A Rachel and Charlie Video!!

Presenting a Rachel and Charlie exclusive video shot and edited by my very awesome and talented brother, Mike, and sister-in-law, Meredith. They own their own company, moho creative, and are doing some great work. Check out their site and pass along their name!

And now the feature film!


Rachel & Charlie - 2012 from moho creative on Vimeo.

Lunch With My Cutie

Struggling

Charlie, even though he is a joy, is not an easy baby. Has never been easy. We are struggling with getting him to sleep in his crib. He will be six months old on the 12th and I don't see crib sleeping happening any time soon. The problem is that he needs to be bounced to sleep in his chair. He isn't the baby you can rock to sleep in your arms or lay down and have him fall asleep on his own. He needs to be swaddled but is able to roll over onto his stomach so that really isn't safe. You would think that he would be happy falling asleep on his tummy. Nope. He screams even louder! I tried very unsuccessfully three times today to get him to nap in his crib. He wanted NOTHING to do with it and fought me for almost 5 hours. I finally gave in and put him in his chair. He slept for over 2 hours. I am soooo tired of lugging that chair around and spending hours of my life bouncing him to sleep. I am soooo ready for him to be able to get to sleep on his own without screaming his poor little head off but I am clueless on how to get there. He also still wakes up every three hours at night wanting to eat. We are tired and feeling defeated. Everyone keeps telling us it will get easier. When? Oh dear lord, when??

Say Cheese!

Went to the dentist with Rachel earlier this week. It was time for her 6 month check-up and cleaning. She did pretty good. Didn't put up too much of a fight while they cleaned her teeth and checked for cavities. BUT, I did find out why our girl hasn't been quite herself lately. She has more teeth coming in than I thought! I knew she had two pointers on the bottom coming in but we were able to see two more top MOLARS coming in and the dentist thinks the top pointers will be coming in shortly as well! Good lord! The poor girl has a mouthful of new teeth. No wonder she's been so crabby with us. She did get to pick out another prize from their huge prize selection. Last time she picked out a rubber ducky. This time - streamers on a stick! I hope this is a sport in the Olympics because Rachel would win gold.



And just because I can't help myself....here are some pics of our cute boy.

Rachel in a Bag

You too can have cuteness in a bag!

Month 5

Crayons and Spoons

Ah, the small milestones. Do you remember when your child first fed themselves with a spoon? When they first started to scribble with crayons? If you are the parent of a typical child, then you might have a general idea. If you are the parent of a special needs child, you bet you write that stuff down in their baby book!

After months and months and months of Rachel's EI therapist trying to get Rachel to activly participate in scribbling, she finally did it. And it was Christmas morning. She received some new palm held crayons and a book of paper from my cousin as a gift. I took one out, put it in her hand and something clicked. "Hey, this IS fun!" She wouldn't let me take them away and kept picking up the paper and running around the house with it to sit and "draw". She now loves to decorate the bathroom with her bath crayons. This picture doesn't do her art justice. She had every surface up to her head covered in red, orange, green, blue and purple. I opened the door to yell down to Stephen to grab the camera and when I turned back I saw that Rachel decided to taste the crayon. She didn't like it one bit and hasn't done it since!

We've also been working on the spoon with Rachel for what seems like forever. Two nights ago, I gave her a bowl of sticky cheesy pasta and a spoon. She took that spoon and carefully put it in the bowl, scooped it up against the side of the dish, and put it in her mouth. She has never done that before. And here she just does it like she's been doing it for years. Rachel, welcome to big girl land! Next up, the fork and drinking from an open cup!

Charlie wanted to say hello, too.

Last but not least, I want to thank my friend and fellow blogger over at Hurdles of Life, Love & Family. She designed my new blog look! Feel free to stop by her blog and say hello!

Under Construction (again)

Please pardon the blog dust...I'm trying to find a new look for our blog!

Nephrologist

Rachel had her annual 6 month appointment with her kidney doc. He took at look at her blood work that she had done a couple weeks ago. He said that going by the blood work, her growth and by my reports on her health, Rachel is doing very well. He explained more about what was going on with her kidneys and I finally understand what hydronephrosis means. Rachel's kidneys never got to fully develop because of being born so early. Her kidneys are also damaged. Over time our kidneys take a lot of punishment and that slowly wears them down. Some people's kidneys are worse than others. Rachel's kidneys are functioning about 80-90 percent. Every six months we'll check to see how they are keeping up with Rachel's growth. As long as her growth is ok and her blood work is ok, then we have nothing to worry about. If the blood work comes back funky at any time, then we'll have to start talking medication. If the medication stops working, then we talk transplant. The doctor explained that this is a really slow progressing disease. That it can take 10 years before we see any signs of the prematurity and damage that has been done to Rachel's kidneys. He said that it is also something that you may never know you have, that he's had teenagers who went in for a broken bone, had blood work done only to find out they are in renal failure! At least we have a heads up on Rachel's issue and we can monitor it and treat it before it gets totally out of hand.

Let's Goooooo....

Mountaineers!!! Rachel and Charlie were ready to cheer on the Eers. I think their participation helped WVU win the Sugar Bowl. :)