Happy Birthday Samuel! It's really potty time!

First, I need to apologize to my readers, all two of you, for delaying my blog posts lately. I'm getting overwhelmed by not setting my priorities the way I need to. Things don't work the way they are supposed to when everything is equally important.

That being said...

My little man is TWO! His birthday was upstaged by the harvest festival preparations at the church so we postponed celebrating until the following weekend, when we wouldn't be competing with other plans for the fake holiday. After all, Halloween isn't really a holiday.

Since he loves Yo Gabba Gabba! we decided to have a Gabba party at our neighborhood playground. While I did plan some games, like Pin the Eye on Muno, a pinata, and some coloring pages, most were upstaged by the swingset and presents. We never even played, didn't even LOOK at my Pin the Eye on Muno game (it's awesome!). But it's OK because the kids had fun.

On his actual birthday I made a simple cake with his Yo Gabba Gabbas on the top (yes, they are from the Jack in the Box kids meals), even though I had wanted to do something more like MckMama's Rainbow Cake but I simply ran out of time.

However, for his birthday party, I DID have time for my version of the MckMama Rainbow Cake. It was, honestly and truly, easy to make. It took me a few hours but that includes mixing the colors and, of course, baking, which is like watching a pot of water coming to a boil.

I had intended to document my steps a little better but I had the help of a certain birthday boy in the kitchen so it's amazing that I even got the cake made. But, for those who asked, this is how I did it.

Using a recipe from the Cake Mix Doctor (the basic butter cake), I doubled the amout of cake mix I needed. After the giant vat of cake batter was prepared, I split it up onto 6 bowls. I started by measuring out 1 cup of batter in each bowl, but it ended up being about 2 cups of batter per bowl/color.

Yeah, I have a messy kitchen counter. I know. I used the gel food coloring because it would provide vibrant color without watering down the mix.

Because I don't have 6 round cake pans, and I wasn't about to buy 6 more kitchen items (see above picture), I bought the cheap foil kind from the store. They were 9 inch round with a scalloped edge, which did not make a difference. I buttered and floured all 6 of those and baked the cake in two cycles, 3 pans each time. Then, I stacked up all six in the refrigerator overnight.

The next morning I made the frosting (yum yum yum) and cut all the layers to the same height using a Wilton Cake Leveler. You can also use a knife.

Then I stacked the layers between the icing, measuring the icing for consistency, put a quick crumb layer on and put back into the fridge. About 45 minutes later, the cake came out, got iced for real, decorated, and taken to the party. No pictures were taken at the party, mostly because we all were busy (lame excuse) and mostly since the cake stayed covered due to flies (yuck!).

But, from inside my refrigerator, this is the final product. Well, half of the final product. I acknowledge that it looks like it belongs on CakeWrecks, and for that, I am very sorry. Please take my word that it really truly was, cute.

In other news, the hypertonic saline study is going very well. We've been participating for 1 month. Only 11 more to go! By participating in the study, it's made our process a bit different. We can't double up and do neb treatments while he is hooked up to the vest. Samuel's treatments take an hour now, twice a day. Even more if he fights it, since I have to talk him off the ledge every few minutes. If Samuel should need to start back on TOBI, that will easily add another 30 minutes to each treatment time, not easy for a 2-year old. But he is a trooper and takes it rather well.

Also big news---Samuel is using the toilet! He started showing an interest a few days ago, so I put him up on there and he peed! He's using it at every opportunity and is really understanding what a big deal it is. And even though I'm super excited about it, I'm trying not to push him too fast to use the potty exclusively. I don't want to pressure him and make it a bad experience. He will do it when he is ready.

I suppose that's enough talk about the toilet. And there should be enough pictures here to hold people over for a while (mom and dad!). Check back later for more updates!

How the Kelleys are falling apart

It all started last Wednesday night.

Samuel's room was just painted a beautiful blue. I (his mommy) was rearranging the furniture. Since things were a little out of order (typical in our home), Samuel found a bar from his pack-n-play and was playing with it, putting it in his mouth (again, typical). It's about 18 inches long, or so. Unfortunately, Samuel got bumped and the bar got jammed in the roof of his mouth/back of the throat. He bled for a while, we prayed really hard for a little while, called 9-1-1. He had a big gash so we ended up taking the ambulance to Banner Pediatric ER. He didn't get stitches but they did tell me to keep it extra clean. And to do that, have him gargle with some water/hydrogen peroxide, but DON'T LET HIM SWALLOW IT. And how do they suggest I do that? "Just dab some of the mixture on there with a Q-Tip." Riiiiight. OK. I should have asked them to show me. That would have been funny. 

This is how it ended...finally: (just not quite so, uh, side-ways)

After a few days, his mouth has healed to almost as good as new. However, he since developed a cough, possibly unrelated to the gash, possibly because we didn't keep it clean enough. But that too, however, is just about gone. He's back to himself, as evidenced below: (sorry they are so dark)

Playing the pot:

Playing the pot Part 2:

Couch Diving:

Meanwhile, my procedures have gone off without incident. The needle biopsy revealed nothing we didn't know already: I have fatty tissue in my breast. It's a shocker, I know. To get to the bottom of it, we just decided to take the lump out, no matter what it was. That was done on Friday morning and now I get to wait yet another week for them to tell me something else. Friday was a nice day of rest with me sleeping off a demerol-induced haze. Demerol makes me not even know I have a breast, let alone that it was cut into earlier in the day. As the demerol wore off, I down-graded to Vicodin. I thought it was somewhat sad that Samuel and I were on Vicodin at just about the same time. He got some for his bar-in-the-mouth incident. Recovery has been pretty quick and seems to be going fairly well.

This is completely off the subject, but I was just thinking... I passed a place today that was called Valerie's Hair Creations. I wonder what Valerie creates out of hair? What kind of hair does she use? Sounds pretty gross.

A few weeks ago we had to have a plan B while Miss Amy was out of town. Our summer Plan B means Miss Amy's sister, Miss DJ, comes over. She frequently helps so is familiar with Samuel and his special needs. While at our house, she also took some amazing photos of Samuel. She is very talented!

Blowing on french fries with daddy:

Saying "cheese" with his first ice cream cone!

no!

It's true!

We've been having lots of fun with Samuel lately. He's really learning LOTS and it seems like he's changing and growing every day. He loves to point out planes and helicopters in the sky and has quite the eye for them. He can spot them from far away! It's really cute to watch him study the sky, see something of interest, then point up and say "See?" We are working on teaching him to say "airplane" but haven't gotten so far yet.

For about the past 2 weeks he hasn't been eating. Not too cool since we, well, he, has to weigh in tomorrow at the CF clinic visit. I'm hoping he breaks his 22 pound plateau. It seems he's been 22 pounds for the past 6 months. Why hasn't he been eating? Well, it appears he's getting 4 new teeth. I'm not sure how many there are in there now. I should count the bite marks on my legs, since that's where he's been biting me lately. Only me. He doesn't bite anyone else. I'm almost thankful for that, really. That's probably the quickest way to get kicked out of Miss Amy's house. :) The other day I was standing in the kitchen making dinner and he leaned over to bite my leg. I told him to find something else to do and so he laid on his tummy to get a better angle to bite my big toe! I couldn't believe it! The eating thing has been getting better, though. Last night (Cinco de Mayo) he was enjoying his staple, bean dip. Yum!

What else is Samuel learning? He's learning where his body parts are. He knows his nose, ears, eyes, toes, mouth and we are working on the fingers. He's also learning how to jump, which is so cute. He gets his whole body involved but his feet don't leave the ground. He is able to "jump" on command. Very funny!

It's becoming clear that Samuel hears the word "NO!" waaaaaay too much. I have to admit, it's not easy to say much else sometimes, but when thinking about it, it's a great learning opportunity to teach him what we want him to do, not just say no. For example, a staple line heard during meal-prep time would be, "Samuel, we don't play in Lucy's food and water bowls. Those are hers." Over and over and over again. Until I put up the gate.

So why do I think Samuel hears the N-word too frequently? Well, it's a known fact that when he is sleepy, he starts to hit. Not very nice. "We don't hit mommies, Samuel We hug and kiss mommy!" Last night, he came over and slapped my knee, then looked at me, pointed to my face and said, quite loudly, "No!" He could also say "Stop!" which comes out more like "Bot!" but still the same thing. It was very hard to hug and correct in love and not laugh at him, but laughing will only encourage the behavior, something I don't want to do.

Other things going on? We are starting to think about what we want to do in our back yard since it's full of dirt, weeds, and dog poop right now. It's a blank canvas. I've got this great idea to install a splash pad! Better than a pool on so many levels. It's been consuming my thoughts for the past few days. 

Pray that Samuel breaks 22 pounds tomorrow. I'm not sure how that will happen after 2 weeks of minimal calorie intake but miracles still happen. If it does, I'll  be sure to post the happy news. If not, I'll probably post that too.

Thanks for checking in!

I almost forgot! Team Samuel at the Great Strides walk! We did great, had fun and were successful. Still getting a team total, but thanks to all who participated!

Kevin Kelley, Lori Kelley Woods, Brenda Kelley, Audrey Sullivan, Tabitha Alexander, Suzanne Francis, Grace Nakazawa, Mike Gentry, Daniel Gentry, Lisa Sifuentes, Eddie Sifuentes, Alexis Sifuentes, Justin Tullock, Delaney Tullock, Amy Tullock (in spirit). Others who are really helping lately are Sandra Ramirez and Ashley Ramirez. Thanks to all of you! It's very touching to have your support and participation. All who donated to our team, thank you thank you thank you! You can be proud knowing your donation is helping to make astounding differences in research and development.

Other interesting pictures:

Chocolate pudding face

Easter Sunday