Birmingham Trip, December 2019

  Anytime I go back to read something on this blog, because I forgot a detail or just want to refresh my memory (like all the stuff while we were in Michigan for Emma's big surgery- those posts have so many details!), it makes me think about how much I love that I have kept great updates over the past 3 years almost - plus all the times I blogged since 2011 after we got married. So I need to do it again. Even if this is blog becomes quad-annual (is that a real phrase?), where I update it four times a year. That's what I'll be doing today and tomorrow: giving updates from the past three months.

  This post has my top 50 favorite and medically necessary photos from our trip to Birmingham, Alabama to visit Michael's family in mid December 2019. It was Emma's first time there and even I hadn't been there since before Christmas 2015! I really enjoyed taking her to the zoo and the botanical gardens, so I will post those photos first:

   The seal was sitting by one of the doors that Michael said was probably for feeding. The seal kept whining and after a minute a female voice, who I assumed was one of the trainers/ employees, yelled, "Charlie!" in a tone that was basically telling the seal to shut up! The seal immediately jumped into the water and began swimming around the pool. 

    The weather was really nice, which is something Michael and I were both looking forward to since Orlando hadn't gotten cool at that point like it did at the beginning of December 2018. It was usually in the 50's and 60's while we were on this visit, which was nice. I originally thought about bringing the Canon camera, but decided against it. However, since the zoo felt big and the animals had lots of areas to hang out, some of them were far away and I wish I had the zoom lens. We still got a lot of great pictures though. Side memory: we ate lunch at Schlotzsky's Deli before going to the zoo.

 ^^ A Sand Cat that was really intrigued by Emma's ventilator.

  ^^ This is how Emma was most of the time, always looking behind us instead of looking at the animals. It's all about the actual light bulbs though. She gets distracted by them like a moth.

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   It was the coldest day when we went to the Botanical Gardens (49 degrees) so we didn't stay longer than 30 minutes (but we were at the zoo for 2 hours until they closed) because Michael worried about Emma getting sick even though she was layered and bundled up. I don't even think anyone else was there, walking around. So that made it extra wonderful that it is free to visit those gardens.

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   I really enjoy getting one-on-one time with Michael's mom. We always find lots of things to talk about. So it was great getting to go on one or two walks with her each morning since she walks the dogs separately. Fun fact: she knitted me this purple scarf a few Christmases ago! She's full of hidden talents. :)

^^ Meeting Simba (the cat), Cinnamon (the brown dog) and Barkley (their white and gray Shih Tzu, not pictured). All of the animals were very sweet and gentle with Emma and very interested in seeing a baby, but usually kept their distance because of all of her medical equipment. Simba was the bravest.
   Something so amazing that his mom started doing over a year ago, was to begin creating holiday themed paintings that she sells to Al's 5 and Dime store in Mobile. Michael helped her make the tags that she ties to the back of each painting which has a brief description of Emma's story as well as the website to this blog. All of the money goes towards paying for things for Emma like diapers, wipes, and a few medical supplies that we have to buy ourselves since insurance won't cover it (Q-tips for trach care, swabs to clean her mouth after we brush her teeth, extra medical sticky tape to keep the foot probe on, etc). The store owner in Mobile doesn't even keep any of the profits from the paintings! We ended up making two one-of-a-kind Christmas paintings using Emma's foot print. Emma even wrote a thank you note on the back of them after they were dry.

   ^^ You can see Emma's upside down footprint in the snowman and the Christmas tree. Michael painted the one with the snowy trees by himself and that one was also sold. I also made a flying reindeer using her handprint (not shown), but kept that one for our own Christmas decor. 

  Although the trip to Birmingham was only our second vacation with her, from a medical stand point (ventilator specific), staying at Michael's parents house was a more difficult trip because of the stairs. We brought her whole ventilator stand this time, compared to taking all the pieces we needed off the stand like we did for the trip to the Georgia mountains in March. This meant that Michael had to carry her ventilator stand (which is at least 60 pounds? Maybe even 70!) up and down the stairs every morning and night, since the room we always sleep in is on the second floor. His parents did offer to let us sleep in their bed, which was on the same floor as the living room, where we stayed with Emma during the day when we were home, but Michael definitely didn't want to do that. Haha.

  ^^ You can see the Pack N Play in the photo above where I was brushing her teeth before we started trach care, but during the first night, just like each night during the mountain trip, she kept getting water down her trach (which is caused from the condensation created by the heater which makes the humidity needed to keep her trachea from drying out), and with my hearing of a bat, I ended up being the one getting up each time I heard the water blowing around in the tubing, which was at least three or four times per night. Michael tends to sleep harder, even though he says he still doesn't sleep very well, and he doesn't usually hear smaller noises like that unless her alarms go off. Anyway, in order to make sure Emma and I both got more sleep, I suggested we put Emma on a pile of blankets at night for the remainder of the days. Because the Pack N Play bed part where she lays is barely bigger than her body, there isn't room for her tubing to lay next to her, so it has to lean along the edge, but that creates a dangerous "slide" for the water to go down her trachea once enough builds up. 

   Michael didn't really like the blanket set up, so over this past weekend, since we will be staying in a hotel in Gainesville later this month (Emma's first time there too!), we bought her a blowup mattress for kids with raised bumpers on the sides. I first suggested using her baby pool to sleep in, so we wouldn't have to buy something new, but he didn't care for that idea. Michael says he will try to sell the Pack N Play on Craigslist to make up for the new purchase. It has only been used twice and never got dirty.

  And, of course, we had to go to Bass Pro Shop, I mean The North Pole, to see Santa Claus! Michael and I are debating on maybe letting Emma be in the picture with Santa by herself next year. Big stuff!

   There are probably at least one hundred more pictures I have from our Birmingham trip, but I don't know if/when I'll get around to posting those. I picked my top favorites for this post. But other things that happened during that week that I did not include pictures for are-- Emma had a few visitors including Christopher and Meredith (Michael's older brother and his wife) as well as Meredith's mom, and Jeremy, a doctor/ friend that Michael's dad works with. Michael's mom made so many yummy home cooked meals for us while we were there and his dad grilled the best steaks for us one night when Christopher and Meredith were over for dinner. Meredith also made a really good brie croissant appetizer and another night we decorated -and ate- Christmas cookies. We opened a couple of Emma's presents early, including a unicorn ornament with her name on it, a big learning box that has fun, colorful buttons to press and will play music and match up the shapes to drop them into the middle, as well as a red ball! His mom once had a dream about playing in the backyard with Emma and she had a red ball. I have too much to post right now with all these other winter updates I need to blog about. We just have so much going on! Plus a super exciting thing happening tomorrow. Stay tuned! ;)