Checkin' In....

Danielle is off to a great start for the New Year. We have been hibernating with hopes of staying healthy because there are a pile of germs and sickness going around right now. She is battling a bit of a cough right now, but after a couple trips to the doctor, just a virus her blood counts say. We have ventured out for walks when the weather has been warm and we have been teased with small tastes of Spring, but other days we have been relaxing and snuggling up!

We have struggled with ouchy ears tho for the past month or so. Danielle is such a tough cookie that she doesn't fuss much when her ears are ouchy but we notice by certain symptoms and can't help but know that they must be bothering. We have done ear drops on and off since the end of December / beginning of January. Drops we got from her Odo doc in IC, use them if you feel she is in discomfort, if they don't do the trick then take her in. Well they were working, we would do them for 5 days, ears would clear up so we would stop, sure enough 4 days later the ear icky's would be back. So Mom finally had enough. After a visit into her local Ped doc they suggested once again to do the drops and we would revisit the situation in 2 weeks. No way that is what we had already been doing!

So two Sunday's ago I e-mailed her most fabulous doc in IC, Dr. Smith. Fully not expecting a response until Monday, I still wanted to type while it was fresh in my mind. Low and behold by 4pm I had a response and he wanted to see Danielle the very next day. We got in Monday afternoon and the results made us sad. Her left ear that still had the tube was clogged badly with ear gunk and the tube was so surrounded that it was not functioning. My Aunt sat with us while Daddy and the nurse held Danielle and Dr. Smith suctioned what seemed like a huge amount of stuff out of the way back of her ear, but it wasn't enough. She screamed and cried, it was so sad but we knew that it had to be done :( The tube was also surrounded with granulated tissue and a lot of gunk, so the drops I had been doing had probably not even been getting to the spot. He scheduled tubes the very next day.

Keeping a watchful eye on her nurses and doctors before surgery.

Sound asleep on the Boppy during play time :)

It was a long beginning to the week but we got thru it and anything to help our baby girl get on the mend. We awoke Tuesday morning and at 6am headed off to IC. Surgery was to be at 9am but by 8:30 they were ready for her. We had been thru this routine before but it doesn't make the situation any easier on Mom or Dad. We both looked at each other with big sad eyes as the Anesthesiologist carried Danielle off to the OR and we took a right turn to the waiting room. 15 minutes later Dr. Smith came in, surgery went good. Her left ear was to be pretty ouchy for a few days, he had a hard time getting the tube out but he did and got the ear cleaned out and new tubes places in each ear. Great news! Thank you Dr. Smith!
We were home by 11am and on the couch snuggling with our baby girl. The next day Daddy stayed home and cuddled her some more to make sure she was feeling okay. Her ears were pretty sore for about 4 days, now we think they are a lot better. Instantly she started holding her head up a LOT better and she is talking even more. What a great thing! And the most comforting thing is having a doctor we love, as we left that day Dr. Smith says to us, 'thank you for letting me help your daughter.' Those words I have heard from him before but they get me every time. It is amazing to have someone so special caring for our children.

One of the reasons we are so very fortunate to have incredible Specialists so close to us at the University! We will be forever grateful to them for saving our children!

Today we ventured back to IC for her 6 month MRI and re-check with our Neurosurgeon. Danielle did great! We even got a visit from the Continuity of Care person for the NICU, Anne, who wanted to followup and see Danielle! That was a great surprise!

The MRI was the usual, quick 5 minute one, she fussed a little bit but I held her hands the whole time. They did the series 3 times to ensure we got more than one good picture. Before long we headed up to the clinic.

The doctor was pleased with this visit. Nothing had really changed since last time which is good news. Her setting is set to drain the most that it can. He is happy with how things are and we got the okay to not come back for another 6 months! We talked about Danielle's therapy and how vital it is for her to keep continuing weekly therapy sessions to help her get stronger, keep her body loose and her mind growing to explore new things! And the best therapy Dr. Menezes said, even better than the therapy she gets at her sessions.....her big brother! He is vital to her, getting her to want to interact, watch him from across the room and hear his language, all of those things continue to be extremely important. We have talked about all of these things before but he just reconfirmed that we are doing a great job at doing what we can for our daughter. We got his blessing to continue on for the next 6 months!

So our pace continues, slow and steady. We don't have to venture back to the U until June when Danielle will have her 1 year re-check for her eyes. It seems a little crazy to think that we hopefully won't even have to see Neurosurgery until August which will be the end of summer! It seems so close, yet so far away!

We continue to be blessed with our baby girl. We are blessed with the team of professionals in our life that help us help her in every way possible. We are thankful for such a wonderful place within a short drive, a place that we owe much gratitude in the health of our children. We look forward to seeing Danielle grow and get even stronger over these next months, so we can show off her and her new tricks on our next visit! This week we are meeting with our team to talk about pre-school for Danielle. She can't possibly be growing up that fast....well yes she is! We are looking forward to exploring the opportunity's that are available and choosing what is best for our baby girl. ~

My Wish for you....

Happy New Year sweet baby girl! What an amazing 2010 you had.....but we know that Twenty Eleven is going to be even better!

We are SO extremely proud of you and your ambition. You never give up, you fight for everything you want and every move you make. Your mind is going faster than many even know, but we know sweetie! You are starting to communicate so much, nodding 'yes', shaking your head 'no', communicating with your eyes, signing to us and your first precious words, 'hi' and 'mama'.

We truly believe that we have found some of the best people to help you get stronger, and get to where you want to be. A full year with those amazing people is going to help you grow in strides sweetie and we are right along with you for the ride! Now that we have your very own walker at home it is amazing how much you show us your strength every single day. Now to just get that Benik in and we will be set, set, set!
Never give up sweetie. Never forget how much we love you and believe in you! You are our precious daughter, heaven sent and we are SO lucky to be your Mom & Dad!

Here is to you darling and a great 2011 full of new adventures....cheers & smooches!~

Moving right along...

Danielle has been a busy little girl these past few months! We are now up to having therapy 4 days per week. Every week we see Danielle do something new....and let me tell you, as a parent, there is no better feeling in the world!
November is Premature Awareness Month. All month long I follow different prayer chains and blogs brought to me by the March of Dimes and the Children's Miracle Network. Recently we were asked by the University to be a Children's Miracle Network family for UIHC and to share our story for Dance Marathon 2011. We were very excited and honored. We filled out the sheets and sent in our family's story. We will see what they come back with to us and how we can help this great event in 2011.

It really is such a time in our life that we don't forget, yet, do like to try and put behind in our memory. But still to this day, as a parent of a preemie I really do feel like the NICU was such a huge part of our life and our children's lives, that is where they started and regardless of the situational experiences that the NICU brought to us....we do really owe them gratitude for saving our children so they could be with us today. So this month we are raising awareness for Preemie babies and thanking all of the doctors and nurses who fight every day to save these precious little ones...our little ones.

We have started Speech therapy and I will have some video and pictures to come soon! This is new and we are so excited to see Danielle progress in the area of speech. She only says a few words now on a continual basis and in context, which is awesome! 'Hi' and 'Mama' she says regularly and we are so excited for speech to help her vocabulary and pronunciation grow.
We also have started a new type of therapy called Vital Stim. Have I told you about our most fabulous OT?! She is a gift to our little girl. I mean, we really strongly believe that she was brought into our life for a reason. She started working with Danielle on Visual Therapy just about a year ago, and this has been the most fantastic year ever since we met Lisa. I started asking Lisa about feeding techniques for Danielle when I found out that she also helps kids with feeding. She loves to eat her baby food and for the most part does not have an issue eating, but in talking with Lisa we decided to try this new Vital Stim for a couple of reasons. One being that it will increase Danielle's swallow, she has a fairly 'soft' swallow right now and increasing the thickness of food to ex. table food, would be challenging with such a soft swallow. So we are working on making those tongue muscles stronger to really strengthen her swallow, make it more quiet and help her to control the food that is in her mouth better. And with all of these muscles getting stronger it will also help Danielle with communication and getting out those vowel sounds.
So we do this session 3 days per week for 6-8 weeks, in addition to her other PT, Speech and OT therapy also. So to say we are busy is a bit of an understatement! But Danielle is showing great results in just the 5 sessions that she has had. We have started with a rubber tool to help Danielle get that flavor of food moved around her mouth and also strengthening her 'bite'. So on this tool she puts different flavors such as, apple juice, strawberry shortcake sucker and various pureed foods like applesauce, baby food etc. I took a couple short video's at the end of this week and the progress is very encouraging! This coming week we will start moving back into a spoon and getting Danielle to lick the spoon and move the food around her mouth in order to swallow. We also started getting Danielle to stick out her tongue and try to lick the sucker. It breaks my heart that such eating tasks like licking a sucker can be difficult for Danielle....this is something that most people probably take for granted, yet for her it can be a challenge to work all of those muscles at the same time. But this Therapy will only help those tasks and for this we are SO thankful! So we are in a really good place right now and SO extremely thankful for all of the Therapists that work 4 days a week for our daughter! We finally feel that we have the right 'mix' of people in our life that work for our baby girl! Danielle does not complain one bit and in fact she communicates with our therapists like you would not believe. Signing to them and shaking her head 'yes' or 'no', rolling her eyes even, yep that super fun 2 year old stage is in full gear and we LOVE every minute of it!
Stay tuned for more great steps in the right direction :)

2 year update...

Danielle has been such a little busy body these past 2 months since she had her Birthday! We were able to get in for her 2 yr check up and her stats were great. Weighing in at 17 lbs 13 ounces, 31.5 inches long and growing steadily. Danielle is growing in length far faster than weight, her spot on the curve is holding tight, but we are working to have her gain some pounds! She is hungry so that isn't the issue, it is just finding the right mix of food and liquid to get her the most calories to help give her that boost! Now this week we have begun mixing in fresh Avocado's with some of her pureed veggies and boy oh boy I think we've found a favorite! Danielle just LOVES the Avocado, that is perfect because it is very good for her!

We also took Danielle to IC a couple times for follow-up visits. She met with our Odo doctor about her ears. Thankfully he did see the tubes were both in place. This was wonderful news because we had suspected since March that one may have fallen out. Sadly, he did have to suction a bunch of wax out of her left ear. Thankfully Daddy was at this appointment because I am not sure I could have done it alone as Dylan was along also. Danielle was not a happy camper during the suctioning, but it really was clogged and they were able to get it cleaned out and the tube is still in place. Literally seconds after they cleared it and she quit crying she was telling us ALL kinds of stories...so it really must feel better, thank goodness!

We also met with our wonderful Neurosurgeon last week for an MRI and follow-up visit. Thank the lord, things are looking wonderful! Her scans looked the best that they ever have. The doctor always was happy with them before but now his words, 'I can finally accept these I am extremely happy and these are by far the best scans yet.' We were just elated with this news, this means less fluid in her ventricles, her cavity is going down and there is good brain growth. We got the all clear to not go back for 6 months!!!! This is very exciting news :We also got Danielle's 2 yr pics taken at the beginning of August. Kristi Bowers @ Luella B. Photography did an amazing job at capturing Danielle's 2 year moments. She also put together a beautiful video of these pics for us to an amazing song that is very fitting for our family. Enjoy! We continue therapy two times per week, OT (Visual Therapy) & PT... and all is going great. We now have a new PT who we feel is a great fit for Danielle and we are enjoying our weekly sessions. We will soon be starting yet another therapy session with speech therapy. We are on the waiting list. We are excited for this to get Danielle speaking more words. This will be great for Danielle. We had our first evaluation appointment and it went great. Danielle was mimicking the therapist and that was so wonderful to hear. We are working on those first sounds 'P', 'B' & 'M' are the most tricky. Danielle is regularly saying 'hi' and has been for quite some time. Over the past month she has also added 'mama' much music to my ears! She says this mostly when she is sad and fussing.

The lord is closely watching down on our family and our precious daughter! We are so proud of the progress she is making on a weekly basis and we are even more proud watching her work so hard to do the things that she really wants to do!~

The MOST exciting and new news is that.....Danielle has also been starting to walk with a walker during her therapy sessions. This is just adorable and too precious for words. She really has amazed us with her willing-ness to get up and go even after she has just had a full therapy session. We hope to have a walker at home to 'demo' in the next week or so, then we also will order one to keep at home. The second session Danielle took 5 steps, it was amazing, mommy got all teary eyed watching! We are SO proud of her and are very anxious, as she is, to be up and chasing Dylan!

We are very excited for all of the wonderful new Adventures Danielle is experiencing! We are SO extremely proud of her and we learn many lessons from her daily. Dylan continues to be her biggest protector next to us of course, he is very very sensitive to her needs and her wants also. She loves him and loves watching him and listening to him talk non-stop. During story time though it is a battle on who gets to turn the pages. Danielle loves to turn the pages as this is something they do in therapy, well Dylan sure reminds her often that he likes to turn the pages in the book also! Dylan is definitely the best big brother for Danielle and he is very very good with her. We couldn't have asked for a better bond with our kids. LOVE every second!~

I am 2 today!!!!

to our precious little girl!!!

Neither Brad nor I can believe that our little princess is already 2 years old! WOW, time does surly fly by when you are a parent! We opted for a family day celebration this year, and what a fantastic day it was. Danielle had been feeling pretty icky for the past 3 days or so, and today, just in time for her birthday she was finally feeling just about 100%! We woke up and after we were up and about for a bit the sun decided to shine, it got nice and hot outside and we decided what a wonderful day it would be spent at the pool! So we got our suits on, packed a little cooler and swim gear and we were off!

And look who was the first to greet us....a mommy duck and her little ducklings! We laughed and laughed, all she wanted to do was take her babies for a swim, and all the lifeguards kept doing was shooing them out of the water. Too cute!

Dylan and Danielle were super excited to get to swim in the 'big' pool today! We have our 2 small pools at home that are super fun too, but nothing compares to when Mom and Dad can get in and be silly in the water too!

Danielle just loved the water, it was nice and warm, she didn't even mind the splashing and water spray features, she just blinked her eyes a few times to rid of excess water and was back to kicking and telling us all about the fun she was having!

Today was a great day spent at the pool for our girls special day! We spent a couple hours there and swam our hearts out!

We arrived home and Grandpa Kinney was waiting there for us! He wanted to give the birthday girl some special loves and presents on her big birthday! We sat out on the deck and finished drying off from the pool, soaked up some sun....we love summer time!

They had brought Halen and Roxy along for the ride too and Dylan was very excited to see Grandpa's puppy's!!!
Big brother Dylan was all ready to help Danielle open her Birthday gifts, so both kiddo's piled onto Grandpa's lap for the first round of opening presents! Birthday's are SO much fun!

'Oooh, pretty', Dylan says!

LOVE the Hawkeye outfit, gearing up for football season!

We then ventured inside for some pizza, cake and round #2 of opening gifts!

Danielle really enjoyed her Watermelon decorated ice cream cake...yummy!

And then we tore into those gifts, Dylan was of course very excited to get to help!

We first opened gifts from the LeConte's in Wisconsin!

Danielle was super excited for her new purse and toys!!!

And her new hat and outfit for her American Girl Bitty Baby! Adorable!!!

And Emily even made Danielle some very special handmade hair bows! We put them all in her hair to show them off. Perfect flower to match her picture outfit and bows to wear during football season while cheering on our favorite teams!!

Thank you LeConte Family :)

Next up, her new shape sorter! Our therapist has been working with Danielle to have her drop the shapes in the correct, matching spot. Now we can practice at home too!

And she really loved her talking, singing purse too! Complete with lipstick, car keys, a mirror and compact! Just what every little girl needs!

And stacking cups! Not as exciting....until you stack them all up and 'crash' them all down as we do at therapy! Fun new things to make lots of noise! There was also a couple new outfits to add to the closet, totally necessary for the birthday girl!

'Yum-o, this ice cream is delicious!'

Dylan even thought so too!

Gotta get every last dribble that we can reach with our tongue!

Mmm, now time for a bath!

We had such a wonderful day with our little birthday girl! We are SO proud of you baby girl for fighting, never giving up and continuing to want to learn new things every single day! You are a trooper, the twinkle in our eye and our princess! Thank you Danielle for being you, we are SO blessed to be your Mommy and Daddy! We love you SO much sweetheart, we hope you had a wonderful 2Nd Birthday and we hope that ALL of your Birthday wishes come true!!