Finally A Family: The Many Marvelous Memories and Misfortunes of March

It's a long title, but so much happened in March!

I'll start with the most important--Emma turned 2 on March 16th!!! Since this is our first birthday with Emma, I really wanted it to be very special. We celebrated in style - a party at home in West Virginia and another in Pennsylvania. Two parties for our two year old! She is so cute - when you ask her how old she is, she says, "I'm two!"

Saturday, March 14th kicked off the celebrations with a great party at our house with friends. Emma had a great time playing with her friends Ryen, Avery, and Riley while the adults visited and supervised.

I had no idea how difficult it would be to find party decorations for a two year old! I finally found some really cute ones that said, "Our little cupcake is turning two!"

I wanted her cake to look similar to the other decorations, so I talked to the cake decorator at our local grocery store and she did an absolutely AMAZING job! We had a big cupcake cake for
everyone to share.

Emma also had one of her own to dig into.....or not! She ended up just picking off some of the sprinkles and eating them, so we put that cake away to have on her actual birthday with just the three of us.

Emma got some wonderful presents (and so many of them!) and some really cute clothes. Thank you all very much!

March 16 - HAPPY BIRTHDAY Emma Lee! We had Emma's favorite foods for dinner - chicken nuggets, mac and cheese, and green beans with birthday cake for dessert. Oh, Emma picked out her own clothes today!

The following Saturday, it was time to party with family and friends in PA! Once again, we had a great time and some great food. It was nice to visit with all of the family and some friends we don't get to see much.

Now for the other stuff that happened this month.

March 6th - my mom had knee surgery. It went very well, and she is continuing to recuperate nicely.

The afternoon of March 7th, my sister's office was having a bowling party, so Emma, my dad and I went. Emma was sooooo cute! I couldn't believe they had shoes to fit her! Check this out:

We would help carry the ball to the lane and push it down together. She did very well, picking up several spares along the way. I think we have a prodigy!

Check out her form!

Hmmmm....Which one will I get a strike with??

Emma crashed!

March 7 - later in the evening

The day was one of those early spring days where it gets really warm, so I was feeling pretty hot and sticky all afternoon, and I thought Emma was, too.

When it was almost bedtime, I was rocking Emma after we finished reading when all of the sudden, she felt strange in my arms. She was having a seizure. I was scared out of my mind! My dad and I were at at his house alone since my mom was in the hospital from her knee surgery and Rodney was in WV working. I called 911 and put a wet cloth on her head and neck to try to cool her down. It took the paramedics over 20 minutes to get there, so I had plenty of time to panic. The seizure lasted a long time, well over 10 minutes, although it felt like hours. My dad called a neighbor over, and God was really looking out for us because his sister happened to be there visiting, and she is a RN. She checked Emma over and had us pick her up while she explained it was probably a febrile seizure from her temperature spiking. At that point, what was scaring me the most was that Emma wasn't responding to me at all. In fact, the first thing that she did was put her hands out to the paramedic (to pick a hand - she loves to play that game) in the ambulance on the way to the hospital, probably 40 minutes after it all started. That moment was a huge relief to me - I was so worried about brain damage and all the other thousands of things that were running through my head.

So now Emma was in the ER and my mom was upstairs at the same hospital recovering from her knee surgery. Thankfully, one of my mom's nurses brought her down to stay with us for a while. My dad's neighbor brought him to the hospital, so he was there as well.

They took blood and urine samples to see what was causing her temperature to spike. In between all the poking and prodding, Emma got to eat lots of popsicles, which have become one of her favorite things. Her fever came down, but went up a little again, so we ended up staying overnight in the hospital for observation. Rodney drove up from WV and met up with us in the pediatric unit. Emma was so happy to see him and kept looking at him saying, "Daddy, daddy!"

They had a very cage-like crib for Emma, and I knew there was no way she would be sleeping in that thing! She hasn't spent a night in a crib since the second night we were together in China. Rodney slept in the fold out chair, and Emma and I slept in the recliner. The next morning (or later that morning since we didn't get to the pediatric unit until well after midnight) Emma seemed fine. She ate a good breakfast and played in the playroom while we waited for the doctor to see her. He checked her over and gave us the all clear to be discharged.

Fast forward two weeks: It happened again. Emma woke up just screaming - mostly it was "All done, mommy!" at the top of her lungs. (This had happened several times since her hospital visit.) We got her calmed down, but she just didn't want to go back to sleep. I was laying with her in bed, and she was just kind of leaning up against me. Once again I felt her body jerking with a seizure. Thankfully, Rodney was there this time, and this seizure was much shorter - it lasted less than a minute and she was interacting with me in just a couple of minutes. MUCH different than the first one!

The next day, I called her pediatrician in Virgina and scheduled a visit for Monday morning, so that meant Rodney, Emma and I left my parent's house Sunday morning and drove home to West Virginia, emptied and repacked my car, dropped off Rodney's truck, and headed to Virginia.

Emma's appointment went well. Her pediatrician is amazing!!! She reviewed all the test results from Emma's hospital visit and really spent time with us answering all of our questions. We are going to keep an eye on her temperature, and hopefully she won't have any more seizures. If she does, we will need to have some tests done and see a pediatric neurologist.

What else happened in March??

Emma's cousin Jeremiah 'exercizing' with grandma's walker.