Friday, August 30, 2019

Hailey started having seizures

This will be difficult to write, but know by the end things are under control.
Last Tuesday Hailey had 3 big seizures. The paramedics were called and she was taken by ambulance to the Las Vegas Children’s hospital. The seizures were stopped by giving her a sedative. She was unconscious for almost 24 hours in the pediatric intensive care unit. The longest 24 hours of our lives. Very long story short, we had to do a flight for life to Salt Lake while her Dad drove. (More on that later) Hailey is now taking anti-seizure medication for the rest of her life. After stays in 2 hospitals in 1 week we are recovering at home now. Last night was our first night back. Even though I was exhausted I was also terrified wondering “how do I sleep and monitor Hailey at the same time?” I was told the first 3 months are what determines if the dose is correct for seizure management, even though it initially goes by weight. We’ve NEVER had to deal with seizures, but as her disease progresses new things are certain to pop up. We were doing so great for so long! We were NOT prepared for this but now we have to deal with it. Hailey is a bit weak as expected but still smiling and laughing at the silly things we do to try and move forward. We will slowly but surely get into a routine, but the last week has been extremely rough on all of us. August is just not our month, never has been. 
I’ve had the Etsy shop closed while we’re getting back on track but I will do what I can for custom orders I’ve started when I can, but Hailey always comes first.


Sunday, July 7, 2019

How we spent the 4th of July

Where were we on the 4th of July? We were in Ridgecrest, California! Quick little Story time: our very close friends live in Ridgecrest and were having a birthday party for their daughter who Hailey absolutely adores. We decided to make a weekend out of it and head to California. During our drive my friend called me to ask if we’re alright. Confused I say we’re totally fine, we’re about to pull up to the house in about 2 minutes, but I wonder why she’s asking. She said they just had an earthquake! We get to her house and the news was on but everyone was pretty calm. Seemed like everyone had experience with earthquakes. I have not. Living in Las Vegas we will usually get the rumbles from California earthquakes but the last one I experienced was when Hailey was in Second grade, for maybe 5 long seconds. I do remember waking up during the Northridge quake when I was a kid. I thought my sister was shaking the bed to wake me up, she wasn’t.
While we were in Ridgecrest I did experience aftershocks and just those terrified me but what could be done? Nothing. Luckily I had friends there and my friends family there so they kept asking if I was alright. I appreciated their concern because my anxiety was on high. We did stay for a few hours but at the end of the day we headed to our hotel by Knotts Berry Farm. I always have Hailey’s medical Alert bracelet on Hailey and in the car we have the medical alert pads I make. Driving on the road after listening to the news, even though I was worried, I am glad I had it on her. I know I did NOT experience what the people of Ridgecrest and what my friend experienced by any means. They were directly involved. I was just a “bystander.” I still have this great worry though. I keep wanting updates from my friend, I want to watch the news, and I also wanted to get home. We stayed in a hotel for the rest of the trip and we did go to Knott’s Berry Farm (are you thinking we were crazy for staying?) and we did feel the effects of the 7.1 that happened the next day. We are home now, but I’m still thinking about it, and still thinking about my friend and her community. What are the odds that we were where we were? 

Monday, May 27, 2019

Look who had a birthday!

Hailey has turned 11 and for her theme she wanted to have a Jojo Siwa party! This DIY birthday party was A LOT of fun to put together! Here are the photos from our day! 

We want to thank Icing Smiles for helping us out with the cake and Raising Canes for the wonderful food that was of course Hailey's must have item! 











New AFOs AGAIN

Here we go again. Hailey has once again grown out of her AFOs and needs to be casted for new ones! She's also out grown her taste in pattern and had picked a more "pre-teen" pattern because she is 11 years old now and she wants to look the part! 


Stay tuned to see what the new ones look like! They should arrive in about 2 week! 

She believed she could so she did

Congratulations Hailey on Graduating 5th grade! All the times the Doctors looked us in the eye and told us all the things you would not be able to do because of your diagnosis. You proved them wrong!  You can read 56 out of 100 first grade sight words! That's an incredible accomplishment and we know you will just continue to defy leukodystrophy. 

I hope you know how incredibly proud we are of you!

 I made this graduation cap for Hailey and I love how it turned out. Lots of times it's very difficult to decorate a graduation cap. We received so many compliments on this cap. Just remember even though you don't see it on our ETSY page doesn't mean we can't do it!

Thursday, April 11, 2019

My opinion on a new Theme Park we tried out

This weekend was the first time we had thought about taking Hailey to Knott's Berry Farm. I've only had one experience with KBF and it was an email communication asking if anyone could answer some questions I had before we spent the time and money going. It was a very short conversation as they didn't really answer any of my questions without suggesting that they couldn't / wouldn't be able to tell me yes or no. Everything was "Up to me" to figure out.

Knott's Berry Farm was never on our radar. When Hailey had her Make a Wish to Disneyworld, we also got tickets to Universal Studios and Sea World. I personally am NOT a fan of Sea World or any theme park that is zoo like. I understand learning from animals and healing and rehabilitation of animals but I watched too many documentaries and it's just not my thing. We went the one time and it was perfectly fine, but we never felt like we have wanted to go back. Disneyworld was awesome and we frequent Disneyland about every 3 months. That place makes Hailey so happy! Universal Studios is AMAZING with kids who have special needs. Hailey could not ride one single ride at Universal but the character experience is what she enjoys.

I had wondered why we never hear anything about Knott's Berry Farm and Make a Wish. I may be completely wrong (This is my opinion after all) but I don't think Knott's has a relationship with Make a Wish to give complimentary tickets out. Them not having a relationship with Make a Wish could make it so that I wouldn't want to go there ever again.

We decided to take a chance with Knott's Berry Farm. All I have known was that they have Camp Snoopy and that should be kid friendly right?? Well...Not exactly.

As you probably know Hailey has a g-tube and she has a pacemaker. She wears AFOs on both legs, she wears glasses, she's developmentally delayed and she's 10. So she loves the little kid rides but she's TOO tall to be able to ride them. Physically Hailey is a taller then average 10 year old but mentally she is about 5 or 6 years old. So while Camp Snoopy did have rides she would love to go on she wasn't able to because she's too tall. The rides she was tall enough to go on were to intense for her and in the end there were not very many rides in the Camp Snoopy area. We tried to see every single show and we rode 2 train rides.

The price point for Knott's Berry Farm would be amazing for an average "typical" child but we just couldn't do much. We are at the point where we can make anything work so that's what we did. We took our time, we walked around, we saw the shows, we talked to the employees, and saw characters.

The one thing that was great at Knott's was you don't have to fight for a disability pass.  It's pretty much a no questions asked type of thing. Well, at least for us. The employee did see Hailey was in a wheelchair. At Disneyland they will try every which way to deny you a disability pass. You really have to argue your way through the conversation to help them understand why your are "worthy" of obtaining one. In my opinion that's Disneyland's one downfall.

In the end if I could decided to go again after what I now know I probably wouldn't spend the money. If I could suggest things to Knott's Berry Farm it would be the following:

*expand Camp Snoopy to include more for kids of different abilities.
*all the rides are outside and they should have at least a couple to get out of the sun
*I didn't enjoy how many times LUCY called Snoopy "Stupid" or a "Stupid Dog" I tell Hailey not to call people stupid.
*They need more companion bathrooms or family bathrooms and they need to inform their employees what those are and where they are located.
*The bathrooms were not constantly being cleaned like they are at Disneyland. I've never been in a dirty bathroom at Disneyland.
*there didn't seem to be a lot of places to cool off. Universal Studios has misting machines with fans going every few feet, which helps a lot!

So that's about it. It's just my experience and my opinion. I thought it might help anyone that's in our situation on similar to know these things or at least have an idea about them. I feel like we went in completely blind and I couldn't find anyone to help me out. Hopefully this gives someone a bit of insight to ask more questions before they pick a theme park for their family.



New items are in the shop!!

We had our shop closed for a few days so that we could update what we were working on! Here are a few of the custom orders we did!