Pipo's Princess

The weather was amazing today! Warm, but not too hot and perfectly sunny! This morning we did a little house work and a ton of laundry (about two weeks worth). Emma Catherine was mommy's little helper as she used the empty stick of pray n wash to "help" pretreat her clothes this morning. Check out her cleaning attire. Yes, she picked out her entire outfit from head to toe! Don't worry I successfully packed away the fleece hat and mittens when she went to take her bath!

Later in the day we all got dressed to go eat dinner with Pipo. I was sliding on my shoes when Emma Catherine walked into our closet. She immediately picked up a pair of my heels, sat on the wet bathroom rug, and took off her shoes to put mine on! Bo had to help her put on the second shoe, but she was a pro at walking in them! Oula would be so proud!

When we finally got her back into her own shoes, we headed to Roswell to eat dinner with Pipo. We didn't really plan a place to eat dinner, but just headed towards Roswell with hopes of finding a restaurant with a great patio. We lucked out and found Relish at the corner of Marietta and Mimosa in downtown Roswell. It had fabulous food and the scenery was fantastic! There was a perfect little park across the street where we took a few pictures in the gazeebo. Pipo and Emma Catherine really wore themselves out running around!

It was a beautifully blessed day!!

Fun in the Sun Picnic, Easter egg hunt, and April Fool's day!

We had a great fun in the sun picnic, April fool's day, and Easter egg hunt at Bright Generations (Emma Catherine's daycare). All the kids were very cute and had fun outside. Tatum's mom brought sunglasses and bunny ears for the girls, and sunglasses and cars for the boys. Emma Catherine loved trying to put the bunny ears and sunglasses on herself. She kept taking them off and trying to put them back on the entire ride home too! She found her first Easter egg when I had my back turned of course! But I turned around in time to see her open it to find a snack inside!

This is good stuff!!

Mommy has "first child syndrome", that is why I'm in white. Silly mommy!
What a sweet, big girl smile!
Hey good lookin'
It was a very good day! God is great!!

Smith Hall Family Reunion weekend 2010

I am having the worst time formatting these posts. The pictures always load at the top, so I have to cut and paste them where I want them to go. So please excuse the formatting - I do not have the energy to fix it right now!

We had a great time in Blakely this weekend! Emma Catherine couldn't decide if Pop or Marianna (Oula) was her favorite person! She had a fun playing on the karaoke machine with Pop and just talking with him in general.

When Pop was sitting down, she spent most of her time standing in front of him and getting him to help her with different things.

Grandma and a tired Emma Catherine

Emma Catherine patting uncle Justin's facial hair!

Emma Catherine and her Oula

Emma Catherine having fun with Oula!

Did I mention Emma Catherine loves Oula?

She loved anything Oula was doing and really like her locket! But Gran's necklace was cool too!

We all spent a lot of time talking to Emma Catherine and I think her vocabulary is growing by leaps and bounds now. She said Pop, banana, dog, no, and yummy-yummy this weekend. She has been known to say apple and happy. She is still saying mommy, daddy, bye bye, uh oh, peek a boo, more, nose, and up please - there are probably more words she is saying, I just cannot remember them all! She also attempted to repeat many sentences today - "out to the car" "want to go". She had fun acknowledging who everyone was this weekend - so she does know everyone by name! She is also getting much better at doing things you ask, like close the door or bring the cup to mommy. She is still not a big fan of dogs. She was scared to death of Zeke, but really like pointing at him and saying dog =)

Emma Catherine gave out a lot of hugs this weekend to just any and everyone, but this was by far the cutest!

Her first time in the swing! She loved it, but daddy was really tired by the time daddy got back with the camera.

She and Benjamin had a great time on the slide. He would wait for her to get back to the top of the slide so they could go down together!

This is such a great stage!

Emma Catherine officially started crawling

Emma Catherine has been "getting around" very well, but we can officially say she is a crawling girl now! Since Bo graduated last Saturday, we are getting ready for our move to Powder Springs. My parents moved to Alabama two years ago and the economy went south right after they put their house on the market. Since they haven't been in any rush to sell, we offered to rent from them until we figure out where we want to settle down. So this fine Saturday afternoon we spent the day packing with the help of Mary, Scott, and Elizabeth(and the future Ann Marie). But before Mary left Emma Catherine decided she would show off a little bit! After this full day of comotion, Emma Catherine decided the picture frames leaned again the bar where worth crawling for! And then she was off! Nothing can stop her now folks!!!

Doesn't that face just say it all! This is such perfect time too. Now leaving her at daycare will be at least a little easier knowing she will be able to get around on her own. This just keeps getting better and better. Thank you Lord for this truly incredible gift!

Our sweet Emma Catherine just after turning seven months:

Emma Catherine sat up by herself

Of course we have been doing our baby workouts since day one. Just after birth, the doctor laid Emma Catherine on my chest. The next thing I knew she had raised her little head up so she could look me in the eyes! What an incredible sight. This precious little gift from God that had been growing in my belly for months was just staring up at me! Emma Catherine's strength has continued to amaze me ever since! We started tummy time that first week. Mostly on my chest, but also for small periods on the floor on a blanket.

When she was five days old we had professional pictures made and this was a feat! Never had our extremely experienced photographers seen such an active five day old. They tried to take all those cute pictures for us, you know, where the baby is all curled up so perfectly as though it were still in utero. Not our Emma Catherine! She wanted to stretch out and lift up to enjoy the immense freedom this new world had to offer.

So like I said, we started baby workouts early. Tummy time and practice sitting were daily things. She eventually masted sitting, fighting back the huge urge to stand on her extremely strong legs. Now she just needed to learn how to get from the lying position, to the glorious sitting position! While surrounded by a group of professional cheerleaders specialized in baby cheer, Emma Catherine practiced sitting herself up on the middle of Aunt Deb's dining room table. Aunt Deb, Katie, Grammy, Poppa, Bo, and I all sat around clapping and praising her as she sat herself up again and again with a huge grin on her face. Ah, the feeling of satisfaction - and the view was amazing!!!

Four and a half months under her belt, guess what comes next...

Emma Catherine's first illness

So here is another strange illness to strike our family! And I fell in love with Emma Catherine's pediatrician - well not really, but I still miss having him as our pediatrician!

We were in Blakely (March 2009) visiting Gran and Pop when Emma Catherine woke up Saturday morning with a fever of 102. So of course I called the pediatric nurse line to get their advice. I watched her closely during the day and started to give her tylenol, but we did not notice any other symptoms. Early Sunday morning (3AM) her temperature reached 104.5. Luckily she was sleeping with us so I noticed she felt hot but her limbs were chilled. So I took her to the sink and started dousing her with warm water. Note: not cold water. She eventually took more tylenol and we called the nurse line again, just to hear them say that they didn't care to see her unless her fever got up to 105 or she had started vomitting, had blood red rash, stopped eating, stopped being responsive, stopped smiling, started sleeping constantly, etc. They actually told me that I didn't have to worry about burning brain cells until she got to 107. Seriously? What is so magical about 107 degrees that they suddenly start burning brain cells. I don't even want to play around with anything near that! And 0f course we are talking about Emma Catherine who never complains and never stops smiling unless she is at death's door! So we continued the warm water, warm compresses, tylenol, and absolutely no sleep routine until Monday morning when we barged into the pediatricians office for help.

Our pediatrician was AMAZING - just in case I didn't mention that before :) He immediately sent us to the hospital for tests he personally ordered. This was probably the worst part of it for mom and dad. The nurses had to put a canula in her hand for taking blood and administering IV meds. Poor baby, she just screamed and I had to try to calm her! Right... Then the blood test results came back and our pediatrician came over to personally do a spinal tap (see why I like him, hands on). I don't think you have ever seen a pair of parents praying so hard! This, I dare say, was probably the worst part for Emma Catherine!

After her first round of Rocephin, we got to take Emma Catherine home with the canula in her hand. The worst part now was trying to keep her from ripping the canula out of her arm. Unfortunately this brought back terrible memories from my hospital stay and I felt her pain! But we were successful at keeping it safe and the nurses were very impressed that we kept the "site" so clean. And again our pediatrician was amazing; he called us at 10:45 PM to make sure that Emma Catherine was okay, or at least not getting worse, to see if we had questions, and just to see how we were holding up. We just felt so blessed that we got to take her home that night and did not have to spend more time in Athen's Regional.

We returned to the hospital the next day for more rocephin and by 10PM that night her fever was gone! Her blood cultures never showed anything to explain why she had been so sick, but on Wednesday we got to take out her canula. And when we got home she just rolled all over the place - she was so happy to have both of her hands working and free! It was so cool and a relief to see her so happy again!! :) And then we all took a nice nap!!!

Mommy goes to the hospital - again

As if adjusting to parenthood isn't enough for anyone, we decided to throw in a serious illness to really make things challenging!!

Emma Catherine's baptism was January 13th, 2009 and also the first day of my pneumonia. I had chills and fever the night before her baptism and then it all went down hill from there.

Before my stint in hospital we made it through many challenges at home. My sister Debbie was called in for help after day two of my illness. My first antibiotic was so hard on my stomach that I was unable to care for Emma Catherine and Bo had to go to classes. Trust me, I didn't want him getting behind in school! So we went to stay with Debbie and I got a new antibiotic. This was such a difficult decision for us. Here we were a new family, just really getting settled in and then this illness would have us separated for what we thought would be just a week - it actually turned into more than a month. Yes, my illness started getting worse and we went back to the doctor. This time he placed me on a stronger antibiotic and said "it should be okay to nurse". But my pediatrician disagreed and Emma Catherine went from mommy's milk to formula cold turkey. She had nursed so well right after she was born that there was rarely a reason for her to take a bottle before, but she started taking it like a champ! God was really looking out for us! So I pumped for 41 days before I was able to nurse Emma Catherine again. I know you are thinking - that girl is crazy - but I didn't realize how long I was going to be sick when I started pumping. And after I started pumping, dealt with the clogged milk ducts, and mastitis, you better bet I was going to nurse my baby again!

So after weeks of staying with my sister, still dealing with exhaustion and fever, I felt worse than ever before and my lips started turning white with a blue rim. I went to Athens Regional for an xray and ended up in the ER. I should have known things were bad when we were walking to my room in the ER. The nurse kept turning around to look at me and asking if I needed a wheelchair. Apparently my resting heart rate had been 185 beats per minute! So when we got back to the room there were four nurses and two doctors crammed in there waiting for me! After many shots of addinison to take my heart rate down (which didn't work), xrays, ct scans, being place in isolation (with a separate air system from the rest of the hospital), and about a dozen doctors looking at my charts in amazement I did get better. My doctor was making fun of me for being weak because they had only seen cases of pneumonia that bad in old people and babies! But after all the blood cultures and test they never found out what caused my pneumonia or why it was so bad. I really felt even more humbled after this experience. Medicine truly had no explanation for me. It was all God, the reason I was healed, the reason my family didn't get sick, the reason we are here.

It was a long road to recovery and I still feel some of the effects when I exercise, but I sure do trust God more than ever before and in a completely new way - because doctors are only human and it was definitely God that got our family through! And I thank him every night for my sister Debbie and my momma because I'm not sure we would have made it through as well as we did without all of their help! Oh and I did get to nurse my baby girl again... and we are still going!