Apples, Apples and More Apples

I LOVE Fall! I absolutely love it. Well, I love every season when it is just starting. About 3/4 of the way through, I'm ready to move on to the next. Fall is my favorite for sure though. I love the colors of the leaves, the crisp air, the perfectly blue skies and all the wholesome goodness that Fall brings.

Having a child makes Fall even more fun. I can't wait to take Emma on hayrides, pumpkin picking, trick-or-treating in an as yet to be determined, but sure to be adorable costume, and to see her attack her first pile of fallen leaves.

Fall makes me want to visit farms and eat apples, cinnamon and butternut squash for every meal. So to make those wishes come true, we took Emma apple picking yesterday.

We've only gone one other time, when we first moved to Boston. I was looking forward to taking Emma into the orchards, visiting the quaint little farm store and eating the best thing ever made ... cider donuts. I'd never heard of them before moving to New England. I can't beleive I've missed out on them for so long. I really can't imagine though that we would be as good if not sitting on a log or stone wall on an apple farm. Sadly, since I have comitted to losing weight for Emma (and a future healthy pregnancy ... way, WAY in the futrue), I settled for the amazing aroma of warm, cinnamon covered cider donuts wafting through the windows of the farm store. Yay, for me!

We took a 'hayride' sans hay into the orchards ....

...where we were directed to the designated picking trees - Macintosh, Cortland and Spencer. Not that I know the difference between any of them.

Jeremy wore Emma in our carrier so that I could be free to capture all our apple moments on camera.

In addition to my camera, I also weilded a picking pole since many of the apples were very high up on the tree. We picked a peck plus one or two extra that Jeremy ate and shared with Emma.

I, being the goody-too-shoes, was afraid to eat the apples in the orchard since we'd only paid or a peck. Emma sure loved them though!

After picking our peck, we rode back on the hay-free hayride, to visit the animals and play in the play area. We saw alpacas, chickens and miniture horses ... one of which was very shy.

In the play area, Emma especially loved the wooden train. She crawled back and forth through the structure, looking through the windows, waving to us.

We ended our trip with a quick look at the still-growing pumpkin patch. The pumpkins were plump, but still very green. Perhaps this pretty pumpkin will be the one that sits on our front steps before Halloween.

We did find one large, friendly, orange pumpkin that Emma seemed delighted with.

Oh, I really do LOVE Fall! The apples, the pumpkins, the warm colors, the bright sun, the cool breeze - I love it all!

It's Been A Year

I don't have a lot to say tonight since I said a lot yesterday, but I couldn't let today go unnoticed. There's a lot of remembering to be done this week as it was a life changing week for us last year. So bear with me and all the retrospectives.

It's been one year since Emma had her first shunt surgery! By this time last year, we were already back home after spending the day at Children's Hospital and then back in the NICU getting her settled, trying to figure how to handle our little sweet pea while she was puffy from IV fluids, hopped up on morphine and even more fragile because of the incisions on her head and belly.

Here's a link to last year's post about her surgery.
http://theleghorns.blogspot.com/2008/09/emmas-surgery.html

I don't think I ever posted the pictures of what she really looked like that day. It was hard to believe how much different she looked than when she went in. A purple mark on her temple was made to indicate which side of her head should be prepped for surgery. Hours of fluid being pumped through her IV left her face swollen, making her look like a much chubbier version of herself. An area where hair once covered her head now was marred by a half-moon shaped incision covered by a taped piece of gauze.

By the next day, she was feeling better and looking like herself with the exception of the evidence of her new equipment.

Again, I'm not sure I ever gave much information about her 'equipment' so here you go.

Emma has a Medtronic Strata Valve. This is the main component in her shunt. It's what can be felt on the back her head and is what regulates the flow of her cerebral spinal fluid (CSF). On one end is a short rigid catheter that goes through her skull and brain into her right lateral ventricle. A long flexible silicone catheter is attached to the other end running down the back of her neck, over her shoulder, down the right side of her abdomen and into her peritoneal cavity (the space between many of her organs). There is a small incision on her belly that marks where it goes into that space. A small ridge can be seen along the path of the catheter, but if you didn't know it was there, you might think it was just a vein, if you even noticed it.

Here is a diagram giving a rough idea of what it looks like on the inside. Emma has a VP shunt, but like the picture indicates, some people of a VA (venticular-aortal) shunt.

So maybe I did have a lot to say today. More than I realized, at least. That happens to me ... frequently. Today her shunt is just part of life and we really don't think about it that often. Okay we think about it very often, but we don't worry about often. Most days, I run my finger tips over her shunt on the back of her head, partially afraid that I will feel it becoming fluid filled as it was for so long, but on many days, I never even think to touch the area. I see the catheter running down the side of her body each time I change her clothes, her diaper or give her a bath, but it's only once in awhile that I really stop to realize that it's not 'normal' and think about what it really means.

This date last year was a big day, eventful to say the least. I can say, though, that this year, our day was rather uneventful and aside from the fact that her shunt kept her CSF flowing and prevented the pressure from building in her brain, her shunt made no difference in her day. I don't think today would have been any different had she not needed that surgery one year ago. As my friend Sayward commented on yesterday's blog, 'God is good.'

The 8th of September: Then and Now

Then, September 8, 2008:

Emma was just a week shy of two months old. She hadn't yet seen the room Jeremy and I had put together. She had never slept in her own crib. She had only been in her car seat twice for walks out of the NICU which were later deemed against hospital policy.

It was a beautiful September. A warm, very sunny Monday in Boston. Emma's 'Auntie' Sarah had flown all the way from California to meet her. Sarah and I had gone a Duck Tour of Boston that morning and enjoyed a nice al fresco lunch on Newbury Street. I remember feeling a little guilty for spending so much time away from the hospital, but knew I needed some time to spend with my friend, just getting away from it all. I must have known something big was on the horizon.

Emma's first visit with Aunt Sarah.

Emma had gone to Children's Hospital the day before with her nurse for an MRI. Shortly after we arrived at the hospital after lunch, a neurosurgeon came from Children's to tell us that the time had come to make the decision. There was no need to wait any longer. No need to try anymore lumbar puncters. Emma was telling us, through her MRI, that she needed a shunt. A few hours later we found out that she was scheduled for 7:30 the next morning.

I remember feeling bad that Sarah had to be there for Emma's surgery. At the same time, I remember feeling so thankful that she was there. Jeremy and I would need someone else for support. As much as we would've liked our parents to have been there, it was better in the end that Sarah was there. She was concerned and connected to the situation, but not in the way that our parents would have been. She would be able to make us laugh and distract us from what was going on in the OR.

Most of all, I remember feeling scared, but at the same time, relieved. I was scared about what a shunt would mean for her life, what it would be like trying to parent a child who had a mechanism imbedded in her little body that could stop working at any moment, and, of course, scared that something would go wrong in the OR. I was relieved at the same time, though. Relieved that we finally had a decision. No more mornings waking up, wondering if today was the day she would come home. No more spinal taps. Nor more nights laying in bed thinking about how wrong it was that my little baby was sleeping 5 miles away. It was scary, but there was a plan.

The 8th of September, 2008 was a big day for us.

Amazingly to me, today, the 8th of September, 2009 is also a big day, but in a nothing but happy way!

Now: September 8, 2009


Emma is one week shy of 14 months. Time has flown by. It's amazing to me that all that happened a year ago. We've been through a lot, but at the same time, her life now isn't much different than that of most other 14 month olds you'd meet. She laughs and cries, plays and reads, eats Cheerios by the handful, makes us laugh, throws tantrums, and has an ever growing vocabulary. (About 35 words, to be exact!) Oh and she CLIMBS (gasp!), but that is a story for another day.

Surprisingly, we spent this Septmeber 8th, just as we did last year, reviewing test results with a doctor at Chilren's Hospital. Emma and I left the house at 6:30 this morning to arrive in Boston for a renal ultrasound at 9. She, not surprisingly, was quite upset with the procedure. She wants nothing to do with anyone in scrubs. She knew something was up as soon as I started unsnapping her onsie. She immediately tried to jump of the exam table in nothing but her Pampers. I held her down, which was not easy physically or emotionally. The technician said that her kidneys and bladder looked great. That were growing appropriately and there was no evidence of scarring on her kidneys. Whew! I wasn't too worried about the ultrasound, but it's always a relief to hear things look good.

At 10:15, we had a date with the nurses in the Department of Nuclear Medicine. This was the scarier one for me. If she didn't like the ultrasound, she was going to HATE the Nuclear Cystogram which involves a catheter. To my surprise, the nurses and the Child Life Specialist wooed Miss Emma with bubbles, a glitter wand and Winnie the Pooh. Although she didn't like it, she wasn't jumping off the table. Screaming? Yes! Jumping? No! She even left with her very first balloon tied to her stroller. A lovely mylar number baring an image of Elmo, one of Emma's favorites.

Our final stop was in the Department of Urology with her urologist. I didn't know what to expect. I had a good feeling about the tests. Not sure why. Mother's inuition, I guess. There was only a 20% chance that the news was good. Thank goodness, Emma is a bit atypical. When it comes to most things medical, she falls into the minority. This was no different!

The news was good! It's gone! She has grown out of her reflux. I saw the images myself. Not even a hint of kidney reflux left! What a relief! Sorry for all the exclamation points, but I'm excited. So 3 more days of amoxicillin and we're done!

On the one had, the reflux was not a big deal. I mean, it's not like they told us that her hydrocephalus was gone. It didn't cause her any problems on a daily basis. She hasn't had any infections since she's been on the amoxicillin. Shooting 3 milliliters of bubble gum flavored, hot pink medicine into her mouth every night was mildly annoying, but she liked the tase of it, so it was just a regular part of our bedtime routine. Washing all the little syringes for the past year, that was a little more annoying. All in all, not a big deal though. On the other hand, the reflux is the root of all of her other medical issues, so it's just nice to know that it's gone!

So today I am again feeling scared and relieved. Just like the 8th of September last year. Okay, today I'm mostly relieved and excited, but a little scared. Emma wasn't sick at all last year... I mean, aside from the obvious. Not even a little cold. I'm a little afraid that pitching the pink stuff will leave her vulnerable to germs, but she'll survive!

Emma practicing her walking with her push toy. She may not need it much longer!

Oh and the icing on the cake on a day that couldn't have turned out much better ... Emma took 3 steps all by herself today!!! They may have been a fluke, but I let her go and she took 3 wobbly steps into Jeremy's arms. We tried to get her to take a few more between us. She took a step here and there, but none so sweet as those first 3 steps. What a day!

Pictures ... hopefully!

Yesterday, when I posted my blog about traveling, I wasn't able to include the pictures I wanted to include. Blogger was being difficult and my new vehicle for posting, wasn't any more helpful. So I figured it out on my own. As I was choosing pictures of our visits with family, I realized something ... I rarely take pictures of anyone other than Emma. I mean except for the few pictures with Andrew and Jen, you'd never know we were with family. I like to think it's just because I only post the pictures of Emma because I know a few family members (myself included) don't really like pictures of themselves, but truthfully, my camera just focuses on Emma. So I'm going to work on that. If there's one sure fire way to make Emma self-centered, it's to show her the blog or her photo albums or the MANY pictures scattered around the house of ONLY her. Oops! Anyway, here ya go! I hope you enjoy.

On our first night in Pittsburgh, Aunt Jen and Emma cuddled in their matching ducky pajamas. How cute!

Grandma and Grandpa took Emma and I to the Pittsburgh Zoo. I hadn't been there for years and forgot what a good view you could get of the animals. In the tiger habitat, there is a viewing window. He walks up to the window and stands there for a second giving you a show. Yes, I took this picture and didn't use any zoom. He was really that close. He started at Emma looking as if he thought she might be tasty. Amazing and scary at the same time!

Emma taking a cue from the celebs, like Kate Gosselin (whose hair-do she also shares), hiding from the ever-present paparazzi. Well, in her case, I'm the paparazzi ...er... mamarazzi?

There is a park near my parents' house that has been there forever. I haven't been there since I was a kid, but they just added a new area for water play. We took her just to check it out, but didn't have a bathing suit. She loved it anyway.

Emma brings sunshine and rainbows wherever she goes!

"I can't believe what the water did to my hair! I need the big brush for this one!"

One evening, Emma and I joined my brother and my parents for 'Broadway at the Overlook'. It was a review of a Pittsburgh theatre company's upcoming season held at a beautiful park overlooking the city. This was the view for the evening! I never knew such a pretty place existed in the city.

Getting into the spirit of the theatre evening, Emma put on her movie star sunglasses. She danced and sang along (a little too loudly) with the other performers. We had to ask her to quiet down a little which she didn't appreciate.

"I can't work like this! I'm SO outta here! "

After Emma realized she was being a little bit of diva and couldn't make a very dramatic exit while crawling, she let Andrew entertain her with jewelry. Andrew knows just how to play with these jewels. They were my Grandma Nancy's and we used to spend hours putting on as many of her necklaces as we could. I actually made the one he's wearing on his head when I was about 5 to give to my grandma.

"I feel pretty! Oh so pretty!"

Uncle Andrew had to explain to Emma that when we go to a show, we can't upstage the actors by singing our own show tunes. It's a good thing she has him to show her how to appreciate the theatre!

Since Emma loved the water park the day before, we took her back the next day in her bathing suit so she could really have fun.

"Ooo! Uncle Andrew, I was just sitting on this red spot minding my own business when all of sudden all this water came gushing out!"

Since we've been home, we've also had a visit from Grandma and Grandpa Leghorn. On Sundays, we like to go to a nice little restaurant in town. Their deck is open and sitting outside is so nice this time of year. Here are a couple pictures I took at lunch the other day. It was a perfect fall-ish day. The only problem was the pigeon that Emma was inadvertently feeding the crumbs from her cereal bar. Grandma Helen and I were not so happy about his presence and even kept our feet propped up on the railing next to us so he couldn't peck at our feet.

My wild child - Yes, I know ... the hair. She did have a bow in that day, but keeping a bow in her hair these days has become a battle of wills which is another post all on it's own!

"Please, Mommy, no more pictures!"

Okay, Emma's right. Enough pictures for now. There will be more another day though!

Trying Something New

I've been frustrated lately with blogging. I can't get the pictures to load the way they used too. They don't move freely about the page. It makes blogging a lot less appealing. So instead, I'm trying something new. Not sure if it will work yet or not, but I'll give it a whirl. I just got a new version of Word and apparently they have an application for blog posting. So here I am, typing a test post.

I promise, whether this works or not, there is a new blog post on it's way. Hopefully lots more. I have lots of ideas, I just don't seem to get them on paper … er .. screen.

Oh. and just so I can test pictures too, here are Daddy and Emma during a lunch date on base. Like Daddy's new uniform?

Frequent Flyer

Some people are lucky to be able to travel. Some people prefer to stay close to home. Some people take their first plane ride in elementary school, some not until they go away to college and some never get on a plane. Our little Emma Bean has become quite the frequent flyer and world traveler. Last week, Emma and I arrived home from an all to short visit to Pittsburgh. The flights to and from 'Da Burgh' marked Emma's 12th and 13th flights, all since our flight home after Christmas. Pretty impressive for a 13 month old, I'd say. We already have number 14 and 15 coming up in October when we travel to Indiana in October for a weekend at IU with my family.

I've gotten pretty good at travelling with Emma. This time was both the easiest and the one of the hardest. Now that I don't have to pack bottles and formula in my diaper bag, my load is much lighter. She is entertained by anything that isn't actually a toy, so other than a few books and her favorite 'babies', I left the toys at home this time. No baby food needed since she can eat table food. I even remembered to being a back pack instead of my diaper bag so I could wear it on my back with worrying about dropping it.

On the other hand, Emma doesn't want to sit on my lap and wait patiently. She wants to crawl all over the place and cruise along the chairs. She wants to grab the laces on the nicely shined shoes of business men and pet the little tiny doggies that people carry onto the plane. She wants to race into the busy foot traffic in the middle of the terminal. Keeping her contained and clean is the new challenge. Thank goodness the Pittsburgh airport as a place space in the Jet Blue terminal! What a life saver!

Now if only the TSA agents in Boston could lend a hand to a mother struggling in her bare feet to wrangle a toddler while hurling a full size stroller on to the x-ray belt, when no one else is line, instead of standing behind the monitor in groups of four or five twiddling their thumbs! Oh did I mention I was in the designated FAMILY FRIENDLY line??!!

Whether difficult or smoothing sailing, I'm grateful to be able to travel with Emma so much whether by car or by plane. If we had a choice, Jeremy and I would make our home closer to our families. We've been lucky enough to be close to Jeremy's families since we moved to the North East, but we'd like to be close to both families. Maybe we could all just move to the same town! Since we have 6 more years of the Navy telling us where we will live, we make the best of it, travelling when we can and welcoming family to our house when we can't. Thanks to every one's willingness to travel, we get to see our families more often than many families in our situation.

I was trying to include photos of our recent visits with our families, but I'm having trouble. So maybe I'll have to do a separate post of pictures which is what I know you really want anyway ;)

This Time Last Year ...

So I had this grand idea for a 'looking back' post to celebrate the one year anniversary of this blog. On August 11th, today, I'd planned to look back at my very first post and reminice about what we were going through. So I just looked back at that first post, (There were actually 2 that day!) but silly me, I missed the boat. Apparently, I started the blog on August 8th. Oh well.

We've still come a long way since this time last year. Click on the link if you want to re-read those first few posts. http://http//theleghorns.blogspot.com/2008/08/waiting-to-come-home.html We were sharing with the our friends and family what was going on with our new addition. She was being diagnosed with meningitis. She was on IV antibiotics and had heart, respitory and blood-oxygen monitors attached to her little body. We only saw her a few hours a day, but were accepting our new life and, most of the time, felt very grateful for the excellent care she was getting. I say most of the time because there were a few ... okay, maybe more than a few ... times that I didn't believe her doctors or was frustrated that they couldn't figure out exactly what was going on or tell me when she would come.

On August 11th of last year, we were excited because it was the day she had her last dose of IV antibiotics and started taking amoxicillin to guard against a UTI. She is still on amoxicillin so I guess not everything changes. It's kind amazing that the child who was almost deathly ill as a newborn hasn't been sick since. I believe it has a lot to do with the fact that she takes that amoxicillin everyday. We will go see her urologist in September. Our ideal outcome is that he tells us that her reflux has corrected itself and that she can stop the amoxicillin. There is only about a 20% chance that will happen, but Emma has fallen into the minority in many situations, although usually those minority categories are those with negative outcomes. For example, there is a 10% change with every shunt surgery whether an implation or revision that the device will malfunction at some point. That means that 90% of the time, everything is A-OK! Now I do know that you all can do the math, but I just want to point out that the odds that a shunt will work properly and not require a revision are supposedly very good. Our little Emma, however, fell into that tiny little 10% not once, but twice! In 3 1/2 months! So maybe it's not too crazy to hope that she will fall in the 20% of children who's reflux is gone by 1 year. (Although if I'm completely honest, I wouldn't mind holding off a few more illnesses with the daily dose of amoxicillin!)

Okay, I've gotten a little off topic. Eventhough we're still shooting the pink stuff into her mouth with a little oral syringe once a day a year later, not much else is the same. Oh yeah, she still has hydrocephalus, but as I've said, for now, that's no match for her!

Sunday morning on the deck in pj's ... oh and a bow, of course.

So what is my little Lovebug up to these days? One year after I started blogging about her? Well, what is she not up to? Oh, well, she's not walking or standing independantly yet, but that's about it.

Mid pull-up

She crawls everywhere, pulls up on anything within her reach, cruises along the furniture, has about 30 words in her vocabulary and even has a few baby signs (water, milk, and eat ... although sometimes they are a bit interchangeable). She is totally off formula now and only takes her milk in a bottle at bedtime. It's sippy cups the rest of the day. She eats dinner with us at the table now and eats what we eat. It's not always an easy adjustment to all these changes, but most days, get a little better than the one before.

This picture is for my friend Alysha. Apparently putting your feet on the dinner table is a one year old thing.(Her blog has a very similar picture of her son Silas, who is 5 days older than Emma, doing the same thing.) This was from our first real family dinner with all three of us eating the same meal at the same time at the same table. Emma wasn't as into it as Jeremy and I.

Why play with your many toys when you can play Hercules with a giant plastic tube? Or maybe she's practicing her guitar hold for the next round of Guitar Hero.

Yesterday, as she sat in her playroom, listening to a Baby Einstein CD, quietly flipping through a pile of books, I couldn't help but look at her and think how amazing it was that she could turn pages in books and sit on her haunches. She just looked so grown-up. I don't know how it happened! She just turned into this little person sometime in the last year. It's adorable to see her flip through her books almost is if she is researching a topic and comparing notes from one book to another. I wish our NICU 'family' could see her now.

Where's Emma???

Whether you've been reading since last August or joined us somewhere in between now and then, thank you for reading! I'm always amazed when I hear about a friend of a friend or the cousin of a friend that we've never met who has popped into hear about our journey through parent-and-babyhood. I haven't been very consistent with my blogging as of late, but I hope to improve my posting frequency in the up coming months. Thanks again for checking in with us to see what's happening in the Leghorn house.