Leaps and Bounds

Our little Ryleigh girl is growing and changing every day. At her 15 month check up last week she weighed 27.5 pounds and is 31 inches long. She also seems to be learning something new every day. We made a list the other day and she is saying more than 20 words (some are up to parental interpretation, but she is consistently saying a lot of words) and she understands WAY more than that. She has these great picture books and when you ask her, "where's the doggie?" she points right to it.

favorite books

She's always liked it when daddy gets out his guitar to play, but now she is taking more of an interest in "playing" it herself. Even if playing means beating it like a drum.

She is a little smarty pants and pretty cute too, daddy and I couldn't be any prouder.

Awareness

October is Spina Bifida Awareness Month. I have been thinking a lot about what that means. I have never really made a big public announcement about Ryleigh's condition. I am not very active in the SB community. I did see this posted in one of the groups I'm a member of and thought it pretty much sums things up.

The thing is, I don't feel like a "Spina Bifida Mom." I do think I have a different perspective. I stop to appreciate the little things a bit more. I can see how easy it could be to take even the smallest accomplishments for granted. But I understand how something as small as this moment can be so special and amazing.

I guess I should say, this is a really BIG DEAL. With Ryleigh's lesion at an L2 vertebrae level, you wouldn't expect her to have much strength and use her hamstrings like that. This is functionality more like an L4 or L5 level, which is super awesome. We have been using electrical stimulation on her hammies nearly every day, and we just have to think that has helped with muscle strength. We have a lot of good things going for us, including a very motivated (and curious) child and an amazing physical therapist. We cannot even say the difference Gerti has made in our lives this past year. She is always pushing to try new things and and be aggressive with therapy options. The e-stim is something she has never even used on a child as young as Ryleigh. We are so so thankful for her, and for the First Steps program that helps provide services and equipment.

I say it all the time, but our daughter is one amazing kiddo. I can't wait to see what she'll do next!

love this goofy kid

I Have a Problem

It may be unnatural, but I seem to have a bit of a problem with superlatives and superlative type language. I just can't commit to something being the most, the biggest, the best ever. I am encountering this problem quite a bit {read twice} on this month's photo-a-day challenge. A smell you ADORE. Your FAVORITE word. Really? C'mon now. Why you gotta be like that? Can't it just be a smell I kind of like most of the time? Or a word that makes me smile every once in a while? It's too much pressure to choose the best ever. Not like I can never change my mind and have a new favorite word. But I feel like once it is posted to the interwebs, it is set in stone! From this day forth my favorite word shall be "XXXXX!" Therefore, I have skipped the photo of the day that is my favorite word. Deal with it. ;-)

Catching Up

LAST weekend we spent some time outside working in the yard. I realized I never got around to posting about it. I received a wonderful gift for Administrative Professionals Day... a gift card to Westlake's Hardware! WTF, a gift card to a hardware store, you ask? So did my husband. What he didn't know is that Westlake's has an excellent selection of flowers and outdoor plants. I had been talking with Carin about planting something in the two big pots on either side of our garage. And she remembered, what a thoughtful gift! We went on Friday evening to pick out what we wanted, that way we'd be ready to go Saturday morning.

my selections



i came across a (not so) little friend in one pot. ick!



finished!

some zinnias for around the mailbox

We also did a little landscape improvement here, but I keep forgetting to take an "after" pic when it's still light out. Just imagine new mulch, no more weeds and no more bricks. ;-)

before...

Lucky Seven?

I haven't posted in a while, so let me apologize in advance that this is probably going to be kind of long. 

Last Thursday (7.7.11) we went to STL again to meet with docs. We "tentatively" set baby's delivery date for August 26th. I keep saying tentative, because I am not ready to believe she will be here in just 7 weeks!

We had an ultrasound at the Fetal Care Institute. And got a pretty good look at our girl. She is getting big, too big to fit all in one screen. She weighs over 4 pounds now, right in the 50-55th percentile for size. She has long legs and lots of hair. Finally, finally after all the ultrasounds they were going to give us a 3D/4D peek at her face. But alas it was not to be. The little stinker was being stubborn and had hands and feet in front of her face the whole time. Darn it!

 I know this is a really terrible picture of a picture. But can you make out half her little nose there? And the side of her mouth, it's slightly open and she was sticking her tongue out. And part of her chin. Well, that's it, that's all we got. And even from that tiny little partial image, I kinda think she looks like me. Ha ha! Guess we'll just have to wait a little while longer to see.

We met with the brand new (to Cardinal Glennon) head of pediatric neurosurgery, Dr Elbabaa. He will do the surgical repair on baby Rowe's back. We were impressed. He answered all our questions before we even asked. He had been brought up to speed on our case and seems very confident in what he can do for her. He said that the location of her myelomeningocele, low on her back, is very good for future outlook. The fluid in the ventricles in her brain are enlarged. Which we expected. She will almost assuredly need to have a shunt placed sometime in her first year to keep excess fluid from building up in her brain.

We took a tour of the NICU at Cardinal Glennon. It is where baby girl will be spending some time after her surgery. I have to admit I was a bit overwhelmed, and I know it showed. Katie who we giving us the tour asked me a couple times if i was doing okay. The floor is really nice. She will have a private room. And Ron or I will be able to stay with her 24 hours a day if we want. There isn't really room for both of us to stay. But, we are candidates for accommodations at the Ronald McDonald House. There are three in the area. The closest one to Glennon is usually pretty full, but if we are willing to stay a little farther away we may get the option to move closer when something opens up. Since it is a charity the room there is available for $5 a day as long as we need. That is a huge relief. There is a kitchen, we can buy and store our own food there and volunteers come and make dinner for families every night. Since I am planning on nursing our little nub, I can get three meals a day provided at the hospital.

One of the most difficult parts of all of this is that baby will be delivered at one hospital and then she will be transferred by ambulance to Cardinal Glennon a few miles away. This leaves mommy (me) at St. Mary's to recover from a C-Section without my baby girl in the same place. I feel pretty strongly that Glennon is the best place for her care, so this is a necessary part of that. But it breaks my heart that I will not be able to hold or even see my sweet baby girl for a few days. And I know daddy is going to be torn as well, wanting to be in two places at once to take care of both his girls.

I've gotten spoiled by all my other doctors and their offices. The new fetal-maternal specialist we met kind of lost me at the shabbiness of the offices. I mean there were pee dribbles on the seat! And another restroom didn't even have any TP. WTH?!? Just one more visit to that office, I guess I can handle it. We were told that the maternity ward at St. Mary's is recently remodeled and really nice. Let's hope so. We'll get a tour when we go back on August 2nd.

So, in our "regular" pre-baby life. Ron is super busy studying for the bar. Coming down to big time crunch time, we are less than two weeks away from that. He was able to stop studying long enough to come to a couple baby showers this week. Our good friends the Pourneys hosted a wonderful shower at their house will a lot of our Columbia friends. Baby girl got lots of books and other necessities. We are really blessed to have great friends. Daddy was happy to receive some of his favorite "chew toys" that he had picked out for the registry. I had to explain why everyone laughed when he said that. When it's for a dog it's okay to call it a chew toy, for babies you usually call it a "teether." :-)
Then we had our final baby shower at my office. Lunch and presents with all most of my MAA co-workers. I was really blown away by how generous everyone is. I almost cried. We got a couple big items from our list - the swing and the video monitor - as well as some smaller baby necessities. So, so nice and very unexpected. Our guest room has totally turned into an explosion of baby stuff.

We are still crazy cat people. After the Warlock incident we stopped feeding all our friends. But then gray kitty came back...with one little baby in tow. How am I supposed to resist feeding this little furry face?

So it seems that Gray kitty and baby kitty live here pretty much full time. They tend to stay under our cars. And when the little guy gets spooked he runs in to the storm drain near the end of our driveway. So we continue to facilitate the kitty HIV epidemic on Calder Court. There are probably worse things.

Okay, so I think this post has gone on long enough (and taken me long enough to write).
Hope all is well.   -carmen

Retail Therapy

Well we kind of had another minor blow this past week.  So we may or may not be crazy cat people. Some of you know we have several stray kitty friends that we have been feeding for a while now. And by several, I mean like eight. It started out with just Gray Kitty. But then word got around the 'hood and soon we were having daily visits from Doodles, Blinky, Chuck Norris, Murph, Tex, Warlock...I know I am leaving someone out. Well, our little buddy Warlock decided he was done being a stray and wanted to come in and live with us. We did some checking around and tried to find a home for our new friend. But we were told it's "kitten season" and the likelihood of someone adopting a scrappy black kitty were slim. We decided maybe we'd take him to the vet, get him checked up and healthy and he could stay living here with us. Unfortunately, at the vet Ron found out that Warlock was a very unhealthy kitty and had feline leukemia and HIV. The only recommendation was to put him down.

Warlock was making himself at home in his last days at our house. He had taken to sleeping on the car out of reach of his nemesis, Blinky. Of all the cats Warlock was the friendliest, and the only one who would let us pet him. We have been told that it is pretty likely that all the cats are infected. We have essentially been perpetuating a kitty epidemic. It only took a couple days for everyone to stop coming around once the food bowl was gone. We will definitely miss our little buddy Warlock.

To help us get over the loss we decided to spend a lot of money this weekend. ;-) Our first order of business, a new car. We traded in the Impala for a 2011 Hyundai Sonata:

 

I joke about this, it was not an impulse buy. I think we definitely did our due diligence when I came to researching and making the decision. We test drove the Honda Accord and Ford Fusion as well. We checked out the Camry too, but never drove one; we didn't think we could get it in our price range. The Fusion and the Sonata are tied for first in the mid-sized car class. We really just liked the Sonata the best, for the looks and performance. If you'll allow me a moment to geek out... They have engineered the engine of the Sonata so that you get more horsepower from the 4-cylinder than the other two models we drove. In order to get to that HP in the Accord or Fusion we would have had to go to the V6 which put us at a higher price and lower gas mileage. Jeesh, I'm such a nerd. Anyway, we love the new car, and XM Radio.

We decided now that we have a new car we needed to get to get baby Rowe's car seat for it. Obviously. I mean she is going to be here in like 3 months. So yesterday we took a little road trip to St Louis to hit up Babies R Us. We knew that we were going to buy the stroller/car seat combo. If you catch me on Facebook at all you know I am slightly obsessed with the show Extreme Couponing right now. Well, we had a coupon for the system, which saved us over $60. Yay! We ended up deciding on a Chicco travel system. I put it together this morning. Love it! I cannot wait to take our baby girl for walks in it. We also bought her bedding, a few more clothes, and worked on adding items to the baby registry. A process that was not nearly as much fun as I had imagined it would be. First of all, it was like 106 degrees in the store; not a good idea when your main clientele is pregnant women! Secondly, there is A LOT of stuff for babies. I mean A TON! And as first time parents we really have no idea what you actually need and what is just extra crap. It is quite overwhelming. We had to take a break in the middle and go get a snack. But overall, I think we did pretty well. If you check out the registry you might be able to tell that I left daddy unsupervised in the toy aisle with the scanner gun. Of course nubbin will need 26 teethers and a bunch of Baby Einstein toys, right? :-) How do you think we ended up with 18 packages of Oreos from our wedding registry?

Our little nubbin has been cooking for 26 weeks now. We are less than 100 days from meeting her. Our next appointment with our doctors here in Columbia is next week. Then we will head to St Louis around the first week of July for appointments with doctors there. I hope we will be able to put together a plan for delivery, and maybe go ahead and schedule it.

Oh, one other thing. Thank you so much to our Lafayette friends Ben And Heather who bought us a farmshare for this summer. Basically it is our own little farmers market. We went and picked up our first delivery Saturday morning. Fresh local veggies included, lettuce, asparagus, radishes, kale and some green onions. And some yummy strawberries. I am so looking forward to getting farm fresh food this summer and trying some things I might not normally buy.  Oh and did I mention they have puppies? The farmers have a litter of 13 chocolate labs they are trying to find homes for. So cute. Luckily they only had pictures, no pups. Huge thank you once again Ben and Heather for the generous gift! Love you guys!

Oops. Another super long post. Maybe If I blogged more often I wouldn't have to bore you all with these loooonnnngggg posts. I'll work on that.

Delayed Post

Hi again. So I know I said I would try to post updates every Friday, and I missed it this week. I had a pretty busy week at work and worked late on Friday night and for a few hours Saturday. Soooo, I thought I would save my baby update post for tomorrow (Monday), when it will be a more exciting update. Our ultrasound is tomorrow morning and we will be finding out if we are ready to start buying PINK or BLUE. I am SO excited! Let's just hope little Baby Rowe decides to cooperate. The last scan, about 8 weeks ago, we had a "very good baby," according to the tech. I hope we will be lucky again tomorrow. Any guesses about the gender? Eeeeekkk! I cannot wait!

I hope everyone is having a great weekend!

Been a long time coming

Ok, so I have been thinking about starting a blog for a while now. And since 2011 looks to be a pretty exciting year for us, now seems like as good a time as any to get this thing going. So, here we have the official Rowe blogspot. Please bear with me as I get used to this whole blogging thing.

We found out on New Years' Day that we are expecting our first child. We're due at the beginning of September. I'm super excited about the timing, as September 4th will be the four-year anniversary of our first date, and three years since we got engaged. How cool would it be to have our baby on that day too?!?
I am 17 weeks prego as of Friday. I had a check-up same day; pretty boring run-of-the-mill, blood pressure, weight, pee in a cup type stuff. I did get to hear our little nubbin's heartbeat which was strong and baby was pretty active.

Some basic baby stats at 17 weeks: a little over 5 inches long, and about 5.9 ounces in weight. Baby has mastered some simple reflexes like sucking, swallowing and blinking.  My belly has started to pop out in the last week or two and I am definitely "showing."

Oh, and a little about nicknames; we have been calling the baby "nubbin" since about 8 weeks when the arms and legs were just little buds starting to grow and it kind of stuck. Lemondrop was another nickname a couple weeks ago when he/she was the size of a lemon. Creative, eh?

Everyone is waiting so patiently to find out the gender of our little one. We have decided to go ahead and find out before the big day. Our ultrasound is scheduled for Monday, April 18th. :-)

I am so excited to share this with all of you. I plan to keep updated with baby and non-baby related posts. I hope I will be able to share a lot more info here than facebook. I will work on posting some picture soon too. Yay! This is gonna be fun! Welcome to our blog.
-carmen