Monday, April 30, 2007

WalkAmerica 2007









WalkAmerica was awesome! We showed up at the walk site in Minneapolis at about 10am on Sunday. We registered and stopped at the family tent where Isaac played a couple games. It was pretty hot out- 80's and very sunny. A perfect day. The kids got a little hot, but they had plenty of water. The walk was 4.6 miles for the short loop, or 8 miles for the long. Since we had the kids along, we did the 4.6 miles loop. The girls rode in the double stroller, and Isaac rode his bike and walked some. They did great! Bella had a double ear infection, but was actually pretty good, considering.

The girls had matching shirts made by a lady from our preemie parenting board (www.brightlittlebeginnings.com). Isaac, Todd and I wore "Three Little Peanut" team shirts:) It was a great time and we will definitely be making it a yearly thing. Thanks again to everyone who supported us in our walk!

After the walk, we headed to the NICU Reunion at Children's. I will post about that when I get a chance....

Wednesday, April 25, 2007

Hard Work


Isabella has been working so hard lately. She is now pulling up next to toys and furniture. We couldn't be more pleased! She is such a determined little girl. I still can't fathom the idea that she will be 1 next month.



All that hard work tuckered somebody out.



For some reason we haven't been able to get Isabella to eat baby food. I don't think she cares for the texture. She loves her rice cereal though. Recently, we have tried a few solids: crackers, noodles, cheerios. She seems to like them, so I am thinking she is just going to skip the whole baby food thing??

Monday, April 23, 2007

Goal reached!

Thank you to everyone who has donated to our March of Dimes walk! We met our goal of $500 for WalkAmerica. We couldn't have done it without all of you. We are still taking donations, and are excited to collect beyond our goal. It would be great if we could even make it to 1000. If you still want to donate, you can click on the link to the right for our walk. We appreciate it! I will post pictures from the walk after next weekend. I better run, lunch is burning in the oven....

Wednesday, April 18, 2007

WalkAmerica 2007 ~ Helping save babies



It is almost time (April 29) for Todd, the kids, and I to participate in our first WalkAmerica. We have been waiting to do this for awhile, but this is the first year we haven't been dealing with a bedrest, NICU, or a baby home on equipment. We are very excited! WalkAmerica is put on by the March of Dimes, and helps raise money to go toward the fight against prematurity and birth defects. We have been thru this nightmare 3 times, so this cause is close to our hearts. We set our goal at $500, and right now still need $230 to meet our goal. We would love if we could even surpass it! Please consider giving to this worthy cause. Even if it's only a few dollars. Our website to donate online is:
http://www.walkamerica.org/379120
If the link doesn't work, it is also to the upper right.
We appreciate every donation, no matter how big or small. Prematurity and birth defects are the leading cause of death in the first year of life. We are walking to make a difference!

Thursday, April 12, 2007

Bella's First Easter

We had a great Easter this year. We were able to visit both sides of our family as it's the end of cold season. I think it's the first time in a few years that it's
worked out. Since the girls were born very early we haven't been able to be around alot of people with colds in the winter, so it seems we always ended up cancelling holidays at the last minute.

Here are some pictures from Easter weekend. I had a hard time choosing, so there's

alot!

Kids with their Easter baskets



Making pancakes
Isaac and Savannah made pancakes with Papa before church


Ready for church
This was Bella's first time going to church (other than her baptism). We dressed the girls in matching dresses. Isaac was very proud of his suit too:) We went with nana,papa, and uncle Ben.







Finding eggs
After church the kids found eggs. Bella was busy with other things, like sitting with papa and checking out her basket.



...more Easter

Next we were off to grandma and grandpa Roisum's house.

Another egg hunt
Here is Isaac with all the eggs he found.

Isaac with cousins Jack and Noah


With grandma and grandpa
Here are the kids with grandma and grandpa, and then with all the grandkids.



Magic touch
Great aunt Darcy and Aunt Anne sure had the magic touch with Isabella.



Fun, fun, fun

Easter fun at home

Coloring eggs
Isaac and Savannah had fun coloring Easter eggs.



The final product. Notice Bella trying to eat the eggs, shell and all!



Chocolate bunnies



Wednesday, April 4, 2007

Isabella



This vent is so interesting!

Well, some people have been asking why I haven't posted about Bella in awhile, so I thought I better update. I think I have just been avoiding it b/c it always seems like there is so much going on.

Her physical therapy is going great. I have been working with her everyday on exercises to help her right side. She has come a long way, and it only took a few weeks of this to get her looking alot better. At this point, probably only myself and PT might be able to see that she uses her left side more, so I feel better about that. She is starting beginning crawling, and it's so exciting to see her scoot across the room to get something. I have noticed her right eyelid drooping more when she is tired, but it doesn't seem excessive when she is wide awake. She is still doing some of her strange head jerking, so hopefully nothing comes of that. The doctor mentioned seizures. It seems to be more confined to when she is tired. The doctor is watching her explosive head growth, so hopefully these things are just all coincidence. I didn't push the issue too much b/c overall things are going better than a month ago, and she is starting to reach some important milestones. Time will tell a lot.

Feeding has been interesting. She is now on all formula. The doctor wanted us to keep her on higher cal stuff, but getting whole bottles of that made her spit up huge volumes. We stopped that and moved on to soy. After being on that for 3 weeks she got an awful case of eczema, to the point where her calves were peeling. I took her in and they gave me a steroid cream with bactroban to put on it. They also sent in some blood (GETTING IT WAS NOT EASY!) for food allergy testing, since Savannah had such a problem with that. The doctor actually called at lunch today to let me know they all came back negative! WOOHOO. I am SOOO happy. Food allergies can be awful to deal with. The cream has cleared the eczema up wonderfully and so she said to keep it for the next flare-up. We ended up going off the soy, as our living room carpet was starting to smell like one of those dog food grain elevator things you pass on the side of the road. We will have to borrow mom's carpet cleaner (hint, hint- we'll be there Easter:)) Now we are trying Gentlease to see if she keeps that down any better. It might just be that formula is harder for her to tolerate the doc said. She is still taking Prevacid. It's hard, because she spits up such huge amounts, and it isn't getting any better with age. Bella is also trying to take baby food. She loves thin fruits and rice cereal, but other than that she hates baby food. I am wondering if she will go straight to table food. We tried Cheerios yesterday and they were a big hit.

Sleeping. Ah, sleeping. Well, after Todd and I slept on an air mattress in the living room for a week, we decided the crib needed to be moved back out of our room and into Savannah;s. We just couldn't take the screaming anymore, and our backs couldn't take the air mattress. Originally, we wanted to wait until she was sleeping through the night (at least kind of- without screaming) to put the girls together. Also, we wanted to wait until Savannah got over the idea of hurling herself into Bella's crib. Well, we put her in there anyway. Probably not our smartest move as Bella's screaming just wakes Savannah up. This presents us with the problem of having to run in there to quiet Bella's screaming, which is ALL THE TIME. For some reason, the "crying it out" thing has not worked with her. A few times we just let them both scream, but when Bella finally quits for a minute, Savannah picks up where she left off and just gets Bella all riled up again. I guess eventually Bella's screaming will stop. I think our hair is going to go gray very fast.

Bella had her last home health visit yesterday. It went good. SHe got her last RSV shots. It will be nice to have that expense over with!:)

I am going to sign off with a few pictures from the 81 degree day we had last week. Yes, in MN, in March. Today its back in the 20's. yuck.




Like our matching shirts? Everyone loves a blue eyed girl.