Happy Birthday Little Bean!!!!

Jillian is one today! Since she was so sick last week she has been here at home all week. She has been feeling much better the last day or so and I was so glad she was in a great mood for her cake tonight. Grandma Smith came over right after work tonight with a delicious cake from her favorite bakery. It was such a cute cake! We turned out the light, lit the candle and sang happy birthday. At first Jillian was a little shy about it and was really hesitant to eat her cupcake. Once she figured out how great it tasted she loosened up and dug in!

Love this picture. She was laughing along with the older girls as they laughed at her eating her cupcake!

Grandma Smith brought over a bunch of adorable new clothes, a first birthday picture frame, a Backyardigans movie and a baby songs CD, but Jillian was more interested in the box that everything came in!

I love this dress and I can't wait to have Michelle take her one year old pictures in it!

We have decided to have her "party" in May when the weather is better

A few things you like at 1...

Shaking your head no at dad and I

Any kind of music you can dance to

Pointing out on our faces where our eyes and nose are as we say them to you

Favorite food is pasta pick ups

Listening to Marissa laugh (everytime Marissa laughs at you, you join in)

Rocking on your little pony

Making your funny face.. I will have to try try to get a picture of that!

Happy Birthday Alexis (12)

In the middle of all of the chaos with Jillian being sick, Alexis turned 12. She is a St. Patty's day baby. 12 years ago she was born at 1:29 am and has been a night owl since day one! These days she loves sleeping in til noon and being up all night (at home of course) She is very independent and can not wait to get away and go to college. She already has it all planned out. She wants to go to Penn State! Of course I joke with her that that would be wonderful since there is a Penn State campus about 15 minutes from our house, so I say.."that's great, you could live at home and go to college and I could still see you every single day".. then she reminds me that it's the main campus hours away that she wants to go to! LOL.. so funny how at 12 you think you know exactly where your life will go!

The night of her birthday this year Jillian was really sick so we stayed in and she and Ed and Marissa went out for ice cream. I have had a trip planned for she and I for months but didn't tell her what we were doing until the day of her birthday.

In May we are heading to NY for a broad way show and lunch! She seemed thrilled when I told her she could pick the show!

Here are a couple of random shots of her over the last few months. I need to dig up and scan some baby ones because when she was that little I didn't own a digital camera!

It's always so crazy to think about how fast they grow up. Alexis and I have so many personality traits that are the same and so many that are completely different! This makes for an interesting mother/daughter relationship! I wouldn't trade her for anything! in the world!

JILLIAN IS BACK!

Well she got released from CHOP yesterday afternoon! We are back at home and she is lsowly getting back to her normal self!

Hopefully that was our one and only stay at CHOP forever!

She won't be able to go back to day care this week, but by next week we should be back to our normal schedule! Except for now I'm a little paranoid about germs!

Quick Update

I just got back home again from CHOP and things are looking a lot better today. They removed the I.V last night and took her off of the oxygen this morning. She still is not drinking much but ate a small breakfast, lunch and dinner today! If her breathing stays above 90 even while she is sleeping tonight then they will let her come home tomorrow!! Today while she was napping they did fall down to about 85 but hopefully tonight they will stay up, if not it's back on the oxygen. Let's just pray that doesn't happen.

Today I was able to pick her up and she even played a little and smiled.. slowly getting back to her normal self!

As I walked around the hospital over the last few days I came across a lot of little kids that were in serious serious conditions. Some of which had been in the hospital for months! I hope to god I never have to go through anything like this again and I think it takes a very strong person to watch their child go through months of hospitalization and differnt proceedures and treatments. We have only been there since Wednesday and I'm so ready to be done with it and have Jillian home... I can not imagine enduring months of this.

I'm really hoping that tomorrow this will all be over!

Heading back down

I'm on my way back down to CHOP in a few minutes. Ed called a little bit ago and said that Jillian did pretty well overnight. They were able to lower her oxygen and are hoping to keep lowering it over the next little while until she is back to breathing on her own. She still hasn't eaten anything since Tuesday, but was able to get down a few ounces of pedialyte last night! The doctor came in and said they are going to try and remove the I.V and see if she will start to eat on her own later today. I'm taking some pasta pick ups down with me just incase all else fails.. they are her very favorite and if the doctor allows it...hopefully she will eat them. I'm assuming they are going to start with a smaller more liquid diet, but when she's ready I want to have something there that she loves!

It seems alot better than when we originally took her in and they were talking about the possibility of moving her to the PICU and inserting a feeding tube. That was scarring the life right out of me! Hopefully things are turning around!

CHOP

It's a very long story with what has gone on over the last week...

Jillian started running a fever Sunday afternoon and when she got up from her nap was breathing really heavy and I could feel her heart beating really hard and fast. I called our pediatrician and he seemed to think everything was ok and that that her heart rate and breathing were increased because of the fever.. which he said was a common thing. Monday morning she seemed a little better, her fever was down but we decided to take her to the doctor anyway. He put her on a nebulizer and sent it home with us to do breathing treatments at home every 4 hours. He guessed that she had a common infection called rsv and that this had most likely caused her to get bronchiolitis ( a swelling of the bronchial tubes). Monday night it only got worse, her temp went even higher and the breathing sounded worse even after 2 treatments so we took her to the hospital. They ran some tests, took a chest x ray, did two more breathing treatments and sent us home. Tuesday she was miserable. She slept most of the day, didn't play at all and stopped eating and drinking totally. We were literally trying to force her to drink by squirting juice in to her mouth with a medicine dropper. Wednesday was her follow up appointment with the her doctor. Ed took her in and he sent him back to the hospital.. from they they finally agreed that something was wrong and that she needed to be admitted for more tests and observation. By this time she was dehydrated so they gave her an I.V along with another chest x ray and more breathing treatments. The treatments did nothing!! The doctor decided to start her on oxygen becasue while monitoring her breathing she was up to over 110 breaths in a minute. They noticed some spots on her lungs in the xray and decided that she should be sent to Children's hospital. They took her by ambulance last night and she has been there since. They still are not certain exactly what is going on but the good news is the fever has come down and is now only around 100 degrees. The bad news is she can't breath with out the oxygen tube so she will have to stay until it is all figured out and she can breath on her own. They have given us a couple of possibilities, but none have been right yet. They thought maybe it had gotten so far in to her lungs that she now had pneumonia... but after the radiologist looked at the last x ray... he ruled that out. The test for the RSV came back negative but a test for a different virus came back positive. On top of this she now has a double ear infection! Ed and I are both pretty much freaking out and hope that they will eventually figure out what exactly is causing all of this. Ed refused to leave the hospital tonight or at any point during the day today, so I decided to come home with the older girls, get some sleep and head back in the morning. Hopefully they will know more tomorrow and I can convince Ed to come home and get some rest while I stay with her!

Ed has been really good at sticking by her no matter what they are doing to her, she had a catheter yesterday and I just HAD to leave the room, I have to get away from it or I will go crazy! It's a good thing she has him there! Ed sat up with her all night on Tuesday night with Jillian on his lap becasue he was afraid to lay her down. Everytime we layed her down she would cough and then her breathing would get worse. I get so upset that I can not stand to stay and watch it all! At this point we can't even hold her because there are to many things hooked up to her and if you try to hold her.. things start getting unhooked... it makes me so sad.

I know that some of you that read this are big on prayer and some of you are not, but even if your not just play along and please keep her in your thoughts at least and for anyone that believes in the power of prayer please please say one tonight for her!

I'm confident that she is in a good place and hope that everything will be ok, but then I have this horrible feeling in my stomach that worries me to death! I pray that my mom instinct is wrong and that this is just a viral infection and will run it;s course and go away!

11 Months

Jillian turned 11 months on the 26th of February! I have been so relaxed with taking pictures that when I went to post this I realized I had not taken any of her in the last month other than on Valentine's day.. so I got the camera out and tried to get in a few shots. She was not at all cooperative! I wasn't able to get her to look at me at all.

So then I had Marissa try to hold her still so I could get a picture. Her face in this shot looks so defeated! LOL. It cracks me up. She was about 2 seconds from screaming at the top pf her lungs so that Marissa would let her hands free!

She is now totally walking and starting to say just a few words. Of all the words to say first.. she says "eyes" We started teaching her eyes nose and mouth and pointing to them on our faces and then on hers. Well she finally picked up where everyone's eyes are and now that is pretty much the only word she says other than the occasional "mama" when she is upset!

When I get her out of her crib in the morning she grabs at my eyelashes and says "eyes, eyes". Kind of funny!

Most of the time she is pretty laid back and very lovey. She will randomly just come over and put her head on my shoulder or give me a big slobbery baby kiss with her mouth wide open and then start cracking up! Ed and I have been so on the fence on whether to have one more baby or just leave it at three. On a good day.. I'm all for it, on a stressful day I can't even think about it! So we will shall see! It doesn't help that we have 10 friends right now that are pregnant! I keep thinking that down the road Jillian would like to have a sibling closer to her age! I just keep going back an forth with it. I do know that IF we decide on more I want to be pregnant before I turn 35 which gives us about 2 and 1/2 years to decide, but then again I don't really want them that far apart! uughh decisions, decisions!!!

Father Daughter Sock Hop

Friday was Marissa's school's annual father daughter dance. This year they decided to make it a 50's sock hop which I thought was such a cute idea.

Marissa decided that since Ed has gone with her the last 2 years she would ask her dad to go this time. Surprisingly he actually showed up this time. Late of course but he showed. She said she had a good time. I wish I would have volunteered to serve dinner this year so I could have gotten more pictures of her and her little friends.















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Marissa told Ed a few weeks ago that he would be her back up just in case. I think sometimes it is hard for her to pick between the two "dads". Poor thing.. she asked me if it would get Ed upset if she asked her dad to go this year instead! She is such a thoughtful 9 year old and always thinks about other people's feelings!



I snapped this one real quick when I dropped Marissa off at the school before they went inside!

She said she had a good time but that next year if it's a sock hop she will stick to rolled up jeans and not a poodle skirt. I thought it looked adorable!