Matt was asked to make a website for his residency and he has worked really hard over the last four months to get it up and running. Every time he thinks he is getting close to being done some one else asks him to add stuff. He has revamped it and made it look better several times. The almost final product looks professional and I give full kudos to him. One of his Attendings' agrees also and has given him allowance to attend another Orthopedic Seminar of his choice (within in the continental US). I am excited because that means that I get to go with him. San Fran, Florida, Aspen. . . where or where should we go. If you want to take a peek at his work here it is:

www.vcuortho.com

Makelle's Birthday

For the final blog of the evening we were so excited to celebrate our beautiful Makelle's second birthday. Every year I make a cake for each kid based on their likes or what they ask for. Makelle LOVES shoes so I decided to make a shoe cake. If you don't look too close it appears to be a cute cake. For the record, I am the most unartistic person I know. So there is a lot of heart going into the cake but not much talent.

Happy birthday Makelle! We will forever count our blessings for the day when you came into our lives. You have been our cuttlebug and snuggler your whole life. You have a smile that lights up our lives! We have loved watching you grow and begin to talk. You are growing up so fast and have decided to potty train yourself. We love you.









Can't figure out how to rotate the pics. Sorry.

Great Grandma

We have had relatively few family come and visit us and we treasure every moment. The first week of December (the week Chase was born) Great Grandma came to visit (I'm leaving out names for safety's sake). She was able to come to the house and visit for about five blessed hours. We know that we were truly blessed to have her visit us. She was the first besides Matt and I and our kids to hold Chase. Here are a few pics of that.

Grandma Jennifer is a beautiful seamstress and has made both of my girls blessing dresses as well as Porter's blessing kimono outfit. Every baby she makes a baby blanket and burp cloth with the same fabric. These blankets have so much personality and are so, so cute. I am so grateful that she is so thoughtful to spend the time to make such wonderful gifts. This time she sewed one with tractors on it which reminds us of how much we miss the farm and Grandpa with his tractors, chickens, cows, turkeys, and his four wheeler (modern horse). We miss them all so much and we can't wait to visit them in May.

Chase's Blessing

We couldn't take Chase to church to have him blessed but we really, really wanted family to be there when he was blessed. We would have loved to have both sets of grandparents there but that couldn't be this time. Here are a few pics.

Chase One Month

Here are a few pics of Chase on his one month birthday. I am including a few pics of him after he was taken off oxygen, as well as a couple of cute random pictures.

Abbie

Abbie has such beautiful thick hair and someday she will love it. But lately she has had such a hard time sitting still while I comb through all the knots. So I decided to have it trimmed a little. She looks adorable. The girl who cut her hair says that Abbie has the hair that they would put in magazines. So here are a few pics, enjoy.

Porter

As if we hadn't already had a busy week. Porter decided on Saturday morning to help himself to some Christmas chocolate and a bottle of Children's Tylenol after breakfast. I came downstairs (he was only down there by himself for about 5 minutes) and saw the empty bottle with the little serving cup beside it. I asked Porter if he had any and he said yes. I then asked him how many cups and he gingerly held up both hands with his ten little fingers waving. I asked him again and he replied "a lot." So, what do you do. . .
I called poison control and they said he should be within okay range if we absolutely KNEW he had 3/4 of a bottle or less. Well, since I really had no idea how much he actually drank, Sharon (Matt's most wonderful mother) and I took Porter and Chase (because we couldn't leave him) to the ER AGAIN and left Lynn (Matt's very willing father) with the girls.
We arrived at the ER and luckily Matt was already there on call and it was slow. He came down and held Porter down while they drew P man's blood. He didn't like that so much. The results: out of a toxicity level where 20 is the level where he gets the anctedote, Porter was 19.4. The ER doctor was a jerk to us, but once again we were blessed to be able to go home without any lasting effects.

Makelle

While I was taking Chase to the pediatrician on Friday, Makelle decided to put her hand on a hot stove. She received second degree burns, but the major blessing in that is she only received second degree burns instead of third. The other major blessing is that even though it was her left hand her thumb (which she sucks on constantly) wasn't harmed in any way.

Chase

About three days after we brought Chase home from the hospital Abbie started in with a cold. It did the rounds with the family and settled on Chase. He started with it about 3 days before Christmas. On the Friday after Christmas we thought he was doing better. However, Friday night he started disintegrating and by Saturday evening he was seriously retracting and head bobbing (a really bad sign I found out later). We took him to the ER where they gave him an albutiral breathing treatment. Then they took xrays. Before they even came back with those they calmly told me that Chase and I would not be going home for several days. The xrays looked like this:


If you look on the rights side of his lung (the left side on the picture) you can see a fuzziness. The doctors said it was either pneumonia or RSV, both are very serious for a three week baby who weighs less than 6 1/2 pounds. After a bunch of tests and blood draws they wheeled the two of us up to the PICU (pediatric intensive care unit).
I was very distraught at seeing my son hooked up to a bunch of wires and tubes. I have never had a child sick like this before. Here is my pip squeak in his red jail sale.



The final diagnosis: RSV. He was in the PICU until Sunday afternoon. Then we moved to a step down unit and were there until Tuesday night. We asked all of our family to pray we could bring home Chase by Tuesday and sure enough by Tuesday late afternoon they released us with oxygen. We strongly believe it was because of so many of your faith and prayers that he has done so well. I took him to his pediatrition yesterday and he told me that Chase is much better than he had expected.

Christmas

We had a wonderful Christmas. We were greatly blessed to have one set of grandparents for the last few weeks. This was the first time we have had any immediate family come to our home for Christmas. Abbie, Porter, Makelle, and Chase have LOVED having them here. The kids really enjoyed the wonderful gifts from everyone. Everyone had more fun being together than actually getting presents.