1 Year Home-iversary

On Tuesday, April 30th, we celebrated Emma being home from the Winnie Palmer NICU in Orlando for a full year! And by "celebrated" I mean we acknowledged it, bragged about how great she'd been doing, and had a photo shoot in the living room! I got these letter balloons while I was pregnant, and planned to use then when Emma was a couple weeks old and home from the hospital like any other normal, healthy baby. But of course that never happened and even at 11 months, she didn't seem like a baby anymore. I would have brought them to the NICU, but they had a "no balloon" policy in place. Anyway, I figured I would dust them off and use them for this occasion. However, before sending and posting the photos, I made sure to let my family and friends know that this is definitely not a pregnancy announcement. We have our one baby and our dog, and that's all we need! :)

Emma says, "Oh! Has it been a year already? Woohoo!!"

   And a special appearance by older brother, Shrimp. ^^
The wood burned frame was made by my best friend, Mia, and given to me for the baby shower.

 Emma was throwing around peace signs for a couple days. Peace and love!!

"Shove off, bunny. These are my pictures!"

   With Emma's arms getting a little bit longer, she is able to start pulling her bows out. This was her letting me know that I had taken enough pictures, haha. She did so well sitting up! As of a couple weeks ago her balancing record is 7 1/2 minutes. Great job ~ check out those abs. 

   This morning (May 14th) we went to Pulmonology for a check up and Emma currently weighs 16 pounds, 10 ounces and is 24 inches long. The doctor turned her Pressure Control on the ventilator settings down to 14. She says ten is usually the lowest they set it at (her Breath Rate is already at ten!) so hopefully by August or September we can try sprinting her. That is when they see how she does with the ventilator disconnected. I'm not holding her to any specific dates (like how I was so eager to get her home from the NICU after her due date and then let down so many times), but we are definitely moving in the right direction with everything!

  Also we started having family dinners together, with Emma sitting in her high chair next to us. Since she passed her swallow study last month, we have been giving her tiny amounts of applesauce on a spoon and she ate a lot of it (about seven little scoops) for us, compared to turning her head away and crying during Speech Therapy. So proud!! 

   Happy 1 Year at home, Emmylou! So glad to have you here, striving and surviving like a baby boss, far past many doctors' expectations. We knew you could do it, and it has been so nice getting to come straight home from work each day, instead of making a detour to the hospital first. Those days are still all too clear in my mind. Here's to the next 96 years of great Meier-Gorlin health! :)

Easter 2019

   This was Emma's first Easter at home on April 21st!! Last year it was on April 1st, so she had her last month in the NICU, but it was still a happy day for us since we got to take her outside in the stroller for the first time! Emma and Michael didn't do anything that I know of since I went to Gainesville and met my mom, brother, and niece for church then hung out at their house for a few hours. On April 24th I took Emma's Easter pictures in the living room.

   Even though Michael and Emma couldn't come to Gainesville with me this time (we have to wait until her fistula -the hole in her trachea- is fully healed before she can meet her cousins or play with any other kids, but Peyton asked about her a lot), I still pulled Emma out of her crib and got a couple pictures with her before I left.

I was glad she held the egg for a picture because she's been in a big throwing phase recently. 

   When we took our Christmas photos last November, we first took them outside, but Michael said they looked more like Easter photos since we took them by the plants and flowers in our front yard. Anyway, I hadn't posted them before since they are in the Easter category. We took them using the Manfrotto arm as the tripod- Michael attached it to the top of my car and put the timer on. It's so crazy to see how long Michael's beard was back then. Also now he looks so different because he is almost clean shaven, has lost weight, and got his ears pierced on Sunday! Here is a comparison photo from a few days ago before we went out to dinner with Emma for our 8 year wedding anniversary, plus some pictures at The Cheesecake Factory (using a gift card, yay!).

 ^^ These pictures, directly above and below, look almost the same, but I like in the one below she is doing the "foot hug" around my wrist a little bit more. I'm trying to teach her how to hug for real! :)

 ^^ This is the picture that I chose to use before we took the better themed ones inside.

Summer Lovin III

   Part 3: photos from Emma's first birthday last summer and some from July 2018 as well!! :)

The morning of her birthday I was looking at photos from her first day on Michael's laptop and came across this top photo that I had never seen before!! How was that possible? Michael also took a year and a half to tell me that it actually looked like the doctors and nurses were having a little bit of trouble getting Emma to breathe or wake up right after she was pulled out of my body. But while it was happening at 12:51 that afternoon, and I was praying and crying about her not making any noise, Michael assured me that she was doing fine. Now she is doing so much more than fine!!  

    Praise the Lord!!

   As we are Americans, we do love to find any reason to go out to eat, even if it is for our baby's first birthday and she is fed only via G-tube and she sleeps through the whole meal. Ha, and yes I am sure we will do the same thing again this year. Maybe this time she will accept a bite of cooled mashed potatoes, since she has been getting tiny spoonfuls of purees and applesauce recently.

   I was very proud of myself for making Emma's Moana themed birthday cake! Even Michael was impressed with how well it turned out and when I posted pictures online many people assumed it was from Publix. Nope!! :)

  My dad is not in this full family photo, since he was the one taking the picture, but he is in the photos from the handful of summer ones, including a few from her birthday, that I did post last year about Emma's first 40 Days at Home!

NaNa getting her great grand baby snuggles in! Emma is her first great grandchild, and her second was born just a couple weeks later- a boy named Oak, by Michael's cousin, Ashley.
  Father's Day 2018 was the day after her party, as it will be again this year. Father's Day 2017 was so special as it was the first time we got to hold Emma for a while, aside from the one minute I got to hold her and say hello to her shortly after she was born. Of course, I wanted to do comparison photos to show how much she had grown within the year.

 Being silly around the house, wearing Mommy's glasses to be twins with Daddy!

Celebrating two months at home with her new leg splints made by Occupational Therapy!

   For the 4th of July Michael and I talked about going to a fireworks show with Emma and had it planned for a couple weeks before he decided that it wouldn't be a good idea- thinking it would interfere with her treatment times, it would be too loud and hot for her, etc. So instead we went over to our neighbors' house (Ashley and Ryan, who we finally became friends with after living next to each other for two years!!) and they made dinner for us. Now that we know Emma will be good and would probably love the fireworks as she is always looking at bright lights, and we like taking her out places (especially after her first vacation to the mountains!), hopefully that can be the plan again this year! 

2018 vs sleeping on July 4, 2017

 At the beginning of July Michael's parents came down to visit again. It is always fun getting out of the house and taking Emma to different parts of town and to different restaurants. A majority of the time she falls asleep, other times she just quietly looks around. I don't think we have had any issues yet with her crying or having any issues where we had to leave- except Michael had to give her the nightly treatments in the lobby of Kobe Steakhouse during the LPA Convention a week after this! But her lungs are stronger now and most days she can go up to 14 hours without needing her treatments again. However, once in a while she does seem to need them exactly at the twelve hour mark.

 & a couple more family photos from the summer:

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