Waking Up

I love waking bug up in the morning!  She is always smiling and chipper, unless she is sick.  We play peek-a-boo sometimes through her crib rails and she loves it.  Then I get to pick her up and give her a giant hug, and it's the best start to my morning.  I know Shannon agrees!

Lylah is doing really great!  Her daycare workers seem to really love her!  Ly dances around to music, runs around the class, crawls on various things, claps, and they keep reporting to me that she eats very well.  When we are at home, she doesn't take long at all to eat her dinner.  We heat it up, let it cool, and put it in front of her.  She grabs it and shovels it in her mouth (I think that I used to do that as a kid!).  Occasionally I get worried because she chokes, but always gets it back up.  I encourage her to slow down, and sometimes pull the food away because of how much she gets.

Her birthday is in 18 days!  I need to teach her how to hold one finger up when we ask how old she is!  We were supposed to go to Fort Worth for her birthday weekend.  We were going to meet up with my parents that weekend.  But my parents decided that the following weekend would be cheaper for airfare.

Yesterday, we tried to take Ly for a walk but it was too cold.  Lately, I have also been walking the dogs.  They get really excited before their walk and Ly just laughs at them because they run around and act generally dumb.  :-)

Life is surprisingly short and fragile, isn't it?

Today I am posting an article from a viewer of Lylahsdaddy.com who wanted to share her story with everyone!  I think the article she wrote offers perspective about our closest loved ones, and the bonds we make daily, weekly, etc. I often reflect about how I am personally going through life and how quickly it is passing.  To value friends and family, and laugh daily, seems to give purpose to me and bonds with those around me. 

The story below was written by Heather, who contacted me about 2 weeks ago.  Some pictures of her and her family are also attached.  We have all known someone with cancer at some point in our lives.  Heather, your story is a great reminder of the fragile balance of life, love, and our ultimate dependence on each other!

-MG

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How I Learned to Cope With a Mesothelioma Diagnosis
Everyone, at some point in their lives, is completely dependent on other people. This time requires people who care about you to help you through the tough times. Dependency will occur at different times for everyone, and my time, came when I was 36 and diagnosed with mesothelioma. Up until this point many things have gone well for me, including the birth of my daughter, Lily, on August 4, 2005, but these great moments were overshadowed by my diagnosis a few short months later.
I first noticed I was ill when I started losing five to seven pounds per week after I returned to work full-time. I was constantly fatigued, but I thought it was a result of being a new mom. When I couldn’t shake the feeling, I visited my doctor to get tested.
"I was diagnosed on November 21, 2005 with malignant pleural mesothelioma. The cancer affected the lining of my lung and was a result of asbestos exposure. I later learned that I had been exposed to asbestos as a child, and it didn’t develop into full-blown mesothelioma until 30 years later.
My prognosis was grim. I was told I would only have 15 months to live without treatment, but we wanted to take aggressive measures. On February 2, 2006, I received extrapleural pneumonectomy surgery, and my left lung was removed. After the surgery, I spent 18 days recovering.  I also needed another two months in recovery before starting radiation and chemotherapy.
When I received my treatment in Boston, Lily traveled back with my mom to stay in South Dakota. The entire community pulled together to help care for Lily while I was recovering. The church and people I babysat as a child all volunteered to help with Lily while my parents worked. Meanwhile, I was in Boston with my own support system to help me cope with what I was going through.
While I was away, my daughter learned to eat food and began rolling around on her own. My mom sent me black and white copies of pictures to show me her progression. When I looked at these pictures, the nurses would always be over my should oohing and aahing at the photos with me. While I missed her so terribly, I knew that i needed to be away from her in order to still be here for her today. She was my reason for fighting so hard.
My parents bonded with Lily, and the bond remains despite the distance. My whole family cherishes moments together because we know how fragile life can be. I tell everyone, “Embrace all that life throws at you. Cancer is a funny thing. With the bad, comes a lot of good.” I learned to embrace the good and bad because the good that came from my experience far outweighs the bad."

Lylah's blowout

Warning: If you would like to not hear a gross, poop story, skip to the next paragraph.  Soooo....... Today was my day to wake up early with Lylah and I had no idea what was in store for me.  As I lay her on the changing table, everything seemed normal.  Then, as the pajama buttons are popped off, the smell emits into the air, and I can never un-smell that which lay before me.  But worse was that all down her left leg was brown bits of this and that, plus more.  Lylah had a complete blowout of poo.  "Where do I even start?" I thought?!  Um...So I just tried to get the diaper out from under her as quickly as possible, and get her pj's off.  I threw the pajamas on the floor (dirty side up of course) and proceeded to juggle cleaning her, keeping her somewhat still, and dodging flailing legs kicking bits of corn at me. Ok, so the corn didn't really fly anywhere, but, ugh.  Gross.  Finally, somehow, I got this monster under control.  It must have taken me 10 wipes to get the job done.

But then my little bug was just happy and smiling, as normal.  And then, the blowout really didn't matter anymore! :-)

Every morning Lylah 'helps' me let the dogs outside.  I walk her to the door, she usually says dadow (Which we think might be doggy) and she smiles!  She has been a very happy baby lately and it's been really awesome!  When people ask me about her, I always say first, "She is really awesome!" because I believe that encompasses her.

Since the mariachi video posted last time on our blog, I have picked up the guitar a few times.  Lylah will stare at me while I play it for her, or she will come over and bang on it.  Occasionally she will hit the strings, but she also tries to grab them and pull so we don't let her around the strings for long.

She's crazy about chords and electrical outlets (yikes!) right now.  We are constantly having to teach her right now that she cannot be around them.  Luckily, ours are already child protected.  They are built with a fail-safe inside that you have to push through with both prongs of a plug to get to the electrical part of the outlet.  That doesn't calm us much though when we see her playing with it.  And if she is trying to play with something that is plugged in already, just one touch to a prong with her little fingers could be disaster.  So we watch her very closely around the hallway and near any plugs or outlets.

Welcome students!

Welcome to my blog HMS choir kiddos!  It was a pleasure to be able to share our blog with all of you at school!  Now that I am letting students see our blog, I want to say something about the ads on our page.

The ads placed on Lylah's page are meant to generate a little bit of income here and there for Lylah's college fund.  Please do not click on the ads over and over!  There is a system that reads the amount of clicks and will stop working if you are simply trying to make money for us!  If an ad applies to you or your family, feel free to click on it.

Today, Lylah helped me put the dishes away!  She just stood by the dishwasher and handed me plastic cups!  She seems very eager to help out!  It's pretty awesome!  I did make a video of it! I will post it below.

Also, now that Lylah has been walking for a couple of months, our daycare just told us that she needs to be wearing shoes.  We didn't really think she needed to, but the daycare says it's pretty much mandatory now that she's walking.  I am honestly glad they give us tips here and there.  It's good that we are putting Lylah in shoes now because she is a little awkward in them.  Over time, she will get used to them, but I don't think she really likes wearing shoes.  I have also uploaded a video of her picking some shoes today!

Lylah unwrapping gifts and spending time with Nana

Here is Lylah dancing to some mariachi music from dinner tonight!

Here is Lylah unwrapping some of her first gifts for Christmas!  

Here is Lylah at the restaurant we went to with Nana and Papa!  We had her try a lemon for the first time!  She actually didn't mind it too much.  She didn't really even wince once!

Great Break! And Mystarkid

It's been a really great break here in Atlanta for the past week or so!  We have visited with family, had great food, hung out with Lylah a whole lot, and generally enjoyed everyone's company!

Shannon's mom and sister had to go back to work today, and it's a reminder that we will be going back soon as well!  Unfortunately, this means we won't be seeing Lylah as much - but she will be returning to her daycare and hanging out with her little friends!

Over the break, Lylah has really enjoyed seeing her grandparents!  At first she was a little bit shy, but she is very social once she gets going!  We are heading out today to the park and going to see grandma at school!  

Also, I have been hooked into a new website called "Mystarkid.com"  I have submitted a picture of Lylah for a photo contest where it will be evaluated by judges (and voted on by social media) and she could win prizes!  Her rank goes up and down depending on votes.  Please go vote for Ly at:

 http://mystarkid.com/120958/lylah

This is her contest photo I have submitted:

Let me know if you think I should submit any of the following photos!