Boys Sledding Video

We took the boys sledding at my in-laws a few weeks ago when we had a good snow. They had never really been sledding before! We pulled them around in a sled when we went to Colorado when they were around 9 months old, but that was the extent of their sledding experience. They loved it then and I think for the most part they loved it this time. They cried at the bottom almost every time but kept wanting to do it again, lol. Enjoy the video!

Funny Videos of the Boys

Here's a few funny videos we took of the boys this past week. They made us laugh really hard! Hope you enjoy them as much as we did!

First Steps

Well, the boys have gone and done it... they learned to walk. They've been taking a few small steps here and there. But now we agree they are officially walkers. They still choose to crawl a lot, but they can walk the length of a room! They started off going from one couch to the other. Our couches butt up against each other forming an "L." Instead of walking along the entire couch and transferring to the other, they started letting go and taking a step or two to get to the next one. They began getting gutsier and gutsier and finally we started working with them.

I heard about a study by a physician that said that babies who crawl early and longer have higher IQ's. That combined with not wanting to have two babies able to walk and get into even more stuff, led us to let them crawl until they decided they were ready to walk! Lol! I guess now they're finally ready. Here's a video of some of their first steps! Oh, and for some reason they just love the camera and wouldn't leave it alone, lol!

P.S. If you click the star looking icon in the bottom right corner of the video, you can change the video to HD (1080p)



Video editing

I know this post has absolutely nothing to do with CF, and is pretty random. I've gotten the itch to make some more videos and thought I'd blog about it.

For the past few years I've gotten more and more into video editing. I've come to love it. I started doing it as the youth leader for our church youth group. We had a guy involved with our youth group who did videography for a living. The videos he could make were amazing! I'm mean awesome! He left and we had nobody to make the videos. So I started trying to, using Windows Movie Maker. I had to transfer video from my camera to the computer at our church (you had to watch the entire video as it put it on the computer) and then transfer it to a disc, put it on my computer at home and edit it. It would take hours upon hours to do. If you are familiar with video editing software, Windows Movie Maker is extremely outdated and very, very basic.

I graduated to Adobe Premiere Pro, which I opened several times and closed right away because of the intimidation of it. There were so many different options just to start a project. It took me months before ever deciding to try and start a project. I finally got the hang of it. It's really pretty easy to use once you get going and understand more about video formats, sizes, etc.

Recently my Adobe Premiere Pro CS4 quit working on me. It got to where the program wouldn't open. It was my church's and they let me install it on my computer. I'm guessing Adobe recognized it had been installed twice and shut mine down. That's all I can come up with. I spent a couple months on a sweet video from a trip to the lake with Monica's family and lost it all... so sad.

Lately I've been shooting a lot of video with my GoPro. If you've never heard of them, check them out. They're pretty sweet! I've been using their free editing software. It works really well if you have GoPro video, but won't let you edit any other video.

If there's anybody out there who recommends a good video editing software, I'd love to know what it is. I love Adobe Premiere Pro, but it runs about $700. Can't afford that!!

Here's a video I posted last week. It's one I shot with my GoPro and edited with their software. Enjoy! It's best to watch it on YouTube and make sure and change it to 1080p by clicking the "star" looking icon in the bottom right corner.



Colorado Ski Trip

Whoo wee! It's been way to long since I've posted a blog update. We were in Colorado for a week and since being back have been adjusting to normal life again. I've been pretty whooped lately and have been pretty lazy. Thus the long delay for posting this. :)

Our trip to Colorado is an annual trip with my in-laws that we look forward to every year. This year we were especially excited. It had been 3 years since we had been able to go. We were a little nervous about the 16 hour drive with the boys, and very nervous about how I would acclimate to the altitude. The last time we were there 3 years ago, I didn't adjust the best and my PFT's were higher then. Towards the end of the trip, I ended up in an ER for a shoulder/chest injury from a gnarly wipeout and my SpO2 (oxygen saturation) was 86%! It's an interesting story that I won't bore you with right now. It just shows that my oxygen levels (which normally run 97%) were very low because of the altitude. I read some pretty scary studies as well about CFers and altitude, which only made my nerves more frazzled. The only thing they recommend to help with altitude sickness is 600mg of ibuprofen every 4-6 hours. Which normally is great and works good. However, I am currently in a genotype specific drug trial and cannot take ibuprofen on a regular basis. I was told not to exceed 1500mg a day. Needless to say, Monica and I were both nervous and praying that everything would go fine.

Well, the boys did great!! We drove through the night and made stops for gas, food and bathroom breaks often. They were able to get out of their carseats enough to keep them from going bonkers. They had someone in the third row seat of our van playing with them at all times too. :)

Surprisingly, I did not have a single problem related to altitude!!! I woke up two mornings with a headache. I think it was from sleeping too long and being hungry more than the altitude though. We all made it through the week without any major wipeouts.

It was an awesome trip! We skied at Keystone 4 days while we were there. We were there just about from open to close. We play hard! We had so much fun! Monica showed me up as usual. She's really good on skis. She's been skiing since she was 8. She's pretty much Olympic bound in my opinion. ;)
It was nice to spend time with family, especially my brother and sister-in-law. They are both in med school so we don't see them as often as we'd like. I always look forward to vacations because of the time I get to spend with Monica and now my boys! Every day life can get hectic with work, treatments and commitments. A week with no worries except having the most fun possible is just what the doctor ordered! Monica was probably ready for me to go back to work! :)

Can't wait til next year!

I'll leave with more pictures than you care to look at, including a burst set of me jumping into the pool! AND I added a couple videos to make this post even more radical! One of the boys' mode of transportation to and from the ski lodge. The other is a video I put together (shot with my GoPro camera) of us skiing and having fun in the pool.

Going for a drive

Monica and I got our van fixed and it's running like a champ! Whoo-hoo! But that's not the drive I was talking about. The boys went for a little drive through the mall last night. Monica and I were supposed to take a weekend trip out of town, but with the bad weather we were forced to cancel our trip. Since we had the evening to ourselves with no plans, we went Christmas shopping. We were able to get a decent amount of it done!

The best part of our shopping expedition was watching the boys in the mall rental stroller. My parents have ours with them in Branson (where we were heading). So we rented one from the mall. It made us both a little nervous, because it was probably germ infested. However, they seemed to love it and we were cracking up laughing at the two of them!

Here's some pictures and video of their drive through the mall.

 

 



New Baby Games

The boys each have their own games we play with them that they think are funny. Jace likes to play a form of hide and seek. If he can't see your entire face he will lean, stretch or move however he needs to so he can see you. It's hilarious! We noticed it a couple weeks ago at a family birthday party. I play it a lot with him and he thinks it's super funny! Jeriah likes to do a balancing act on my hand, lol. I hold my hand out, put him on it and he will stand on my palm. He almost always grabs his hands and pulls them to his chest and makes the cutest face ever! It's sort of an I'm proud of myself/this is fun face. He scrunches his little nose and shines those two bottom teeth! It's usually accompanied by a giggle or squeal of excitement!

We have a couple decent videos that showcase their games! The one of Jace playing hide and seek is a longer video. He does it near the end. We were also trying to get him to look at his hand. For the past couple weeks, he'll be playing and will stop to stare at his hand while he's wiggling his fingers, lol! Like he's amazed that he can do it or something.

We hope to get better videos at some point. Anyway, here they are!



Clinic Update & Sleepy boys

Yesterday I had my follow up appointment after 2 weeks of IV antibiotics. It did not go at all how I had envisioned it. I saw myself going in, blowing an FEV1 of at least 62% and getting my PICC line pulled. I would leave with a smile on my face, go home and take a long, hot shower! (With a PICC line you have to wrap your arm and hold it out of the water when showering. Makes it hard to enjoy a shower.) Then get back to work at getting my PFT's into the 70's! I was almost there with a 66% 6 months ago.

When I went in, I kind of had a feeling it wasn't going to go the way I had hoped. I feel slightly better, and my cough has lessened. Usually I feel like a new man after 2 weeks of IV's. My cough hadn't changed either. It is still a harsh, dry sounding cough and it's hard to cough sputum up. The only way to describe it is that my lungs feel swollen, or my airways are tighter than they've ever been. So, since I wasn't feeling like a new man, my cough was still harsh and dry, and I wasn't able to bring up sputum easy, I figured something was still going on and I'd keep my PICC.

I blew a 53% FEV1. That's down 3% from before I went in 2 weeks ago! I was shocked to see that I had dropped. For a brief second my heart dropped. I've been working hard the last 2 weeks. As soon as I saw it, immediately my mind starts going to things I could have done better. I blew as hard as ever trying to get that FEV1 a little higher each time. It actually dropped with each attempt. I've been doing these long enough to know that usually my 2nd, 3rd and sometimes 4th attempts are my best. Another indication to me something else must be going on.

On a good note, my weight is up to 160! Maybe my FEV1 dropped from the addition of 5 pounds of adipose tissue. :)

Sooo, after discussing with my CF team how I feel and my symptoms not changing, they came up with a plan of attack. My physician thinks maybe I'm having an inflammatory response (swelling) in my lungs. Here's the gameplan:

1. Add oral Cipro to the mix for 2 weeks
2. Continue IV Meropenum through Friday
3. Add prednisone (if the blood work does show I'm having an inflammatory response, he would treat it with prednisone. So he wants me to start it now prophylactically.)
4. PFT's in a week to see if the prednisone had any effect. Follow up with the blood work results and go from there.

Am I concerned? Of course I am. Am I worried? Yes, slightly. Scared? Maybe a little. I'm not okay with that kind of decline and am not going to accept it as "the disease running it's course." I'm glad that my team is not accepting that as the case either. My physician told me not to worry that they were going to get me better. I guess he could tell I had a million things running through my mind.

Oddly enough though, I have quite a bit of peace about it all. Jeremiah 29:11 " 'For I know the plans I have for you,' says the Lord. 'They are plans for good and not for disaster, to give you a future and a hope.' "

To brighten the day, Jace decided to have his first real belly laugh. I had just finished his bath and was drying him off and putting lotion and powder on him. Monica was feeding Jeriah in the living room. The Chase credit card commercial came on with the Katy Perry song "Roar." I randomly started singing it to Jace being silly and he thought it was hilarious!!! Every time I'd start to sing, he'd burst out laughing before I could get a couple words out. He just kept laughing and laughing and laughing! It was awesome!!! It was a textbook belly laugh, lol! Now we'll be trying to get it on video to share with you guys!

I'll leave you with a couple videos of our boys falling asleep after being tuckered out from a hard day of being a baby!



6 Months Old

The boys turned 6 months old 2 days ago on the 12th! It's really hard to believe they are getting so old! They develop more every day! We notice them doing something new almost on a daily basis. It's so crazy!

If you've been reading any of our other posts, you already know that Jeriah has 2 teeth now. They stick out more and more all the time! Jace has been chewing on everything! We expect his teeth to poke through anytime. They are becoming more mobile. They aren't crawling yet, but they have figured out how to twist, roll, wiggle and grab the blanket/mat to pull themselves all over. They are close to scooting! They both will put their face down, push with their feet to get their butts in the air and push with their feet. It looks like they're trying to climb, pushing one foot after the other, but they don't go anywhere, lol.

They've gotten much better at sleeping!! In fact, Saturday, the day they turned 6 months old, they slept from 9:30 until almost 7 without waking once!! (angelic noise) It was wonderful! We can pretty much lay them down almost wide awake and they will fall asleep on their own without much of a fuss. They're such good boys!

We go for a check-up at the end of the month where we'll find out how big they are! I'll be taking wagers if anyone is interested! Haha!

They have learned so many new things, I feel like I'd have to go on and on and bore you to death. So I'll mention a few and leave it be. They are really watching each other and even more than that, starting to interact with one another. As parents Monica and I think this is one of the coolest things ever! They will laugh at each other and they're starting to babble to one another. This afternoon when I got home from my study appointment, I went into the kitchen where they were sitting with momma and made some funny faces at them to get some laughs. I got the laughs, and right after they laughed at me, they turned and looked at each other, like "Did you see dad being silly?" It was awesome!

Last night we had a birthday party for my father-in-law. Monica's cousin's fiancé (lol) was ducking behind me and popping back up, playing with Jace. When she would duck behind my other shoulder, he would lean over my back, look to see where she went, and then laugh really hard when she popped back up! We had never seen him leaning to look for something like that before. He did it again today with Monica. It's too cute!

Last one, Jeriah has gotten so fast with his little ninja moves! If anything is within reach, BAM, he's got it! He is a fast little booger! It's almost as if he's always waiting for something to get close so he can pounce on it, lol. He's got some quick reflexes.

Alright, I guess that's enough. Enjoy the pictures and videos!

 

We have the most good-looking boys ever!

Sleeping on grandpa

Sometimes he zones out... :)

Fuzzy head

Shopping is tiring... I felt the same way.

The following pictures were taken in order of how they happened.
It serves as an illustration of how mobile they are becoming.

Running when it's cold! They both slept the whole way!