Little Bit of This, Little Bit of That

Sorry if I’ve been slacking on blog substance lately, but let me catch you up to speed on what we’ve been up to.  Thanksgiving Day was SO much fun for us, very busy, but that’s the way we do things.  Alan hunted in the morning and me & Ryder went to my brother’s house to visit with my fam and have breakfast.  We came home, got ready, then headed to Grandma’s for our first dinner, then went to Alan’s Dads for our second dinner.  So we hung out with family and got really full, it was great!  I tried to get some cute pictures in the leaves…but Ryder wasn’t feeling the leaves this year!

 

Me & my Mom decided to do the Black Friday thing so we met at 3am and shopped until 7am.  It was fun…but exhausting!  It feels good to have started my Christmas shopping though!  Speaking of exhausting, this long weekend must have been very tiring for Ryder because he slept until 9:20 on Friday & Saturday mornings, and until 8:45 this morning!  It was soooooo nice for him to sleep in for once.  Of course me & Alan were both awake worrying sick that something was wrong with him the first day!  But when the trend continued throughout the weekend, we took advantage of it!

A few weeks ago, my mom bought Ryder a wagon.  The day she bought it, Daddy put it together and Yaya pulled him around the house.

But today we ventured out and took him for a wagon ride, which he absolutely loved!

It felt good to get some fresh air, I’ve been feeling very BLAH lately, so we’ve just been lounging around mostly.  But after our walk we decided to put our Christmas tree up!!  This ALWAYS makes me feel better.  I love getting in the Christmas spirit, it is by far my favorite time of the year, so even though I’m totally not ready for it, I’m really glad that it’s here!

And now it’s back to work tomorrow…YAYYY!  Totally being sarcastic and not excited at all that this long weekend is over, but we sure did enjoy it while it lasted.

9 Weeks!

Well Thanksgiving definitely made this week fly by, hopefully with more Holiday’s coming up a few more will go by just as fast!

Your Baby:

• Is about the size of a grape, or perhaps a cocktail olive, the kind that’s marinated in vermouth and stuffed with blue cheese.
• (Is not marinated in vermouth or stuffed with blue cheese.)
• Has fingers and toes and eyelids and ears.
• External boy and girl-parts are present, but won’t be really distinguishable for another couple weeks.

You:

• Have a uterus the size of a flipping grapefruit, lady.
• *BARF* Again. Still.
• With all the extra blood pumping through your system (about 50% more blood volume, actually), your body temperature may be a little jacked up — if you’re constantly complaining about being too hot or too cold, this is why.

 

This week has been the worst for nausea and food aversions…I’m definitely counting down for the 2nd trimester so that yucky feeling will go away.  My energy level is staying pretty low and my face is breaking out horribly (that didn’t happen with Ryder).  I’m not in maternity pants yet, but I can’t button my jeans.  Jamie gave me her bella band and that seems to be doing the trick…and as you’ll see below wearing over sized hoodies makes me feel better too!

Ryder went from being completely clueless about the new baby, to being completely knowledgeable.  He talks about him/her every day and always asks if he can kiss my belly!  He knows there’s a baby in there and sometimes I’ll ask him “what do you think the baby is doing right now?” and he’ll either say “sleeping” or “swimming”!  I’m pretty sure he’s right :)  He kept asking if the baby could play, and I always tell him he has to wait a while so the other day he said “baby can’t play…be patient?!”  So smart!

Here we are:

Thanksgiving Eve

The best part about Thanksgiving (well besides the food, of course) is that it provides the perfect time to really reflect on your life and realize all that you have to be thankful for.

This Thanksgiving I am SO very thankful for the gift of life.  The life we brought into this world last year, and the new life stirring inside of me now.  Ryder’s life lights ours up, I just can’t imagine a single day without him in it.  I can only assume that another child will give us double the joy…so much to be thankful for!

I’m thankful for family.  My husband especially, he is perfect for me.  My immediate family who is there every day, walking life’s journey with us.  And for the extended…you know we have lots of it!  It’s just a warm feeling to know that you have so many places or people to turn to for support.

I’m also thankful for the friendships I’ve made over the years.  They are the ones that are so special, you know they will last a lifetime.  Friends that offer so much encouragement and let you vent and don’t judge you and are genuine.  I’ve learned that you reach a point in your life where you realize which friendships those are and you cherish them, because they are worth it!

Jesus…I am so very thankful for Him.  Without Him I would have nothing to be thankful for. 

I hope that everyone has a wonderful Thanksgiving…and remembers all that they have to be thankful for!

Such a Little Man

Some of my favorite things that Ryder says or does are things that Alan teaches him.  It makes me realize how important it is for a boy to have his Daddy, because there are certain things that Mommy would just never think to teach her son…like the difference between an automatic car and a stick shift, the noise a Harley Davidson makes, and what you do when you see a deer:

One thing that has surprised me is how much of a help Alan is in the potty department.  Lately since Ryder has been telling us that he is going potty in his diaper, Alan has been teaching him about the potty and how it all works and bringing him to observe when he has to go.  We always let him go sit on his potty with his clothes on and let him pretend to go, and we sit him on his potty before bath time, but he has never gone, he just pretends.  BUT…tonight, shortly after I took that video, he wanted his pants off and right after I took them off he said “Ryder go potty?”  So I took his diaper off and I let him sit on the BIG BOY potty this time, and much to my surprise, he PEED!!!  I was so excited, and so was he, mainly because that meant he was allowed to flush the toilet!  We told Daddy when he got home (from an ice-cream run, we are spoiled!) and he was super excited too!  We were going to wait until the summer time to start potty training, but maybe we’ll attempt it after Christmas and see if we can get anywhere!

8 Weeks!

Another milestone today…I’m 8 weeks pregnant!  Here’s what’s going on this week:

Your baby:

• Is about the size of a gummy bear or kidney bean, and dear LORD I promise to be done with the bean comparisons soon, because it is all entirely too precious.
• Is extremely jointy, with fingers and toes and elbows and knees that s/he can bend and wiggle.
• Almost doesn’t have a tail anymore.

You:

• Are possibly a walking ball of first-trimester misery, if I may project myself on you for a bit.
• *BARF*
• OMG I HAVE TO PEE I JUST PEED OMG I HAVE TO PEE AGAIN
• May be having trouble sleeping at night, despite being exhausted.

 

Yes, the first trimester misery is in full swing!  I am bloated and fat and tired and nauseous and moody.  But I’m trying to ignore all of those symptoms and make the best of each day because I still have a very important job to fulfill…there is a man and a little boy that need me to still be available as their Mommy & Wife.  It’s kind of good though because sometimes I get so side tracked that I don’t notice the symptoms or even remember that I’m pregnant, instead of dwelling on every single ache or pain like the first time around.  It felt really good to see the heartbeat on the sonogram so I went ahead and told my work about the pregnancy.  And, we traded in my car on a full-sized SUV so we’ll have plenty of room for another car seat…and stroller…and everything else that comes along with having 2 kids. 

Don’t ask me why a gummy bear needs THIS much room already, but apparently Ryder thinks its funny!:

20 Months!!

Wow…I mean seriously…where has the time gone?  We are very quickly approaching Ryder’s 2nd Birthday!  Seeing his age in months reach the 20’s has now made that a reality.

Here’s what Ryder is up to this month:

• He is very small for his age, only weighing in at 22 pounds.  He wears mostly 12 month pants and 18 month tops.
• He has a great appetite, but Mommy had to make a new “no snacking before dinner” rule because he has started to ask for things like donuts and gummy worms for dinner! 
• He has started to recognize things that are similar.  For example, he will go in his room and bring us all of his monster trucks, or all of his dirtbikes, or in the waiting room at therapy he will go through the crayon box and pick out all of the green crayons.
• He is putting so many words together now and forming sentences, and it shocks me when I tell him something like “Daddy’s not home, he went hunting this morning” and he repeats the whole thing back to me “Daddy not home, Daddy went hunting!”  It amazes me the things that come out of his mouth and how he understands everything that we tell him.  He has some really BIG words he says too, like another, different, calculator, and microwave!
• He’s soooooo sweet!  I love when he says “Mommy I NEED you” and when he asks for kisses all the time.  And my favorite is when we say goodbye and he says “miss you”. 
• He is testing us and himself a lot lately…doing things he knows he’s not allowed just to see our reaction, or jumping really close to the edge of the bed to see what will happen.  The other night I put him to bed and noticed a few minutes later that the light in his room was on!  I opened the door and caught him playing, but when he saw me he dove into his pillow and pretended to be sleeping!!!  Now every night I have to be on light duty for a few minutes to make sure he goes to sleep, if his light flicks on, I open the door, and he looks so shocked like “how does she always know?!”.  One night he heard me coming and turned it off and laid down!  He is SO the quiet mischievous type just like his Daddy!
• We have been asking him about the new baby lately, if he wants a boy baby or a girl baby.  He always changes his answer, so we never know what we’re going to get.
• We had lots of Doctor appointments and Therapy appointments this month, all of which are helping us move forward on his road to recovery!
• He talks about Team Ryder and the Kidney Walk ALL the time!  Any time he sees someone in their Team Ryder shirt he knows exactly what it says and gets so excited.  We raised a total of $2,823 this year for the National Kidney Foundation and had over 50 people on Team Ryder, so that was such a huge blessing for us!

This month has been fun and exciting and exhausting and has flown by sooooo fast!  Ryder is the best source of joy and entertainment that ever could have been brought into our lives and we are so very thankful for him.  Love this boy!

It’s Video Time!

Just some talk about cars:

He won’t watch TV, so he has to learn all of his characters from his diapers:

Animal sounds never get old, so here you go, for your entertainment! :)

Doctors, Doctors Everywhere!

We had a day filled with Dr. Appt’s today…it feels good to finally be home.  We left the house around 8am and didn’t make it home until 6pm! 

Our 1st stop was in Richmond to Ryder’s kidney doctor, Dr. Winslow (as Ryder has renamed “Docta Wednesday!”).  We love this Doctor SO much.  He got to meet Ryder right when he was born and has truly cared about his progress in life, even aside from just his kidney development.  But the point of the appointment was to check his kidney development and we got another GREAT report!  Ryder’s kidney’s have been progressively looking better at each appointment and he was really pleased to see on the sonogram this time that the right kidney has grown (the past few it has kind of stayed the same size) and caught up to the left!  It was a miracle in and of itself that the right kidney regained function after rupturing, but to now see that it has caught up to the left just shows how amazing Ryder’s little body is.  He was very happy to hear that Ryder is telling us when he’s peeing because that is a sign that he’s getting good sensation.  Now we need to figure out whether he can feel his bladder filling up, or can only feel it at the point when he is peeing.  His bladder has huge bands of muscle around it, so potty training is going to be very…interesting!  Other than that, we talked about Ryder’s stroke, and the new baby on the way.  He again reassured me that Posterior Urethral Valves is not something that shows up in siblings, but that the kidney’s should still be checked as the pregnancy progresses just to be cautious.

Luckily, Ryder’s next appointment was in the same building, right down the hall, at the Ophthalmologist (Ryder’s version: “Da EYE Docta!”)  This one was rough because they had to put eye drops in his eyes to dilate them, which made his vision really blurry for FIVE hours!  When we left there the poor things was burying his head in his Daddy’s shirt saying “its BRIGHT ousside! need sungwasses!”  But let me rewind, the reason we took Ryder to the eye doctor is because we have been noticing for a while that sometimes it seems like Ryder’s left eye focuses and his right eye drifts out of focus.  Well, we were right that something isn’t right, but that’s not it.  Ryder has…wait for it…Sixth Cranial Nerve Palsy.  I mean, really?!  Can’t it ever just be nothing?!  Basically what that means is that Ryder has a nerve way in the back of his brain that is not letting his left eye reach all the way around to the left to see things, if it did then he would be seeing in double vision.  So when he needs to see something to the left he turns his whole head instead of his eye, then uses his right eye to focus on it.  And when he needs to focus on something straight ahead he is turning his head slightly to the left to focus both eyes straight.  There’s nothing that needs to be done about it right now, because just like everything else that was affected by his stroke, there is a chance that his brain will make a new pathway to correct the problem itself.  So the Doctor wants to see him again in 1 year to check the progress.  If his body never corrects the problem, then it will require surgery to loosen the muscles in his left eye to allow his eye to reach further around and allow his right eye to stop compensating.  It will be imperative that his body corrects this or that surgery is done before  he will ever be able to play sports or drive a car.  Please pray that his body (by that I mean God!) will fix it.  We have seen His healing power in Ryder’s life many times before, I’d just hate to see him have to be put to sleep again, but we’ll cross that road if/when we get to it.

After that, it was time for a sneak peek at Baby Marsh v2 (thanks for the creative name Nicki!).  Since Ryder had already been traumatized at two doctor appointments, we figured it’d be better to let him sit out of this one.  So Daddy & Ryder dropped me off, and they went toy shopping…and to go look at bunkbeds because they are convinced this is a baby boy!  Thank goodness they didn’t come, I was there for THREE hours!  But to see that sweet little heartbeat is always worth the wait.  I had the most awkward heart-to-heart of my life…I’m sorry for the visual, but as I’m sitting there getting an internal sonogram, the Sonographer asked me how everything turned out with Ryder’s kidneys.  Let me give you a little background, when they found out I had diabetes with Ryder, they sent me for a sonogram with her at 30 weeks because my belly was measuring 4 weeks big.  People with diabetes have big babies so they wanted to check in on his growth.  When she did that sonogram, she noticed that his ureters were dilated.  She reported it to the Doctor who then sent me to the Perinatologist…and the rest is history, Ryder’s kidneys and bladder continued to swell until he had to be born by emergency c-section at 34 weeks.  Anyway, back to the heart-to-heart, i’m laying there with this big you know what stuck you know where and we both have tears streaming down our faces because she asked me what would have happened if she hadn’t noticed that swelling, and I told her that Ryder never would have made it.  We both agreed that the diabetes was pure Divine Intervention!  God put me in her office that day because He needed her to see that swelling, and it seriously saved his life.  She saved his life!  She told me thank you, for helping her to remember that her job does make a difference, and I thanked her…for doing her job! 

Poor Baby Marsh v2, we then both realized that we were there for a purpose, to look at the NEW baby (I’m starting to feel like I’m already neglecting this poor child!)  Everything looked great, the heartbeat was 145 bpm, and the baby was measuring at 7 weeks 4 days.  That gives me a due date of July 1st!!  Here’s a picture of our sweet little blob:

I met with my Dr. after the sonogram and he said that everything looks great, but I do have a cyst on my right ovary that they want to look at again to make sure it goes away.  They’ll be scheduling an appointment for me to see the high-risk Doctor at 12 weeks, and I need to come back to see my regular OB in 3 weeks.  Sometime before then I need to get all my blood work done and a 1 hour glucose test…YAY! 

Wow, that was a lot of information…for you and for me!  Thanks for sticking through it :)  Now I need to go rest my brain!

Oh wait, I almost forgot…Ryder and Daddy came back to the office before I was done and I heard them outside playing.  So I got my camera out and took pictures out of my 2nd floor window (this was great entertainment during my looooong wait for the doctor), seriously, how much do these pictures look private investigation?!  And the truth is, Ryder started running towards the parking lot and just as I was contemplating how hurt I would get if I jumped out of the window…Daddy hopped the fence, caught him, and spanked his butt.  ONE FOR DADDY!  Maybe I should spy more often!

Before the incident:

After the incident:

 

Oh how I love these boys.

Okay, done, for real.

7 Weeks!

Here’s what’s going on this week:

Your baby:

• Still with the growing. Always with the growing. Your baby starts off this week at four or five millimeters long, but is a whopping half an inch by the end.
• Has a two-chambered heart, air passages in the lungs, and cerebral hemispheres in the braaaaaains.
• Has an appendix, which is kind of cool until you remember that the appendix is almost completely useless. But it’s there now! Awww.

You:

• Might be feeling a little urpy and gaggy and pukey.
• Are incredibly sensitive to smells.
• Like, seriously. Who burned an English muffin in the employee break room this morning? WHO? WHO IS RESPONSIBLE? I WILL HUNT YOU DOWN, YOU MUFFIN-BURNING IDIOT!

I definitely feel pregnant this week!  The nausea has set in, and that’s just no fun.  You wake up feeling sick because your stomach is empty, and throughout the day the nauseous feeling comes and goes.  The best way I am able to keep the nausea to a minimum is to always have food in my stomach or on standby for when I start feeling sick.  Luckily, with Ryder I never threw up, and I don’t feel like I’m going to with this one either.  Thank goodness!  I’m not getting dizzy or light-headed anymore, so that’s great!  Other than that, my symptoms are heartburn and exhaustion.  Like I said, I definitely feel pregnant this week.

Alpha Mom said something else on her blog about this week that made me laugh because it is SO me! 

“You may feel more pregnant than you actually look (even though your uterus has doubled in size), and without that nice round belly you might not be getting a ton of “everything is okay” reassurance from your symptoms.
(Of course, as I have learned, all bets are off for a second pregnancy, as my previously stretched-out joey-pouch belly has rejoiced at the chance to totally fulfill its poochy destiny once more.)”

So…here you go…my left-over-Ryder-shouldn’t-be-this-big-but-can’t-suck-it-in 7 week belly!

Always/Sometimes/Never

I saw this post on Diana’s blog a few weeks ago and thought it was a really cute idea!  These babies grow up so fast and their little personalities and quirks change, so I love any chance to document each stage of Ryder’s life.  All to soon, the things he always does now will be things he never does and I don’t want to forget about them.  So here we go:

Always:

~ Talks!  He talks from the second he wakes up until the second he falls asleep.  He’s either repeating what you say or telling you what he’s doing or just rambling on and on…but something is always coming out of his mouth!

~ Tells his Daddy goodnight!  Even if Daddy isn’t home, Ryder yells “night-night Dada!” from his bed, hoping Daddy will hear him wherever he is. 

~ Wants kisses!  A regular kiss first, then he wants an eskimo kiss, then he wants a butterfly kiss, then a bear hug…in that order!

~ Eats Snacks!  He has a snack cabinet at home and if Daddy hasn’t already brought something home or got something out of our cabinets for them to share, then Ryder will find something out of his and bring it to Daddy.  Somehow, all of the snacking they do doesn’t ruin their appetite at meal time.

~ Says goodbye to objects when we leave somewhere.  “goodbye house, goodbye mailbox, goodbye Pap-Pap’s truck, goodbye garage, goodbye fort!” And then he ends it with “see you oomooorrow”

~ Has something to do with cars.  He’s either carrying car keys around, or driving a car, or talking about a car, or making car noises…he loves motorized vehicles!

Sometimes:

~ Calls us Mommy & Daddy!  For all this time we have been Mama & Dada, but recently he has started to say Mommy & Daddy which totally melts our hearts! 

~ Tells us when he’s “peein” or “poopin”.  He even has his own potty now that he sits on (with his clothes on) and tells us he’s “goin potta”.  Gotta start somewhere!

~ Can be dramatic!  He has perfected the faint move where something doesn’t go his way so he falls limp to the floor and cries!  That’s when operation “ignore that child” goes into full effect.

~ Asks me to read him stories out of his “Jesus Book” before bed.  He gets SO excited when we get to a page with Jesus on it!

~ Tells us what he wants to eat.  Usually he just eats whatever we’re having, but on occasion he’ll wake up and ask for pancakes for breakfast, or spaghetti for dinner.

Never:

~ Watches TV!  He used to watch his Praise Baby movie before bed, but ever since he started walking, he won’t even have anything to do with that!  He’s just not interested in TV at all, which isn’t a bad thing, but he definitely doesn’t get that from me!

~ Says I Love You!  It seems like he can/will say or repeat anything in the world, but he has only said Love you like once or twice…EVER!  I think he knows that he’s holding out on us and is doing it on purpose! 

~ Likes to swing!  Do you  know any other child that hates to swing?  It must have something to do with him feeling unstable, but he hates to swing or be thrown around.

~ Sleeps past 8 am…and that’s pushing it!  He usually wakes up around 7, but has never ever not once slept in past 8!  He goes to bed at 8pm though, so I guess after 11 or 12 hours, he’s just done!

~Says Yes to anything!  He substitutes the word “okay” for the word “yes”.  So our conversations go “Ryder would you like some milk?” “No” “Would you like some juice?” “okayyyyyy”.

 

Ryder will ALWAYS be the most important thing in our lives, he can SOMETIMES be a little mischievous, but he will NEVER be able to comprehend how much his Mommy & Daddy love him.

1st Appt for the New Baby

Today I had my first Dr. Appt for baby #2!  It was pretty routine, they did a pregnancy test…still positive!  And we just talked about my last pregnancy and some things that will be to come for this one.  First of all, I should NOT have started that diabetes diet.  The Doctor said that your sugars go a little crazy in the beginning of your pregnancy anyway, so for me to try to regulate them while my body is trying to regulate them is a bad combination and I could have fainted…which is exactly how those dizzy spells were making me feel.  I will be tested for diabetes early in the pregnancy, just not yet.

I will definitely be having a repeat C-Section which they will schedule for 1 week before my due date.  I have a sonogram scheduled for next Monday so that they can measure the baby and get an accurate due date. 

Of course we talked about Ryder and the complications that came with his pregnancy and birth.  I was shocked to hear the Doctor say that he has never had a patient whose child has had a stroke before!  That’s how uncommon it is…and with that said, I don’t want to hear any statistics during this whole pregnancy.  He is going to call the high risk Doctor and see how soon I need to be seen by him. 

And that’s about it…until next Monday :)

2010 Kidney Walk!

Wow, what a great time we had today!  First of all, we have been talking to Ryder about the Kidney Walk and about Team Ryder all week to get him pumped up.  Of course he repeats everything we say so when he woke up this morning he told me “Tidney Walk here!”  He remembered that it was today and was ready for it as soon as he woke up!

We had an amazing turnout!  Over 50 people showed up in their Team Ryder gear.  Thank you SO much to everyone who came out to support us and the National Kidney Foundation.  It really means a lot to be surrounded by such a great group of friends and family!

Team Ryder is so awesome!  So far we have raised a total of $2,477.00!!!  That doesn’t include the cash donations we turned in today.  I think it’s safe to say that we well surpassed our $2,000 goal!  Thanks to everyone who donated, you really helped make a difference.  The Kidney Foundation actually surpassed their $80,000 goal which for them means they will have funds to do things above and beyond what they already offer…more grants for kidney patients, more kidney disease testing sites, more money to go to research…BIG things. 

Since we were the Honorary Family at the walk this year, they announced us and told Ryder’s story, then we got to lead the walk.  Here are some random pictures of our walkers:

 

   

   

Ryder had a blast riding on his Daddy’s shoulders during the whole walk!

 

He was so adorable in his Team Ryder gear!

I hope that when he gets older he realizes how very special he is, what an inspiration he is to others, and that without him, there would be no Team Ryder!

Blog Party!

We had another get together with all of our blogger friends over the weekend.  We always have so much fun with these Moms & Kids.  It’s really neat to watch them all interact as they get older and really get to know each other.  I didn’t get many pictures because now I have a 1 year old to chase around, but here was the best I could do:

Mikayla going down the slide (as graceful as possible!)…

 

Ryder’s favorite thing was playing in the sand box:

And here are some group shots of the kids:

 

Some candid belly shots!  At our last get together, it was just Moms and our Kids, this time, there are FOUR pregnant women!  We’re having a blogger baby boom!  (be careful, you might catch the bug!)

 

Of course, me & Ryder were both exhausted afterward, but that just means we had LOTS of fun!!!

6 Weeks!!

I seriously feel like I blinked and then a week went by!  Probably because crazy long work days mixed with sleepless nights are a bad combination, and leave a pregnant-working-mommy in quite the daze as the days go by!  Here is what Alpha Mom (www.alphamom.com) has to say about week 6:

Your baby:

• Has tripled or even quadrupled in size and is now three or four entire millimeters long! Godzilla baby!
• Is working on growing a nose, some ears and a mouth.
• Is also growing flappy little leg and arm buds.
• Has a heartbeat that can be seen on an ultrasound — 100 to 160 beats per minute.

You:

• Are maybe moody as hell.
• Are getting up in the middle of the night to pee.
• Food cravings and/or aversions can be pretty strong at this point. If salad with a prenatal vitamin chaser makes your stomach flip and your esophagus burn, then for goodness sake skip the salad and eat something that sounds appealing, be it chicken nuggets or black olives straight out of the can. There’s no need to be the Healthy Salad Martyr Pregnant Woman, nobody likes her anyway.
• Depending on the state of your digestive system and appetite, you may have gained a couple pounds already — or you may have lost weight. Don’t stress either way right now. It’ll probably all even out in the end.

Hmm lets see…Moody? check! Waking up in the middle of the night? check!  Food aversions…thank GOD those have not started yet.  I haven’t had any bouts of nausea, which I am dreading as I wait for that phase to arrive.  For now I’m just trying to figure out what is causing these major dizzy spells I have been having.  My guess is that it wasn’t a good idea for me to start the diabetes diet yet, so cutting out all of my sugars and cutting back on carbs was a bad idea!  I took my blood sugar after a big dinner the other night and it was only 78 (should have been around 140!)  Needless to say, I started eating sugar again.  I can’t WAIT for my appointment on Monday so that I can quit self-diagnosing myself and get some advice from a professional on how to handle pregnancy #2! 

Update on Lefty

I’m happy to report that Lefty has made lots of progress since this LAST POST where we checked in on him. 

Ryder has had about a 2 month gap in Occupational Therapy, which is where they work pretty directly with his left hand.  This really started to worry me because I want him to have the best chance possible at recovering use of his hand.  Now that he has Medicaid we were able to start OT back on Friday and we are thrilled!  His new therapists name is Abby and I can already tell that she is going to be great with Ryder and we’re going to see great results from working with her! 

As Ryder learned to walk, I noticed that he started fisting his left hand and holding really tight to his chest again.  I felt like this was moving WAY backwards from where we had come, but I now realize that he just resorted back to that for comfort and stability as he worked on his new skill.  Now that he is a professional walker, he has started relaxing his hand and actually using it A LOT more!  See for yourself (sorry I didn’t edit these videos to show you just the examples, he’s too cute to cut out all of the conversations!):

In this first video you can see how far he has come with being able to pick up a round cup without handles, using both hands.  Of course, once he gets a good grip he always lets go with lefty, but before he couldn’t even get his left hand to cooperate to help him lift it.  MAJOR progress!

In this next video you can see how well he is using his left hand to manipulate objects now.  He used to do everything one handed, but now he realizes he has another hand and uses it to help.  Basically his right hand does all the work for whatever he is trying to do, but he allows his left hand to assist.

In this last video you can see that he is finally able to pick an object up and release it with his left hand!!!  This is HUGE.  He has always initiated everything with his right hand, then handed it to his left, then forgot about it and dropped it.  But now he is getting a signal from his brain, not only to pick an object up, but also to release it!!  This brings so much joy to my heart!  He will only do it if his right hand is occupied holding something else, but it is proof that he has made major progress.  You can see that his fingers still don’t work independently of each other, he doesn’t have a pincer grasp and cannot point, so those are things we will continue to work on.

We are so proud of Ryder and Lefty as they work so hard in therapy and are constantly being pushed to their limit.  All of the hard work pays off though, as you can see, and Ryder is such a good sport through it all.  He is truly an amazing child!