Talking to a 13 Month Old

The first few days that Ryder was at home, I remember going through every little step in my head “okay, I’m going to change his diaper….now I’m going to feed him….now I’ll rock him and put him back to sleep” until one day it clicked that it was okay to say these things out loud.  It felt so weird at first, like I was having a conversation with myself, only I had these two little eyes fixed on my lips pretending to understand every word that was coming out of them.  And so began my year long, endless, one-sided conversation.  I talk to Ryder about everything!  I feel like I never stop talking, telling him everything we’re doing, naming things for him, explaining how things work, etc.  Which leads me to some of the ridiculous things that have come out of my mouth recently.  Sometimes I will say something and then stop and laugh at myself, did you really just say that?! 

“Cookies aren’t magnetic baby, no matter how many times you try to stick it up there, it’s not going to stay”

“I’m sorry but people don’t ride golf carts at 5:30 in the morning”

“Please don’t eat the duster…I promise you it is NOT your Elmo doll!”

“Thanks Ryder, I love it when you pee on my shirt”

“I realize why you’re getting confused, but I assure you, that is a picture of Jesus, NOT your Da-da!” (this one deserves a visual):

 

And now that he likes to repeat things, there is interestingly a second side to some conversations, and it can be dangerous:

Me: “Crap”

Ryder: “cra, cra, cra”

Me: “Oh crap, please don’t say….crap”

Ryder: “cra, cra, cra, cra, cra”

Come onnnnn think of another word Brandy “Ball, can you say Ball?”

Ryder: “Baaaa?!”  shewwww.

If these are the things coming out of my mouth now, I can only imagine how entertaining it will get when he learns the words “but why mommy?” Stay tuned!

Happy Mother’s Day!!

It really doesn’t seem like it has been a year since I wrote this post about all the Mom’s in our life!  But here we are, celebrating another Mother’s Day already!  We actually turned this into a Mother’s weekend. Friday night visiting with my Mom & family, Saturday with Alan’s step-mom & family, and today we took flowers to the cemetery for Alan’s Mom and then spent the day with his Grandma & family.  Somewhere in the mix I got flowers from Alan, Ryder, & the Dogs, with a separate card from each of them.  Just another thing to remind me how much I love being a Mommy!

My Beautiful Flowers:      Me + Mom + Sis-In-Law = Mom Power!

Also, today I got to go visit the newest Mommy, Lindsay, and hold baby Madalynn who is oh so precious.  Yikes…I think I spiked a fever while I was there (a baby fever that is), hopefully that temp. will come down soon :-)

Happy Mother’s Day to all the Mommy’s out there.  I hope everyone had a wonderful day being Mommy’s and loving their own Mommy’s!  I guess I better end the post with a picture of the one who made me a Mommy in the first place:

Guest Blogging

Hey Everyone, for the next few hours (or however long it takes) you can find me Guest Blogging over at Lindsay's blog...and you know what that means...she's in labor!!  I'll be posting updates as I get them and trying to keep everyone in the loop as to what's going on.  We are so excited to finally get to meet baby Madalynn and are praying for a safe and easy delivery!

***UPDATE***

Baby Madalynn made her grand entrance into this world around 3:30pm and she is absolutely beautiful.  We are so happy for Nick & Lindsay and can't wait to meet their new little love.  What a wonderful Mother's Day present for Lindsay!

Clean Up

There is one night during the week that we make an appoint to run through the house and do a quick clean, trying to put everything back in its place and straighten up.  That night is…the night before whatever day the therapist is coming!  Sad, but true!  I hate having guests come over to any kind of mess.  This “clean sweep” used to go so easy and smooth.  We would put Ryder in his bouncy or walker to occupy himself, and off we would go, on a mission.  Now that he is mobile…that task seems impossible!  So much so that I have given up temporarily to blog about it.  Anything, but go back to fighting this 1 yr old to leave things where I put them.  If I put his books on his bookshelf, he is one step behind me ripping them all off (the 3 I put back, plus 10 more), as soon as I pick up all of his blocks and put them into a container, I walk away to hear the sound of them dumping back out behind me, dishes are not staying in the dishwasher, nor in the cabinets…and so on…and so forth.  This little guy is becoming quite mischievous, which earned him his very first spank pat on the butt today!  After telling him 14 times to stop putting his hand in the dogs water (gross, right?!) he looked at me and intentionally swished his hand right back in there as if to say “why mom? Watcha gonna do about it??”  So came the moment I had to decide to not let him win, he got the point, and he got his feelings hurt.  I decided to take a break from cleaning, because it was becoming obvious that he was acting out in desperate need of my full attention.  We went out to the porch and shared a popsicle…which of course healed all wounds and we are back to loving each other again. How can you be mad at a face that has blue popsicle dripping down its chin?! 

***Update: The house is clean, we’re all alive, and ready for therapy!***

One Word Wednesday

**Noodles**

A Day At The Beach

I think it’s safe to say that we have a beach bum on our hands!!  He absolutely loved hanging out, digging with his shovel, putting his feet in the water, and eating the sand (gross!).  Daddy built us a sand castle…Ryder helped…kinda!  And he now has his first ever farmer’s tan!  I have a feeling we’ll be spending lots of nice weather weekends in this very spot.  Yay!! 

Nothing beats coming in from a hot day outside than a nice cold slurpee!!

Childhood Stroke Awareness

I know that I haven’t said much about Ryder’s stroke since we found out that he had one, it surely hasn’t left my mind but I guess that’s just where I’ve been letting it live for now.  I’ve been trying to do as much research as possible and really trying to process what it means and how to move forward.  One of the major things that I’ve noticed in all my desperate attempts to collect information…is that there is not much to collect.  In fact, they have dedicated an entire month this year to Childhood Stroke Awareness due to the fact that people are so uninformed and unaware of the fact that babies can have strokes.  So, in an attempt to get the word out, I thought I’d take the first day of Childhood Stroke Awareness Month to get the word out that babies DO have strokes…ours did! 

I started noticing Ryder’s hand dominance very early on.  In fact, in going through old posts I realized just how early I started noticing it.  I mentioned in his three month post that he could rub his RIGHT eye with his RIGHT hand when he was getting sleepy.  And when he was four months old and found his toes he would only grab his RIGHT foot with his RIGHT hand.  Even though I was always so happy about every milestone he reached, I had this constant nagging question in my head “what about his left side??”  I brought it to the Pediatrician’s attention at his 4 month appointment and we agreed to just monitor it, knowing that he could have certain delays from being premature.  We revisited the issue at the 6 month appointment and decided that if his left side hadn’t caught up by the 9 month appointment, she would send us for therapy.  I hate waiting, it drives me crazy, I made it to 8 months and couldn’t take it anymore…remember??  I took him for an x-ray, found out it was nothing physical, then contacted Early Intervention.  They came out and did a full evaluation at 9 months old and I had my first major meltdown when they suggested that I take him for an MRI of his brain.  He has been in Occupational Therapy with them once a week ever since.  We saw a Neurologist when he was 10 months old and he agreed 100% that Ryder needed to have an MRI done…he suspected a stroke and he was right.  The week after Ryder turned 1, he had an MRI done that confirmed he had a stroke-in-utero and he was diagnosed with Left Hemiparesis. 

So, here we are one month after the diagnosis and Ryder is hard at work being rehabilitated.  I’ve made the decision to seek out more therapy because I feel that he is at a critical point in recovery right now, so he has an Evaluation at Children’s Hospital on May 25th.  I’ll work on some updates soon about where he’s at with mobility and the use of his left side.  I don’t purposely avoid the topic, but I’m still trying to find the right balance.  As most of you know, I use this blog as his “baby book” so I’d hate for him to get older and think that his whole childhood we only focused on his weakness.  As you can see, we do not treat him any different (and don’t expect anyone else to either).  We let the sky be the limit with him, and as determined as he is, we know that he will continue to reach that high!

I decided to write this whole story out from the beginning because, in all my research, the thing that has helped me understand this diagnosis the most is the blogs that I have come across of children with situations just like Ryder’s.  I have spent the last month reading their blogs all the way back from the beginning.  Relating completely to the raw emotion that their Mothers were so unashamed to write about, the unconditional love that they have for their children, and the willingness to push them and fight for them, doing everything in their power to give their children the best chance at recovery.  I am so beyond thankful for these Moms, and they don’t even know it (well one does, because I emailed her, because I’m crazy like that!)  As I mentioned before, there is so little information out there, so maybe another mother who is up in the middle of the night, desperate for some hope and encouragement, will come across this post and realize that everything is going to be okay!  Their baby is absolutely perfect, God is still in control, and life moves forward :-)

Check out this FACT SHEET for some pretty interesting stuff about pediatric strokes and how you can help get the word out that babies DO have strokes!