Long awaited...Family & Friends Baby Quilt debut!

Here it is!!

A special thanks to all of the contributors! They are listed below next to their squares...or the squares that I am guessing that they made if there are no indicators in the design. Please correct me if I attribute the wrong square to you! Lets see if I am a good guesser...

Crafted by Betsy Semmens (?)

Crafted by Eleanor Smith (Linc's G-Gma)

Crafted by Debra Hughes (Linc's Gma)

Crafted by Cassie Pollock

Crafted by Kim Garcia,

text reads: "May God bless you every day of your life! Amen!"

Crafted by Joe Blatchford (Linc's Uncle)

Crafted by Michael and Alejandra Casson (?)

Crafted by Frank and Andrea Fergel (?)

Crafted by Sarah and Heath Curtiss,

text reads: "May you be strong and disiplined like your father, patient and persistent like your mother, and like them both our friend. We look forward to knowing you."

Crafted by Jocelyn Mullen, (Linc's G-Aunt).

Crafted by Jessica Rowland in Africa (not sure why Blogger flipped it on it's side).

Crafted by Jamie Hughes (Linc's Aunt),

text reads: "There is no secret so close as that between a rider and his horse" (again, not sure why it got flipped sideways)

Crafted by Carolyn McLintock (Linc's G-Aunt)

Crafted by Nesmary Hernandez

Crafted by me, Linc's momma!

Crafted by Kathy Blatchford (Linc's G-ma & master quilt crafter!)

Crafted by Donald Hughes (Linc's G-Gpa)

Crafted by Jennifer Hughes (Linc's Aunt),

text reads: "No matter how much cats fight, there are always plenty of kittens. -Abraham Lincoln" The kittens represent 'Todd' and 'Clay', our 3 year old cats.

Crafted by Christa Rokita (?)

Crafted by Jason & Sarah Follett (Linc's Uncle & Aunt, and the master quilt making planner!)

The squares are all very beautiful! Andy and I are overwhelmed by how wonderful the quilt has turned out, and it could not have been done without any of you guys! This quilt is very special to us, and will someday mean a lot to Lincoln as well. Thank you so much!

Can you believe it? 4 months old!

I am a little late in posting this, but Lincoln is now 4 months old!

Official 4 month picture.

For comparison...
3 months, 2 months, and 1 month.

He has changed quite a bit this past month. He has started to try and sit up, and enjoys sitting supported. He also has gotten a lot more active during tummy time. He has started working with our EIT "Service Coordinator" Jana once a week. Basically it is play time with someone other than mommy or daddy. We have a PT evaluation coming up this Tuesday. I have a feeling that she will say that he is basically on par with his development so far, and that she will only come 1 time a month for therapy if we would like. We will see. There may be some things that I am unaware of where he has some physical development weaknesses.

In other news we went to Linc's 4 month well-baby and immunization appointment with Dr. R. Lincoln is 27" long (98%), 20lbs 8oz (off the charts), and 42cm head circ (50%). Basically pretty good and healthy. The doctor said that I should encourage him to sleep through the night, since he obviously doesn't need the caloric intake. Right now he is pretty consistently waking up 1 time per night around 2-3am. We may have to look into some sleep training methods after Andy's parents leave. From some of the info I have been reading we have gotten into some bad habits of feeding him to sleep, snacking type meals, and cat naps. Oops. Oh well. I am sure that we will get this all figured out at some point.

Because he is doing so well sitting supported and has shown significant interest in grown-up food while Andy and I eat, the doctor okayed us to start Linc on solid foods. He has done very well with his single grain rice cereal these past 3 days. He is never very sure about it, but eats it all up, so he must like it okay at least. So for the next 2 months we will be doing "stage 1" foods, things like rice cereal, barley cereal, wheat cereal, fruits, and veggies. All of these things must be introduced 1 week apart to make sure there are no allergic reactions. This solid food thing is pretty exciting for me. Our little guy is growing up so fast!!

Okay, here is the best part...more pictures!

Andy and I are doing well. We have been busy busy here at home doing some remodeling projects. You know us...we always seem to have a new project going on. We will post pictures after Christmas, as we want the changes to be a surprise to both of our visiting families.

Andy's family is coming tomorrow, as I mentioned earlier. Everyone except Sarah, who is still pregnant last we heard (she is due Nov. 27th, Thanksgiving day). Andy and I have a little bet going as to when she will have her baby. Andy thinks that she will go on her due date, which would be pretty cool to have 2 holiday babies (Danny was born of 4th of July). I think that she will have Jocelyn on Dec 1st (sorry, if you are reading this Sarah). We both think that Sarah's baby will be right around 8lbs.

Andy's family will be staying for the week, and we have some fun acitivities planned. Golfing, 4-wheeling, drinking, eating, relaxing...stay tuned, I am sure there will be more.

Happy Halloween!

Well we had a happy Halloween here in Tucson. It was 90+ degrees that day, so that warm of a Halloween is always a weird thing for us transplanted northerners. I think that Andy bought about 7 bags of candy, and we gave away only 4 of them...so that leaves 3 bags for us (not that I am complaining)! :)

Linc had his follow-up EEG last Thursday. While we were waiting in the waiting area a nurse came by and said that Linc was so cute. She said that he had "chicken-feather" hair. I am not really sure what that means, although we did learn that all of her children had it as well. Heh. ;)

The EEG itself was painless (no needle sticks or anything), but Linc has turned into a little cry-baby recently, so he let everyone know how much he didn't want his head messed with (no matter how many times his momma said that everything was going to be okay). But we survived. He even fell asleep during it this time!

We got the call today about the results. Dr. T said that the EEG looked a lot better. He said that the Infantile Spasms are gone (yay!), and the focal seizures that he was having are improved. The EEG did show that he had one seizure in the left side of his brain while we were there. So today Andy picked up another drug called Keppra that we will be giving Linc in addition to continuing the Sabril that he is already on. We are no longer giving him the Valproic Acid/Levocarnitine combination, as it seemed pretty unaffective anyway.

I started "back to work" today. Basically that consisted of me emailing the office saying that I was going to do my Health and Safety Hazwoper refresher (which only took about 1.5 hrs), and that I would be visiting tomorrow to get some real work. My "back to work" routine is a part-time-work-from-home, fit-in-as-many-hours-as-I-can-during-baby-naps, depending-on-how-much-work-that-they-give-me, kind of schedule. We will see. At the beginning here, I am hoping to get in 10 hours a week. At the end of the year (or maybe sooner) I will start going into the office on Fridays to get in long 10 hour days, while Andy works 4-10s and stays home on Friday. When this happens I will hope to be getting in about 20 hours a week.

So that is how we are doing these days. And here are some pictures that were taken since the last time I posted.

3 months old & 28th B-day

Sarah visited us this past weekend. It was really neat to see her again. I am glad that we got the chance. She was 34 weeks pregnant, and looked fabulous! We are very excited to see pictures of baby Jocelyn when she makes her grand entrance in November!

Linc turned 3 months old on Sunday. He is doing pretty well. We went in for a visit with the ped. neurologist last Thursday, and he said that "It is a good sign that Lincoln had such a dramatic response to the medication", he also said that Linc appeared to be on target developmentally so far. He did say that we need to work more on his head control. When the doctor pulled Linc up from a laying to sitting position by his arms, Linc's head lagged behind...lazy baby. On Friday we had a visit from a lady who works for early intervention (EI). She is doing all the paperwork to get us enrolled in DDD, Divison of Developmental Disabilities, so that we can start on physical therapy (PT) soon. Yay!

We have a follow-up EEG coming up next week. This will help to determine if Linc really is seizure free. Keep your fingers crossed for us!

Here are some recent pictures of our little chub-chub (17lbs 5oz as of last Thursday!).

Also, today is my 28th birthday. I can't believe I am almost 30! I wonder what this next year will bring...

Andy made me a cool titanium ring for my present. It is really neat. Plus, it fits on my wedding ring finger, which is good, because I still can't get back into my wedding rings comfortably.

I think that we are going to go out to dinner maybe this weekend at my favorite restaurant in town, El Paso. It has the best Salmon ever!