Sundays with Ruthe.

I was thinking all last week about starting a new series for the blog.  I need to be better about documenting Ruthe's milestones, and Sundays are the slowest day of our week. (that's probably not true... but it is the most consistently scheduled day!)  It's also one day of the week that I KNOW she'll be fully-dressed AND clean AND super-cute for at least ten minutes.  So, welcome to Sundays with Ruthe!!

but - as you can tell from it being Monday - I forgot!  I'm going to stick with Sundays in the future, and blame this week on having John in town with us and allowing me to take a beautiful, quiet, much needed nap yesterday.  

So, back to Ruthe Clementine...  she is a rolling machine!!  I can't set her down anywhere now without her being completely across the room when I get back!  She's also spending a lot more time on her belly looking at things in front of her and out of reach - which I'm hoping will encourage her to figure out crawling. (no, scratch that. I don't want her to crawl.)

We're still working with physical therapy once a month to assess Ruthe's abilities and needs.  She has been doing so much better since her last heart surgery!  She has a lot more stamina during her workouts, which means we can push her a little harder for a little longer, and we get to see better results!!  I'm actually supposed to decide if I want to bump her up to twice a month, or remove her from the NEIS system and get her physical therapy out in the community... it's a tough decision.

She hasn't had her palate repair surgery yet - we're still waiting on the hospital to schedule that.  We're also waiting on a call to schedule her for another upper-GI scan that will hopefully tell us if she's having issues with reflux or why else she's been so vomit-y.

We did schedule her next heart cath - for the 27th.  They need to get better readings from her pulmonary branches and either balloon them a little bit or place stents to open them up a little more.  Remember when she had her first surgery and they put PA bands in?  Her doctors are starting to notice in a lot of patients that afterwards those same spots are narrowing and causing higher pressures than they'd like to see.  So the cath will be done to measure the velocities and try to correct the issue.  

It's an out-patient procedure, but it will be an all-day affair.  Once the cath is done and Ruthe wakes up, she has to be kept still and monitored for at least 6 hours.  That means flat-on-her-back, no snuggling, and a very uncomfortable chair for me.

We've been so lucky to have John here this weekend!  And he has been SO GREAT with Ruthe, allowing me to sleep in and take some incredible naps!!