Wednesday, November 26, 2008

The Ranch

Today we went out to the ranch (it was my first time to go, and Gracie hadn't been since this summer). Gracie had such a fun time meeting all the animals and walking all over the yard with Grammy and Mommy while Daddy and PeePaw went shooting. Here are some pictures of her fun day!

This is Gracie's new car seat! We're supposed to wait until her first birthday, but she is just way too big for her old one and was getting very bored looking at the back window all the time! She loves her new forward-facing seat!
Longshot Ranch

Sister, the ranch dog

Mo the Arabian horse, and Penelope and baby donkey

Lucy Running around the yard

Meeting the baby bull

Wednesday, November 19, 2008

GRACIE'S WALKING!!!!!

She has been "cruising the walls", using the walls for support as she walks around the room. She also has perfected standing up straight by herself with no support, even drinking her juice and playing with toys while she's standing, without losing her balance. In the last week, she's been taking a couple of steps away from whatever she is holding onto, but then dropping to her knees to crawl the rest of the way. The last two days she has actually attempted up to four steps toward something before she drops and crawls, which was very exciting. Well TODAY, just like any other afternoon, I am at her school to pick her up and when I walked through the door to her classroom, she is standing up holding onto the wall, about 20 feet directly across the room from me. She sees me walk through the door, smiles a huge smile, and then takes a couple of steps away from the wall. I pause inside the door, waiting for her to drop down and crawl the rest of the way to me as she usually does.... but she WALKS ALL THE WAY ACROSS THE ROOM INTO MY ARMS! My jaw dropped; I was amazed! I scooped her up and kissed her all over, and she just giggled non-stop. She was so proud of herself! Her teachers said she had been taking several steps at a time all day, but they wanted me to see it for myself and be surprised (they're so cool). I got her home and set her down and she walked all over the place. We clapped and cheered her whenever she did; now she claps at herself while she's walking! Haha it's so cute. I'm pretty sure we wore her out; she's passed out like a rock now, hehe.

I wasn't expecting how this would make me feel. I knew I would be proud and excited, but I didn't realize how strong those emotions would be. I remember how my heart swelled up so fast the very first moment I saw her face when she was born, and hadn't expected to feel that again so soon. Well, when she launched herself into my arms today, the feeling was pretty close! It's such a huge separation from BABY to LITTLE GIRL. She grew up right in front of my eyes today, and my heart swelled up again with that overwhelming pride and joy. She is truly my greatest happiness. But now I no longer have a little bitty baby... we need to get to work on fixing that. (;-P)

I did take a bunch of video clips of her walking tonight, but I can't figure out how to get them off of this video camera we have. I will post them here when I am able to get them.

So yay for walking! It's amazing how she took to it so quickly. I remember her crawling pretty much overnight, too. Gracie's just full of surprises! Now we just have to get her more shoes! =)

Sunday, November 9, 2008

Gracie's new toy, standing up, walking, and spaghetti!!!

Today we took it pretty easy, as we drove to Abilene and back yesterday for my grandfather's funeral. We cleaned up the house a bit and realized that Gracie has outgrown a lot of her toys. So we went to lunch at McDonald's together (she loves the chicken nugget happy meals!) and then went to Babies R Us. We found a shopping cart toy for her to push around (it's not a walker, as she can't put all her weight on it) and got her Lil People collection started with a school bus toy. When we got home and put her toys together she started pushing that cart around and literally squealed with delight! She's been standing on her own more and more confidentally over the last week, and taking a lot of steps, but this just got her feet going so fast! She even figured out pretty quickly how to back it up and turn it around when it got stuck against a wall. She's so smart. =) She crawled that bus around the living room, but kept coming back to the cart. It came with toy food and things to match shapes, and it sings and counts, too! She absolutely loves it and it's so cute! Then for dinner we had one of her favorite meals: spaghetti! Enjoy some pictures of her having fun with her new toys, standing, and "hoovering" her spaghetti! =)

Wednesday, November 5, 2008

Prayers please

My grandfather Gerald passed away this afternoon. He was my stepmother Angela's dad, and a wonderful, gentle, godly man. Funeral arrangements are being made tomorrow, so I am as yet unaware of specific dates and times, but we are now tentatively planning to head to Abilene on Friday afternoon and return Saturday evening.

Please pray for us and for my family as we head through this difficult time. Thank you, and love to you all.

I wish Obama wasn't black.

I have strong opinions. Those of you who know me well are very aware of this, as I don't hesitate to say what I feel. You've heard me talk about it, read my pointed emails, even seen the quotes in my email signature. Now, I am not fond of forcing my opinions on someone who is in disagreement with me, and try to never do that, however I do try my hardest to make that person see my reasoning behind my choice of opinion. I want them to fully comprehend what I feel is the common sense behind my choice. It is very important to me to do that. That said, please do not take offense to the thoughts that I'm about to present on the election results.

I'm utterly disappointed. Big surprise. My emotions are a whirlwind right now: I want to cry, yell, and denounce anyone I know that voted for a Democrat, but at the same time I'm desperate to find SOMETHING positive about it, anything at all. Here are the three positive things I've come up with so far:

1) He's not President until January 20th, 2009. Whoopee.
2) John Cornyn won his race for the Senate. Thank you, God. I really really like him, and I'm glad he'll be in DC fighting for us.
3) California passed the ban on same-sex marriages. I know a lot of gay people, and they're wonderful, nice, awesome human beings but man, I can't in my right mind condone something that is so against what I believe in. Marriage is between a man and a woman, period. When the law comes into play with that, it makes me mad, so I'm glad to see that the ruling in May allowing the marriages has been overturned by the people of California. Way to go.

Unfortunately, the negatives are far outweighing the positives at the moment. In addition to Obama being elected President, and Democrats taking control of everything else (*shudder*), here is a soup of sad proposals that were passed last night:

1) Colorado voted against specifying life beginning at conception. Abortion supporters successfully made everyone think that this would affect some forms of birth control, and while it would, how can that justify taking a life?
2) South Dakota voted against a ban on all abortions except in cases of rape, incest and serious health threat to the mother. Just sad to me.
3) Washington joined Oregon in offering terminally ill patients the option of physician-assisted suicide. I want to know how this was worded on the ballot that would not make this sound so morally wrong to a voter. They call it the "Die with Dignity" Law. Wow, I don't see anything dignified about taking my own life. I don't think it's my decision to make. There is a reason that suicide is wrong, whether you're depressed or just terminally ill, it's wrong. I hope Washington and Oregon physicians aren't forced to offer this option, that they can make their own moral decision to grant their patient this option or not. I can see this being horribly abused by families of these patients. I hope that life insurance policies won't grant anything to families of patients who exercise this option.
4) The cherry on top is Massachusetts decriminalizing marijuana possession under one ounce. Really? Okay, an ounce is an ounce, but do you really think that is the only ounce that has ever been in possession? This just baffles me as to why one ounce is any different from a pound of the stuff. It's a drug. What's next, cocaine? Heroin? Just... wow.

The country in which I get to raise my daughter for the next four years is not looking very appealing. Thank God I'm in Texas, where we're mostly Republicans with common sense (just need to stay out of the city centers). I feel like I'm going to have the taste of vomit in my mouth for a very long time. I just can't understand how the following stands by Obama appealed to anyone. I can't understand the common sense behind them; I don't think there is any:

1) "Share the wealth": Levy very high taxes on anyone making a lot of money, and "share" it with the middle and lower class. How does this help anyone? Tim works his butt off in high school to get into a good college, works his butt off there to learn as much as he can and graduate with a technical or bachelor's degree, then kicks off his career in the corporate world or in an inherited business or even starts his own business. He works his butt off there to move up and build and puts in hours of time and sweat and just plain hard work and determination to finally reach a point where he is making a great amount of money to keep him and his family comfortable. A well-deserved earning. His high school classmate Tom, meanwhile, is having trouble finding a job after he decided to drop out of college or not even go at all. He sits on his couch watching TV, playing video games while his girlfriend takes care of their child, maybe he even has a part-time job somewhere. They get to a point where they can't make ends meet, but they don't really want to get out there and work multiple jobs, go back to school, work themselves up to a greater amount of income, don't really want to work, period, so they apply for government assistance. The government says, "Sure, you know, Tim over here is making a ton of money, we'll just take some from him and hand it over to you." HOW IS THAT FAIRNESS? Obama is mis-using the word "equality" to make this appeal to the lower and middle class. This isn't India, we aren't stuck in these classes forever. I know that I didn't finish college, that David and I got married and had a kid too early, that neither one of us makes the money we want to, but when things get tight financially I certainly don't look to someone else to give me handouts. I know I have the ability to go back to school, to get a better job. I can make more money! But now, why should I throw my hard work and determination into increasing my income when I know that I could reach a certain point that it would just be taken away again and given to the lazy person who didn't put forth the extra effort? Why should I provide for them? This share the wealth thing is just about making lazy people lazier, and taking motivation away from the hard-worker. It's very very sad to me that people actually think this is a good idea. This is just the way of the Democrat, though. Ugh.

You know what? I'm done here. There are a TON more reasons why I didn't vote for Obama, but they are just a lot of common sense, and I associate with some pretty intelligent people, so I'm sure that if you disagree with something, I do too.

My final thought is how sad and disappointing this is for our country. The question I want to face to the majority of Obama voters is this: Would you have voted for him if he wasn't black? Or if both candidates were black, would you have voted for him, being forced to compare the issues? I'm just crushed that the main reason you hear all over TV as to why these people voted Obama is that they want to see the first black president. I don't care what he looks like, I care about the issues. I did my research. If he had been the Republican and McCain the Democrat, I would have voted for him. But he wasn't. He was the Democrat, with radical ideas and full of ever-changing opinions. Unstable stances on issues, pushing the wrong ideas for our country, issues that I just flat didn't agree with. The issues between the two candidates were incredibly different. I just wish he wasn't black. I believe that would have saved America from this downfall.

We have our first black president. I could care less.

Monday, November 3, 2008

No infection yet...

Well Gracie finished off her antibiotic Saturday, and so far no sign of her ear infection(s) returning! I can tell she still might have some fluid in there, and she does pull at her left ear occasionally when it's hurting her, but she's still eating and sleeping well. I am still going to get her into the doctor sometime this week to check it out. We've been giving her the nosespray every day so hopefully that's helping to gradually ease the pressure. We will see what happens!

Sunday, November 2, 2008

Sunday, plus a Gracie update

So we set our clocks back last night before we went to bed and let Gracie stay up late, but we were still hit hard this morning by the time change. Gracie usually wakes up about 6:30 every single morning, regardless of how late she was up the night before, so when she happily started chatting away this morning and we saw 5:30 on the clock, we knew it would be a sleepy day!
We tried to take it easy and catch up with little catnaps throughout the day, but Gracie played good and hard! Here are some pictures of her being her ornery self!





Kisses to wake up Daddy from his nap!


Now for an update! Gracie is doing something new every day.... she climbs up and down onto everything, gives kisses! (she comes at you open-mouth, but it's precious and its obvious that she wants a kiss), is now pretty clear with her "Mommy"s and "Daddy"s, dances to any music she hears, claps (which is so cute), stands up all by herself and even takes steps without holding onto anything! Not full-blown walking yet, but she was doing it more and more just this weekend so I'm sure she'll take off on her own very soon! She loves to lay her head down on soft blankets and dogs (haha), and is pretty much done eating baby food. She eats all kinds of food with her hands, and especially loves pancakes (no syrup or butter, of course)! She even had her first McDonald's food today, a chicken nugget kids meal with apples and she ate it all! She is down to only 3 bottles a day: wake-up, afternoon nap, and night-night bottle. She has so many expressions that she makes with those big brown eyes, and her giggles are absolutely infectious. We can't get enough of them!

Friday, October 31, 2008

Gracie's First Halloween!

Gracie's school does a costume parade every year so we needed to bring Gracie's costume with her to school this morning. We had bought a giraffe costume for her almost two months ago, but never thought about trying it on her, so we decided to see how it looked on this morning... and she hated it! She kicked and screamed until we took it off, so we panicked and ended up putting her into her Texas Longhorns cheerleader outfit as back-up. I dropped her off, and at 10:45 was back with Grammy Sherrie to take pictures of the parade! The infant classroom came out first, and the ones that weren't quite walking yet were in three of the rolling cribs (I thought that was a good idea). Gracie just chilled with her friend Carson for awhile (he's the red bat) and then when the other classrooms filed out into the parking lot for the parade she stood up and got more interested. I went and got her and we all walked around in the parade a bit. It was fun to see her friends all dressed up in their cute, silly costumes! Then we left because we had an appointment at Portrait Innovations at 12:40 to get Gracie's fall pictures taken!
We went to Target first to kill some time, and Gracie was a little fussy and tired when we stopped for lunch, so we decided to run home and feed her there. Well she ended up passing out for her first nap of the day 20 minutes before her picture appointment, so I called to reschedule and they moved us to 2:40. Gracie slept til 2:15, then downed a huge lunch, and we made it to the studio by 2:50. They got us right in and we put the giraffe costume on her at the very last minute. She stood it for just a few minutes, then she got mad (I think it was really hot, plus it was still a bit big for her). Then we had a cool-weather fall outfit and then a pajama shoot that was so cute. I would definitely say that her 7 month pictures were the easiest (remember the tutu, bucket, and flower pictures this summer?). At that point she could sit up straight, but wasn't as mobile. Now that she can go where she wants, she just crawls right out of the picture!Hopefully her one-year-old/Christmas pictures will be easier, although at that point we're predicting she'll be walking so she might just take off running! =)
Enjoy the pics! We have PLENTY (they had a great deal going on) so just ask if you want some!
Unfortunately, we decided not to take Gracie out Trick-or-Treating this year. Her picture appointment lasted until 4:30, and then we came home and played for awhile. Then Daddy wanted to spend some time with her when he got home, and it was dark before we knew it. I don't think she would have wanted to wear that giraffe again anyway. Well, next year she will get to pick her own costume, so she can pick out whatever SHE likes! =)

Wednesday, October 29, 2008

A party and a hat

Saturday we went to my Aunt Dyana's 40th birthday party at Gran's house! Gracie had such a great time visiting with everyone, playing with the balloons and dogs, and helping Daddy watch the Texas game!





Here is an adorable hat Gracie's Aunt Myka bought for her from Janie & Jack (I absolutely love that store!). It is great at keeping her ears warm on these cold mornings and is so cute!

Friday, October 24, 2008

It never ends....

Gracie's ear infections came back with a vengeance yesterday. She is now on her third antibiotic in one month for them. However, her doctor does not think she is resistant to the antibiotics, rather that the ear infections are recurring as soon as she finishes the medicine. Gracie is now on a stronger penicillin-based antibiotic that she must take twice a day, and also on a nasal spray-type of medicine that her doctor hopes will gradually ease the pressure on her sinuses and therefore allow her ears to drain better, preventing more ear infections from occurring. If in six weeks this theory hasn't worked to suppress the infections, Gracie will have to have tubes put in her ears.

The struggle with the insurance to get Gracie to see the urologist at Children's is still ongoing. They seem to care more about where the referral is coming from than Gracie's health. It is very frustrating; it's just a piece of paper, for crying out loud! I told Dr. Conger about the whole issue yesterday, and she got very angry about the way they are handling it and she is going to call herself and try to use some of her professional influence to get Dr. Len to write the referral for Gracie. Hopefully that works! We are so blessed to have found such a great, proactive pediatrician in Dr. Conger. She is busy and runs her practice, but she always takes the time to talk about everything going on and make sure that we can get everything covered, while all the time having Gracie's best interests at heart and as her ultimate goal. She is awesome!

Please keep my grandfather Gerald Harris in your prayers, as well. His multiple myeloma is in remission, but he has stopped treatment and is leaving the hospital for at-home hospice care. My stepmother Angela started a neat website for updates on his condition: http://www.caringbridge.org/visit/geraldharris

Thanks, hope everyone has a great weekend!

Monday, October 20, 2008

Gracie's test results

I heard back from Dr. Conger today. She has diagnosed Gracie with Grade 3 VUR (on a scale of 1-4, with Grade 4 being worst/most severe). Gracie will now need to be seen by a pediatric urologist, and Dr. Conger emailed me a list of several in the DFW area. Most of them do not accept Medicaid, but I found out that the Pediatric Urologists at Children's Medical Center in Dallas accept it. So I called them to make an appointment, and the soonest they can get Gracie in is December 18th, to see one of the urologists, Dr. Warren Snodgrass. Upon further research, this Dr. Snodgrass just happens to be the chief urologist at Children's, as well as a professor of urology at UT Southwestern. So Gracie is going to be seen by the very best! Here is the website for Children's Urology: http://www.childrens.com/Specialties/template.cfm?groupid=4&pageid=12

Now we just need to work out some insurance headaches. Apparently Medicaid will only cover a visit to a specialist if the referral is made by the primary care physician listed on the insurance, which is Gracie's former pediatrician, Dr. Len. However, the tests and diagnosis have been made by Dr. Conger, who is not a Medicaid doctor. I'm now hearing that Medicaid can be suspended if a non-Medicaid doctor orders tests performed, which I asked over and over at the hospital registration before Gracie's tests Friday and was told that it was all covered. So now I am stressing big time and am at the mercy of the Medicaid caseworker to understand my situation. She was supposed to call me back, but I guess didn't get around to it today, so I will call her again tomorrow (and sit on hold for another 45 minutes, ugh). Pray for me, this financial insurance stuff is so chaotic and I just wish they would all put Gracie's best interests first and let her be seen without all these minute details.

Sunday, October 19, 2008

Pumpkin Patch!

Whew! What a busy, fun weekend we had! This morning we went to church, then we were off to Terrell for cousin Lilly's birthday party! Gracie had LOADS of fun in the bounce house! Then we went to the Flower Mound Pumpkin Patch to take some pictures and to find Gracie's first family carving pumpkin. We had a wonderful day! Here is the evidence:

Bounce house with Daddy

Gracie loves to bounce!

Concentrating hard on tearing up this napkin, haha

Fun in the bounce house with cousin Lilly!

A ball makes it twice as fun!

In the fire truck at the pumpkin patch!

Pumpkin house

LOVE this picture!

Peek-a-boo!

Super-strong Gracie! =)

Just kidding! hehe

Hm, this doesn't taste very good...

Family picture at the pumpkin patch!

Here is a video of Gracie bouncing with her cousin Lilly