The Busiest Time of the Year

So why not end out a crazy ridiculous year with an even crazier month instead of just sitting around the Christmas tree enjoying our baby's first Christmas? Well, because its insane, that's why, but we decided to do it anyways. Let's reminisce, shall we?

• We got in a car accident. Was it bad? Yes. Are we ok? Thank God. Let's just say we had yet another 'scariest moment of my life' happen this year but so thankful we all walked/crawled away ok, although the Sub didn't quite drive away and has been out of commission for over a month.
• We made it to Thanksgiving on the Central Coast. After the accident, a sleepless night watching Goose sleep on my tummy and one collapse later we finally made our way up to be with both families. 
• We bought a house. Yup, after getting our licenses, house hunting and much deliberation we decided to sign our lives away and purchase the house we've been renting for the past few years. The influx of new babies in the neighborhood and proximity to both freeways (our only commute saving grace if we wanted to stay in north county) were the deciding factors so we got busy on making it our own. Which leads me to. . .
• We remodeled the house. For escrow we had to get the house tented, and since I'm neurotic about chemicals we practically moved everything out anyways that we decided we might as well remodel once the tent came off. Sounds logical, right? Hmm. . .
• We were nomads. Down a house and a car we had to revise our plans of the Goose and I heading up to the central coast so we stayed with Mark's parents a few days, rented a place on the beach for a few days, back to the in-laws and a impromptu night at my parent's beach rental before we could get back and 'move in' our home. Throw in three colds but some killer weather and we made December one for the books!
• We hosted our first Christmas. With escrow closing and the house being finished just two days before Christmas, we had a tight timeline to move what was left back in and prepare for Christmas. I am so thankful my parents and sister (the Seal, from Hawaii!) were here to help us. The plus side of doing it all last minute is we got a killer deal on a 9 foot tree and were happy her soon to be cousin decided to keep on cooking so we could celebrate with the whole family at our 'new' house.

The past 4 weeks have been such a whirlwind I still don't think I've fully grasped what just went down, but I wanted to get something up since most people have felt 'out of the loop' based on our cryptic texts and have tried to track us down Carmen San Diego style to no avail.  While I can tell you I'm supposedly in said loop I still have no idea what just happened, so when I do I'll make this pretty with pictures and stuff. Until then, I wanted to post and to ask for prayers and love for our little Goose who goes in for yet another surgery on Thursday, January 2 at 9am. What a way to start the year but we've got to get them in soon and they had an opening, so we're getting ready to go again. The treatment is going to be even more aggressive this time (a whole new laser) since they aren't getting the results that they expect from these treatments.

We hope everyone had a wonderful (and slightly less 'eventful') Christmas and a Happy New Year!

A Big Week

Last week was a big one for us as the oldest and youngest members of our tribe both had surgery - Makenna kicked off her first Halloween with an early morning in the OR and my dad had one of his batteries replaced (yes, he really is Frankenstein) the Friday before.

So this being our second of this kind and third overall you'd think it would get a bit easier every time but that wasn't quite the case for me, although it was more familiar now that we know how this goes,I'm not quite sure handing my baby over will ever get easier. Luckily our little peanut handles it all with such grace an patience. Despite getting up at 4 and spending 2+ hours in the waiting room with ZERO food, she didn't shed a tear and walked happily down the hall when the nurse took her away.

Light reading in the waiting room with Duck & Goose

THIS KID DOESN'T SLEEP. No seriously, people usually give me the 'yeah, all parents go through that' look when I say that, but I think we're bordering on the extreme here with surgery day being a prime example. Not only did she wake up from anesthesia BEFORE the doctor finished briefing us, she was also discharged within a fraction of the time they estimated. The doctor was SHOCKED to see her in the hallway being so alert (despite the demeral) and said 'Wow! Now this is what the face of recovery should look like!' They also tell you that the baby will sleep off the anesthesia most of the day-not so! She took almost a 2 hour nap (1.5 hours longer than she EVER naps) and that was it for the day, then it was on to the Halloween festivities. This kid doesn't want to miss a beat!

No idea why we were smiling - this was not fun

The littlest patient of the day

Nonna entertaining a hungry goose

About this surgery: They usually start patients at an intensity level of 8, but Makenna started out at 11 and they bumped it all the way up to a 13 this time because results weren't what they expected last time. She had more bruising and a harder time recovering from anesthesia but not too much discomfort, or at least she didn't show it. We're in the process of scheduling the next one while trying to coordinate it with getting an MRI on the other side of the hospital of her spinal cord while she is under to prevent having GA yet another time. So please get the prayers started early on this one -we are praying her spinal cord is ok!

Luckily she was feeling well enough to carve her first pumpkin, or at least play with the guts, and hop into her strawberry costume for a couple minutes that afternoon to at least get to celebrate a little bit of her first Halloween. My hometown is know world-wide for their strawberries so we thought this would be a great fit for her.

The sweetest strawberry

Pilates for strawberries

In other goose news, she's still a peanut hanging steadily around the 25th percentile in both height and weight. But don't let her petite size fool  you, this kid is tough, and by the bumps, bruises and scrapes on me, you can see she is pretty strong too. Just after she turned 7 months, with absolutely no interest in crawling, she decided it was about time she started standing and pulling herself up on everything and more recently cruising. She has also mastered the wave but the only person she finds worthy of it on a regular basis is that cute baby in the mirror. She's also very verbal, talking, singing, rambling on an on throughout the day, and I am almost positive she speaks Italian based on some of the inflections in her voice and the authority she commands when she decides she needs something.

We've also been lucky to get some amazing Fall weather here, and that means beach time! We've been spending early mornings before work and late afternoons after just enjoying the beach.

Thanks for all of the love and support you have shown us the past couple of weeks. These surgery days, and the days following are so unbearably hard on us sometimes, but made much better by your love. THANK YOU.

The Great Pumpkin

Since Makenna's next surgery is (in)conveniently scheduled for one of my favorite holidays, we made sure to get a jump start on the Halloween festivities this year. Wait, who am I kidding? I start scheming about what to be for Halloween sometime in November (yes, do the math) and have gone on full out reconnaissance missions to find the perfect pumpkin patch in my adult years, sans kid, because I love this time of year and everything pumpkin so much. 

Office Halloween costume contests? Owned. Holiday Decor? Decorated.Trader Joe's pumpkin section? Forget about it.

So after silently disowning my husband who suggested we go to the local 'patch' in the mall parking lot (sacrilege!) we went on good recommendation to a place down in Rancho Bernardo and were so happy we did. We got to take her on her first hayride, pick pumpkins straight out of the patch and take her picture with a lot of funny shaped gourds. Boom! And she seemed to enjoy it. Especially the hay. . .she liked the hay.

Aside from the sweaty post-headband Bozo the clown hair do, I'd say the day was a success!

Hayride

Pumpkins just her size

A little out of her league

Missing her story time days

VIP Status

This past weekend we participated in our first Rady Children's Hospital Shamu and You Walk down at SeaWorld. While we joked that this was my mom's first 'race' she had ever competed in, it was even more of a 'cruise' than a walk with frequent stops to check out the marine life (and stuffed, fake marine life wannabes) along the 'course.'  The park was closed but they brought out some of the animals to keep the kids entertained, well, not so much our kid who was happy to play with her feet most of the time, but other kids, sure.

I've participated (and gently encouraged Mark to participate in) a handful of these types of events in the past but it was definitely an emotional moment for me crossing the starting line and hearing the announcer give a shout out to Makenna for being a 'VIP'- Very Important Patient, as I never would have imagined that we would have ever been on this side of it, especially with one of the littlest VIPs there. But we were so happy to be there and support the doctors that have done so much for our little goose, and for us since we know she is in the absolute best hands (her tummy surgeon has taken a personal interest in her and does research on her syndrome in his 'spare' time).

And a HUGE thank you for the donations in support of our team - we are so grateful and we hope you can join us for this fun event next year!

Shamu himself! (or herself!)

No Goose, that isn't your aunt

Flamingos!

Proud of our little VIP!

Summah Time

Now that summer is officially over, well by calendar at least because it's still a solid 80 degrees outside here, I thought it was about time to recap some of the summer highlights. Mostly because I've already forgotten 90% of what happened but I'll just make up whatever I can't remember so this post sounds a little more exciting. 

One thing I do remember was there was swimming, lots of swimming. We took a couple warm up laps in the Gparents pool to get her psyched for her first swim lesson this past week and the extra effort seemed to pay off because she seemed to love it. And by 'love it' I mean there was no crying and she half fell asleep on the back float portion of the class. Good thing this kid is a water baby because let's face it, she didn't really have much of a choice.

Carlsbad Waterworks - First class!

Back floatin' like a boss

Dip!

 She also made her first trip to the central coast to Nonna and Pop Pop's house to help Nonna recover from her knee surgery. It was a pretty quick trip but she snuck in some time to tickle the ivories while we were there and it sounded about as good as any music I've heard coming out of that piano so she's definitely a Salcido.

Back in July we were excited to welcome my cousin Tina's family all the way from Peoria, Illinois. After spending some time at my aunt and uncle's in Washington they all hopped in a (big) car and made their way down the coast to our place. She loved playing with her cousins and having a house full of kids to entertain her.  Luckily we were able to hook them up with some good weather and a stop at Legoland.  I think Makenna enjoyed it, or at least what she could see of it through the opening in her stroller.

The Nester crew

Meeting the cousins

Aunt Teetsie and Uncle Jerry

Lego boat race

Beach time with Uncle Jerry

Don't know what he has to do with legos, but he was there, so we took a pic with him

Cousins Catie and Libby (Proud Mom moment - first Roxy outfit! )

There was also some eating which has been fun. Like a true Italian she LOVES to eat, it's the digesting that needs some work. I don't know if you necessarily need the play by play because, well, you've seen eating before, but this series of pictures just cracks me up.

There was also just some run of the mill 'hang outside in your swimsuit and duck tub' type of afternoons.

We made our way up to the Bay Area to celebrate the wedding of our dear friends Katie and Vince. On top of getting to see all of our besties and their babies, we got to reunite at Santa Clara University. It's been a hot minute since either Mark and I had been back so it was great to celebrate the mass at the mission and cruise the campus for a bit before stopping by the 801 porch where we met.

And if Mark had been writing this post, which of course he wouldn't be, but let's just imagine, this part would have been first: Dubbie's first Padres game at Petco Park. While feeling a little low that the Chargers lost the morning game in the last 15 seconds and the Padres couldn't buy a hit, I think he still had a pretty good day.

And summer wouldn't be complete without a trip to the races. Makenna got the VIP treatment while hanging out in her sun dome on the hot Sunday afternoon watching the ponies, while a handful of people passing commented on how pretty jealous they were of her cool digs. But she did enjoy hanging out with her cousin Dom while her Momma picked the winners and her Dada squandered away her winnings with his picks based on actual "research.' Research, phooey.

We're already looking forward to a more sun-friendly baby and lots of time at the beach next year!