A concert and a disaster

This is what can happen in the space of 10 minutes, when Mom has unwisely fallen asleep on the couch.

The plethora of straws is apparently so that lots of people can share the same cup.

Maddie's been on a recent laundry kick, so she helped me unload the baskets of clean clothes.

She even said, "Mom, you were sleeping so I was trying to be quiet." How thoughtful.

We got to go to a GREAT concert last night. Sarah Harmer has been a favourite of ours since we were first married. In our little first floor apartment, we discovered her song, "Basement Apartment." (Click on the link for the song)

Here we are, partially frozen after waiting outside to get in.

She is SO talented!

Here are couple of other songs that we love:

Lodestar (Ryan's favourite)

Captive (A new favourite)

Pendulums (One of my favourites)

Weakened State (A...favourite!)

Her new album came out last summer and there are some great songs on it. It's refreshing to see someone live who is incredibly talented and fun to watch!

We've been chugging along at life, working hard, trying to find time to play. Luckily Ryan's back is doing much better. He got a lecture from his chiropractor about how we all lead lives that are too sedentary and that our bodies are built to stand all day, in keeping with a hunter/gatherer tradition. In response, he has been trying to avoid sitting to help his disc repair itself. So now I can ask him how his hunting(slash)gathering is going.

We had an appointment for Claire this week with the neurologist who found that she was missing a gene (FOXG1). Along with news of more tests to rule out potential problems (EKG for heart monitoring, back x-rays for scoliosis, genetic counseling for possible future problems, a sleep study to monitor seizure activity during the night, etc.) we got the news that the discovery of Claire's missing gene has actually helped many other people come to the same diagnosis. Hopefully with the awareness generated by multiple occurrences, this can become a more researched gene. I'm not sure if we'll see any results of that, in regards to helping Claire somehow, but it's nice to know that people who come after us might have more options for treatment.

I'll be interested to see what happens with all the snow as we're supposed to have a week of "plus" weather. I'm not sure if it will be good or bad!

When will it be Spring?

Because of all my ranting and raving in the last post, I neglected the mention the fun things we'd done in the past little while. There will be a lot of pictures in this post so bear with me.


We had a fun Sunday out in Wetaskiwin on March 8th to celebrate Mom, Rob, Natalie and Madeline's birthdays since they all fall close together. Here are some pictures from that day:

Rob is 14! Yay youth dances! I remember how excited I was to go to those.
The excitement did not last long. So I say, enjoy it while it lasts!

Natalie is 19! That makes me super old. I love the camera hog in the background.

Maddie gets to blow out candles twice -
once at Grandma and Grandpa's house and then at our house this weekend.
She loves it. She keeps asking for presents and singing Happy Birthday to everyone.

Claire had a blast with this balloon until we discovered that it was turning her fingers black.

Grandma and her sleepy babies.
(Somehow I missed getting a shot of Mom blowing out her candles - sorry!)

Self-portrait. Ryan is so good at taking these.
I always get the angle wrong or cut off someone's head when I try to do it.

Cute couple - Greg & Steph. Married almost 2 years now.

Here's a few pictures from around home last last few days.

Claire loves being in her standing frame. It serves several purposes:
It gives her another position to be in to change things up,
it helps her joints and bones and muscles by weight-bearing (since she isn't walking on her own) and it helps get the bowels moving, if you know what I mean.

Speaking of bowels...(gotta love sentences that start that way)
Auntie Stephanie and Uncle Greg got a first hand look at explosive diaper trauma the other night while babysitting. They handled it like pros so I think they're ready to have their own kids now.
They've seen the worst of it. Hopefully they will still babysit for us again.

Madeline got some money in the mail from Auntie Sheila for her birthday and
so we had fun going to the store to pick something out.
She picked a mermaid Barbie and loves to brush her hair. She was very pleased with herself!

Ryan's been doing this trick with Claire lately and I don't know how he does it.

She loves being up there though. They make one super-tall mega person.
Maddie loves all things princessy and fairy-like.
Here she is, in full get-up, dancing to the fairy dance song on our Wiggles DVD.
She's blurry because she doesn't stand still.

We spent some fun time outside during that warm weather spell.

The snow was sticky and just perfect for snowballs and snowmen.

Ryan and his creation. He did all the hard work.
Maddie and I gathered the bark chips and twigs (which made it look really creepy, but oh well), and Claire supervised the operation. It was lots of fun.

I'd been trying to get a good picture of Madeline the whole time we were outside
and hadn't been successful. I asked her to smile for a picture and she leaned up
against Ryan and posed - she stayed still and waited for the picture to be taken.
Uh, maybe you had to be there - it was funny at the time.
It made for a good picture though.

I love this picture of Claire - just pure joy at being outside and enjoying the world.

You can see our little snowman in the distance.

On a side note, sometimes I feel like cleaning my house is nothing but damage control.

Here Maddie found my box of cornstarch in the pantry and dusted the house with it.
It's never dull around here.
Do you ever dream of having the house to yourself for an entire day...just so you can clean it? This is what my life has come down to! :)

Ho ho holidays

December is always a busy month and it always seems to rush by so quickly! I can't believe real life starts back up on Monday. Boo.

We've had some fun times since I last posted: (remember to click on photos to enlarge them)

Drawing on the walls

Wearing chocolate pudding goatees

And growing real ones

Keeping warm on those cold days

Capturing memories

Hobnobbing with celebrities

(OK, here is the story. Ryan grew up in St. Paul with a guy named Mat Gordon who has become this huge male model. He saw this advertisement on the bus stop by our Safeway and we took a picture with him right beside his old friend Mat.)

Battling cabin fever when it's too cold to go out

Keeping Wii Fit - so much fun!

OH, and Christmas and such other related activities. Click here to see an album of our Christmas photos.

Click here to see a few pictures of our trip to Galaxyland and Build-A-Bear that we did today when it was almost -40 outside.

As a side-note: In the course of one month (Dec. 5-Jan. 5) we celebrate 6 birthdays in our immediate family (11 total if we count extended family) and there were celebrations galore. Dad's is Dec. 9, Grandma's is Dec. 15, Rob Mark's is Dec. 21, Natalie Layton's is Dec. 28, Ryan Layton's is Dec. 30 and Greg Patterson's is coming up Jan. 5. It has been a fun birthday month so far.

Also, a few thoughts about passing along memories. It is so fun to see your kids enjoying something that you remember playing with. My dad found an old puzzle that he did with Madeline this Christmas and I remember him doing the puzzle with me!


Anybody remember flannel board? This farmyard scene and animals was made by my grandma and my dad played with it and we played with it and now Claire and Madeline are able to play with it. I want to make something that will endure through several generations of kids! Thanks grandma!
A few other accomplishments of note - dejunking our house and taking 3 loads to Goodwill, steam cleaning our carpets and rearranging furniture. It feels so nice to have a neater, cleaner place to hang out.

I hope everyone had a great holiday and is looking forward to 2009!

Roaches, FOXG1, celebrity look-a-likes, a mugging and backwards clothing

As usual, we've had a lot going on these past few weeks. Here are some highlights:

(just a reminder - click on the pictures to enlarge them)

Madeline has been decreed as a Suri Cruise look-a-like. We've had at least 5 random people stop us at the park and on walks to tell us that she looks like a famous baby. I think Suri is about a year older than Maddie but they do look kind of similar. Maybe we should take advantage of this and turn her into a celebrity baby impersonator. Judge for yourself. (Too bad I don't look like Katie Holmes!)

Madeline "Suri" Layton

Suri Cruise (Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes' daughter)

Claire's new hairstyle really suits her! It took a tag team of stylists (Grandma and Auntie Natalie) to sort through the dreadlocks but Claire looks so much cuter and it's so much easier to manage.

Here's our first attempt at a double bath. Madeline got kicked a few good times by Claire and Claire got buckets of water dumped on her - but I think they both had fun!

Madeline enjoying Claire's collection of stuffed animals....and her soother. I know I should be getting rid of it soon, but I don't have the emotional fortitude to put us all through that stress right now!

Ah....chocolate pudding snacks.

Daddy and Claire playing on the floor. Claire is really holding herself up well on the floor and is even lifting her bum up every once and awhile. First steps to crawling!


Our biggest disaster of the month was that our building got cockroaches! You heard me right. The tenants directly above us two floors up brought a sample of the bugs down so we could call the fumigator and they were cockroaches. So since we're below them and they waited for so long to tell us about it, we saw a couple in our suite and so it had to get sprayed. Luckily my family helped us out by having the girls at their place for nearly a week while we dealt with moving all our furniture and taking everything out of our closets and then having to clean and replace everything. It was SO stressful but they didn't find any more bugs in our suite besides the two we originally saw, so they don't have to spray here a second time. Phew. Here are some pictures of our packed up house.



Ryan built a retaining wall flower bed for my parents with the help of Melanie's muscles, Robbie's tamping abilities and my and the girls' supervisory techniques. It looks awesome!

Cheese supreme.

Claire really enjoyed her time at Grandma and Grandpa's - I don't think she wanted to come back home!

Madeline has recently discovered that she loves playing the piano. I'm just waiting for the day when I leave her for a minute and then come back to find her standing on top of the piano.
In other news...

In a hurry and late for a big Relief Society activity, I wore my shirt backwards for the entire night without noticing. It wasn't horrible - it was just the black shirt I wore under my patterned shirt for layering purposes but boy I felt stupid when I got home and realized. Curse you tagless t-shirts! It made me realize that I should actually look in the mirror before leaving the house. Lesson learned.

Ryan ran to Mac's late at night to buy some pop and almost got robbed by three guys. When they asked for change to distract him, they tried to knock his wallet out of his hands but then gave up when it didn't work. One more reason why we should maybe take some kung-fu lessons if we are going to live here for much longer.

We finally got Claire's mini Lite Box in the mail. We ordered it a long time ago but it took awhile to work out the ordering red tape. A Lite Box is a visual enhancement tool that's basically a tracing table with a bright light. The accessories are the most important part - there are coloured shapes, spin patterns, coloured backgrounds, etc. She responds so well to it that I think it will be a great teaching tool for her.

Another very important piece of information was that we have a diagnosis for Claire. Dr. Bolduc at the Glenrose and U of A hospitals came here to specialize in diagnosing kids who had no diagnosis and Claire was on his list. They did a gene karyotype and found a deletion on her 14th chromosome. Within that deletion is a missing gene named FOXG1. We are in the process of doing tests on Ryan and I to see if we are carriers of the missing gene or if it happened after conception. It's kind of a scary time but it's good to have some answers finally. The only information he could find on this diagnosis were very recent and very limited. That means we don't have a lot of information on what might come later on but it isn't a regressive disease - it won't get worse over time. It's just something she will always have to deal with. It's a little scary reading the papers he gave us because the outlook seems quite bleak based on the two Italian kids they are writing about. Their situation is different because the two kids have the gene but it is mutated. I guess that can be worse than it being missing because the mutated genes can then affect surrounding genes. I really need to go take a genetic research class so I can understand this all better. Claire is teaching us a lot!

We're also really enjoying Claire's programming everyday. Claire's already worn out one developmental specialist (she has knee problems and has been having troubles lifting Claire) so we're doing a switcheroo and getting a new lady. It's frustrating to have to go through all the introductions and instructions again with a second person, but I think it will be best for Claire.

What a blabbermouth I am. I had better stop for now.