More party pictures!

Libbi's quilt

For Libbi's birthday we had a quilt made for her. This isn't just any quilt, it's a special quilt, for a special gal :)
It's so soft, she LOVES it!
..it even doubles as a tumbling mat!
It's so big, she will be able to use it forever and ever.
She's pretty happy with the curly ribbon that was on the wrapping, maybe i wasted my money on the quilt, i should've just bought her ribbon!
The story behind the quilt. I decided to make Libbi a quilt to represent her 1st year of life. I picked out the fabric, cut out the squares and had these cute ladies in Logan quilt it for me. Each fabric represents something in her 1st year of life.

14 xrays (the heart paisley)

13 echos (the multi polka dots)

9 days in hospital (lighter stripes) Plus 2 for this recent stay

2 heart caths (darker pink stripes)

1 heart surgery (the brown with white polka dots) We also used this for the binding.

The plain pink and brown are just filler squares, there are 24, i decided those could easily represent how many times she's been stuck.

Compared to another heart baby, this is not much, but compared to my other children, she has been through a lot her first year of life! She's such a trooper, we love her so much!

Grammy's bday in the hospital

Ok its getting a little ridicuolous in our family. Sicknesses everywhere!! I wrote about Anna, so she spent the weekend of the 5th at PCMC. Then Libbi got sick with nasty flu/throw up/poop bug and got put in the hospital the weekend of the 13th, which happens to be my moms birthday! THEN Anna just spent the weekend of the 20th in the hospital for RSV, so she missed Libbi's party, which was sad, they are best of friends :) I'll be honest i'm a little afraid what this weekend may bring. We're setting quite the trend. Let's hope not i'm not sure i can handle another hosptial stay.

Happy Birthday to Grammy!!
She tried popsicles, not sure she liked the cold feeling

This is her new 'trick' i'm certain she learned it from her sister who rolls around the house rather than walking. If we say Libbi do tumbling, this is what we get :)

Chillin with dad watching March Madness

For future sake i am going to type a long boring report of her sickness. Read at your own risk :)

Libbi started throwing up on a Tues night. We heard her making some noise, waited a bit then went back to sleep when we felt like she was ok, if we go in her room, we wake her up and she makes noises alot in her sleep, coughing etc. The next morning we discovered she had thrown up. Talk about feeling like a piece or crap mom! She didn't make more than a tiny peep in the night, i had no idea she was puking all over herself :( Wednesday she threw up a couple times, one of which was in the car, again i didn't even know til i got home and went to get her out. Not a peep! She threw up again that night, we got up cleaned her up and went to bed. The next morning, she had thrown up on herself again, without us knowing! We heard nothing, and let me reassure you, i am a heavy sleeper but Kurt IS NOT! He wakes up to every sound she makes. By Thursday i decided to call the Dr, mainly to make sure he would be in on Friday if i needed him. When she was throwing up, it wasn't alot coming out, and she really wasn't throwing up a ton, only maybe 5 times in the 2 days. I was mostly being paranoid due to Anna's weird virus she had just been in the hospital for. Well of course he wanted to see her, even after me saying, "i really think she's fine, should we give it another day?" So i took her in on Thursday and at first Dr. Rose was thinking she had a bt shunt, so he was worried about blood clotting in her shunt from being dehydrated. We then talked and he realized she did not have a bt shunt, he still felt he should hospitalize her, just to make sure her heart was ok. She showed NO signs of dehydration. She wasn't lethargic, and her skin would come back to the normal color in just a couple seconds when you would press on it.(that's a test of dehydration i guess) Well, once she was admitted and had the blood work done, she was way worse than he had anticipated. Her blodd sugar was extremely (dangerously as he worded it) low. And her bicath (i think) was way low too, meaning she was very dehydrated. Ok so i just have to throw this out there, her oxygen is always low, her hemadocrit is always high, do you think these numbers may be off due to her heart, and maybe she wasn't really that sick at all??? I don't know, just my thoughts because again, she showed NO signs of dehydration. Anyway, she stayed Thur and Fri night and got to come home Saturday afternoon. I had to take her in for blood work twice last week and he wants me to take her again this week sometime, her liver enzymes were a little high still, and he wanted to make sure her blood sugar stayed up. I'm just getting up the courage to go :) Her 1 year well visit was yesterday so she had 4 shots! Yes 4! So i thought i'd give it a day or 2 before more pokes. She is fine and well now, thank goodness! Thanks for reading if you did, i know that was alot of boring information for most of you :)

Happy Birthday to Libbi!!!

WOW!!! Lots of emotions going on today. I have been thinking back to 1 year ago and it is tough. My mother in law tells me to stop doing that. I am trying but it's natural it think :) I can't believe how far we've come in 1 year. How far Libbi has come! But today is a day of celebration so i will save the 'feelings' post for later. Our plan for the day includes
1. waiting for Libbi to wake up so we can sing to her!
2. dressing her up, doing her hair and getting her all pretty!
3. decorating the house, and o my do we have lots of decorations!
4. letting Libbi do whatever the heck she wants, she's the boss today! (of course within safety limits)
5. kissing, hugging, ooooing and aaaahhhing over her ALL day!
6. singing more happy birthday songs, some of which i'm sure we will make up as we go!
7. Taking lots and lots of pictures and videos (stay tuned)
8. running around, pick up Libbi's cake, make cake for adults to eat.
9. Put her pictures in frames all over the house to display!
10. 3pm PARTY!!!!!!!! Woot Woot!
What a fun day, i can't even wait for her to wake up, maybe i should wake her? O but wait, that would conflict with #4. I guess i will be patient :)


ANNA
Now on a sad side note, our little Anna(15 months) who is my brother (Chase) and his wife's (Jana) baby, and Libbi's bestest friend, is spending Libbi's birthday in the hospital. 2 weekends ago she spent a few days down at PC with an unknown virus, losing her hair, sores in her mouth and weird head stuff going on, like her head had soft spots all over and a rash. After an MRI, cat scan and some other tests, they sent her home with a diagnosis of 'unknown' or 'just a virus' well she has never really got better. Once she got home, she still threw up and had diahrea. This week she got a cough and the head symptons returned. They noticed the sores in her mouth were back, or never really went away. Jana demanded blood work be done, they are still waiting for results on some but RSV came back positive, they admitted her last night and they now think she has pnemonia. Her fever was 105 last night at the hospital. Poor family, my heart just hurts for them. Please keep them in your prayers and if any of you have ANY idea what may be going on with her, let's hear it. For now, it's still a mystery.

Heather :)

I went today, requested the iv team, was told that the iv team will only come if she had a pic line, told them the problem, they said they'd give me someone different, Heather walks out, i told Heather to please not stick her if she wasn't confident there was a good vein, Heather pokes around a bit, says she's feeling good, pokes Libbi, draws blood, give Libbi a treat and we were done! How easy was that! Thank you Heather! I will be requesting you from now on.
The Dr. office just called and her blood sugar was 69, which is good! He wants me to take her Monday again just to be sure it stays up so we will be seeing Heather in a couple days :)
Things are good, life is grand. Libbi will be 1 in 2 days!! More like 1 day since today is practically over :)

Feeling weak

I have officially hit a wall. I feel like i am giving up. I can't even begin to explain how much i hurt for all of you mothers you have it WAY worse than i do. This is really not that big of a deal but Dr Rose called today and said the blood work we had done on Monday was still concerning, low blood sugar and low (something else, can't even remember) but it means she's still dehydrated. He wants me to take her again in the morning to see what her numbers are. Well since all she has done since Monday is poop, i'm pretty sure they won't be real great. I am so scared they are going to put her back in the hospital. I can't do it again. I can't even take her to the lab to get stuck again, i've asked my mom to please take her. Let me tell you the problems with the arm stickers at Mckay Dee. They aren't trained in pediatrics, or if they are, they need more. At Primarys, they were so good at finding veins, but when i take her to the lab here it's always the same story, "We need to strap her down, she's soo strong!" "We can't find a vein, her veins are so tiny!" " We need to try the other arm" "O this arm is worse!" ...and so on. After 20 minutes of hyperventalating from screaming so hard, 3-4 pokes later, 2 pink arm bands, and a treat from the box (let's be honest, that does NOT help!) we are headed home. Seriously so heart wrenching. I know, i'm being a baby. I am trying to be strong, i just needed to vent :)
Help me, give me advice on how to stay strong for my baby girl. I am weak.

15 hours of sleep!

Libbi went down at 4pm last night, woke up at 8:30 this morning!! Holy cow she must've been tired! It was daylight savings so even though she woke up at 8:30 it was more like 7:30 in real life :) Still, that's alot of sleep! And the sadest part was, she was covered in poop when i went in to check on her, i actually woke her at 8:30 to clean her up because it was EVERYWHERE! Who knows how long she would've slept if i hadn't woke her up! Poor girl! But so happy to be home :)