Spreading some cheer!

We are one of the mission families for the March of Dimes, we attended a "jail and bail" event last week at one of the local restaurants. Danes personal info was on all of the mailings that went out, so it was great for Dane and I to meet the people that showed up to raise money. My Mom came and helped too, it was an awesome experience and volunteering really keeps me passionate about prematurity. I met a couple that had just recently lost triplets, they were born at 24 weeks and they all passed at different times. It was heartbreaking as she looked at Dane coloring at the table and started to cry, I am sure that she was thinking of what may have been for her babies. It was a swift kick to me, Dane is doing so well I almost forgot of what could have been for him too. Okay...on to the cheer I promised in my title!!! This is a picture of Dane posing with the restaurant managers. Yes, the look on his face was like, "Mom, who the heck are these people?"

Okay, so yes, we do have the ultimate couch potato coffee table...it pops up so that you can eat while sitting at the couch and you guessed it... while watching TV too. Anyway, Dane thought that he would test the limits the other day by trying to crawl in.

And being the great Mom I am, I thought I'll take pictures and blog about it! I know that he is thinking, "I can't believe that Mom is letting me sit here...I better at least be cute"
Don't you know that if you are one year old no one can see you if you can't see them...This is what he did when I sternly asked him what he was doing in there. Clearly he can not be seen in this picture, where did he go?

"Here I am!" Yes, even after that big old grin, I still made him get out. I am so mean.

Here is little sample of what a little yapper he has become!

Exceeding my standards..already?!?

Lot's to be thankful for again this Thanksgiving, family, friends, a roof over our head, and a gracious God of course! We are thankful to share whatever we have with others including Dane's journey...which we have an entire new list of things to be thankful for this year when it comes to him! We have an amazing little boy who is walking, talking, smiling, laughing, (ummm...sometimes hitting and pinching too!) and darn determined to figure out the world around him! He just had a check up and he is in the 95 percentile for his height and in the 75th percentile for weight...and that is for his actual age, NOT adjusted!!! This is great for a preemie, it usually take two to three years for a 26 weeker to catch up to his peers...and he is exceeding them in under two years!
Everyone was healthy and we were happy to spend Thanksgiving with the whole family this year. We had a great time eating yummy food and catching up with everyone. Dane found his way to the piano, where he sat down and played while we poorly sang...hard on the ears but cute none the less!

Photo and video editing at www.OneTrueMedia.com

Sorry about how dark the video is, it was taken with my camera's video option and as you will see it's not very good quality. I need to learn bring my camcorder with me more often!

I've lowered my standards!

I have come to the realization that posting on a monthly basis will have to be enough! I will try to post more, but once a month is my official goal!

We have had a wonderful month, thanks in part to some gorgeous weather. There is a small window after the weather gets nice and before the brown cloud rolls in...and that is what we are enjoying right now. Dane loves to play outside, he is especially happy to just roam around the yard with a stick and explore. He loves to look at bugs, and move rocks from here to there...then back again! His speech continues to be taking off, tonight Gage taught him to say "pound it" then do the knuckle bump! He is still using sign language, but less and less now that he can repeat most things, however refuses to say certain words that he has been signing...like "more", "please", "drink", and "thank you". He will sign them, but when I tell him to say them with his mouth, he just continues to sign only with his mouth open! It's very funny!


I have seen an improvement in his breathing since starting the treatments last month, he can play a few minutes longer before the coughing and wheezing start. Looks like we will not be approved for the RSV shots this year, not a big shocker to us. Our co-pay would have been around $800.00 every 28 days, and we couldn't afford it anyway...who could??? So, we are limiting his exposure once again. No more taking him shopping during busy hours, no malls, no day care, no being around other kids that are in day care...etc. We are all praying to keep him healthy one more winter, in hopes that he will out grow his lung disease. His physical therapist, Miss M, thinks that he is doing great and has basically almost caught up to his peers in gross motor skills! Amazing huh?

Enjoy a quick video montage of what he has been up to the past month...

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Where has Dane been???

Sorry that it has been so long since I have updated the blog!! Hopefully I didn't loose to many readers in my laziness! Dane is doing great, but he is more than a handful these days! He is into everything and has no fear of anything...including me! We have cut back on his physical therapy because he is doing so great with his motor skills, we are so thankful to have had such a great therapist and we will miss seeing her every week! Dane's speech is taking off as well, he can say too many things to list here...and we couldn't be happier! Dane's lung disease has been showing itself lately, now that the weather is nice and we are able to go outside he hasn't been able to run and play hard for more than two minutes with out wheezing and coughing. So we are back on breathing treatments twice a day for the steroid and up to three times a day for the one that opens his lungs up. I can already see a difference, but it is another big reminder that we need to stay germ free another RSV season to give him the best chance of out growing the chronic lung disease. He hates his treatments and fights and cries the entire time, but this is one battle that he will not win! Enjoy our little montage!

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Munds Park (part 2)

Here is the kiddos at the park, Gage was so excited to get his picture taken by his Mom at the park...get over it Gage...I am still the boss! Gage was even more excited when I made him sit on the swings so that I could get a picture of all the cousins on the swings together!

Anyway, the weather was beautiful and we all had a great time. The kids have been cooped up all summer (unless they are in the pool), so it was so nice to just be outside. Munds Park is gorgeous, maybe some day we can afford our own get away home...or heck I would live there year round!

Thanks to Gary and Dee for letting us invade their home up north! We had a blast!

And yeah to Dane's little lungs who handled the change in altitude like a champ! He is one resilient child!

Munds Park (part 1)

Chad's birthday was Friday, we were trying to plan a weekend up north to celebrate and get out of the heat. Chad's sister, Kelly, grew up with a family that has truly become "family" to her...and they own a gorgeous cabin in Munds Park. They were so generous and offered the cabin to all ten of us for the weekend! This place was amazing, tons of room, kid friendly...and way more than we could have ever enjoyed renting a cabin. This picture does not to it justice! They have two rhinos, that the boys (Chad, Dan & Gage) and kids had a ton of fun riding around the town in...this is one of them.
Dane and his cousin Mallary had a fun time playing together. Both the front and back porch were totally enclosed so we didn't have to worry about them getting hurt...They loved being there!
They even a had room designated just for the kids. They colored, watched movies and hung out in this room when they were not enjoying the outdoors. Dane looked so cute hanging out with the big kids.
The community that we stayed in had nice park where Dane loved being on the swings...the higher we pushed him the more he laughed!

High Altitude Test

Before planning for our weekend up north, Dane had to make some phone calls to make sure that his lungs were going to be able to handle the change.

We brought his nebulizer just in case, but after his long conversations with some of his preemie friends, we were assured not to worry!

So, we headed up to Munds Park. Elevation 6600! This was the highest altitude Dane has been in, last summer we were told not take him above 4000...and even then to make sure that we new ahead of time where the closest medical facility was...that was enough to scare us, so last summer we stayed in the valley. So, did he pass the test??? Yes, with flying colors! He was a bit more tired, but he did great!

Chim-chimney, chim-chemney, chim-chim cher-ee!!!

This is Dane's impersonation of Dick Van Dyke in Mary Poppins...not too bad, huh? We were rearranging my room (and yes, still cleaning it out) and Dane who has been known to be a garbage picker, found a candle that I threw out. I threw it away because the glass was full of soot and looked pretty ugly...Dane thought otherwise. This picture cracks me up, Katie's face is like "wooaahh..." "I don't know how my hands got dirty?!?"
"My Mom is over reacting and making me take a bath..."
"Okay, maybe I won't be a chimney sweep...I am way too cute when I'm clean!"

Strollin' down memory lane

For those of you who know me really well, you know that I am in a never ending attempt to clean and organize Chad and I's bedroom. I feel like my room has been a mess since I was little, I'll keep the rest of our house clean and somewhat organized but it all stops at our room. So, in yet another effort to clean out the clutter I ventured into a forgotten drawer where I was so excited to find all of Dane's NICU awards...well, they really are not "awards" but little signs that nurses would make and hang all over his tiny space to make it feel more home-like. I have one that says "Congratulations on being extubated...what a brave boy!!!" they would include the date, and are decorated with stickers and stuff too. They would always make them when we were not there and it was a highlight to come in and see a new sign up by his incubator. You could tell how long the little ones had been in the NICU by the amount of "awards" they had. Looking back now, I find it kinda funny...how many Mom's can scrapbook with a sign that reads "Congratulations on being extubated!" or "Congrats to Mommy for the first diaper change!" And yes, I deserved that award...it should have been statue award because changing a barely two pound baby's diaper was like doing surgery! I remember my hands were shaking, as the nurse lovingly said "make sure you lift his legs and hips together so you don't dislocate his hips"...nice huh? So, yeah, I am a little proud of my awards too!

But these are the two that I cherish the most. This one was taken when he was almost one month old. I put my cell phone next to it so that you see how tiny his hands and feet were. You could fit both of his hands and feet inside the perimeter of my cell phone with a ton of room to spare. He was heading towards the 3lb mark and I remember thinking he was getting so big. This one was taken on his two month birthday, I put a quarter on the picture to see the size (I thought of the cell phone after the first picture, then my battery went dead before I could take this one with the phone) This was a week before we had him transferred to a closer hospital.
I am so thankful for the reminders, they keep my heart in check when he is driving me crazy!

If they don't win it's a shame...for it's 1, 2, 3 strikes your out at the DiamondBacks game!

Me and Katie!
Perks of having good seats...you actually can catch some of the souvenirs they throw out! We were very excited about our little foam ball!
Fireworks!!!
I had to add a picture of Dane...being his blog and all...

A very generous customer from work gave me four tickets to the D-backs game on Friday night, now these weren't just your average tickets, they were right above the D-backs dugout! You see, Katie won tickets for a project she did at the science fair at school, she had to plan a baseball team...everything from picking the right players and their salaries, to what concessions they would sell. She was sooo excited to win the tickets, but when we got them we were a little disappointed to see that they were in the extreme nose bleed section. It would have cost us more to drive downtown and park than the tickets were worth, so we decided to save our money and purchase our own tickets and make a fun night of it. I shared the story with Lena, one of my faithful customers, and she said that she gets free tickets at her work all the time and that she would try to score us some tickets! So, Katie, Chad, Uncle Dan and myself headed down to Chase Field (still BOB to me) and had a fantastic night that ended with the roof opening up to a great fireworks display! Icing on the cake since they cancelled fireworks on the fourth of July! They did loose to the Braves...but we had a couple good innings that kept it exciting!

THANK YOU LENA, for the awesome evening...memories that Katie will not forget anytime soon!

Dane spent the night at Grandma and PapPap's house and had an equally good time!

Chonicles of a one year old driver

Yes, I am cool...and yes ladies, I am single!
Gotta go, you can't hold me down now that I have wheels! I am free to experience all that my little red car has to offer...I want to let the wind blow through my hair!
Wait a minute...I forgot Daddy buzzed my head...and now the wind can't blow through my hair!


*In case you notice the bruise on Dane's forhead, he tripped and caught the corner of our paper shredder! Poor guy, but he barely cried...because he is one tough kid!

Developmental Evaluation #3

Sorry I have done such a cruddy job of posting, these are my excuses: our Internet has been going crazy, I think that we have been off line more than on line the past couple of weeks, and we have been getting ready for back to school for Gage and Katie. Katie started school today and Gage starts tomorrow. I will miss my helpers, especially Katie, they have been a big help around the house and with entertaining Dane.

Today was Dane's third developmental evaluation with Phoenix Children's Hospital, I really like getting feed back from the therapists there...the majority of kids they see are former preemies, so they really understand the development of these little miracle kids. Well, besides her immediate response to how huge Dane is (she said that we should do a study on him, he is the biggest preemie she has seen!) she was amazed with his progress. She put him through lots of little tests and then scored him in all of his developmental areas. They go off of his adjusted age of 14 1/2 months, and his lowest score was 15 months! The majority of his scores were at 17-19 months!!! AMAZING!!! Thank you Jesus!!! She was impressed with his sign language, and how he stacked blocks like a pro, he also went up and down the therapy stairs while only holding on with one hand...very fancy stuff! She wasn't that concerned with his wobbliness (I think that I just made that word up), because he has only been walking for two months. She feels that we can back off a little on his PT too, so I think that we may go to twice a month on that. We celebrated his awesome report card with an iced americano and some apple juice...not mixed together of course!
I felt an overwhelming urge to praise God as we left Phoenix Children's...so I put on a CD and sang worship songs very loudly and yes, very out to tune...but I know that God has ears to only hear my heart...to which we are both thankful! It is truly a miracle to watch how Dane has been healed. I am not in denial to what problems may lie ahead for our journey, but I trust in God's plan and know that any future heart ache will only draw us closer to Him.

BTW, his hair is growing out and I think that it looks much better and I am no longer angured with Chad when I see his little head!

Pictures to come soon!

"You, did NOT buzz his head!"

"It's okay, I still look cool Mom!"

Where did Dane go???
"Here I am!"
"YOU DID NOT BUZZ HIS HEAD!!!"

The reply from my dear husband was "yes". I came home from work to see a toddling Dane come around the corner with a silhouette of an egg head that I was so desperately trying to hide with his hair. Yes, Dane did need a trim as the dreaded mullet was starting to appear. I have been ever so slightly trimming his baby hairs for the past six months, and Chad has been teasing me that he was going to buzz him, which I kept saying "you had better not TOUCH his hair". Due to his prematurity he does have a skinny head, the NICU nurses call it a "toaster head" and say that they can spot a grown preemie by the shape of their head! I was trying to grow it out a bit to off set the shape of his head...which I must add is not that bad, the nurses did a great job of turning Dane every couple hours while he was in the hospital to keep the "toaster head" to a minimum. So okay Mom's, I know you can sympathize with me here...yes, he is still adorable and yes, it will grow back...but girls...I was soooo mad at my husband!!! Needless to say I am quite sure that Chad will not go near Dane's head again with anything sharp!

Otherwise, Dane is doing good. We are working on trying to strengthen his core to help him with balance, he is still falling a little more than he should. We are basically doing a Pilate's move on him, his stomach and neck muscles are a little weak and he has compensated with VERY strong shoulder muscles. We are also working on behavior, as he thinks that if we tell him "no", he should try to bite or pinch me. I know that it is out of frustration as he can't communicate with us they way that he wants to. The funny thing is that he only does this to Katie and me...never once does he try to bite Chad or Gage. It also doesn't matter who tells him "no", if Chad tells him know...he tries to pinch me, if I tell him "no" he tries to pinch me. Let me tell you, he has some strong pincher's!!! So, for now we are just removing him from the situation when he starts to do this...time will tell what we try next. He is very strong willed and stubborn, which was a necessity in the NICU...but a bit of a challenge as he gains Independence! We love him though, and we try to remember that it was his rebellious nature that helped him get him where he is today!

Happy 4th of July (on the 3rd!!!)

This is what Dane does when you ask him "who's so cute?" or "who's so smart?" Too cute, he always proudly raises his hand!

I know that I won't have time to post tomorrow, so I thought that I would do it today! I hope that everyone has a wonderful day tomorrow full of lots of family, friends, food, and fireworks.

Beware, hot topic ahead...and it doesn't have one thing to do with Dane or prematurity!

We will be going to a church party/baptism at an unbelievably generous persons home that has offered their gorgeous home to our church family for the evening. This house is awesome, the pool has a lazy river and a buried treasure ship in the shallow end! Gage, Katie and myself have made the decision to be baptised also. Baptism itself has raised a lot of questions for me, since I became a follower of Christ I am very skeptical and aware of trying to stay clear of any legalism in my relationship with God. When I read the gospel what resonates in my heart is that we are to be baptised in the Holy Spirit and if you are not careful, water baptism can feel like another notch on your Christian belt. It is something that I have decided to do as an outward symbol of the internal change that I have had in my life, not as a legalistic, religious thing that somehow makes me more Christ like. There has been an odd stigma that I have found is attached to not being baptised in the church, there are brothers and sisters in Christ that have acted shocked and said "YOU have not been baptised!" and I think that it is for that reason that I haven't done it yet, when people act like that it changes the experience for the person being baptised it makes it about everything that Christ preached against. It's like when you see people take communion, and they really have no idea why they are doing, just another "to do" thing on their God check list, and like taking communion, baptism needs to come from the heart, a decision that is between you and God alone, and I might add a decision that is for God alone to judge. Anyone can get dunked by their Pastor, but it takes a secure relationship with Jesus to search yourself for the real reason you are doing it. I am glad that I have had the opportunity to really pray about it the past couple of weeks, and thankful that I have had the chance to share my heart with people about why I hesitated to do it. I am proud of my kids for making the decision to be baptised tomorrow and I pray that it is truly is a life changing experience for them. I pray that they are not doing it because it is what man expects them to do, but what God wants them to do to show and share with others their faith in Jesus... and that they know it doesn't make them any less or more loved by God...He sees and knows our hearts, whether we have been submerged in water or not. Google "different thoughts about baptism in Christianity" and you be amazed at the discussions out there on this topic. I am glad that I have decided to share this experience with my kids, heart and eyes wide open knowing that there is not any legalistic reason attached to this public symbol of my new identity in Christ. Just as a side note, my Mom baptised me when I was a baby and I think that is awesome, you know why? There is not ANY legalism attached to a Mother baptising her baby with no one else around but the Lord...so thank you MOM!

Oh yeah, make sure in the midst of your 4th of July celebration that you pray for our country, and it's leaders, our soldiers, and their families!!!

Okay, back to Dane, he is doing great! Getting more and more stable on his feet and though he may not be hitting every milestone on time, he shows improvement everyday. We have been taking him swimming, which he loves a little too much...he has ZERO fear of the water! He is my happy guy and our family is blessed by his big brown eyes!

Today is the first day that I have actually felt a lot better, I can have conversation with out my lungs burning. The way I figure it Dane is about 4 days behind me in this flu/chest cold thing. He still has a very nasty cough, but his lungs were clear when we took him to the doctors. (BTW, he weighs 25.5lbs!!!) He is back on breathing treatments, mostly for preventative reasons. He is a much better trooper than I, you barely know he is sick except at night when he tries to cough up all the junk in his chest. We are praying that it doesn't turn into anything worse.

When he is sick or very tired it really effects his motor skill, so he has been falling a lot...which he has actually gotten very good at. He does get frustrated because his body won't do what he wants it to do. Now that he has been walking for two weeks, we have noticed that his right foot is turned out and his right leg is a bit stiff. So, we will keep our eye on that to see if may need a little help with it. We are so proud of him!

The never ending night

Well, I did it...I gave Dane my cooties. He started coughing pretty hard yesterday and I just knew that it wasn't going to be a fun night. He woke up crying and coughing after 15 minutes of sleep, when I went to pick him up he promptly vomited all over me. Now, I am not complaining, we have been so blessed that we haven't had any of the preemie eating, gagging, and vomiting issues. For so many preemies and their families vomiting is a part of the daily routine. I think that Dane must have steel guts, he eats and poops like champ...and has done so since he was in the NICU. With that said, curdled milk and half digested dinner down the INSIDE of your shirt is not cool. He was feeling better, but it took what felt like forever to get him back to sleep. I thought that I would share this cute picture so not to leave you with the mental picture I just created for you above. Then Gage came home from work to this, you guessed it folks, we have a revenge T.P.'ing at it's best. Yes, it sucked that he had to come home from work and clean this up, but the reality of war is not pretty. One of his best friend's that was involved in the initial attack that lead up to this revenge attack came over and helped clean up...there is one thing for sure, the bar has been raised and if I know my boy he will rise to the occasion. So the war will continue, consider yourself warned. Jade, Krystal and Allison!!! :) Gage has a job and plenty of money to buy loads and loads of toilet paper! This was written on the drive way, a cowardly move for sure! I personally think that this Bobby character has made himself a target fair and square...no pun intended of course.
Okay, getting back to Dane, he woke up with a fever and in need of a breathing treatment at around 3:00am. He seems to be a little better this morning but we are taking him to the doctors to be safe, though he has steel guts...his lungs are still a little lacking.

Hopefully, we will all rest well tonight!

Happy Fathers Day

This has nothing to do with Fathers Day...just a funny picture of my personal choir! Gage came home with these from work the other day because they were going to throw them out, but we managed to entertain ourselves for at least 20 minutes with these beautiful red and hot pink choir gowns!

A special Happy Fathers Day goes out to my Dad and my husband, the two guys in my life that I know no matter what happens will always be there for me!

I had to work this morning, and I have been fighting a bit of a yucky chest cold that has turned into what is looking like the flu, but it was a great day still. We went to church, then napped, and I made chicken pot pie to take to my Mom and Dads.

Dane is walking up a storm, though his walk does resemble a zombie that has had a couple cocktails! What a great gift for fathers day, to see our little man toddling around!

He is still doing great with his communication, his new thing is what I call "babbling in sign language". He will start doing things with his hands, I know he is trying to sign something but I have no idea what! I know that he is soaking up all the signing that I am teaching him and the signing videos too, so I guess it's just like the babbling he does in reaction to all the talking he hears around him...just with his hands! It's very cute none the less.

NEWS ALERT!!!

Sorry about the quality of this video, it was taken with my digital camera...anyway...Dane has been taking three or four steps on his own for the past week or so, but today we had some friends over and when they went to leave he walked from our kitchen to the front door to follow them out! We grabbed the camera and did a reenactment by dangling my cell phone in front of him! We are so proud of him!

We thank God for his continued healing of our sweet miracle!

The eyebrow

So, for those of you in our family...well at least my Mom's (Grandma Kathy) side of the family, there is the famous "eyebrow". My Mom can raise her eyebrow at you like no other, my brothers David and Mark also have "the eyebrow", it's been kinda a joke in our family as long as I can remember. Katie snapped this picture of Dane, and you can see for your self that the legacy of "the eyebrow" will live on for another generation! Though it's not raised nearly as high as my Mom can raise hers, not too shabby for a one year old. For those of you that don't care about our family eyebrow raising...it's still a funny picture!

You may have heard me say this before, but....This little boy amazes me! We were at the grocery store when he started making quite the scene over a picture of a baby in a magazine. So, once again, we showed him the sign for baby...which is folding your arms as if you were holding a baby and rocking. Well it finally clicked with him and he is now a "baby" signing fool. As you can see from the video, he shakes his head "no" when I keep asking him to sign "duck" (which he knows how to do)...but if you listen closely you can clearly hear him say duck. He has grown leaps and bounds in the past two weeks with his speech. He is clearly starting to mimic what we say to him. It is soooo exciting and one of the many "Thank you Lord" moments as we get to watch this miracle unfold right in our very own little house!

He is still very, very close to walking and has started taking one or two steps consistently between furniture with out holding on. He is extremely stubborn, and refuses to practice walking unless it is his idea and not ours! He is currently tempting his boundaries on behavior, which we are doing the best we can in being consistent...though it is very hard to keep a straight face when he is being a stinker! He already broke the first set of baby locks on our cabinets, and Chad just installed the new ones...hopefully they will last longer than the first ones! He favorite thing is taking everything out of the pantry, and when we ask him "who make this big mess?", he proudly raises his hand! We are baby sitting my Moms dog, and has been saying her name, Molly, like a pro...well at least he says "olley"...good enough for me~

We celebrated his "adjusted age" birthday party last weekend. We had his dedication at church, which was a tear jerker for me, then we had family and close friends over for some cake. Dane did great at the party, and let everyone hold and play with him. It was a great day, I only wish that we had the finances and the space to have invited more people to share in the celebration! I better go, I can hear Chad scolding Dane for getting into the garbage...he is worse than a dog when it comes to getting into the garbage!

We are really working on signing please and thank you, but as you can see from the video or if you have ever been around Chad and I, you know that we both seem to talk at the same time...so the fact that Dane can hold two conversations with us at once makes him a double genius!!!

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New goals

"Good grief Mom, enough with the camera!"
"Okay, I'll smile for this picture...but only because it's Mothers Day"

Every six months the DDD comes out and we talk about how Dane is doing and set new goals for him for the next six months. I was so proud that he had mastered all of his goals that were set for him six months ago, like getting himself into a sitting position, crawling and more babbling. He has kicked some serious preemie butt in all of those goals...so now we move on to new goals. Of course walking is a major goal for the next six months, but the big one is speech. Speech is the area that he is the most delayed in, he does a lot of pointing and grunting to communicate with us. We encourage him to sign to us, which he has been doing awesome with...he is pretty consistently signing "more", "drink", and "all done". There are times that he refuses to sign, but we take his hands and do the signs for him before he gets what he wants. We want him to start mimicking our speech with in the next six months...that is the biggie right now. He seems to have a bit of an ornery side to him, but for now we treat him like we would any other child when he acts up. Time out in his play pen and stuff like that, it's just so hard to tell what is a behavior issues VS. disabilities. I personally think that he is a smarty pants with an attitude!

Today, we had him strapped into his toddler rocking chair to watch a video while Chad and I worked on a spread sheet for his business. Next thing we hear "THUMP", we look over and there goes Dane crawling across the floor with the chair still attached to him! He couldn't see where he was going because he couldn't look up, ya know these things are hard when you have a rocking chair strapped to your back...we heard him swinging his legs but we had no idea that he was doing it with the intention of rocking himself completely forward! He looked like a hostage victim trying to get to away while still tied up! He took off crawling until he hit the wall! There is no one that can tell me that this child is not a genius...or at least an escape artist!

We are going to try to get a video of him doing it, it was the funniest thing that I had seen in long time!

I know, he looks like an angel in the pictures above...but trust me, there is something behind those eyes that is full of mischief!

It's over!

RSV season that is! Yippee! We made it successfully through Dane's first RSV season (out of the hospital that is) with out catching the nasty virus. It really wasn't too bad being stuck at home and well worth the health of his lungs. He has been to the grocery store a couple of times this week, and we may even attempt a play date this week with my sister Chick's! There is a whole new world out there and I am excited to take him to the Mall too, I am sure way more excited than him but that's okay. Gage and Katie were at the Mall with in days of being born!

We are still very aware of his lung disease though, every time he starts to play hard and crawl very fast he starts wheezing and coughing. Last night we had to give him a breathing treatment (the first in over three months) because he was wheezing so bad. You see this child does not want to get dressed and especially doesn't want us to put his diaper on. After his bath he exerts sooooo much energy fighting us to put his clothes on he starts wheezing. The doctor said that he will definitely have asthma and that it would most likely be pretty severe...but hey the doctors have said many other things too, right? Hopefully we can keep him healthy and he will out grow any asthma, but it not no biggy.

Thank you team "Great Dane"!!!

Here is our team Captain!

This is the back of our t-shirts...we wanted to give everyone our definition of what a "Great Dane" is! Our team started to assemble, we had to get our Starbucks first though...it was worth being a little late!

Tonya & Jenn, my fellow Starbuckians! (I love that I got Team John in the background!!!)
Dane after the walk, he was VERY happy to be out of his stroller!
The fam...
Team photo...minus my brother Mark and sister in law Sandra, today was their anniversary so they left early to be schmoopy with each other! Happy Anniversary guys!
We raised a total of $3,210!!! Thank you all so much for donating, the generosity of my friends and family amazes me. You know what else amazes me? The wonderful team of walkers that got up very early on a Saturday morning to walk to raise money and awareness of prematurity. My poor Mom couldn't be there, she got the nasty flu bug early in the morning...we missed you Mom! Shera also just got out of the hospital after suffering a scarey migrain and couldn't make it, so we missed you too Shera!

Besides the love of family and friends the other great part of the walk was that I got to meet John's Mommy, I have been following his blog since Dane came home from the hospital. Her blog was one of the first one's that I found, I was instantly taken back by her love for little man who also fights hard everyday to over come his prematurity. John was a 24 weeker and has over come so much! John's link is on my page if you want to pop in and show his blog some love.

I also met Tiffany, Mommy to preemie triplets...yikes! One of her triplets also had a grade IV brain bleed and is doing really well. I would have loved to stay and chat with the other NICU Momma's but kids were growing tired and needed naps.

Of course PETA was there to protest and hand out copies of a dime with blood spilled on it...nice huh? They are upset that March of Dimes does has funded testing and some of that testing has been on animals. I am sorry but a bunch of 19 year old PETA activists just aren't going to persuade me to not support this cause. SO THERE PETA!!!

So, to our team captain...the "Great Dane":

We love you and we can't imagine our family with out you, we did all this in celebration of your life!!!