Evie the Extraordinary and Her Mommy: The Journey As We Go

I thought that winter was almost over, and that we had made it without a stay in the hospital.  I spoke too soon...here we are in the cardiology unit of Boston Childrens for an unexpected stay. Evie started with a cough and runny nose, and just went downhill over the next few days. She started breathing rapidly and was crying frequently. We were told that if her oxygen saturation levels went down to 90%, that we should go to the hospital.   I called Pediatrics and the nurse said to go to the ER, and offered to call me an ambulance. Evie was smiling and playing with her toys, so I figured driving in was just fine. I emailed the cardiologist and he agreed that we should go in.   Here's Evie looking at her new accessory, aka hospital wristband.  No wait in the ER! Woot! I was affirmed by the cardiology fellow for bringing her in.  They saw her oxygen saturation levels dip a bit while we were there, and that won her a ticket to stay overnight for monitoring.  Evie enjoyed the ride in M

Happy Valentine's Day, everybody! My heart is doing so well, that I have graduated from cardiology follow ups every 3 months to every 6 months!  Mommy and daddy are so ecstatic! This photo is one of the photos from my photo shoot with Nicole Starr. She is our hero because she donated her time and talents to so many families with Down Syndrome.  I would also like to wish everyone a happy Lunar New Year!   Today, I am remembering all my buddies with Down Syndrome who tend to have heart problems and need to stay in the hospital for surgery.  I am blessed with a stronger heart now, which makes it an extra special Valentine's Day! Lots of love,  Evie

Evie is a Houdini at pulling off her socks.  This makes me proud and annoyed at the same time.  I am so glad that she is super flexible and can reach her socks easily, even bringing them up to her nose.  But having to do a "sock check" whenever we are out somewhere is necessary, and my aging back does not like doing squats to pick up the sock while I'm holding Evie. And now begins my search for the perfect slipper socks, and then the perfect walker shoes. All the walker shoes that people so generously gave to us are too big still for Evie.  I evidently passed my genes of small feet on to her.  Side note: someone in middle school once asked me if my feet were bound in China.   I have tons of sarcastic remarks now to this, but all I said was a scathing "No." At this point, if someone asked me that, I would ask them if my feet looked like they were broken and then unnaturally curled into a ball .  But that is for another day.  For now, I am glad that Evie has c

Now that we have Evie, I want to have some new traditions for her to look forward to at Christmas time. One of the things I want to start is to give  Evie an ornament each year.  This ornament would have some meaning for her.  I got this idea from our friend Momo's mommy--she took all of her ornaments from childhood that she received and started her own tree when she had her own family. And now Momo gets his own ornaments each year! This year, I made a Shutterfly ornament to start us off. It has some of my favorite pictures on each side. Another tradition I want to start is a yearly digital photo album.  My dad has painstakingly kept a photo album of our family starting from when he and my mom were married.  That is too hard for me to keep up with, but I think I can do a digital photo album each year.  I want Evie to be able to look back and see the pictures of when she was little. A favorite tradition that Erick and I already started was that every year we help out at

Hi everybody!  Mommy said I could blog about what it's like to go from being Baby Evie to Toddler Evie.  It's awesome.  I can now tell everyone when I am so happy to see them by clapping my hands over and over again, or I can tell them that I don't feel like talking by whirling around quickly and putting my face in Mommy's neck.   I can also reach things on the table when people aren't looking.  Recently, I've been working on a few things that I'd like to share with you.   I am working on picking things up and putting them down. I'm awesome at picking up big objects, but don't like to let go of them when I'm supposed to.  I let go of things in the car so that they fall out when the door opens, or out of my high chair so that Mommy has to pick it up.   Working on taking caps out of the container and putting them in.  That tube that you see in the picture above is actually an oximeter cable, which is to measure my oxygen saturation an