Happy birthday to our Ruby girl

Miss Ruby's Surgery

August 30th my baby had her surgery.  We arrived at Children's Hospital at 6:30am and were brought back relatively quickly to get things started.  I woke Ruby up to feed her at midnight since she couldn't eat past midnight and my little girl LOVES to eat.  I was really so worried about waking her in the morning and having her be starving, and I couldn't feed her.

She did ok....I think being woken up at 6am (she usually gets up around 7:30) and then being in the car, the hospital....it was enough "new" scenery to make her forget that she was hungry.  But her surgery wasn't until 8:30am and so that "newness" wore off quickly and she was pretty crabby.  We watched movies in the room, played with toys, read books and then they brought in clothes to get her changed into for the surgery.

Around 7:45 a dear friend stopped by to give us all a hug and drop off a little surgery gift for Ruby.  That was so sweet of her (she works in the hospital and knows the surgeon too, which we felt comforted by).

8:30am they came and got us. I got suited up in scrubs, mask and hat and went in with her while they gave her some breathing gas in order to put her to sleep so they could start the IV with fluids and anesthesia.

Blake and I waited and waited and waited until 11:45 when the Dr came out and said she was in the OR recovery and everything went great. They ended up removing the bones (as planned) but were a little surprised to see the bones were connected on both feet.  The surgery basically removed the duplication of the distal phalange in both great toes.  Meaning, Ruby had two little teeny bones in the end of her big toes which made her big toes extra wide.

They removed the extra bone, which was connected, shaved off the bone and then did reconstruction on the foot to make everything look normal once healed (skin, toenail, etc).  Here are pics:

Toes before

 

 

Baby girl cuddling daddy before surgery

 

 

The afternoon of surgery at home.....she was pretty crabby and uncomfortable.

Her little toes.....all wrapped up and protected.

 

The first few days we just kept her comfortable with meds and lots of cuddles.  By Saturday, she was getting right back to normal....playing, crawling and starting to pull up on everything.  Saturday night in her crib, she pulled off her right foot bandages!  Little stinker!

 

We're chuggling along. We got back Sept 11th for a check-up and I am praying that all is healing ok, that she is pain free and that the surgeon is happy with the results.

We're so thankful for such wonderful family and friends who helped us and prayed for baby Ruby. 

Update- Hudson 2 years (the rest to come)

I must, must, must make myself take a minute here to update what is going on in our life. Our kids are just so amazingly smart and funny and FUN.....I want to make sure that I document what's happening at this particular moment.

2 Year Stats:

28lbs

35.5 Inches Tall

15.9 BMI

You are perfect in every way! You will be playing independantly and out of nowhere come over and hug me or Harper or Ruby. You love to be rough and tackle daddy. You are extremely coordinated in sports, making baskets, hitting the ball and swinging a golf club. You're so cautious! WOW! You're more comfortable watching Harper while standing on the sidelines instead of jumping in and doing the swimming, swinging or activity yourself. You're observant, part of me wonders if you watch so that when you're ready to try it....you get it right. You're so strong. You swing from the table and now recently from the barre at gymnastics and you're upper body is so strong. You're methodical and a great problem solver. You stack and pile things and get a HUGE grin and say "wow" when you get something to balance. This is so strange. It's a sippy cup, with a piece of toast balanced, then a spoon, then a stacking pile of cheerios. Hahaha.....I love it! You line up your toys ALL day long! I don't know what this means.....but it must mean something!

You are great at throwing and hitting balls lately, hitting them almost as far as daddy!

You love cho cho trains (which sound like coo coo nain) and trucks (which sound like cucks) and saying what the trucks say "wee ohh wee ohh wee ohh). You're picking up Spanish really well.....but your speech is slower to develop so we feel you get frustrated (as well as us) when trying to figure out what it is that you want.  Oddly as it seems, your spanish words are more clear than English!  And you're really good at syllabals.  So if we say "Hudson, can you say Minnesota" you will say a blurry version of Minnesota but it will have the same voice infliction as we have. 

Hudson, you are my sensitive boy.  A kiss from mommy, daddy or "Yon" when you've fallen makes it all better. Seriously!  You give toys to Harper when she's having a fit, you run and give kisses to Ruby when she's fallen down.  You woke up the other morning around 5am and not thinking, I picked you up and brought you into bed with us.  You snuggled up with me and slept like a rock for the next 3 hours. 

You are truly amazing. You're our only boy and I am SO SO SO SO SO SO SO happy I get to experience having a son. You light up my life. Your smile, your eyes and those curls absolutely MELT me!

Ruby's Appt

With the Ortho team at Children's today at 3pm!  Praying we can get a plan in place...soon!  Miss thing is busy crawling (July 10th) and pulling up on furniture.....I"d like to take care of the surgery soon so that it doesn't slow her down too much.
Will update after!

Red, White and Boom 2012

Starting off the day at the Parade....they had a blast even though it was unbeleviably HOT!!!

This serious little guy, he was SO hot!!!

With our amazing au pair

Me and my 3 little firecrackers! Love them so much!!!

My sister and her 3 little firecrackers as well!!!

HOT little guy, cooling off with some water

Always smiling

Red faces  at the park, closing down a wonderful day!

It was a VERY Mickey/Minnie Clubhouse! The twins turned two and we had a BIG bash to celebrate! Pics below!

New Room

So along with our big house project, we did a little musical rooms. Ruby moved into the twins old room, the twins moved into our old room and Blake and I got our new room in the addition. We changed a little bit in Ruby's room....but not much. The twins room.......Ugh what a sad sight it was. I just didn't know what to do. I think eventually it will be the girls room.....but I'm in no rush to switch the kids around again and if anything, I'll move Ruby into the room with them. So priority was to keep it gender neutral. I LOVED sharing a room with my sister growing up and in 5th grade, when we moved and we got our own rooms.....she snuck into my room our first night "alone". Anyway, I love thinking of the kids laying in their cribs (because I plan to keep them in cribs FOREVER) and talking and laughing together. Hudson sleeps through Harper's singing....every single day. This girl doesn't need sleep (or so she thinks) so she goes down for naptime and talks to her babies, sings, talks to the air....just jabbers on for 2 hours while he snoozes. I think Ruby will be a sleeper like her brother, and I think it's great that they can sleep through the chaos around them. Anyway, we decided the room needed a temporary fix. So we got busy. We painted a chalkboard wall, Ivonne and her friend Erika stenciled on the letters.....and the rest were just minor touches. It's not much.....but it's definitely more "kid" friendly now!