Thursday, August 21, 2008

Updates on Faith's world...

I guess I'll start by saying "Thank You!" for the prayers concerning Faith's Dr. visit to Little Rock on Tuesday. Besides hanging out in the waiting room for 3 1/2 hours!!!!!!, we received a good report. Here in Texarkana we were told that her kidney reflux on a scale from 1-5 (5 being the worst, which includes bad kidney damage and scarring) was a 3; however, the specialist said she was only a 2! Yeah!!! The overall plan is to stay on antibiotics for at least 2 more years, possibly longer. After that, have another scan performed and go from there. The only hang-up in that plan would be if she had a breakthrough infection while on the antibiotics. We're praying that never happens! I was a tad bit concerned about staying on low dose antibiotics for that long, but he assured us that studies and research had been done and that there are no harmful long term effects. He has been in pediatric urology for over 35 years at Arkansas Children's Hospital, so we felt comfortable placing Faith under his care. Again, thank you for thinking of us! God is so loving and protective of His children, and we are sooooo blessed by His devotion to us! Here is my big girl roaming around the living room. She looks so big in this picture; look at those long legs! She busted it right after she posed for me! No visible bruises appeared!:) I'm sure we're in for a lot more of those!
She's really into climbing on, under, over, in, or through EVERYTHING! It's kind of fun though to watch her explore and figure out what she can really do with those arms and legs!
We stopped at the "Crack Barrel" (our name for the Cracker Barrel) for lunch on our way to Little Rock with Faith. Her and her Dad found the rocking chairs and had some playtime before we loaded back into the car. Jeff likes to blow her hair as you can see here. She doesn't quite get it, but neither do I?!:)
She became a little restless in the waiting area, but then again, so did we. You can only entertain a 10 month old for so long. 3 1/2 hours was near impossible. Finally one of the nurses stepped out after about 2 1/2 hours, to tell us it would be OK if we left for a little while, and that they would just page us when she could be seen. So, we took the pager and rode around town for an hour. It was a little frustrating, but being in the medical field, I do understand. Things hardly ever stay on schedule, and usually it's not anybody's fault. In this case, our doctor was in a surgery case that ended up taking over 4 hours; he was piecing a 14 y/o's anatomy back together after he had been shot by his little brother on accident. The Doc said that he was determined to do whatever he could to keep that little boy from wearing a bag the rest of his life, even if it took 4 hours. So, you know, it's kind of hard to get upset about that! And for the record, the surgery was a success.
Little agitated here...
So, she chewed on her medical records.
If you check out that terribly long foot in the right bottom corner, you'll understand why Faith is in the 95th percentile on height.
She loves to feed herself the little teething biscuits; they fail to tell you how messy these things are on the box!
See, this nearly drives me nuts, because I'm really anal about keeping her clean. I'm not sure why, because I stayed dirty growing up on our farm 99% of the time. But I catch myself always wiping her hands and mouth and inspecting her for dirt and germs fairly often. I'm hoping that will get better; maybe after we have a 2nd child I'll relax a little more? Can anyone relate or do I need counseling?
Much better...my clean child.

Faith abhors wearing shoes! But we did distract her long enough to get a couple of pics with her Nike's on. Jeff bought these when I was like 2 months pregnant! He was just a tad bit excited!!!!
Daddy stealing some sugar!
I love these next pics!!! I was laying on the floor and Jeff was dropping her down real quick on top of me. She thought it was hilarious!
She's really beginning to laugh loudly and it's precious to a Momma's ears!
I mean, come on now, that's soooo kissable!
Here's Faith and Boo at the Roadhouse.
Jeff and my parents.
La La looks up to something?
Faith had a good time as usual. Well, we all had a good time! When Faith went to bed we played games and ended up not getting to bed until around 1am! I love family time.
She finally has enough hair to place a single bow in and not those full headbands. Although those are extremely handy and cute too. I don't know, it kind of made me realize that she really is GROWING. Wow, she's almost a year old!
I have no idea why I decided to place these two pictures of the house and flowers on here. This is kind of like a scrapbook though for us, and this is a pretty shot of our house in the summer time for Faith in case we don't live here forever.
I've never planted lantana before, so in case anybody's wondering...give it plenty of room to grow because I didn't and it's taking over! It's a great plant, but man it grows fast and gets big quick!
Mommy and baby shot...
They didn't turn out very good, oh well, we tried.
She's attempting to eat my dress here.
She loves playing with her hair brush.
"Mom, put down the camera and play with me!"
OK, maybe she just likes to eat the hairbrush.
A great bow shot!

Every afternoon when Jeff comes home from work, he takes Faith riding. She loves it! I think it's really sweet too. Sometimes they let me tag along.

"And why are we stopping?"
They're off again...
I'll end with the two loves of my life pulling back into the driveway! A little cheesy maybe, but true!

Tuesday, August 19, 2008

Trip to Little Rock

No pictures today, sorry. I wanted to ask everybody to say a prayer for Faith today; we are taking her to Little Rock for her consultation appointment with the pediatric urologist. Hopefully he will just tell us to keep her on the antibiotics she's been taking for the past several months since she's not had any more urinary tract infections since her hospitalization. It's pretty routine for patients with kidney reflux to stay on low dose antibiotics for quite some time until (hopefully) she grows out of it. We are taking all of her films with us, so I'm praying that they won't do any more tests of their own. So, if you read this before or around 2:45pm today, please lift up my little one.