Wednesday, October 27, 2010

Tuesday, October 26th, 2010






Life has been pretty crazy the last few weeks and it's only going to get a little crazier. Here is what has been going on:
Mommy - she is you guessed it - sick again or is it still sick? Hard to tell at this point if this is a new cold or just the same cold that never really went away. For over a year Mommy has been involved in a system conversion at work and the go-live is on Halloween. Heading into the last few weeks before the big day work has been stressful and being sick is not good!
Daddy - he has thankfully stayed well and loves to remind Mommy that she and I are in our third cold of the season despite us both getting flu shots while he has not gotten the cold once and has not had the flu shot yet. It is a good thing he has stayed healthy since he helped Uncle Jeff move to his new apartment and has been helping Mommy out with the extra hours she is putting in.
The boys - they don't like getting baths normally so it was no surprise that when we all got in the bath together they were less than thrilled. But it made for a great photo op so they tolerated it. They are suspicious of the change in the weather since they are Cali dogs after all. The first snow of the year will be quite the shock!
Me - my life continues to be an adventure to keep everyone on their toes.
First off, when I went to the Dysphagic Clinic appointment a few weeks back they recommended leaving me at my current volume of formula but increasing it from 22 kcal to 30 kcal. Now I have tried the 30 kcal route once before and did not tolerate it very well but Mommy was willing to give it another shot to try to put some weight on me. For the first few days all seemed fine and then things started to change. At least once a day usually following either nap time or waking up in the morning, I would vomit my feeding. In addition, I was waking up in the middle of the night with a dry, hacking cough. My parents and my nurse, Cory put two and two together and figured out that it was all related to the 30 kcal. Now let's see if you can follow their logic. Since the canned formula is already at 30 kcal, my parents previously had to dilute it to get it to 22 kcal. So for my 6 feedings a day, I got 140 cc's of formula mixed with 60 cc's of water. Once I went to 30 kcal, I just got 200 cc's of formula straight with no extra water. That was a loss of 360 cc's of water overnight from my diet and my body wasn't happy about it. Water is important for lots of reasons but for me it is key for two areas - digestion and respiratory secretions. Because of the lack of water my tummy was having a harder time processing the higher calorie formula. In addition, with the lack of water my trachea got too dry resulting in the coughing at night. So Mommy called the dietician and let her know that the plan is to modify my diet - eventually I will be moved to 24 kcal and get an additional 50 cc's at each feeding to end up at the same number of calories per day as I had been on the 30 kcal. The first hurdle is to get me on my regular 200 cc volume at 24 kcal instead of 22 kcal. The next step is to bump me to 225 cc's and once I can go a few days without vomiting then get me to 250 cc's. So over the weekend that is exactly what happened - Mommy moved to 24 kcal and I did great - we were done with vomiting! So Mommy planned on bumping me up to 225 early this week. And then I got sick.
Yes, that's right - I have ANOTHER cold! On Sunday night, my parents did my weekly trach change and my quarterly g-tube change. That all went great and off to bed I went. As I was falling asleep Mommy noticed I was breathing much louder than normal and when she went to check on me she could feel that I was running a fever. She gave me a dose of Tylenol and let my nurse know to keep giving it as long as I was running a fever during the night. When Mommy got up at 5 am Cory greeted her by saying, "It was a bad night." So Mommy sat down to hear the story. As usual when I am sick my heart rate starts to climb. It was in the 130's at 10 pm when normally I am around the 80's-90's. In addition, with the Tylenol my fever was 101-103. At one point, I had such bad chills that I asked Cory for a blanket. This is pretty notable since I HATE having blankets on when I am sleeping. As the night progressed, my heart rate jumped over a matter of a few minutes from the 130's to the 160's. This is where Cory started to get nervous since I have a heart condition. Now Mommy knows that when I have been hospitalized with URI's in the past the 160's is not uncommon. Cory was worried that if I jumped even higher as fast that I could get into the 200's in just a few minutes and potentially get to stroke level. She told me she had just about called 911 for an ambulance transport to Primary Children's when my heart rate stabilized. Whew! By the time Mommy had come down at five the crisis seemed to be over as I was no longer running a fever and my heart rate was back down to a managable 125-130.
Since something was obviously brewing, I stayed home from preschool today and acted like I was perfectly healthy. When I got home the fever had been gone all day and my heart rate at bed time was back to the 110-120 range. I had a great night but when I woke up on Tuesday morning I vomited up my first feeding and my fever was back. This time while I was at Grandma's it was easy to tell I wasn't feeling well. Over nap time, though my fever finally broke and I had no more trouble keeping down my feedings. Since Wednesday is my Halloween party at school we are all crossing our fingers that come tomorrow morning I will be feeling good enough to go back to preschool!
A few other notes:
On Friday, we went to the Fox Hole and met Uncle Shawn and Gavin, Uncle Jason and Traiton, Chong and Rick for dinner. Mommy's uncle John was in town visiting his brother in the nursing home so he came too. I sat with my cousins for several hours and about the time I started to get antsy the pub started to get busy so we left.
As we get closer to Halloween, my parents are having me practice trick-or-treating each night. I knock on a door in our house, say "trick-or-treat" and then they put some Whoppers in my bucket. Mommy is not a big fan of Whoppers so it accomplishes two things at the same time - I get to practice and Mommy has someone else who will eat the Whoppers!
Peyton Nicole Smith

Thursday, October 21, 2010

Sunday, October 17th, 2010


A few months ago, Mommy was contacted through the tracheostomy.com message board. He had read Mommy's postings about how much my vocalization increased by trying out the Shikani-French speaking valve vs. the "gold standard" Passy-Muir speaking valve that most children are given. I had never tolerated the Passy-Muir and it provided lots of frustration for me and my parents when we kept being told that the best way to measure my ability to get my trach removal was my being able to wear it. Mommy had joined a trach list serv and saw a posting from someone about the Shikani-French speaking valve and she set off on a mission to obtain one. She had no idea how hard that was going to be and it took several months and many phone calls before it finally showed up. But when it did - what a difference! Unfortunately, just days later I lost it at the doctor's office and the whole process had to start again to get a new one.
So when Mommy was contacted a few months ago and was told that there was going to be a new website created to make it easier for people to order the valves going forward Mommy was thrilled. They asked if they could use my vidoes on YouTube wearing the valve along with a testimonial from Mommy on the website. Although I am now capping and don't wear the valve anymore, Mommy attributes the valve to me "finding my voice" so she said yes.
The site has now launched and although there is a little glitch seeing the videos you can see my picture on the web site with some of Mommy's comments! Check me out!
Peyton Nicole Smith

Tuesday, October 19, 2010

Saturday, October 16th, 2010

Daddy gave Mommy a few hours to work on organizing all my medical files and took me to the dinosaur exhibit at Thanksgiving Point today. Although I liked all the bones, I was just as excited about our stop at the gift shop where I picked up a dinosaur book and plastic two headed dinosaur - gift shops are the best!

Peyton Nicole Smith

Friday, October 15th, 2010







It was the first annual Four Foxes Halloween pumpkin carving contest! Since there are four Fox children and now each of them has one child a piece it was easy to pair off. Shawn and Gavin, Jason and Traiton, Mommy and I and Jackson and Kristin. The four of us kiddos were not so interested in carving which was a good thing. So we let our parents get to work on the pumpkins. When we were all done, Kristin invited their neighbor Mike to act as judge. Despite Jackson pointing to his pumpkin and saying over and over "that my pumpkin", Mike stayed completely neutral and guess what - I won! (OK so Mommy won but I got the prize). And what a prize it was - a battery powered giant spider that has red blinking eyes and is motion activated to drop. I was more than a little scared at first but still willing to take him home.
Peyton Nicole Smith

Friday, October 15, 2010

Thursday, October 14th, 2010

A note from Mommy:

As Peyton and I went to a local mexican place the other day to pick up take out, she got the usual curious looks. They weren't horrified stares or anything but I could definately tell the wheels were turning as they checked out Peyton's trach. As I was packing Peyton on one hip and carrying the food in the other hand I got to thinking back to three years earlier. Peyton was still in the NICU and I couldn't have imagined running to go get take out and her tagging along without a nurse or at least Travis in the car.

I've written in the past about her birth story. But I have written very little about my feelings in the weeks and months that followed. Within hours of her birth, they wheeled her in and I got to touch her through the plastic isolette. Then off she went to UC Davis and it would be several days before I would see her again. In fact, that first visit would be the only other time I would see her without the trach. The sign above is what greeted me that first visit. Even with the pink hearts to dot the i's - it was a clear signal of how precarious her situation was. After the trach was placed, it would be still longer until I would get to hold her for the first time. I can see clearly now that for a very long time I was not bonded to Peyton. That's not to say I didn't love her or I wasn't invested in wanting her to survive but I realize now that most of the time the reason I was so cool and collected was because I hadn't let myself attach to her fully. Don't get me wrong there were lots of barriers put in the way preventing me from doing that, it wasn't all my fault. In the first few days I was physically removed from her and then when I was released from the hospital the first few weeks I was recovering from the c-section and the spinal fluid leak. Once I was able to hold her, there was always a nurse close by watching me. And then there was the constant reminder of how fragile she was with monitors constantly beeping and various cords and IV's to keep from tripping over or pulling out. And then she came home. For most parents bringing their children home for the first time you get in the groove pretty quickly I would imagine. But when Peyton came home we had supplies to organize, machines to learn to use and nurses to manage. When a state agency says your child qualifies for 22 hours of nursing care a day that's a pretty sobering thought and one always in the back of my mind. It was a long time before I could see Peyton other than as a "sick" child. I'll never forget the first time I was alone with Peyton - it was at the end of the day when the nurse had left and Travis had not yet come home from work. I was terrified that at any moment she might stop breathing and I wouldn't be able to help her. Every parent probably has some lack of confidance in their parenting abilities but this was on a whole different level. And so despite loving Peyton, I think I held myself back from her just a little just in case...

I remember sitting down to write the blog posting where Peyton "took over the blog". I couldn't sit up for more than a few minutes at a time because of the spinal fluid leak and the awful headaches. But I remember thinking if I just pretend to be breezy and nonchalant as I blog about what has happened nobody will ever know how terrified I am. After all, with all of our family and friends out of state, if I write honestly about my feelings I will scare them and they will feel helpless being so far away. Thank god for Travis for being the rock that he was during this awful time.

In the first six months when she was vomiting more frequently I was beside myself. I figured at any second she would vomit into her trach and aspirate and die. Great confidance builder. It wasn't long before I would start to feel myself getting anxious when I would hear the suction machine start up. I can remember being on conference calls for work in the office and hearing the suction machine in the background and feeling as if I was going to vomit myself. I would have to tell myself that I had to stay on the call - I wasn't allowed to drop the phone and run out to the front room where the nurse was to check on her. With all the suctioning she needed in the first few months I would never have made it through a call! And then the insomnia and nightmares began. When I was sleeping I would have nightmares and go "look" for her in the bed. Travis said this was almost a nightly occurrence for a period of time. But more often than not, I just wasn't sleeping at all. But if you read the blog during this time most people probably didn't realize how close to the edge I was - I don't think I even knew how close to the edge I was.

So fast forward to three years later and how things have changed! I don't think twice about taking Peyton anywhere on my own. I don't worry every night when I put her to sleep that she is going to die during the night. I don't consider her a "sick" child. I don't panic at the sound of the suction machine starting up - in fact there are days on end that we never even use it. So if you are just starting down this path with your child, I promise there is hope. It will get better. It will become your new "normal". You too will look back and see how far you have come on your journey and be able to offer support to the person who is just beginning theirs.

Wednesday, October 13th, 2010


This is one of Mommy's favorite moments of the day. Now this is not to say that Mommy doesn't love me when I am awake but it's a lot easier to love me when I am sleeping quietly like an angel. When I am awake and yelling at Mommy, kicking Mommy, hitting the dogs to spite Mommy or generally finding creative ways to torture Mommy - Mommy will try to retrieve this photo from her mind. OK sometimes even that doesn't prevent Mommy from wanting to drop me off on Grandma and Papa's doorstep and speeding away! Oh the fun of being three! (Please tell Mommy this improves when I turn four - she is counting down the days!)
Peyton Nicole Smith

Tuesday, October 12th, 2010

As promised, I said I would share a photo of me in the blonde wig we considered using for the Cindy Lou Who costume. Upon threats to tickle me until I pee, Daddy will not allow me to post the photo of him in the wig!

Peyton Nicole Smith

Monday, October 11th, 2010

Happy Birthday to Daddy! He turns 35 today!

To start the morning off right, around 2 am there was a knock on the bedroom door. Now the nurse knocking on the door at 2 am can NEVER be a good thing. So with her heart pounding, Mommy got her glasses on and rushed out to the hallway to talk with Cory. Cory didn't look so hot and after figuring out quickly that the issue wasn't with me, Mommy calmed down a little. Apparently Cory wasn't feeling well. In fact, she had been peeing blood off and on for hours and was getting dizzy and needed to leave.

Apparently, I am hard on my nurses. Last week Mommy found out that my back up nurse had been hospitalized with a stroke - so we won't be seeing her any time soon. It came as no surprise that the agency called back in the afternoon to say Cory still wasn't feeling well and we would be without a nurse tonight as well. We hope she feels better soon.

Peyton Nicole Smith

Thursday, October 14, 2010

Sunday, Octobert 10th, 2010



With Halloween coming up quickly, my parents have been debating about my costume. Several weeks ago when Mommy asked me what I wanted to be I went with my current obsession of the Itsy Bitsy Spider. So Mommy ordered the costume and I was super excited to put it on. But then Coco came along. Mommy thought he looked like a mini-me version of Max the dog from The Grinch Who Stole Christmas. So that got Mommy thinking - I could pull of Cindy Lou Who - right? Although I have no idea who Cindy Lou Who is I am going along with the plan so far. Mommy is busy finding the appropriate items for the costume - tights, black and white checked dress, red cape trimmed in white marabou, crazy wig. Now this is all depedent on me wearing the wig and Coco wearing the antlers. We'll let you know how it turns out!
Peyton Nicole Smith

Tuesday, October 12, 2010

Saturday, October 9th, 2010



Just to be consistent it is the weekend so of course I am sick once again! I have a runny nose and a fever and I am sneezing. This time it seems to be a little bit of a cold but as with my last cold it seems like the asthma meds are keeping anything more serious at bay. Mommy was my night nurse last night and to reward her I woke up at 4 am! After an hour of trying to encourage me to go back to sleep we went downstairs to start the day. By 7:30, though, I was yawning and by 8:00 I had fallen asleep sitting up on the couch watching Caillou. For the next 2 1/2 hours I slept with either Mommy or Daddy holding me but when I woke up I was in a great mood and ready to hit the road for some errands for the day.


At 5 pm, my new respite nurse Angel came to play. She and I had a couple of hours to get to know each other before my parents left to have dinner with Uncle Jeff and Viv to celebrate Daddy's birthday. I was having such a fun time with Angel I waved them off without one bit of protest. My parents had a nice dinner and when they returned at 9:30 I was already fast asleep.


Peyton Nicole Smith


Friday, October 8th, 2010





Mommy met Grandma and I at school today for my bi-weekly appointment with my teacher. It gives my parents the opportunity to learn fun ways to play with me to increase my verbal communication. Mommy brought Sarah up to speed on my surgery plans and there will be an IEP meeting the first part of January to get everything written up so I can receive home services during my medical leave from preschool.
In the evening, Mommy took me over to play with cousin Jackson. He and I had a great time running around outside although as usual we want to play with the same toys at the same time. We are definately building our sharing skills! Jackson picked out a plastic spider and a pumpkin for me and Aunt Kristin brought me home a cute Minnie Mouse dress up skirt from her recent trip to DisneyWorld.
Peyton Nicole Smith

Thursday, October 7th, 2010



After the stress of yesterday, it was nice to have a quieter day. As you can see, I relieve my stress with some time painting. Okay so painting is a little messy I admit, but I am a creative soul and after a hard day at school there is nothing better!

Peyton Nicole Smith

Friday, October 8, 2010

Wednesday, October 6th, 2010

Mommy knew going into today it was going to be a marathon - three different medical appointments - oh the fun!


It all kicked off at 11:15 with my long awaited follow up appointment with Dr Morales. In August I had a CT scan and today he was going to review it and make a recommendation on jaw surgery. Mommy had also scheduled my Dysphagia clinic appointment at 1 pm. Since the clinics are just steps away from each other she figured there would be plenty of time to get from one to the other. Hmmm, not so much. We didn't get into a room until close to noon and then it wasn't until 12:30 that Dr Morales made it in.


Mommy had brought photos of my CT scans pre and post from my last distraction. Dr Morales took a look at those as well as at my newest CT scan and explained that the bone from my previous distraction had relapsed so we are essentially starting over. Dr Morales looked in my mouth (which I hated of course) and then explained that he would recommend another distraction although he prefers external to internal distractions.




If you click on the link you can see a photo of Nathan a little boy who is also seen at Primary Children's with his external distractors in place. I am scheduled on 1/31/11 to have the external distractors put on. I will probably be inpatient for a few days and then at home for the next few weeks my parents will turn the pins. Then the hardware will stay on for 3-4 months! That's right 3-4 months! And because it is so critical that they are not bumped I will not be able to attend preschool during that time. In fact, my parents will have to monitor any situation in which I am around a lot of other children (family, friends, activities in the community) to ensure I don't knock them out of place. At the end of the 3-4 months I will go back to the hospital and under anesthesia they will remove the hardware. At that point we'll all hold our breath to see what happens with my tongue. What's up with my tongue? Well, before I can get a trach out I need to be able to breathe awake and sleeping through my nose and/or mouth. I have been doing capping trials now for months during the day and that's going well. But once I fall asleep my tongue falls back and covers my throat. The hope is that with more room in my mouth from the distraction, that while I sleep the tongue will fall forward on it's own and leave a big airway for me to breathe from. I don't think the plan is to try to decannulate immeadiately after my distraction but we'll just have to wait and see.
Dr Morales finished up with a few minutes to spare so off we went to the Dysphagia appointment. They were ready for us and we were hustled into a room without much time for me to play in the waiting area. Helene, the speech pathologist came in first and made sure we had gotten in to Courtney for speech and feeding. Then in came Sharlene, my dietician. Daddy has been saying for weeks that I am looking thin and sure enough when they weighed me today I had dropped from 25 lbs 8 ozs to 23 lbs 7 ozs. Sharlene is thinking that the drop is related to starting preschool and being more active during the day. The plan to get me bulked back up is to leave my volume the same but increase the calorie content from 22 kcal to 30 kcal.
A short time later, Dr O'Gorman came in and agreed with Sharlene's recommendation. In addition, they discussed my milk allergy and since the results show a pretty severe allergy they want to have me see an allergist to get additional testing. The concern is that after my jaw distraction we start to focus on getting me to eat more volume and more variety they don't want to risk finding out then that I have other severe food allergies. The allergist can also decide if I need to carry around an EPI pen. Since I take such small volume of any food or drink right now, it's unlikely over the next few months that I would unknowingly consume a large enough quantity of milk products to cause a problem. But, since my allergy response is respiratory (rather than a rash or vomiting) it's something to be aware of.
Dr O'Gorman also discussed the issue with my button placement. She is convinced that the "sucking in" phenomenon is directly related to the location. However, if we have found methods for controlling that (more frequent feedings, small feedings at night) she is not anxious to have one more surgery with the jaw distraction coming up. However, if after the jaw distraction I am not able to eat more by mouth and it looks like the g-tube will be a long term thing (possibly forever) then it is probably a good idea to eventually get it moved to a more common location.
By this time, I had had about enough of sitting in a small room and I was due for a nap that I was probably not going to get. Mommy took me home and I got a few hours to play before I was back in the car for my third and final appointment of the day - speech therapy with Courtney. Since Courtney and I play games, I am always super excited to go see her. In fact, for the 10 minutes or so we waited for her I would yell out "Courtney!" any time a female walked by. Today we got to play two games while working on my speech and at the end when I started to get a little antsy, Courtney took me into the OT room and hooked up a swing for me.
With no nap and a day full of appointments I was pretty wiped tonight and fell asleep with no trouble and nice and early!

Peyton Nicole Smith


Thursday, October 7, 2010

Tuesday, October 5th, 2010






I missed preschool yesterday because of my cast removal appointment at Shriner's so I was super excited to go today. I had a great day and took advantage of my cast being removed and did what I have been wanting to do for a long time - hang from the slide. So over the last few weeks, it has become the custom that when my classmates go down the slide, they hand on the bar at the top of the slide for a few moments then drop onto the slide and off they go. With my cast I have not been able to do the hanging part. Today I made up for lost time and held up the line for the slide because I wanted to keep hanging!
In the afternoon, Mommy and I met up with Aunt Kristin and Cousin Jackson at the aquarium where we spent an hour or so running between exhibits. It was sometimes hard to keep up with Jackson because he was so excited to move from one tank to the next but I did my best to keep up.
Aunt Kristin had a fun surprise waiting for us when we got in the car to leave - she found plastic snowglobes that shoot snow and play Christmas music. I got a Rudolph one and Jackson got a Winnie the Pool one. I played it all night long!
At dinnertime, my parents and I met Karen for dinner at Mimi's. I tried hard to stay sitting but it seemed like we were there forever and there were a few moments where I was having trouble minding my parents. While Mommy and Daddy were embarrased, Karen seemed more amused. This may be the last time we got out to dinner together for a while!
Peyton Nicole Smith



Wednesday, October 6, 2010

Monday, October 4th, 2010

After weeks of waiting it was cast removal day! Since Shriner's in Sacramento had done the surgery, my parents got permission to have my cast taken off by the Shriner's in Salt Lake. We were 1/2 hour early for our appointment - good thing! For years Shriner's has been a charity hospital and didn't bill insurance if a patient had it. That has come to an end and since they are going to start billing insurance companies they had to change to a new computer system. Unfortunately for us, this morning was the go-live. It took 45 minutes for us just to get checked in - ouch! Then what Mommy thought was a quick appointment turned into a marathon. First step - remove the cast. Now this is easier said then done because Mommy learned at my last two cast removals that I do not like this process one bit. Sure enough, I started crying as soon as the tool was turned on and cried the entire way through. Step two - off to xray (also on my top five list of bad experiences). Mommy held my arm down so they could get a few pictures and then back to the exam room we went. Step three - pin removal. This was pretty quick but after looking at the xrays he decided not to put me in a soft splint but to have a plastic splint custom made for me since the bones didn't look fully healed. Step four - one to the splint room where it took close to an hour to get fitted for my new pink plastic splint. During this time, Mommy and Grandma encouraged me to start holding my arm in a more natural position and to start using my hand but I was not in the mood - I didn't want anyone even looking at it let alone touching it. Because there is some question as to whether the bone is healed or not, I am not allowed to have any PT or OT on the hand until the splint comes off. So I will return on 11/1 for more xrays.

Peyton Nicole Smith

Sunday, October 3rd, 2010

My parents came and got me this morning from my grandparents house and we went to Sportsmans Warehouse looking for some clips for my feeding backpack. I love all the dead stuffed animals and was super excited to have my picture taken out front with bronzed elk.

Since I am getting my cast off tomorrow, my parents were happy to have only one more bath time tonight having to wrap my arm up in plastic. Unfortunately, the bag sprung a leak and the cast got a little wet - good thing it's coming off int he morning!

Peyton Nicole Smith

Saturday, October 2nd, 2010




With such a nice fall day, we took advantage of it and went to Wheeler Farm. I had a great time visiting the farm animals plus they had lots of fun things to do - I got to go through a corn maze and pick out some pumpkins to take home!
In the afternoon, Mommy dropped me off at Grandma and Papa's for a momentous event - my first official sleep over. Now I am a little over three but this is the first time I have spent the night away from my parents when I wasn't hospitalized. Since Grandma has been my care giver for many months now they were excited to have me sleep over - the final frontier!
My parents went out for a nice steak dinner, rented a movie and went home and cuddled my furry brothers and watched the show. Meanwhile, I was running around with my cousin, Dylan and then Papa read me a few books and I was asleep without a fight. Success!

Peyton Nicole Smith

Friday, October 1st, 2010

It has been a busy couple of days with doctor's appointments this week. On Tuesday, I had an eye exam. Back in July when I had my craniofacial panel appointment they recommended an eye exam since it had been several years since my last one. They didn't find anything wrong the last time but due to my rare genetic syndrome they want to keep a close watch on my vision. I started out with an exam which was not too big a deal but then I had to get drops to dialate my eyes for the second part of the exam. Not fun! When they finally got them in I got to go back to the waiting room and play for 30 minutes and then back to the exam room. Poor Dr Dries, I was using my cast as a weapon as he tried to look into my eyes! He must have gotten a good enough look because he let Mommy know that he didn't see any problems although he could tell I was near sighted and would need glasses in the future - wonderful! He did ask Mommy that if I were to go under anesthesia soon to let him know so he could come get a better look while I was not in such a fighting mood. So now that is two specialists who have mentioned to Mommy that they would like me under anesthesia to do a thorough exam - sounds like a pattern!

On Wednesday, I had my speech appointment with Courtney. Since I hadn't gotten a nap in by the time my 5 pm appointment rolled around I was getting a little tired and it showed. Although I participated well in the games and did what Courtney asked - I was a little less focused. In fact, as I was sitting in front of the mirror practicing where to place my tongue when saying "d" and "t" - my sparkly shoes caught my attention and I spent quite some time checking them out!

Peyton Nicole Smith

Monday, September 27th, 2010

The story of the shoes....
So, remember those shoes I had to have yesterday? Well when Daddy dropped me off and Grandma got a look at my new shoes she started cracking up. She asked Daddy, "Do you know why Peyton picked out those shoes?" (Besides the fact that were sparkly?) Obviously, Grandma knew something Mommy and Daddy didn't. "Peyton's best friend Chloe at preschool has the exact same pair of shoes," Grandma replied and suddenly it all made sense. In fact, both Chloe and I were wearing our shoes at preschool today and during circle time we got in trouble for talking to each other about them! Yes, it goes without saying, my parents are in a world of trouble when at 3 I am already wanting to dress like my classmates!

Peyton Nicole Smith

Sunday, September 26th, 2010

There are times when Mommy is convinced I really am a girly girl. Today was one of those days. In addition to wanting to wear my tutu to dance, we also went shoe shopping. Now Mommy HATES shoe shopping when it is for her but it is kind of fun when we go shopping for me. I had to bring my pink princess purse into the store of course. Once there, it only took a few moments before I picked out the flashiest pair of shoes. Now Mommy knew once Daddy caught a look at them he was going to be horrified (Daddy is not known for being flashy - he avoids drawing any attention to himself whenever possible) but my heart was set on the shoes so into the cart they went.

Peyton Nicole Smith