Last Sunset

Goodbye 2008!



The sunset was certainly pretty tonight. That's a good sign for the upcoming year, right? :c)

P365

I tried this year to do Project 365. My attempt didn't go very well. I gave up completely a month or two into it. Actually, I think my problem was more that I forgot about it, forgot my camera, etc. I love the idea, though, and had fun the days I did participate, so I am going to give it another try. I am going to give myself a few guidelines:

1. Don't expect the pictures to be perfect. Capture the memory, don't worry if it's going to be a perfect shot, too grainy, poor lighting.
2. Don't stress if you miss a day, just pick up where you are and continue.
3. Take your camera E.V.E.R.Y.W.H.E.R.E. At least this year I have my iPhone, which helps, and I can upload those pictures very easily and quickly.

I really want to stick with this and have a wonderful record of 2009. Won't a collage of the 365 days(or whatever I end up with) be a neat thing to see? I should gather all the days I did manage to get a picture and see what it looks like. Maybe that will be a bit of motivation for the upcoming year.

Anyone want to give it a try?

Yaaaarrrrrrn!

If anyone has a little bit of Christmas money and wants to buy some gorgeous yarn from a very sweet person, you should check out Annie Amelia. There is a sale going on through the month of December and her taste in yarn is to die for! I want pretty much all of it. LOL! The wonderful mama that runs the shop is a dear friend of mine. You should check out her patterns, too. I'm finishing up the nice nice headband using the yarn she suggested and it is so... nice - just as the pattern says! :c) It's very pretty and girly. I have two of the i-cords left to do, the rest has been done for a very long time, but I tend to walk away from projects. Hi, ADD! (No, I'm not just throwing the term around, I really do have it. :cD) It was a really quick and simple knit and is beautiful. Sheri would very much like for me to finish it, since I promised it to her when I was done. It came in the first Sweetcase, which is another wonderful product of hers that you need to go check out. I had never worked with beaded yarn before getting Sweetcase#1 and probably never would have, if it weren't for Cheryl and her shop(which is named after her grandmother, that is so sweet!).

So get on over there and have a look around! :c)

The end of another year

We wish you a Merry Christmas!!



And a Happy New Year!

:c)

Happy Birthday to my baby!

Elijah is one year old today. I just can't believe it has been a year. I've been thinking all day today about the day he was born. Everything was up in the air. We didn't know what to expect. We were excited and nervous and happy and anxious. It was a very long day. Elijah was born at 12:39pm(all 10 pounds 7 ounces of him!) and I didn't get to see him again until about 12:30am. It is amazing how far he has come. We have been so incredibly blessed.


I uploaded some pictures into a "December 2007" album in our gallery. The link is over there on the left. I have looked at pictures off and on all day, remembering that day and the weeks that followed. And now, a year later, I have a wonderful, happy and healthy one-year-old boy.


Elijah is such a fantastic baby. He is so happy and loving. I feel blessed to have him in our family. I love his little open-mouth, slobbery kisses on the cheek. I love how he chomps my chin and giggles. I love when he snuggles in so close. He has an infectious laugh and his eyes twinkle when he smiles. I love his gummy, toothless grins.


Happy Birthday, Elijah! We love you so much!

'Tis the season

It's time to really gear up for Christmas. There isn't really too much that needs to be done. I took our family Christmas pictures on Saturday and have been playing around with them a bit. It's time to get them printed out and put into envelopes. I'm only slightly behind on this. I'll post some here once I get them mailed.(Hint: There are a couple sneak peeks in our photo gallery if you like to peek. Or you can just watch the little slideshow on the left of the blog!) :cD I have a few last minute things to get, but then I didn't start shopping until last week, so I guess it's all last minute. Haha!! We don't do a big Christmas, so it doesn't take much time. The kids each get 3 gifts from Kirk and I(think of the 3 wise men) and then a gift from Santa. They get a few little things in their stocking like chapstick, an apple, a clementine, a candy cane and maybe another little item or two like those. They also get a pair of Christmas pajamas on Christmas Eve to wear to bed that night. For their three gifts, we try to stick to one thing they need, one thing they want and one thing that's educational. Sometimes it's hard to know what to get, because they don't really have big Christmas wish lists. This year they each had 3 or 4 things on their list, so it was a little easier. I don't know if it's because we've always done Christmas this way or if it's just the way our kids are, but they don't really ask for much. It leaves time, money and energy to be able to do things for others as well.

I'm really enjoying this Christmas. It's so much different from last year. Elijah will be one on Saturday. It's hard to believe it's been a year. We are so incredibly blessed. I'm glad to be home and more grateful than words can express that he is doing so very well. He has come so far in a year.

The girls have two more days of school and then are off for 2 weeks. I have plans for Christmas cookies, gingerbread houses and all kinds of fun things. We'll be using Wednesday to make some cinnamon rolls for gifts and for our Christmas morning. I'm excited!

I do need to get to work, though, because there is shopping and sewing to be done. :c)

Neat CT scans

Here are some really neat pictures of Elijah's skull from the 3D scan on the 8th. Well, at least *I* think they're neat! LOL!



Looking at the top of his head. You can see his face at the bottom of the picture. This shows his fontanel on top, his skull sutures(not fused! Awesome news!) and his shunt.


The back of his head. You can see the hole where his encephalocele was and is almost gone! :c)


Looking at the back of his head. You see the encephalocele again and can start to see how the bottom left is a little bigger than the bottom right.


Again from the back. The part on the left is more visible here. You can see both the encephalocele and the fontanel at the top of his head in this picture, as well as his shunt on the right side of the picture.


The white spot is his shunt. You can see another part of it as a white spot on the right of the picture. The dark area is what is left of the fluid in his brain. Look at all that beautiful brain!


This is a picture from his CT when he was born. Look how far he has come in a year!! :cD (His head is the same size now as it was when he was born.) The dark part is fluid. You can also see how thin(and non-existent in some places) his skull was in the back.

Elijah's neurosurgeon is going to watch the back of Elijah's head where it is a bit deformed. He isn't going to have him wear a helmet because after a certain age it isn't as helpful, plus it is a bit risky to use a helmet on a kid that has a shunt. So, we're going to watch it and hope it evens itself out by the time he is 3 or 4.

It's good to be home!

We had a really great day! Elijah was such a trooper. He was happy and smiley pretty much all day with just a couple moments of fussiness. You can't ask for a better travel companion. His CT looked fantastic! His head might not have grown outward very much in the last several months, but that's because it's been working overtime on the inside! One ventricle looks really close to normal and the other is only slightly enlarged. It was such a pretty scan to see! So much beautiful brain! ;c) His head shape is looking good as well. There's a bit on the back of the head that we're going to keep an eye on, but Dr. Grant said it should even itself out over the next couple years. The plates in his skull are not fused, so there is the opportunity for more growth. The spot where his encephalocele was is really small! The skull is working hard to close the bone over that spot. He just looks awesome! :c)

Elijah was quite the little flirt today. He would flirt away and then get shy all of the sudden, so he would hide behind his arm. It was really cute. We stopped by the ICN to see if any of Elijah's nurses were there. It was a long shot and none of them were on shift today, but the guy at the reception desk remembered me and Elijah's name. He was happy to meet him! Elijah flirted with the girl that was working the reception desk, too. He was very taken with her. :cD

We head back to Duke in June for a check-up, but no more scans until a YEAR from now!! How awesome is that?!

Duke

We're at Duke today for a check- up. We got here a little early and Elijah was a champ so we're already done with the CT. Now we are waiting for his clinic appt. just before noon.