In loving memory of Mom...

and Grandma
Patricia Emerson
February 14, 1948 to June 3, 2007

Sorry for the delay in posting on here...my Mom went into the Hospice home on May 22nd and passed on June 3rd. Hospice was marvelous at caring for her and keeping her pain free in her last days. She is in a way better place now.

Although this blog was started to let friends and family follow our journey to Tommy-- Quite frankly, I haven't updated this blog because it turned into keeping mom, my #1 blog-fan updated and feeling close to us since we were so far apart and she wasn't able to visit until Tommy was 3 months old. Although our friends and family are important to us...I somehow got in the mind set that I was "writing to mom". See mom had lost her ability to speak in November. Therefore calling her and sharing life's daily excitement wasn't possible...so I just wrote about it and added pictures. Mom checked the blog first thing in the morning and last thing before bed.

So please accept my sincere apologies for not updating sooner. I appreciate all the thoughtfullness of checking in on us and the prayers. I have lots to share with you and hope to upload pictures soon.

Quick update...

We got in from Florida last night. I'm doing wash and repacking to drive back down. My mom is in no pain at all and fairly comfortable on some good pain meds at a very nice Hospice Home. I don't expect to see her alive again. We had a fabulous (considering the situation) time Saturday night hugging, crying and saying goodbye. She's going to a far better place very soon. They are suspecting it may happen in 2 days....

On an exciting note, Tommy (and the other kids) did fabulous on the very hard emotional trip. That long of a trip with such short notice is hard, but they did a great job! Tommy turned 5 months old on Friday, obviously no weight update. 5 months was the target age I put in my head for starting him on baby cereal. Not sure why I waited so long, the kid has had ice cream with hot fudge already :) Okay, so it was just a teeny bite, but still. He was way ready for his cereal this morning and ate it all gone and rather fast. If you didn't know it was his first time, you'd never have guessed so. I do have pics and will try to post some soon. Quite honestly, I'm not sure I'm ready to download the camera right now. We have gotten a lot of pics with my mom and the kids on there.

The best part is that medicine Tommy took to help movefood through him to prevent huge spit ups and vomiting....well we had him on a very low dose but thought it was still doing something. We lost it in FL, actually all his meds were together and lost. We could not find them anywhere and I was very stressed...turned out he hasn't spit up but once or twice which is completely normal. We found the meds 2 days later, but obviously have not used the reglan anymore. We did start his iron supplement back up :)
I sincerely appreciate all the prayers. We are hanging in there, most of the time doing well...and rightfully so, struggling with emotions at other times. I thank God the older two got to have a nice visit and say goodbye to their Grandma. I wish they didn't have to learn so much about death at such a young age.

Tommy's first trip...

No time to really update now, we are going to see my mom who has requested hospice in her battle with ALS. Please pray for our family.

OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO-H-I-O.......

Here we come! Just thought I'd fill you in...it's for real. We will arrive in Ohio the first week of August! Now I'm on the crazy house hunting spree. Actually only over the phone, my dear friend Peggy is doing the crazy walk-throughs for us!

Quick stats... 20 weeks, 1 day old today and....

Okay, yesterday Tommy turned 20 weeks old. In 10 days he'll be 5 months old! This all seems so unbelievable. One minute it feels like he was just born, the next like he's been with us forever. Time is flying by...5 months...crazy. Okay, okay...

So today we went to the pediatrician as he's PCSing and he wanted one last check up on Tommy and to make sure his notes for the new doc were current. So, Tommy weighed in at 9 pounds, 8.9 ounces, 21.5 inches long and his head was 40cm. His weight gain was a little less than I expected in the last week, but the big picture of weight gain is good still.

Over the past few weeks I have been pondering the fact that my 4 month old weighed less than my second child at birth. Granted Kaitlyn was "cooked" the longest out of all my babies...she was born just 3 days before her due date of Christmas Day 1999! Well, Kaitlyn weighed in at 9lbs, 7.4ozs and I would look at Tommy thinking, well she must have been shorter and so on... Barely! She was 21 inches and her head was 35cm at birth. As I look at Tommy, I really understand why Kaitlyn's birth was so very traumatic...that was one huge baby!

As I was looking up these stats I wondered how big Tommy's head was at birth, I think it's fair to say half the current size now. Well here's what just caught my eye....Tommy was 38.5cm LONG at birth. His head circumference today (40cm) is more than his length at birth! For all those stories of my frustration about people thinking Tommy is small, now you see...he's so huge to us! Now I'm very curious to really find out his head circumference at birth though :)

SMILES!!

I can not believe I forgot to post this picture!!! This is from May 5th...Dad was hanging out with him and stealing all these fabulous smiles from me!



HAPPY MOTHER'S DAY!!!
I bet this is the first picture of just Mom, Dad and Tommy! It's about time!


Beware...here comes another storybook, enjoy!


Kimberlyn enjoying her afternoon snack with Warlock. I sincerely didn't think he was going to eat the fruit snacks and fruit-flavored marshmallows?? He kept asking for more. Well, not asking but saying "Is that Good?" which is his way of saying MORE PLEEEEEASE!


May 10, 2007 ~ Kimberlyn was playing outside and I believe I was trying to get her inside for a nap. She brought a roley-poley in and said "look mom, I got a roley-poley from the flower"...GREAT! I said and told her to put the stinking thing out of the house! Okay, Okay she said...then comes in "but mom, he really loves me and won't get off my finger"...the third time she came back inside with her beloved friend, I decided to take a picture!

Well the prior post I told you that we wanted to go to OKC but feared Tommy was catching my cold...he did fine and we decided Friday morning to go. He did marvelous on the trip and we had a nice, quick visit with Glenda. Please pray for Glenda, as you may recall Glenda is our dear friend that I lived with when Tommy was in the NICU. She was diagnosed last month with a rare, nasty (I don't recall the name of it) cancer. She's doing her chemo and overall doing very well. But, at the moment she is battling a bug of some sort and not feeling so well.

We took Glenda to our (Kaitlyn and Mom's) new favorite restaurant in the city, Ted's. It's this wonderful Mexican food place and best of all one of Tommy's NICU nurses, Neans (pronounced the same as our last name) works there on weekends, so we got to see her!

Those of you who have stayed the night with us or had us stay the night with you know HOW serious Kimberlyn is about her 'raggies.' These raggies are seriously her old cloth diaper spit-up 'rags' as we called them. She never outgrew them and I believe when she was 2 and chose to throw her paci's in the trash in exchange for some cute twin baby dolls, she bonded even more with her raggies. Well, these are dwindling away as she hauls them everywhere and must leave them places. I try to always have one put up for emergencies... Last night I had no emergency raggie. I had no energy to find one after just getting in from the city. I decided IF Kimberlyn was desperate enough one of Tommy's 'rags' would do! They are the same type 'rags,' just his are a bit more blue. No joke, she took it fine, notice the white rag with blue stars she's snuggling!



Kimberlyn also got herself a new bike helmet...with the cute matching elbow and knee pads to protect herself. This is her demonstrating her one-handed riding skills last night!

He's still growing and smiling...

Tommy (19 1/2 weeks old, 9 lbs, 5 ozs) and Kimberlyn (too close to 4 years old!) smiling together yesterday.



May 2nd, Tommy 18 1/2 weeks old. Cute as can be! 8 lbs, 12ozs


Tommy 18 1/2 weeks old trying out his Jumperoo, he needs to grow a bit more! Although he couldn't touch the floor with his feet, he sure liked being 'pushed' back and forth by Dad!


Tommy 18 1/2 weeks old...just waking up after sleeping 10 hours for the first time!



Well, I have great intentions of updating this more frequently but seem to get sidetracked or tired.

Tommy is doing well and we are loving all these smiles. Larry's dad visited over the weekend and although he got some pics with his camera, we didn't. Our camera was MIA for most of the weekend.

Friday night was his first night to go 10+ hours in between feedings. Now, it's pretty standard for him to take his bedtime bottle (supposed to be at 9:30pm, but he can't hold out past 8:30om max.) around 8 or 8:15pm and then is in bed by 9pm. Most mornings I have to (actually Kaitlyn has to) WAKE him for his 6:30am morning bottle. Nothing new here, mom has always been a die-hard scheduler!

Kimberlyn woke with a congested voice on Friday and then I came down with a cold, mostly a lot of congestion and tiredness on Saturday. Kimberlyn's never turned into a real cold. Now that I'm feeling better and almost congestion-free, Tommy is catching it. Say a prayer for him. I'm so worried. Right now he has a congested, runny nose and a little cough. I may have him checked out tomorrow if he seems worse.

Unfortunately, due to Tommy not feeling well, I don't feel like braving a trip to OKC. We planned on going to get out of town overnight and visit Glenda.

I took Tommy into get weighed on Tuesday. He gained 9ozs in 7 days again. WOW! 9lbs, 5ozs now. We're so glad he finally steadily gaining well.

Still no "official" news on our move...we'll keep you posted!

Thanks for keeping up with us,
Tricia

Girls playing in an afternoon rain shower last week.