The Crigler Crew

Two Years Old

2011-08-04T08:46:00.000-07:00

Dearest Perron,

How could it be that you are already two years old. In fact you are two and a month and a half to be exact. The time has gone so quickly and your sweet spirit and hilarious personality continue to fill our hearts with love. You have been VERY busy these past few months. You have been talking up a storm and it makes it very hard to believe that just six short months ago you only had a couple of sounds and no real words. I am sure you will be graduating from speech therapy at your upcoming annual evaluation. I was talking to Meaghan this morning and it seems like there really is no word that you will not try to say. Granted, we don't always understand what you are saying, but it doesn't keep you from saying it. some of your favorites are:

pongo (piano)
lin (violin)
El Mouse (Mickey Mouse)
Kanzie (McKenzie)
Gabu (Meaghan)

You will run around, climb up on things, jump off things etc and then yell careful. You also love to say neato and yummo. You love saying Hi (insert just about any thing here). I frequently will hear Hi Mommy Hi Mommy Hi Mommy Hi Mommy over and over again. You love to come grab my hand and tell me "walk" and lead me all over the house to wherever you have decided we need to go. This morning while I was getting ready for work you came in to the bathroom and told me to "sit play" because you wanted me to come into your playroom to sit down and play with you. I was happy to oblige. You still LOVE Sesame Street and Elmo remains your favorite. You can pretty much name every single character on the show and you could watch Elmo DVDs all day long if we let you.

In fact, you had an Elmo Theme birthday party at Gymboree for your 2nd birthday party. You had the BEST time and were such a little ham. You even were able to blow out the two candles on your birthday cake perfectly. The candles are your favorite part. You have had a lot of friends have birthday parties recently and before we go we always practice singing happy birthday. At the end of the song you always say candles (which sounds more like congoles). I have to remind you each time that you won't be the one blowing out the candles this time.

You are a very busy, rambunctious boy. Which if evidenced by the number of boo-boo's that you accumulate on a regular basis. Your biggest boo-boo to date is your broken arm. That is right, you broke your arm three days before your second birthday. You fell running around in mommy and daddy's room and broke your ulna. You are such a strong, brave boy that we didn't even realize something was wrong with it for three days and it took five days to get a cast on it. You are currently the proud owner of a red cast that goes up to your should. In true Perron spirit, you have not let it slow you down one bit. You still run, jump and climb as if it never happened. You love pointing to your arm when people ask what happened and tell them "Boo Boo Cast".

You love to read and we spend a lot of time reading the same books over and over. But even more than reading, you LOVE music. I have never seen a child love music more than you. You are constantly asking me to turn one of your CDs on. You will say "munich, munich, munich (your word for music)" over and over until I turn it on. Your favorite song is the choo-choo song from your Kindermusik CD and you could listen to that song 20 times in a row and never get sick of it. In fact, I am quite certain we have listened to it 20 times in a row. You love going to Kindermusik and your music therapy classes. You are the star of both of those shows. You still love to conduct and always want to watch classical music concerts and gamma and ganpa's house.

Even though a tiny bit of the terrible twos have hit, you still remain one of the sweetest, most loving children I know. You love to snuggle with mama. You are such a happy boy and your sweet giggle is music to our ears. You have grown into such a big boy, and your daddy and I love you so much. You will never be able to comprehend the true joy you have brought into our lives. You are the best, most important thing we have ever done.

We love you!

Mommy and Daddy

Casa Crigler

2011-07-05T20:34:00.000-07:00

After my months of blog hiatus, I am coming back to talk about a new project in the Crigler Crew's life. Perron is doing fabulous and I can't believe he will be two in less than two weeks. I promise I will do a post on him soon, but for now...on to our big new project.

The Crigler Crew is expanding...no not that kind of expanding...rather we are expanding our house! We began a huge construction project right after Memorial Day. We are adding about 650 square feet of living space to our main level and have dug out to create a two car garage. Can you believe it!?! A two car garage! I honest to God have never ever parked in a garage in my entire life. Literally never! I am a little nervous because I am not known for my excellence in spacial judgement, so I am affraid that the Accord might have an inappropriate meeting with the side of the garage. I guess we will just have to wait with baited breath and see.

I have the floorplan to post but its a PDF and I can't figure out how to convert it to a JPEG, so my description will have to do. We currently live in a four bedroom , 2 bath 1950s ranch. We will be taking it to a four bedroom, three bath house. We are techinically adding a bedroom a because we are turning our current fourth bedroom (which is stephen's office) into a Jack and Jill bathroom to connect the existing guest bedroom with the new bedroom. Perron is getting a big upgrade in space and is moving into a much larger bedroom. Stephen is getting a big down grade and is having to move his office into Perron's bedroom. He will survive though. :) Oh and did I mention that I am going to get a fabulous new laundry room that is big enough for a washer, dryer, full-size refrigerator, a utility sink and a mudroom area. Yipee! I know it is sad to get this excited about a laundry room, but seriously when does mommy ever get a space all to herself? We are also adding a new family room/playroom in the back of the house too. That means that I finally get a dining room in the room that is now Perron's playroom. Another yipee!

Of course, as with all construction projects, there have been some surprises along the way. The first one was a big surprise. We were supposed to begin the construction process on Monday May 2nd. As many of you know, the events of April 27th changed that start day slightly. While we were spared the damage seen in Tuscaloosa and parts of Birmingham, our neighborhood took a direct hit from an F2 tornado in the early morning hours of April 27th. We live in an area of very mature oak and pine trees and there was severe damage and one death in the neighborhood. We were blessed beyond measure because we did not have any damage to our house, but it definitely slowed things down. Especially because we needed to have six large tree removed from our yard before construction began.

The second surprise is that we apparently have an active spring that lives underneath our deck and wants to drain directly into the new addition. That was an exciting discovery. When they first hit it we assumed it might be an old field line and thought it would eventually drain dry. Well it has been six weeks and we are still draining water at a steady pace. Maybe we can start bottling it and selling it to help fund the addition. That would help a lot since we have been seem to be spending money like its water. No pun intended...unfortunately. :)

The third surprise isn't really a surprise per say, but I guess it is more the extent to which it has happened. Our yard is DESTROYED! I expected the back yard to be bad, but we have a mountain of dirt that takes up half of our back yard that is over 5 feet high in some places. It is going to take a lot of work to get grass back there again!

Stephen has been sweet enough to be taking pictures of the process. Unfortunately he was so focused on taking pictures of the house before we lost the trees, that he forgot to take any pictures of the back of the house pre-construction. Oh well, you will just have to use your imagination. The sweet hubby spent his lunch hour yesterday taking pictures of the interior framing so I will share that next time.

Hear and There

2011-03-16T10:15:00.000-07:00

Yes, I purposely used the word hear instead of here in the title. I am not great at grammar, but give me some credit. I wanted to use the word hear, because we are finally starting to hear some real words out of little Perron. He now has six words that he can use pretty consistently. I know he is not nearly caught up to where he should be, but we are very proud of him. He can now say mama, dada, uh oh, up, ball, and grandma.

We have been calling my mom Grammy since he was little little, but he somehow has picked up on his own variation of the word grandma. He now calls my mom gamma (pronunced gam-maw). I hear it ALL DAY LONG. He brings me the phone and says gamma...he points to the door and says gamma...he sees a car and says gamma. Sometimes he just says gamma gamma gamma over and over again until I cave and call her to put her on speaker phone. That boy LOVES his gamma.

He says up and it is so cute because it frequently sounds like pup. He is starting to get good at associating up with wanting to be picked up. We are working on having him say it every time he reaches for us. We will see how it goes.

He also has a huge fascination with all things basketball (he is his daddy's son). He is constantly throwing basketballs around the house. He loves watching it on TV and will stand in front of the TV screeching and pointing to make sure you are watching whenever it is on. He is going to be in heaven during March Madness. I am afraid we are going to have to DVR some games so he still has something to watch when basketball season is over. Anyhoo, that leads to his latest word addition. Ball. He just started saying it yesterday. Stephen has watching Alabama in the NIT and clear as day he said ball. He kind of draws it out, so it sound longer than it should, but it is so cute.

Hopefully with all these new word additions it will open up he language a little and he will quickly add more words. His speech therapists has talked about getting him in this language intensive that she runs through his early intervention provider. It is like a modified Mother's Day out where he would go every Friday for an hour and a half and have on-site therapy. She is coming this Friday so we will see when he is going to start.

Railroad Park

2011-02-03T16:30:00.000-08:00

Birmingham has recently been blessed with two things. One was a weekend of warm weather right in the middle of winter (which is ironic seeing as now it is iced over outside). The other was the recent opening of Railroad Park in downtown. We went for the first time this past weekend to have a picnic and enjoy the nice day and I was TOTALLY impressed. It is right in between Southside and downtown Birmingham and I really think it is going to do great things for the rehabilitation of that area. Perron is obssessed with choo-choo's so he thought it was awesome because an active train line runs right on the edge of the park. I honestly felt like I was in a much bigger city, with a vibrant urban center when we were down there. They are doing a lot of development next to the park, including building a new baseball stadium for our minor league baseball team right next to the park. We are so excited to see what happens to the area as it continues to grow. For now though, it is still a huge asset to the community and we will definitely be going back quite a bit in the spring.

While we were there Perron got to go on his first picnic and enjoy big open spaces to run around in. He was so precious. We took some pictures and I am finally going to get some photos posted up here. I bet y'all were starting to forget what he looked like. Don't worry...he is just as precious as ever. Enjoy!

Poor McKenzie

2011-02-03T09:37:00.000-08:00

So for those of you that don't know us in real life (which let's be honest, might be like one person reading this blog), we have a precious fur baby that was our first child. Stephen's "Aunt" ML gave her to us after Stephen and I had only been six dating six months. That was seven years ago and she has been a huge part of our family since that time. Last year she had to have TPLO surgery on both of her back legs. Basically she blew out both of her knees and had to have her knees rebuilt. They go in and cut the leg bone and create a less severe angle to the bone and then put a plate and a bunch of screws in and re-attach the ligament. If you are dying for a more scientific and accurate description you can check it out here. It is a very difficult and expensive surgery and the recovery is tremendous. The rehab process is 12 weeks and it is very demanding on Stephen because she basically has to be almost completely immobile for 6 weeks and then can only be walked on a leash for another six weeks after that.

After she had her first knee done, she blew out her second knee literally within five minutes of coming off of her 12 weeks of rehab. It was only a partial tear at the time so we did another 12 weeks of rehab, hoping we could strengthen the area around it without surgery. Unfortunately that did not work as planned and she ended up having to have another knee surgery and 12 more weeks of rehab.

Fast-forward to Friday a week ago. I noticed on Friday morning that she was limping and would occasionally not put one of her paw pads down. We didn't think too much of it because we thought she might have hurt her paw pad running around. On Saturday she was not acting any better and we could not find something wrong with her paw pad, so Stephen took her in to the vet. The vet thought she might have sprained her ankle or have an infection in her ankle joint. She sent us home with some anti-inflammatories and said to bring her back if she wasn't getting better. Well, she didn't get better and at times is was getting worse so Stephen took her back in last Friday. The vet observed some new tenderness in the knee but couldn't determine what it was and wanted us to see our specialist.

We took her in on Monday and got the bad news. Apparently the ligament that holds her knee cap in place had stretched and her knee cap was sliding in and out. That meant more surgery. Boo for all of us! She had the surgery on Tuesday and got to come home yesterday. She is pitiful, but hopefully will be feeling better in the next couple of weeks.

Here is the kicker(s). Kicker number one. MY POOR WALLET. I am not going to tell you what we have had to spend on her legs over the past 13 months, but sufficed to say it would have paid my car off. Kicker number two. The rehab from this surgery is still twelve weeks. To make matters worse, because the bone wasn't cut she feels much better much faster so keeping her calm will be a challenge. Kicker number three. We have a very active 18 month old in the house who doesn't understand why he can't "pet", pull, poke, jump on the dog.

It is going to be a long 12 weeks.....

What's Going On

2011-01-25T12:13:00.000-08:00

So, long time no talk. I can't believe I have turned in to such a slacker about this blog. It has really gotten to the point that something has to give and the blog has been the thing to go. However, this has caused me a tremendous amount of guilt, so I am going to try to get back on the bandwagon. I love reading other people's blogs and I love having all the memories that I am able to capture in my own...so it is time to get more diligent about it.

So, what have we been up to all these many months. Basically everything and nothing all at the same time. I guess that is how life is. Work has been going well for Stephen and I. He is gearing up for busy season, but things shouldn't get too bad. I continue to get to enjoy my Friday's off with Perron and try to make the most of them. I am truly blessed to work for such a flexible company.

I have really gotten into sewing as a new hobby. I have always been fascinated with the concept of sewing, but never really tried doing anything about it. The thought of making things that you can actually use in your house or wear is really appealing to me. I took my first lesson before Christmas and I am back at my second class right now. If all goes well, I will be able to make Perron's Easter outfit this year. so far so good. I will be really proud if it turns out alright. I am absolutely OBSESSED with fabrics and have really been buying entirely too much of it right now. As Stephen would say, my raw inventory is way up and my finished inventory is...basically non-existent. Hopefully that will all change soon. I have three very good girlfriends that are all pregnant with their second child right now, so I will have plenty of people to be making for. In fact, one of our friends just found out she is having a little girl, so I will be in a frenzy of onesie dress making soon. I am really happy and hope I can stick with it. I have a terrible habit of getting really interested in something and thing dropping it like a hot potato.

Stephen and I are in the middle of a dilemma over what to do about our house. We LOVE our neighborhood and the area of town we live in, so we were hopeful that we could add on. We had plans drawn up for a lovely addition and were one step away from breaking ground before the ca bosh got put on our plans. The appraisal that we had done came in well below what we needed it to be to feel comfortable moving forward, so we had to put our plans on hold. Right now we are waiting until spring. At that time we are going to meet with a real estate agent and have them show us properties that are in our price range and have all the things we want. We will also get the realtor to take a look at our plans and let us know what she thinks the house is worth currently and what it would be worth if we moved forward with the addition. After those steps are taken, hopefully we will have some clarity on how we should proceed. I don't want to move, but we definitely need more space one way or another.

Other than that, nothing much else to report. I promise to be better about blogging and will do a fun picture post soon so everyone can see how big Perron has gotten!

18 Months

2011-01-25T11:55:00.000-08:00

Dearest Perron,

Where has the time gone? How could 18 months of our life fly past so quickly. It seems like just yesterday you were a tiny newborn in my arms and now you are a vibrant, rambunctious toddler running through my house. I have meant to capture you at every month like i did for your first year, but life has gotten in the way. Working and raising a baby and trying to still be a decent wife, friend and human being takes a lot of time! So I am going to take this half way mark to your second year as an opportunity to reflect on where all you have been these past six months.

You started walking right around fourteen months and by fifteen months you were completely mobile and ON THE GO. You have yet to slow down. You took your first real steps on the night of the Alabama vs Duke football game. Isn't that the way it should be in the south...major milestones marked by college football events. :) We were over at our good friends the Taylor's house and Ethan must have inspired you because you just started to take steps. We were so proud of you and surprised that you got on the move at such a young age.

You can now climb proficiently pretty much anywhere you want to go. You have a Little Tykes slide and you love to climb up the ladder, stand on the top and raise your hands in the air. Quite the little daredevil. You can also climb up and down the step to your playroom and to our room very easily. You still need to hold on with one hand, but you can easily maneuver up and down.

Speaking of your playroom, you loving being in there and playing with all your toys. You are such a good independent player. You can entertain yourself for quite a while looking at books and playing with your toys. You developed a fascination with all things Elmo about three months ago. You LOVE him, which we find ironic since you have never watched even a second of Sesame Street. The love affair all began with your Elmo bathtub spout cover and just grew from there. You love Elmo books, pictures, toys, basically anything Elmo. Santa brought you a Hokey Pokey Elmo and Grammy and Grampy got you an Elmo camera for Christmas and they are two of your favorite toys. Daddy and I have all of the songs and sayings memorized.

Speaking of Christmas, we had a great holiday. You loved Christmas even though you did not truly understand the concept. What you did understand was that you were getting tons of presents and attention and you TOTALLY loved that. We got to stay in Birmingham and spend christmas with mommy's side of the family. It was really nice, especially since Aunt Diana and Uncle Trae got to come up to celebrate with us. You got showered with gifts. You got a bit riding pony and a wagon from santa. You love bouncing on your pony. You will squeal and bounce up and down and then stop and pet its mane and give it a hug. You are such a sweet boy!

You can imitate several phrases now. When we tell you to ride 'em cowboy or to ride the pony you do this uneven hopping thing like you are riding on a horse. It is hysterical. You can pretend to wash your hands when people ask you to. You rub your belly in a circular motion whenever you like something or someone tells you something is yummy to your tummy. You also will pretend like you are swimming in the bathtub, but there is a small catch. Instead of laying in the water and swimming you stand up and paddle the air like you are swimming. HILARIOUS! We definitely have gotten some of these little tricks on the camera.

You are not really talking yet, but you are getting some help with that. You started speech therapy last month and we really like your therapist Ms. Meredith. We are hopeful that we can get you going soon. Right now you can say da-da and ga-ga with much proficiency, but that is about it. I am dying for the day when you will regularly call me mama. You have started saying it a little bit here and there, so hopefully you will start soon. The therapist says you should say anywhere from 18-20 words at this point, so we have a little catching up to do. We know you will get there soon though!

You continue to be quite the busy boy. You go to classes at the Zoo, Gymboree, Kindermusik, and story time. Ms. Meaghan takes such good care of you and makes sure that you are happy and entertained during the day. You are such a sweet boy and whenever we take you anywhere you are constantly waving at people and smiling your cute little smile. You definitely are a charmer...watch out ladies.

You are still on the small size, but mommy pulled out the first pair of pants you ever wore and let's just say it was eye opening. You wear size 12 to 18 month clothing. We have just had to move your shirt size up because you were starting to look like you were wearing crop tops. The pants are pretty big in the waist, but you need them for the length. That is because you are in the 40th percentile for height and only the 8th percentile for weight. Mommy took you to your 18 months appointment and you weighed 22 lbs and 2 ozs and were 32 inches tall. You went from the 5th percentile in weight to the 8th and from the 20th percentile in height to the 40th percentile.

Your daddy and I are constantly saying we don't know how we produced something as precious and as beautiful as you are. You truly are the light of our lives. You have a beautiful, sweet spirit and an absolute joy to raise and be around. We love you more than life itself!

Love

Mommy and Daddy

The Pumpkin Patch and Pumpkin Carving

2010-10-25T19:26:00.000-07:00

Perron and I took a trip to the pumpkin patch with our friends Kelly and Ethan. Daddy was at the Alabama/Ole Miss game with Uncle Phillip so he missed out on the fun. Kelly and I learned some valuable lessons during our pumpkin patch excursion and I will share some of them with you.

1. The term pumpkin patch is misleading because you would assume that meant you would be going home with a pumkin. WRONG! We didn't even look at a single pumpkin. The thought of wrangling pumpkins in addition to two toddlers was so overwhelming that I decided I would just cop out and pick one up at Publix.

2. Snack time will inevitably be the boys favorite part of the trip.

3. Getting two 15 month old boys to both smile and look at the camera at the same time is a pipe dream. Let me just give new moms a tip...it will not happen. No matter how much you bribe, cajole, call out, they are not looking at the same time. And if they do look they will not be smiling.

4. You will be as exhausted as your children leaving the pumkin patch. To give you an idea of how exhausted that is, Perron fell asleep before we even got out of the parking lot. Needless to say I was asleep in bed at 9 pm that night.
5. You will be so excited and happy that you are getting to create your first pumpkin patch memory with your baby and lifelong friends that you won't care about any of the above.

To make the season complete we attended a pumpkin carving party at our neighbors house. This is again a misnomer because not much pumpkin carving was done on my part. Most of my time was spent chasing a little boy who want to climb up the stairs, down the stairs, up the stairs down the stairs...or in the door, out the door, in the door, out the door. You see where I am going with this. I eventually caved and just pushed him around the yard because at least I knew where he was. At least daddy was free to carve the pumpkin and he did a great job!

A Photo Collage

2010-10-25T18:37:00.000-07:00

I have been such a slacker about posting recently so I thought I would continue the trend and sum up the end of our summer and beginning of our fall in a photo collage. We have been busy busy busy and Perron has been loving every minute of it. We have gone to birthday parties, gone swimming on the patio, played with friends, goofed around, watched football with our buddies, ate spaghetti and celebrated Daddy's birthday. As you can see, we have had A LOT of fun!

14 Months

2010-09-19T17:11:00.000-07:00

Dearest Perron,

Where has the time gone. Mommy has turned into quite a slacker on the blog, but I promise to get better. I have been having a really hard time with burn-out at work and it is spilling over into all areas of my life. I feel like by the time I get you down for bed, I have nothing left to give. That has meant that the blog has had to suffer. I know this is just a phase though and I will be back in the swing of things soon. Okay, enough boring stuff about mommy, we know the reason people come here. Daddy and I CAN NOT believe that you are already fourteen months. I said that the other day and it sounded so old. You are definitely not our tiny little baby anymore, but rather our big, strong, independent boy. You have been so busy recently, so it will be hard to think of what all you have been doing.

You are on the go constantly! You can stand for extended periods of time unassisted and you can easily sit down from a standing position. You are on the verge of walking full time. We went to your friend Ethan's house last night and you were a walking machine. I think he inspired you since he is ten days younger than you, but walking all over the place. You have not wanted to walk today, but at Austin's birthday party you walked all the way through Gymboree just holding one of my hands. Everyone was very impressed. I think that we will have a full fledge walker by the end of this month. We are so proud of you!

You are getting so good with all of your fine motor skills. You can pick things up out of a bucket and put them back into the bucket. You are also starting to be able to stack things if they are big enough. You have a little farm truck that has two pins (pens?), a horse and a dog. You love to pick the dog and horse up and then put them back in their pens. You still love your music table and the learning farm that Grammy and Grandpa got you for your birthday. You have finally gotten very interested in books and will pick them up and bring them over to us to read to you. Your favorites are Big Little, Shake it Up Baby, and Good Morning Good Night. You are obsessed with your blue car that MamaCrig and Grandaddy got for you. You crawl over to it and pull yourself up and then turn around and ask to be put in in. We go on car rides at least once a day.

You still are not talking much. Well, let me correct myself. You talk all the time, but you don't really say any words. Your four main sounds are gaga, dada, giga, baba. Those four sounds can mean up to forty words. I do think you know what gone gone means, because every time you finish your milk I say gone gone and you repeat back something that sounds like gone gone. You also can say dada fairly reliably, but it is still hit or miss. We know it will all come in time.

Meaghan has been working with you on your baby sign language very hard. You now know what more means and use it all the time....especially when it comes to eating. You LOVE Meaghan and we are so lucky to have her as a part of our family. She does such a good job taking care of you and you love her so much. You are still loving to eat and will literally eat whatever we put in front of you. I have only found one things that you do not like...hummus. You take after your daddy.

You have been such a joy to watch blossom these past few months, as you have been all your life. You are such a sweet precious spirit. Your daddy and I hope you never loose that.

We love you to the moon!

Mommy and Daddy

Perron's Birthday Extravaganza Part 3: Attack of the Cake

2010-08-12T18:37:00.000-07:00

The final post of the birthday series is here. The adventure with the cake was probably the highlight of the party. I have never seen a seen a child attack a cake like he did. To say he loved it would be the understatement of the century. People were rolling on the floor laughing he was so funny. In fact, I think I will let the pictures speak for themselves this time.

Perron's Birthday Extravaganza Part 2: The Birthday Boy

2010-07-26T18:46:00.000-07:00

Seriously...is this not the most precious birthday boy you have ever seen. I know I am partial, but I have a feeling people will have a hard time arguing with me. Perron had so much fun at his birthday and looked so cute in his little outfit that I had made. IzzyB Designs was such a pleasure to work with and was very patient with my numerous questions. I wanted him to have something custom to match the party decor, but I also didn't want to spend a fortune because I knew he could only wear it once. I think this was the perfect solution.

Perron snorting at his friend Shepp

We had carnival games for all the kids to play, but Perron was a little young to play with them. Luckily he was easily entertained by a leaf. He spent the majority of his birthday eating leaves and crawling around on the basketball court. Basically a one year old's birthday dream.

Yum...more leaves.

So excited that it is his birthday! He was so cute the whole afternoon and really enjoyed himself. I think he liked all the attention...I wonder where he got that from? Next up in the series is Perron meets his birthday cake. I have never seen a child go after a cake like this so the pictures will be entertaining to say the least. Stay Tuned!

Perron's Birthday Extravaganza Part One: The Decor

2010-07-21T19:04:00.000-07:00

As y'all know, Perron celebrated his first birthday this past weekend. I took so many pictures, that I am going to have to do multiple posts and break them up into sections. I will start with the decor and then move on to the birthday boy. I thought long and hard on what theme I wanted for this special event and finally decided on vintage carnival. I spent hours trolling Etsy looking for the perfect invitations, decorations, outfits, you name it I looked at it. I poured over blogs about children's parties. I spent hours painstakingly crafting the decorations. And I had the time of my life doing it. I told Stephen that he was not allowed to say one thing other than, that sounds great dear, and I was to be given free reign over the budget, the decor, the food and everything else. He sweetly obliged and never once asked how much something cost. Such a good husband....plus I have a feeling that he didn't want to know. He kept saying that I was going to have solicit sponsors to fund the party. He might have been partly right. :)

But this was a celebration for all of us. A celebration that we had all made it through this year with our sanity in tact. Plus, your first born only turns one once...right!?! I was a little nervous because sometimes I have ideas in my head about how things are supposed to turn out, and then when they don't materialize they way I want I get disappointed. Luckily the party gods were smiling on me, and everything turned out exactly they way I imagined, if not better.

As I mentioned, the theme was vintage carnival and the color scheme was aqua blue and red. I had the pleasure of working with some awesome vendors from Etsy and I could not have pulled this off without their creativity. He fabulous invitations and custom circles, as well as the inspiration for the party came from Paper and Pigtails, his adorable sign came from Embellishments By Rachel, all of the vintage party supplies came from Hey YoYo and his precious outfit (which you will see in a later post) came from Izzy B Designs. Thank you to all of these ladies for helping me make Perron's birthday so special. I hope you enjoy the pictures as much as I did the planning!

The centerpiece of the party. I got my inspiration from Amy Atlas' dessert tables, although mine is no where near as fancy and well done as her's are.

The precious elephant PB&J sandwhiches for the kiddos. What carnival is complete without an elephant?

Look at the adorable birthday circles. I decorated all of my vases with lots of ribbon in my theme colors. It is amazing what you can do with a little double-sided tape.

Peanuts! Get Your Peanuts!

I love these vintage popcorn boxes from Hey YoYo. I was able to use these in so many different ways. I got this idea by combining two tablescape ideas we had at our last Smithfield shoot. I was trying to go for the look of popcorn overflowing the bucket. I think it turned out pretty good.

Fruit kabobs. This reminds me that I have gone this far without saying thank you to my little sister. She was such a huge help. She spent many a night at the house helping me get things ready. She then spent all day the day of his party helping me (and getting a million splinters from bamboo skewers) all on only 4 hours of sleep after a particularly wild and crazy night out. What a good little sister and aunt!

The party favors. They included side walk chalk, masks, and stickers. So easy, but so cute. Notice the precious thank you tags.

Yummy popcorn in precious bags that matched the color scheme exactly.

A shot with the cupcakes on their stand. Love the popcorn boxes that flank the stand with the cute circles.

Yummy cupcakes for the kiddies. I am going to let you in on a little secret....the cupcakes and Perron's cake was from Publix. I was a little nervous, but it they did a great job and they were so delicious!

Can you believe my baby is one!?!?! I can't. I have told Stephen a million times that I could not believe we were about to be parents of a one year old. Stay tuned for the next post in the series, which will be all about the birthday boy and star of the show.

1 Year Old

2010-07-18T18:18:00.000-07:00

Dearest Perron,

This photo perfectly describes how you embrace life. Full of joy and enthusiam. I hope you never loose that. Oh what a year it has been. I was telling your daddy tonight before bed time that it was hard to imagine that this time last year I had not even been able to hold you. In fact, outside of that very brief moment in the operating room, I had never even seen you. But I already knew. I already knew how much I loved you and I already knew that at that moment, 7:42am on July 18, 2009, my life had changed forever. You have been the light and joy in your daddy and my life since you came into this world. It is hard to imagine ever loving anything or anyone as much as we love you.

You have been a ball of energy this past month. You are a full on crawling machine. We say you crawl with purpose; which is so funny because everyone says your mommy walks with purpose. You are non-stop energy. You love to bounce up and down on your bottom when you get excited and sometimes you bounce so hard you almost launch yourself over. You love to play with all your toys, but your favorite thing to do is pull up. You pull up on everything! Most of the time we can find you standing at the baby gate like you are in baby jail. You talk non-stop, but are not officially saying any words. You just babble and squeal at the top of your lungs.

I weighed you tonight and you were 18 lbs and 12.5 ozs. Such a big boy! That brings your total weight gain this year to almost 15 pounds. You are a GREAT eater. You will eat absolutely anything we put in front of you. You love fruit and are particularly fond of watermelon and mandrain oranges. You eat turkey lunchmeat almost every day. You like veggie burger, turkey burgers, and regualr hamburgers too. You love Mexican food and could eat black beans and rice until you exploded. This is a very important trait to have in the Crigler family. You still drink four bottles a day, but I am sure we will be tranistioning to milk in the next month or so. I am a little nervous based on your history of tummy problems. Hopefully it will go smoothly. We will be very happy when we don't have to buy formula and formula water. Now if we could only get you potty trained and out of diapers, we would be millionaires....just kidding...kind of. You still wear a broad range of clothes, but you are pretty much in anywhere from 6 to 12 month clothes. You have been in this size range for quite a while, so we are getting a lot of good use out of all your outfits.

You love Meaghan, your new nanny, and are so happy to see her every morning. You jump into her arms as soon as she gets to the house. Y'all play all day long and she takes you to do lots of fun things. You are taking another round of swimming lessons and you are the star of your class. You also go to Mommy and Baby Yoga with Meaghan. You have quite the full schedule because mommy takes you to Kindermusik as well and you LOVE it. You love playing with all the toys and singing and dancing around. The parachute is by far your favorite.

You have such a beautiful, sparkly, loving personality. People are immediately attracted to you, and you can be quite the flirt. Mommy and daddy are so proud of how far you have come this year. We can not wait to see where the upcoming years take you. We know that you will do big things and we hope you know that your mommy and daddy will always love you and be your biggest fans!

Love,

Mommy and Daddy

This Night a Year Ago

2010-07-17T19:20:00.000-07:00

This night a year ago I was laying in a hospital bed, sick, scared and unsure of what the next few hours, days and weeks held for me and our son. Our path over this past year has certainly not been the straightest and our road has not always been the smoothest, but it has taught us so much. It has taught Stephen and I about the strength of our love and commitment to each other and about our love and dedication to our son.

We could not have made it through this year without the support of our friends and family. When they say it takes a village to raise a child, they weren't kidding. Since I know our parents check this blog, I wanted to take this time to thank them. Thank them for teaching us to be the parents that we have become. For carrying us through the lows and celebrating the highs with us. There have been several times when I have said that I wouldn't have made it through this year without them.

I especially want to thank my parents, and in particular my mom. She has done for Perron what she did for my siblings and I when we were growing up. She put her entire life on hold this past year to help me raise my son. She always has been the model of selflessness when it comes to her children and she has proven no different when it comes to her grandson. She has been at every doctor appointment, sat through therapy appointments, carried me when I didn't think I could go any further, comforted my tears of sadness and shared my tears of joy. She has taught me everything I know about being a mother and Perron is very lucky that I learned from the best.

So tonight we celebrated Perron's first year of life with friends and family. We laughed, played and ate cake. And tonight as I rocked my baby to bed one last time before he officially turned one, I couldn't help but think of where this year has taken us. I held a beautiful, healthy, precious baby boy who just one short year ago, was a tiny three pound baby in my tummy on this very same night. I know that my nights of rocking him and him loving me like I am the only person in is world will not last forever. In fact, they might not even last until this time next year, so I held him extra tight, rubbed his downy soft head, and smiled at how very far we have come.

Red, White and Beach

2010-07-11T20:04:00.000-07:00

We got to spend the 4th of July weekend down at Orange Beach with all of Stephen's family and we had SO MUCH FUN! We stayed at The Caribe and it was fabulous. I would highly recommend it to anyone. The condos are huge and there are five pools, three huge water slides, and a lazy river. This was Perron's first trip to the beach and he loved it. He went swimming twice every day and was a total water bug.

We never even went to the beach, in fact this is the closest to the ocean and the sand we ever got. All of the public access points to the beach were closed and there were boats out skimming the water all day, everyday. That being said, I never saw a drop of oil in the water on the bay side and the air did not smell at all. I am sure if I had gone to a resort that did not have as nice of a pool I would have been a little disappointed. Luckily, our family is much more of a pool family than a beach family, so it worked out perfect for us.

This is Perron's new favorite face to make. He scrunches his nose up and blows air in and out like he is a bull. So cute!

Standing up like a big boy.

Two of my favorite sister-in-laws.

Four out of the five Crigler boys relaxing on the balcony.

Perron's first trip on the lazy river. He loved bobbing along and we made it through at least two full trips around before he tired of it.

He loved his little float and he used it like it was a walker in the shallow water. Two of the pools had zero entry so he was able to sit, crawl, and walk around in his float in the pool.

Perron and Katelin are best buds. They had so much fun together and all of the cousins were so sweet to Perron and he ate up all the attention.

Perron and mommy hanging out in front of two of the big slides. He wasn't quite ready to take those on this year. I am sure it will not be long though.

Playing with Mama Crig before heading to the pool.

Hanging out with mommy, daddy and cousin Andrew

All the Crigler women.

We can not wait to do it again next year. I told Stephen it was one of my favorite beach trips of all time!

Baptism and Father's Day= One Busy Weekend

2010-06-23T18:48:00.000-07:00

So this weekend was a very big weekend. Stephen celebrated his first father's day and Perron was baptized. Before we get into the weekend, a small note for Stephen. His first Father's Day was a bit overshadowed by Perron's big day and I feel bad. I want the world to know what an amazing father he is to our son. My heart melts every time I see them interact. In the course of one short year, Stephen has gone from never changing a dirty diaper and barely wanting to hold a baby to being one of the most hands on dad's I know. He can do everything that a mommy can do and does it willingly. Whether that is building a "tower of doom" with blocks or giving a bath after a particularly dirty diaper. I am glad that he chose me to share his life with and that he is providing such a good example to our son about what a man, father and husband should be. He is the best daddy ever and Perron is a very lucky boy!

Okay, now that that has been said...on to the festivities. We were blessed to have lots of Stephen's family in town for the weekend. Stephen's parents as well as one of his older brother's came in town with their family to help celebrate the weekend. We hadn't seen them since Christmas so it was great to have Phillip, Sarah, and the boys there. David was flying solo for the weekend because Angela was out of town and working, but luckily precious Katelin was with him, so we got to spend quality time with her too! The weekend started with a Crigler family favorite...Mexican food!

The cousins

Philip, David and Stephen...three of the four Crigler boys

Perron already is performing a Crigler duty...loving Mexican food.

After a big night of Mexican food, Perron was ready for his big day. He did so great and was so happy the entire time. He looked absolutely beautiful in his gown. He learned how to wave over the weekend, so he spent the majority of his time at the altar waving at the congregation and trying to talk over Rev. Wolfe. It was very special for us to be there on that altar where we got married almost five years ago with the same minister who married us performing the cermony. I remember praying at that altar the day before our first ultrasound that everything would be alright and I would have a healthy baby. My prayers were answered and then some!!

The handsome boy on his big day.

Pictures with his proud parents

Mama Crig and Grandaddy came up for the big day

Grammy and Grandpa were the only Spalding representatives to make it, but lucikily they love him enough to represent for the whole family.

The cousins

A very happy baby with him namesake ML Blalock Moody

What you lookin' at?

Hmmm....I wonder what we are having for lunch?

We had everyone over for lunch after the service and had a great time celebrating the two most important men in my life!

11 months

2010-06-18T19:07:00.000-07:00

Dearest Perron,

How could it be? How could it be that 11 months ago you came into our lives in a whirlwind? We have gone through four seasons together. What an unbelievable journey it has been. You have had a VERY busy month. After two and a half months of working, you have finally begun to crawl. You started on your ten and a half month birthday. At first you looked like a little bunny hopping. You would move your arms forward and then hop your little legs forward at the same time. It was so cute. Well, that only lasted two days and on evening I put you down to show daddy your bunny hop and you just took off in a full out crawl. Now most of our days are spent telling you "no Perron" or be careful or that is not a toy or get out of that. You are very brave and already are pulling up to standing. That didn't take you long! You even will cruise back and forth along your crib. Since you learned to pull up there is not a morning or a nap time that I do not come in and find you standing up and smiling waiting for me to get you out of bed. The only time it causes us problems is at bedtime. You can stand up, but you can't get back down. You get tired and start crying, but you can't get back to laying down. I think i had to go in to your room six time tonight.

You are almost completely on table food and you are loving life. You love turkey, BBQ chicken from Miss Myra's, edamame, raspberries, blueberries, peaches, cheerios, avocados. Basically anything that we have given you, you have loved. We are so proud of how well you eat and you look so precious as you are shoveling food in your little mouth. You are now weighing in at 17lbs 5 ozs. Such a big boy. You officially weigh more than your mommy did at one year. You still can wear anything from 3-6 month clothes all the way to 12 month clothes. It really just depends. The majority of your 12 month clothes are too big, but sometimes I just can't resist.

This will be your last month in daycare. We have hired a fabulous nanny for you. We know you are going to love Ms Meaghan and are going to be so happy staying with her. We know you will be so much healthier. You have started taking Kindermusik and are doing well. It falls right at naptime, so you are sometimes a little grouchy, but you are still doing great!

You are loving your toys and you have a new found joy of knocking things over. You love for us to build towers with your stacking cups or blocks for you to knock over. You get the biggest smile on your face and clap the blocks together. Right now though, your favorite "toys" are the things that you should not be getting in to....wall grates, shoes, the fireplace, the protective covers that make sure you can't hurt yourself on the fireplace, your baby gate. Speaking of your baby gate. You like to crawl over to the step and pull up on the baby gate. You will pull yourself up and stand at the gate like you are in baby jail. Very cute!

We love you more than to the moon and back.

Love,

Mommy and Daddy

Puttin' on the Ritz

2010-06-13T18:09:00.000-07:00

Stephen and I got away last weekend for our first trip together since Perron was born. This trip was much more relaxing than the last trip we took before he was born...when I spent the majority of the vacation in the hospital. We went to the Ritz Carlton at Reynold's Plantation and it was absolutely fabulous. Both sets of grandparents tag teamed taking care of Perron and it went really well. My mom and dad kept him on Thursday night, Friday part of the day, and Sunday. Linda and John drove up on Friday and kept him Friday and Saturday night. Perron was supposedly a doll and entertained the grandparents all weekend...would we expect anything less? :) It was so nice not having to worry about him at all because I knew he was being taken such good care of. It was awesome to do nothing but sit at the pool, sleep and eat for three days. Of course, as soon as i got back I felt like I needed another vacation, but it was so good to get back and see our precious baby. We had an awesome time and it was just what we needed!

Lounging at the pool...what we spent the majority of the time doing.

The view from our executive suite. We didn't start in this room, but the second day we were there a family with a little yippy dog checking into the room next door. That dog barked non-stop from the time that we checked in, so the Ritz moved us. I asked for an upgrade for our inconvience and we got a lake view suite. It was AWESOME!

The resort is right on Lake Oconee and they have an infinity pool. The bottom of the pool is colored so the water matches the lake. I love how the people look like they are swimming in the lake, but are really just at the edge of the pool.

My view for the majority of the trip.

They have smores out by the fire every night...they were a big hit with the kids...and the Criglers.

Right before a delicious dinner at Georgia's.

Crigler Crawfish Boil

2010-06-06T18:53:00.000-07:00

For the record....I would blog a lot more often if it didn't take an hour to upload my images. I know I could use flicker but I just haven't gotten my sh*t together to set it up. Okay, glad I got that off my chest. Now on to the fun stuff. We had our 3rd Annual Crigler Crawfish Boil one of the last weekend's in May and everyone had an awesome time. This has become our families signature event and I like to think that it is a fondly looked-forward to event by all of our friends and family. Luckily the Gulf oil disaster did not affect the crawfish and we had plenty of food and Cajun fun to go around. We were all laughing because when it is amazing how much the demographics of this party have shifted in three short years. When we first started there were only one or two families that had kids and the party usually ended with one-handed drunken basketball in the wee hours of the morning. This year almost everyone in attendance had kids, the party started at 4pm, and was basically cleared out by 8pm. My how quickly life changes!

Testimony to how much this party has changed. The bouncy house was the hit of the night.

I love this picture because it's all the daddies hanging out outside the jumper.

The fancy eating set-up. Add newspapers and you are ready to go.

Aunt Angela and Cousin Katelin playing with Perron before the party gets started.

Perron wowing John Clarke with his physique.

Finally, some clothes.

Katie braving the bounce house with Cassidy and Austin.

Look at these two cuties.

Grammy hanging out with her favorite baby.

Ethan is having a blast!

Getting all three boys to look at the camera at the same time= next to impossible.

My sweet little sister and her best friend drove all the way from Charlotte for the big party. My even

sweeter assistant Mary Frances entertained them all night.

About 55 lbs of goodness.

Dig in!

Stephen giving everyone crawfish eating instructions.

We ended up having about 50 people there and had a great time. Mom and dad kept Perron overnight so that Stephen and I could enjoy the party. IT was very nice and let's just say that Stephen enjoyed it so much that he couldn't get out of bed until 11 the next day! We can't wait to do it again next year.

I have tons more to post soon...we have a crawler on our hands and Stephen and I just got back from vacation so I will try to get those posts up soon!

10 Months

2010-05-21T18:17:00.000-07:00

Dearest Perron,

You are technically 10 months and 3 days at the time of this post, please forgive my tardiness. We have been VERY busy this week with craziness at work and getting ready for our annual crawfish boil. I remember this time last year, I was pregnant at this annual tradition. Now I will be holding you in my arms, enjoying your hugs and kisses (since you will only hug and kiss mommy), and jumping with you in the bouncy house. You and I both have come so far in the past 10 months. You will be spending the night away from mommy and daddy for the first time tomorrow night. Grammy and Grandpa are going to keep you so that mommy and daddy can enjoy the party...and sleep in.

You are continuing to grow more and more each day. You lost a pretty decent amount of weight during your illnesses last month, but I weighed you tonight and you weigh 16 lbs and 6 ozs. You continue to be a great eater and can now even feed yourself. I typically have to wrestle the spoon out of your hand when I am feeding you and you love to shove as many puffs as humanly possible in your mouth. We have started to introduce stage 3 baby foods and you are doing good. You still aren't totally sold on the texture, but you NEVER turn away food. It won't be long until we have you on table food.

You are working as hard as you can on crawling, but you still aren't there yet. You have gotten so good at shifting your weight while sitting and for not crawling you can get around really well. You now have 6 teeth, four of which you cut in one week. YIKES! You have three on the bottom and three on the top. It definitely hurts now when you want to chew on our fingers. You love playing with your toys and have discovered your box of blocks. You love to dump them all out and then bang them together. When you play, you actually prefer to dump out all your toys and throw them all over the place. I think you got that from your mommy. We have started to stack blocks and you love to knock them down. You also have finally started to make consonant sounds. I had just told your social worker at your 6 month review that you still were not making babbling noises that involved consontant sounds. Well, of course you had to go and prove me wrong and last Saturday we were in the car on the way to a party and next thing we know you are ba ba ba-ing away in the back seat.

Speaking of your six month review, I was looking back at all your goals that we set at the beginning of this journey and it is amazing how far you have come. We were asking for such simple things, like bringing your hands to midline, getting you to reach and hold objects,getting you to respond to familiar voices. Things that at the time seemed like insurmountable tasks, but now are easily mastered skills. The last goal was that you would respond to your mom and dad and show us that you knew who were were and were attached to us. It is sometimes hard to think back to those days. Days when you wouldn't look at us, wouldn't turn to the sound of our voice, didn't want to interact with anyone. Those were difficult and painful days for sure, but they have allowed us to have such a beautiful appreciation of where you are today. I will NEVER take any milestone, no matter how small, for granted. Each one is a miracle given to us and I cherish every one of them.

You have really been doing well at daycare and I think you like being around the other kids. Unfortunately, you were sick again and we had to have you on breathing treatments. Daddy and I have decided that it would just be safer and easier for everyone to get you a nanny. So, i have begun the process of finding you a nanny and will be interviewing candidates this weekend. It will be sad not to have you around friends as much, but it will just be so much better for your little lungs. They just are not ready for daycare yet.

You have gotten to be a much better napper (thank God!). You will usually take a 45 minute-one hour nap in the morning and an hour and a half+ nap in the afternoon. Some days are still a struggle, but it is so much better. You usually go to bed in between 6:30 and 7 each night. You still will wake up sometimes in the middle of the night and you still think 5am is an acceptable wake-up time. Luckily we can usually get you back to sleep either in your bed or in the swing during your early morning rooster calls. It allows mommy and daddy to sneak another few minutes of sleep. You are still loving your pre-bed bath and we finally had to move you out of your baby tub. I think you were the only nine and a half month old still easily fitting in your baby tub. You figured out how to climb out of it, so we realized it was time. You now have a blow-up rubber ducky tub that you LOVE!

You are growing up so fast and your daddy and I are so proud of you. I don't know if I will ever be able to adequately describe how much I love you and how much you have changed my life for the better. There are somethings in life that are so profound that even the English language can not adequately capture them. Your smile lights up my life and your sweet laughter is the best music there is. Your daddy and I love you more than life itself.

Love,

Mommy and Daddy

Mother's Day Recap

2010-05-17T19:22:00.000-07:00

All dressed up in our out to dinner finest :)

Chillin with daddy after my two and a half hour nap

Unfortunately my head was tilted in all of our family shots.

This unfortunately was the best one...which is not saying much.

Me with the beautiful boy who made me a mommy

Perron with two of his favorite ladies

With the fam

While I realize I am over a week late, I had such a wonderful first Mother's Day that I could not not document it on the blog. The weekend kicked off with getting a massage and my hair done on Saturday. Stephen had surprised me with a gift certificate for Valentine's Day and I had saved it for a special occasion such as this. I must say it was much needed. On Saturday night, we went out to Chez Fon Fon with my parents and little brother. It was Perron's first experience in a fancy restaurant and he did fabulously. He charmed the entire restaurant including the people sitting next to us (who he was VERY interested in). On Saturday I got to sleep in until 8:30 and was greeted to breakfast in bed and a wonderful new-to-me bicycle from my fabulous hubby. Perron got me a card promising me to sleep...and a gift certificate to Starbucks for when he decides to break that promise. We then went to church and over to my parents for some steaks. It was a beautiful weekend and I certainly felt loved and appreciated by all. Stephen was so sweet and really went out of his way to make it special for me. Oh how could I forget! He also surprised me with flowers and a visit to my office the Tuesday before Mother's Day because he knows I love having flowers to look at at work. Did I pick a winner or what ladies!?! He truly is a gift from God in my life. I am so blessed to have such a loving husband and beautiful baby boy. Being Perron's mother has been the best thing I have ever done in my life. I can't wait for more Mother's Day's in the future! Enjoy some pictures from the weekend.

The formatting screwed up and a can't figure out how to fix it so y'all will have to forgive me....

Perron's Trip to the Botanical Gardens: Otherwise known as eating grass, rocks and pollen

2010-05-05T19:20:00.000-07:00

The weather here has finally turned gorgeous. Although I do feel like we went on warp speed through spring, and are now full on facing summer. It is supposed to be in the 90s here by the end of the week. Sheesh! Since the weather was nice, I thought it would be fun to take Perron for a little trip to the Botanical Gardens. He wasn't in the mood to nap well, and I needed to practice my photography ideas. He was so cute, but as the title suggests, he mainly wanted to put everything he could get his hands on in his mouth. I missed the peak of the blooms, but there were still some nice shots to be found. I remember when I was a little girl, my parents taking my older sister and I to the Botanical Gardens every Easter to get our pictures in our Easter outfits. I look forward to creating memories with Perron at the gardens (even though Stephen hates them and thinks they are soooo boring) and sharing a piece of my childhood with him.

I love how he looks like he is waving here...he isn't..but it still looks cute.

He spent most of his day picking things up and putting them in his mouth.

It didn't always end up as he had planned. This is after eating a hand full of pollen.

I wanted to get more pictures of him in front of the entrance to the

Japanese Garden, but I was constantly having to race forward and pry

rocks out of his mouth.

The little red bridge always used to be my favorite.

Hmmm...I wonder if there is anything down there for me to eat.

9 Months

2010-04-25T18:24:00.000-07:00

Dearest Perron,

You might notice that your nine month post is a week late. I promise there is a good reason. You unfortunately have been very sick since your start at daycare. You caught bronchiolitis after a day at daycare. You where wheezing something horrible and we were very nervous that you might have to go to the hospital. Luckily you responded well to the breathing treatments and we were able to keep you at home. Unfortunately, all the congestion from the RSV lead to double ear infections. We sent you back to daycare for one day and you then ended up with four days of fever (three of those days it was a fever of 103) and a viral throat infection. Poor baby! Needless to say, you have been wiped out and so has mommy!!! You feel much better now and your little nose has finally stopped running.

Other than all of your illnesses, you are doing great. You are absolutely precious and have really gotten into playing with all of your toys. You have finally learned to bang your toys together. You have a little ball with a bell in it and you love to bang it with your little hammer. You love your music table and try to launch yourself all over it to reach all sections of the toy. You are starting to really think about crawling, but you are definitely not there yet. You will bounce up and down on your bottom and try to throw yourself forward, but you haven't figured out how to move anywhere yet. You will lay on your stomach and rotate around in a circle to try and get to things. You are very attached to mommy and you want to climb all over me like I am your personal jungle gym.

You are still a great eater as always. You have just started to figure out how to feed yourself puffs. Hopefully this is the first step to feeding yourself. You like to take the spoon out of my hand and put it in your mouth. Unfortunately you haven't figured out not to put it in too far, and you will frequently choke yourself with it. You also have started imitating feeding yourself and it is so cute. You hold your spoon, put it in your bowl, and then put it in your mouth. Speaking of imitating, you have started doing this adorable thing were you look at us and shake your head side to side like you are dancing. You want us to do it too and then we copy each other back and forth. You also are starting to "talk" in conversation. You still refuse to make any consonant sounds, but you will squeal and then wait for us to squeal back to you and hold a conversation with us.

You lost a little bit of weight while you were sick because you were having to work so hard to breathe. I weighed you tonight and you are a little bit over 15.5 lbs. You are still in size 2-3 diapers, but I am about to order you size three diapers. You still wear mostly six month clothes, but we just went today and bought you a bunch of nine month pajamas because your little feet are growing out of your six months pjs.

We love watching you develop every day. You are so precious and are by far the best thing your father and I have ever done. I look at your and am constantly amazed that we created something as perfect and beautiful as you. You are the light of our lives.

We love you very much!

Mommy and Daddy

In His Easter Finest

2010-04-11T19:15:00.000-07:00

I promise that I did take pictures of us on Easter weekend...and I have some from his first day of school too, but I just got these this weekend and I had to share them first. We had his Easter pictures taken by the fabulous Kim and they are so cute I just had to share. He is so adorable and I can't believe that he is almost nine months old. He absolutely loved the bunnies, although he might have been a little rough with them. I was afraid we might have an Of Mice and Men moment since he is used to petting an 80 pound golden retriever.

Growing Up

2010-04-07T07:01:00.000-07:00

I guess parenthood is a series of milestones that eventually bring your child closer and closer to independence. I guess I just didn't realize that it would start this early. Perron had his first day of daycare yesterday. I remember in July standing over a NICU bed looking at my three pound baby and thinking that the prospects of April getting here and daycare starting seemed a world away. Well guess what, April is here and daycare has started. We have been so blessed to have my mom take such good care of him for the past five months. She has given Stephen, Perron and I a gift that I will never be able to repay. But, like most good things it was time for he stay at Grandma's to come to an end.

We got up yesterday morning and I put him in his big boy clothes and away we went. Stephen and I took him together to help him get adjusted to his new environment. We brought him in to his room and got him playing with toys. He was very interested in all the other babies and all of the other babies toys. I stayed with him while he got acquainted with his teachers. He DOES NOT like when you just let a stranger hold him right off the bat, so he had to ease him into the situation. He warmed up to his teacher really quickly and I was able to sneak out without him realizing that I was gone. Our daycare has cameras in each room so you can watch your child through out the day...so you can imagine how much time I spent on there Monday morning.

He did really good and I was able to pick him up at 11:30 and take him to my mom's house. He is only going to go half days for at least this week. We will ease him into full days gradually.

Pool Party

2010-04-02T18:05:00.000-07:00

Perron's MamaCrig and Granddaddy gave Perron a pool for Easter. Granddaddy was in town for a meeting and brought it with him all the way from Mississippi for Perron to play with. We have been having gorgeous weather recently so we figured that we would let him get out in it this afternoon. We barely put any water in it, but he still had enough to splash around in.

At first he was a little hesitant.

Notice the arched eyebrow below.

We had to pause to consider it for a bit.

Get his hands wet.

Luckily he had his trusty ducky to keep him occupied.

Couldn't you just eat those little feet!?!

Then he decided he was thirsty.

And maybe a little hungry too...

After his appetizer course of tub toys he had to move on to

the main course...the pool

And then a dessert of grass. Delish!

Therapy Olympics

2010-03-30T18:51:00.000-07:00

I am on fire recently...back to blogging with a vengeance. It must be because poor Stephen is in the office until 10 o'clock every night doing tax returns. Perron had another therapy session today and he is doing so awesome! I know he is on the verge of crawling. It makes me so excited, but a little sad at the same time. I look at him all the time and wonder where the time has gone. Nancy worked on lots of stuff with him today and left us with a list of homework assignments. He is starting to get a lot better at sitting up and can really hold his torso up so much better. We are working on him shifting his weight from side to side. He needs help doing what they call "load transfer", which is shifting his weight from one side of his body in order to free up his other hand to do activity. This is an essential step in getting him to crawl. Nancy said that a lot of pieces were coming in and it was just a matter of getting him to pull every thing together. I always ask where she thinks he is in comparison to his actual and his adjusted age. She said he is still a little behind his adjusted age (which is almost 7 months) because of some of the issues he still has with sitting up. She was however very pleased with how much he had improved in just two weeks. He wasn't able to pull up to kneeling last time because his upper body wasn't strong enough, but this week he could do it with relative ease. He also was able to sit on one hip and and hold his weight with one hand while playing with his music table.

I looked at Nancy this afternoon and I asked her "how do normal babies do all of this". It makes me a little sad, because I feel like I will never get to experience the way things are normally done. I told Nancy that I have become fascinated with normal pregnancy and birth experiences. It is almost impossible for me to imagine just going into the hospital, pushing out a baby, keeping it in the room with me, and then leaving with a baby after my two day stay is over. I most likely will never experience a true labor contraction in my entire life. i will never have another pregnancy when I don't spend every day worrying that something could go wrong at any moment. Certainly I am not the only woman who is scared that something could go wrong in a pregnancy. I think all women live with a least some degree of fear. I think the difference with me is I have experienced a lot of what can go wrong and so my fear will be in both the known and the unknown. I don't know what it is like to have a baby that just "does" the things he is supposed to, when he is supposed to do them. when I asked Nancy how normal babies did all the things they are supposed to do, she said they just did them. That is such a foreign concept to me. That a baby is just able to figure it all out on their own. It really is a miracle I guess.

However, all is not doom and gloom. We are so blessed to have so many people that care about Perron and help us make sure that he is okay and help him learn all of the things he needs to learn. We have wonderful doctors and wonderful therapists that want to help us and make sure that Perron is given all the skills he needs to succeed. And in a way it is a blessing to have a professional to talk to all the time about what he is and isn't doing and what should and should not be expected. I really consider Nancy a friend....like a really knowledgeable aunt. And I have been given the blessing of seeing my little miracle unfold right before my very eyes. I am so proud of how far he has come and what all he has accomplished. He has worked for every one of his milestones, but it makes us appreciate each one of them so much more. It might have taken him over four months to look at me in the eye for the first time, but I'll tell you what, each time I see him look at me I realize what a blessing and a gift it is and I do not take it for granted at all. Each time he reaches for me or a toy I remember that he couldn't/wouldn't reach for anything for over five months. And I realize what a blessing the simple things are. When I see his little face light up with a smile when he sees me, I remember the 3 and a half months or more that it took him to smile at anything, and it makes my heart smile. He is a miracle, a joy, a delight, and the best thing that has ever happened to Stephen and I. We might not do things the normal way, but we make it work!

What's Cookin'?

2010-03-29T18:41:00.000-07:00

In general, I really like to cook. Before Perron came along, I would usually cook every night that I didn't have an after work commitment. I would make pretty elaborate meals and tell myself what a little Suzie Homemaker I was. Now that Perron is here, I still need to cook dinner every night, it's not like we have stopped eating since his arrival. The only wrench in my plans is that my time is now severely limited. I basically get to spend an hour and a half with my son every day that I work. By the time I get him home for the day and he has to get ready for bed, we have about an hour to spare. I was hating it that I was having to spend a minimum of a half hour of my precious time with him in the kitchen making dinner. So I started searching the Internet for solutions and I found this. Basically you prepare either two or four weeks worth of meals all in one day and then you freeze them and pull them out the night before. I tried a two week cycle and it worked awesome. It is so nice to come home from work and just put something on the stove or in the oven and be done with it. It took me five hours to cook 13 meals (I didn't cook one of them) and then clean up the kitchen. It definitely made the kitchen look like a food bomb had dropped in it and I had to run the dishwasher in the middle of cooking because I was running out of mixing bowls, but in the end it was all worth it. I have so much more time with Perron and I have the added bonus of not having to stress about what I am going to make each night. The plan calls for a major grocery shopping, so that takes some time, but my in between trips to the grocery are much shorter. It also is saving me money because I am buying in bulk and not throwing away food that never gets used. So, to all of my working mama friends...or even those who don't, but are sick of the nightly dinner night...go out and buy this book. I promise you will not be disappointed.

I'm Back

2010-03-28T18:10:00.000-07:00

So I have been totally unmotivated to blog these last several weeks. I have not been able to find any inspiration, nor have I had the energy to try and be witty. I do however, feel extreme guilt for not posting (that is the good Catholic girl in me) and feel like I should at least string a bunch of random thoughts together. So what have we been up to? Nothing and a lot of things all at the same time. Stephen's work is really cranking up so he has been busy. While his tax season is absolutely nothing like what we experienced when he was in public accounting, he still is pretty busy. He does tax returns as a side business, so he pretty much locks himself in the office as soon as the baby is in bed each night. I'm not going to lie...it is sometimes nice to have the remote to myself. Between Perron's fascination with it and Stephen's possiveness over it, it is very rare that I get a chance to hold it. Perron is such a big boy in training, that we have had to give him one of our old remotes as one of his very own. Don't tell daddy...but sometimes I still let him old the fancy computerized remote. My work has been relatively busy and I have been a bit burned out recently so I am hopeful that I will come out of my funk soon.

Perron starts daycare in one week. His first day is the Monday after Easter and he will be going three days a week. I am a little nervous, but I think that once we both get adjusted to it we will settle in nicely. I just hope that he will nap while there. He is doing much better on that front, but still not great. While I can lay him in his bed and he will put himself to sleep at night, he still needs to be rocked completely to sleep to go down for a nap. I know...I know...this is a situation of my own creation, but I don't have the energy to change it. He will at least take one nap a day that is an hour to an hour and a half long. We are still on a three nap a day schedule though. We have had major interruptions in his night time sleep thanks to his second tooth coming through. It finally broke the surface last weekend, so he finally slept through the night again all this week. AMEN!

Other than that nothing much, we are still doing swim lessons and those are going great. He had his Easter pictures taken last week and he looked so cute. We ended up having to do two sessions because it was so cold the first session he REFUSED to smile the entire session. I decided I definitely did not spend that much money for him to look pissed beyond belief in every picture, so we went ahead and had then re-taken. He did much better the second time around and would even play with the bunnies that Kim had. By playing with them, I basically mean grabbing their ears and squeezing the you-know-what out of their little heads. Hopefully the rabbits will forgive him.

We have also been able to take him to church for the past two weeks, which has been so nice. He did awesome the first week and did pretty good this time. He was a little fidgety and fussy, so I ended up trying to listen to the sermon in the narthex. I am not 100% sure how much I got out of the situation, but it was still good to be back in church. I am not going to lie, they had been sending us mailings that bordered on harrassment :) trying to persuade us to come back to church. Between my difficult pregnancy and Perron not being able to be out in public, it had been almost a year since we had been in church. I had really missed it. I also want Perron to understand the importance of going to church and I want us to go regularly just like Stephen and I did when we were growing up.

I know this post is missing a key element...pictures...but with Stephen working on returns every night, my time on the home computer is limited and I don't keep pictures on my work computer. I promise I will get some new ones up here soon!

8 Months

2010-03-18T18:37:00.000-07:00

Dearest Perron,

How can you already be 2/3 of a year old? Whenever someone ask me how old my baby is, I am shocked when I reply 8 months old. You are getting so big and strong and we are so proud of you. You have had a great month and are such a cute, sweet baby. You weigh 14 lbs. 9.5 ozs. You are wearing 6 month clothes in your pajamas and you have officially grown out of all of your 0-3 months clothes. Mommy is going to have to go shopping this weekend because you barely have any clothes that fits you. And you definitely need clothes because...you start daycare on April 5th. I can't believe it is already time for you to start school. Mommy is nervous, but I am hopeful that you will like it. I am hoping that you will like being around all of the other babies. I am also hoping that you will decide that you like napping at daycare too.  You are doing a tiny bit better in that department and will take at least two one hour naps a day. Still not great but it is better than 35 minute naps. You definitely sleep better for Grandma than you do for mommy.

You are a great eater and have not turned your nose up at a single thing we have given you. You have gotten great at the sippy cup and can now hold it, tip it up high enough, and figure out how to suck all at one time. We are really proud of you. You are sleeping about 10 hours at night.  We put you down in bed at night and you are able to put yourself to sleep without crying. You usually stay up for at least 30 minutes, talking to yourself and playing. You are still waking up some nights between 4 and 5, but we hope you will grow out of that soon. I think you are doing that because you have cut your second tooth. I finally got a glimpse of it tonight when you were in the bath. Hopefully now that it has broken through your little gum, it will not hurt as bad.

You have started swim classes and you absolutely love them. You love to splash around and look at all the other babies in your class.  You can sit up so well all by yourself now. Your new favorite toy is your musical table that your daddy's cousin's family got you for Christmas. You love to make the music play and then shake your head like you are dancing. You are still obssessed with your jump-a-roo and will bounce around in there forever. You LOVE your doggie, McKenzie, and will do just about anything you can think of to try and get her attention. Whenever she is in the room you laugh and shriek and throw yourself all around. Unfortunately, she is not ready to reciprocate those feelings yet, but I know that one day she will.

You are such a precious little boy and we love you so much. It gets harder and harder each day to leave you when I have to go to work. You continue to be the light of our lives.

We love you very much,

Mommy and Daddy

The Next Michael Phelps

2010-03-13T16:43:00.000-08:00

Perron had his first swim lesson this morning. He absolutely loved it, looked adorable, and was such a good swimmer. Stephen had been a little afraid that he would cry, but I knew that he loved bath time way to much to not like the pool. Luckily I was right and he enjoyed every second of it. In fact, there were 11 babies in our class and not a single one cried. You might be catching glimpses of the future Olympic swimming team! Enjoy a sampling of some of the 90+ pictures that Stephen took of us this morning.

PS I am sure Perron will be mortified when he looks back at these pictures and realizes I was the only mom in a bikini at his swim class. Oh well! I don't own anything else.

Eye Doctor

2010-02-27T07:53:00.000-08:00

Perron had his follow-up eye doctor appointment yesterday morning. Before I go into the appointment, I need to give some back story. In December, when we felt like his eye's had improved so dramatically, I canceled his appointments with the neuro-opthalmologist and the pediatric opthamologist. Here is the slight catch....I didn't tell his original eye doctor that I was doing that. I had spoken with his therapist, who was with us at the first appointment, and we felt like he was doing so well we didn't need to put him through the stress of those tests.

Fast forward to Tuesday of this week. I am at work and get a call on my cell phone. Guess who it is...Dr. M-T, his eye doctor. She told me that she had seen that Perron was on the schedule for Friday and she called the neuro and the ped. optho and found out I had canceled my appointments. Dum...dum. dum...dummmmm I was completely busted. First of all, growing up as a daughter of a doctor, I rarely question what doctor's tell me is the right thing to do. I trust them and truly believe they are acting in the best interest of myself and my son. Second, I have NEVER had a doctor call me up unprompted and bust me for going against what she told me to do. I apologized for going against medical advice and tried to explain how much he had improved and what had led us to make that decision. She was very nice, but went on to explain standard of care...yadda yadda....and ended by telling me she had gone ahead and re-scheduled our appointments for March. I told her I understood, but hoped when we saw her on Friday, that she would see how good he was doing and would reconsider. She seemed very skeptical, but said she would see what happened on Friday.

And guess what....we went on Friday and Perron passed his eye exam with flying colors. Everyone who had been in with us the first appointment (basically the whole office) was coming in to see him and telling us how much they had been thinking of us and hoping he would do better. And he is! Dr. M-T could NOT believe how awesome he was doing. She was so taken aback. She walked into the room and he was watching her and she was moving all around to see if he would follow what she was doing. The first words out of her mouth were, "Well I can see that he can see me". YAY Perron! She went on to explain that she had very rarely seen a case present the way that Perron's did and then turn into the outcome that we have experienced. She was so excited and very surprised. The best news is that she said she would personally cancel the other two doctor's appointments that she had scheduled. We don't have to go back for another six months. She said she had seen a couple of cases of the delayed visual development in which the vision came in and then later on secondary issues came up, so she gave us some warning signs to look for, but I know he is going to be okay.

The moral of this story is prayer works! I don't think I fully understood what kind of miracle took place with Perron's vision until yesterday. I just assumed that our outcome happened for most babies that had Perron's issues. I was definitely wrong. So I want to thank you all again for your prayers. We will never be able to repay this gift that we have been given, but I want you to know that we will be eternally grateful. We are so blessed to have so many people, both those that we know and those that we don't, that care enough about our son and our family to lift up our worries and heartache to God. Thank you doesn't even begin to describe it!

We love you all!

7 Months

2010-02-18T18:52:00.000-08:00

Dearest Perron,

I can't believe that you are closer to being one year old then you are to being a newborn. Where do the days go? This has been a busy month for you and you have accomplished quite a few firsts. You are eating "solid" food like a champ and will eat anything that we put in front of you. So far, you have tried sweet potatoes, pears, peas, prunes, carrots, squash, and apples. We gave you a couple of puffs tonight to see how you would do. You weren't quite sure what to do with them, but I am sure you will get there soon. All of the eating is turning you in to such a big boy. You weigh 13 lbs 5 ozs. We took you to the GI doctor and they measured you and you were 26 inches long! You are in size 2 diapers and you wear a broad range of clothing sizes, anywhere from a 0-3 month all the way up to 6 months depending on what it is.

You are cutting your first tooth and it is so cute. You will NEVER let us get a good look at it, but we can definitely feel its little jagged edge when you put our fingers in your mouth. I had to take you to the doctor on Monday and it took the nurse practitioner holding your head, me holding your hands, and the pediatrician pushing your tongue back with a tongue depressor. We only got to see a little tiny glimpse of it and right now it really just looks like little holes in your gum. The reason we were at the doctor is because you have also had your first cold this month. You have been a trooper, but you haven't felt great. Your nose has been really stuffed up and it has required quite a bit of suctioning...which you hate.

You also had your first snow. You really were not all that interested, especially since you were sick, but we dressed you up in your bear outfit and took you out there anyway. You have gotten so good at playing with your toys and entertaining yourself. You finally can actually play with your first toy and you absolutely love it. Your new favorite toy of all times is your exersaucer jumparoo. Last Friday I put you in it and was jumping around and you started to copy me and began jumping too. Needless to say, you have been jumping ever since. You have also discovered your feet for the first time and you spend the majority of your day trying to figure out ways to get them in your mouth. You are getting so strong and are doing really well with sitting up on your own. You can sit unassisted for several seconds before toppling over.

Your napping is still a major source of stress in mommy's life. You are really difficult to get down and then you typically only sleep for 30-50 minutes. We have a plan from a sleep consultant that I am working with so we will start enacting that plan tomorrow. I have a feeling that this whole process is going to be harder on me then on you. We will see. You have also decided that you don't love sleeping through the night anymore. Daddy and I are praying that this trend is just because you have been sick and teething. Daddy and I are TIRED!

We are so proud of how good you are doing and how independent you are getting. You are a beautiful, smiling joyful spirit and it makes your daddy and I so happy. This whole blog has been my love letter to you, but I don't know if I will ever adequately be able to put into words how much we love you and what you mean to us. You are our true joy and reason for being.

We love you more everyday!

Mommy and Daddy

And the Award Goes to...

2010-02-15T18:15:00.000-08:00

Perron Crigler..officially the cutest baby in the entire world. Now admitidly I am biased, but give me a break...does it get any cuter than this?

or this....

or for that matter...this?

Okay, it is obvious where I am going with this...

but come on give me a break

how can you resist him

he is finger lickin' good

that precious

boy of mine

These were from his six month photo session that Kim Sharit took for us. She did a great job. Although with such a precious subject, it is hard to not take great pictures. But again...I'm biased.

Bid It Up

2010-02-11T12:58:00.000-08:00

I have a favorite blog that is literally one of the first things I read every day. I have never met this family, but I feel like I know Patrice and her sweet baby boy, Jonah. Jonah has a very rare skin condition called EB, Epidermolysis Bullosa. EB is a genetic disorder where the body lacks the collagen that anchors the skin. Even the slightest touch can cause blistering and raw places to develop. I love Patrice's, Jonah's mom, sense of humor, faith and strength in facing what is a daily fight for her son's life. In order to celebrate the milestone of Jonah reaching his first birthday, 80+% of EB babies don't live to one year old, they are hosting an online auction to raise funds for EB research. If you are so inclined, you can go here, to bid on items. It definitely goes to a good cause.

I can not imagine how difficult it must be to see your child suffer through a disease as horrible as this one. Patrice is an inspiration and really helps me put my own life and struggles into perspective. So go bid it up!

A Little of This and a Little of That

2010-02-06T18:28:00.000-08:00

So what have we been up to these past couple of weeks. To be honest not that much, but a lot all at the same time. Work has been really insane for me. My job is great, but it requires a lot of creative energy. That is what I love the most about it. I basically get paid to think of creative ideas for a living. Pretty cool. I will admit, I was a little worried that after having Perron I would loose my touch. I was telling my mom that I understood what mommy brain is. That incessant forgetfulness, the loss of your train of thought in mid-sentence, the inability to focus. It is all very familiar to me. But I now realize why mommy brain occurs. It is because for the rest of my life, I will never be able to focus on just one thing at a time any more. Thinking about Perron will always be in the back of my mind. Even when it is just in my subconscious. So yes, in a way it has made my job harder since I have been back at work. Harder in the sense that it takes all of my creative energy to focus and come up with the kind of ideas that I am responsible for for my clients. I can do it, but it definitely is more draining than it was before. hence why I haven't been able to blog for the past couple of weeks. Outside of there not being enough hours in the day to get everything done, usually by the time I get Perron in bed my brain is running on empty.

Add to that the fact that I am taking a photography class every Tuesday night and I am stretched pretty thin. I am excited about the class. Stephen and I got a Nikon D3000 for christmas and I really have no idea how to use it. Right now I basically paid a lot of money for a fancy point and shoot camera. Hopefully after I finish this class I will know how to use all of the fancy features and will have a better understanding of the fundamentals of photography. Up next will be a class that is specifically geared to taking picutres of your child. I DEFINTELY could use some help on that front. Luckily I have the cutest subject in the entire universe to practice on.

Perron has been doing awesome. He has been doing such a great job eating. He is a true boy and will pretty much eat whatever I put in front of him. He is so happy and cute...always laughing and smiling which melts my heart. We are still having some napping issues with him. Yet another reason why I am exhausted. I feel like the days that I am not at work are spent wrestling with him to get him to nap. We have finally broke the napping in the swing habit, but we are still having issues. He is pretty erratic with his schedule and it is a struggle to get him to sleep more than 40-50 minutes at a time. I am reading Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Baby to see if I can get some ideas. I know there are lots of mommies who read this blog, so if you guys have any advice I would love to hear it. I feel like it is a struggle to get him down and then once he is down he is not sleeping long enough. which then leads to him being tired an hour and a half to two hours later...and then the process starts all over again. It really is exhausting. It sucks because I feel like I don't get to enjoy my days off with him because we are always in some stage of the going to sleep process. HELP! Seriously ladies...any advice or tips would be greatly appreciated.

I will leave you with some precious pictures of our peanut. He is such a cutie!

An action shot

Mommy why do you have that thing in my face again

Baby smirk

Lounging with daddy

Trying sweet potatoes for the first time

Me boy. Me like food

Perspective

2010-02-06T17:32:00.000-08:00

I have been reminiscing a lot recently. I think I have a perspective on motherhood that many first time mother's do not have. I feel like sometimes I look at motherhood the way a mother who was on her last child would, rather than someone who is at the beginning of their family. Now don't get the wrong idea, I am certainly not nearly as calm, cool, and collected as a seasoned mommy. No siree. I am just as neurotic, anxiety filled, and clueless as many first time mom's are...maybe more so if I am being honest with myself. What I mean is that I look at every milestone and sweet memory with Perron as if it could be my first and last time to experience it. Now Stephen and I hope and pray that one day we will be able to add another baby to the family, but the reality is that might not be what God has in store for us. It was difficult to get pregnant for us and saying that my body and pregnancy don't go well together would be the understatement of the century. We would really have to weigh not only the risks to myself, but also the risks that my issues could cause the baby. I would never want to do anything that would put a baby in danger because I was selfish and wanted another child. We got so lucky with Perron being as healthy as he has been. What if the second time I was tempting fate? What if next time we weren't as lucky as we have been this time? I would never forgive myself. But I digress, this discussion wasn't the original intent of my post.

Because of this unique perspective, I find that I try and savor things with him. I hug him a little tighter, hold him a little longer, play with him a little more because the truth is, this might be the only time I get to do these things. I want to try and remember everything about him being this little and needing me so much. I want to remember this time when I am his favorite person and there is no one that he loves more than me (I will need this to get me through the teenage years). I want to remember what it feels like to hold him so close and feel his little breath on my cheek. It is such a magical time and we have come so far. Stephen's older brothers are twins and were born premature. I remember his mom and dad telling us when Perron was first born that we would soon forget what it was like to have him be so small. I remember looking at him in his NICU bed and thinking that how could that be true. How could I ever forget holding something so tiny. But it is true. I barely can remember that little tiny 3 pound creature that I held in my arms so gingerly just a short six months ago. While a part of me will never forget that, it is amazing how quickly those memories fade away. Now all I see is the big boy he has become. Rolling over, starting to sit up, smiling and laughing all the time.

I was cleaning out his drawers getting clothes ready to donate and I came across this.

The little blue pants are the first pants he ever wore. They were huge on him and made him look like a baby Eurkel. I remember putting them on him for the first time and thinking what a big boy he looked like. They are lying on top of a pair of jeans that fits him perfectly right now. Even though those jeans are only size 0-3 months, they are still a sign of how far we have come.

Now that is perspective.

MIA

2010-02-04T08:38:00.000-08:00

Hello strangers. I have been gone for what seems like forever. I promise we are still here. Doing well...just busy as all heck. Work has been insane and we have been on the go at home as well. I am exhausted and all of my creative energy is being devoted to work right now. I didn't want my three loyal blog readers to worry about us, which I guess they wouldn't since my three loyal blog readers are all related to Stephen and I. I promise I will be back this weekend with tons of witty stories, cute pictures, and fun updates! Miss me!

Going to California on A Big Jet Plane

2010-01-27T19:50:00.000-08:00

Well let me re-phrase that. It should actually read went to California on a big jet plane...and it should also specify that Stephen was the one doing the going, not me. That's right. Three weeks ago Stephen packed up and headed to Pasadena for the BCS National Championship. I had promised my blogger friend Amanda that I would post pictures, because she too is a Alabama fanatic, but I hadn't gotten around to it. Better late than never.

As a little back story...Stephen could possibly be one of the biggest Alabama fans of all time. (In fact he is reading over my shoulder right now to ensure that I adequately describe his level of fanatasim...otherwise known as checking my grammar and spelling.) I on the other hand was raised a Gator fan. My mom went there, my dad went to medical school there, my little brother goes there..so my Florida ties run deep. I grew up going to all the games. I went to a small private univeristy that was not a football power house by any stretch of the imagination, so I had always kept my Florida ties...until I met my husband. I am now a converted fanatic and love AL football. We have had season tickets for the past four years and we love going to games. We both are just huge college football fans and it is something that we really enjoy together. I guess it comes along with the territory of being born and raised in the south.

Anyhow, back to the real story. Stephen had an awesome time and went with a big group of friends. Perron and I got to stay home for the coldest weekend since the 1980s and have some mother son bonding time. We did great together, but we were really excited to have Daddy home. If you will recall, that was the weekend of no sleeping, no napping, and a trip to the pediatrician.

Getting into the game

Remember the Rose Bowl We'll Win

Trying to get a picture in front of the Rose Bowl...as the TX team is driving in.

I asked for a picture of the Game Day crew hoping

for a picture of Herbstreit and Stephen comes home with a picture of Lee Corso

A happy and victorious bunch!

6 Months

2010-01-18T19:13:00.000-08:00

Dearest Perron,

How quickly 6 months have gone by. Looking at this picture I can not believe how much you have grown. You are like a different baby than the one we brought home six short months ago. I look at you now and find it hard to remember that tiny baby who laid in the NICU bed with tubes and wires coming out of him. You are officially three times as big as you were when you were born. I weighed you tonight before your bath and you weigh 11 pounds 13 ounces. That is 8 pounds bigger than when you were born. AMAZING! You are still pretty much in your three month clothes, but you are starting to get a little long for those. You are still in your size one diapers, but it is hard to imagine that size one is the third size of diapers you have been in. You finally got to start on solid foods last night and you were so precious. You seem to be enjoying them, although this morning you weren't quite as enthusiastic as you were last night. Right now you get more food on you than in you, but it is so fun to watch you eat.

Your personality has fully emerged and your daddy and I both agree that you are the cutest and sweetest baby we have ever met. You have learned how to laugh this month and you think EVERYTHING is so funny. You smile all the time and are getting to be quite the charmer. You love it when I sing the itsy bitsy spider and you just laugh and smile the whole time. You are officially a professional roller overer. You can barely stay on your back because you are constantly practicing rolling over from your back to your stomach. You haven't quite figured out that you can get yourself back on your back if you want to, so that can lead to some fussing until mommy or daddy rescues you. You love to talk and are a constant stream of babbling. We don't have to wonder where you got your gift of gab from. You have gotten really good at holding your head up even when your chin gets down on your chest. It is amazing how strong your little neck and back are. You can hold things and maneuver them into your mouth with ease. We are still working on you reaching for things, but we know that will come soon. You're vision is doing amazing and it is sometimes hard to believe that we ever had concerns about it. It might have taken you four months to make eye contact, but you are certainly making up for lost time. You look at mommy and daddy all the time and can track anything that catches your attention. It is a miracle and truly answered prayers for so many people.

Perron we are so proud of how far you have come in six months. Your daddy and I can not wait to see what the next six months and beyond brings. I already get a little sad when I look at you a realize that these baby moments are slipping by so quickly. It won't be much longer and you will be crawling around, constantly on the go and won't need us as much. While I am sad to see the little baby moments starting to pass, I am excited to see what the next phase of our life brings. You are a true gift to this family and we treasure ever moment with you. We are blessed to have you in our lives.

Love,

Mommy and Daddy

PS. This second picture was so sweet I couldn't leave it out. See what I mean...everything is soo funny!

Put it in my Mouth

2010-01-17T17:33:00.000-08:00

Today was the big day for Perron. His first experience with "solid" foods. I use the term solid pretty loosely because the consistency of the rice cereal was pretty much the consistency of his already grainy formula. Our GI doctor and his therapists had really encouraged us to wait until he was six months old to test any solid foods on him. Since he has already shown a tendency towards allergies with his milk protein allergy, they wanted to make sure we didn't introduce food to soon. Apparently the intestines are pretty permeable when they are young and the protien can pass through the lining of the intestines and cause the body to launch an auto-immune response in the form of an allergic response. I am a little nervous how his stomach will handle it, because in so many ways I feel like we just got his GI issues resolved. However, I know that he can not eat formula forever, so we are going to keep our fingers crossed that his stomach doesn't freak out.

He will be six months tomorrow, so we decided to give it a go. He was absolutely adorable and did a really great job. Please excuse the way we have his high chair rigged up. He is too small for anything that requires a five point harness, so we have to improvise. On a side note, I think this is the first time McKenzie has ever been excited that we decided to introduce a baby into her life. Enjoy...Perron (and McKenzie) sure did.

The first bite goes in.

Hmmm...this taste different than my formula.

But I love to eat, so I will consider this for a minute.

Okay this is fun...for all parties involved. I was having to fight McKenzie
to keep her out of the bowl.

Happy Baby!

The Aftermath! I think there was more rice cereal on in than in him!

My Heart Breaks...

2010-01-13T17:57:00.000-08:00

for the people of Haiti, especially the mothers. I have been thinking about this a lot today. Is a mother's love not universal? Does a woman in Haiti not love her child any less or in a different way than I love my own child? A mother's love is not defined by location, culture, race, religion, socio-economic status or any other label. The love that a mother feels for her child is the same here as it is in Haiti. And my heart just breaks to a million pieces thinking about what mother's there must be going through. I just imagine what it would be like to be scared, possibly hurt, wandering the streets with no place to go, no way to feed or care for my baby, no place for him to sleep. Or worse, I imagine knowing my baby was trapped somewhere, possibly left for dead, and having no way to get to him. I can not imagine the pain and agony these women must be feeling.

So as I sit here on my couch, watching tv and typing on my computer in the comfort of my home with a baby safe in his bed, I think of a woman a world away from where I am. Wandering the streets in the dark with no where to lay her baby for the night and I know she feels no less than I would for my Perron. And my heart breaks for her. May God be with the people of Haiti.

The Teething Fairy

2010-01-11T09:40:00.000-08:00

The Teething Fairy, the lesser known evil twin sister of the tooth fairy, has come to visit our house. Unfortunately it looks like she is in for an extended visit, as there is no sign of a tooth anywhere to be found. Well let's be honest, I am actually having to guess that it is the teething fairy in an effort to keep my sanity as I try to figure out reasons (aka grasp at straws) that Perron could be cranky and REFUSING to sleep. That's right people, refusing to sleep. Not a pretty situation at our house. Of course the teething fairy decided to take up residence at the Crigler abode while Stephen was out of town. She knew my defenses were down and I would not be able to fend off her attacks for a few days. Conniving B$%#H!

It started like this. Stephen leaves on Wednesday to go to California for the game. I am able to get Perron down like a breeze in 20 minutes flat and he stays asleep the entire night without making a peep until 6:30 the next morning. He must be in cahoots with the Teething Fairy because he too likes to lull me into a sense of smug satisfaction at what a perfect mother I am before he sucker punches me in the gut. So Thursday comes and bed time rolls around. He again goes to sleep like a perfect little angel and again I am patting myself on the back and filling out my application for Mother of the Year. Well of course the game was on, so I didn't get to bed until midnight...way past my bedtime. He then was up at 2 and 4 and then up for the day at 7. I thought okay, not great but not horrible, only one more night til daddy's home (read: I can pawn off bedtime and night waking responsibilities on him). Well Perron decided to save his best performance for last. I got him down easy again, but he was up about 45 minutes later....and then did not go to sleep until midnight...and was then up again at 5 am for good. YIKES! Oh and did I mention he is pretty much refusing to nap as well. Like I said, it isn't pretty.

This was the final straw and I called my mom. I told her that I thought he was teething, but I was wondering if it could be an ear infection. Of course my mom jumps on the ear infection band wagon immediately and says I need to take him in to get checked out. I unfortunately allowed my mom to peer pressure me into taking him in to see the doctor on a Saturday morning. Note to self: NEVER DO THAT AGAIN! It was like the bubonic plague had hit Birmingham and my pediatrician was the only person in the city who could cure it. I knew it was going to be bad, because let's be honest a parent has to be pretty desperate if they are willing to pack it up bright and early on a Saturday morning to go to the doctor. That is unless they are me, and then they just allow themselves to be talked into it by their mother. Long story short, his ears are perfectly fine (which if I had trusted my mother's instinct, I would have known that without exposure to the bubonic plague) and the doctor looked at his mouth and said he is teething.

Again, not sure how he knows that since there isn't a tooth to be found anywhere in his mouth, but I guess I will trust him. He left me with these reassuring words of wisdom: "He could cut a tooth by midnight or he could wait around until Easter for the tooth to show up." Surely he is kidding...right....someone please tell me he is kidding....I can not wait until Easter for him to quit being cranky and sleep through the night again. That tooth better be here by tonight or I am going to go on a witch hunt for that Teething Fairy and shake a damn tooth out of her. Or maybe I will just go sleep at my parent's house and let Stephen deal with it. Just kidding...or maybe not.

A New Look!

2010-01-07T15:31:00.000-08:00

Notice anything different? YAY! I got my blog professionally designed. Remember how I mentioned thinking about doing it in one of my rambling posts a few months ago. I think I might have been waxing on about how much I hate uploading pictures into Blogger and proclaiming that one day I would consider getting a new look for my blog. Well guess what....I did it. I am SO excited I can barely stand it. I worked with Danielle over at Design Girl Studio and I think it turned out fabulously. Danielle was so easy to work with. Even though I spend all day working with designers and specializing in emerging/social media, I didn't really understand how the whole blog makeover process worked. Danielle was very patient in explaining to me what I needed to do and how it all worked. Like I said, I think it is pretty fab...although I am probably a bit biased. I hope you guys like it too!

Enjoy!!!

Nap Bootcamp Has Officially Begun

2010-01-05T12:51:00.000-08:00

Welcome to Nap Bootcamp 2010! Join us on this somewhat painful, often stressful journey of getting Perron to nap in his bed instead of in his swing. Nap Bootcamp has been a longtime coming. He has napped in his swing pretty much since he got home from the hospital. He would occasionally take a nap or two in his crib, but I can probably count on one hand the number of times that has happened. We conquered the first step of getting nap bootcamp kicked off by kicking the swaddle habit. I must say, I was dreading that step the most. My sleep and I have a very close and intimate relationship and if I don't get enough of it, let's just say things are not very pretty around here. Luckily, the swaddle breaking was much easier than we both expected it to be. He is still a little harder to get down some nights, but for the most part it has gone extremely well.

Now that the swaddle habit has been kicked to the curb, I have to get him to nap consistently in his bed. I know that I can not send him to daycare napping in a swing so that is a big motivation for me. I chose today as the kick off to bootcamp mainly because he was refusing to nap in his swing. He would sleep for 30-45 minutes and then he would be awake. His OT is coming today for his first therapy session of the new year and I did not want that to occur with him sleeping a total of an hour all day. Trust me...it would not have been pretty. I figured I didn't have much to loose.

I put him down in his crib and turned on his mobile with just the music playing. As a side note, we practice a very wimpy version of cry it out...that really doesn't involve much crying to be honest. We put him in his bed and let him cry for a few minutes. After that, I will go into his bed and pat his bottom for a minute or two. I then leave the room. If he is still not asleep, I let him fuss for another minute or two and then go back and bottom pat again. Then I will usually just sit in his rocking chair so he can sense that I am in his room, but not see me. The main thing is that once he is in his crib, we do not pick him up unless we absolutely have to (take for example last night when he waited until he was put in bed to poop). Well, this afternoon it took 30 minutes and several trips in there to pat his bottom....but I did it! He is now sleeping in his crib. Let's see how long this is going to last. I would love it if he would sleep all the way to his therapy appointment so he could be good and rested for that.

Now the hard part is going to be consistency. If you think I am a wimp when it comes to him crying, you should meet my mom. Hopefully I can get her on the same page and she can follow the routine that we set in place. Luckily we have the common goal of getting him to nap in his crib before daycare gets here...and we have four months to make that happen. The next thing we will have to work on is trying to figure out a way to get him to nap with 8 other kids in the room with him. That should be interesting. But for today, we will celebrate this one small victory!

The List

2010-01-04T11:57:00.000-08:00

I love to travel. I have since I was a child. I can thank my parents for that. We were never allowed a vacation where we were not going to go somewhere to learn something. There was no lounging on the beach, being lazy for us. No siree! We would march to the point of exhaustion through museums, historical sites, and cultural events. It sparked a curious mind, it taught me so much about history and other people's culture, about the importance of experiences, and it gave me the travel bug for life. It is one of the greatest gifts my parents gave me. I love trip planning almost as much as I do the traveling part. I 100% for sure get that from my dad. He would have us scheduled within an inch of our lives on vacation...down to the places we would eat for breakfast, lunch and dinner based on where we were going for the day and what are of town we would be in. I love looking up information about the destination and mapping out where all we will go, so as not to waste a single sight-seeing moment. I can not wait to share my passion for new places with Perron when he gets older.

I don't know if it is because of the New Year and I am reading everyone's resolution/to-do list, but I have been thinking of all of the places that I want to go to before I die. Kind of a morbid thought I guess, but something to think about. So I am going to start composing my list. Some of these places I want to take Perron to, some of these places I have already been and I want to share with my family, and some of these places are for Stephen and I to adventure to alone. This is the first installment of the list. I want to write places down as I think of them, more as a mental note to myself, than anything else.

1. Grand Canyon
2. New York City at Christmas time
3. Maine
4. Boston
5. Yellowstone National Park
6. Napa/Sonoma
7. Driving down the California coast on Highway 1
8. Skiing in Colorado
9. Italy: Rome, Florence, Venice, The Amalfi Coast
10. Drive through the Texas Hill Country during Blue Bonnet season
11. Rent a cottage in Provence. I love Peter Mayle books and they have inspired me.
12. Las Vegas
13. Niagra Falls
14. Chicago
15. Turks and Caico's (I have to throw this one in there since Stephen loves tropical destinations so much!)
16. London
17. Greece
18. Philadelphia
19. Disney World
20. Washington DC

There is a story behind each one of these places and why either I love it and want to share it or why I want to go. Rather then bore you with all of those details now, I will save that for another day. I am always up for suggestions, so if you have a favorite vacation destination or a place you think I can not miss, please leave me a comment and tell me about it!

2009: A Year in Pictures

2010-01-01T08:14:00.000-08:00

I thought that it might be neat to do our year in review through pictures this year. Mainly because I am too lazy to come up with witty things to say about the best and hardest year of our lives. We were very busy this year..

We started the New Year in New Orleans.
7 weeks pregnant+NewOrleans+ humiliating Alabama loss=No fun at all!

We got our first "big" snow in Birmingham since we have lived here.

We took our first pregnancy picture (14 weeks).

We went to the beach with great friends.

We went to the Grand...

which lead us to a not fun night here...

We took pictures in Destin right before my thrid and final trip to

the hospital during our one week of vacation

We had a baby too soon

He was very small

but a fighter from the beginning

We got to take him home after 17 days in the NICU

We lacked a lot of this

We celebrated

We prayed

We played

We spent our first Christams with our baby

And we received the greatest gift God could ever give us.

May God continue to bless us in 2010 the way he did in 2009.

Happy New Year from our family to yours!

Merry Christmas...A Few Days Late

2009-12-28T18:16:00.000-08:00

We were a busy bunch this holiday season. Between my birthday, holiday parties and family obligations, I felt like we were non-stop. Stephen and I have rotated holidays between our two families since we have been married. One year one family gets Thanksgiving and the other gets Christmas and then we switch the next year. This plan has worked really well for us and we can probably squeeze one or two more years out of it until Perron gets too old and we won't travel for Christmas anymore. This year it was Stephen's family's year for Christmas so we loaded up and headed down to Mississippi.

Before we left, we went to my parents' house on December 23rd and had a delicious holiday meal of beef tenderloin and opened presents with my parents and my little brother and sister. Diana and Trae had come up in November and we had our big holiday celebration then, since Diana can not be away from the hospital at the holidays. We got up early (otherwise known as Perron's regular wake-up time) on Christmas Eve and started the 5 hour journey to Stephen's parents house in Mississippi. Now, prior to this point, Perron's longest car ride had been 45 minutes. There is a good reason for this. He has a fabulous habit of deciding that his car seat is fashioned out of nails as soon as his body hits the seat and typically starts screaming bloody murder as soon as we put him in it...you think I kid...one time I had to stop and get him out of the car seat before we had even made it out of the driveway because he almost threw up he was crying so hard. All in all, the car ride went much better than expected. Especially considering it poured down rain almost the entire trip and Perron only slept for like an hour and 15 minutes. Of course a family occasion can not pass by with out an Adventure in Poop, so I have a story to share. We stopped at a gas station in god only knows where Alabama (otherwise know as Georgiana) so I could feed Perron. Of course it was pouring down rain so I couldn't get out of the car to change him, so I had to change him in my lap. Not easy, but doable since he had only peed...at this point. Diaper changed, baby fed, all is well and we are back on the road. I am not kidding you, we were pulling onto the interstate from the entry ramp and I look over an Mr. Poo-Poo Pants is grunting away. Did I mention it was pouring down rain and very cold. So we drive a little while hoping that maybe he doesn't mind laying in his own waste and we can make it to the rest stop to change him. WRONG! He starts to voice is displeasure with his current diaper situation, leaving us no choice but to stop at the nearest exit. Long story short...after first pulling in to a very sketchy "roadside motel" I ended up having to change him in the bay of a self-service car wash facility in Evergreen, AL. Oh holiday family memories....

We finally made it to MS (Did I mention that I had to sing Jingle Bells on repeat from the MS state line all the way to my in-laws) and embarked on two days of family holiday festivities. Overall, he did pretty well considering everything that was thrust upon him over the course of two days. He refused to nap pretty consistently which makes it hard and he certainly cried more than he usually does, but he managed. I too probably cried and fussed more than I normally do, but I managed as well. :) We have paid a very high price for him being out of his element and he has been extremely fussy since we got home. I feel like we have reverted back to Perron of old and he probably hasn't been this fussy in well over two months. I am hoping over the next couple of days that he will settle down and get back in to his regular routine. He definitely is not ready for that many dramatic changes in environment and routine yet. It makes me VERY nervous for daycare. I told Stephen it will be quite some time before we travel with him again. I had already told my parents there wasn't a bats chance in hell that we would be joining them in the mountains for New Year's this year. I don't think Perron could take it and I guarantee that I couldn't take it.

Perron got showered with gifts and attention the entire holiday season. We are going to need another house just to hold all of his toys. Here are some pictures from all of our holiday gatherings. As you can see, he is one cute little elf (with quite the Christmas wardrobe). I hope everyone had a happy and blessed holiday season!

What do you mean a man is coming down our chimney?

Is that safe?

In my present palace

At the Crigler Family Christmas

With My Grandma

Posing with my presents Christmas Morning

This Day A Year Ago

2009-12-22T07:58:00.000-08:00

This day a year ago was the day that I found out I was pregnant with Perron. A day that would change our lives forever, sometimes for the harder, but always for the better. The day I learned that my dream of having a child had come true. A true Christmas miracle, and the best gift I have ever received. We had been going through the infertility process since August (a micro-second in the land of infertility) and I had just had my first round of Clomid. Several days prior I had had my progesterone levels checked and they were very high compared to where they had been. I was surprised, but didn't put together that that might mean I was pregnant. Fast forward about 20 days. I was supposed to have my period over the weekend and they had told me to call no matter what day if I was late. I of course didn't think anything of it, and didn't call over the weekend. I waited until Monday morning to call and they told me to come in. Since I refused to take home pregnancy tests because I was tired of the disappointment I felt month after month, when it would be negative; they told me to come in. I would give a urine sample and if that showed anything they would take bloodwork and try to get a confirmation. I didn't tell anyone that I was going in for the testing. In fact, I talked to Stephen in the car on the way to the hospital and didn't mention a thing about it. In fact, he thought I was sitting in my office talking to him. I was so convinced that the test would be negative that I didn't want to get anyone's hopes up, including my own.

So into the infertility department I went to pee on my little stick. I took it out to the nurse and started gathering up my things. I didn't even look at the stick before I handed it to her. So I am getting ready to leave and she says "I think I see something". My heart lept and my stomach dropped. I walked over and sure enough there was a faint line. I could not believe my eyes. So she starts talking about blood work and HCG levels and talking to the doctor and blah blah blah. She kept talking to me like I was pregnant, but I still didn't believe it. She told me that they would call me sometime after 2pm with the results. I was crazy enough to tell her that I would be in meetings all afternoon and to just go ahead and leave the news on my voicemail. Was I insane or what !?! I was too scared to get my hopes up because I knew I would be devastated if it turned out to be a false positive. I just kept thinking it was too soon, I had only had one round of clomid, it wasn't supposed to be this easy. So I left the office fully expecting them to call me back when my bloodwork came in and tell me it had been a mistake. The only thing I allowed myself to do was go and get a little cross that had a bible verse that said "For this child, I have prayed". If the test results were positive, I wanted to have a neat way to tell Stephen.

So I went back to work...and I had all my meetings...and they did leave the news on my voicemail....I was pregnant. I saved that voicemail for a long time and would listen to it periodically. It was the message that would change Stephen's and my life forever. I came home from work and told Stephen that I had bought him a little present that I wanted him to open for Christmas. On the cross, I had taped my pregnancy test from the hospital. What I didn't realize is that I had put tape over the area where you could see the results of the test. Whoops! So he opened it and was looking at it very confused. I finally blurted out...I'm pregnant. He was shocked and excited to say the very least.

And that was the first chapter in the beginning of a very long, sometimes scary, often hard journey that brought us the most precious gift we have ever received. It is amazing how much can change in one year.

In the Battle of Man Vs. Swaddle....

2009-12-22T07:07:00.000-08:00

MAN WON! Can you believe it? I have been dreading this day since he was eight weeks old. The day we would have to say good-bye to the swaddle. I knew that it would be a day that lived in infamy...but I assumed it would be for all the wrong reasons. Perron had started rolling over onto his stomach in the middle of the night and I found him lying on his tummy two different times when I went in to check on him two nights ago. I knew that as much as we all loved the swaddle...and the sleep it gave us...it was time to say good-bye. I was just too nervous about him rolling over and getting trapped without having his hands free to maneuver himself with. I had read all the chat boards, I had solicited my friends for advice, I had tried to putting it off, but in the end Stephen and I decided to go cold turkey and see how it went.

We did our regular bedtime routine and then laid him down in his little sleep positioner. That was our only big mistake. He stayed asleep when we laid him down, but then he let his arms relax, they landed right on top of the positioner. That of course woke him up and started about 35-45 minutes of on and off crying. I tried a tiny version of the Ferber method were I would let him cry for three to five minutes and then I would go in to give him his paci, rub his little head,calm him down, but not pick him up. I did this for 3 or 4 times. On the last time, I decided I would just sit him his chair and position myself so he could tell that I was in the room, but could not see my face. This seemed to do the trick. He fussed a couple more times, but I just put the paci in his mouth and went back to my seat. He checked a couple of times to make sure that I was still in the room with him and then slowed started to close his eyes. He jerked awake two more times, but would close his eyes each time.

Stephen and I decided to split the night like we did when he was a newborn just in case things fell apart. I took the first shift and slept on the couch. I woke up at 12:30 to go check on him and he was sound asleep with his little arms just moving all around. He didn't wake up until 3:30, when he started bashing his head against the crib rails. Stephen moved him back to the middle of the bed and he flashed Stephen his biggest "i'm wide awake" smile. Stephen put his paci back in his mouth and went to sit in the chair. Before he knew it, Perron had flipped onto his tummy (confirmation that the swaddle needed to go). At that point, Stephen just went ahead and gave him a bottle. He fell asleep and didn't wake up again until 7:30. IT IS A CHRISTMAS MIRACLE!

Now, I am fully aware that because I have gone to all this trouble to tell the world that he slept without a swaddle, that he will sleep a total of 4 and a half minutes tonight. He has proven that as soon as I announce some big milestone (see the coming home from the NICU post as evidence), he will throw a massive wrench in the plans. So fingers crossed this is not an anomaly and we have a baby that for once has done something the easy way! The next hurdle will be trying to get him to nap somewhere other than his swing. We will save that battle for another day. I will keep you all posted as the swaddle saga continues to unfold.

5 Months Old

2009-12-18T07:01:00.000-08:00

Dearest Perron,

Well, you really took us on a roller coaster ride this month. We have learned from the very beginning that you never liked doing things the easy way. Luckily we have found that the hard way still provides the same precious reward. Your vision gave us quite a scare, but you proved everyone wrong again and chose to show us that your vision was just fine on Thanksgiving. What a true reason to give thanks!

You are weighing in at 10 lbs. 11.5 ozs. You are wearing your 3 month clothes and they fit you pretty well. You are super skinny, but your feet are huge so you usually grow out of clothes because your feet are too long for the footie part. You are still in Level 1 diapers, and I have a feeling you will be for quite a while because they go all the way up to 14 lbs. I think we have a while until we get there. You are eating 5 and a half ozs. at a time. It is hard to belive that when you first started to eat you were only getting 10 ccs at a time. My how things change in five short months.

You are so cute and you love to smile. You have started laughing too, which is the most adorable sound in the entire world. You love to be tickled and you will let out these short burst/squeals of laughter which are so funny. You love it when mommy sings and dances for you. We are like a regular Broadway production together. You can regularly roll from your stomach to your back and you are starting to experiment with trying to roll from your back to your stomach. I can tell that you are starting to work through the process, because you will kick your legs over to the side as hard as you can. You can roll from side to side, so I know it is only a matter of time. You love to put EVERYTHING in your mouth. That is the primary way that you play with things. Your favorite toy is your hungry catepillar. You are so strong and you still love to stand in your mommy's lap and look around. You can sit up if we support you and you can even sit in your Bumbo chair for a little bit of time, as evidenced in your picture this month. We just put your jumparoo together for you today and you LOVE it. You don't understand how to make it bounce, but when mommy does it for you you just smile and laugh and look so excited.

It is hard to imagine that this time last year I was pregnant with you and didn't even know it. It seems like so much has changed in such a short period of time. The trials that we have all been through together this month have only made your daddy and I love you even more. I didn't think that was possible. You are our reason for being. We are so proud of you and can not believe that you are ours. You bring so much joy into our lives!

We love you more every day,

Mommy and Daddy

Dear Santa

2009-12-11T07:31:00.000-08:00

Dear Santa,

Wow, it's been a long time since we last talked. I am hoping that your feelings aren't hurt after I claimed at age five that I no longer believed in you. w that I am a big girl and have big girl concerns, I thought I might try and strike up our relationship one more time to see if you could throw me a couple of bones. I think you will find that my wishes for this year are quite different than the days of wishing for a walkman cassette player and a VHS of Dirty Dancing. Although, those gifts were much appreciated and talked about at the time...and Dirty Dancing does remain one of my all time favorite movies. But, I digress. I was hoping you might listen to my pleas one more time and help a sister out. Okay here we go.

I would like the ability to sleep through the night back. I mean seriously...I don't think I have had a full night sleep in over a year. First there was the pregnancy,and its many nightly trips to the bathroom. Then there was the NICU stay were even though I didn't get the joy of having my baby home I did get to experience the joy of waking up in the middle of the night to pump. Next came the sleepless nights when Perron thought it would be a good idea to only sleep in 45 minute intervals. Now my almost five month old regularly sleeps through the night....but I can't. WHAT IS UP WITH THAT!?! So Santa, if you could please restore my ability to close my eyes at nighttime and not have them open until it is time to get up in the morning, I would really appreciate it.

Alright, this one might be a little harder, but I still remain hopeful since you can do anything that is asked of you. I would like you to please soften the cold, hard hearts of the people at Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Alabama. I mean really....did they have to change the guidelines for RSV shots this year of all years. And since when did allergic colitis become a diagnosis that is no longer covered under our policy. For god's sake...he was bleeding from his intestines. So now I am stuck with forking out $2,000 a month for RSV shots and $350 a month for formula just so my baby can eat. So, like I said, if you could work some magic on the scrooges at BCBS, I would really appreciate it.

Lastly, I want my old stomach muscles back. I know I know, I should have thought about that before I got pregnant, but my overwhelming desire to have a child got in the way of my vanity...well guess what...my vanity is back. If I never eat, everything is pretty under control. A relatively flat and happy stomach. However, so much as one bite of food and it is back to looking like I am 3 months pregnant. You have a little time to work on this one since I won't be in a bikini again for another couple months, but I would prefer not to have to starve myself my entire beach vacation.

And I know that I said the one above was the last one, but that desire got me thinking. Can I have feeling back around my c-section scar. It really weirds me out, I am not going to lie. I am afraid to touch it and Perron has already decided that when he stands up and jumps up and down in my lap, that little reminder of how he got here is the perfect launching pad for him. It feels funny and I don't like it. I really don't think that is too much to ask.

So, when I am all snug in my bed with visions of sugarplums dancing in my head, if you could swing by my place and leave me those things under the tree, it would really make my Christmas.

Love you Santa Baby!

2009-12-10T13:15:00.000-08:00

So I was out of town for work (a NIGHTMARISH trip might I add) for the past two days and Stephen had to play Mr. Mom. Lots of my friends asked "are you nervous to leave Perron with Stephen" or "is Stephen nervous about having Perron all by himself?" or stated that their husbands would never make it on their own. Lots of his friends asked who was coming to help him or would he be able to do it on his own. Both of us thought that these were funny questions, because we never assumed that there would be any problem with Stephen being solely responsible for the duties of the house and the baby while I was gone. Stephen has always shared in the responsibilities of parenthood. He would stay up in the middle of the night with him even while he was working and I hadn't gone back yet. He wipes heinies and dabs spit up. He makes bottles and feeds babes. Basically he does just about anything that I do.

I have thought about doing this post for a long time and haven't done it because I didn't want to embarrass Stephen...oh well, too bad! Me leaving the two boys alone has motivated me and I am going to do it anyway.

I have thought many times in this journey we have been on since Perron was born, how lucky I am to have him in my life. He is supportive, caring, and devoted to both me and our son. He is a partner in the truest since of the world. He is nicer to me than I frequently am to him. He is patient and kind...two things that I am not always. He is the perfect counterpoint to my fiery tendencies. He is calm when I am not. He is levelheaded when I loose my ability to be. He is gentle where I am hard. He is strong where I am weak. He helps without question. He advises without pushing. He listens (most of the time) without instructing. I like to think that I am his counterpoint as well, but I think that he might have gotten the short end of the stick.

I often think that if I could just have some of his better qualities I would be a better person for it. But just as I say there couldn't be two of me in a marriage, I guess the same applies to him. I hope that my enthusiasm, energy, and drive serve as an inspiration to him, the way his kind, gentle spirit is an inspiration to me.

We have been through a lot together in the four years we have been married, and I know our long life together will bring other storms to weather and joys to share. I also know, that I could not be sharing my life and raising our child with a better person. Perron and I are both blessed to have him.

An Early Christmas Present

2009-12-06T17:36:00.000-08:00

I have been meaning to post since Tuesday, but this week has gotten away from me. We received an early Christmas present on Tuesday when Perron's PT and OT came to the house for his therapy session. The PT was the referring PT who did his initial evaluation for admittance into early intervention and his OT was with us for his entire eye appointment a couple of weeks ago. As soon as "K", his PT, came into the house Perron was all smiles for her. She must have said a million times how he was a completely different baby from the one she had seen the first time. Then "N", his OT, came and she could not believe the progress he had made in a week and a half. Here is the best part. She said that in her professional opinion he did not need to see the neuro-opthamologist. Both she and "K" said that if they had just met him for the first time, without knowing his vision history, they would not think anything was wrong with his eyes. WHAT A BLESSING! This is truly the miracle we had all been praying for and it happened. God is good to this family! So....I am going to cancel his neuro appointment and his appointment with the pediatric opthamologist. Can you believe it!?! We were so excited. I had been hoping that this would be the outcome but I hadn't wanted to dare that it was possible. When I told my mom she burst into tears and just cried and cried (she had been with me for the initial appointment when they said he might be blind). This has been such an emotional ride for the entire family.

This entire journey has taught me a lot of things. The first and most important is to never give up hope. Stephen and I never gave up hope that we would one day have a baby. We never gave up hope when I got sick and Perron was early. We never gave up hope when Perron was in the NICU. And even when things were at their hardest and I was at my lowest, I tried as hard as I could to hang on to hope even when I felt like all hope was lost. God has blessed this family and neither Stephen or I will take the little things for granted. Four months is a long time to wait for your baby to look at you and recognize you, but it makes it all the more worth it when he does. Now he will look at us and smile and he even laughed at me this evening. Truly music to this mommy's ears. We are forever grateful to all the friends, family and strangers who have taken this family under their wings and prayed for us. We appreciate it more than you will ever know. We hope this is the last time that kind of urgent prayer request ever has to go out on behalf of our family.

We continue to enjoy Perron more everyday. He has grown and changed so much in these past couple of days. His adorable personality comes out more every day. He finally weighs over 10 lbs (10 lbs 3 ozs to be exact) and is starting to get so strong. He is rolling over from his stomach to his back consistently now and can sit up if you really support him well through his trunk. We have lots of exercises that the therapist gave us to do in between sessions and it is amazing how much they help.

Thank you again for all of your love and support. We are blessed beyond measure!

A Perron Picture Post

2009-11-30T18:13:00.000-08:00

I love taking pictures of my baby. I love sharing these pictures with everyone. I HATE uploading pictures in blogger. It takes forever and I still have not figured out how to make my commentary on the photos line up correctly. It drives me insane that the order in which you upload does not match the order that they magically appear on your blog and I can not stand that it always loads them to the top of the post. I am constantly cutting and pasting things all around.

In all of my free time(don't hold your breath on that one) :), I am going to try and figure out the formatting HTML better. I have seriously considered getting someone to professionally design my blog for me. I love doing it so much and love that I am starting to accumulate a small (but very loyal) follwing, so I want it to look better than it does right now. Again, don't hold your breath on this one. I barely can keep my head above water as it is. Work is insane right now with planning for a major client being pushed up this year. I have to travel next week for three days and hubby will be home all by himself with Perron during that time. Wish us all luck. Luckily Stephen is such a hands on dad, I know that he will be able to handle everything in stride.

Okay, enough of my ramblings, let's get on to the real reason you guys are here. Here are some adorable pictures from the life of Perron. If I had the time and the energy to devote to putting these in the right order and commenting on them, I would tell you what each picture was...but I don't. These are random assortment from my siblings visiting for early Thanksgiving, some adorable picture of a sleeping baby, pictures from real Thanksgiving, and some random Super Baby pictures...all in no particular order. ENJOY!

We Live Amongst Proof

2009-11-30T14:05:00.000-08:00

I am acutely aware of the fact that we live among proof that God is with us in our times of need and that he listens to our prayers. We have a little bundle of proof that lives under our roof. I had been so discouraged at the beginning of last week by Perron's vision situation, that I had almost resigned myself to the fact that we would be looking at worst case scenario. I hate to admit, but I am a "prepare for the worst, be happy if the worst doesn't happen" kind of person. I wish I wasn't, it is one of my true personality flaws, but I can't help it. Well lo and behold, Perron decided to use Thanksgiving as his day to prove that God truly is with our family. I started to notice on Thanksgiving some improvements in his vision abilities. He was not just looking at us, but initiating eye contact and holding gazes for sustained periods of time. These are things he never used to do. He also was tracking his toys. Prior to Thanksgiving he only wanted to track large moving objects that were at a distance. I was so excited, but I wanted to exercise a little bit of caution since I knew that transient vision was a hallmark of CVI. Well guess what, he has continued to do all of these things and more since Thanksgiving. Something to truly be thankful for. Stephen and I both are very encouraged that our prayers might be answered and this could just be a developmental delay. We have a consult with a vision therapist through Hand in Hand, our early intervention service provider, on December 14th. I am secretly hoping that she will say he is doing so well that we can cancel all of the tests with the neuro-ophthalmologist. Wouldn't that be awesome!

Thank you so much to everyone who has prayed for us. Please continue because it is working and we truly are seeing results. I am going to try to post again some adorable pictures from the past few weeks.

Days Like This

2009-11-24T17:52:00.000-08:00

This is the title to one of my favorite Van Morrision songs and describes my life in a nutshell recently. Except in my case it would be minutes or hours or days like this. I must admit that I have been on quite the emotional roller coaster since our eye appointment last Friday. One minute I am in the pits of despair imagining the worst and then he will look at me or track a toy and I will be rocketed to the highest of highs only to find myself in a free fall a minute later when he then acts like I am a ghost. For instance, today I came home from lunch crying because I was just so overwhelmed by everything and when I got home my mom was holding Perron and he was so precious and interacting so well and my worries momentarily went away. I just wish that one of the hallmarks of CVI was not that their vision appeared transient....one minute fine,the next minute gone. It is torture trying to determine if he is making improvements and he is just progressing slowly or if it is just the in and out quality of CVI vision.

For those of you who do not know me, I am both a control freak and a knowledge seeker by nature. So my way of feeling in control of this situation is to try and learn as much as I can about CVI. I have read medical journal articles, I have read blogs, I have contacted vision therapists, I have reached out to special education professors who specialize in training teachers for the visually impaired, I have emailed mom's who have children who have this diagnosis. I have done everything I can to arm myself with knowledge. I have to be prepared if I am going to be able to advocate for the kind of care Perron needs. I truly believe that we have caught this early enough and that is brain is malleable enough that intervention at this stage is critical. Although we have to wait until December 23rd for the testing, I want to make sure that not one minute of that wait is wasted and that we are prepared to move if the diagnosis does turn out to be CVI.

Obviously I pray that I will never need all of this information I have accumulated. I pray that I can go back to only having to worry about the normal mom stuff. I will admit in my lowest moments my mind does wander to the what if's....what if he never is able to see.... what if he can't live on his own when he grows up...what if kids are mean to him because he is different.....but I quickly snap myself out of it. I can't focus my energy on that. Worrying about what if's like that will do me no good at this point...or ever for that matter. In my moments of weakness, I question God. Why has he made this journey so hard for us, what did we do to deserve this kind of heart ache, is he trying to tell us that we never should have had children in the first place. I have lived under constant stress for too long...the stress of infertility, the stress of a very difficult pregnancy, the stress of having Perron be premature and in the NICU, the stress of him being a difficult baby, and now the stress of being faced with a child with the potential of a life-long disability. However, I know that rather than question God, I have to trust. I have to trust that he is with us, walking this journey alongside us. I have to believe that he has plans for us that I might not understand right now. Trust that he has the ability to heal Perron and heal my hurting heart. I have said this before and I will say it again. I believe in miracles. God has proven that he listens to our prayers. I hold proof of that in my arms every day. I have to believe that he will listen to our prayers one more time and know that he alone can carry us through this dark time.

Like Van Morrision said, "I just have to remember there'll be days like this."

Cortical Blindness

2009-11-21T05:55:00.000-08:00

Hi guys!

I found this article on the Boston Children's Hospital website and it gives a very good description of what they are afraid Perron has. It is called cortical blindness or cortical visual impairment. A lot of the description of behaviors that children with this condition exhibit are the same behaviors we have been noting in Perron and were noted by the optometrist yesterday. I thought this might be helpful in describing what could be facing in a relatively easy, less medical-speak kind of way.

Presently, Cortical Visual Impairment (CVI) is the most common cause of permanent visual impairment in children (1-3). The diagnosis of CVI is indicated for children showing abnormal visual responses that cannot be attributed to the eyes themselves. Brain dysfunction must explain the abnormal visual responses, as abnormal ocular structures, abnormal eye movements, and refractive error do not. Fixation and following, even to intense stimulation, may be poor and the child does not respond normally to people's faces. Visual regard and reaching (in the child with motor capabilities) toward objects is absent.

Causes of CVI
It is now widely accepted that "cortical blindness" is not an appropriate diagnostic term for children with early, acquired visual impairment due to non-ocular causes (4). The term "cortical" is misleading because the visual impairment is due to abnormality of bilateral. post-chiahydrocephalus shunt failure, se smal visual pathways, including damage to cortical (gray matter), subcortical (white matter) or both. Non-anatomical lesions, for example, seizures, metabolic derangements, also can cause CVI.

Thus, "cerebral visual impairment" is preferred to "cortical blindness." Common causes CVI in infants and young children include hypoxic ischemic encephalopathy (HIE) (in the term born infant), periventricular leukomalacia (PVL) (in the preterm infant), traumatic brain injury due to shaken baby syndrome and accidental head injuries, neonatal hypoglycemia, infections (e.g. viral meningitis), vere epilepsy, and metabolic disorders (5).

Other causes include: antenatal drug use by the mother, cardiac arrest, twin pregnancy, and central nervous system developmental defects (5). Accompanying features of CVI include cerebral palsy and developmental delays.

Confusing diagnostic entities include: delayed visual maturation (6), autism spectrum disorders, severe bilateral central scotomata (with eccentric fixation), dyskinetic eye movement disorders (7) and profound mental retardation.

Eye examination findings
The eye examination may show anomaly of the optic nerves (paleness, large cups) that, however, is not severe enough to result in the visual impairment exhibited by the child. Strabismus is common; nystagmus is less common. Pupillary reactions are usually normal. High refractive error corrected by glasses may improve some visual behaviors and should be tried if present (2, 8, 9).
Symptoms
# The most common CVI symptoms presenting to the ophthalmic clinician are: Abnormal light response - light gazing OR photophobia
# Blunted or avoidant social gaze
# Brief fixations, intermittent following
# Poor visual acuity
# Visual field loss - generalized constriction, inferior altitudinal, hemianopic defect Behaviors
Behaviors reported by parents, teachers and low vision specialists include:

* Variable or inconsistent visual responses to the same stimuli
* Better responses to familiar than to novel stimuli
* Fatiguing from visual tasks
* Peripheral vision dominates when reaching
* Colored stimuli elicit better responses than B&W stimuli
* Visual attention for moving stimuli is better than for static stimuli
* Vision for navigation is unexpectedly good
* Difficulty seeing an object or image in a "crowded" array or a busy background
* Reduced responses to visual stimuli when music, voices, and other sounds are present, and often, when the child is touched.

All or most of these behaviors are not observed in individual children with CVI. Conversely, a child showing only one or two of the behaviors above does not indicate CVI.

Parents are most disturbed by the child's lack of social gaze and direct eye contact. Active avoidance of or withdrawal from unfamiliar visual stimulation, including people's faces, is frequently reported. Tactile stimulation may be avoided by the child, while in others, touch may be utilized in preference to vision. Commonly, the child positively responds to voices and music. Therapists and teachers are rightly concerned about the child's reaching without looking at the object or the hand.
Visual development
Partial recovery of vision in many children with CVI and severe visual impairment occurs. Improvements are seen in visual acuity, orienting to peripheral stimuli, attention to and reaching for objects and for social gaze. Effective management of intractable seizures often results in improved visual behaviors (personal experience).

Clinical evaluation and monitoring
In addition to the complete eye examination, objective measures of visual abilities should be done where feasible. Visual acuity is measurable in most children with CVI using large, black and white gratings (stripes) presented using preferential looking tests (15-17), or using cortical visually evoked potentials (17-19). Acuity may be very poor in infancy and remain so. In others there is gradual improvement in acuity. In most children with CVI, acuity does not reach normal levels. And, when measurable, recognition acuity for pictures, symbols or letters may be much poorer than the acuities previously measured for gratings. Glasses should be given if warranted, as visual abilities may improve, surprisingly so.

Visual field abnormalities are much more common in children with CVI than realized probably because of the difficulties in assessing peripheral vision in children with poor fixation, poor orienting, and visually avoidant behaviors. Certainly, in individuals with diffuse, extensive lesions of the posterior visual pathways, visual field defects would be expected. Inferior field defects, often dense and complete, are seen in patients whose CVI is attributable to HIE or to PVL (20, 21).

Visually guided responses, especially reaching and environmental scanning, should be interpreted in the context of the child's visual field status. Referral to a pediatric low vision specialist for further evaluation may be helpful.

Rehabilitation and education
In all children with cerebral visual impairment, services of trained and experienced teachers are very important for the child's development and education: See the American Printing House for the Blind CVI website and Linda Burkhart's Technology Integration website

Referral of the child with CVI to state services for visually impaired children should be done promptly after diagnosis. Specific recommendations based upon the clinical measurement of visual abilities, such as visual acuity and visual fields, should be provided to parents, therapists and teachers. Teachers of visually impaired children should assess broader, "functional" visual behaviors and, often in conjunction with other therapists, devise interventions appropriate for the specific needs of the child (11, 14, 22, 23). Appropriate additional support services for the school aged child, including for non-verbal learning disabilities, will be needed.

In children with visual field defects, visually guided mobility and spatial orientation can be expected to be impaired. Evaluation and instruction by a certified orientation and mobility instructor should be provided when the child is independently mobile.
Conceptual framework for understanding the visual difficulties in CVI
Understanding the basis of complex visual difficulties of children with CVI may be aided by description of the specific problems associated with lesions in specific areas of visual association areas of the brain in adults (21, 24, 25):

1. Visual motor disturbances, as in moving the eyes to direct visual attention to an object, fixating on an object of interest, shifting fixation and gaze to a new visual stimulus, and accomplishing fine motor tasks such as copying a drawing, are associated with posterior parietal (-occipital) lobe lesions. These are considered due to damage to the "dorsal" visual association pathway.
2. Visual spatial disturbances, as in localization of objects, judgment of direction and distance of objects, and orienting the body in relation to the physical world (the "Where is it?" aspect of vision), are associated with posterior parietal (-occipital) lobe lesions (also "dorsal" pathway).
3. Visual perceptual disturbances, as in discrimination, recognition, and integration of visual images and objects (the "What is it?" aspect of vision), are associated with inferior posterior temporal lobe lesions (due to a different visual pathway, the "ventral").

Brain damage in children with CVI is more diffuse than in adults with the specific difficulties indicated below. Thus, children with CVI may show more than one of the specific domains of visual impairment (for example, both dorsal pathway difficulties - visual motor and visual spatial). During early development, visual motor disturbances are more evident than at later ages. Aspects of abnormal reaching and visual avoidance may be affected by abnormal sensory integration and motor output difficulties. In some children with minimal visual acuity loss, specific difficulties in visual perception or in spatial orientation become more evident as they mature. Specific visual cognitive dysfunctions are common in children with traumatic brain injury (personal experiences).
References

1. Flanagan NM, Jackson AJ, Hill AE. Visual impairment in childhood: insights from a community-based survey. Child Care Health Dev 2003;29(6):493-9.
2. Good WV, Jan JE, DeSa L, Barkovich AJ, Groenveld M, Hoyt CS. Cortical visual impairment in children. Surv Ophthalmol 1994;38(4):351-64.
3. Steinkuller PG, Du L, Gilbert C, Foster A, Collins ML, Coats DK. Childhood blindness. J Aapos 1999;3(1):26-32.
4. Hoyt CS. Visual function in the brain-damaged child. Eye 2003;17(3):369-84.
5. Good WV, Jan JE, Burden SK , Skoczenski A, Candy R. Recent advances in cortical visual impairment. Dev Med Child Neurol 2001;43(1):56-60.
6. Fielder AR, Mayer DL. Delayed visual maturation. Sem Ophthalmol 1991;6(4):182-93.
7. Jan JE, Lyons CJ, Heaven RK, Matsuba C. Visual impairment due to a dyskinetic eye movement disorder in children with dyskinetic cerebral palsy. Dev Med Child Neurol 2001;43(2):108-12.
8. Huo R, Burden SK, Hoyt CS, Good WV. Chronic cortical visual impairment in children: aetiology, prognosis, and associated neurological deficits. Br J Ophthalmol 1999;83(6):670-5.
9. Afshari MA, Afshari NA, Fulton AB. Cortical visual impairment in infants and children. Int Ophthalmol Clin 2001;41(1):159-69.
10. Hoyt CS. Neurovisual adaptations to subnormal vision in children. Aust N Z J Ophthalmol 1987;15(1):57-63.
11. Baker-Nobles L, Rutherford A. Understanding cortical visual impairment in children. Am J Occup Ther 1995;49(9):899-903.
12. Jan JE, Wong PK , Groenveld M, Flodmark O, Hoyt CS. Travel vision: "collicular visual system"? Pediatr Neurol 1986;2(6):359-62.
13. Porro G, Dekker EM, Van Nieuwenhuizen O, et al. Visual behaviours of neurologically impaired children with cerebral visual impairment: an ethological study. Br J Ophthalmol 1998;82(11):1231-5.
14. Morse M. Visual gaze behaviors: considerations in working with visually impaired multiply handicapped children. RE;view 1991;23(1):5-15.
15. Birch EE, Bane MC. Forced-choice preferential looking acuity of children with cortical visual impairment. Dev Med Child Neurol 1991;33(8):722-9.
16. Hertz BG, Rosenberg J, Sjo O, Warburg M. Acuity card testing of patients with cerebral visual impairment. Dev Med Child Neurol 1988;30(5):632-7.
17. Weiss AH, Kelly JP, Phillips JO. The infant who is visually unresponsive on a cortical basis. Ophthalmology 2001;108(11):2076-87.
18. Frank Y, Kurtzberg D, Kreuzer JA, Vaughan HG, Jr. Flash and pattern-reversal visual evoked potential abnormalities in infants and children with cerebral blindness. Dev Med Child Neurol 1992;34(4):305-15.
19. Good WV. Development of a quantitative method to measure vision in children with chronic cortical visual impairment. Trans Am Ophthalmol Soc 2001;99:253-69.
20. Jacobson L, Hellstrom A, Flodmark O. Large cups in normal-sized optic discs: a variant of optic nerve hypoplasia in children with periventricular leukomalacia. Arch Ophthalmol 1997;115(10):1263-9.
21. Dutton GN. Cognitive vision, its disorders and differential diagnosis in adults and children: knowing where and what things are. Eye 2003;17(3):289-304.
22. Hyvarinen L. Visual rehabilitation of the infant and child. In: Hartnett WE, ed. Pediatric Retina. Philadelphia : Lippincott, Williams & Wilkins; 2005:493-514. 23. Morse MT. Cortical visual impairment in young children with multiple disabilities. J Visual Impair Blind 1990;84:200-3.
23. Girkin CA, Miller NR. Central disorders of vision in humans. Surv Ophthalmol 2001;45(5):379-405.
24. Trobe JR, Bauer RM. Seeing but not recognizing. Surv Ophthalmol 1986;30(5):328-36.

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The Begining of Yet Another Journey

2009-11-20T17:03:00.000-08:00

So today has been a hard day. As those of you who follow the blog will recall, we have been noticing some eye issues involved in Perron's developmental delays since his two month well baby appointment. Well those issues led to us being evaluated for early intervention, and led early intervention to send him to the Eye Care Center at UAB. We saw a pediatric optometrist this morning.

I should have known right away that something wasn't right. UAB is a teaching hospital so we had a 4th year student and a 1st year student doing the initial exam. The first year took our history and I am giving her our long and sorted story of pregnancy and post-birth complications. The fourth year student came in and started trying to give Perron an eye exam. Yeah...good luck with that. They have all of these visual stimuli that they are trying to get Perron to look at. They started with a little tiny blinking star that they were trying to make him follow. In my head, I was thinking this is never going to happen. Of course I was right, and he absolutely refused to look anywhere near the star. So then they try some other test...nothing. So then they pull out these huge card that have really big black and white patterns on one side and are just plain gray on the other side. In the middle of the card is a little tiny hole. The fourth year student is looking through the hole, while the first year student is supposed to tap on the shoulder of the side Perron is looking at. Well guess what.....he did not look at the card even one time. So the fourth year student says, hold on, let me go get my attending physician. Dum...dum...dum...dum. That is when I knew that my day was not going to be as I had hoped.

The attending comes in and she tries doing all these tests and is looking in Perron's eyes with all of these special instruments and taking pictures etc, etc, etc. They dilate Perron's eyes and do someone tests and look at them some more with special instruments. While all this is going on, her assistant is bringing in all of these papers and talking about when appointments were available with all these different people. I actually thought they were talking about someone else, but unfortunately they were talking about us. So here is the gist of what we know. There is definitely something wrong with Perron's eyes. That is one thing everyone can agree on. Unfortunately that is were the information ends. She said that it could just be a really bad developmental delay and we were right on the cusp for when the neurons that send information to the occipital cortex come in. However, I asked her point blank if my baby was blind and she could not say yes or no. Not very comforting at all. Here is what we do know. He can see...it is not like he lives in a world of total darkness. We just aren't sure if his brain can process what he can see. For instance, we know for sure that he can detect movement. He LOVES looking at our fan more than life itself. The good news is the type of vision that detects motion usually comes in first. The bad news is that the area of the brain that processes that type of vision is not the same area of the brain that processes information that gives you the ability to understand what you see. Luckily the one piece of information we were able to take away from today is that structurally his eye is normal and he does have the physical ability in his eye to see.

So where does this lead us. unfortunately it leads us down another road of seeking more answers to more questions. On December 23rd, we have an appointment with a neuro-opthamologist at UAB. He is going to conduct two different tests. One that detects visual activity at the retinal level and then a second one that detects activity in the occipital cortex. The first test involves putting sensors in between his eye ball and his eye lid and doing some kind of testing. the second involves hooking him up to an EEG and testing brain activity when visual stimulation is made. This will help us determine if there is brain damage or some other kind of neurological issue that is impeding his ability to process visual stimulation. After that appointment, we are supposed to see the head of the Department of Pediatric Ophthamology at UAB on January 5th...so they are bringing in the big guns.

So....how do I feel about all of this....scared, nervous, shitty, curious, worried...all of the above. I was very hopeful that we were going to get some answers today. Instead I was told that we have a very complicated case. His prematurity and IUGR, my use of brethine and clindamyacin (for the Group B Strep) only complicate an already very complex puzzle. I am scared because I don't know if she knew that something was majorly wrong and that is why we are having to see two very big doctors and she didn't want to tell me. I am scared that my baby will never be able to see and lead a normal life. I am scared that we are going to have the tests and I am going to hear the words your baby is blind. I am scared that we will do the tests and they still will not be able to give us the answers we are looking for. I am scared. I am overwhelmed. I am jealous. I am jealous of all the mother's out there with "normal" babies. I want to play with my baby and have him play back. I want to look at my baby and have him look back. I want to come into a room and have my baby look at me. And I am scared that I might never have those things. I am tired. i am tired of having to turn every interaction with him into an evaluation. I want to be able to sit with him and play with him like a normal mom and not have to be constantly noting in my head what he is or is not doing and wondering whether that is normal. It is exhausting. It really is just a lot to take in at one time. I can't imagine having to wait another five weeks for answers. The doctor we saw today said she would personally email the doctor performing all of the testing and see if there is any way they can move the appointment up. We will cross our fingers.

Okay, so I have some very specific prayer requests. First, please pray for Perron's eye sight. Right now, best case scenario, we are looking at just a developmental delay. Please pray that that is all this is and that he is not blind. Second, please pray for all the doctors treating Perron that they will have wisdom and guidance in knowing what is wrong with him and the best way to treat him. Third, please pray for Stephen and I. I can't even begin to describe what it feel like when you are told your baby might be blind. It is not something I would wish on my worst enemy. please pray for strength, courage, wisdom, and comfort as we start this journey. Please, please, please pass these prayer requests and our story on to anyone you know who might join in praying for Perron.

We love you all and we thank you for your continued love, support, encouragement, and prayers.

4 Months

2009-11-18T18:06:00.000-08:00

Dearest Perron,

Oh my godness where has four months gone? I was thinking just tonight that I can't believe that four months and one day ago I was frantically running around the house trying to get my bag packed for the hospital. No one had told me yet that I was sick and you were not doing well and that I would be having you that weekend....I guess it was my first taste of mother's intuition. Four months ago today you came into this world kicking and screaming and life not been the same since. Your daddy and I look at you every day and are amazed that we created something as beautiful, precious, and special as you are. I know every parent says this, but you truly are the light of our lives.

You are tipping the scales at 9 lbs 7 ozs...so you are getting close to six pounds heavier than your birth weight. You are VERY long, so you are starting to grow out of some of your newborn clothes in length. WE put you in your 0-3 months clothes and you look like a little bag in them. You have graduated to level one diapers, so that is already up two sizes since you were born. You are finally getting big enough to sit up like a big boy in your stroller without having to be in the carseat. I took you for your first walk like that yesterday and you loved being able to face forward and look around.

We are amazed every day at how strong you are. You have gotten so good at holding your head up. One of your favorite games is Super Baby. You will grab on to our fingers and hold your arms in very tight to your body and want us to pull you up to standing position. Once there you either want to be hoisted into the air above our heads or you had to jump up and down while mommy chants "super baby, super baby, super baby". Every morning when I get you up I sing a little good morning song to you that goes "Good Morning, Good Morning it's time to rise and shine. Good morning, good morning sweet baby of mine." You still aren't very good at locating where the sound is coming from, but as soon as you hear my voice you get the biggest smile on your face. It melts mommy's heart.

One of your absolute favorite activities is staring at the fan in mommy and daddy's bedroom. You are completely fascinated by it. Every morning when we are getting ready for work we put you in your boppy pillow on our bed. Daddy then plays the fan magician and turns the fan on and off for you. You think this is HILARIOUS and will squeal and laugh and smile at it. You also now like to give kisses. If anyone puts their face up to yours, you automatically turn and give them a huge open mouth kiss. If someone kisses you, you turn your face to them and plant a big wet one on their cheeks. Mommy and Daddy love it.

It truly is amazing how fast you grow and what a big boy you are becoming. We have blinked and four months has already gone by. We love watching you grow, learn and change. These have been the hardest, but best four months of our lives.

We love you more everyday!

Mommy and Daddy

Have You Hugged Your Preemie Today?

2009-11-17T18:12:00.000-08:00

Today is National Prematurity Awareness Day sponsored by the March of Dimes. Today is a day to fight for Perron and the other 534,000 babies that are born premature each year. I guarantee that it is not a club that any of the mother's of those half a million babies wanted to be in, but through our worry and our sorrow we have gotten to witness the fighting spirit of our little miracles. One of the most frustrating things about prematurity is that in most cases doctors do not know why these babies come too soon. And even in cases like mine where they technically know why Perron came to soon, they don't know what causes pre-eclampsia and why some of those cases become severe and develop into HELLP syndrome. I had absolutely no risk factors that would lead anyone to believe that I would be at risk for the disease.

These babies that are born too soon are born with a fighting spirit. Being born premature is the single most important cause of death in children under the age of one....pre-term births account for over 50% of mental disabilities...250 babies are born prematurely every 10 minutes. The statistics on late term preemies, while better than babies born before 32 week, are still grim. According to the March of Dimes, late term preemies are:

* 6 times more likely than full-term infants to die in the first week of life (2.8 per 1,000 vs. 0.5 per 1,000)
* 3 times more likely to die in the first year of life (7.9 per 1,000 vs. 2.4 per 1,000)

and

"A recent study, found that late preterm infants are more than 3 times as likely to develop cerebral palsy and are slightly more likely to have developmental delays than babies born full term (18). Another study found that adults who were born at 34 to 36 weeks gestation may be more likely than those born full-term to have mild disabilities and to earn lower long-term wages".

Sobering statistics for any parent to have to face. Take all of the typical worries that a first time mom faces and add to that the additional worries associated with prematurity and it can be a lot to take.

We are blessed that Perron has done as well as he has. Yes he has some issues. Yes it has been a harder road for Stephen and I than we imagined. Yes it has been scary. Yes it has been stressful. Yes it is hard for people to understand what you are going through. Yes it is hard to have to be a constant advocate for your child. Yes has been totally worth it.

These babies are born with fighting spirits. They have to, they need them to survive, thrive and beat the odds. Perron was willing and able to fight for us and I will spend every day for the rest of my life fighting for him in whatever way I need to. He's worth it.

Early Intervention

2009-11-13T09:08:00.000-08:00

We had our evaluation with Early Intervention this morning. The case manger and physical therapist were nice enough to come out to our home so we didn't even have to worry about going anywhere. I had called my pediatrician a few weeks ago and let her know that I was having some concerns about some developmental delays I was noticing with Perron. He was/is having a really hard time with some visual aspects of development-tracking in particular, as well as issue with sound location. My pediatrician said that due to his prematurity it was probably best to go ahead and see if he qualified for early intervention services, since in these kind of circumstances the earlier we start getting him help the better off he will be.

For those of you that don't live in the land of prematurity, early intervention is a state run service where they provide free therapeutic services to children that show a 25% or greater developmental delay in several core developmental areas. The therapist and case manager took Perron through two different tests. The physical therapist used the Peabody Developmental Motor Scale to help determine Perron's fine and gross motor skills. The case manager used a test that i think was called IDA (don't know what it stands for). The bottom line is that Perron does qualify for early intervention services. His inability to track object, his trouble with eye contact, and his inability to locate sounds were all reasons for concern and put him in the 1 to 2 month range developmentally (he is 4 months actual, 12 weeks adjusted). They also noticed some issues with increased tone and with him keeping his little hands in a fist all the time. Increased tone basically means he is a little more rigid than a baby his age should be. She said these could just be transient issues (and I was very strong and muscular as a baby) or they could be markers for a larger problem. Because of his prematurity he is at an increased risk for cerebal palsy, but they do not think that is an issue...he is just exhibiting a couple of markers for it.

He will start meeting with a physical therapist once a week and when he gets a little older they will add in occupational therapy as well. they have set us up with an appointment at the UAB Eye Center with a specialist in pediatric opthamology. We will see them next Friday. We will also be working with a specialist at the Alabama School for the Deaf and Blind. They assured me not to get freaked out by the Alabama School for Deaf and Blind part...they do not think he is either deaf or blind....that just happens to be who the lady is contracted through. He qualifies for these services for up to 3 years and at a minimum for one year. At his one year marker, we will do another assessment to determine whether we need to continue on with therapy or not. As I mentioned all of these services are free to us.

We of course would prefer that Perron was developing normally and not showing any signs of delay; however, since he is showing delay, we are very pleased that we have gotten this caught at the earliest possible point. We will take it one day at a time as we have with all of the challenges we have faced.

Splish Splash Perron's Taking a Bath

2009-11-09T18:35:00.000-08:00

This little boy loves absolutely nothing more than bath time. It is his favorite part of the day and the kick off event for his bedtime routine every night. Sometimes he is a kicking and splashing maniac and other times he will just lay there and fall asleep. Depending on how tired he is. We got a new camera recently and the pictures were too cute. Enjoy the photo documentary of Perron's bath time routine.

Happy Halloween!

2009-10-31T18:00:00.000-07:00

Happy Halloween from our little treat!

A Busy Weekend

2009-10-26T18:36:00.000-07:00

Perron's social calendar was quite full this weekend. He got to experience his first trip to Tuscaloosa for tailgating for the Tide. He and I rode over with Stephen and hung out on campus and then drove back while Stephen went to the game. He looked so adorable decked out in his Alabama gear. It was FREEZING cold, so he was dressed like he was headed to the North Pole. Truth be told he basically slept through most of his first game day experience, but we are not too concerned since this will be the first of many Alabama football experiences.

On Sunday we went down to Kate's farm for ML's bridge clubs annual Halloween party. Every year they hold a big halloween party for all of the bridge club (Read: wine drinking club...no cards have been played in like 20 years) ladies and their families-kids and grandkids include. We are ML's honorary kids and this year she even had an honorary grandbaby to show off. Perron had the BEST time and I could totally tell that he was eating up all of the attention he was getting. The ladies were going crazy over him and he was crazy for the ladies. It was an absolutely beautiful day and we got some great pictures. We are already looking forward to next year!

How I spent the majority of my first tailgate

Brr it's cold outside

In front of Denny Chimes

On the steps of the library

AT the tailgate before I get bundled in my gear

Watching Game Day with daddy

Daddy and I discussing our game strategy

Pondering whether Alabama was going to win

Decked out in his game day wardrobe

Who could resist this face

Stephen and ML

Mommy and ML at the barn

A Perron Picture Post

2009-10-22T18:15:00.000-07:00

So I was reading back through the blog today and I realized that I had done a lot of blabbing on and hadn't posted many pictures of Perron recently. Now I know that while I am witty, I am very confident that that is not what keeps bringing you back here. So here is a photographic record of Perron's recent adventures in babyhood. Enjoy!

Sitting in my mommy's lap wearing my cute owl outfit.

With daddy at his birthday celebration at Grandma and Grandpa's

With mommy before she heads to work.

Lounging in the big boy bed.

Getting ready to cheer on Alabama!

Bath time is the best time....for sleeping!

3 Months Old

2009-10-20T07:27:00.000-07:00

Dear Perron,

We can not believe that you are already three months old. It is so hard to imagine that this summer we had you and now the seasons have already changed and it is fall. It is amazing how fast the time goes by. We have had so many troubles with your poor little belly, but we think we might be starting to get it figured out. We have switched your formula to another brand of Amino Acid based formula and it has finally helped your tummy troubles! Of course it is even more expensive then the Ele-Care ($40 a 14 oz can), but mommy and daddy can't blame you for liking more expensive things. You are just like us, once you try the nice stuff you never want to go back :). Since we have gotten your tummy troubles worked out you have much more time to be your happy adorable self. Your current new favorite toy of all times is the activity gym your Aunt Meggy sent you. You love to lay on your mat and look at the toys and the special light machine that is on it. You have discovered that you are just as cute as everyone says you are and you now love looking at yourself in the mirror. If I was as cute as you I would like to look at myself all the time too!

You are still super tiny. You are weighing in at 8 pounds 3 ounces. You are still squarely in your newborn diapers and even some of your newborn clothes are still big on you. The doctor is a little concerned that you are not gaining weight faster so he has done a bunch of tests. We are waiting to hear back on those results. We are hoping that the results will just show that you have a high metabolism like mommy and daddy and nothing more serious. You have turned into an excellent sleeper and will now sleep 8 to 9 hours in a row which is such a change and it is hard to believe that in five to six short weeks we have taken you from sleeping 45 minutes in a row to sleeping 8 hours in a row. It is a much needed relief, especially since mommy went back to work last week. It was very hard to leave you, but we know you are in good hands with Grandma. Mommy is blessed because she loves her job...and she needs it to pay for your $40 a can formula.

You continue to be the light of our lives. We love to see your smiling face every morning when we wake up and hold you tight every night before you go to sleep. We have learned in this journey how quickly this time goes by and how fast you grow up. We know that you will not be our little tiny baby much longer and we savor this time with you. When you let us hold you and snuggle and sleep in our arms. We want to remember the sweet smell of your little baby breath and the downy softness of your little head because we know that in such a short amount of time you will be our bundle of energy little boy who will not have the time to let us hold you so close. We can not wait to see the little boy you are going to grow into being, but we can not bear to loose the sweet baby moments that we share with you right now. These moments go by far too fast!

We love you more everyday!
Mommy and Daddy

First Day Back

2009-10-12T18:55:00.000-07:00

Well, today was my first day back in the office in 12 weeks. I must say it was really good to be back. I was excited to get back into the swing of things. I joked with Stephen when I got home that I wasn't nearly as tired as I usually am because I could sit down uninterrupted for hours at a time. I could even go to the bathroom by myself whenever I felt like it. What a luxury :) I of course missed Perron like crazy and thought/worried about him all the time, but I knew he was in good hands. We are so blessed to have my mom be able to take care of him for us while I am at work. It was so much easier leaving him this morning knowing that he was with her. To make the transition easier she is keeping him at our house this week so he doesn't have too many big changes at once. I can come home at lunch to nurse him, so really I only have to go four hours at a time without seeing him. It was also so much easier going back knowing that I was only going to be back 30 hours a week. I will work in the office full days on Monday, Wednesday, and Thursday. I will work from home on Tuesday's and I will be off on Friday's. It will be nice to have three day weekends to spend with him. I am truly blessed that my office/boss has been so generous and flexible with me. Not only since Perron was born, but also during the difficult pregnancy. I know the majority of bosses would not be as understanding as Tinsley was. Stephen and I both don't know how we could ever thank him enough.

I have already been loaded up with projects and I have tons of things that I have to start reading tomorrow, but it was good to know I was missed.

Rollin' Rollin' Rollin'

2009-10-03T19:18:00.000-07:00

That's right! Perron rolled over from front to back for the first time this afternoon. My best friend from college, Megan, sent us a great Baby Einstein play mat (thanks Aunt Megan!!!) and we were checking it out. It has this great little light up aquarium thing that has these flashing lights and plays a bunch of music. Perron was laying on his stomach for tummy time and I was sitting on the couch folding laundry. I was watching him watch the flashing lights and next thing I know he just launches himself over to his back. I yelled, Stephen jumped up to see it for himself, and Perron probably looked the most startled of all of us. None of us could believe it. He is getting so big. For someone who is technically only 5 weeks old today, he is really physically very mature. We also have possibly turned the corner on some of his fussiness. He has been much happier the past two days. He is starting to REALLY get interested in looking around and looking at his toys. His new fascination is looking at himself in the mirror. We have a mirror above his car seat and (if he is not screaming his head off) he loves to stare at himself in the mirror. He also is starting to try to imitate some of my facial movements. If I stick my tongue out at him, he concentrates really hard and tries to stick his tongue out back at me. So cute! It is amazing how fast they grow up!

A Perron Update

2009-09-30T12:06:00.000-07:00

Hi guys!

I haven't posted pictures of our little peanut in a while so I wanted to put some up for your viewing pleasure. Perron is doing well. We took him in last Thursday for his two month check up and his first round of shots. He weighed 7 lbs 14 ozs at that appointment so he has officially doubled in size since he was born. He was also 20 and 1/2 inches, so he has grown 2 1/4 inches too! He is growing so fast. He did great with his shots and barely cried at all. He ran a low grade fever for about 24 hours and he got huge knots on his legs, but he didn't seem too bothered by it all. He is still pretty fussy and we are hoping he grows out of it soon. Preemies are generally fussier than full term babies and that seems to be the case with him. I think he feels trapped inside his body because he has been alive for almost 11 weeks, but really developmentally he is around a 5 to 6 week old and that frustrated him. He is working on finding his hand and I am hoping that will happen soon so he can help soothe himself. He is not really smiling yet, but we feel like he is getting close. You can tell when things kind of amuse him because he gets a little smirkish look on his face but no full on smile.

We found out bad news today about his RSV shots. We had been told on Friday that he was approved for shots and we would even get a home health nurse to come out and give them to us. Unfortunately, there was some confusion with the new BCBS guidelines and he now only qualifies for one! Can you believe it. The new guidelines say a baby born between 32 and 35 weeks qualifies for up to 3 shots prior to their three month birthday. Well perron turns 3 months on October 18th so we only get one. We are really upset and waiting for the doctor's office to call us back and see if there is anything we can do. The shots are several thousand dollars a piece so it is too expensive to cover them out of pocket. So it looks like we will really be on lock down this winter. It is so depressing because I want to be able to take him out and show him off, but we can't risk it. So many of our friends and even family members have never even seen him before. Boo! Sometimes life stinks!

I head back to work in a week and a half. I am ready to be back and I think it will be good for everyone. It is definitely a huge relief to know that he is going to just be going to my mom's. I would FREAK out if I was having to put him in day care.

We love him more everday and our so glad he is ours!

I love to play...play play play

Tummy Time

Tummy time makes me sleepy

Very Very

Sleepy

Hitching a ride with mommy at the farmer's market.

Top Ten: Part 2

2009-09-22T03:09:00.000-07:00

Okay so here is a continuation of my top 10.

5. Multi-tasking. This word is taken to a whole new meaning once you have a baby. I always thought that I had this skill down pat, but I am know an expert. The other day I found myself hooked up to my pumps, blow drying my hair, standing on one leg, and bouncing Perron with the other while I tried to get ready to get out the door. Gone are the leisurely days of doing one morning task at a time. No siree, i can now do all of them at one time! I have a feeling this skill is going to come in handy in two weeks when I go back to work.

4. Pumping. Okay this is an experience only the lucky few get to deal with. Due to all of the circumstances surrounding Perron's birth I made the decision to pump exclusively with him and not really try breast feeding. Now don't get me wrong, that boy loves to eat and is a great nurser, but with his prematurity and he reflux issues it is more important for me to know exactly how much he is eating at any one time. Little did I know that when i made this decision it would DOMINATE my life. I have a complete love/hate relationship with my pump. It all depends on how good Perron is behaving that day. I have a confession to make. I have a VERY fussy child. (It was really hard for me to admit that but now that I have embraced it it is much easier.) I frequently end up pumping with him lying in my lap screaming and kicking my breast shields...while they are attached. ARE YOU SERIOUS! Like it doesn't hurt enough to have your nipples sucked back and forth in a plastic tube, but I have to add my son kicking me while I am doing it. Sometimes life is not fair :)

3. Diaper Changing. Okay so we all took the Preparing for Parenthood class before we had our babies. They had us change diapers on little dolls as "practice" for when we had to change our own babies diapers. Luckily I was prepared for this skill because I have changed a lot of diapers in my day. What they didn't prepare you for is that babies don't really like getting their diapers changed! Now call me crazy, but if I had to sit in my own waste, I would be kissing the feet of the person that changed my pants....not screaming bloody murder at them. Perron literally acts like he is being tortured everytime he gets his diaper changed. Go figure.

2. Guilt. Okay...this one isn't that funny, but it is just as true as all the others. I was not prepared for the amount of guilt I would feel as a mommy. There is a special breed of guilt associated with being a mommy of a preemie. It is very hard knowing that because your body failed your baby that they had to endure hardship that they shouldn't have had to endure. While we did get the joy of meeting our little man early he has had some issue that would probably not have been issues if I had been able to do my job.

1. LOVE. Love like you have never known before. I look at Perron all the time and can't believe that Stephen and I have created this perfect little creature. He is our true joy and our lives are so much fuller now that he is here. I don't think anything can prepare you for the love you feel for your child until you have one. It is definitely all encompassing (and it certainly needs to be when he is on his fifth straight hour of crying :))

Top Ten: Part 1

2009-09-22T02:43:00.001-07:00

As the next installment of my own personal baby manual, I will be sharing a Letterman-esque top ten list of things about parenting that are not shared in most baby books.

10. You will become obsessed, and I do mean OBSESSED, with another persons body functions. Here are a list of things that I never thought I would hear myself say that are now very regular parts of my vocabulary. "Did he poop yet?" "How much?" "Did you trying and help him (don't get too grossed out I just mean by bending his legs up)?" and my all time favorite "Let me see". Are you kidding me!!! You mean to tell me that in two short months, I went from being totally disgusted by other people's poop to asking to look at it. Yep ladies and gentlemen, that is what being a parent will do to you.

9. You will become quite the song writer. Now I must admit, this was a talent of mine even before we had a baby, but I have really honed my craft. Here is a list of some of the new Crigler Family Favorites. Again you will notice a strong body function theme in all of my new work.

Here comes Perron Poo Poo Pants
I've Got a Poot
Poop Poop Poop in my Belly

8. You will do things like post on your blog at 4:30 in the morning. That's right ladies and gentlemen, you will find a whole host of ways to entertain yourself in the middle of the night. Gone are the pre-baby days when seeing 4:30 in the morning must have signaled that you had a REALLY fun night out on the town and could now sleep until 1 in the afternoon. In fact, gone are the pregnancy days where you would only see 4:30 briefly on your way to the bathroom for the 12th time. I would kill for those days because at least i could go back to sleep immediately.

7. You will do WHATEVER it takes to get your baby to sleep and stay asleep. Everyone says "All babies like to do is sleep". Okay let me clear up a little myth for you guys. Yes all babies like to sleep, but that could only be in fifteen minute increments or only if you are holding them or only when you are desperate to try and get somewhere on time and don't want to wake them up. What people don't tell you is babies don't like to sleep during the night....or in their crib....or while you are stuck in a traffic jam. No sir, that is when they want to SCREAM!

6. You will do things you said you would NEVER do to get your baby to sleep. This relates heavily to number seven. Just yesterday Perron fell asleep in his car seat and was out like a light. He hadn't slept well all day so I decided I would gingerly take his car seat out of the car and promptly put it in his bedroom (with him still in it) and turn up the static on his little clock radio really loud (who needs a fancy white noise machine) and let him stay sleeping in his car seat.

5. You will learn how to do everything one handed. Here is a list of things I can now do one handed that I used to think would be virtually impossible.

I can go to the bathroom while holding a baby.
Even better than that I can pull up my underwear and pants one handed. Now this might not sound that difficult, but for all of you non-mommies, grab a sack of potatoes and jiggle it around while simultaneously pulling up your pants. See....it's not as easy as it looks.
I can answer work emails one handed.
I can definitely eat one handed...that one is a pretty rookie skill that is developed pretty early.

Okay...I have to cut this post short because someone is hungry and I am done pumping (don't worry...you know there will be something on my list of top ten paying homage to the pump). Stay tuned for the second half of my top ten list. Don't worry....it only gets better :)

2 Months Old

2009-09-19T07:21:00.000-07:00

Dear Perron,

We can not believe that you are already two months old. The time has gone by so fast. With each day a little more of your personality comes out and your daddy and I love to discover more about the little person you are growing to be. You continue to love to eat. Daddy and I think that you might be going through a growth spurt because you have gone back to eating every three hours on the dot. You are like a little food alarm clock. You are eating about three and a half ounces per feed. You continue to grow like a little weed. We go to the pediatrician on Monday for your first round of shots :( and we are betting that you weigh over 8 lbs. If you are that big, that means you have gained over 5 lbs in two months! We finally have your reflux under control with a special medicine called Prevacid and you are a MUCH happier baby. Mommy and Daddy were afraid we were going to have to send you to go live with the wolves for a couple of weeks you were so unhappy.

You are also starting to sleep MUCH better. This is very good for mommy's sanity. You have gone from waking up every 45 minutes to hour and a half to sleeping almost three hours in a row. We have the miracle blanket to thank for that. Pray that your mommy doesn't leave your daddy for the inventor of that godsend. It has changed all three of our lives! Even wrapped up in your baby straight jacket you can figure out a way to scoot all over the crib and turn your self around. We frequently come in in the mornings and find you still in your positioner but turned upside down at the bottom of the crib. You are definitely going to be a wiggle worm like your mommy.

You are starting to smile, mainly you still practice in your sleep, but we know that you are going to start smiling at us any day now. In fact last night, you were even laughing in your sleep and it was the cutest sound ever. You are really beginning to enjoy your toys. We play every day on the blanket on the floor. Right now our version of playing is just looking at your toys as you lay on your back or stomach. You are getting so strong. You can lift your head up and turn it from side to side.
You still love your bouncy chair the most, but you are starting to like to spend time in your swing more and more. We go to a stroller mom class two times a week and mommy gets to exercise while you get to come along for the ride. You are the second oldest baby in the class but by far the smallest. Every baby in the class weighed more at birth than you weigh now. But that's okay. We have known all along that the best things come in small packages!

Mommy looks at you every day and realizes what a true miracle you are. I have read so many sad and scary stories about babies dying because their mommies got sick like I did and they didn't get to experience the joy that a baby brings into your life. I thank God every day for brining me into that doctor's office that Friday morning and saving you and me. You are the light of our lives!

We love you more every day!

Mommy and Daddy

Mouth Kisses

2009-09-13T06:59:00.000-07:00

I know....that title is bizarre. It will all make sense soon, so be patient. First a little background. As you have read in the previous post, we have been trying to sort out Perron's stomach issues. As an update on that, they switched his medication to Prevacid which is much stronger and that has helped tremendously. Thank God! However, it was not the answer to our sleep issues that had developed along with the stomach issues. He would sometimes sleep 3 hours in a row for Stephen, but by the time my shift started he would be up every 45 minutes to an hour and a half. Exhausting! He would sleep great in his bouncer and even better in our arms but the second you tried to lie him down forget about it. What did Albert Einstein say? The definition of insanity of is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result. We would feed him, hold him up right for 30 minutes for his reflux and he would be sound asleept. However, the second he hit the crib he would quickly startle himself away. Because he is a preemie, his little nervous system is more immature then most newborns his startle reflex is very strong and he doesn't have great control of his arms and legs. He moves them constantly which while great is also a big problem when trying to sleep.

We had given up on swaddling very early because we thought he didn't like it. He would always cry and squirm as soon as we finished the swaddle. However, this weekend Stephen and I were at our wits end. In one of my many middle of the night research sessions I had come across the Harvey Karp and the Happiest Baby on the Block. THIS MAN IS A GENIUS! Hence the mouth kisses...I have told Stephen on more than one occasion that if I were to ever meet this man, I would kiss him square on the mouth...with tounge if necessary :) His philosophy is so simple and commonsensical, but IT WORKS! He bases is on the five S's: swaddling, side, shushing, swinging and sucking. I would recommend this book and philosophy to any mother expecting their first child. The best part is that is even comes as a DVD, which works great since we know Stephen refusing to read :) I on the other hand read the book in less than 24 hours.

Now onto the other mouth kiss. If I ever meet the inventor of the Miracle Blanket...I will mouth kiss them too...girl or boy! As I had mentioned, we thought Perron hated to be swaddled; however, after reading Dr. Karp's book I realized that they might fight it but it is what they need to help them calm down. It is really the cornerstone of Dr. Harp's philosophy, so if you can't get that down you can't really do his other 4 S's. So we have a little Houdini on our hands and I knew that we would not make it with just a regular swaddle with a blanket...plus I am not really that good at it. so I remembered that some of my friends had the miracle blanket and had recommended it. So Stephen and I went on line and bought one right away...and had it two day aired here (at this point we didn't realize you could by them at retail).

So I tried it last night and he slept a total of 8 and a half hours!!!! Unheard of!!! He went from 10:45 to 12:45 and then stephen fed him and put him to bed and then he slept until 5 am and after I fed him he went back down until 8:30 am. Unbelievable! The best part of the miracle blanket is that I can just lay him in the crib and he stays there. He doesn't flail about, he doesn't wake up, he just stays asleep. It truly is a miracle.

Now, I am not sure if this is just a fluke or if it is a trend, but this is the most positive I have felt about finding a solution to our sleep issues. I know he is still going to wake up two times to feed right now because he is just still so small, but I think we are a step closer to getting him to eventually sleep through the night. Please pray that this continues to work and we can all start to get some more sleep. He is still a little houdini and I came in at five am he had scooted down to the bottom of the crib and was pushed up again the crib rail and had his blanket semi-unwrapped and had it loosely wrapped around his neck (yes that freaked me out). I think that we might pin the tail of the blanket in tonight to make sure it doesn't do that again. It didn't do it this morning so I think he might have just wiggled really hard.

So anyhow, we are so happy that he slept so well and we are hoping that this trend continues!!!

My New Favorite

2009-09-08T07:42:00.000-07:00

I was sent this photo from our shoot and it is by far my new favorite. Ignore the fact that I am photoshopped within an inch of my life :) enjoy!

Tummy Troubles

2009-09-07T11:32:00.000-07:00

Sorry for the delay in posting. It has been a VERY long week (even though it technically is monday already). Perron has been having some tummy issues for the past two weeks and we have spent the majority of that time trying to figure out what it is. We finally have it down to two different issues. Unfortunately it took a trip to the pediatrician, two trips to the pediatric gastroenterologist, a upper gi series, a new perscription formual, and a middle of the night trip to the ER. Based on the upper GI series Perron has pretty severe acid reflux...even though he doesn't spit up that bad and he certainly doesn't refuse feeds...we also think he might have a milk sensitivity. I don't think he has a true milk allergy, but it does definitely hurt his belly. He is on the highest dose of Zantax that he can be on for his age and he is on a specialty formula called Ele-Care. The formula cost $33 for a small can and you can't buy it at retail and it stinks like hell, so let's hope he doesn't have to stay on it. The bad news is that if he does have a milk sensitivity then he will not tolerate my breast milk well. After our trip to the ER...which was a nightmare that I don't even want to discuss (he is fine though) I put him on all breastmilk which he tolerated well until last night. It just makes his little belly hurt and get really gassy. I think that we will be able to rotate him between his formula and breast milk and keep him under control.

When he had the barium swallow for the upper GI series no one mentioned that it might be difficult for him to pass the barium. I would have appreciated a heads up. The barium basically turned in to hard pieces of "chalk" in his intestines that were anywhere from half and inch to an inch long and about a third of an inch wide. As you can imagine getting rid of those was no fun for him. After two calls to the pediatrican the nurse on call sent us to the ER at 3:30 in the morning on Saturday saying he needed an enema. So we pack up our 7 week old premature infant and take him to ground zero for disease in the city of Birmingham..the Children's Hospital emergency room. Once there they informed us that they don't do enema's on babies as small as he is and we were told to "give him apple juice". Are you FREAKING KIDDING ME! Could the nurse not have mentioned that in one of my frantic phone calls. The bitch ass (excuse my language but that is what she was) attending pediatrician then basically implied we were bad parents for bring our son down there and exposing him to all of those germs. She implied that he would be getting meningitis or some kind of infection that would cause him get septic because he was there. Like we just decided that there was nothing better to do at 3am on a Saturday morning so we would load ourselves up and head to the ER to see what was happening. I then of course was a nervous wreck all weekend thinking he was going to get sick. Stephen had to force me not to take his temperature ever three minutes all weekend long. Needless to say, the pediatrician's office will be hearing from me this morning. Why couldn't the nurse have said...by the way try some apple juice...that may work.

Any how, he is all better now. We are watching him really closely to make sure he doesn't exhibit any signs of illness. It is just really scary because a baby less than 3 months old can not localize infection and even a simple cold could very quickly turn into something deadly. Add his prematurity into the mix and it is extra scary and stressful. The GI series did show that he has what they call a standing column when he has reflux. Basically the food exits the stomach in and moves up the esophagus and stays there. It almost looked like a little food tornado. He is a trooper though and we are hoping we have the situation under control now and he will feel and sleep better! For his sake and mommy and daddy's! If it is not one thing it is another!

Photoshoot Sneak Peek

2009-09-01T09:30:00.000-07:00

Yesterday we had the honor of going to my friends Liesa and Tony's studio and having a photoshoot with Perron. They do all of my photography for Smithfield and as a baby present they offered to take pictures for us. Liesa is incredibly talented and we are blessed to have these pictures. Check out their work at . We will have more pictures to post later, but Liesa sent me a sneak peek of a few of them and I wanted to share them with you. We are biased, but we think they are beautiful!

Picture Post

2009-08-30T08:58:00.001-07:00

I haven't posted pictures of our peanut in a while and I figured y'all were getting sick of me blabbing on. Enjoy!

Going for a ride in my swing.

Evidence that I love sleeping on my side. I look so sweet how could you tell me I could not sleep on my side.

Sweet sleeping angel.

I love my play mat. Horray!

About to go out to celebrate our 4 year wedding anniversary.

Catching a few Z's on the couch with Daddy.

Due Date

2009-08-26T18:25:00.000-07:00

Today is the day that Perron was supposed to be born. I can't believe that his due date is here. It is so weird to think that this entire time he was still supposed to be inside me. It is a really surreal feeling that is very hard to put in words. So much has happened in these past six weeks and at times they alternately feel like the fastest and slowest 6 weeks of my life. It feels like he has always been here and been a part of our lives and he has changed so much in the past six weeks. He has had so many milestones that it is hard to imagine that he wouldn't be "alive" on the outside until today. He is in newborn diapers as of today. We switched him from his preemie bottle nipples to his newborn nipples yesterday. We have already had to take his bumper pads off of is crib because he moves around so much. I came in this morning (after a very long night...more on that later) and he had scooted all the way to the top of the crib and had pressed his face up against the crib bars so hard that when I picked him up he had an indentation on his face! He is going to be a strong little squirm worm just like his mommy.

Back to the long night. As I mentioned, he is is quite the squirmmer. He HATES being swaddled and screams bloody murder if you try and keep his hands down. I think that he gets this from his daddy because being in a straight jacket is probably hands down one of Stephen's biggest fears. So we have started just wrapping his swaddling blanket under his armpits and letting his arms go free. He likes that for the most part, but it really gives him leverage to move around. He wants to sleep on his side really bad (like his mommy) and we are having a hard time getting him to stay on his back already. I went and bought sleep positioners yesterday after talking to my pediatrician and we tried them out last night. BIG MISTAKE! He was so tired, but everytime you would put him down, his little arms and legs would start flailing and he would bump the positioner. That would startle him and he would start screaming bloody murder. I was up with him from 1:30am until 6 am with only 30 minutes of sleep in the mix. Stephen got up with me at 5:30 while we tried to figure out what to do. I have to say we still don't really have a plan. I think we are going to give the shankapotomus (see adventures in poop entry for explination) one more try and see how it goes if we take everything out of the crib. I don't think he could roll all the way over at this point, but I also didn't think he could wiggle out of his positioners and get his face pressed against the crib rails. Wish us luck tonight! Mommy can't take another five hours straight of awake time in the middle of the night.

The Crigler Crew

Two Years Old

Casa Crigler

Hear and There

Railroad Park

Poor McKenzie

What's Going On

18 Months

The Pumpkin Patch and Pumpkin Carving

A Photo Collage

14 Months

Perron's Birthday Extravaganza Part 3: Attack of the Cake

Perron's Birthday Extravaganza Part 2: The Birthday Boy

Perron's Birthday Extravaganza Part One: The Decor

1 Year Old

This Night a Year Ago

Red, White and Beach

Baptism and Father's Day= One Busy Weekend

11 months

Puttin' on the Ritz

Crigler Crawfish Boil

10 Months

Mother's Day Recap

Perron's Trip to the Botanical Gardens: Otherwise known as eating grass, rocks and pollen

9 Months

In His Easter Finest

Growing Up

Pool Party

Therapy Olympics

What's Cookin'?

I'm Back

8 Months

The Next Michael Phelps

Eye Doctor

7 Months

And the Award Goes to...

Bid It Up

A Little of This and a Little of That

Perspective

MIA

Going to California on A Big Jet Plane

6 Months

Put it in my Mouth

My Heart Breaks...

The Teething Fairy

A New Look!

Nap Bootcamp Has Officially Begun

The List

2009: A Year in Pictures

Merry Christmas...A Few Days Late

This Day A Year Ago

In the Battle of Man Vs. Swaddle....

5 Months Old

Dear Santa

An Early Christmas Present

A Perron Picture Post

We Live Amongst Proof

Days Like This

Cortical Blindness

The Begining of Yet Another Journey

More Questions than Answers

4 Months

Have You Hugged Your Preemie Today?

Early Intervention

Splish Splash Perron's Taking a Bath

Happy Halloween!

A Busy Weekend

A Perron Picture Post

3 Months Old

First Day Back

Rollin' Rollin' Rollin'

A Perron Update

Top Ten: Part 2

Top Ten: Part 1

2 Months Old

Mouth Kisses

My New Favorite

Tummy Troubles

Photoshoot Sneak Peek

Picture Post