The Journey We Are On.....

Ethan turned 2 years old yesterday! We actually had two birthday celebrations. The first was on Saturday. We celebrated with my side of the family at my parents house. We had a combined birthday party for me, my cousin Mike, my Grandpa Troutt,  my cousin Callie and Ethan. We were celebrating a combined 158 years! It was wonderful to spend the day with our family. There was tons of food, fun, and presents! Ethan even touched some cake this year and ate a few bites of coconut ice cream. Then last night we had another birthday party here at our house with Jeff's side of the family. Our house was full of little kids. Here is the best picture of the all the cousins that were at the party that I could get.  Our family from the Chicagoland area were unable to make it to a Monday evening birthday party, so we missed them of course, but I think I can safely say that Miles and Cora would have had a blast with all the other cousins if they had been ab...

Thursdays are almost always busy around the Marshall house. Ethan has physical therapy and occupational therapy every Thursday (unless their is a conflict) and twice a month on Thursdays he typically has his appointment with his vision therapists, and once a month on Thursdays he typically sees the dietitian. Sometimes the stars line up and we all of those on the same day.... like today - except instead of having a vision therapy session, Ethan had his first meeting/evaluation with the feeding therapist. Here was my little man's schedule today: 9:30 - 10:30am Physical Therapy 12:45-1:45pm Feeding Therapy & Dietitian Visit 2:15-3:15pm Occupational Therapy It was a busy, but good day, minus the fact that Ethan still isn't eating well and now weighs less than he did six months ago. The plan is for Ethan to start Feeding Therapy, two times a month, starting next month (on Thursdays - it is the only day the feeding therapist is in Decatur). Look at what Ethan di...

My parents were in town yesterday helping with the triathlon (they were one of the spotter boats for the swimming portion of the race) so we got to spend part of the afternoon with them. They brought a gift for Ethan. I think he likes it, what do you think?

As you know we've been having issues getting Ethan to eat very much over the last few weeks (he lost almost a pound this past month). We've been working on trying to not have him have such fits in his high chair, so we recently started using it as booster seat, but that isn't always good enough for Ethan, so today we ate in the living room while playing with his jungle toy! He had yogurt for lunch and part of his medicines. This evening we were able to get pureed "taco" chicken as well as applesauce and the rest of his medicine (minus his bedtime dose of Cystadane) in him. We were all very happy.

After two hard nights around our house, Ethan slept for almost 12 hours last night -- a huge answer to prayers! Ethan went down tonight around 10pm, so let's pray we have another full night of sleep! This morning we had our Baby TALK Special Connections playgroup and Ethan tried to eat his friend Mason's toe! Well, maybe not eat it, but he did lick it! Mason was not thrilled to have his friend lick his toe, I mean GROSS! But that is my boy, the toe licker, gotta love him. We also got to see Ethan use one of his newly acquired cognitive skills: they had a bus toy like we have here at home that has lights, sounds, and plays music. Ethan crawled right to the toy and pushed the top of the bus to make it play and it didn't do what he knows it is supposed to do and he was a bit upset. I know this sounds so simple, same toy, different place --- but that is actually a skill kids have to "learn." Last week when Ethan was at his grandparents's house for a bit when I...