Yara had surgery!

Yara had eye surgery on her left eye on Friday, June 13 at the Virginia Hospital Center by Dr. Melissa Kern. Yara had an eye condition, double elevator palsy, that prevents her left eye from moving completely up when she needs to look up. Her muscle underneath her eye was too tight and had to be loosen up to allow her to move a little upward. When her head was tilted (40 degrees) all the way she couldn't move her left eye up and caused her left eye to cross or move in because it had no where else to go. With this surgery her left eye as of now does not cross and does move up a little though not 100% up like her right eye. Over all her health has been great with that eye. She is not having a huge tilt of her head/chin anymore; more like 10 degrees if needed. She doesn't rub her left eye any more at night times or when she is moving her eyes or looking at objects above her. We believe her personality has blossomed a lot. We have been back to the doctor a few times and go again in September. We need to keep an eye on her lower eye lid on her left eye because it is drooping a little and can cause other issues; dry eye, dirt getting in, and other things. So we will keep a watch on it and by the time she is 5-6 years old we will see if we need to get a plastic surgery to look at it because it would be cosmetic only. 

Last Day of School: June 13, 2014

Kau'e loved everything about his pre-k school! I am so happy with is improvement and his love for school buses! We loved Ken Culbert but sad that next year his program has been moved to Mt View. Though we are happy he is still qualified to go to pre-k.

Mini-Adults

Kau'e and Yara have really grown up the last couple of months.  Not only are they looking taller and more mini-adult like but they are growing into little-people.  Yara is wanting to be mommy's helper and Kau'e is wanting to do everything possible with daddy.  Yara will pick up items in the steps and carry them up or down depending on where they are at.  She will come check on us if we are in the bathroom helping Kau'e potty train.  She wants to be helper so bad and we let her.  Kau'e is such a fun boy.  He will pick up a football or any ball at that fact and ask you, "Run?".  He is wanting you to chase him.  He def loves a ball.  He is getting really good at shooting hoops; little toddler size basketball hoop.  We are able to be out and about more with them and not worry so much about schedules and routines; which are nice to have!  With Kau'e being in school he has really flourished and is trying more and more words/sentences.

Easter Pictures and Kau'e's Spring School Picture

Yara's Eyes

My little girl has the biggest brightest eyes.  But it was recently that we noticed a change in her left eye.  Her eye at certain angels would look crossed or inward.  I mostly recognized it when I was either looking up at her or down on her like if we were on the stairs or she was on the playground.  At first I made every excuse in the book about what I thought I was seeing; oh she's tired, I didn't see that right, or she has funny control of her eyes, or she's sick, etc.  But after a week of noticing it I told Romulo to go play with her and see if he noticed anything.  I didn't want to lead him on to what I already knew.  Sure enough he noticed it.  Another week went by and then it was Spring Break.  We were home a lot together and her eye was crossing more and more and by then I knew I had to take her to the doctors.  It was almost 3 weeks by this time.  Her Pediatrician had us go to a Pediatric Ophthalmologist.   Luckily two days later Dr Kern's office had an opening.  I took it.
It was that day that we found out that she did have a problem that needed to be corrected with surgery.  Oh the pain it brought to my heart.  My little girl.  Her little head tilt up and to the right was not her little personality that we all thought.  It was a head tilt of 40 degree that allowed her left eye to see like her right eye did.  Oh my heart aches.  She was diagnosed with a condition called, double elevator palsy.  There are muscles above and below your eyes that allow you to look up and down without having to tilt your head. Well her muscles either above or below are not working right.  The doctor won't know which set of muscles it is until she gets into surgery.  But Dr Kern's is pretty confident that it's the lower muscle under her eye.  And if it is then that means her muscle below her eye is too tight and won't allow her eye to look up.  But when she tries to look up her eye has no where to go because of the muscle being too tight and then her eye goes inward because it has no where to go.  Her head tilt allows her to see up but then its when her head is titled all the way it can that she wants to still see items above it that her eye goes in.  Her head tilt doesn't help her because its tilted to the max.  Does that make sense?
So we head back to the doctor on May 7th for more measurements and to make sure nothing else is happening.  We will need to do a MRI to look in and make sure no tumors or anything else is causing this issue.  The doctor was a little concern about the recent noticing of the eyes movement.  We will know more later.  But surgery is in the very near future; like early summer.
I'll keep you posted.  Here's a good and bad example of her eye.  It's her left eye or on our right.  This happens too at this angel.

Busy times

Busy times for the Aguilar household.  I will list in no order what has been happening with us!

-Mom, aka Lydia or Me, has been enrolled in school at BYU-I pathway program to finish up her degree she started back in 2001.  Luckily, a lot of information has come back to my mind after 10 years of not being in school.  I also am blessed that BYU-I took my associates degree from NOVA so that much is behind me.  I will do pathways program of 2 classes (one religion and one other like english, math, etc) per semester for 1 year.  During that one year I go to Thursday night gatherings for 1 hour.  It's a lot of fun and I am having a blast.  Tonight is my last gathering and tomorrow I take my finals.  I'm excited.  Its been  lot of fun because I've been doing it with Thomas; plus two other ladies from my ward and we carpool.

-Romulo has been busy with Busy Season and I think the end is almost near us.

-Yara is a busy soul.  She has a lot of personality that sometimes makes it difficult at times because she wants to be a free spirit but I can't sometimes let her be.  She is fearless on the playground.  She usually wants to go down the slide standing on her feet.  She gets upset when she falls on her bum doing just that on the slide.  But she will try anything and everything especially food.  She is my condiment child; dipping everything in ketcup or ranch.  I haven't tried anything else.  But on Tuesday she requested by trying to say Please and rubbing her chest in the circular motion of sign language of please and pointing to the fridge.  I thought she wanted milk but shook her head no and pointed to the ranch.  So I gave her some ranch to dip her waffles, grapes, banana, sausage breakfast into.  Interesting!

-Kau'e has been a joy to watch blossom from school.  He still has his moments but he has really improved when we are in new situations/places.  He is trying new words and new phrases all the time when he does speak.  He knows what we are asking of him when we want something from him.  It's not so much of a fight anymore.  Trust me its still hard he is 3 after all but so much better.  His skills are improving.

-The house has gotten a lot of improvements; new light fixtures in stairways, kids got fans in their room, ceilings are finally painted, we will be getting a back fence soon, the rest of the can lights will be installed in the livingroom/kitchen/family room, and I think all rooms are painted.

-We went to New Market to my parents second home two weekends ago to help them install drywall to the upstairs loft area.  Oh the pain it was but so worth it!  It was actually fun!  Nice little get away even if we did do manual labor.  Fun.

-We had our friends, Lia and Anders, over for a lunch on Sunday.  They are moving to Atlanta.  I will be sad to see them leave but good to meet them even if it was for a year since we met them.  But we will stay in touch.

-I'm sure more has happened just can't think about it now.  But just the every day activity is enough to keep us busy.