Busy Busy

We have been incredibly busy lately and I am finally looking forward to a weekend with NOTHING on the calendar! Because of all of our busyness, Hannah has been a bit cranky lately, but hopefully that will work itself out now that we are calming our schedule down a bit.

The gymnastics show a few weeks ago was a big success. Hannah had a great time and Kyle and Grandpa got some awesome photos. I used photoshop and made composite images for every kid in the show. It was a lot of work, but I had fun doing it and those parents that I got to talk to really liked their pics. Last weekend Tiffany's twins had their 5th birthday so Hannah got to see them and she had a blast at the party. She especially loved playing on Kayla and Chase's swing set. The same weekend Hannah had her gymnastics meet we also did the March of Dimes March for Babies (formerly known as Walk America). This year Hannah was one of Lilly's poster kids because the antiviral that cured Hannah's herpes and saved her from serious neurological damage was developed using a grant from the March of Dimes. Hannah had fun on the walk and loved seeing all the dogs the people had with them.

Hannah's language skills continue to grow by leaps and bounds. She is now praying on her own and will often incorporate the day's events into her prayers and not just recite a standard memorized prayer. We had no idea she could pray like that until one night when we bowed our heads to say our bedtime prayers she just started praying! Here is what she said, "Dear Jesus, Thank you for the day. Fun with Grandpa, fun with Daddy, fun with Mommy. Amen" This was the night of her gymnastics show and she had had a very fun day and seen Grandpa. Kyle and I were both shocked. The other day we were sitting at a stop sign and a bus pulled up beside us and Hannah said. "I see a bus. I see an octagon." The bus started to pull forward and she said, "I see another octagon. Two octagons." She was pointing at the stop signs on the arms of the school bus! Then, tonight she got in trouble for chewing on one of the letters on her play mat and Kyle put her in time out. She started to cry and then called out, "I'm sorry Daddy for chewing the M." On Monday she had a doctor's appointment and when the doctor came in she looked at him and said, "Leave the door open please Dr. Hendrick." I thought the doctor was going to keel over. He turned to me and said, "What 2 year old talks like that!?!" I replied, "but she's not even 2!"

She now knows all of her alphabet except for X, V, and N. She often calls X K, V Y and N Z. She can identify several lower case letters now and knows basically all of her letter sounds. She's still pretty much stuck at 13 in the counting department, but if you get her past 13 and break the 13, 7-13, 7-13 cycle she can sometimes get to 20.

Potty training is still pretty much holding steady. We've had no major breakthroughs lately. She definitely gets great joy out of picking out her big girl underwear each day and gets very excited each time we check them and they are dry.

Obedience is currently a hot topic in the Spontak household. As Hannah grows more and more independent she becomes ever more willful. She will push the limits on the same issue dozens of times a day even if it means getting multiple time outs in a row! There are days when I feel like she spends ALL day in time out. Hitting is another unruly behavior that has reared it's ugly head and I am none too pleased with it. It seems like whenever she gets frustrated, bored, or the whim just strikes her she will haul off and hit us. She gets time outs for this so often that many times when asked why she got a time out she will default answer for hitting even if that's not why she was in time out! Time outs or a stern "NO!" don't seem to be making much difference. I am hoping that this is a phase that she will soon grow out of because it is really trying my patience.

Physically she can now jump and get both feet off the ground all the time, but she still hasn't grasped the concept of jumping off of things yet which is actually good in my opinion! She climbs like a crazy woman. She goes up ladders, steps, cargo netting, rock walls, etc. She can sit by herself in big kid swings and go down pretty much any slide by herself. She's working on walking on the balance beam by herself and is very motivated to learn how to do it. She can really run now (not just a fast walk) and loves to do it any chance she gets. She can usually walk up and down steps alone as long as she has a railing or something else to hold onto and she is starting to want to go up and down without holding onto anything which makes me nervous.

Some people have asked me what Hannah wants for her birthday. She doesn't NEED anything really except for some clothes for the next season, but when I said last year that she didn't need gifts I had people asking me anyway for ideas. So, here are some ideas if you feel like you really want to get her a gift. She's currently wearing size 3T and 4T dresses and shirts. For pants she needs size 3T, preferably elastic waist without zippers or buttons that she can pull up and down herself for easy potty training! For shorts she needs 2T or 3T. If you want to get ahead for the fall, she could really use some 3T (or to be safer 4T) long sleeve shirts, light weight jackets and sweaters or sweatshirts. She's currently wearing size 8 shoes. She doesn't have any sandals or dress shoes that fit. She could also use size 4T/5T ( I think they only come in two size increments and the size she is wearing now is 2T/3T) big girl underwear because some of the pairs she has now are already getting tight. Socks for shoe size 8 or bigger would be great because she has very few pairs that still fit (thank heavens it's almost summer and hopefully I can get her into some sandals soon!). I'm always looking for cute hair bows and clips to tame her wild hair. I love the curly ones from Gymboree(she wearing ones from there in almost every picture in this post!). They work great in her hair because they seem to be just the right size/stretchiness.

Besides clothes she LOVES books. She can read books with regular paper pages just fine now and rarely (if ever) tears pages anymore, but board books are still fine too. New alphabet and counting books are always big hits. Those seem to be her favorites from the library these days. Also, any books about adoption would be good. Some of the best ones I've found from the library are Megan's Birthday Tree by Laurie Lears, The Red Thread, An Adoption Fairytale by Grace Lin, Over the Moon by Karen Katz, and A Mother for Choco by Keiko Kasza. She likes all of these books and I feel they portray adoption in a realistic or favorable light. I would say her favorite of all of these (and the only one I've ever seen in a bookstore, I kicked myself for not buying it then, but I didn't know she would like it so much!) is A Mother for Choco. Other favorite books that we have checked out from the library recently that we don't have are DW Flips, I Love You Stinky Face, Hop on Pop, and DK My First Phonics Board Book.
As far as other interests go, she loves animals, puzzles (she could stand to have some new ones since she's completely mastered the 3 she has), Diego, anything Sesame Street,-especially Grover, The Backyardigans, Fisher Price Little People toys (she has the barn, ark, and A-Z Learning Zoo) the computer (we've thought about getting her the Leap Frog Click Start My First Computer, but it's kinda expensive), swing sets, toy kitchens/food, art supplies (stickers, stamps, scissors, etc) and anything that teaches numbers or letters. She is NOT very into stuffed animals or dolls.
I think that is all the updates I have for now. I'll try to get some more videos uploaded as soon as I can.

Belly Sleeper

Well, it's now official. Hannah is definitely a belly sleeper and we have given up the fight to try to make her sleep on her back or side. It's to the point now that she sleeps completely on her belly with one leg and arm tucked up underneath her and her butt in the air. It's pretty cute to see, but still scares me to death. We've tried and tried to turn her back onto her back while she is asleep, but she now turns her immediately back over without even waking up. She did this 3 or 4 times in a row last night! The Ferbering continues for Hannah's sleep issues. I think it may be getting better, but it's hard to tell. I still hate letting her cry.

Hannah's been working really hard on crawling and can now occasionally get up on her hands and knees and wiggle her butt back and forth, but she's not consistent with it at all. She continues to search out other alternative forms of transportation and is getting quite creative at it. This morning she was pushing up on her hands and toes (like the yoga plank position) and then swinging her upper body over to the side and setting herself back down, resting, raising back up and shifting over some more. To move forward she rocks side to side over and over again and slowly inches forward. Of course there is always the old stand by of rolling all over the place.

Hannah's newest foods are green beans, peas, applesauce, and bananas. She's becoming a pro at picking up and depositing veggie puffs into her mouth. She's getting much better at chewing them up too! Sometimes she even relaxes her vigil with that extra finger and chews them with no fingers in her mouth! Her sippy cup skills are also improving and she's starting to get the idea that she should hold it with both hands and that she needs to tip it up to get more than just air coming from the spout when she sucks. Dropping things from the highchair has also become a fun game as has taking her arm and completely clearing the coffee table with one fair swoop!

Next week Hannah goes to have her 6 month hearing test done. Because of her exposure to herpes at birth she has to have it checked every 6 months until she is 3 years old because herpes can cause late onset hearing loss and we don't want to take ANY chances. We're lucky that one of the testing sites is the Purdue Audiology clinic here in West Lafayette so at least I won't have a long drive. The bad thing is that her appointment is scheduled for 12:30 and they said that she has to be asleep for the screen. I tried to explain to the lady that Hannah usually only takes 2 (at the most 3) half hour to 40 minute naps total during a day and that 12:30 is not one of those nap times, but she was not sympathetic. I'm not sure how much she knows about babies, but most of them will not generally just sleep on command when they are 6 months old. That has been my experience anyway. I'm not thinking this screen is going to be a good experience for either or us, but we shall see. Maybe Hannah will be super cooperative and go right to sleep. She IS a VERY GOOD girl, but that may just be expecting too much from her.

Well, I'm back. It's been a few days since I started this post. Now it's Friday and Hannah has hit another big milestone. She got her second tooth! She's been quite cranky today because of it, but thankfully this time it wasn't at night! Just to prove to me how proud she is of her new tooth she bit me several times today HARD. Kyle thought I was being a baby about it until she bit him just a little bit ago. He really hollered because it hurt a lot. :P That'll teach him to make fun of me!

For an update on the cutest baby contest I am happy to report that I chose the picture of Hannah sitting up wearing the reindeer antlers. I used the closer up version that Tina doctored for me. Thanks for everyone who voted to help me make up my mind! The deadline for submitting photos is next week I believe so I will be sure to put the link up to vote as soon as they have the pictures assembled on the newspaper website. I would appreciate all the votes we can get. A $2000 savings bond would really give Hannah's college fund a jump start!

Another new thing that Hannah decided to try today is pulling up from sitting on the side of the pack-n-play. I had been sitting her down in the bassinet part of the pack-n-play while I check my email or pay bills online. Well, today I heard her making some cute noises and I turned around to see that she had pulled herself from the center of the pack-n-play to the edge and was pulling and bouncing to try to stand up by holding onto the side of the bassinet! Well, that's the end of the bassinet. :( I took it out today and now she has to sit down in the bottom like a regular old play pen. We will see how she likes that.

Here's a video (it's about a month old) of Hannah practicing transferring objects from one hand to the other and practicing sitting up on her own. Now she's to the point that I don't even put up pillows to break her fall anymore unless she is sitting on something really hard like a floor without carpet. Just click on the link and enjoy the video. http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=7153612364983465505&hl=en

Tied Down

Today officially marks the half way point Hannah's stay at the hospital. It's seems like we've been there FOREVER already. I can't believe we have 7 more days to go! Just as a point of interest, if anyone is trying to contact us at the hospital by phone or to come visit, Hannah is listed under her own name not ours. So, to find us you have to either ask for Hannah Catherson (her legal name until the adoption is finalized in 60 days) or just go on up or get connected to the pediatric wing. From there you can just ask for baby Hannah and they hook you up with us right away. Everyone in peds knows who we are since we've been there so long. If you ask for either Kyle or I or Hannah Spontak they will tell you that they have no record of us being there.

Hannah got her picc line in yesterday so now she is permanently attached to an IV pole 24/7 instead of just one hour out of every eight. Before they managed to get the pick line in they had to start a 5th IV site! UGH! The poor thing is turning into a human pin cushion! While the pick line will probably prevent them from having to stick her anymore, it's a pain for us b/c now we have to drag an IV pole around everywhere when we hold her, feed, her, and change her. We had just been given the ok to walk the halls with her and now we are back to being tied to the room. We can technically still go out in the hall, but it's not that feasible because it's hard to hold Hannah, keep the IV line out of the wheels of the pole, and pull the pole along, while also trying to manage a paci if needed!

Yesterday was another interesting day as far as nursing students were concerned. Hannah had a student that was absolutely obessive. She was in our room every 5 minutes correcting me and telling me how to do this and do that and checking her vitals every half hour instead of every 3 hours! At one point I was sitting on the bed with Hannah sitting on my belly with her back and head supported by my bent knees and the student freaked out, ran in the room and pulled both the bed rails up on the bed b/c I might fall asleep with Hannah and drop her! That woman wore me out! I had all sorts of plans of things Hannah and I were going to do, but we spent the day fighting off the crazy student! Thankfully today there were NO students on the floor. In fact, our normal nurses were all three gone today. We recognized the new nurses, but they had never been assigned to Hannah before. It cracks me up how all the nurses just fawn over her all the time. She really does have them all under her spell. It's nice to know that it's not just us being biased when we get to thinking that we have the best baby ever. We have several educated nurses who think the very same thing! :)

Today has been a sleepy day. All three of us have dozed most of the day away. Finally we had a day with no procedures and no test results that we were waiting to come back. It was nice to be able to relax a bit. Sue, a woman from our church, brought us a wonderful meal of stuffed shells. It was a welcome change from take out and hospital cafeteria food. The people at Calvary sure do take care of you. We are very blessed to be a part of such a great church!

I have some more pictures of Hannah that we've taken since she's been born. Most of them don't have anything to do with her hospital stay, but she's just so darn cute that I have to post them! Thanks for all your prayers, calls, and visits. We appareiate everything everyone is doing to make us more comfortable.

Out of Isolation!

We got the results of the culture on Hannah's spot on her arm and it is NOT a herpes leision. They think it was probably just an irritation from her IV. That is really good news. That,combined with the negative result from the spinal tap means that she is now out of isolation! YEAH! Now we can walk the halls with her when she gets fussy instead of making ourselves dizzy pacing around her room. She still can't go off the wing, but out in the hall is better than nothing. Visitors also no longer have to gown up to come into the room. Now they only have to gown up if they are going to hold her. This is also good news. The only not so good news we have is that Hannah's poor little veins are not tolerating the IVs very well. She's on her fourth site since 3:00 am Saturday morning. She's had one in both hands, her right foot, and now her head! The one in her head is already causing problems and it's only been in since 2:00am this morning. So, either tonight or tomorrow morning they are going to run a central picc line in her because they are running out of sites to stick. The only other issue she seems to be having is that the medicine upsets her tummy a bit we think. It's very strong stuff and she's been having more problems than normal with spit up and general fussiness.

Yesterday Kyle and were looking at Hannah and we thought, "Wow, she looks longer. I wonder if she has grown?" So we asked the nurses to borrow a tape measure and we did our best to scientifically measure our squirming, wiggling, ball of fire of a daughter! According to our calculations, she has grown a half inch and is now 22 inches long! They weigh her every day and the nurses report that she is gaining over an ounce a day which is really good. Today she weighed in at 9 lbs 8 oz! She's taking 3 oz of formula at each feeding which they say is really good and we've even been given the ok to let her sleep 5 hours at a time at night without waking her up for a feeding! A bottle every 5 hours at night sure is a lot better than every 3 hours!

So, Hannah is really doing pretty well. Kyle and I on the otherhand are exhausted. Spending all day in one room really wears us out and the general atomosphere on the wing is understandably depressing since it's filled with sick or hurt kids. I don't know how the nursing staff manages. Already I'm emotionally drained from being around it so much. No matter how comfortable they try to make the wing or how happy they try to be sick kids are sick kids and that's no fun. We are each taking turns going home for a few hours each day to take care of the pets, get a shower, and just generally be away from the hospital. I'd say the biggest inconvenience is eating. I'm already sick of take out and it's really not feasible to buy groceries and make food. The cafeteria is expensive and not all that great. So, meals are really a pain in the butt. It's too bad we HAVE to eat something otherwise I think I just wouldn't even bother!

Today a nursing student had Hannah as her patient and it was her job to give Hannah a bath (I usually do that myself, but they talked me into letting the student do it for the experience) and take her vital signs every 3 hours. Well, the student was not a typical student age. She was a mother of 3 and a grandmother of 1 so I figured she would be really good at the bath at least. Boy was I wrong! I can't tell you how hard it was for me to not to run over and push her away from Hannah! Now I don't claim to be a baby expert and I'm definitely not the best at bathing, but I do ok and Hannah doesn't put up much of a fuss at all. BUT, when this student bathed her she screamed bloody murder the whole time. The lady was jerking her around, forcing her to straighten her limbs, letting her head flop around, not rinsing well, getting water and soap into Hannah's eyes, not drying her betweeen each body part, and not covering her up when she moved elsewhere so she would stay warm. It broke my heart to see my little one in such needless distress. Afterwords I told the student supervisor that I would rather she not bathe Hannah again tomorrow or if she did if that I would like the supervisor to actually supervise her while she did it. I'm was not about to let Hannah go through that again. She's had enough trauma that last few days. Bath time doesn't need to be another one!

Thank you so much for all of your prayers and well wishes. Kyle and I really appreciate it and I'm sure Hannah will too when she's old enough to know better.

Tests and More Tests

Poor Hannah has had more tests done on her than any baby should, especially considering she doesn't look, act, or even feel sick. :( The good news is that the doctors are working hard on her case and slowly unraveling the mysteries behind it. The results of her spinal tap came back negative so that is a good sign. Although, Dr. Hendrick is going to call and talk to the lab people who interpert the test to see exactly how acurate it is and determine it's margin of error. He doesn't want to take ANY chances with her treatment. On Sunday night we found a spot on Hannah's arm that looked suspicious. Yesterday they burst the leision and took a sample of the fluid inside to run cultures on to see if it is indeed a herpes leision. Hopefully it's just some random scrape or something. Eevn if it does come back as positive it really doesn't change her treatment though. Right now she's still only slated to be in the Hospital for 14 days of IV meds unless we find out that the spinal tap test is not reliable and they have to run a second one. I sure hope not because I don't think I could stand to watch her get another one of those! Dr. Hendrick is also consulting with the children's infectious disease experts at Riley to see if there is anything else possible that they could be doing for Hannah to ensure that everything turns out well. We really appreciate the concern that all the doctors and staff at Home Hospital show for Hannah. They all just love her. She has every single staff member on the pediatric unit (nurses, housekeeping staff, doctors, volunteers, and nursing students) wrapped around her tiny finger! She's already learned how to bat those long eye lashes of hers and get absolutely anything she wants! She's even managed to weasel a swing out of them for her room and boy does she like that swing! We may just have to get one of those when we return home! Tiffany is beside herself with grief over Hannah's infection and completely blames herself. She came to see her on Sunday and I think it put her a little more at ease when she was able to see that Hannah really isn't in any distress and that everything was caught soon enough that she shouldn't ever really be in distress unless they have to do any more tests. The tests are really the only things that bother her. Other than that, she is happy as a clam. :) She is finally allowed visitors, visiting hours are from 11am-8pm, but everyone (evn doctors and nurses) except Kyle and I must suit up in a gown and gloves in order to get within 3 feet of her. It's so weird that the people at infectious diseases require that, but they do even though it has been determined that Hannah really has no chance of spreading the virus to anyone unless they are severely immune compromised and even then the chances would be slim. Thank heavens Kyle and I don't have to don all that gear. It would really be a pain. We just have to scrub down every time we leave the room and make sure that we don't ever take Hannah out of the room unless they have to run a procedure on her. Well, that's all the updates I have for now. Continued prayer support would be appreciated.

Emergency Room

Before everyone freaks out any more than they need to, just know that Hannah will be fine. But we had to take her to the emergency room last night because we got a call from Wishard Hospital (where she was delivered) telling us that Hannah had tested positive for the herpes virus and needed to start IV medication right away to treat it before it became a serious problem. So, we took her immediately to the hospital and spent from 8:00 pm to 4:00 am in the emergency room until they finally admitted us and gave us a room on the pediatric wing. They've done several tests on Hannah, including lots of x-rays and a spinal tap, and we are awaiting the results of most of them over the next few days. The minimum amount of time she will have to stay at the hospital is 2 weeks and the most is probably not more than 3 weeks. Kyle and I are very nervous for Hannah, but the doctors have assured us that because she is showing no symptoms and we have begun treatment this early that she should recover completely with no lasting effects. We would appreciate everyone's prayers for Hannah and for Tiffany (she's beating herself up about this pretty badly) and want to let you know that we will be spending most of our time at the hospital the next few weeks so please do not be offended if you don't get a call or an email returned as we will only be using the house as a dumping point for awhile.