life! 


Now for some pictures:

Charlie and the goats

Mardi Gras in New Orleans. Charlie is eating, which he did a lot at the parades. 

The Family at the Covington parade

Teddy, 7 months

Charlie and Teddy playing with their loot from Mardi Gras

Jeff and Charlie at the racetrack

Lauri and Teddy at the racetrack

Watching the racing cars

Teddy, 8 months

Charlie

6 months old already?!

Our little Teddy is already 6 months old! I can't believe it's gone this fast! He is still a very happy, easy baby and we love him to bits.  He went to the doc last week for a checkup and weighs 16 pounds 14 ounces, which is in the 40% for weight and is 25.5 inches, which is 25% for height (seems he's right on track like Charlie, shorty!), but he must be smart because his head is 43 cm which is in the 60%! We'll take it! He has his two front bottom teeth (the first came on New Year's Day) and looks like he may be getting more shortly.  He is starting to rock on all 4's and can helicopter around with the best of them.  I think he'll be crawling before too long.  Not sure I'm ready for him to be mobile, but looks like I won't have a choice. The last week he started sleeping through the night again which is really great.  We travelled a lot during the holidays and it's hard for the 4 of us to sleep in the same room without waking each other up. Plus he was cutting teeth so that contributed to the night waking.  But now we are back on track for now. We have tried to start him on solids and he just doesn't seem to want them. I tried rice cereal, oatmeal cereal, applesauce, squash and baby mum mums.  We get the same reaction every time.  Gagging, making faces like we just put the most disgusting thing in his mouth and eventual crying and fussing.  So looks like he's not quite ready yet, so we'll keep offering until he decides he's ready.
We had a nice Christmas here at the house and Charlie loved ALL of the toys the boys received. It's hard trying to explain to a 2 year old that he has to share and that not all the toys are actually his.  We went to Louisiana for almost a week to visit family and friends there and came home for Christmas, then went to Fredericksburg to spend New Year's with Jeff's family.  As always, there are lots of pictures so you can peruse them at your leisure.


Pictures from Louisiana Christmas

Pictures from Fredericksburg Christmas

Pics from our house Christmas morning

Jeff and I celebrated our 10 year anniversary on January 5. We decided to take a quick getaway to San Antonio for the night while we had babysitters around.  We stayed at a hotel on the Riverwalk and just enjoyed being kid free for about 24 hours.  The hotel was awesome and gave us a free bottle of sparkling wine in our room! What was even more amazing was the wine they gave us was one of our favorites and we have actually been to that vineyard in California. How did they know?

view from our room 

Looking out from our balcony

Present from the hotel

I also celebrated my birthday a couple of weeks ago and I decided I wanted seafood.  And rather than go out to a restaurant (which is harder and harder to do these days), we had a few friends over and cooked ourselves.  It was an actually feast and Jeff was great and did most of the cooking. We had bbq shrimp, grilled redfish, fried catfish, fried shrimp, fried pickles and homemade chips. My friend Erin so kindly brought the cupcakes, Andes Mint, which were amazing! No one left hungry I can tell you that! I had a great day all in all.

Now it's been awhile since my last post, so we have tons of pictures, but I'll try to put up some of the great ones (since they're all good!).

Taking pictures after bathtime

Charlie helping to decorate for Christmas

Charlie modeling the onesie I made for him.

Brothers

Like Father, Like Son

Sweet!

Baptism, Thanksgiving, Santa and a few things in between...

We've been pretty busy lately and I lose track of time and what's going on with the boys so I'll try to remember everything! Teddy is now 4 months old, as of last Saturday and is growing rapidly.

I weighed him last week and he was 14 pounds 6 oz. I just looked back at Charlie's 4 month stats and he was 13 pounds 12 oz, so Teddy is only slightly bigger than Charlie was at this age. He feels so solid though! He was sleeping through the night for a good 7-9 days (I'm talking went to bed at 9:30 and woke up around 9, no eating in between!), but somehow has not done that recently.  I think it may be a growth spurt or something (I'm hoping?) and he will go back to that sleeping through the night deal again.  Right now he cluster feeds in the evening until about 9:30 and then will wake up again around 2-3am to eat and then goes back to sleep until 6-7am.  :( I know he's only 4 months old so I should be thankful for the times I do get to sleep all night, and I am. I just know that he had gone all night before without eating so lets go back to that! :) But anyway, he's smiling and interacting a lot more now and has discovered his hands and that he can use them to put things in his mouth.

Smile!

 He's also rolled over a few times and it won't be long till he's doing it more consistently. Here is the first time he did it:  

Teddy rolled over!

 He loves to watch everything that is going on around him and especially loves to watch Charlie.  He's starting to laugh that really sweet belly laugh and we actually caught it on video:

Charlie continues to be the cute, sweet kid he's always been. He's like a parrot these days and I have to answer the same 2 questions multiple times daily. He always asks "What's THAT, Mama? and Where'd Daddy go?" over and over and over. Every. Day.  But that's how they learn, right? :)  Gotta love him!

Asking "What's, THAT, Mama?" 

We are very excited that the LSU football team is doing so well and we all get dressed up in our LSU gear when the games are on. I think they look cute, don't you?

Geaux Tigers!

Last weekend we had Teddy baptized at St. Mary's Catholic Church here in League City.  We had most of our families come in for the occasion so I had a brunch before church so we could all talk and visit before hand. I worked hard all week baking and cooking and I think everything came out great. Unfortunately I didn't take any pictures of that, but I made pumpkin and zucchini bread, homemade goldfish crackers (in the shape of longhorns cause it was the smallest cookie cutter I had), granola, greek yogurt, doughnut bread pudding with a cappuccino sauce, hash brown omelet, mini quiches, bacon, bisquits, chocolate croissants, coffee and oj! Whew! That was a lot of food! We made it to the church on time and sat through a very.long. service. Even by Catholic standards, it was long. But the kids did great. Teddy was a trooper and Charlie entertained us all with his comments.  He was playing with my phone and I have a flash card app and he was going through them and all of a sudden he busted out with "I want some carrots!".  He was going through the C flash cards and one had a carrot on it and he suddenly had a craving for carrots.  Then he came up with me to get communion and saw me get the host and he said really loudly, "I want a cookie!". He would have been very disappointed with that cookie if he would have gotten one! Never a dull moment around him. Anyway, we had a private ceremony after Mass so here are some of the pictures.  The Godparents are Stephen, Jeff's bff, Carrie, Jeff's sister, and Nicki, my sister. After that was over, we went back to our house for more food. I made a roast with gravy for sandwich's and sugar cookies for dessert, along with the rest of the food from the morning. 

The Mauldin family with Deacon Sam

Nicki, Deacon, Lauri, Charlie, Stephen, Teddy, Jeff, Carrie

Lauri's family

Stephen, Teddy and Jeff

Jeff's family

Jeff, Carrie (Jeff's sister), Teddy

Nicki (Lauri's sister), Teddy

The next day we went to see Santa at our mall.  It's been a tradition the last couple of years to get Santa pictures with Charlie and my sister's kids the week of Thanksgiving. And we usually alternate where we do them. The first year was here, last year was in Baton Rouge and this year here again. I guess next year we'll need to go to Baton Rouge!
I was worried that Charlie would not like Santa and I was right. I put him on Santa's lap and he immediately starting crying and trying to get away.  I was prepared though and brought something I only use in emergencies...jelly beans! He loves them and I told him if he sat in Santa's lap he could have some.  And just like that, he sat in his lap! Of course he is chewing the jelly beans during the picture so he is not smiling, but he's not freaking out either, so I guess it's a win.  Teddy just chilled out on his lap. And he also fit in Jeff's old outfit that Charlie wore the first time he saw Santa.  Amazing it fit!

All smiles before Santa:

Grayson, Nicki, Charlie, Kirsten waiting for Santa.

Santa:

Teddy and Charlie with Santa

Kirsten, Grayson, Teddy, Charlie

 Jeff had to work evenings Mon-Wed of Thanksgiving week, so we stayed in town for the holiday. We went to our friends house for Thanksgiving day and had a great feast.  Unfortunately, no pictures from that either, so I'll leave you with these two:

Cutie... 

...Patootie!

 We're relaxing and enjoying Jeff being off from work for a few days and getting the house ready for Christmas.  We hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving. We have a lot to be thankful for this year, mainly Teddy and my 2 years of being cancer free.  Life is good!