He's OK!

Thank you to everyone for your concern for Owen! I am happy to report he is feeling much better. He's still not 100% on the Owen Personality Meter (more like 74 to 76%) but he's closer to get back to his old self. The nebulizer treatments definitely helped and we were able to keep him out of the hospital. Hallelujah! I was a little worried about the prospect of having to take him to the hospital. We have already had 2 ER trips since October. At what point does Social Services start to worry!? Despite how much the treatments are helping, they are not Owen's favorite activity. You can see how miserable he is. It really gets his heart going. It's a little frighting to feeling your childs heart pumping so fast but it is a side effect of the medicine. I'm back to work ~sigh~ and he's well enough to go back to day care so life is back to normal (did I just use that term?). If there was an upside to Owen being sick, it was that his was so cuddly! All he wanted to do was lay on Dan and I which rarely happens any more. See? There's always a silver lining!

Never a dull moment!

Owen has respiratory syncytial virus or RSV. He is one sick little boy. He developed a cough on Friday and got progressively worse through the weekend. By Sunday, he was lethargic and miserable. The scary thing for us is that he was not interested in eating at all which was very alarming to us. My biggest concern was the dehydration. We took him to the doctor yesterday morning and the doc said it was RSV. He sent 3 babies to the hospital for it last week so it goes without saying that it seems to be circulating. Luckily the pediatrician felt that we could treat it at home so we now have to give him nebulizer treatments 3 times a day for a week! This little virus is pretty nasty. It last for 10 days to 2 weeks so Owen will start to feel better - in a week. Great! Poor guy. I took a couple days off of work to stay with him. I'll keep everyone updated!

Our Birthday Boy!

This was officially Owen's first - and last big birthday bash. I sure hope he enjoyed it. Just kidding (kind of). Whew! It is hard work throwing a 1st birthday party!

That being said, I couldn't have asked for anything more. The day was filled with family and friends. Owen's friend Knoah and his mom Tonya made it all the way from Monroe! It was so good to get my hands on Knoah again! Especially after the little scare he gave all of us last week.

Because of the generosity of all the people that love Owen, he will be a lifetime member of the LPA. I was flabbergasted! I'm not really sure how to adequately express how grateful I am to everyone. You have given my son the absolute greatest gift. The LPA offers my son a lifetime of friendship and support. The fact that those who love Owen are a part of it is more special than I can say. Dan, Owen and I love you all! OK - We realized that this looks like a horror movie. Dan and I did not think of the ramifications of red icing when we ordered the cupcakes!

Thank you!

I will not get a chance to post pictures until tonight, but I wanted to get a jump start on saying thank you!

I couldn't have asked for a better 1st birthday party for Owen! Thank you everyone for all of the wonderful gifts. Owen received enough contributions to his LPA membership so that he can buy a lifetime membership! I feel so blessed to have such wonderful family and friends. I love you all! The pictures will be up tonight!

Happy Birthday Owen!

YAY!!! Happy Birthday my beautiful (and very manly) boy. This is what we were doing one year ago today...

One Year Ago Today

Today is not Owen's Birthday. Quite the opposite. Once year ago today we heard the words "Your son will die." It's a pretty emotional day for me. One year ago today: 10:00 am - Dan and I were getting ready to go to the doctor's office for an ultrasound. We were so excited. I was in my 38th week and couldn't wait to see how Owen was doing. 12:30 pm - By this time, Dan and I had seen Owen and were relieved that he was still a boy! Funny, but our biggest fear going into the ultrasound was that they had gotten the sex of the baby wrong. Dan left the doctor's office to go to work while I stayed for a check up with the doctor. When the doctor walked into the room and I was excited to talk about how the baby was doing. I quickly became alarmed by the look on her face. "Well," she said, "The ultrasound showed some abnormalities. Owen's arms, legs and chest, are measuring small. We are not sure what this means at this point so we would like you to see the perinatologist. We think that it would be best if you see her today." She told me that it would be a good idea to call my husband and have him come back to the hospital. 2:30 pm - I called my husband in a panic. "Something's wrong! Something's wrong!" I could barely talk through the sobbing. I thought to myself, what if Owen is a dwarf? That was the absolute worst thing I could have imagined. 'He look strange and people will make fun of him,' I thought. I didn't realize that it wasn't even close to the worst thing that could happen. I called my mother. I'll never forget the sound of her voice when I told her something was wrong. The wait to see the perinatologist was agonizing. When we were finally called in, the doctor did another ultrasound. The exact discussion was a blurr. I remember hearing "lethal" and some some term relating to his skeleton. Lethal. The severity of the situation dawned on me. "Will our baby die?". "Yes, your son will die." I remeber crying out. It was a primal, guttural cry. That's the only way I can describe it. It's the sound people make when their world comes crashing down. At 2:52 pm exactly one year ago, Dan and I thought our son would die. 7:00 pm - One year ago at this time, most of our immediate and close extended family had been told the devestating news. Everbody was as heartbroken as we were. My parents came over and cried with us. I had never seem as sad as on that day. Dan and I spent the rest of the afternoon alternating tears and silence. We bargained with God and promised that we would be better people if he let our son live. We prayed that our U of M appointment the next day would prove our diagnosis wrong.

Coming soon...

Video of Owen walking on his walker all by himself! The crawling thing is sooooo last week!

Movin'

And so it begins. Owen is officially on the move. Gone are the days when we could lay him in the middle of the floor and walk away. Gone are the days when our house seemed clean enough for a baby! Now that Owen is crawling around, everything on the floor is now on his clothes and let me tell you, I am horrified by the poor performance of our vaccuum cleaner (yeah...uuhh...it's the vaccuum cleaners fault). On that note, babies make surprisingly efficient mops. Anyways, Owen is crawling, crawling, crawling! He's still army crawling for now. Although, I have my doubts that he will ever get up on his hands and knees due to the simple physics of the whole thing. His legs seem almost too short to bend under. I'm becoming increasingly aware of certain looks that I'm getting when I tell people that Owen is crawling. "How old is he?" they ask. When I tell them he's almost a year, the "He's not walking yet?" look appears. I'm sure many other mothers whose child is not hyper-advanced has experienced this look (dare I say we have all given this look at one point as well?). I'm not too worried about it. It's just an observation. Occasionally, when I have the energy, I will let people know that Owen is a dwarf. Most of the time however, I will smile polietly and pretend to marvel at the fact that this person's 3year old speaks fluent Spanish. But I digress... He is babbling and moving and generally in a great mood all of the time. His year birthday is coming up and like most mothers facing this milestone, I can't believe it's been a year! I've been spending more time on the Parents of Little People Group site. I've meet some great people. One of those people is Sarah Laurin who lives in the Dexter/Ann Arbor area. Her daughter Kaela was born with Metatrophic Dysplasia, one of the most rare forms of dwarfism. She also has a blog that she has allowed me to share. The Laurins. She is just gorgeous! Owen has dibs! Just kidding (but not really). Up to no good Too early for braces? Goofball. Just like mom. Bad hair day.