Friday, May 10, 2019

Hens, Hearing aids and a Hair cut

The baby chicks are now 4 weeks old and getting big fast! I have a feeling Cheeseburger is going to be a boy because it looks like he/she is getting red wattles already and none of the others are yet. Not sure what is going to happen if we end up with a bunch of roosters. Reagan loves to play with the baby chicks, though now they are at the stage where they startle easily.

Avery kept telling us she wanted to get her hair cut so one day we decided to cut it ourselves. She wanted it around shoulder length. We cut about 7.5 inches off after her bath one day. She wanted to bring the pony tail we cut off to school to show people so she went to put it in a Ziploc bag. I told her that she couldn’t put it in a bag if it was wet. It needed to dry first so I made her put it on a paper towel on the counter and I told her that we would put it in a bag in the morning. I woke up the next morning and the ponytail was gone! I thought for sure one of the dogs ate it because one of Buddy’s favorite things to chew is Barbie heads/hair. I searched frantically before I went to work and I couldn’t find it. I texted Tim and said Avery is going to be so upset when she wakes up and the ponytail cant be found. He texted me an hour later and told me she put it under her pillow. LOL. She is nuts.  She still wears her hair in a pony tail everyday. I keep trying to talk her into wearing it down one day and letting me straighten it. We did it once in the past and it was beautiful but she always wants it up. She is the complete opposite of Reagan. Reagan’s hair is ALWAYS in her face and it drives me nuts. She only lets the teachers at daycare put her hair up. Her curls are crazy. I need to go to a hair salon and ask what I can put on them so they aren’t so wild.


The other day Tim was working in the yard with Avery and I was doing things in the house (cleaning litter boxes, dishes, etc). Reagan was playing on her iPad in her room. An hour or so later Tim came inside and asked where the dogs were. I said I thought they were outside. He thought they were inside. We went outside and called and shouted for Joe and Buddy for a half hour. Tim went back inside to get his phone and he had a missed call. The Animal Warden from North Royalton called and told us he had our dogs. Someone from down the street found our dogs and called the warden and he came and picked them up. They were at the corner of our street, about 7 houses down. I get so nervous when they escape because we live on a really busy road. I am always worried they are going to get hit by a car. We do our best to keep them in the backyard when they are outside but Joe is too smart for us. He learned how to unlatch the gate on the back fence. We have to put a lock on it that he can’t open. He also learned how to go into the garage from the door in our kitchen. We changed door knobs from a push handle to a handle you have to turn and I still think he can somehow get out that door. He also pushes the door handle on the door that’s in the garage that leads to the backyard. If he is outside in the back, we have to keep that door locked with the deadbolt and keep the garage closed in case he gets it open. He is insane.  Also in the past he figured out how to open our automatic garbage can. You wave your hand over it and the top opens. He is tall enough that he would just put his head over the sensor and open it. We had to take the batteries out so now it won’t automatically open. We have this fancy garbage can and can’t even use it to its full potential. Lol.  Anyways, thank you to the neighbor for spotting our dogs and thank you to the warden for picking them up and calling us.

We are still waiting to hear about the appeal for Avery’s new hearing aid. Avery’s school told us they could have the audiologist fit Avery for new molds for her old hearing aids. Hers no longer fit well and create a lot of feedback because they are loose.
We had to pay $84 but they saved us from having to
1. Pull Avery out of school
 2. drive downtown to Main Campus
3. Have Tim or I take off a work


so it was definitely worth the $84. They prepared Avery ahead of time by showing her videos of people getting their molds made. . She got fitted for the new molds yesterday and they said she did great. Her teacher sent me a few pics and said Avery picked out pink molds with glitter. Hopefully she will wear them! She did tell the teacher at daycare that she would. We go see the ENT next month. It was supposed to be this month but I wanted to wait until she got her new hearing aid. Since that isn’t happening anytime soon, I wanted her to get her new molds for her old hearing aids. Her ENT will determine if she is going to have surgery to have another set (this would be her 4th) of tubes placed. 

Tomorrow is the March of Dimes walk. I will post pics when I can. Thanks for the donations!

Joe and Buddy, probably coming up with a plan of how they are going to escape again.

For her birthday, Mommy wanted a Paint by Numbers of Scarlett and Chewie. She will post the finished product when she is done in about 3 years.


Ray Ray is so cute.

We love each other most of the time


Hi



The stairs Daddy built for the dogs. Soon the kitchen will be torn apart and they won't be able to get outside using the door in the kitchen/garage. 

I got my haircut! A lot!




Buddy and his huge wrinkly neck


I want to be a doctor when i grow up


I told my teacher to send this pic to Momma

Here are our new chicks. 

Getting fitted for my new molds

Cheese


Ray and Grey

Daddy decided to fill the pool up in our basement. It was so fun but it made Momma nervous :)


Momma started the paint by number. Its slowly coming along. She wanted them both to be in black and white but now she is thinking she probably should have done it in color.

We had to move the chickens to their new cage outside in the garage. Daddy and I went downstairs one day and all of the chickens had jumped out of the plastic tote and were pooping all over the bathroom. It was time to move them.


Make a Wish!




Monday, April 22, 2019

Happy Easter!


Happy Easter!
We hope you had a great holiday. I am so happy Easter finally came because for the past 3 weeks, Avery has been talking about the Easter bunny. She was very excited to wake up on Sunday to eggs hidden all over and her Easter basket.

We had a busy weekend. Saturday morning, we went to an Easter egg hunt at Tim’s parents development. They had food and games and hid some Easter eggs filled with candy. There was also a raffle and Avery won a stuffed duck. Of course when they said her name, she hid her head immediately. She gave the duck to Reagan and Reagan loves it. Tim and I went to a comedy show Saturday night (Alan Cox Show Comedy Tour) and my sister watched the kids. Sunday morning the kids found eggs and looked through their baskets. I spent most of the morning trying to prevent the dogs from eating candy. Every time I turned around, one of them had a Reese’s cup in their mouth, wrapper included. The girls got candy, some small toys and fairy wings, a wand and skirt. They dressed up and were dancing around the house in their wings. It was really cute.

Next my parents came over and brought the girls their baskets. We went to Tim’s parents for dinner and hung out with his family. They received bags with Easter candy in it there as well. Avery is in heaven because she LOVES candy.

Tim has been working on building a small deck/set of stairs so the dogs will be able to be let out the back of our house into the backyard. Soon we are going to be remodeling our house and the dogs won’t be able to go through the kitchen/garage to get outside. I am not looking forward to the construction but I cannot wait to see the final result. We are taking down the wall between our living room and kitchen to have an open concept. We are also making the kitchen bigger by taking up part of our garage. We will eventually be building a new garage down the road. I won’t necessarily miss parking in the garage since I haven’t parked in there in a year because we always have so much stuff in it.

Our new chicks are one week old and they are getting so big already! (Fingers crossed that they aren't all roosters!)

Click HERE to support March of Dimes March for Babies!!


Easter Egg hunt at Mommy's friend Sara's house. We look forward to going every year!!













My kids are only fans of the Easter Bunny when he is far away



Easter egg hunt/ Party and Grandma and Grandpa Svitaks.





See, we still aren't fans of the Easter Bunny.


Holding the new chickens. Reagan likes to hold them a lot









Its FINALLY Easter! I have only been asking Mommy about it for weeks




I LOVE CANDY!





Our new Fairy outfits....




... and Buddy









Tuesday, April 16, 2019

March for Babies!

Its that time of year again. The March of Dimes March for Babies. I am sooooo happy they made it in May this year. I never knew why they would do it in April when 90% of the kids who have something to do with March of Dimes were born prematurely and have compromised immune systems. So far in the past 6 years that I have participated in the walk, I have never brought my kids because it has always been cold, rainy or cold and rainy. Hoping I can take them this year. If anyone wants to walk with us, please register for the Hillcrest Hospital team. If you raise $25, you will get a Hillcrest Hospital/Cleveland Clinic team shirt.

Last year I got really cute shirts made for the kids with their statistics on the back. It still amazes me how great Avery is doing. Yes she has some setbacks, but I know it could have been a lot worse. If you would have seen her the day she was born, you would never believe she would be where she is at today. And that is why I walk every year. Its the least I can do.

Even though we had some issues with the nurse manager at the hospital (who is no longer employed there by the way), that cannot take away from the fact that everyone else there was awesome and our kids are alive today because of them.

March for Babies - Susan Svitak page




Monday, April 15, 2019

It’s definitely spring time!

We had some chicks hatch the other day! One hatched early Saturday morning and two more hatched early Sunday morning. We think we have one more that is still going to hatch. I looked at the remaining six eggs and picked one up and it started peeping!

It was definitely a cool thing to experience. I woke up early Sunday morning (at two am) and walked into the kitchen and I saw one of the chicks had hatched and it couldn’t walk. I thought it had splayed legs. I went back to bed and woke up a few hours later and another chick had hatched and they were both walking around ok. I must have seen that other one right when it came out of the egg. I was relieved to see it walking around normally in the incubator.

When the first chick hatched, Avery was soooo excited. She couldn’t stop watching it. We asked what she wanted to name it and she said cheeseburger! So on Sunday when the other two hatched, I asked Reagan what she wanted to name one of them and she said she didn’t know. I told her Avery named hers after a food she liked and I asked Reagan what food she likes..so now we have Bacon. Lol. I decided to go with the food theme and named the third chicken Tater. Not sure what we will name the 4th if it hatches. I looked in the incubator and picked up all the eggs to see if any had cracks. One had a crack and I picked it up and it started peeping! Fingers crossed it hatches.

We were worried they weren’t going to hatch because at first, we had issues verifying the humidity of the incubator. We decided to buy a cheap $9 hygrometer (humidity monitor) from Amazon and it has helped tremendously.

I am still amazed we hatched three chicks! So far all the chicks are black and one of them has feathers on their legs/feet (cheeseburger).

****I wrote the draft of this blog on Sunday and woke up Monday to a new little chick peeping loudly. This one looks much different than the others. She (hopefully she’s a she) is much lighter and almost a grayish color. Yet to be named ***

Our first chick that hatched. The peeping was so loud!




Cheeseburger when she first hatched. You let them sit in the incubator until they dry off and fluff up



Here she is all dry and in the plastic tote. She has a black beak with a little orange.

This is Tater. She has an orange beak.


Here are Cheeseburger's feathered legs/feet


This is the newest chick that has grey feathers.