The Beginning of our Blog

This blogging thing would be so much easier if I had internet access at my house, or a computer... Nonetheless, even if it is sporadic, I've decided it is a great way to keep a family history. So I'm going to backtrack a little and do some posting covering January and February. I'm doing this now because I'm having a rare quiet moment at my mom's house (thus in the presence of a computer, and the internet), Alli and Madison have gone with my mom to the grocery store (ever seen a grandma who asks to take small children on errands with her?), and Taya is her usual self (perfectly agreeable). So here begins our family story 2009.

January 1st 2009

Here is one of my favorite pictures of Taya. On New Year's Eve we decided that Alli and Madison didn't really care about what was going on, so we put them to bed as usual. Jesse and I got takeout and ate it in bed watching a movie with Taya hanging out between us. We started taking her picture because we are a little obsessed with our children, and this is what we got.

She is such an angel

January 9th, 2009

Today we spent the day at Moonbounce, so Alli and Madison could release their limitless energy. I just sat and held Taya while they climbed and slid and maneuvered the play structures. It was a good day followed by a crazy night. In the middle of the night I woke up to a horrible smell. I went out into the kitchen and found that our boiler had erupted and there was black ash everywhere. We figured the poison was not good for our kids, so we quickly packed them up and took them to my parent's house to sleep. Our landlord came and had the boiler fixed, but still our whole house was covered in ash. Every toy, article of clothing, dish, piece of furniture, etc... had to be scrubbed. It even got inside our fridge, and inside our cabinets. Can anybody say HVAC? After spending at least 50 hours cleaning and scrubbing I called the landlord and told him this was ridiculous. He knocked $200 off the rent. Can anybody say cheapskate?

The worst part about this was that Taya had not been focusing on objects or following anything with her eyes. We were unsure whether or not she could see. We had Taya and Jesse tested for carbon monoxide poisoning, and found that they both had been affected by the boiler which had been leaking for some time before the explosion. I was just sick to think that Taya's home had been the cause of her problems. If she was born with a problem, then fine, but I did not want it to be a product of her environment. We took her to a pediatric opthamologist who said that theoretically carbon monoxide poisoning would affect vision first, however, her optic nerves looked good, and he thought she was just developmentally delayed. That afternoon she focused on us for the first time. Our pediatrician was also considering the possibility of autism, even though it would be way to early to diagnose. So we took Taya to a neurologist who checked her thoroughly and said she was fine. Now (3 months later) she is absolutely perfect, and was apparently just not interested in following the general trend in baby development. The boiler problem was a mess that took most of January to clean up.