My new swing!

Caroline is an outside loving kind of girl! Lately she has been begging us to go outside frequently. If you get close to the back door while holding her she reaches for the doorknob and starts begging to go out the door. I love it that she likes to be outside, because I enjoy being outside too. We've been making frequent trips to our nearby park now that the days are longer and the weather is warmer. Caroline loves the swings at the park, and we had really wished we had something at home, but unfortunately our yard does not have many trees, and none are large enough to support a swing hanging from them. So, Daddy to the rescue! He designed and built (with a little help from a friend) Caroline her very own little swingset. She loves it!

Caroline's Addiction

In my search for finger foods that would be easy for Caroline to pick up and eat, I came across these lil' crunchies and decided to try them. Caroline likes the whole grain fruit flavored puffs that are also by Gerber, so I thought she might like these too. Caroline is not a girl who usually gets really excited about food. She eats when she's hungry, but now that she's crawling especially, she feels she has far more important things to do than sit in her high chair and eat. Unless you show her the can of these cheesy crunchies.....then she's literally lunging out of your arms for the high chair. She LOVES them! I've never seen her get so excited about food before. I've been using them as appetizers while I prepare her baby food to lure her to her high chair so she'll stop long enough to eat! I have to be careful though. If I leave the can on the counter and she catches sight of them, she's immediately begging for them. I think it's safe to say she loves cheese. Ahh....just like her Mommy. She gets it honestly. Too bad she's not addicted to broccoli or something like that. Oh well, that would probably be too good to be true!

Not Me Monday

Welcome to Not Me! Monday! This blog carnival was created by MckMama. You can head over to her blog to read what she and everyone else have not been doing this week. I've been following MckMama's blog for a while, and thought this looked like fun, so I'm going to give it a try. Here goes....... The tv in our house is NOT on a lot. I am certainly NOT obsessed with reruns of Friends. I most definitely do NOT have all 10 seasons minus one on DVD, and if I did I would never watch them incessantly. Caroline most certainly does NOT get excited every time she hears the theme song, stop whatever she is doing and dance to the music. She does NOT recognize the song since she has NOT heard it since birth or even since she was in the womb. I do NOT get behind on my housework. A supermom is able to balance work, housework and childcare, and I am NOT anything but a supermom. I most certainly do NOT skip a day (or two or three) of vacumming the floor. So that is why my newly crawling 10 month old does NOT stop every few inches to pick something up off the rug and hand it up to me as if to say, "You missed a spot, Mommy!" Because I don't get behind on housework, it is definitely NOT true that for the past week all our clean clothes have remained in laundry baskets. Last week my poor husband definitely did NOT have to rumage around in an early morning stupor to dig through two laundry baskets of clothes to find a clean shirt and pair of jeans. Who would let laundry pile up like that? NOT ME! Last Friday afternoon I did NOT spend the majority of Caroline's three hour nap on the internet reading about the "Jon and Kate Plus 8" controversy. To waste time like that would just be ridiculous. Especially when I could have been putting away laundry and vacumming the floor!

So Proud

Early Riser

The past two mornings, Caroline has been up at the crack of dawn.....literally. 5:30 am to be exact! She hasn't been up this early in quite some time, at least 5 or 6 months. The reason for these early morning wake up calls?

She is too excited and can't wait to do this:

And this:

The problem with getting up so early is that soon it makes a girl feel like this: She took her first nap this morning at 7:30 and slept for two hours! Then she further compensated by sleeping three hours this afternoon. Silly girl! Here's hoping for a later Saturday morning!

A week of Firsts....

Last week was a week of firsts for Caroline. First and foremost, she is now crawling! You can tell that she is so proud of herself and her new found independence. Of course, this means Mommy and Daddy have had to be more vigilant about baby-proofing now that she's mobile! She's especially attracted to the buttons on the VCR and DVD player, which happen to be right at her level! She's also attempting to pull up on everything. It's so much fun to watch her learn and explore! Last week she also had her first haircut. I was hoping to wait until the traditional first birthday, but her hair had just gotten out of control and was constantly in her face. I took her to my hairstylist for a little trim. She did a great job, and Caroline didn't seem to mind it. Of course, it helped that she had a full length mirror in front of her the whole time. The girl does like to admire herself in front of the mirror!

Before the cut....

She's also starting to feed herself and really likes the Gerber graduate puffs. These dissolve quickly so they are easy for her to eat. It's hard to eat solid food when you don't have any teeth! Hopefully she will get some soon....we keep waiting! Maybe this will be her next "first"!

Praise for propranolol!

Caroline had an appointment this week with Dr. Prose, so I decided to print off some comparison pictures to take with me to show him the difference. I had not really compared Caroline's most recent pictures to ones before propranolol, so I was shocked at how different the hemangioma looked. Maybe there has been dramatic change after all! Although I was hoping to keep her on it just a little bit longer, it was decided to continue weaning her off the propranolol. We had decreased to two doses a day, now we are down to one. Dr. Prose really feels like Caroline is at the point now where her body will take over and the hemangioma will begin going away on it's own. This week, I've really been thinking about the blessings to be thankful for in all of this. While certainly if given my choice, I would rather have never known what a "hemangioma" is at all, there are countless ways I truly believe the Lord has taken care of Caroline and her needs. I'm thankful to have a pediatricians office who listened to my concerns and referred us to a specialist in the early stages of the hemangioma. I'm thankful that we were led to Duke and the wonderful care that Dr. Prose has given Caroline. I'm thankful that Dr. Prose was willing to try a new treatment for her (propranolol) when the hemangioma began growing again and we were trying to avoid the awful side effects of restarting the steroid. Even the location of her hemangioma is a blessing! Most doctors advocate taking a "wait and see" approach with hemangiomas unless it is impacting a vital function or organ. Basically, this means that unless it is affecting seeing, eating, or breathing, NO treatment is given and the hemangioma is left to run it's course. This could take years! Left untreated, hemangiomas like Caroline's can grow very large, very quickly, causing ulceration (sores) that are extremely painful and difficult to manage. I have seen the pictures and read the stories from parents who are dealing with that firsthand and it's heartbreaking. Thank you, Lord, for protecting Caroline! Here are the before and after pictures so you can see for yourself:

Day one of propranolol

This is day two 0r three

This is now, taken two weeks ago.

Pretty dramatic to me!