Happy Birthday Buddy!

How is it possible that my little guy is 11?!? 

He's not so little any more ...

Teddy's birthday is often a mix of emotions:

• Gratitude to have another year with Teddy. When we got his diagnosis at 2.5 years old, we read the life expectancy was 3 years old. Given that there are only about 100 known cases of PIGN-CDG in the world, we know far too many families who've buried their children from this diagnosis. Yet Teddy and others continue to thrive and write their own stories.  
• Sadness that comes with comparison. In the words of Teddy's namesake, "Comparison is the thief of joy." Some years it's easy to get lost in the rabbit hole of what Teddy can't do compared to others his age. It's especially easy when shopping for gifts is hard.
• Happiness of the celebration with family and friends. The best thing for Teddy isn't presents, but rather the presence of his favorite people.

This year was extra chaotic because I had a farmer's market the morning of his birthday, so this year didn't come with quite so many emotions. I lived in the land of happiness and gratitude, loving seeing him so happy as he spent his afternoon and evening with his favorite people.

Birthday buddies - Teddy & Collin got to celebrate their birthdays together last week.

We invited family, neighbors and friends, and so many of them made an appearance (whether that was for Teddy or the pulled pork is debatable). I snuck him away for a quick visit for his sitter's graduation party, and he was overwhelmed when we returned home because so many of his favorites were here that he couldn't decide who to play with first! 

We're so blessed to have Teddy as our son and blessed beyond measure to have the community that surrounds and loves on him!

Summer Sickness

 It's weird how things work out sometimes. 

On the Wednesday before July 4th, I was a bit concerned dropping Teddy off at therapy because I was afraid he was coming down with pink eye. He had been rubbing his eye for 20 minutes, clearly in pain, before leaving for therapy. But it seemed to be an eyelash in his eye and then a pair of styes, so I felt it was OK to drop him at therapy.

When his sitter picked him up from therapy, he was definitely not acting like himself, just moping around, trying to take off his shorts and diapers and pointing to his waist. (On the bright side, the eye issue was resolved.) Since he's not verbal, it's really tough to tell what's going on. I was working from home, so I could check his temp and check him out.

He seemed OK from a symptom standpoint that I could find, but something was clearly bugging him. After about 2 hours from when he started acting weird, the mystery was solved when he threw up. Ugh. He threw up twice, which confirmed my gut feeling that we should take him into the clinic.

We had a bit of a poop issue, and then all of the sudden he started scratching. The poor kiddo just turned bright red from head to toe with viral hives. No break for him!

So a quick trip to the walk-in revealed not just the obvious stomach bug, but also a nasty ear infection and then viral hives to boot. Poor kiddo had a 3 for 1 special. But, without the stomach bug (which probably prompted the viral hives), we wouldn't have known about the ear infection to treat that. So in a weird way, it all worked out ...

After a night of medicine (anti-nausea that didn't fully work as he puked up all his medicines, prompting a call to his neurologist on call to sort that out), a long oatmeal bath and some sleep, he woke up feeling much better with the stomach bug thankfully over, along with the nasty hives. 

It wasn't quite the 4th we had planned, but we did manage to get to our land to play in the mud. At least that was Teddy's plan.

Just a bit of mud.