Spring is springing along!

I just wanted to post some pictures of our Spring season.

 Dyeing the eggs

Meeting Austin's girlfriend

Pocking eggs with family on Tuesday

before Easter Sunday

    Unexpected hospital stay for Brady over the Easter weekend

Pocking eggs with a friend, who is a girl.

Blessings in disguise:

Because Brady had to be off from work after his hospital stay, 

we all got to spend our wedding anniversary together: 

shopping for plants at Lowe's and eating out.

Plus Daddy at home on a weekend,

racing cars with Joseph.

Spring means flowers!

Ooops, what is he doing here?

Oh yeah, we watched a lot of The Voice.

 Joseph's lack of enthusiasm about being outside, 

regardless of the beautiful weather;

he would rather stay inside where the Wifi signal is strong.

An idea I copied from a gardening website, 

with Thanks! to Brady

for doing it for me.

Thriller, filler and...okay, the spiller does not show very well.

My first attempt to take a picture of a hummingbird.

Second attempt to "capture" a hummingbird

Joseph and his Nana

Crawfish time!

A new addition to the Baudin Family

Mack De Leon Baudin

Joseph's reaction to Mack on their first meeting

Joseph and Mack getting along 

as long as they are not on the same plane.

Saying Goodbye to a friend at work :(

(Served her right to have her eyes closed in this picture!)
I will miss you, Mia!

 

Hello! to her replacement

   

Mother's Day with my boy.

   

They love each other; they just don't know it yet.

Warming up

Book (Kindle) Report

.

Just a quick update.

Joseph has a book report due on Tuesday.

It was not a very specific assignment; just any book.

He and I chose the first book, I think, in the Goosebumps series:

"Welcome to the Dead House"

I just wanted to post it here, being that this was the first book that 

Joseph ever read by himself with no stopping.  

Except for a couple of bathroom breaks.

I think it took him just over three hours.  

I have never read the Goosebumps books.  I didn't realize they were scary, 

with real ghosts and such.   Joseph was not scared though.  

He said because the book didn't have pictures.

I hope that he would be more interested to read books now

instead of just reading the comments on the 

YouTube videos that he watches.

Happy 9th Birthday Joseph!!!

Before I forget about today, here are some pictures of the day Joseph turned 9 years old.

This was the last picture taken of Joseph at age 8.
He turned 9 a few minutes after we took this picture.
He and I are night owls :)
(Those are band-aids on his face to cushion him
from getting those bipap marks.)

It doesn't look much, but I spent three hours past midnight
to blow up these balloons  and  make the cupcakes.  

No cake this time; just cupcakes to make a 9.

Chocolate sundae cupcake.
Another idea from Pinterest :)

Happy Birthday Joseph!
No crowd.  Just him, his Daddy, his Nana and me.
Too many people with cough, cold and fever and we
did not want to take any chance to pick up some illness.

I love the ombre balloons in shades of blue.
Another idea from Pinterest.

And this was how Joseph pretty much spent his birthday:
glued to his new computer.

And so we went pretty low-key for Joseph's actual birthday.  Thank God that we already had the birthday crowd earlier in November for his Almost-9 birthday bowling party.  Pictures as follows:

Birthday theme: Sonic the Hedgehog

Favor bag

Birthday favors

We finally met Isabella and her Dad, Stephen.
They drove an hour and a half to attend the party.

Daddy helping Joseph with the ball.

Daddy helping Isabella with the ball.

Isabella is absolutely beautiful!
We were so happy to meet them.

Singing Happy Birthday to Joseph.

Blowing the candle.

It was a good day.  It was the last of the three consecutive outings Joseph did in 10 days.  We breathed a sigh of relief that Joseph did not get sick even after being around a lot of people in those outings: Dinosaur Exhibit, Zoo Boo and bowling party.  And so we thought.  He got sick the week following his bowling party.   It was mild, thankfully; just low grade fever, sore throat and lots of suctioning. 

We are officially confining Joseph to the house from now until mid-Spring.  Brady and I plan to wear isolation masks when we get home from work.  There are so many people with the flu, people who had the flu shot!  There are RSV cases.  Plus the stomach virus that is going around.  Even Hillary Clinton had the stomach virus and suffered a concussion when she fainted.  We will do what we can to keep Joseph from getting sick, but in the end, we have to trust God to keep Joseph and us all healthy and safe from illnesses and harm.  Right?

Well, hello there!

Facebook is to blame for the lack of updates here.  And the ton of paperwork at work spilling on to my personal time.  I just saw the 2 comments for the previous post that needed to be reviewed by me.  Sorry about that.  I still feel strongly that I should keep this blog because it really is the best venue to post current/recent pictures and events, and to, later on, go back to for reminiscing and for reassuring oneself that things do get better no matter how bleak things look sometimes.  Anyway, since I don't even know what we have been up to in the past 10 months, I shall start with the recent month.

December.  I love this time of the year.  The feeling of Christmas in the air.  The shopping.  The decorations.  The cooler weather.  My special someone's birth month.  Joseph always reminds me that we should always love God the most.  And so, I love December because we celebrate the birth of Jesus this month.

I am pretty proud of myself this year.  I am actually early in sending the Christmas cards to my folks in the Philippines and the cards for the folks in the US should all be mailed out this week.  I still need to finish decorating the inside of the house; but, the outside decorations are up.  The Christmas tree has been up for the past 2 weeks, although still undecorated.  Gifts still need to be wrapped, but, all bought and currently cluttering the dining room.

December 1st.  I can't believe that I didn't take a picture of Joseph this day.  My day was spent on boxing up stuff and addressing the cards.  I couldn't remember if Joseph did anything special, so I asked what he did yesterday.  He answered, "The basic stuff.  I watched videos on my computer."  Since I don't have a picture of him from yesterday, these are pictures of him from the day before.  He was very unhappy posing for pictures.  He takes after his Dad. 

                                         

December 2nd.  I felt like I needed to make sure that Joseph did something special, at least, different, today.  Even though I would have preferred to decorate the house today, Joseph really wanted to see a play.  His cousin - Taylor- was performing in the play.  And so we went; nervously, because Brady wasn't with us and that's always stressful to me.  Thankfully, everything went smoothly and we really enjoyed the play.  Taylor did a fantastic job as Marryin' Sam in their high school's production of "Li'l Abner".  Joseph's Nana and I thought that Joseph would want to leave during the intermission, but he wanted to see the whole thing.

Joseph with Taylor

That is all for now.  Hopefully, I can keep up with the updates.

Minecraft

So, what is Minecraft?  "Minecraft is a game about placing blocks to build anything you can imagine. At night monsters come out, make sure to build a shelter before that happens."  Don't worry.  There are several modes, and we usually play on either peaceful or creative mode.  Joseph watches hours and hours of Youtube videos of Minecraft, while I gather wood or mine materials for him.  It is really fun.


                             

Yeah, we do exciting things down here.  It's Mardi Gras season but with all the illnesses around, we are staying home.  We can't wait for summer to come.  I'm saying that right now and I'm sure come summer I will be complaining a lot about the heat and humidity.

Groundhog Day


This post has nothing to do with a groundhog.  Although I am reminded a little bit of the movie with Bill Murray and Andie MacDowell.

Joseph had his 1st RSV illness when he was barely 3 months old.
See the smile on Brady's face?
That was a time in our lives when SMA was still unheard of,
when RSV was just a two-night stay in a regular Pedi floor.



RSV 2nd time around (officially at least, since Joseph tested negative for RSV
during his last PICU stay in 2010, although Brady and I were pretty sure
that he had it).  This time around, instead of a 48-hour hospital stay, how about
a 14-day illness, including a 10-day stay in PICU.

But, I may be getting ahead of myself and I surely hope that I don't jinx us.  It's just that I am so ready to sleep all stretched out on my bed instead of this:

Of course, Joseph will dictate our decision on whether to really be discharged Friday or the next day.  He sure showed signs of being almost back to his baseline: off of bipap for most of his waking hours today; no afternoon nap; O2 sat ranging from 96 to 100% without bipap; actively playing on his computer; extremely chatty; acting impatiently when his videos or games take a long time to load (Internet is not optimal in his hospital); and bargaining to keep on playing long after his Daddy has told him to turn off the computer. 



The "dragon" is back.



LOL.  Washing the hair without water.

Hair is finally clean.  No more itching.

Time for bed.  Hopefully our last night in PICU.

We'll see how tomorrow goes.