Category: Hope

Christmas has come and gone, and for Hope, it was a wonderful, if overwhelming time.

In the last few weeks, our house has undergone a lot of internal modifications- weatherizing some windows and doors, adding a Christmas tree in Hope’s playroom, and setting up Hope’s play area.  There’s enough room for the three of us and a plethora of Hope’s toys.  Our home is safe for Hope and it’s great to have a spot for her to play in that we can completely control.

As for Christmas, it’s safe to say that Hope had a good time.  We’ve seen a lot of family and friends over the last few days.  While she’s shy at first,  she eventually opens up and joins the party.  The three of us have spent time with both sides of the family and we think Hope knows that something special has been going on lately.

Christmas morning, Hope awoke to find her play room filled with some new toys- a farm playset, a 100-piece set of styrofoam blocks (that were already set up) and a wrapped box.  Hope’s approach to the toys has been interesting.  She loves to knock over the farm.  She has no use for 99 of the blocks, as her favorite thing has been to take one of the blocks and chew on it, ignoring all the others.  As for the box, well, it’s still mostly wrapped and makes noise as you touch it (rumor has it that it’s a remote control).  Hope has torn away at some of the paper, but seems more content with toppling over the farm or chewing on one of her blocks.  If we’re lucky we can recycle the mystery box for her birthday!

For the past few days, King Classic, my sister and stepmother have been in town.  Hope has had a lot of fun playing with them.  For Christmas dinner, King Classic and I made pierogies, kielbasa and scallops for dinner.  After spending the day playing with her new toys and relatives, Hope joined us in chowing down on pierogies and kielbasa.

Update: Hope was playing with her mother and tore away a little more of the mystery box’s wrapping.  But then she saw one of her blocks out of the corner of her eye and was distracted.

Anyway, I’m off tomorrow and it will be fun to spend more time with The Civee, sister and Hope.  Maybe soon Hope will be interested in more than one block at a time.

Here’s a little of Hope on Christmas morning:

So I noticed the other day that it’s been a while since I’ve last blogged (last month was pretty sparse on the blog entries).  And as some family members have informed me, it’s been more than a month since I’ve blogged about Hope.

That doesn’t mean that nothing is happening with our soon-to-be eight-month-old.  Quite the contrary.  The Civee and I have been so busy following her around and trying to keep her out of trouble that it feels like we haven’t had much time to sit back and brag about her.

In the past month, she’s been crawling all over the place, even managing to make her way up the stairs (with supervision).  She’s pulling herself up on couches, tables, chairs and people and can walk while holding on to things.  She can stand for a few seconds (but seems to fall whenever she realizes she’s standing without holding on to something).  She can wave (but not yet do the wave) and give high-fives.  The sounds she’s able to make have grown (and should grow even more in a few months once she’s had her palate surgery).  And her diet has expanded, now including:

• Peas
• Artichokes
• Carrots
• Pears
• Avocados
• Squash
• Potatoes (sweet and normal)
• Crackers
• Cheerios
• Ham
• Pork
• Turkey
• Salmon
• Parsnips
• String Beans
• Bananas

Perhaps most important (to The Civee and I at least) is that she falls asleep (or gets quiet) right as soon as we put her in her crib around 8 at night and doesn’t wake up until sometime after 4:30 the next morning.  Getting her to nap is still a chore, but we’re making progress.  (Having said that, we know her sleeping patterns will change tonight and we won’t get any sleep for a long time).

We’ve had to do a lot of childproofing and because we don’t have a lot of open space, it still feels like we have to keep an eye on her while she plays.  Hope doesn’t like her playpen, possibly because she knows she can’t get anywhere from inside.  But some of Hope’s relatives got a garage sale deal on a little tykes playset, which has helped out a lot.  The Civee and I call it her little apartment, and as you can see below, it does a great job of keeping her occupied:

This new thing called eating dinner continues for Hope.  This week, we started her on green beans, which she doesn’t like as much as the squash.  Sweet potatoes are up next, and we’re hoping that because of their sweet flavor, consistency and similarity to squash, Hope will like them as well.

We had some questions about feeding issues, especially with a child with a cleft palate, so met with our team at Children’s Hospital yesterday. They assured us she’s looking good and is growing well.  Her next surgery will be scheduled for early next year.  After that, they usually start speech therapy, since babies with cleft palates have issues with speech because their mouths aren’t able to make certain sounds.

This past week has brought a bunch of firsts for Hope.  She went on a swing and down a slide over the weekend.  We heard her first ga- and ba- vocalizations today.

We call Hope our action adventure girl.  The Civee says Hope lives life like she’s on fire.  There’s never a dull moment when she’s awake and in a good mood.

Now that she’s six months old, I’ve been told to expect firsts on a near-daily basis.  But I don’t mind if she just hangs out and enjoys life.  But knowing Hope, we doubt she’ll sit still.

I’ve mentioned before that the Civee and I really like artichokes.  Unfortunately, it looks like we’re going to have to learn how to share.

Over the past few weeks, we’ve been feeding Hope food (real food) as we take our sup (special thanks to my over-the-shoulder editor for that word choice).  Hope started out with rice cereal and oat cereal.  We added a vegetable to the oat cereal, starting with peas, then moving on to avocado, and last week, squash.

Each day, Hope’s eating skills grew–where the first few days, it seemed as if she ended up wearing more of her food than she ate, pretty soon, she was getting most of it in her mouth.  And it also seemed as if she enjoyed each food progressively more.  When we started the squash, we really got the feeling that she enjoyed her food- possibly for the first time getting more out of the vegetable than the oat cereal.

So The Civee and I decided to start her on one of our favorite vegetables- an artichoke.  While I stuffed and baked an artichoke for the Civee and I, I steamed some artichoke hearts and pureed them for Hope.  We gave them to her along with some squash, totally bypassing the oat cereal for the first time.

Unfortunately (for us), Hope really enjoyed the artichokes.  And I don’t think we’ll be able to keep them from her for much longer.  As I’ve mentioned before, she’s crawling all over the house making us put our childproofing plans into place a lot sooner than we expected.  Not only is she crawling now, but she’s also starting to pull herself up to things.  Yesterday, I saw her crawl up to a toy basket and pull herself up, curious to see what was inside.

She’s strong, she’s coordinated and she’s smart.  It’s going to be tough to hide artichokes (or anything else) from her.

On April 13 of this year, The Civee and I had a baby (The Civee was the one who did all the work, but I’ve been told I helped a lot).

Now today, a half-year later, that baby is still alive and growing.  It hasn’t been entirely easy, but it’s been a lot of fun.  After being warned before her birth that being born with a cleft lip and palate might mean she would face struggles, especially with development, we’ve been amazed at how healthy and happy she is.  Rather than the stories we heard of a cleft baby who struggled with eating eat, we can’t stop her from eating (since a few weeks ago, she gets nearly all of her food into her mouth and her repertoire now includes avocado). Her first surgery is out of the way, her splints, stitches and stents are off and it’s hard to tell that this little baby has been through so much already.

But for a six-month-old, she’s thriving.  She doubled her birth weight.  A month ago.  She can crawl.  Across a room.  And she laughs.  At my jokes.

We have a feeling she’s going to be standing soon and after that, there will be no stopping her.

The Civee and I (and Hope) couldn’t have made it this far without the support of family and friends who have helped out, both in person, and through their long-distance assistance.  We appreciate everyone listening to us talking about her (yeah, I know it’s kind of annoying, but with Lost and 24 off the air, I need something to write about).

And to wrap things up, we have (surprise) another video.  It’s just Hope playing around (with me providing some encouragement).  Nothing too exciting, but it’ll give you an idea what she’s up to.

This morning, Hope had an appointment with her pediatrician.  The Civee took Hope to the office and I met both of them there.

(For those interested, she’s growing well and the pediatrician was impressed with her expanding set of motor skills.  We were advised to start investing in gates).

As I was saying, I took some time off from work to accompany the girls to the doctor’s.  The Civee and Hope got there first.  As I walked in, I saw The Civee holding Hope and filling out paperwork.  While The Civee’s nose was buried in the paperwork, Hope looked up, saw me and smiled.  She made a noise and reached her arms out to me before The Civee even noticed.

There are still a few hours left in the day, but there’s not much that will beat that.

Also, this weekend, we (along with Grandma) took Hope to the beach (Lake Erie, not the ocean, unfortunately).  She really enjoyed trying to crawl on the sand.  Because she’s teething, she wears a bib most of the time.  That isn’t a cape around her neck.

It’s almost been a month since Hope’s surgery and things are pretty much back to normal.

I say pretty much because they’re as back to normal as things can get for a little girl who’s learning new things every day.

We had the first post-surgery checkup last week and everyone is happy with how she’s recovering.  While the arm restraints are gone, the doctor does want her to keep in the nasal stents for another few weeks to strengthen her new nose. Hope is happy to be able to put her fingers (and other things) in her mouth again, and has learned not to hit herself in the nose.  However, she still doesn’t like it when The Civee or I have to clean her nose.

As time passes, we notice Hope becoming more of her own person.  Earlier today, we tried feeding her some regular food for the first time.  She’s been curious about what The Civee and I have been eating, so we figured it was time for her to chow down on her own.  We gave her some rice cereal (no, not Rice Krispies).  And even though more of it ended up on her bib than in her stomach, it was a very pleasant experience.

Yesterday was also a big day for me.  It was the first time I took Hope out on my own.  We had an oil change scheduled for our car, so I wanted to give The Civee some alone time.  Hope and I dropped off the car and walked over to a nearby farmer’s market.  Well, I walked.  Hope was in her stroller.  The only mishap happened before we even left- after dressing Hope, I discovered her shirt was backwards.  But we survived.

Hope seems to be having a lot of fun, and The Civee and I are having fun with her.  We even have a new video, this one is of Hope sharing a laugh with her mom:

It’s been a few days since Hope’s surgery and The Civee and I already can tell one thing about her new smile–it’s just as cute as her old smile.

Monday night going into Tuesday wasn’t as rough as we had feared.  The hospital let us feed her a little later than usual, which meant that Tuesday morning, pre-surgery wasn’t miserable for Hope or us.  In fact, in the pre-surgery room, she was very happy, not knowing what awaited her.  It was tough to give her to the nurse to take into surgery.  But as the nurse wheeled Hope into the surgery room, Hope rolled over onto her stomach and got up on her hands and knees, showing off her latest trick, and a round of laughter erupted from inside the surgery room- meaning either the doctors were sampling the laughing gas, or they found our daughter’s antics amusing.

The next few hours were anything but amusing.  Although the surgical waiting room at Childrens’ is pretty nice, Let’s Make a Deal and free Internet access (on IE 6, no less) wasn’t enough to make the few hours of Hope’s surgery go by any more quickly.  After what seemed like a day, but was more like two and a half hours, we met with the doctor, who told us he was pleased with how Hope’s surgery turned out.  Not only did he have to bring both sides of her lip together, he also had to separate her upper lip from her gum on both sides and attempt to straighten out her nose. All the taping that The Civee and I had done over the past few months helped, bringing the skin closer on its own.  Additionally, Hope had some excess tissue which made the surgery a lot easier for him (we were later told they might use her case at some sort of medical conference).  He also did a lot of extra work on her nose, helped by two nasal stents which he was able to use because he trusted The Civee and I with keeping them clean over the next few weeks.

After another hour or so, we finally got to see Hope, and despite the doctor’s good report, it was a little upsetting.  Hope was still under anesthesia, her eyes were closed, her face bloated and the sounds coming from her mouth told us that she was in pain.  She slowly woke up and by the end of the night, flashed a slight smile or two.  Until her post-surgery appointment sometime in September, she’ll be in arm restraints, which could be frustrating to a baby who wants to put everything she can grasp into her mouth.  The sensitivity of the nose and mouth also means that laying on her stomach is out, as we don’t want her rubbing her mouth or nose into the ground.

But since coming home Wednesday morning, Hope has been slowly getting back to normal.  Her face is still very sensitive, but each day, she has been smiling and talking more.  And she’s finally big enough to try something my mother’s been wanting to get for her grandchild for the last 32 years: a Johnny-Jump-Up.  Thanks the The Civee’s father, we were able to get the device mounted from one of our abnormally-wide doorways.  Even though Hope is still learning how to use it, we think she likes it: