Halloween 2009, part 2....Sophie the St. Bernard

Determination... Excitement!!!

Independance!!!

This was at the beginning... no loot

Happy Halloween!!!!part one...

Sophie's first pumpkin carving with Daddy. She truly is VERY into this. She copied daddy's actions to a tee. What's up with the camera mom???? We're working here!

Some good ol' knife work from a 16 month old....Don't worry, daddy was close by....and he comforted me by telling me the name of that carving knife was "baby's first steak knife". hahahaha

Sophie at Daycare. They dress the kids up as a group! I think they were cats...or possibly "Wild Things"....still am not quite sure, but I love it!!!

A Frankenstein costume that a friend from Jason's work gave him... It was just for dress up! The "real" costume comes in our next set of pictures!

Just in case you forgot our little monkey was a baby last year.....Here's a tribute, to give you perspective.... And BOYYYYY has mommy aged since this photo....

More to come from tonight's Trick or Treating......tune in!!!

small blessings amidst the fears.....

Just a quick update....

Even though we are being challenged as a family right now, there are small parts of life that are glimmering through....

Sophie is sick again. Fevered, coughing, congested and generally feeling yucky. She was sent home today from Daycare...which means, no return until she is back to normal...which means...wait...Dad is not able to take anymore days right now...mom is on bed rest.....YIKES!!!!! She got progressively worse all day, to the extent of Jason and I being in total fear this evening. She wheezed, couldn't breathe, took shallow breaths....face and eyes are all puffy and weird... You parents know the look I am talking about. I have only recently memorized this face of sickness. If you add this sickness with Sophie's general state of "yeah...I had brain surgery"....you get paralyzing fears of what might happen if something goes untreated.

I was full of fear....We can't handle another set back...not this week. Give us a couple days to come up with a plan for my care, then we will tackle Sophie. Most local Grandparents are out of the question for various reasons...so I was really nervous. I called her pediatrician..they said to get her to urgent care and get her checked out...SO..off Daddy went to Morgantown to take Miss Sophie to WVU Urgent Care while I called my Dad to come and help us tomorrow so Sophie could stay home. He will be arriving in the A.M. Thanks Dad! a little spark!

Here's where the light at the end of the tunnel starts to flicker ever so small...After a 2 HOUR wait at Urgent Care..Jason and Sophie got called back. He just happen to be checked in by the SAME physician's assistant that checked her into the emergency room for a similar problem a few weeks ago. She remembered us! (It was a Saturday Game day in Morgantown and the ER was filled with drunks...well all except for our girl...Drunks and a little Angel...I'm sure that 's why she remembered us) She asked a ton of questions and when I requested the swine flu swab, they didn't even flinch....they just did it. (I was on speaker phone) Then Jason called to tell me that they diagnosed her with "daycare crud" and not flu! Whew...but wait, that was fast...are you sure??? what did they say????

This is when the light gets even a little brighter... Jas says, "Well, they said it was daycare crud, but besides that, this Doctor says he "knows Sophie and you?? I didn't know him though." " I think his last name was Lancaster???" "Once we saw the Doctor, he was really thorough and did everything really quick.."

LANCASTER!!!!!! You mean Dr. Jeff Lancaster, the ATTENDING PHYSICIAN on THE PEDIATRIC floor where Sophie and I spent an entire week????? (jason was out of town on work, so he never actually met him) The guy that took time to read this very blog and follow up on Sophie several months later??? The guy that I stopped in the hallway of the hospital to thank, fully expecting him to have no recollection of us, yet he said, "Hi Heidi! Of course I remember you, How's Sophie??? WOW, she looks great!!"

Apparently, they staff the Urgent care in Morgantown (by Applebee's) with staff doctors....Ummm that will be where we go from now on in an emergency. How lucky were we? I am 100 percent sure, that if Dr. Lancaster had any concern,he would have kept our sweet babe and put her in the hospital...I am confident because he KNOWS her history, he knows are struggles, he knows our girl and our family and he would do what he felt was right for us. Small blessings, small blessings. So now, we will mend our sick monkey and mend our sick mama...and hopefully all will return to ALMOST normal in a day or two.

On a side note...he was so very kind to send his concern for our current situation..Jason said that he made a kind comment about "5 months pregnant and on bed rest...that can be tough.." and some words of encouragement...

It's nice to be able to be a mama and daddy and take our kid to the dr. without having to go through her medical history EVERY DETAIL, every time we go to the doctors....we could just be concerned parents tonight... small gifts!

ps. My friend Jennifer's daughter was under Dr. Lancaster's care recently when she was hospitalized for viral meningitis....She's better and Jen left with the same "warm fuzzy" feeling about Dr. Lancaster. He's one of the good ones! In case any of you ever get in a scary situation in your lives with your kids. That's 2 thumbs up for Dr. L!!!!!!

Update: Full Disclosure, don't read if you don't wanna know!

Hi Folks! Sorry I haven't written in a while. It's been kinda crazy. We are expecting again, and I have been back to work. That is, until this week. We had a pretty good scare on Monday. We went for our 20 week ultrasound appointment and WHAMO...I was hospitalized. No symptoms, no signs, no clue.



They saw contractions on the ultrasound and a shortened cervix as well. By the time we drove to Ruby Hospital (10 minutes max from my Dr. office) and I had another ultrasound, I was in pre-term labor, 2 cm dilated and had a "funneling cervix". They put me on Magnesium Sulfate (the devil's own juice) and then performed a cervical cerclage. Not fun. But definitely necessary.

So now I'm home after 5 days at Ruby...on total bed rest.....for the duration of the pregnancy. Had to quit teaching, exercising, socializing, lifting up my beautiful daughter....you name it...I can't do it. No, I can't clean the house or fold laundry...Which sounds good, right????? UNTIL you see it, just lying there, waiting to be dealt with and no one can. ARGH!!!! I have bathroom privileges only. Then BACK TO BED. I'm not even allowed to cough or sneeze. Try controlling that!!!!! The good news is that I DON'T HAVE SWINE FLU. I was exposed 3 days before this whole ordeal and had some "mild" symptoms when I went into the hospital. Guess we dodged that bullet, at least.

So, hubby has to be super husband, super worker, super dad...all at one time. That's a big shift in the balance of our household. It's hardest on him because I can't let go of control....Let me tell ya, it is not easy watching someone else make decisions about your kid that you normally are in charge of. I'm a bit of a Grumpy Gus as a result. We are definitely having our moments, but he is really doing a great job adjusting to the "two kids" he now has to be in charge of.

As for Sophie, she is unfazed by all the excitement. She has learned to "kiss the baby" and precedes to blow a raspberry on my belly every chance she gets. Her new favorite word, UH OH...She still loves Dahdee and chases him around the house like a puppy. She's even been witnessed to say "MITTSY" (the cat) once too. Her walking is awesome and she is now starting to climb. She has full conversations with Jason, all in jibberish...but you can tell she has a point in mind. She also has started to respond to our requests. Pick up your sippy, hand that to daddy/mommy...stuff like that. Just in the 5 days I was in the hospital, she grew a ton. We are so proud of her. She is a wild child though! Dad has his hands full!!! We had an appointment with one of the medical professionals that follow her progress involving her head scans...She had a follow up on Thursday. He had not laid eyes on her for 4 months. The fella took time out of his day to call me in the hospital after the appointment and say how amazed he was at seeing her. He said, "Boy, she is a genius...she just takes it all in and you can see her wheels turning!" He called her really observant and said she wanted to play with his laptop the whole time!

By the way, when Lucas#2 gets here, SHE will probably be the exact same way. She is a wild monkey! Kicking, moving rolling...etc. TMI here, but the kid did not like the Foley catheter I had to have, so she preceded to sit there and kick it....over and over and over. I had to end up BEGGING the Docs to take it out!!! You could see the hoses bounce up and down. The nurses thought it was pretty funny! I did NOT enjoy the pain related to her protest though. She also would kick the heart monitor they were using to check her status....lubdublubdublubdub..CRACK!!!BOOMlubdublubdubSMASH There wasn't a nurse in the place that didn't say, "Geesh, this one is a live wire!" Her heart rate is running in the 160's....which is pretty fast. Let's just hope she is the fighter she is showing to be right now.!!!! Go kid Go!!

OK nuff for now! Thanks for listening!

Our little big eyed, smarty pants

...and the EYES have it!!!! Our girl has the strangest colored eyes. I was wishing all along that she'd take after her Dunkle heritage and get the ol' baby blues.....but alas, she has this weird combo of gray, green, and brown....but they are not what I would consider to be hazel. Very unusual.

Sophie's daddy entered her in a "longest eyelash" competition at Sears. Unfortunately, they didn't take a good picture of her eyes, so you could'nt see these amazing eyelashes. Both Jas and I had really long eyelashes as children. Sophie's are totally unreal. She's become a real social butterfly. She waves at everyone and LOVES when they smile and giggle at her. She waves to the security guards at the FBI on the way to daycare, she waves at the secretary and coordinator, she waves at all the kids when she gets there....It's a real hoot!!!!

Bear with me... This is a little long, but I'm just so darn proud of our girl. She's really starting to show her personality these days! We are very lucky!