My Little Traveling Partner

 Well I'm kind of behind the times, but here are pictures from my latest trip out east, with my cute little traveling buddy Lexi Lou. She enjoyed the 2nd airplane ride of her life. She also had lots of fun at grandma's house, crawling around, exploring, and getting into mischief. :) The two separate stair cases gave her quite a thrill. She tried to climb at every chance she got. Luckily Mom and Dad are well prepared with baby gates, but we put them both on the back staircase, which left the front one with the landing wide open. Here she is, biting the stair for some reason. Silly girl.

 I think I'm sooooo coool!

 We always love visiting Mom's PreK school class. This first time we visited, it was before school actually started, so Mom was still setting up her room. It's so fun to see her in her element, with all her cute ideas and methods of teaching...such an amazing talented mama I have!

 On Tuesday, Mom took off work to take me to my crack of dawn endoscopy, so here we are waiting in the retro looking waiting room at the main Johns Hopkins Hospital. This is the appointment that turned out to be kind of a flop and had to be repeated later in the week with proper preparation. Blah.

 My days were thoroughly brightened, though, just from having this little pixie around! These skinny jean capris are my favorite. A-dorable.

 Lexi was a gem. She slept beautifully in a pack n play in Nathan's old bedroom, with me down the hall in Bree's old bedroom. She took great naps every day, and went right to sleep at night. She was just a fun buddy to have around during the day, too. On one of my free days, we got together with my friend Kelli and her kiddos at their house, and the kids went swimming. It was a perfect hot day, and Lexi had a blast splashing in the kiddie pool. This little 3 year old cutie reminded me a lot of Cami and made me miss her like crazy! They even have the same swimsuit.

 I totally rocked the clear liquid diet for 3 and a half days. Here I am proudly displaying my blue raspberry jello jiggler stars. Gotta liven things up sometimes.

 Banana chairs! A brilliant invention! I STILL remember the family road trip we took one summer to Utah, in which we bought 2 banana chairs and transported them back to California in our big 12 passenger blue and white van. I think we even took out the front bench so that we could sit in the banana chairs during the trip. bahaha. We lived on these things growing up...watching TV after school, playing video games, totally trying to balance in the middle and do cool tricks. I might need to talk Jake into buying me one from RC Willey or something. :)

Anyways, Lexi fell in love with the banana chair, and loved going "Rockabye, don't you cry, we will go to Grammie's. Over the hill, behind the mill, to see the little lammies. Baaaa." She doesn't know how to maintain ladylike composure yet, but she'll get there. :)

 Is this not the sweetest picture?? Just stylin on one of our days off, ready to hit the town.

 Dad was a gem and took work off to take me to my 2nd endoscopy. He's a pleasant companion. Always stocks the car with GPS, water, peanuts, talk radio, and plenty of Coke. :) Love this man.

 Here I am when my bloating was at its lowest, thanks to the clear liquid diet. Oh please don't tell me that that's how I'll have to live my life forever. I'd rather eat food. But it was nice to have a normal tummy again. Here I am, just waiting patiently to be called back, change into a gown, pee in a cup, get my IV and get knocked out for a lovely nap.

 It didn't really end up so pleasant. The anesthesiologist asked me if he could also give me some medicine that would make me a little loopy. He said, "I noticed you seem a little down, and this will help with depression for up to a week!" I said sure, whatever. Give it to me. I wasn't down, I'm just always subdued. You know that. And I let my dad do most of the talking while he was back there with me waiting for the procedure. So anyways, I noticed the medicine taking effect right away, in the procedure room, when things started getting fuzzy and all I heard was pounding in my head. I was in and out of a weird little world. Then the propofal kicked in and the next thing I knew, I was super groggy and in recovery. But my nose felt weird and stiff, and I didn't want to wake up.

 I discovered that they'd taken my feeding tube out and switched it to the other nostril, which I totally wasn't excited about. The tube was hanging like 3 feet past my ear, so I groggily complained and had them cut it off, but it still dangles too long behind my ear. The tube was taped to my nose and face with sticky masking tape, which hurt like a mother when I took it off later. My nose had bled when they put it in, so it just wasn't a pleasant awakening. Dr. Stein had successfully placed the capsule and taken some biopsies, though, so at least that worked out.

I went home wearing a belt transmitter to track the capsule over the next 8 hours. It didn't show anything too abnormal, just a slower transit than normal. We later heard from Dr. Stein about the biopsies and results of the endoscopy, but it's kind of complicated. :) Basically there's some irritable bowel disease, probable Celiac, gastroparesis, etc. But she says she's hopeful of a full recovery- woo hoo. I also saw an allergist, who did the skin prick test for all the major allergens, and none came back positive. Interesting. So he said that's a good sign, that although I may now be intolerant to things, I'll slowly be able to add them back into my diet again. But I'm instructed to stay gluten free forever.

So back to cute pictures! Here we are, enjoying a nice Sunday dinner. I try to teach Lexi to be a lady.

It's just not sinking in yet.

Here she is with a new friend, who came for a visit with his grandparents, my parents friends, down the street. It was so cute to see him and Lexi playing together and getting a kick out of the Sesame Street play table. Dad tied Lexi's shirt back in a knot so that she could crawl better. He's always good at finding a solution.

 Cute little superbaby!

 Yay, we found a Halloween costume! In Mom's closet! Grandmas are the best. Just happen to have things lying around. It fit Lexi perfectly, and I can't wait to take her trick or treating in it!

 Lex had lots of fun playing the piano, and listening to Grandma play.

 "Scuse me, while I turn the page." I love this one.

 I took Lex with me to the Harley Davidson factory in York, since I've never actually been to the visitors center. We didn't do the tour, but we looked around at the cool displays they have, and Lexi was tickled pink to sit at this teensy racetrack table.

 Admiring the bikes.

 From there, we went to Mom's class again, and this time all the kids were there. They were all so cute and excited to have a baby visitor, and we got there just in time for work time, when they can play at different stations. They wanted to do puzzles with us, give Lexi doll toys, colored pictures for us, and wanted to stroke her head over and over again. :) Mom was a proud Grandma.

After a lovely 2 week visit, it was time to go home. Here I am in all my glory at the Baltimore Airport where Mom dropped me off. We "hired" a wheelchair guy to help me check my bags, get through security, and onto the plane. It was great.

 Nice, Heather. Nice.

Well, that was it! It was great to be reunited with Jake and Cami, and to be home again. Apparently, I might be going back again in November for more follow up visits and tests. We shall see. For now, I'm doin well and feeling good and trying to gain 5 more pounds so I can lose this tube! Let's do it!