I'm a little reindeer

Bath Time is fun!!!

Bath time is fun!

Daddy and Mommy are always dribbling water out of my bath cup into my mouth. I think that is so funny when they do that! But c'mon Daddy, respect my privacy and stop sending my naked boobies to the internet!!

Quick!!! Call Child Protective Services!!!

See what happens when Mommy lets Daddy babysit and do laundry when she is at work?!?!

(OK, before you call CPS, the dryer was OFF, the door was OPEN, and daddy turned the camera SIDEWAYS. I was lying flat on my back. Then he photoshopped the picture to make it look like the dryer was going. Do you honestly think that Daddy would put his little princess in any danger? Sheesh! What kind of maniac do you think he is???)

Daddy spends too much time

Daddy spends too much time at the dentist. I hope my teeth are better when they get here!

My First Halloween

Lots more pics at http://picasaweb.google.com/kbgerend/MadisonSFirstHalloween?authkey=SbAqzpr_AL8#

Today was my first Halloween! Daddy took off early from work today, and we ran out to Disneyland for a couple of hours to take some pictures! I was all dressed up as a cute little butterfly. There were all sorts of kids dressed up today! The park was really busy. What was really weird was that we ran into Daddy's cousin Jessica at Downtown Disney...we didn't even know she was going to be there! That was really neat, the last time I saw her I was like 2 weeks old!

After we left Mickey's house, we went over to Aunt Corina's house for some Trick-or-Treating fun. I had a really long day and I was tired so instead of flying (I was a little butterfly, you know) Mommy carried me in the Baby Bjorn. Everybody was giving me candy, and I'm like hey, what the hell? I can't eat candy! But one guy was cool and gave me a juice box! I was happy about that until Mommy said that she was going to drink it herself! I still had fun though, and I can't wait until I'm big enough to eat the loot myself!

Grandma's House Again!!!

Today Mommy and I took a drive up to Grandma & Grandpa's house. Daddy will be coming up on Saturday, with Grammy, Aunt Pam, and Megan. Saturday, Mommy is putting on a baby shower for Auntie Julia and cousin Ian. We can't wait to meet him!

First Disneyland Trip!!!!!

Today I went to Disneyland for the first time!

First, we went on the Winnie the Pooh ride.


I'm so happy that I got to see my good friend Ti-double-guh-er today!

After Winnie the Pooh we went on the Haunted Mansion ride! It was all decorated like the Nightmare before Christmas. I didn't really get it, but hey, Daddy says I'm young and I'll like that movie some day. In any case, there were some neat colors in there!

Then we went to Toontown, and I got to see Mickey's house. I even got to meet him!!


Later, we went to California Adventure and we went on the Monsters, Inc. ride. In line, I kept looking at this cute little girl's red dress (she was 4 1/2 years old). She kept talking to Daddy, and she even showed us that her dress was a cheerleading uniform from High School Musical! She showed us what a good cheerleader she is. Her daddy said that her pom-poms were at home though. By the time we got on to the ride, I was pretty sleepy by then so I didn't see all the neat stuff in there. Maybe next time!

All in all, this was a pretty fun day...I'm going to enjoy going back there all year!

~Mattei

Richmond Street Fair

Today, we went to El Segundo, where they were having a street fair on Richmond Street. We had a lot of fun, walking around and looking at all of the neat stuff for sale. Mommy bought a really pretty Breast Cancer Awareness bracelet. Mommy and I finally got to meet Debra, one of daddy's friends from work. She was selling custom made purses, handbags, Christmas stockings, and stuff. Later, Mommy and Daddy had gourmet hamburgers with carmelized onions from the Second City Bistro. And all I got was damn Similac formula!!

Sharks in Long Beach

Tonight we went down to Long Beach. Mommy and daddy wanted to take me to the Aquarium of the Pacific, where the shark exhibit is open for free on Fridays. Wow, was it neat!

Then, we walked around Shoreline Park as the sun set. Daddy had his good cameras, but did not bring his tripod so he didn't get the good long-exposure pictures he wanted. Oh well, better luck next time.

As we were walking back to the car (OK, I was sleeping in my stroller, but THEY were walking!), Mommy and Daddy decided to have dinner at Bubba Gump's. As they were in line, they noticed that Jeanette and Isaac, Mommy's friends from work, were also there. Today was Jeanette's birthday. So we sat at a table together. They got to eat fish, but I had to have milk again. When the hell am I gonna get to try some of that good-smelling grown-up food?

Too Cool

Just chillin' at the twins' soccer games.

Bum Deal for somebody???

Mommy and Daddy are stuck in a two-hour Baptism class (along with Megan and Jorge) while I go see a soccer game with Auntie Corina and the twins. I think we all knew who got the shit end of the stick there, huh?

Update: Just as I thought, I had a great time with Corina, Kelly, and Brady...when Mommy & Daddy came back to pick me up I was sleeping so soundly!!! But at least we now know that when Mommy went to her first confession she couldn't think of any sins so she lied and made some up! One ticket, first class, straight down...

4:30am, still waiting to see a doctor...

We have been here since 1:50am. Now it is 4:30am. Mommy is letting me cuddle with Daddy for the moment. I had a bad reflux tonight. That is why we are here. Family night in the ER is not fun. Especially when the ER is busy and a calm, sleepy baby is at the very bottom of the triage list...

Another trip to the ER

Another trip to the ER. This time we took a woo woo ride. I had a bad reflux. So Mommy & Daddy wanted to make sure everything was ok. This all took place at 1:20am. Now it is 4:30am and we are still waiting to see the ER Dr. so we can go home. I am tired, daddy is VERY tired, and poor mommy isn't feeling to well.

Happy Baby

Life is good again. I have my friends and I am a happy Peanut again.

It's Over!!!

The nurse came and found Mommy and Daddy. I am wake now and angry and really frickin' hungry (cut me some slack, the last time I ate anything was at like 2am!!). Mommy is coming in to the Recovery room to feed me right now.

Already done!!!

The procedure is already over. Dr Chin says everything went very well. I am in the recovery room right now. The Doc says that I didn't have any hemangiomas in my bronchial tubes! He showed Mommy & Daddy the pictures while they were eating in the cafeteria...eeewww!

My voice box looks great. It's just that my throat is just a little small in one spot so that's what causes the stridor noise. For those nerds out there, Daddy says to look up Bernoulli's Principle.

The good news is that I will grow out of that before too long. Yay!

Ba-ba-bamp-ba ba-ba-ba-bamp-ba I wanna be sedated

With all apologies to the Ramones. I am going under sedation now. I will soon be just a sleeping baby. This whole thing will take an hour or so. Dr Chin is doing a bronchoscopy but no GI today...Daddy thought that they were going to do both at the same time, but Dr. Chin says that the GI is not really needed for now...

IV in the hand

We made it through the IV step. Mommy had to leave the room. She didnt want me to see her cry. Thats ok I had my Daddy to hold my hand. Then Mommy came back and told me everything is going to be ok.

My Medical Procedure

Just to keep everybody updated, tomorrow Mommy & Daddy are taking medown to Long Beach Children's Hospital to have an endoscopy on my trachea/lungs and also my esophagus/stomach. It is just a precautionary procedure to make sure that I don't have any obstructions or other problems that would be causing my stridor. We should also be able to get final diagnosis as to whether I have Laryngomalacia (soft larynx/"floppy voice box") or not. The main reasons are to make sure that my epiglottis is not too deformed, that I don't have any hemangiomas (warning: graphic pictures) on the inside (I have very mild ones on my leg and also my butt cheek, that are already disappearing).

For this procedure, they will be sticking a fiber-optic camera up my nose and down my throat and into my lungs and stomach. They will be placing me into "deep sedation" which is basically what would be, for an adult, making me really relaxed. I will not be fully "out" but since I'm so young they still call it "deep sedation". I will be semi-conscious but relaxed. It still will not be very pleasant for me or my parents. This is an outpatient procedure, however.

The doctors who will be doing the procedure work with Dr. Elizer Nussbaum, who is a world-renowned pediatric pulminologist. We've met them one time before, and Mommy and Daddy are very comfortable with them.

Daddy promises to keep my blog updated for you throughout the morning.

Goofy Girl

Poor Daddy

Daddy had a tooth pulled today :-(
Everybody should send him money to cheer him up :-)

Visiting Grammy

Dirty Laundry

We went to the laundromat tonight.

I slept in my swing the entire time! Mommy and daddy loved that.

The Latest Scoop

As of right now, I'm at home and doing fantastic. Thank you to everybody for your warm wishes and prayers.

When Dr. Demonteverde saw me in the hospital, she had a big "a-ha" moment. She heard my beathing sound and recognized a sound called "stridor". She thinks that I likely have a condition called "laryngomalacia" which basically means "soft larynx" or more informally as "floppy voice box".

Some links to information on laryngomalacia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laryngomalacia
http://www.bcm.edu/oto/grand/08_18_05.htm
http://www.utmb.edu/otoref/grnds/Stridor-050615/Stridor-050615.htm
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qa4100/is_200410/ai_n9464857

The laryngomalacia is very likely combined with a case of "GERD", or "Gastroesophageal reflux disease" (a.k.a. Acid Reflux). The doctors prescribed a baby version of the medicine Zantac to treat that. It is a liquid that tastes like peppermint, and I don't like it. Mommy and daddy are always tricking me by putting it into a nipple and having me drink it before I realize what I've done.

In addition, they make sure to keep me upright for 30 minutes after eating, and try to put me on my side when I'm in bed. As if that wasn't bad enough, they have one end of my bed tilted up so that my head stays higher than my tummy. Sometimes I roll to the foot of the bed (when I'm really pissed off I can actually roll over in a flat bed; on the slanted bed I can do it pretty easily).

Tomorrow I see Dr. Demonteverde at 10am, and then daddy has a dentist appointment at 11am. He has a toothache. If he'd just brush his teeth once in a while...

As for our weekend plans, we're going up to Santa Barbara on Thursday afternoon, so Daddy can go to Uncle Jefferson's wedding rehearsal. The wedding is on Friday, then we come home Saturday morning. We're not going up to the Valley or Santa Maria; we're going to just stay in SB and try to take it easy. Daddy keeps saying that Mommy and I need our rest and to get into a routine. He won't admit it, but he needs more rest too!

I'll let you know how my doctor appointment goes...

Visitors!!!

My god mother Megan came to visit with Dani and 'grandmas Gertie and Leona' (Grandma Peggy & Auntie Pam)

Pulmonary Specialist

This pulmonary specialist in Long Beach is top of his field :-).
We will probably see him next Week :-(

Stridor

Sounds like this stridor is a problem. Getting referred to specialist in Long Beach to run a scope to her larynx.

Medical update

Ok the latest on my medical issues. every test has come back ok so the hospital doctor was stumped. she said we could probably assume it was acid reflux that wasn't detected in the tests. mommy and daddy were not too happy about that. late last night dr. d came by and talked to up for a long time. she heard my cute little girl noises and said a-ha! she said that sound is called stridor. it is caused by my voice box being too flimsy so it partially collapses when i am very relaxed or stressed. it is very common. we are going to see an ENT specialist to learn more but dr. d was pretty optimistic that this could have caused my problem. i will let you all know as soon as we know more. hopefully we can go home today and see the ENT as an out-patient later. we will see...

Update

The doctor came by and gave us an update. All of the tests that have come back so far are OK. Even the upper GI where we thought there was acid reflux, the GI doctor said that it was very mild and normal. The only tests we have left to hear back from are the EEG, the sleep apnea/pH test. And the blood test they want to redo because her sodium was a little high . . . probably because she was drinking mostly formula. that's probably nothing though.

Doing ok

I just had an echocardiogram to look at my heart. The tech said it looked boring, which daddy says is a good thing because nothing is out of the ordinary. The cardiologist will review it to be sure.

So it looks like hopefully all this is for a damn case of acid reflux. But they still have to rule out everything else. Personally I am just glad they took that f@#!?g tube out of my nose and throat. Daddy says it was a pH probe to measure acid in my esophagus. It was in there for 12 hours. That thing sucked! We think that the upper GI test, combined with the stomach acid (pH) test, will give the doctors some good information about what's wrong with me.

So we still need to wait for the results of all my tests to come back, just to be sure that there's nothing else wrong with me. But everybody so far seems to think (and hope?) that acid reflux is the only problem.

So don't worry Brandy, I will probably be just fine. Thank you all for your thoughts and prayers. We love you all.

Good news, i just got

Good news, I just got back from having an upper GI x-ray. They strapped me to a plexiglass board really tight, laid me on my back, and made me drink a bottle filled with a barium solution. Then they took a bunch of x-rays of me as they turned me around onto my side and stuff, still strapped to this board. Daddy was watching as the barium went down into my tummy and then after moving around a little, the barium went back up my esophagus. Pretty far, almost to my throat.

It looks like I have a bad case of acid reflux. Let's hope that's all that's wrong with me!

There's still a few more tests to run, they are going to do an echocardiogram (basically an ultrasound of my heart) and then maybe run an endoscope down my esophagus to look for damage and stuff like that.

I'll keep you posted.

All Wired Up

Tubes and wires

OK so as some of you may have heard I am back in the damn hospital again. I mean, come on, it's a great hospital and the nurses are all wonderful, but we just HAD to come back. And now they say that i have to stay until at least Saturday!!! That's messed up. I want to meet my cousin Espen.

The reason that I am here is that I had some sort of seizure this morning. Dr. D wanted me to have a ton of tests to figure out what's wrong with me. Mommy is taking this really hard. Grandma Gerend is here with us. What a crappy deal she got for this vacation! I will keep you all posted on my status when I know more.

Love, Madison

Happy Father's Day

Today is Father's Day. Daddy just wants to spend the day with me in his arms. I have no arguments there!

Later today we're going to go to the Men's Wearhouse to look for Daddy's outfit for Uncle Jefferson's wedding. And then we'll probably try to go over to Great-Grandma & -Grandpa O'Neill's House to visit.

To The Beach...

Today Mommy & Daddy took me for a walk on the Strand in Hermosa Beach. We stopped for coffee, and Mommy almost ripped this dumb b***h's head off at the Coffee Bean. This lady was treating the barista's coffee-pick-up-table as a smorgasbord, and took Mommy's coffee. Instead, she just started talking a bunch of s**t loudly enough so that that lady could hear her.

Then we saw a cop on a motorcycle with a license plate frame that said "I eat donuts...that's how I roll". Daddy thought that was funny.

I'm a girl...

I'm a girl...

I'm a girl

I'm a girl

Dr Sanders came by

Dr Sanders came by to check on mommy. She is doing so good that we are being released today. I get to go home too!

cutest baby

The cutest baby in the whole world (according to mommy & daddy)

Free Time

Mommy & daddy took me for a walk and saw the nurse who took me in to do my vitals. Now they have a little free time!

Dr. Demonteverde

Doing good. Dr. Demonteverde came by late tonight and checked me out. Said i'm doing good on the formula. Says i'm ok to go home!

Eyes 2

Eyes 2

Eyes

Eyes

Animals.

I bite boobies like a barracuda, eat like a pig, and quack like a duck when i suck my thumb after i eat.

Pumping.

Hopefully tomorrow mommy's boobies will heal enough to start pumping milk for me to eat. I have such an appetite!

Wow, big day!

Wow, big day! mommy has really sore boobies. She had to stop nursing me and let them heal. Daddy feeds me formula from a syringe.

One Eye

Here's one eye...

Funny Face

Sleeping

I've been sleeping for hours, ever since they brought me back from the nursery. It's been pretty loud but that hardly bothers me.

Spit up.

Last night in the nursery I spit up "thru every hole in my face" so they suctioned me and now I have a snotty nose :-(

Boobies

Still trying 2 get this whole breast feeding thing down. I'm getting better though...20 minutes...longest feeding yet!

Kicked out

I got kicked out of the nursery because i cry too much. Said i'm probably hungry. Need boobies. NOW DAMNIT!!!

BLAND!!!

Daddy went to the caf for dinner. He says that shit is so bland even the hot sauce is bland.

Mommy farted

Mommy finally farted so the doc let her eat a real meal so now daddy is getting hungry bye bye for now the end

Visitors!!!

I finally got to meet my great grandpa O'Neill

Morning Time

I'm learning how to eat. Mommy walked to the bathroom & had her catheter taken out. Her pain is only 3 out of 10 so far. I'm so happy she's not in too much pain!

This plot

This plot is to wrap him around my little finger as part of my bigger plan 2 rule the world from my throne...

early morning feeding

When mommy holds me I cry but when daddy holds me i'm ok. Its all part of my nefarious plot to wrap him around my little finger, as part of my bigger plan to rule the world from my throne!

Visitors

My great uncle Tim and second cousin Kelly came to see me. Kelly even got to hold me! I hope i'm pretty like her when i grow up!

Chubby Cheeks

Met my pediatrician

Met my pediatrician Dr Demonteverde she was nice she said i'm beautiful but mom & dad already told me that! Said I am healthy!

Reflection

Brian here, having a chance to reflect. Thank you to everybody for your love and warm wishes. Mattei is blessed to have you all in her life.
~B

Daddy's hungry

Yum Yum greasy cheese burger! Daddy feels better now (but Elton john can still die in a fire as far as he's concerned)
~B

Daddy hates Elton john songs

Daddy hates Elton john songs stupid circle of life i hate the lion king die simba ~B

Daddy finally got a breather.

Daddy finally got a breather. He only got a cup of coffee and a small danish today since 4 AM. Going round the corner to a burger joint or something.
~B

Meeting Mommy

Mommy finally got to hold and kiss Madison

8 pounds 8 ounces 19 inches

Mattei is 8 pounds 8 oz 19 inches

Bath

Mommy is doing great. Mattei just had her first bath

Here I am!

Here I am!

Going in! Wish us luck!

Going in! Wish us luck!

Monitors

Mom got the monitors all hooked up

Ready

Mommy is all suited up and ready to rock

At the hospital

Arrived at hospital

Beautiful Mom-To-Be

I just wanted to share with you some amazing pictures that Daddy took of Mommy. I hope that I'm as beautiful as her when I grow up!
~MKG

Ready to pop...

Mommy is ready for Mattei to come out!