I finally got professional pictures done and I am SO PLEASED! I get to go and pick them up today and I can’t wait to get them up on my walls. I hope you enjoy looking ~ the other boy is Vani and he’s my adorable nephew!! I’m sad that Alana, my niece, wasn’t in the pictures, but someday we’ll get all the cousins together for a picture.
This past week Ella has mastered walking and broke through another tooth. So, now she has 4 on top and 3 on the bottom. She’s walking all over the house and it’s so weird looking! She really is a short little baby, so it just doesn’t look normal. She feels quite proud of herself that she can do what we all can do.
When Ella was a newborn we always knew when she was going to wake up. She’d raise her hand to announce it to everyone, or was it that she was asking permission? In the above picture she was only 1 month old. I always loved this little quirky thing she did, but sadly once she went into the hospital with her heart problem it stopped. The memories of all the cute things they do are priceless.
Kristen over at We are THAT Family has many more Sincerely Fro Me to You stories to read.
I get this question a lot. Probably at least once a week from some random person. They ask, are you having anymore kids? Or are you done since you have a girl and a boy. I truly do feel blessed that I have a girl and a boy and can be done if that’s what we wish for. I’ve even been told that I should get my tubes tied, which honestly I don’t believe is anyone’s business. However, here’s my issue….
I love my sister. I love that I have a sister. I couldn’t imagine not having my sister in my life and I’ve really thought a lot about this after she came up to visit this weekend. I can’t guarantee that if I ever did decide to have another kid it would be a girl, but I don’t like the idea of Ella not having a sister. So, I have no intentions of having anymore kids anytime soon (Ella needs 6 years of quality time like Jayden got), but I don’t like the idea of never having anymore kids ever again. Yet, I feel like my family is complete. I guess what’s meant to be in life will be. I just think it would be sad if Ella never got the chance to have a sister.
This past weekend was wonderful. My sister came up to visit me for the first time since I left Sacramento. We had so much fun! We took the kids to get their pictures taken and I can’t wait to get them back! They turned out soooooo good! It makes me so sad that the cousins, including Mitch’s baby girl Alana can’t grow up together. Vani was so cute this weekend. He has such an independent personality and it’s amazing how each and every child is so different!!! I love that little boy so much and am sad that I’m not in his life the way Jess & Mitch were in Jayden’s life. I feel so bad that they don’t get a chance to be in Ella’s life the way that they were in Jayden’s. However, we have to be happy and we weren’t happy in Sac.
Vani did so many cute things! The first night he got here, Jayden had wrapped himself in a blanket and ended up falling asleep. When Jess went out to get their stuff they had their pillows. Vani ripped the pillow away from Jessica and threw it on the floor. Then he went over to Jayden and lifted up the blanket from over his head and yelled “Hey!” and then pointed to the pillow. It was so sweet. He just wanted his big cousin to sleep on a pillow. Jess and I almost cried over the situation.
Another cute thing that Vani did was we went out to breakfast and Ella was in her car seat sleeping. She was on the floor next to him. After he ate his breakfast he wanted her to eat so he kept trying to give her eggs. It was sweet! It also resulted in him throwing eggs on her.
Hopefully we can all get together more often. It’s so important for our kids to know each other. And for us all to know our nieces and nephews.
Here’s a couple pictures of our fun weekend together.
I left tonight for my Aqua Aerobics class, which I’m loving, and I told Gino that Ella was exhausted. This is exactly how tired she was~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Yes, he did move her after he took the picture.
Dear Ella,
Unfortunately in the midst of all the chaos that has been going on I forgot to write to you on your 10 Months and talk about all the things you are doing.
You are such a smart little girl. You have started to imitate people and that has just opened our eyes that you really are learning things ~ your brain is soaking up everything it possibly can.
The walking. You definitely know how to walk, yet you’re still a little scared of it. Sunday at church you actually walked a good distance. Afterwards you clapped, which you always do after you accomplish something, or hear the words YAY. I am excited for you to walk, but there’s no rush. My heart is aching at how quickly your baby years are flying. I love the vibrant personality that shines through more and more every day. There’s no doubt that you’re definitely a Leo.
You finally started sleeping through the night. That happened shortly after you turned 9 months. I just want to say THANK YOU!!!!! You know, your brother actually slept through the night at like 8 weeks. After the 3rd month I kinda gave up, but you have been a beautiful, sleeping angel at night and I am SOOOOOOO THANKFUL!!
I love you, Ella. I truly feel blessed that you were sent to us and are a part of our family.
One more thing to add ~ anytime you hear music you dance. You LOVE to dance.
These babies are watching and soaking up every single thing they see. I was eating popcorn and Ella was sitting on the ground watching me. As I’d grab a piece and put it in my mouth and then chew Ella would then pretend to pick something up, put it in her mouth and then chew.
I realized at that moment ~ they really do watch and learn young. These babies are so amazing.
I’m back! I’m putting my blogging once again before my marriage, my family, eating ~ yes and even sleeping!!!! Okay… maybe not that extreme, but I do apologize for my absence. Of course I missed all my other carnivals I participate in this week AGAIN, but you know I couldn’t miss out on Fro’ Me to You!! Make sure you head over there and check out Kristen’s great blog.
I thought today I would share a couple pictures of Ella at 7 weeks old, and tell the dreadful story of the day she almost died. The day our world went spinning out of control, and the day we realized how strong God can make you in the times you need to be strong.
Ella was only 7 weeks old. It was October 4, 2007 and she wasn’t keeping her food down. I thought she had a stomach bug and decided that it might be wise to take her in just to have the doctor look at her. The decision I made was weird, I never took Jayden to the doctor’s for the flu, but I had this burning thing inside of me saying SOMETHING ISN’T RIGHT. I think the thing that bothered me the most was that she didn’t have a fever. I wanted so badly for her to have a fever, because that meant that yes, it was just a bad case of the flu.
The doctor looked her over agreed with me that it must be the stomach bug and to only give her pedialyte. All night long Gino and I took turns holding her – she didn’t want to be set down and it was a hard, hard night.
Fast forward to Friday, October 5, 2007. The phone rings and it was her doctor’s nurse asking how she was doing and said that they would like to see her since it was Friday just to check up on her. I honestly did not feel like driving there, and she was starting to keep her pedialyte down, but I went. When Wendy, her nurse, came in she was putting the oxygen level checker on her toe trying to get her levels – she couldn’t. She had someone else come in while she went to find the doctor, she wasn’t telling me at the time that Ella’s chest was retracting and there was a serious problem…. I guess she didn’t want me to freak while she went to get Ella’s doctor. Dr. Mills walked in and from the look on his face I knew that something was very, very wrong. I started spinning and feeling like I was going to black out. I just remember them taking Ella and running across the street with her to the hospital.
At the hospital they were trying everything they could to get an IV in her, but the couldn’t – her veins collapsed. Her heart rate wasn’t even registering on the monitors, and when it would I’d see numbers like 280, 300 and then nothing just plus signs. I felt alone, scared and just wanted my baby to stop crying and I wanted to know what in the world was wrong with her.
Gino finally arrived and shortly after they had the crash cart in and they were restarting Ella’s heart – it worked. However, the damage had already been done. Her liver was enlarged, her organs were about to start shutting down, she needed a blood transfusion, and they wanted her intubated. 
It was decided that Ella had Wolf-Parkinson-White syndrome and they wanted her in Portland where the specialists were. They had a team fly down from Portland to pick her up. It was a process, because she was intubated and they wanted an extra set of hands that could help, so my seat was taken. My baby went into the air without me. It was 11:00pm on Friday night and we had to leave our son behind and drive blindly into the night. We had a 4 hour trip ahead of us and didn’t know if our daughter was dead, or alive.
The team called when they landed and informed us that all went well and they were getting into the ambulance to transport her to the Children’s Hospital. Huge, huge, huge sigh of relief. We finally got there and went to her room and layed down. It was about 6am when they do shift change and the new nurse walked in and said, “This one here is awake.” Gino and I jumped up so quick and ran over to her. She actually looked at us and had these eyes like she wanted to tell us about all of the horrible things that she had been through. This picture is me looking at her right after they took out the tubes.
We ended up staying there for a few days then taking her home. She continued to go in and out of SVT (fast heart rate) all throughout the month of October. Luckily I started to know the signs and could tell when listening to her heart. So, if caught in time it was easy to stop by suffocating her with a bag of ice, which I personally couldn’t do. We had to take her in to her doctor’s to have it done. Once we realized that her medicine wasn’t working we went back to Portland to have her watched closely in the ICU while they tested another medicine that could cause heart failure, but it worked!! When she’s around 6 they’re going to do a catheter ablation and close the extra pathway that’s in her heart.
Her doctor was telling us that if we didn’t take her in to the doctor’s she would have stopped breathing. Her organs were already shutting down and we would have lost our precious, beautiful Ella. I couldn’t even fathom the thought. Heavenly Father kept us so strong throughout this, and I’m thankful every day for the blessings he has given us. I’m thankful that everyday I have this beautiful little girl to smile at me.
To follow Ella’s story as it unfolds her website is HERE
Today was long! I changed Ella’s diaper tonight and got up, threw her diaper in the garbage and then went to FINALLY get on my blog and talk about how my son graduated from Kindergarten yesterday and how Ella has another tooth and all the things that I’m just now too exhausted to talk about, when….. my husband says “Are you just not gonna put another diaper on her?”
I walk in the living room and Ella’s sitting there with the Xbox 360 remote right in between her legs. A part of me was secretly hoping that she would pee all over it, but of course that would never happen. No. She’ll just wait until she finds a great opportunity to pee all over me.
It’s official ~ I’m losing it. At least I did this at home and not in public.