Merry Christmas

We have had a great Christmas and a great break so far.

Christmas we spent at home with my family. The kids were so excited about Santa. They put out milk and cookies for him on the balcony and also left him some nice drawings. Luckily Santa found his way and the kids woke up on Christmas morning and found a bunch of gifts under the tree. 

All afternoon and evening we spent with the family. Good food, another Santa visit, more food, the Christmas gift game and some more food. :)

 

On the 25th we celebrated Orphen's Christmas with the footy team. Everybody comes together and celebrates. We were hosting it at our place and I think we ended up being around 20-25 people. Everybody brings something for the big dinner and then we eat and have fun all night :)

The kids have been really good and bothe Christmas celebrations went really well. 

Merry Christmas to all family and friends!!

Tooth no 2

Tonight Damien lost his second tooth!!

Warms my heart...

Alicia is spending the weekend at my parents and today they sent us this picture. Alicia is helping decorating the Christmas tree. It warms my heart<3

Lucia

It's Lucia tomorrow. Yesterday and today we been around to the kids schools to watch their performance and to celebrate with their friends. They are so cute! This year Damien took it very serious and had been practicing the songs for weeks :)

ER visit

On Sunday we had to take Damien to the emergency room. He feel and hit his head on Alicia's wheelchair.. He got a cut on his head that bleed a lot. It wasn't so big, but it was pretty deep. They didn't have to give him stitches, they just glued it together. One of the nurses glove got stuck in the glue, so now he has a piece of purple glove on his head and we are not allowed to touch it... :)

Liam 3

So Liam turned 3 last week!! Alicia was in the hospital but Mormor was so nice and spent the night with Alicia so both mommy and daddy could celebrate Liam's big day. We picked the boys up from school and took them to Leo's lekland. We played and had fun and when we came home we had some cake and sang to him. He got a big toolbox that he loved!!

In January we will have our big combined birthday party with friends and family!

The journey has begun...

Today Alicia got admitted to the hospital in Lund to start her ketogenic diet. After around a year of seizures and numerous changes of medicines we felt that it was the right thing to try this out. We really hope that this treatment will work for Alicia and that it will reduce her seizures and best of all that they will stop..

Today they took some test on Alicia and she started the new meals. The first couple of days she will get all the meals as fluids and then we will learn how to prepare the food for her.

Since Alicia is not sick but we still need to visit the hospital a couple of times every day this first week we were lucky to be able to stay at the Ronald McDonald house a few minutes walk from the hospital. It's like a hotel were we have our own room with our own bathroom. There are a lot of common areas with couches, a kitchen were we can cook our own food, game room with a ping pong table and a pool table and one room filled with toys.

It feels like this week will be a lot easier to get through now when we can stay here!

Here is a short description from Wikipedia:

The ketogenic diet is a high-fat, adequate-protein, low-carbohydrate diet that in medicine is used primarily to treat difficult-to-control (refractory)epilepsy in children. The diet forces the body to burn fats rather than carbohydrates. Normally, the carbohydrates contained in food are converted into glucose, which is then transported around the body and is particularly important in fuelling brain function. However, if there is very little carbohydrate in the diet, the liver converts fat into fatty acids and ketone bodies. The ketone bodies pass into the brain and replace glucose as an energy source. An elevated level of ketone bodies in the blood, a state known as ketosis, leads to a reduction in the frequency of epileptic seizures.

Daddy and Alicia started the day of with a nice nap :)

When we got back to the room this afternoon Alicia was in a good mood and played with her toys for a little bit.

A tired girl tucked in to bed. Sweet dreams princess! 

Big boys...

 Damien has lost his first tooth. It had been super loose for a couple of days and we had talked a lot about what would happen after he loose it. He had a little box he wanted to put it in and he was excited for the tooth fairy to come at night.

On Thursday Damien helped me making dinner and he was shredding some cheese. He took a chunk and ate it and the tooth must of come out without him noticing and he accedently swallowed it.. 

He was so excited about loosing the tooth. One thing he said was: " Mommy, I'm gonna be the coolest kid in my class now, cause I'm only 4 years old and the first one to loose a tooth".

Damien drew a nice picture and wrote a letter to the tooth fairy and was so excited in the morning when he saw that she had been there and left him a letter and some money.

Damien's letter to the tooth fairy: "Dear tooth fairy, Here is a picture for you. I ate my tooth with the cheese. I like you. The end! From Damien"

Damien's picture to the tooth fairy. He wrote by him self: Tandfen tog min tand. (Tooth fairy took my tooth)

About a week ago the kids had a new cousin. Mattias and Marie had a baby girl that they named Maja. What a sweet little baby, she is so adorable! 

Yesterday we were gonna see them and Liam decided that he wanted to give all his pacifiers to Maja. We wrapped them up and he proudly gave them to her. We were a little worried how he was gonna do without them but it has been surprisingly good. He asked about them a couple of times today so we reminded him that he gave them to Maja and he seemed to except that. 

Our little boys are growing up so fast now <3

Feeding tube

We are in the process to get Alicia started on a ketogenic diet that is an alternative treatment for kids with epilepsy. 

At the moment Alicia has daily seizures and we fell very positive to try this diet and hopefully she won't need any additional medicines.

The first step to get started was that Alicia needed to get a feeding tube operated to her stomach. The diet is very strict and everything she will eat and drink needs to be measured. If you have a tube it's a lot easier to regulate her meals.

This Monday we signed in to the hospital and in the afternoon Alicia had surgery. It's a keyhole surgery to reduce the pain for the patient. I got to go with Alicia in to the surgery room and I stayed there until she feel asleep. It was really hard to leave her but two hours later we got to see her again and we were there when she woke up. 

The surgery went as it should and Alicia is recovering well. We stayed at the hospital for two nights and yesterday we got to go home.

Alicia has been doing really well through this and has hardly been complaining at all. Our sweet, brave little princess!!!

November break

Last week was November break and we had a great week together filled with fun activities.

Pumpkin carving was one of the activities. Damien wanted a Teenage mutant ninja turtle and Liam wanted a Peppa pig pumpkin. Daddy and I was pretty proud over the results!!

Sunday morning pancakes with the boys.

A lot of playing both inside and outside. Legos, tools, superheroes,trains, playgrounds, swinging, Leo's lekland, a visit to TGIF, the library and so on. It felt like the boys got a new connection with Alicia this week. They anted to play with her, help her, show her toys, sing to her and so on. Damien has been were helpful lately, he sits with her if I need to do something so she doesn't need to be alone,helps her with the iPad and so many other things. He is being a really good brother to her, they both are!!

We made one trip to Skånes djurpark. This was probably the first time we were there and it didn't rain... We had a great afternoon together and enjoyed looking at all the animals.

Damien and I got one afternoon to ourselves. We had a good lunch together and then we went to the movies and saw Airplane 2. 

We had a great time together and are looking forward to the Christmas break now!!