Have a Good Night's sleep

Penelope had her Birthday on Thursday. She finally made it to 1 year! Unfortunately though, her teeth are making her miserable. I swear she is cutting six at once. Poor baby. So it seems that she has had a fever since Thursday afternoon that we have been treating with Tylenol. She has no other symptons and her 12 month check up is this Tuesday so I am not that worried. Her last dose today was at 11:30 and she still seems fine.

She had her first Birthday party today and we worked hard to over stimulate her. :) She also had her first taste of a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. She is so good at chewing that I thought I would see what she would make of it and she did wonderful! She liked it so much I gave her 2 pieces. The rest of the meal was a juice box and strawberries, followed by a pint sized birthday cake for the birthday princess. She went to town on the frosting. Her lips were stained blue for quite a while. She also did very well unwrapping her gifts. Thank you to all that came and shared our good time. Thank you all too for the gifts. She has a lot of new stuff to explore and clothes to keep her looking on the edge of high fashion.

I'll be posting pictures soon.

Tomorrow, we are off to the Little Hearts Picnic!

Penny Photo Shoot

I Consider Myself Very Blessed

So I traveled to Walmart on Saturday, with both the children, to pick up some things for her party next week and I had an interesting experience. I am quite used to receiving compliments on how cute Penny is and Saturday was no different. By the time I got to the check out line, we had received our fourth compliment by the cashier. She first asked how old Penny is and I replied that she was turning 1 next week. Then of course she told me how beautiful she is. In the year that I have had Penny I have NEVER returned a compliment with "You know, she has Down syndrome." I always smile and thank the person and move on. I mean, what's the point and who cares, right? For some reason, though, this exact statement came out of my mouth this time. I didn't even know where it came from. The cashier looked at me with sad eyes and said, "I know, I had a daughter with Down syndrome." Then, this woman that was not even older than myself told me that she had a daughter with Down syndrome who had stenosis of (not the trachea) some component of the airway and it was not repairable. When she was only 11 months she passed away because she could not get air into her lungs. We agreed our children had strong but sweet personalities, then the woman stated that God has blessed her. We then commanded each other to have a great holiday weekend and I left feeling a little melancholy.

Truly, Penny, CONGRATULATIONS on turning 1 year!

Penny is almost 1 year!!

I apologize for not posting in a while. I really wanted to get on there on Mother's day to wish all the wonderful mothers out there a spectacular day, but that didn't happen. There is a lot to tell. On May 9, Penny had a check up with the cardiologist. She was 20 and 1/2 lbs! Unbelievable right? The best news we got was during the ultrasound. You may recall that her last echo cardiogram revealed that her left branch pulmonary artery was very narrow. If it did not get better then some sort of surgical intervention would have been necessary. However, on her check up it was discovered that her left grew to be almost the same size as her right artery. Yay!!!! I was so elated to get such good news as was my mother who went with us and my husband. He was so worried that the doctor was going to find something wrong with her and have her whisked back to the hospital! I am so happy. We don't have to go back to see her until November. Another concern I had was that if Penny would need to be scheduled sooner than 5 years old for her next surgery since clearly, she has been growing so quickly. Well, that does not seem to be a concern for Penelope's cardiologist. She said that if Penny is growing well we should take that as a good sign. Also, the conduit (donor artery) that was placed in Penny's chest is so big that the cardiologist suspects it will last her until she is 6 maybe even 8. This is of course as long as she does not lay down a lot of calcium as the years go on.

Another thing that has been going on is our transition to different foods. I really wanted to keep her off wheat until she was a year, but I figured we are close enough. I gave her buckwheat pancakes this weekend and a graham cracker. She loved it. She also tried strawberries. Yum-O!

Lastly, the thing that has kept us most busy, is that I went up to visit my good friend on May 10 who just had a baby on April 27, and my car broke down in MA en route. Luckily, I was able to get a rental car fairly quickly and I resumed my trip. But my car is still in Tewksbury. I need to really make a decision on what I will do with it was recommended that we didn't fix it. I loved that car. It was an AWD 98 Subaru. I see other cars just like it all around and it makes me a tiny bit sad. Scott and I purchased another vehicle this weekend so it is all working out, but it just was unexpected, you know?

Well, I wish I could say that I plan to post again before Penny's big day, but I don't know that I will realistically be able to. Oh, in case I haven't mentioned it before, Penny is getting her 2 top center teeth right now, they are pretty established, but then tonight I found that she is getting 2 top bicuspid (maybe?) teeth as well. She is a teething monster! Good night!