I see London, I see...Christmas

The Gasbarro family had what most people would call an nontraditional Christmas this year. It was filled with hotels, palaces, kings and queens. If you couldn't tell from the title, we went to London this year. We figured this was our last year to get away with not being bogged down with helping Santa with gift lists, decorating the tree or making Christmas cookies before Adelaide would notice. We even forgot to send out Christmas cards this year. That may be a bit of a white lie, I just really didn't feel like it so if you didn't get a card it isn't because you fell off of my list, it's because I was lazy. So our trip was a little rocky in trying to get to London. We were supposed to leave Friday after work, but after some time in the Crown Room we were sent home without our luggage for a flight in the morning. Don't worry, I'll get to the luggage story later on in the post. So Saturday morning we tried again and were successful. The weather all over the East was a mess that day so we had to take an early flight to Atlanta in order to make sure we caught our flight to London. This meant many hours in the Atlanta airport and no nappy for the Tootie Girl. We were originally supposed to fly into Heathrow, but there were no seats available so we ended up in First Class to Gatwick (much further out of the city than Heathrow). As soon as we got up in the air Adelaide decided that would be the right time to throw up all over me. Of course she had a change of clean clothes, but I didn't. Not that that really mattered since she threw up again an hour later. So there we were in First Class covered in throw up, no more clean clothes and an 8 hours to go. We MADE IT! A long cab ride and crying baby later, there were we were, just steps from Buckingham Palace. Mom and Russ were staying down the street at the Ritz, while Grant, Adelaide and I were at the The Park Lane Sheraton. Notice I said WE made it, not our suitcases. We didn't see our suitcases until I think Wednesday, minus the car seat, which we was never found. Poor Russ didn't get his clothing until Saturday! I can't tell you how much time I spent agonizing over buying new jeans, because I couldn't find any that weren't the skinny legs and then when I finally did they were $129. So it really didn't end up mattering since I had to buy new clothes when I got to London. Not an easy task when it's snowing outside, days before Christmas and Europeans are much smaller than I am. Putting the travel woes behind us, we had a great time. We will definitely have to go back, because there is a lot that we didn't get to see or do. There was record breaking lows while we were there, so we tried to get indoors before the temperature dropped too much. There were so many pictures from the week that I thought it would be easier to give you the link to my shutterfly share site to explore as many as you would like. http://www.gasbarrosweare.shutterfly.com/

Formal tea in the Palm Room, we weren't the crowd favorite with Adelaide puking all over the place. Too many salmon finger sandwiches I guess.

Russ's favorite movie coming to life, "look kids, BIG BEN"

So excited to see Father Christmas at Harrods.

Look at my "local" husband, half way through the week people were asking him for directions! He may be in logistics, but he isn't great at the whole directions side of things.

Teal and Black

What was teal and black all over...ADELAIDE! Yes, we took our Tootie girl to her first football game this Fall to see her Mommy and Daddy's favorite NFL team...let's go Jags! Leave it to my mom to come through with the box seats and have enough tickets that we could invite our friends Andy and Anna.

I am not making this up...Adelaide had a great time and paid close attention to the first half and then she eventually fell asleep. She was standing on her seat, clapping and yelling. She absolutely loves when a bunch of people around her clap, so everytime something good started to happen her eyes got really big and she looked around in shock. We can't neglect to mention the amount of food she consumed as well.

Adelaide - 1 in 15

I always knew I wanted a child who was original and special, little did I know that we would have a child who was 1 in 15 in the world. I have posted here and there about some of Adelaide's medical mysteries and then I stopped blogging and talking about it because it was too tough. When I say tough, I mean mentally. I'm going to make this long story, short or else I'd be typing for days.
I think everyone knows that Adelaide has been seeing a Pediatric Opthamologist and we have had the brain scans and everything else done. So we'll fast forward to more recent months...delays.
One of the downfalls of taking your child to daycare is that you see what all of the "other" kids are doing. Grant and I spoke a lot about every child being different on when they hit certain milestones and quite frankly I was tired of people pacifying me with "in her own time, she is just being stubborn". So we went to our regular Pediatrician and we discussed some of A's developmental delays. They were also alarmed and at the time she was shaking at certain points, mostly around sleep times. We waited for 2 months and finally got into a Neurologist who said she wasn't having seizures, but highly suggested we started seeing a Geneticist and have A's DNA analyzed along with a whole slew of tests.
Blood work was done and 3-4 agonizing weeks later we got the call that A does have a genetic disorder. No, it's not something you have ever heard of before because there are only 14 people in the world who have ever reported the issue. Of course there are plenty more that more than likely have this issue, but it was never found. The problem when you have something rare is that there isn't any information to go along with the diagnosis of an interstitial deletion of the short arm of chromosome 8.
What we know at this point is that we live every day just like anyone else. Adelaide will be 17 months on Monday and still can't walk. We started taking her to physical therapy in November which was a colossal failure and now we are trying to get into a state run program. She isn't treated any differently at school than the other kids other than she physically gets tired much more quickly and she crawls instead of walks. The other 1 year olds protect her and call her baby since she is so much smaller than them and can't stand.
Moving beyond physical limitations, Adelaide is super cute, opinionated, great comprehension and the fastest crawler you will ever see.
Grant and I will be getting our blood work done next week to test our genetic makeup before deciding how and if we will grow our family. We haven't reached a verdict either way if we have passed the gene on to Adelaide or if it was a fluke whether we will have children or not. The test results will take approximately a month to come back so until then we keep loving life with Tootie girl.

New Year, New resolutions...futile attempts

Don't worry, this isn't a post about all of the 2010 resolutions I have made and then plan to break, this is more of a post about the attempts I am going to make in 2010 and they have little to do with the size of my butt. So here goes nothing...

1-I am going to try to lose a few pounds and I have already started Weight Watchers, but I'm not harping on it. I thought I would post it as number one just to get it out of the way since everyone puts it on their list.

2-This year I am going to give relationships as a whole a much harder try.
Phase 1-I have already arranged a girls night out in Jacksonville for all of my lady friends this month. We are going to a place called Yes You Canvas to paint pictures of downtown Jacksonville, drink wine, eat apps and get to know one another a little better.
Phase 2- It has been approximately 9 months since Grant and I have lived in the same house for longer than a week at a time so it's as though we get to start fresh this year. It's almost as though we have to learn each others habits and routines all over again this year. For those of you who don't know, Grant has been traveling with work.

3-Blogging, yes I said it blogging is on my list. This blog started out strong and then slowly, but surely fizzled out, but IT'S Back. This weekend Tootie and I will be blogging fools on our three days off to try and catch everyone up on the things that happened in November and December that we failed to post in a timely manner. We've had so much happen this year that I neglected to think about all of the people who would want to know.

For those of you who didn't know the name Bean has been replaced with a more appropriate one...Tootie. Tootie for 2 reasons...she is a cutey patootie and well she toots.

4-Project 365, I have been taking a picture a day since January 1st and will be printing them out and putting them into an album with captions. The pictures aren't going to be fantastic works of art, but rather a diary of our lives. I'm going to attempt to post them on here as I upload them, but no promises that they will all appear.

So there it is...short and sweet.

Thanksgiving 2009

Another traditional Thanksgiving in Fleming Island this year. The Mesick ladies came up on Wednesday to stay with us and of course we had such a great time with the girls. We must have the most well behaved nieces on Earth, because the only thing that I have ever seen them do which drives their mother crazy, but makes me laugh is when they give a little attitude. Hannah is ultra sweet and I don't think she realizes it even though I tell her all of the time. Brooke, the youngest is an absolute hoot, poor Jeannette and Troy are going to have their hands full with her because she is smart and slick.

Kari and Andrew stayed at Mom's house with Grandma Beitler, though we call her Lizzie or Betts (we can all thank Pappy for those names). Thursday was filled with Christmas gifts, fantastic food and baton twirling by the pool.

Did I mention that a turkey showed up for dinner? I guess two turkeys showed up...the one we ate and the one we kissed and hugged on. I found this costume in the Halloween sale and knew that Adelaide had to have it. It had a padded tummy and everything. Grant of course told me I wasted by whole $7.50, but when Adelaide went crawling out of the room in her costume and every started laughing it was well worth the money.

Unfortunately we did have a little mishap at dinner. Adelaide was being a real fuss and I couldn't figure out why until I looked down at her ear after dinner and surprise...another ruptured ear drum. It's not that this happens too often it's just that it takes a lot before it goes away and we never know about it until it's too late.

Friday I had to work, but the crew met me for lunch at The Loop. Saturday before the Mesicks headed south we went to the Riverside Arts Market. It had really cooled down over the weekend so it was a quick trip, but I think that they enjoyed it and will want to go back sometime.

Bahamas

Grant and I went on a little escape to the Bahamas in November and I can't say it was anything short of lonely. We missed our little Tootie girl desperately. If it weren't $6.99 a minute to call we would have probably called at every meal.

We weren't gone too long, dropped her off at school on Thursday and was able to pick her up after school on Monday. While Grant and I were sailing the Atlantic to the Bahamas, Adelaide was spending the weekend getting spoiled rotten by her Grams, Gramps and Great Grandma Beitler.