Sick Girl

Riley has been one sick chica this week. She spiked a fever Sunday around lunch and was pretty much downhill from there, she even wanted nothing to do with grilled cheese. Ironically she was finishing up her antibiotic for her ear infection so I was sort of confused by the whole fever thing. I kept her home Monday and I treated her fever with some Tylenol but it kept climbing and by Monday late afternoon it was 102.2 and she was developing a rash on her chest and back, great! I called the Dr and they didn't have anything until the morning so I made the first appointment and hoped she at least stayed the same. Well we were up from 2:30 - 4:30, her fever went back up to 102.3 and it took a while to get it back down, which meant 2 hours of trying to rock her and put her down to sleep followed by the saddest cry you would ever hear in your life. Me picking her up immediately turned the cry off and so I finally settled into the fact that I was going to be in her rocking chair a while, at 4:30 I finally got her into a deep sleep and put her back in her crib. Unfortunately I had to wake her up around 7:40 to bring her to the Dr. Of course Riley was fever free at the Dr office but the Dr did confirm that she still had an ear infection and she felt the rash was from her measles vaccine which she had 2 1/2 weeks prior. It was the same Dr that saw us on Friday when Riley bumped her head and she looked at her head again and said it looked much better. So we're now on round 2 of antibiotics. Marc stayed home with her Wednesday since I had been out two days and my mom flew up Wednesday night to watch her the rest of the week since she still had a rash and couldn't go to day care. I will say a nanny is looking mighty fine, it's so much easier to get out of the house without a day care drop off but Riley would most definitely miss the kids at day care.


Rashy herself:



























Resting before her Dr appointment:

































Still time to play:

Party Girl

Riley loves a good party and Saturday afternoon we went to Xavier's 2nd birthday party. It also happened to be at Riley's favorite place, Gymboree. You would think the thrill of Gymboree would wear off after a while, after all, they end each class with the same activities each time, parachute, bubbles, kisses from Gymbo. But nope, the girl goes crazy with excitement! Of course Riley was shy as usual. ;)


We also got to meet our friend's Matt and Kristen's twin boys, Max and Kennedy, at the party. The boys are identical so Riley's face was pretty funny, she kept looking from one of the boys to the other with a look of complete confusion. And lucky for Riley because they were really cute boys and there was two of them! One of the other little boys there LOVED Riley, he kept sharing balls with her, a boy after her own heart, and followed her around (Marc said he was a little upset about it but I thought it was very cute). At the end of the party Marc took Riley to say good bye to Xavier and asked him if he wanted to give Riley a kiss good bye and Xavier planted one right on her lips, too cute! And her first kiss! Of course Riley was most excited about the hug from Gymbo that she got at the end of class. Here's Riley on the parachute, one of her favorite activities!

She's not having too much fun ;)

Me and Riley with Matt, Kristen, Kennedy (with Matt) and Max (with Kristen):

Xavier likes Elmo just about as much as Riley and one of his Aunt's made him an Elmo cake!

A Year Ago the Journey Began

It's hard to believe that a year ago today we began the crazy journey of Riley's clubfoot treatment. It seems like a lifetime ago that we embarked on this journey but I must say after the few bumps along the way, it really hasn't been all that bad. I think once we got past the casting phase things really started to look up. Maybe we also finally got past the mourning phase of having a baby with a birth defect and started to see truly how amazing Riley is rather than having the "whoa is me" attitude. The unconditional love and support of our family and close friends also really helped us through it. I was looking back at old blogs the other day and we are truly the luckiest people to have such a wonderful support system, all of the encouragement we received really kept us going and looking back a year later we realize how lucky we are. I really believe everything happens for a reason and there is definitely a reason we were given Riley with clubfeet, maybe it was to help us realize how wonderful our friends and family are. Then there was seeing kids and families with syndromes and birth defects a whole lot worse than clubfeet that helped put things in perspective for me.

These days treatment is sailing along smoothly (knock on wood), I like to call this our passive phase of treatment because really we are just maintaining her correction through the brace with quarterly checkups at Dr. Hoffinger. Getting Riley's brace on isn't too bad either, we turn on Sesame Street, put her on our lap and in 5 minutes her brace is on with hardly a struggle at all, in fact most nights she doesn't fight us at all. I will say that finding out that Riley loves Sesame Street has helped a ton! Before that it was quite the struggle but once we realized her love of the Street, brace time is no longer a chore but more of a part of our nightly routine. The downside of the brace, the bruise though I will say that I'm getting used to permanently having bruises up and down my legs from her swinging it around! For a little girl she can pack a punch! I will say pajamas are still a big pain in the butt, it's very hard to find footless pajamas for a little squirt like Riley and I still get sad and angry sometimes that all of the really cute ones that I would love to dress Riley in have feet on them but such is life and in the end what really matters is that she is going to have fully functional feet and lead a very normal, and most likely, active life since the girl is always busy (but if you know anyone who works at Carter's please tell them to make more super cute footless pjs!)!

So this is what her feet looked like before her treatment started:

Riley's first casts, I think they were bigger and weighed more than she did!

And here are my beautiful, "million dollar," designer feet today!

Day care tells me almost every day that they think she is going to walk any day now. Right now Riley's favorite thing to do is to hold onto our fingers and walk all over the house, a year ago that didn't seem possible. When she finally does take those first independent steps it is going to be so such a sweet victory! It's crazy the magic of medicine and of course our fantastic doctor!

Bruiser

Today I got the call:

Kindercare: "Allie, this is Brenda from Kindercare"

Me: "Hi, how are you?"

Kindercare: "I'm good but Riley's forehead is not."

Me: "Uh oh"

Kindercare: "There's no blood but there's some bumps, she fell cruising but she barely cried and she was really good while we iced it, she's eating lunch and we're keeping an eye on her."

Allie: "How bad is it? Do I need to get her?"

Kindercare: "It's up to you, she seems fine but we're keeping an eye on her to make sure there's no vomiting."

I called back at 1:50 and she was doing fine, when I picked her up, this is what her head looked like, they said it had gotten better:

See the two red lines, yeah, they're not pretty. It seems that Riley was cruising and got a little crazy (i.e. too fast) and fell and hit her head on a plastic block, which is now imprinted on her head. When we picked her up she cruised over to me and was happy to see me, though she wasn't quite herself. (Could be the 1/2 hour nap all day) We went to run some errands and Riley fell asleep in Best Buy on my shoulder, she never falls asleep in public. I started to get really worried, it just wasn't Riley, so we called the Doctor and they told us that we should come in. They got us right in and had a nurse check her out but we had to wait a while for the Doctor. Good news is, Riley checked out fine, there didn't seem to be any sign of fracture and no sign of bleeding so the Doctor told us we didn't have anything to worry about tonight. Plus we really liked the Doctor we saw (our normal one is out on maternity leave) so we have another Doctor we would be happy to see. (And she told us it looks like Riley's ear infection is healing up.)

First Word!

Riley has said her first word, well besides "Momma" and "Dadda," I don't count those because all babies say those first. Riley has been saying "ball" for a couple of days now and tonight I got her on video saying it. She chases her ladybug ball around the house yelling "ball ball ball." She also says "baby" but I don't count that because she doesn't actually call babies, "baby." As you will see on the video, she calls her ball "baby." But we're very proud of her none the less.

Riley can also pick a circle out of a group of shapes. For three nights in a row I've had her shapes from her shape sorter out and I asked her to get me the circle and she grabs the circle and hands it to me, tonight she even tried to put it in it's slot in her shape sorter, her coordination is still a little off so I helped, what's important is that she recognized where all of her shapes were supposed to go. Tonight she also accurately identified a triangle and the star and attempted to put those through their slot too. We still need to work on the square and hexagon and after we master shapes we will move onto colors! I hope to have her reading the classics by kindergarten...just kidding! ;) But she does love her books!

Happy Birthday....to me! :)

Well, today I celebrated my 31st birthday. It was sort of anticlimactic after the big 3-0 last year, but then again last year we had just had Riley and we were just hoping Riley could get discharged from the hospital on my 30th. This year I am happy to say we did not have any hospital stays, though I am fighting a nasty cold complete with laryngitis so I will be making a call to the doctor tomorrow. We played it very low key today since we had a big celebration last weekend for Riley and I am not feeling great and the weather was pretty crummy. Riley gave me a great present, she slept in until 8AM! Happy Birthday to Momma! After she got up we brought her into bed with us while I opened my cards, Riley was in charge of organizing the envelopes, she did a great job! Then we all got dressed and I went for a pedi followed by a trip to Target and lunch at Panera. It was pretty rainy and cold today so after lunch we came back home for Riley's nap and I watched part of the "Bring It On" marathon, love it! For dinner we picked up my favorite, sushi and are enjoying some sparkling wine!

So here are some pictures from the weekend!

This little piggy went to the market...Have you ever seen such a cute tooshy!?!

Riley checking out her new car, hopefully next weekend will be nicer so we can take it outside for a spin! (Thanks Dayna, Jeff, Jack, Robyn and Matt)

12 Month Checkup Stats

I took Riley for her 12 month checkup today and I must say it was probably the most challenging appointment ever! Riley is the vision of health (well sort of but I will get into that in a minute, nothing serious, don't cheat!) and is developmentally on track but she's definitely more aware of what's going on and pitched a massive fit when they went to measure her and also when we put her on the scale to weigh her! The doctor also had a very hard time getting into her mouth.

Riley weighed in today at a mere 17lbs 3.5oz and was 27 and 3/4 inches tall. That puts her at like the 2.3 percentile for weight and the 12th percentile for height. She dropped a little percentile-wise in weight but is still on the trend line so the doctor (we saw a different one today because ours is out on maternity leave) was not concerned one bit. Sometimes it's nice to get another doctor's point of view and hers matched up with our normal peds opinion. Unfortunately, this means Riley still has to sit rear-facing, she has to remain rear-facing until she is 20lbs! She might be in kindergarten! She checked out 100% except for one small thing. Seems our Riley has her first ear infection and we had no idea! I feel so horrible but she has not been acting sick, is eating normal, and is sleeping through the night! She is rubbing her ear but I brought her in like a month and a half ago because I thought she might have one and she didn't so I figured this time it was teething or her just finding her ear. So Riley is on her first antibiotic. Even though the doctor told me not to feel bad I feel absolutely horrible! We go back in 2 or 3 weeks after she's done with her antibiotic to make sure that the ear infection is gone.

Other than that Riley continues to thrive, she's definitely into walking these days, cruising everywhere and finding anything she can to push along. She also has gotten herself into a standing position from sitting, without holding onto anything, several times that we've seen so I am sure she's doing it at day care a ton! For some reason she has decided she's a pacifier girl and has started wanting and pacifier, I was a little worried but the doctor said it's ok, she obviously needs something to soothe her and if it's working then not to worry about it right now. It's just one more thing we'll have to break her of down the road but we have her pretty much off of the bottle and that was fairly easy so she didn't think it would be an issue. We got the go ahead to start cow's milk and she can start eating fish. The only no-no's right now are nuts and shell fish. Oh and the doctor assures me that teeth are coming, she's not sure yet but she could see bumps on her gums, unfortunately she thinks she's going to get like four at one time, which will be less than fun for all of us! For now it just means small pieces of food for Riley!

Our Riley is all growsed up!

What a Great Day!

What a great day we had, I was able to take the day off and Marc was able to work at home for Riley's birthday. Our day started off at 6:15 when Riley woke up. We brought her into bed with us, sang her "Happy Birthday" and told her about the day that she was born. We went through the whole story about how my water broke and Marc wanted to do the dishes before we went to the hospital, about Homer and about how Marc was really worried about my water getting on his car. I forgot to tell her about how her daddy ordered a pizza in the delivery room and that we were asking all of the doctors and nurses to put in their vote on her weight but we'll be sure to add that next year. And of course about how she came out screaming and it was the most beautiful sound we could hear. After her birth story we gave her a little present and read her the card we got her, of course she got a little Elmo and Abby doll from us. Marc then read her my blog to her. Then we had breakfast and played before she took her morning nap. Unfortunately, it was kind of rainy today so we didn't get to go on our walk or to the park so after her nap we of course took her monthly picture in her chair and then Riley and I headed to the mall to walk around before we met Marc for lunch. I tried really hard to buy her something on her birthday but just had no luck at all! Riley and I met Marc at Nordstrom for lunch, definitely a step up from the hospital food we were eating last year. It was so crazy to think that a year ago we were feeding Riley with a dropper and this year she was eating a grilled cheese sandwich!!! After lunch we came home and Riley took a nap. We came home to a beautiful bouquet of flowers and a teddy bear for Riley from my office. Then more play, some Skype, a stop from my friend Lori and her kids to wish Riley a Happy Birthday and Japanese for dinner (chicken yakitori for Riley) followed by some lemon raspberry Bundt cake that my friend Lori dropped by.

And the big news is - Riley stood up by herself from a sitting position late this afternoon. She was only up for a second but I she did it and on her first birthday none the less! (I know she's been trying and yesterday she day care told me she got a bump on her head from trying to stand and falling on a toy. They were very apologetic about it, of course as long as she trying to develop we aren't upset, and Riley is fine, just a little bruise now.)

Here's our big girl at her birthday lunch:

And what's a monthly Riley update, especially the big 12 months, without her monthly growth trend -

Happy Birthday My Sweet Girl

Happy Birthday Sweet Girl, exactly one year ago, at 3:26AM, you decided you could not wait another month to come into this world and your birthday was decided!



I have been thinking about this post for about a month and I can't believe the day is really here. I can't believe my teeny tiny "4lbs of Fury" is a year old and has been replaced with a vivacious, curious, and super sweet little girl! I have no idea where the time went but I think I can say for both Marc and myself that this has been the time of our lives! Sure we hit our rough spots but Riley is truly a joy every day even when she is being challenging! I've been having a hard time the past couple weeks with the impending big 1st birthday. Marc and I have been looking at photos of Riley when she was a newborn (this one is from when she was less than an hour old, I think we were even still in the delivery room) and then we look at her now and a little bit of sadness sinks in, our little baby girl is gone. Parenthood has definitely been an adventure and I don't think Marc or I could have ever imagined loving someone as much as we love Riley. So while we love the little girl who is currently filling our lives with so much laughter and joy, we often wonder where did that sweet little tiny baby girl go? If only I could freeze time!

So here's to you my sweet little bug on your first birthday!

Riley, thank you quite simply for being you. In many ways you are the daughter I never knew I wanted and I love everything about you! I love the way you face every challenge like it's a game, you have defied everything the doctors told us to expect. You have handled your clubfoot treatment with grace and dignity and often times better than Mommy and Daddy and for that I will always admire you. You faced each cast, your surgery, and your brace wear without it ever phasing you and you pretty much had a smile on your face the whole time. You never fussed after a cast was put on, you were barely cranky when you had your surgery, and you adapted to your brace in a matter of days. When people would feel sorry for you because of what you had to endure, I would tell them not to, because after all you didn't feel sorry for yourself one bit. And through it all you continued to develop at the same rate as other babies your age. You have learned to do everything two ways, with and without your "night night shoes" and you never skip a beat. I will always admire you for your bravery and adaptability, I have learned so much about life by simply observing you.

I love how outgoing, independent and friendly you are, I admire that about you also, and I hope you never, ever lose that. You have a way of lighting up a room and I hope you are always your carefree, happy, friendly self. I love how you are always trying to figure things out, we can almost see the wheels turning and the steam coming from your ears as you try to learn new things. I love the way you find the smallest most insignificant part of something and examine it thoroughly. I love the way you growl at people when you want to say hello. I love your smile, which is always present on your face. I love the way you hear the alarm chime and know that Daddy is home and crawl into the kitchen looking for him. I love the fact that when you do something new or exciting that you look to Daddy and I for approval. Most of all I love your hugs and kisses. I love how you stop playing, crawl over to me, climb up into my arms and wrap them around my neck. I love that you plant a big, slobbery kiss on my cheek and then squeeze me. So while we are sad to see our baby girl slowly disappearing, we love the exciting little girl that is emerging. Happy Birthday our sweet Bugga, we hope you have many more happy, healthy years ahead and we can't wait to watch you develop and grow. I hope we are always BFFs.

Happy Birthday my Sweet Girl! We love you more than you can ever imagine!

xoxo

Mommy and Daddy

Let Her Eat Cake!

Ladybug Infestation...

Call the exterminator, we've had an infestation, a ladybug infestation! Today we celebrated Riley's 1st birthday with a ladybug themed birthday party. We had some friends over and we had a great time celebrating our baby girl's first birthday. I made ladybug cookies and put them on cupcakes and we had some sandwiches and let the kids have a good time. Riley had a blast which made all of the planning, work, and stress so worth it. It was so great to look over and see her having a great time!

Our entrance way and banner I made for Riley:

Riley's monthly pictures from 10 days to 11 months...

Our pinata friend:

Ladybug cupcakes!

Our favorite bug, the birthday girl!!!

Birthday (cup)cake time!

Ooey, green sweet stuff, where have you been all my life!?!

Pinata fun!

Cheering on her friends as they take their turn at the pinata:

Elmo

We're major Elmo lovers in this house. We have learned that the only thing that can keep Riley still long enough to get her "night night shoes" (aka her brace) on is Sesame Street, particularly Elmo's World. The first time she saw Elmo and his friends (particularly Abby and Zoe but she also likes Cookie, Big Bird and Mr Snufalufagus) she went to the TV to try to say hi and touch her new friends. I must say that I too find Sesame Street quite entertaining especially with their cast of celebrity guests, Randy Jackson, Jame Blunt, I watch it more than she does! We DVR all of the episodes and then watch them from there, it's fantastic. Riley sees Elmo in stores and her face automatically goes into a state of awe, then she shrieks with delight, and that is followed by a temper tantrum when we don't let her take Elmo (or Abby) home with us. A couple of days ago we were on our weekly Target run and Marc found an Elmo video for $4.98 so we bought it for her. I put it on New Years Day morning while I was making brownies for our afternoon get together with some friends and put Riley in her anywhere chair and she sat there for 25 minutes watching her Elmo movie! Nothing keeps Riley still for 25 minutes! She doesn't even stay still for 25 minutes while she is sleeping! She just sat in her chair watching her DVD, drinking her water, and hugging her stuffed friends. For 25 minutes!!! And even after she got up out her chair, Riley continued to watch her Elmo movie, she was just standing at the coffee table or her music table.

So Elmo, I can truly say from the bottom of my heart that I heart you!

Here's a picture I got on my iPhone of Riley watching her movie in her chair:

Hello 2010!!!

With love,

Riley xoxo