Happy New Years!

Happy New Years from our family to yours! Savannah did not make it to midnight. She was up late last night but couldn't quite make it tonight.

I did keep last year's resolution and exercised more. I completed two half marathons, two 10k's, and eight 5k races in 2013. Not too bad for my first year of running. I want to continue running in 2014 with my goal to complete at least three half marathons and at least four 5ks. We will see how that one pans out since it so hard for me to get up that early in the morning!

My main resolution in 2014 is to work on my clutter and get more organized. I am working on a craft room and hope to have it completed by February. After that I want to start selling on Etsy and Ebay. That should help get rid of some of the clutter!

Cheers! Hope you have a great new year!!!

Merry Christmas to all!

I know I am a little late but Merry Christmas! We had a great time this Christmas and spent the day with family. Savannah loved opening all of her presents and has been especially excited about a play veterinarian kit from her Aunt, Uncle and cousins. She has not stopped playing with it since she brought it home and it has to go everywhere with her!

Savannah's gift to each of her grandparents.

Next up will be New Years! Will Savannah (and her parents!) stay up until midnight? What will this year's resolution be? Stay tuned!

Christmas Spirit

We are starting to get into the Christmas Spirit around here. We have decorated the house, painted new ornaments, and decorated gingerbread houses.

 

We also made a visit to the San Diego Zoo for their annual Jungle Bells celebration last night. We walked around and enjoyed all the of the great light displays, watched some of the nocturnal animals and rode on the Skyfari ride. Savannah also checked on each and every one of her goat friends to make sure they were all okay from the last time we visited. 

 At the zoo she also met Santa for for the first time. She couldn't wait and ran to him and gave him a big hug! She was so excited. She then proceeded to tell Santa that she wanted a doggy and kitty for Christmas. When told he doesn't give live animals she told him she wanted a teddy bear. I think she was in awe of the moment because in the weeks leading up to this she had told us she wanted a cake from Santa. I don't know why a cake but that is what she has told everyone who asked in the last few weeks.

She was on the naughty list!

After the zoo we headed to train and took a lap on it and then headed home. The whole trip to the zoo was perfect and we can't wait to do it again next year! I hope it can become one of our family traditions.

Train ride for two!

More speech therapy!

We had another evaluation for Savannah's speech issues this week. This time it was through our HMO so we could have it officially documented in her medical files. I think it was longest forty five minutes ever. Savannah was tired and she would not focus for any longer than a minute or two. Eventually the evaluator was able to complete the testing.

Holding her new froggy friend.

We were told when we booked the appointment that if she did qualify that there was a long waiting list and it would be at least 6-8 weeks until she would be able to get on the schedule for actual therapy visits. Well... she definitely still needs therapy and that the evaluator wanted to take her case and work with Savannah directly. The very next day we got the call to schedule her visits. Apparently her delay is significant enough to bump her to the front of the line! She will now be going to speech therapy through the HMO every Tuesday morning starting Jan 14th. So now she will have speech therapy three days a week through the HMO and her school district.

Savannah's idea of decorating the tree!

Enjoying another California winter!

Savannah's Speech

I thought I would post a short video of Savannah talking for those who don't know what hyper-nasal speech sounds like. Just ignore the fact that she is obsessed with Buffalo Wild Wings!

Genetics follow-up

We met with our geneticist again last Monday. We spoke about Savannah's speech problems at length and she agreed that it is something that needs further evaluation from the cleft team soon. So she bumped up her yearly clinic appointment from late May 2014 to Feb 20, 2014. That way all the team members can look at her again and decide the best route to fix her speech issues. The geneticist is very concerned with her hyper-nasal voice and the fact that it has not improved with the speech therapy she has been getting. She gave us more referrals for a speech therapist in hopes that we could expand on what she is receiving with the school district now.

Our next appointment? Dec 12th. We are finally getting a speech evaluation done by our HMO provider after fighting denial letters for a year!

Outtakes from a fall photo shoot....

This kid is hard to get a a photo of! She never stops moving so you really have to focus fast and click away. Smile? That also has many variations in her tiny toddler head and none of them match what I had envisioned. I thought my followers might be entertained by some of the outtakes from last week's attempt at portraits! So here they are-

Finally! She sat still for .2 seconds!

Yearly doctor bonanza!

With her birthday every year comes the avalanche of doctor's appointments. So far we have finished up three of the them- her regular well check, her eye exam and her ENT (ear, nose and throat specialist) check-up. Everything is going really well so far this year! Her eyes look good and she does not need an exam under general anesthesia like last year. Her tubes also look good so no replacement surgery needed in the near future either.

We took a drive to Julian two weeks ago to enjoy the fall colors.

She is measuring almost 38 inches (~65th percentile) and 29 pounds (~25 percentile!!) She is finally catching up to the rest of the pack in growth. She constantly eating now so it's no wonder that she is catching up. She also NEVER EVER stops moving! It is exhausting and I truly do not know how she does it.

A brief moment of her sitting still!

We still have another follow-up in January with her Geneticist and we are also still waiting for approval for an official speech evaluation. Her school speech therapist has diagnosed her with velopharyngeal insufficieny. Meaning when she speaks there is air escaping out of her nose when there shouldn't be. It is affecting her ability to make certain sounds and also makes her sound hypernasal most of the time. After we get an official diagnosis with our HMO provider we will see where to go from there. Until then we will continue with our twice weekly speech classes provided by our school district.

Getting into the holiday spirit with some beautiful fall color!

 Besides doctor appointments we have been keeping busy. We made a trip to Julian for apple pie and fresh cider, Disneyland for a Christmas present for the grandparents (I will reveal that cool idea after Christmas! E-mail if you want to know.), and then recently we went to SeaWorld for a Mommy and Me day.

Interacting one on one with a dolphin!

Playing at "snow world" AKA ice world!

SeaWorld is already decked out for Christmas!

Hi Shamu!

This was a great trip to SeaWorld. It was nearly empty and we got to spend a lot of time watching the different animals. Savannah really wanted to pet a dolphin again but there were none in the pool because there were doing interactions with guests that paid extra for it. So one of the trainers brought out two dolphins to interact with the kids. It was fun to see Savannah try to make the dolphins do different tricks. We also went to see the pet show and she was enthralled watching it. It is the first time she actually watched the entire show! Afterwards they allowed the kids to come up and pet some of the "performers". So Savannah waited patiently and was able to pet one of the dogs and a wallaby! We also headed over to the stingray pool and she was able to "pet" a bunch of stingrays. She was so happy. I think her favorite part is petting all the animals.

Halloween!

Our little pirate had a great time trick or treating this year!

Savannah's First 5k

Last weekend we took Savannah to her first 5k run. It was a Halloween theme and we all dressed up for the occasion! Since we are doing an 80's/Star Wars themed race next week I decided that I wanted a costume that we could wear to both races. So we went as a family of Ewoks from the movie Star Wars.

Before our 5k race there was a 10k race leaving 10 minutes before ours. We stood to the side and watched the runners leaving the start line. Savannah became very upset thinking that everyone was leaving without us. She was in tears and was obviously still very tired from her early wake up time.

 

 Savannah did not even make it ten minutes to our race start. She was out like a light and slept the entire time we were running. She woke up right after the finish when we put her medal on top of her. She instantly woke up and was very proud of her first medal. After all she worked SO hard to get it! Ha! We enjoyed our bananas and then headed home to take a nap. (We are NOT morning people...)

Halloween time

In our family tradition (started when Sav was one year old) we headed to Bates Nut farm last week. We had talked about it all week and I know Savannah was excited to see all of the animals. She was even more excited at the prospect of a pony ride! When we arrived we wandered through the giant pumpkin fields and took some pictures. After taking some required portraits we headed over to see the animals.

How she has grown over the years!

We were quite surprised to see a very long line for pony rides! I was surprised that there was a 30 minute wait on a Monday. Apparently on all our previous visits we came closer to the beginning of October when crowds were nearly non-existent. I decided since we talked to Savannah all week about it and during the entire ride up that we would wait to get a pony ride. She was so excited and had a great time!

We then walked around and saw the rest of the animals on site, picked out our pumpkins, and then headed back home. It was a fun day and we will definitely be back again next year!

Birthday girl

Yesterday Savannah turned three years old! Time has flown by. It is both a happy time and sad time. She has grown up so fast and we had a great year. She started classes to help with her speech last year but she could only attend until she was three. Those classes are now over and she is still asking to go see her teacher. She still qualifies for classes but they went from two hours twice a week to thirty minutes twice a week with a new teacher. Last year she didn't really talk at all and now she can put together 5-8 word sentences regularly. She is still hard to understand but at least she is trying. On her last evaluation she had a lot of air escaping out of her nose while talking and it is causing a hyper nasal voice. So we are working on getting in to have that evaluated by a doctor. We are also working on getting her into a wait listed preschool in our area. It is one that her teacher highly recommended and her speech teacher can work with her while she is there.

 For the second year in a row we took Savannah to Disneyland for her birthday. This year my parents went with us and we had a great time. We visited California Adventure the day before her birthday and Disneyland on the day of. The crowds were not bad at all and the weather was MUCH better than last year. (and much better than just 4 weeks ago!)

Petting "kitty"!

Jessie!

My parents have never visited California Adventure before so it was fun to show them around. First we started the day by eating at Rainforest Cafe since our hotel's breakfast bar was way too crowded. It was a good breakfast but Savannah was not a fan of the gorilla that was overlooking our table. Next we headed into the park. We were able to go on a lot of the rides and it was fun to go on some of the adult rides while my mom watched Savannah. After an exhausting day of going on rides, eating and shopping we headed out and into downtown Disney for dinner. We ate at Earl of Sandwich and then went back to our hotel.

No line to visit Woody!

We all went to bed early since we had to wake up early to check out of the hotel and get to Disneyland when it opened at 8am. We had breakfast at the hotel and then made it into Disneyland by 7:45! I don't think we have ever been early to anything when Savannah is with us. There was hardly anyone in the park and we headed straight to Haunted Mansion. I really wanted my parents to see it while it was decorated for Halloween and Christmas. Except that it was still closed due to some glitch. Along with Jungle Cruise, Indiana Jones, and Splash Mountain. Thankfully Winnie the Pooh was open for Savannah. By the time we headed back the mansion was open. So we went thru once and then got right back in line to go again. Soon as we walked in Savannah jaw was chattering. I think for the first (and so far only) time ever she thought it was too scary and did not want to do it again. We walked out while parents went on it again. We then hit Pirates and a few other rides in Fantasyland before we going back to go catch a quick show at the Tiki Room before lunch reservations.

Visiting the goats at the petting zoo.

 For lunch I had made reservations at Blue Bayou. Lunch was perfect and apparently the dark, quiet atmosphere was all Savannah needed to take a nap. She was asleep within two minutes of being seated. We all enjoyed our meals and then woke Savannah up to blow out the candle on her birthday dessert. She went right back asleep and we enjoyed her desert for her.We finished the day with Indiana Jones and Splash Mountain and then headed home after buying some birthday toys for Savannah. It was a great weekend and I can't wait to do it again next year!