Merry Christmas

Santa Came!

Vince really liked the piano at my parents house

He also likes chocolate!

He is our little Elf

His first laptop

Merry Christmas everyone! We had such a wonderful time, we hope that you all did too. Vince still does not fully get Christmas, but he had a great time tearing paper! We went to my parents house last weekend (Andrea's), spent Christmas Eve and Christmas morning at home, and went to Uncle Chris's house Christmas afternoon. Vince enjoyed all of it! Being that Vince is still the only grandchild on both sides and an only child he was very spoiled. He got a lot of great toys and clothes. Vince still amazes us, he is walking around, with our help, like crazy. He loves to walk! We will post a video of him soon doing it again as he has gotten better at it. Last week at the doctor he weighed in at 22 pounds, so he is growing a lot too. Merry Christmas again!

Love,

Nick, Andrea, and Vince

Vince is starting to WALK!

This pretty much says it all!

Time Flies!

Well, it has been a long time, but that means everything is going pretty good. Vince is doing great! He is getting so big. He finally hit 20 pounds about a month ago. He is crawling like crazy, he goes forward, backwards, to each side, and loves to go in circles. He is babbling a lot, but not really saying many words. We do have good talks though, he likes to tell us lots of stuff, we just don't understand it yet. He has had a lot of check ups lately and they have all gone well. We are still not cathing, which is great. It is most likely in our future, but we are enjoying every day we don't have to do it. He has 12 teeth so far and always seems to be working on the next one. Last Thursday Vince had tubes put into his ears. He had been having a lot of ear infections and it was determined that it was the best option. He did great with it, by dinner time he was completely back to normal.

Other than that we have been very busy. We had a great summer vacation, but it is nice to be back at work. It is definitely a balancing act, but we make it work. Nick is still working a lot as well, but we are very happy to both have job since so many in Michigan do not right now. Nick's Mom retired this month which is great. Her first act as a retired person was to come down and help Vince and me out. It was parent teacher conferences which makes for very long nights so she stayed with Vince while I did that. We are looking forward to seeing more of her.

We hope everyone is enjoying fall, it wont be long until Christmas is here.

Love,

Nick, Andrea, and Vince

House picture post

Our Deck, the guys did a great job with it!

Living room

Living room

Mud room

Dining room

Kitchen

Office

Guest bedroom

The room we never use anymore :)

Guest room #2

Vince's Room

Vince's Room

Our Bedroom

Our Bedroom

Here are the pictures of our house. It has been so great traveling as much as we have this summer, but it did not really allow us much time to do stuff like this, sorry it took so long.

Love,

Nick, Andrea, and Vince

HUGE stuff today!

Vince started to CRAWL (army crawl)! The last couple of weeks he has been rolling really well and has become pretty mobile with it, but up to this point he has not gone forward. Today we were playing and he rolled onto his belly and went after a roll of toilet paper. It was like all of the sudden he just put it all together. The rest of the day he practiced by going after things he is not supposed to, like doors and the computer, and by the end of the day was doing pretty good. He is not getting up on his knees yet, but he is trying. It is so great to see him do this, especially since there have been therapists out there who have not been positive about him ever doing it. Here is a video of him in action.

Great Things

Hanging out in Colorado

Our only picture all together in Colorado, we were in Vail, just about to head to the airport.

He had this muffin in Colorado and thought it was the best thing ever.

So tired

Ready for a boat ride

Enjoying the Lake with Dad
One Year photo's

He was not too sure about this bear

So Vince has been doing some great things lately. We have had so many first in the last couple of weeks it is amazing. I will go back a little ways though.

In May Vince's Neurologist decided to take him off of phenobarb because he had not had a seizure since right after his first shunt surgery, his EEG came back normal, and the blood that was in his brain looks like it has dissolved. We did it very slowly. He was on 6 mL a day and we took 1 mL away each week, so it took 5 weeks. We did not notice anything that different with him at first but as we got lower and lower we started to notice that he was waking up screaming and after a couple of doctors appointments it was decided that he was going though withdrawals. I don't think either of us realized how strong the stuff really was. We had been told by a few people that sometimes when kids come off of the medicine they can do new things and Vince happened to be one of those. Two days after he was off of it he started to stand. At first it was very short but as the summer has gone on he has gotten stronger and stronger and now can do it for a couple of minutes at a time. He loves it to, he gets the biggest smile and is so excited when we stand. We do it a lot during the day and he even points to the couch to stand at this point.

This summer Vince has gotten a lot of teeth. He now has nine and a few more are very close. He got three of his teeth all in one day, numbers 7, 8, and 9. He had a little bit of a hard time with it but not too bad.

Vince has also started pivoting on his tummy and scooting back a little bit. Today he even started wiggle on his tummy and tried to go forward, so I think crawling is in our near future. We are very excited. It is like all of the sudden he has had this explosion of movement.

Vince also got AFO's last week. They are ankle and foot orthotics. When Vince stands he has weak ankles and needs a little help building the correct muscles. I have not taken any pictures of him in them yet, but I will soon. He does not seem to mind them and he can stand even better in them which he loves.

He is also developed quite the personality. He is so goofy and silly. He also lets you know when things are not going as he wants. We have even witnessed his first tantrum. While skyping with Nick he really wanted the computer and had a complete meltdown. It was very surprising and a little funny at the same time.

Vince is still shy around people, but is doing much better. I think with all of the positive gatherings this summer it has helped him a lot.

Well, that is a lot of info for one day, I will continue at another time.

Love,
Nick, Andrea, and Vince

Our New House

So I hoped to get to this sooner than this week, but my Grandpa passed away last week and I spent some extra time with my family last week and did not have internet access.

Anyhow getting to our house, we moved in the weekend before Memorial day weekend and have been enjoying it ever since. Although we have been gone a lot of weekends this summer we have made it feel like home. I think Vince enjoys having more room too.

A couple of weekends after we moved in Nick's parents came back down and the boys built a great deck that we have gotten a lot of use out of. You can see the lake from the corner of it and it is very pretty.

Our biggest project this summer has been grass. When we moved in there were just a bunch of weeds and rocks. I never realized how long it takes, but we are getting there.

We still have little things to do here and there, but from what I am told that is all part of home ownership, but so far it has been great. We are looking forward to fall so we can enjoy it even more.

I thought I was going to put pictures in this post, but when I looked at the pictures we have I could not find any of it all complete with our stuff in it. I will do a picture post very soon.

We hope that you are all enjoying August.

Love,
Nick, Andrea, and Vince

Really Long Time

Well it has been a really long time since we last posted. Everything has been going really well. Since Vince's birthday we moved into our house, the school year ended, we went to Colorado, have a lot of doctor's appointments, and traveled around Michigan. I am going to tackle these topics one by one in different posts, but I just wanted let everyone know we are doing good.

Love,

Nick, Andrea, and Vince

Birthday and Haircut Pictures

I'm shy

Long hair before getting his 1st haircut

This is a big book

Ready to party

I like chocolate cake

Wow time has flown

Hi everyone. We are so sorry we have not posted in a long time, but we have been so busy. Vince turned one, Chris (Nick's brother) graduated from college, and our house is almost done! First it was so nice to see everyone at Chris's graduation, almost all of Nick's moms side was there. Vince did pretty good, he is still very shy around people but we know he will outgrow that someday. We also celebrated Vince's first birthday while we were there. It was very cute, because Vince is scared of loud noises, everyone whispered happy birthday. My parents came down for his birthday as well. A couple of days later we celebrated on his actual birthday and he really went to town on chocolate cake. It was an amazing milestone for us, making it one year and feeling that we have been successful doing it. I don't think I will ever be able to express what it feels like to be Vince's mom, just so much love and joy. I am sure all of the other moms out there know what I mean. Oh Vince also got his first hair cut. He did so well, and looks so cute.

We are now about two weeks from moving into our house. It really looks like a house now and not a construction site. Everything is done, they just have to do the final touch ups, clean, and get the final inspection.

On another note Vince is doing well health wise, but we have decided to take a break from therapy. I know not everyone would agree with the decision we made but it was actually his therapist that suggested it. Vince has major anxiety about therapy, which he has been doing since he was five weeks old, and it has not been getting better. When we would get to therapy, as soon as he was set down he would start crying, ok not just crying but screaming. Sometimes he would make it for about 10 minutes but that was it. It was not that he was in pain or anything because most times they would not have even touched him yet. They gave us stuff to work on with him while we are on a break and he seems to be improving. In fact, he has just started to scoot backwards and is able to stay on his hands and knees for a longer period of time. We are also working on transitioning. At his one year check up the doctor thought he looked great and was impressed with how well he is doing. He said that if you read his chart and then saw him you would not think it was the same kid. That made us very happy.

I think that is about it for now, we will try to be better about posting but I can not promise anything because the next couple of weeks are going to be even more busy than normal. We hope all of you are having a great Spring and we hope all of the moms have a wonderful Mothers day.

Vince's Stats: 17lbs, 12oz, 28 inches long, 4 teeth, and very cute.

Love,

Nick, Andrea, and Vince

Easter

Happy Easter

This turned out to be a cute picture but I was initially taking it to show the drool. He was getting his 4th tooth.

Watching TV with Dad

The brick is now up on the outside of the house

Going to the basement

Upstairs hall

Looking out of our bedroom

Front door area

Kitchen

I know Easter was a week ago, but we hope everyone had a great one. I bought an Easter hat for Vince so I thought I would share as well as a couple of other pictures. We did not have a traditional Easter this year but it will be memorable, Vince was sick so that changed all of our plans. We also had a Neurosurgeon appointment this week and that went well, Vince does not have to go back for 6 months.

The house is still coming along at a fast rate. On Thursday we stopped by the house expecting a little bit of the dry wall to be up and to our surprise it was all up. It won't be long before we are packing up and moving in.

Love,

Nick, Andrea, and Vince