Rackham 2018 Christmas Letter

December 04, 2018

Rackham 2018 Christmas Letter

December 1, 2018

Dear Friends and Family,

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays to you all! We are so grateful to have all of you in our lives and have fun seeing so many of you on social media and catching up with your Christmas cards. This year has felt like a complete whirlwind at the Rackham house! Thanks for reading along!

*********

Erin-Erin’s incredibly difficult pregnancy came to an end in February when she gave birth to a baby girl, Olivia Jane, at 36 weeks along—making Olivia just 14 months apart from Bennett. Erin was VERY grateful to not be pregnant anymore and thrilled to see that Olivia was breathing great and didn’t need a NICU stay!!

She went back to work seeing clients this year as a marriage and family therapist. Since she graduated from her master’s program in 2014, she’s had to take 2 years off from seeing clients because of the pregnancies, so she has loved doing therapy again!

She spends most of her time trying to keep both kids alive, working with Bennett on his development, and keeping up with the SCN8A Epilepsy community. She actually just presented at a conference for the group early in December in New Orleans, LA!

Dave-Dave is still working at Pluralsight as a product manager and loving it. This job has been the biggest blessing for our family and for Dave personally and professionally. He loves the people he works with and has learned so much from his managers and team. The company went public earlier this year (IPO) on the NASDAQ, which was a really big deal and way cool to be a part of! Work definitely keeps him busy, but the flexibility is incredible. He’s able to get in early and come home early almost every day so he has a good chunk of time to be with the kids before bedtime.

He’s been able to get out to fish the Provo River a few times this year. Not as many as he’d like, of course, but more than last year! So we’ll take it! The house is coming along and with our parents’ help, Dave’s been making great progress on the renovations. We now have all the new doors installed (not all painted yet, but that’s okay), baseboards and door frames completely in, the kitchen complete (minus some shelves Dave wants to redo), a shed and concrete outside so the garage isn’t stuffed to the gills anymore (hooray!), and probably some other things I’m not remembering right now. Basically it feels like we’re actually closer to finished than not—which is a big deal!!

Dave spends most of his time working, taking the kids to Home Depot, working on whatever new home project we have going on, listening to his favorite political podcasts, and trying to keep the kids alive with Erin!

Bennett-Bennett turned 2 years old on December 11^th. Some of his favorite things are books (he can read for hours in his crib happily!), baths (as always), his favorite TV show—Daniel Tiger, macaroni, swinging, car rides, and anything that opens and closes. He also loves to help with Olivia. He’ll pick things up for her when they drop from her high chair, he’ll throw away her diapers for us, he’ll covers her with blankets when he thinks it’s time for her to sleep, and he LOVES to give her hugs and kisses.

He learned to walk independently this summer after some assistance from a super cool and inspired PVC pipe-walker my mom thought up and built for him with my dad. He has gotten more and more stable on his feet, which is amazing because some of the kids with SCN8A Epilepsy don’t ever walk. We still work with our early intervention program here in Utah once or twice a week to help him with physical, occupational, language, and general developmental therapy. He is making great progress physically and learning to communicate with us in his own way, which we are thrilled about. He still struggles to eat normal food because he has a hard time chewing with his molars and just tries to swallow everything whole. So our main focus right now is getting him to eat and stop relying so much on Pediasure for nutrients. Many of the SCN8A kids have feeding tubes for feeding issues, so we are trying our hardest to avoid that!!

Bennett’s most exciting news this year was probably that he went just one week shy of 6 months seizure free! Since that seizure in July, we have gone 4 months seizure-free (as of the day I’m writing this) and we feel like we’re on the right medicine and dose for now. We’re all pretty thrilled with his progress and stability, and we just love him so much!

Olivia-Olivia was born on February 8^th, 2018, and is 10 months old as of this December and she is on the go! Some of her favorite things are also books—although she mostly eats them if they’re not the indestructible kind, her Jumparoo (she gets PUMPED about jumping up and down), being out and about, anything she can chew on, and eating. She eats anything and everything!! Dave and I are SHOCKED at how much a little baby can eat because Bennett still barely eats anything. It’s really fun to watch her chew so effortlessly and enjoy it!

She loves to crawl (army crawl for now) anywhere and everywhere, and she recently started trying to take Bennett’s toys from him when she wants to play with them (that’s been fun…). This girl has NO problem making her needs known. She was born with quite a pair of lungs on her and that has definitely persisted throughout these last 10 months. There’s no questioning when she’s hungry, tired, or just wants your attention, and her big cheesy smile is just so darling there’s no resisting it!

She’s been the best sister to Bennett. She just beams at him every time he interacts with her and it’s really helped him be able to engage with other people and play back and forth in ways he never has before. He also started copying her babbling (still hasn’t copied “ma-ma” yet!), which has improved his language. She babbles like crazy and it’s so fun to listen to her all day. We love her to pieces and don’t remember what life was like without her cheesy grins!!