Our Play Kitchen Project

Sometime during the second week of December, I started pondering what to get each of the kids for Christmas this year.  Having Annie in the hospital had set back my gift planning, so when I came up with the idea of buying a play kitchen for the girls, I thought it sounded great.  I started searching online for the perfect play kitchen for less than $100, but everything I found was too small, too expensive, or cheap looking.

I explained my dilemma to Justin who quickly volunteered to build one.  I wasn't sure he could pull it off, but I entertained him by drawing my plans of how I would want a play kitchen to look. He created a blueprint of my sketches in PhotoShop on on his computer to put everything in scale.  Next thing we knew, a week before Christmas we found ourselves buying wood.  And of course this project was a great excuse for Justin to finally buy some more wood-working tools he's been wanting including a router and jigsaw. 

Unfortunately, we didn't quite have it finished for Christmas morning.  We spent all day Christmas Eve working on it, put the kids to bed, and continued working on it.  By 10:00pm Christmas Eve night, we thought we really could finish it by about 2:00am or 3:00am.  We worked quickly--I did all the painting, using my hair dryer between coats, while Justin cut plexiglas for the window and microwave and oven doors.  By 5:00am all we had left was to apply some coats of polyurethane.  The paint coats dried in about 5-10 minutes with my hair dryer, so we thought we could get a few coats of polyurethane down that quickly too and be to bed by 6:00am.  Unfortunately, polyurethane doesn't dry as quickly as paint.  So we applied one coat, got a snack and headed for bed, crawling under the covers around 5:40am Christmas morning.  Molly woke us up at 7:00am, then again at 7:30am, and then yet again at 8:00am, so we didn't actually start opening presents until 8:30am.  We were exhausted, but the girls were so excited to discover what we've been working on for so long.

The last few days we've been working on applying 3 more coats of polyurethane, and now today we put the cabinet doors back on, screwed on the handles, and hung the drapes.  So now, after many, many hours, our play kitchen is finished.  I have to say, Justin continues to amaze me with his talent!  We had a lot of fun working on this project together, and I'm thrilled with how it turned out--almost exactly how I had sketched it. Plus, we saved a ton of money doing it ourselves.  We even got the cabinet knobs, handles, and stove knobs for free from Habitat Restore.  The sink is simply a stainless steel bowl that we got for a buck at Goodwill.  I love it! And more importantly, the girls love it!

My sketch to show Justin what I wanted it to look like.

The finished kitchen!

Here's how we did it:

All the wood.

Cutting the wood with a circular saw and square.  (Justin wished he'd had a table saw.)

Sanding the wood with the electric sander.

Routing the edges and grooves for the cabinet hinges.

Base of the kitchen

Base of the kitchen with holes drilled for sink and faucet.

Assembling the base, and fitting the doors.

 

What a man!

 

Shelves installed and hinges placed

 

Top hutch added.  Getting ready to measure and cut back board.

Oops!  Forgot to cut the window out before attaching the back board!

Jodi's paint job.  Window framed glued on.

The curtain strung across our storage room to hide the project.

The finished kitchen:

Stove knobs and oven handle we got for free from Habitat Restore.

Countertop

Plexiglas window and curtain--I wish I could say I actually took the landscape photograph myself.

Plexiglas window in microwave

Notice Justin's nice routing job to sink in the hinges.

Oven with plexiglas window and cabinet shelves

They LOVE it!  Well, Annie isn't too thrilled--she's had a cold.

All moved in and stocked with dishes, pots, pans, and food.

It's Christmas Time!

The best gift this year was having Annie home for Christmas happy and healthy! 

Ready to open presents!

Molly got her kitty!

Justin made recycled crayons for the kids from old broken crayons they no longer use.  He took them to his lab at work, crushed them with a mortar and pestle, packed the crayon crumbs into test tubes, and melted them in the oven.  Only problem was that the binding wax separated out from the color making the new swirly crayons rather brittle.  But leave it to Justin to be so creative!  The new crayons are small, but still look really awesome and are fun to use.

My absolute favorite Christmas present this year is this 3D tic-tac-toe game.  My grandma had this game at her house, and I would play it with her often when I visited her as a little girl.  When my grandma passed away almost 9 years ago, I was thrilled to inherit it because of its high sentimental value.  However, sadly enough, a few months ago, Lexie tripped and fell on this game completely breaking it.  I was heartbroken, and saved every little piece of crushed plastic determined to super glue it all back together somehow.  However, my ever talented and thoughtful husband restored it for my Christmas present.  He bought a sheet of new plexiglas and cut out the three squares and drilled the 9 holes in each square.  (The posts are the original posts and weren't damaged when Lexie fell on it.)  Having him fix this so beautifully for me brought a little tear to my eye!  It looks wonderful, and you'd never know that it had been re-made!  Thank you, Justin!  I love you!

Lexie is 3!

For Lexie's 3rd birthday, Justin built a potty for Lexie's dolls.  He made Molly a play potty like this when she was almost 3 which seemed to help her want to potty train.  So the hope is that this play potty has the same effect on Lexie!  Happy birthday to my baby!  I can't believe Lexie is already 3!

Annie's Colonoscopy and Endoscopy

Annie had her follow-up colonoscopy and endoscopy yesterday.  We were nervous about her prep but her magnesium citrate didn't seem to have any effect as of midnight the night before, so we actually decided to give her almost a double dose of Miralax.  The next morning we learned it worked really well!  Needless to say, Annie got a nice long bath!  The procedure lasted about 1 1/2 hours and after that Annie only needed about 10 minutes in recovery before her general anesthesia wore off--even more evidence of how much difficulty she has sleeping lately!  She's usually in recovery for an hour.

The doctor brought us copies of all the images and although we weren't shown images from her colonoscopy a few weeks ago, the doctor said her tissues look much better.  Her esophagus, stomach, and duodenum all look completely normal, as well as all sections of her colon and cecum, with the exception of two psuedo-polyps in the sigmoid.  He saw one of those during her sigmoidoscopy a few weeks ago, but thought it would go away when the inflammation went down.  He considered possibly removing the polyps today, but since they don't have necks like regular polyps they would be difficult to remove.  He did take biopsies from them, so that will help give him some more information.

So there was no visual evidence of inflammation, however, it's the biopsies that will give the most information as to what's going on in her tissues.  In addition to the biopsies from the psuedo-polyps, about a dozen more biopsies were taken from all different parts of her GI tract.  We were optimistic seeing the images and hearing that nothing bad was found visually today, but as we know from her last scope, things can look pretty good, but the biopsies might tell a different story.  So we'll have to wait until next week to get all the biopsy results that will tell us if Annie does in fact have some kind of chronic inflammatory bowel problem. 

The good news is that because the doctor did see visual evidence of a decrease in inflammation, he has started to slowly wean Annie off the prednisone which is causing her to be so irritable and not sleep!  It will take about four weeks to wean her off it, so hopefully we'll all start sleeping better soon!  Also, we anticipate that Annie will be able to return to school after the winter break since her immunity won't be compromised by the prednisone any longer.  Annie will be thrilled!  As for everything else, we are still instructed to continue the mesalamine to help her colon heal and keep inflammation down, and we also need to keep her on her specialty formula, neocate, at least until we find out what the biopsies show.  We get the sense from the doctor that Annie might need to remain on mesalamine and neocate for a longer term.  Unfortunately, those are the two things that require the most prep and time to give to Annie--the mesalamine must be mixed in applesauce and administered through her g-tube with a special extension set, and the neocate is a powder formula that must be mixed, measured, and refrigerated each day.  Oh well, it's a small price to pay for a healthier Annie! Now we just wait for biopsy results!

Sleepless in Omaha

Apparently Annie liked her hospital bed better than her bed at home.  Or maybe melatonin just doesn't work any more.  Or maybe Annie is really actually having pain, not just irritability from the steroids.  Or maybe after 6 weeks with a parent sleeping in her room and nurses visiting throughout the night at the hospital, Annie's now getting lonely at night.  Regardless of the cause, Annie is not sleeping.  Yes, we've been faithfully giving her the melatonin at bedtime, but Annie is usually awake and fussing by 1:00am, some nights as early as 11:30pm.  Nothing helps her drift back off to sleep.  We've gotten her up in her wheelchair in the middle of the night, and even let her watch TV in the family room.  We've also moved her to the love sac downstairs to watch TV in the middle of the night.  We've repositioned her, vented her, scratched her back, rubbed her head, played calm music, and given tylenol.  And yes, this pattern continues throughout the day as well.  She is so absolutely exhausted all the time but is unable to fall asleep.

So the last couple days we have resorted to sedating her with the Ativan that they sent us home with.  We thought it was silly for them to give us a prescription for Ativan since Annie's seizures returned to normal once she got re-hydrated the second week in the hospital, but the script actually does say to give Ativan for breakthrough seizures and agitation.  We aren't fans of how Ativan affects her breathing, so we've held off on giving it to her, but we have become desperate.  We are giving her a slightly lower dose than what was prescribed and it seems to work magic... until it wears off.  It would make sense to just give her more once it wears off, but Ativan can only be given every 8 hours, even though the drug appears to only work for about 6 hours.  It's those 2 hour windows that feel like they will never end as we helplessly try to console Annie, to no avail, pleading with the clock to move quicker to the time when she can get more Ativan.

Besides the sleeping issues, Annie seems to be doing relatively well.  She is maintaining hydration on her own, despite her two episodes of diarrhea every day, but continues to require venting of her stomach every few hours.  She remains on the additional 5 medications--the mesalamine even increased in frequency.  Of course only 2 of Annie's 8 drugs are actually available in liquid form, so preparing medications three times a day is proving to be quite time consuming: opening capsules and mixing contents in applesauce and water depending on the drug, crushing pills and mixing in water, and opening packets of powder to dissolve, and don't forget her formula now has to be reconstituted as well.  Annie's bathroom now looks like a small pharmacy.

Annie did have two follow-up appointments on Monday.  (Sorry for the delay in posting--I clearly don't have as much time to post updates right away now that I'm not just sitting in a hospital room!)  On Monday we met with the GI doctor, as well as the pediatrician.  The GI seems positive that Annie has a chronic underlying issue such as Crohn's, Inflammatory Bowel Disease, or an autoimmune deficiency disorder.  We get the impression from him that we have only yet begun a very long-term battle with bowel issues. He has scheduled Annie for a full colonoscopy on the 16th to get a complete look at what is possibly wrong.  We continue to pray that he doesn't find anything, other than signs of her bowel recovering from a severe case of infectious colitis.  He wants Annie to stay on all her extra medications until after he learns more from the colonoscopy, then he'll decide which medications she needs to stay on longer-term, as well as how long she needs to stay on her specialty formula.  While he's in there doing the colonoscopy, he said he'll also look more closely at the pseudopolyp he found several weeks ago, and may possibly remove it. The pediatrician left us feeling a bit more optimistic.  He did Annie's pre-op and gave her a flu shot and pneumonia vaccine, although we're not quite sure how effective those will be since she's taking prednisone.

So Annie won't be returning to school or church until we learn more, since the prednisone is suppressing her immune system and an illness could cause more c-diff issues and would also push back her colonoscopy date.  So she'll continue on her same drugs and diet until we learn more from the colonoscopy, and just hope the Ativan continues to give her (and us) some sleep.

Catching up on Pictures

Ahhh, it feels good to be home and actually have a small amount of free time to download pictures from my SLR camera!  All the pictures I've posted over the last 6 weeks have been from my little point-and-shoot camera that we've kept at the hospital.  But today I thought I'd finally post some pictures that were taken at home over the last 6 weeks.  Starting with Halloween...  Lexie was Snow White and Molly was a ballerina.

Molly loved getting her hair done up all fancy!

We had our first snow of the year several weeks ago--it was actually a nice wet pretty snow--something we didn't see much of last winter with all the wind and dry powdery snow.  So the girls had fun helping Dad build a snow-woman.

Justin's mom came to visit for a week.  The girls had fun baking lots of treats with her!

This book arrived in the mail a few weeks ago.  It is a book made by the University of Texas at Austin called "Changing the World: Stories Celebrating 100 Years of Graduate Education at the University of Texas at Austin."  Some people from UT called Justin a while ago to ask him questions about his graduate and PhD experiences at UT and apparently they transcribed the interview to include in this book since Justin is the very first student to earn a combined PharmD/PhD degree.  Receiving this book and reading Justin's page was pretty exciting!  (Click the picture below to enlarge to read the full entry.)
 

These next two pictures were taken the day after Annie got home from the hospital.  She had a "spa day" and got her first real shower in 6 weeks, got nearly 3 inches cut off her hair, her nails all trimmed, and a new fresh g-button and tubing.

Annie's Home!!!

After 40 days in the hospital, Annie finally came home yesterday!  This battle started the first week of August, nearly 4 months ago, and we are so thankful she is now doing well enough to come home!  We still have lots of unanswered questions about her care and the timeline for further testing to determine if there's a chronic underlying issue, but the doctor who needs to consult with us about all of that won't be available until Monday.  So they told us we might as well wait around this weekend at home instead of waiting in the hospital.

Annie is still on several medications in addition to her usual ones, and is still on a specialized formula.  We knew neocate was really expensive, but not until they handed us the receipt from our order to take home did we realize really how expensive!  About a month's supply of neocate is over $1200--about 4 times the cost of her normal formula! She's tolerating the neocate very well at her regular rate, but we have no idea how long Annie will need to stay on it--it might be a permanent change depending on what they find during her colonoscopy within the next month.  We feel like we have a newborn again since this new formula comes in cans of powder that we mix up in bottles, rather than the ready-made cans we're used to opening and pouring straight into her feeding bag.  We also have a new medication schedule taped to Annie's bathroom mirror again because it's going to take some time to re-memorize the doses and frequencies of the 7 drugs she's taking regularly throughout the day now.  But on Monday we should be able to talk to the GI to find out how long she needs to be on all these new drugs and the neocate, and find out what the plan is for further testing to possibly make a new diagnosis.

No more hospital gowns!  Got her own pj's on and ready to go home!

Packing up the room--we collected quite a bit after living in the hospital for 6 weeks!

All at home together again!

Annie LOVED getting out of the hospital!  During the whole ride home she kept her head turned looking out the window smiling!  This morning we gave Annie a "spa day" where we gave her her first real shower (with conditioner) in 6 weeks.  We changed out her g-button so she has a nice fresh one and replaced her tubing too.  She got her nails trimmed and I cut 2-3 inches off her hair!  (Pictures will be coming soon--they're on my other camera.)  Tonight we even had a little dance party to celebrate Annie's homecoming!  We danced to fun music by Mike Tompkins--our new favorite--and everyone had a great time!  We're so grateful to have Annie home with us!