Grayson 1 Month

Dearest Grayson,

How could it be that one month has already passed since you were born.  Well technically six and a half weeks have passed since you were born, but you are going to have to cut mommy a little slack...you're first month of life was a roller coaster.  It is hard to believe that you spent more of your first month of life in the hospital then outside of it.  You were a very sick little boy and we were very scared for you, but you are also a very strong little boy and were able to pull through.

It is hard to image our lives and our family without you.  In some ways it seems like this month has passed in a blink of an eye and in other ways it seems like you have always been a part of our family.  You are such a sweet, good baby.  You are so relaxed and content.  I think that after your brother, God knew that we deserved a little break.  You are happy to be held, but you are just as happy to sit in your bouncy seat and observe what is going on in the world around you.  You very rarely cry.  In the hospital while they were repeatedly poking you with needles the most you would ever do was grunt really hard and squirm.  Every nurse would lavish you with praise and tell us what a good baby you were.  We could not agree more.  You will take a paci but you are fully committed to it.  We will see if that changes as time goes by.

I would list some of the things that you like to do, but bless your heart, you have been in the hospital so much you haven't gotten to do much more than lay in a hospital bed or lay in the bunny seat (your bassinet/bed).  I have done a little bit of tummy time with you and you are so strong.  You can hold your head up away from our bodies.  In fact, you are exhausting to hold just like your brother was, because you squirm and practically climb up our bodies and over our back.

You are a wonderful sleeper.  In fact, most nights I have had to wake you up just to feed you.  You eat and then go right back to sleep.  You have been sleeping right next to mommy and daddy's bed.  That won't last forever though, because you are a very loud sleeper.  You grunt and squirm like nobody's business.  I have enjoyed having you close to me though because we didn't keep Perron in our room for very long.

You lost down below your birth weight during your hospital stay, but are up to a little over eight pounds.  We had to switch you to size 1 diapers while you were in the hospital because you were wetting out of the newborn diapers.  You can wear newborn clothes and 0-3 month clothes, but those are still big.  It is so funny though, because you seem huge to us.  You are wearing clothes that your brother didn't wear until he was 3 or 4 months old.

Speaking of your brother.  He loves you very  much.  He always begs to hold you and wants to kiss and hug you all the time.  He is very sweet and gentle with you for the most part and is so excited to have you here.  We have had to cut back on the amount he can touch you and he hasn't been able to hold you since you were sick.  We have to keep you safe.  I love watching the two of you together and know that one day you will grow up to be best of friends.

You are the light of our lives and we can not imagine what our lives without you in it.  If anything, our time in the hospital with you strengthened our love and commitment to you and reminded us to cherish each moment with you.

We love you more than words can say!

Love

Mommy and Daddy

Grayson's Hospitlization Part 1: The ER

Hello there blog.  It has been almost a year since I have seen you last.  I would make excuses, but who has time for that.  The reality is that I am here now and I have a very important story to tell.  This blog, back when it was active, has always served to document our lives, the good and the bad, the exciting and the scary.  Well, a few short weeks ago, I have never been more terrified in my entire life.  It started simply enough.  Perron started coughing over a  weekend.  I wasn't alarmed.  I assumed it was allergies due to the early spring we have had.  Well, by Monday the cough had turned into a fever and a full blown cold.  We toughed it out and I tried to keep the boys separated as best I could.  For those of you with more than one child, especially one child who is a very exciting to big brother newborn, you know that is impossible.  We took Perron to the pediatrician's on a Thursday and he was diagnosed with a sinus infection and put on antibiotics.  All was well in the Crigler household...until Saturday.

We went to the zoo with my parents Saturday morning and I remember mentioning at some point that Grayson was getting a stuffy nose, but I didn't think much of it.  Then some of our sweet friend brought dinner over for us Saturday night.  While they were there I felt Grayson's head and he felt really warm.  I took his temperature and it was only 99.9 degrees, elevated but below the 100.4 cut off.  I called the ped's office and she paged the doctor on call because Grayson was so young (17 days old at this point).  The doctor told us we could hold off on going to the hospital but if anything changed she was sending us to the ER.  He stayed about the same Saturday night and still had an elevated temp on Sunday so she sent us in to get checked out.  We were checked out and at that point there was nothing really they could do so we were sent back home.

Fast forward to Monday.  I woke Grayson up to feed him at about 7 am and he went directly back to sleep.  I had to go to the grocery store since I hadn't gone over the weekend due to his illness, so I left Grayson with the nanny and headed out.  When I got back home he was still sleeping.  I thought he might be wheezing some and I could see his clothes moving as he breathed, so I knew he was working a little hard to breathe.  I called my dad, who is a doctor, and asked him what he thought a newborn wheezing sounded like.  He basically said it sounds like going to the doctor's office.  I don't know why I was so hesitant, but I guess I was afraid that I would look like some paranoid first time mom, even though this was my second child.  Luckily after my mom called and said dad had called her, I agreed and made an appointment for 10:45.

My mom and I took him in and we got to see the same doctor that we had been working with over the weekend.  Our regular pediatrician was in Africa on a medical mission for two weeks.  We saw the FABULOUS Dr. M and she said that although is oxygen saturation was 98 percent she didn't like the amount of work he was having to do to breath.  He was retracting and doing some very slight grunting at that point.  She said she was sure that they were going to laugh at her for admitting us, but she would feel most comfortable admitting him for observation.  She said she was sure we would just be in there for 24 hours and things would be fine.  I completely agreed, because I was sick of being a nervous wreck at home watching him 24 hours a day.  She said that we didn't need an ambulance and we could just go straight to the ER and we could be admitted through there.  She called ahead and let them know we were coming.  I still thank God to this day, and I will forever, that she had the foresight to send us to the hospital immediately.

So mom and I loaded up and headed down to the hospital.  I was perfectly calm and relaxed.  I called Stephen and let him know what was going on.  I told him to leave work and go home and pack us a bag, get lunch, and meet us at the ER.  I called the nanny who was with Perron and let her know what was going on.  I was chatting and having a gay old time in the car.  In fact, I even went the wrong way to the hospital because I wasn't paying attention and was headed back home until my mom asked me where I was going.  Long story short, the entire time were were in the car was probably not more than 15 minutes.  As we were coming off of the highway, I happened to look in my rearview mirror at Grayson and he looked horrible.  He was gray and he was working so hard to breath that I could literally see his head jumping up and down in the mirror.  I asked my mom to turn around and look at him and she agreed that he did not look that good.  At that point, I had her take off her seat belt and turn around in the seat and watch him the rest of the ride to make sure he was still breathing.  It's funny because I clearly knew that he was worse, but I didn't know how much worse and I was not really panicked at that point.

We get to the ER and I take Grayson in while mom gets all of our stuff out of the car.  I head to the triage desk and tell them that we were the people who had been sent in.  The triage nurse asked if he could listen to Grayson really quick.  I pulled back the blanket that had been covering him and he listened to him for two seconds and said that I needed to come back to the triage room.  I quickly got him out of his carseat and the nurse put a pulse ox on his foot.  I looked at the machine and it said 78 (it should be a minimum of 92).  I remember asking the nurse if that was accurate.  He didn't answer me and quickly but the pulse ox on his other foot.  The reading came back as an 80.  The next thing I know he was yelling come with me and we were running through the ER trying to get to a room.  We got to the room and two nurses and a respiratory therapist started working on him.  I will never forget that scene for as long as I live.  Grayson was a horrible grayish, white, his capillary re-fill was 7 seconds (it should be less than two), he was retracting so hard that I could see each of his ribs, and was grunting so loud trying to get air in.  The nurses were trying to get an IV in him and he kept blowing veins left and right.  The respiratory therapist had a mask that was pushing 5 liters of oxygen in him and I was just standing there in total shock.  Not even 15 minutes prior he had been fine and now he is in critical condition in the ER.

The ER attending doctor came in and I told her the story and she said that she needed to get a PICU consult down to the ER because they thought that they were going to intubate him in the ER.  WHAT!!!  That is when it really sunk in how sick he was.  I couldn't believe that they were talking about intubating my 19 day old.  As I mentioned, I was just in total shock and my adrenaline was pumping like a million miles an hour.  Thank God my mom was with me.  she immediately called Stephen and told him to stop whatever he was doing and get to the hospital immediately.  She also called my dad and as soon as she said he was satting in the 80s he rushed from his office to the hospital and met us in the ER room.

They kept giving him breathing treatments, stuck him a million more time to try and get blood because his iv wouldn't return blood, took chest X-rays, and pushed several boluses of fluid to try and get him re-hydrated.  Stephen finally made it to the ER and we just stood there staring at our precious baby as he was being worked on.  The PICU doctor's came down and talked to us about the intubation process and what the criteria were for intubation and then said we had to be admitted to the PICU.  He said they were really full in the PICU so they would have to move beds around to make space for us.  They left us in the ER while that happened and again I can not stress enough that we just stood there in shock.  I didn't really cry the whole time in the ER, I was able to joke with our wonderful RN's and REspiratory Therapist (all males by the way).  The main thing I remember doing is just pacing back and forth over and over.  They finally  let me sit on a gurney and hold him and we just waited to be transferred.  When it was time to be transferred the loaded up his monitors, oxygen tank, and me on the stretcher and wheeled us off.

We were on the way to the PICU.  Stay tuned for part 2 of the story...the PICU.

Two Years Old

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

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

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

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

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.....