Happy 20th.

Micah is 20 months old today! EEEEK! Where did that time go?

Micah can say dada, hi, uh-oh, no, ball (his favorite word!), ew, i did it, cracker, more, and on occasion he will babble mama.

He can give high fives, kissies, hugs, and clap.

He recently learned how to use a kazoo.

Micah LOVES bath time, his stuffed monkey, and bananas.

He likes to play with his ride on toys, to run around outside, and to throw balls.

He likes to press buttons, and he will pick up the phone and say "hi!"

Micah does not like to sit in a highchair at restaurants and he can drink from a regular cup.

He likes to slide down the stairs on his belly and he goes really fast!

He likes to play pat a cake and have his belly tickled. He will sometimes lift up his shirt and point to his belly so that you know where to tickle!

He can point to his nose, ears and belly.

He needs lots of sleep! He sleeps from 8:30pm-8:30am fairly consistently, and naps in the afternoon for anywhere between 1 and 3 hours.

I love my Micah!

Merry Christmas!!

Merry Christmas from your favorite North Carolina family! :) We are going to church and then opening presents and eating some yummy dinner. It's a little untraditional, but I'm vying for This for dinner! I have been on a shrimp kick lately. A margarita wouldn't hurt either. ;)

Tomorrow we are heading off to Great Wolf Lodge in Charlotte. I am SO excited! I think Micah is going to playing in the water! We are also going to stop at Ikea and I'm trying to plan to meet up with a sorority sister for dinner. I can't wait!

I LOVE Laughing!

This video had me laughing out loud! I read a blog www.kellyskornerblog.com She is a super sweet mom of a sweet little girl. Her friends made this video on how to "poof" your hair. Oh. My. Gosh. SOOO funny. I loved that they gave brody an eyelash curler, the Beth Moore comment, the "don't tell daddy." Just watch it!

Poofing from Jennifer Francis on Vimeo.

and please don't doubt that I went and bought Freeze It! The next day. :)

haha!

Micah lifted up brian's shirt and gave his belly a hug and said, "hi!"

Brian looked over to me and said, "hunny, i think he thinks there's a baby in my belly."

Haha!

[Posted with iBlogger from my iPhone]

Here comes trouble.

If a picture is worth a 1000 words it might be worth just as many laughs!

Micah and I spend A LOT of time at the wonderful dance studio that I work at. It is the best place in the world to work and has really become like a second family for us.

Meet Cooper. This is Micah's partner in crime and Hillary's sweet 4.5 month old son. He is also just about as tall as Micah is now even though he's only 4.5 months old!

We had a cleaning day at the studio and a training meeting after. Micah spent about 8 hours there today and filled his time with sweeping, climbing on chairs, crawling in the tv cabinet, playing peek a boo, and eating.

His favorite place to go at the dance studio is Hillary's office. Cooper is usually hanging out in there, Cooper's swing in there, and there is generally a lot of pens for Micah to choose from for his "artwork." Micah's FAVORITE thing to do is to sneak in to Hillary's office chair and type on her computer.

Today while we were cleaning and Cooper was hanging out Micah snuck in to Hillary's office. Suddenly, I hear someone ask Micah, "Who's drink is that?" Hillary looks over and says, "That's mine!"

We can now add diet coke to Micah's list of favorite things in Hillary's office.

a PSA and a birth story.

This is more for me to just write out. Its therapeutic.

So, with all of the pregnant people around me I have been getting some questions about why Micah was born early. I developed preeclampsia and HELLP syndrome. HELLP stands for:
Hemolytic Anemia
Elevated liver enzymes
Low Platelet count.
Basically, my red blood cells weren't working, my liver was failing, and I had very few platelets which help clot blood. HELLP syndrome occurs in 0.5% of all pregnancies.
Preeclampsia occurs in about 5% of all pregnancies and is characterized by high blood pressure, protein in the urine (because the kidneys are having a hard time functioning) and severe swelling.

I also developed pnuemonia in the hospital. I had been on bedrest for 10 days in hopes that my blood pressure would go down. It didn't. I was then admitted to the hospital at 31 weeks pregnant. It was April, and I wasn't due until the end of June! Once admitted, I met with a high risk maternal fetal medicine specialist and she hoped to keep micah in for three more weeks. I mentioned at the end of the appointment that I was seeing spots, like I was getting a migraine, and she then changed her estimate to say that she hoped we made it through the weekend.

I made it one more day until my blood pressure went up to 195/125 and I was a cranky, miserable mess! Everything hurt; my head from the high blood pressure, my back from my kidneys, my side from my liver. It was awful. It was also two months to the day before my due date.
They then had me sign all of the release forms and my OB mentions to Brian that he wants to do a spinal block on me instead of general anesthesia because he's afraid that I won't wake up if he puts me under general anesthesia.
During the c-section they took Micah out and I remember asking Brian why Micah wasn't crying. Brian didn't know either. The room was silent. I had my OB and 5 nurses standing over me. There were also 7 NICU staff members there to take Micah immediately. Micah scored a 4 and an 8 on his APGARS which means that he scored a zero in one category. I don't want to know which one it was. They took Micah away to the NICU and then took me back to the ICU.
I was in Intensive Care for 4 days. I had a blood transfusion to replace platelets that I had lost. My IV infiltrated during the infusion and I got blood all over me. Micah was born at 1:27 on Sunday April 27th. I didn't see him until 3am-ish on Tuesday morning.
Micah stayed in the NICU for 5 weeks until he was strong enough to come home. He was born weighing 3lbs 1oz and looked like a little peach. He came home weighing 4lbs 8oz and looked so big to us!
Visiting our friends with 8lb babies in the hospital this year has been so strange. Their babies' are giants!

All in all that experience totally sucked.

Would I do it again?

In a heartbeat.

Updates.

So, we've been busy!
On Wednesday I had an interview for a very awesome job. We'll see how it goes. Last weekend we were supposed to go to the Apex parade for the dance studio, but it was cold and rainy and so we had the camps over for a craft night. Mike and Brian cut down 18ft of wood into 4" cubes. Sunday has become nap day for me and so after church/work we got some lunch and I took a nice long nap. Yesterday Micah got his H1N1 shot. Today I got a flat tire, but it turns out my tire just needed air. Tonight I'm teaching, grocery shopping and working on the never ending house cleaning!

Fringe Benefit.

B is in school for "Digital Media." One of his homework assignments was to take portraits. I offered to be his model, but he gave me a spiel about how he needed candid shots of someone and blah blah blah. {whatever Brian, I'm much too pretty to be your model. Your classmates would just be jealous of your trophy wife. haha!} Anyway, this assignment resulted in my being able to take a 20 minute nap while B took micah to the park! I'm considering writing his teacher a thank you note.