Baking Christmas Cookies with Mommy

Kiera often seems so young since she is a bit different socially than other 4 year olds and signs instead of speaking. It's easy to keep thinking of her as a baby. However, today she seemed so "little girlish." I was baking Christmas cookies and started with a batch of ginger snaps. I rolled them into balls and rolled them in the sugar and then showed Kiera how to smash them with the bottom of a plastic baby bottle. I only had to show her once, and she immediately took the bottle and repeated the skill on all the other cookies. A few times she turned the bottle over and used the open end which cut the cookies. I think she actually did that on purpose because it amused her. I think she did a pretty good job...don't you? I had to do very little repair. Most cookies were baked as smashed by Kiera.

River of Lights Trip

Our Rio Grande Botanical Gardens does a wonderful Holiday display of lights. We took Kiera before it got too cold. (It was still cold enough). She loved the lights although she hadn't had a nap and fell hard on the cement while walking. She had to stay in the stroller after that. Overall a fun trip.

Belated Pics from Pumpkin Patch Trip in October

McCall's Pumpkin Patch in Moriarty, NM. Not the best view. We had to take a pass on the hay ride to go pick a pumpkin just because of health care issues and not wanting to be stuck out in a pumpkin patch with a respiratory emergency. Maybe next year.




It was a little colder than we had expected because of the wind so we kept Kiera on the vent instead of an HME and O2. Kiera LOVES wind in her face.
The Corn Kernel Bin (in place of a sand box) was the neatest discovery. This was Kiera's favorite part of the trip. (Mine too)
Fascinated by the bales of hay.
Oh...and one of Kiera's favorite things to touch...TIRES. She grabs the tires everytime we unload her from the car.


Hello chickens. There were a lot of neat animals exhibits with a petting zoo, goat pen where they did some tricks, and a little bunny rabbit village. Kiera mostly liked the fencing, tires, and rocks.

Second non fever related Seizure

Not much to say except last night Kiera had her second seizure without a fever to trigger it. From the two she has had, there are a few patterns. She has had them about 10 minutes after falling asleep. Both days seemed to be days that she was particularly sensitive to auditory stimuli, crying at the sound of her story reader. She had an ear infection when we went in for the October seizure. She has just gotten over a cold this week. Maybe we need to take her in and see if she has another ear infection? She seems fine though. The most striking similarity between the two events is that both days I had just finished explaining to a family member (first Jer's sister and this time my mother) that taking Kiera on vacations still seems a bit unrealistic. Hmmm...God likes to help me re-enforce that position.

Everything went okay. We successfully administered the rectal valium, and she came out of it about 10 minutes after meds were administered. The weird thing is that I was holding her while she was sleeping and didn't notice the seizure right away. My guess is that it lasted about 20-25 minutes, but she may have been seizing 5-10 minutes before we detected it. I heard her lips smacking but couldn't see her face the way I was holding her and thought she was sleep sucking a paci. Then I felt drool on my arm and still thought she was just really soundly asleep and drooling. When I went to put her down to go wipe my arm off, I finally realized she was mid-seizure. It didn't seem quite as severe as the last one. She wasn't as stiff or single point fixated, but it certainly was nerve wracking and left me with seizure dreams all night. I keep worrying that maybe she has had them in the middle of the night without bei
ng detected. We will still have to call neuro and see where we go from here.