How Do You Know You're Sisters?

It's easy. You show up to an event dressed like this.

My sister and I hadn't seen each other all day until we both showed up to a High School basketball game. Green isn't even the school color or this might make a little bit of sense. I'm just chalking it up to great minds and sense of style.

It's Tortisitis...no it's Tortelini...what is it?

So some of you know that we have had some issues with Liam and his neck. I thought I would give a short explanation of what exactly has been going on.
A couple of months ago I noticed that Liam's head was beginning to flatten on the back on his right side. Then a friend mentioned to me that Liam's head always seemed to be leaning to the right. She thought he had Torticollis. We took him to the doctor and sure enough he does have it. In short torticollis is a shortening of the neck muscle on one side that pulls the head toward that shoulder and can be caused by a wide variety of things. We have had Liam's neck looked at with ultrasound and x-ray to rule out any problems with his spine. Thankfully those all came back totally normal. It's just a problem with his muscles which can be fixed with some physical therapy which he has once a week at this point. Our next test is to have his vision checked to make sure his eyes are equal in strength. Apparently an inequality can also cause this condition.
Below are a couple of pictures of Liam with his head leaning. The physical therapy is working well and he really holds it up straight for the most part unless he is really tired or not feeling well. We are optimistic that everything will be cleared up quickly.

There is one other thing that concerns Liam's physical therapists, but we are not too worried about it because it seems to be a trait that runs in my family. The picture below is of Liam "arching".

It's a perfect wrestler's bridge. He uses this to scoot around the house. One of my uncles and a cousin of mine also did this and they turned out totally fine and both are athletic healthy people now. The physical therapists worry about it because they are afraid his core muscles are underdeveloped. He is trying to sit up and he pushes up on his hands and pulls his knees under him in attempts to crawl, so we're not stressing.

This poor kid has been to have ultrasounds, x-rays, physical therapy and eye exams all before he's even 6 months old. What a start for a little guy.

Christmas

I know that I am way behind in posting, but here is how our Christmas went.

One of my favorite things about having a live Christmas tree and getting it home and in water as soon as possible, is that sometimes the tree keeps growing. The light green needles on the end of the branch in the picture below is new growth that turned up on our tree in the month it was at our house. I love it

Here is our living room after Santa Clause had visited, and before the boys got to everything.

Here's our little reindeer.

Here is Liam with his activity center from Santa.

Michael asked Santa for a motorcycle. We were a little worried that he would be disappointed with what he got, but he tells everyone about the motorcycle he got for Christmas.

Levi and I's Christmas present came a little early because Santa ran into Papa Brad and gave the present to him since he was on his way to see us anyway. It's a nice gun safe that also acts as a fire safe for all of our important papers.

Christmas was a pretty fun time for us, and we hope you all had a great holiday season too.