Update

All is well in the Fox household. Playing Christmas music, getting Nina jazzed about Baby Jesus.
Learning Christmas songs, making crafts!

Nina continues to kick ass. Her speech and fine motor skills amaze us, it's just her gross motor that always falls short.

PT came today and we are working on standing from a kneel. So Nina has to put her hands on her ears for instance, so as not to use the ground to stand up.
She is working hard to walk up the steps using her legs and not crawling up.
We suspect her height of 34 inches is not helping the activity though...
She is also working on jumping, and lastly balancing...and sit ups and push ups..wind sprints(Ok just kidding with the last three)

PT comes once a month and tells me she is seeing much improvement with Nina month to month. I see the difference too.

Nina loves her babydolls and music. She is asking Santa for a piano, babydoll bed and new babydoll.

We have Elf on the Shelf and she is having a blast(as are we) with talking about Dicky the Elf and what he'll tell Santa about Nina's day and where he'll show up tomorrow.
It's a neat thing for us and I recommend it!

6 months

6 months ago...our future changed. Nina is at such an awesome, fun age. It would have been wonderful to see her with her 6 month old brother.

It's all just so sad.

our black kitty

All Nina wanted to be for Halloween was a black Abby cat. (our cat's name is Abby)
She is so cute I can't stand it! LOL!!

Got the first dose of the H1N1 on Thursday and we we back to the Dr the very night day with a double ear infection. I guess the blood in her ears from itching them should have clued me in a couple weeks ago on that...but it's been said before and published that our preemies had super high pain tolerance which makes me nuts, b/c she could be in lots of pain with her ears for this example and I have no flipping idea! She's on meds now and all will be fine.
She does have a cold to go along with the ear infection and her nasal drip is causing her cough to sound like she smokes a pack a day.

Nina is getting PT once month and OT once a month...not sure if this is helping...it's more of tracking at this point. She is prefers crawling up the steps when she needs to be working on building strength in her legs. We are on her to be strong! Be a big girl! Walk up those stairs! Her preschool teacher says she is off balance a lot, but is right in with the kids for most of the non- physical stuff. Nina's Gymboree teacher told me that she would probably catch up by the time she is 5. I wonder why she picked 5. Maybe her magic ball told her? What does it mean to catch up anyway?
I would love Nina to be able to hang out on the playground and not get pushed to the side by the kids younger than her to make their way up the steps to the slide... They tell me she needs to get stronger. OK, but I want to kick the asses of these 24 month old that zoom on past her as she tries so hard to climb up the steps...Guess I really want to kick the mom's asses that let their kids cut in line and then ask me how old she is and I tell them and they look at me like I have three heads.

Happy B-day to Jason and Happy October Baseball to the Phillies!

Nina is good...woke up with the sniffles though... The H1N1 vaccine is still not avail in PA yet. We are getting it for her when it becomes avail to us.


Just gotta keep on keeping on!

The first case of H1N1 was confirmed in the 3 year old room at Nina's school.
The school followed all the CDC's guidelines and the school is all bleached up.
Nina got a flu shot last month and not sure about the H1N1 yet. It's not even available to us at this time.

It's been 5 months since baby boy died and it's not getting any easier for me. I cannot be happy for friends, relatives, people in Gymboree class, people on the street or in my neighborhood (anybody really) who are pregnant or have babies under 5 months old. Baby envy...jealous rage... whatever you wanna call it...I have it, and I don't care.
This experience has changed me and I am not sure if I can change back.

Services

We had OT come out to the house this week.. the lady did not have her scoring papers (coming to my house was a last min thing so she was not 100% prepared) so she is coming back in a couple weeks...
Said that it's not strength that's a problem for Nina, it's body awareness(whatever the heck that means for a 2 year old) So hopefully we'll get it all figured out when OT comes back.

In other news Nina is going well in school. She's just painfully shy and the teachers tell us she does not really hang with the other kids, they are trying to break her out of her shell.
When she comes home though she tells me about her friends and is happy with life.

Yesterday at the park I met a nice young couple with a 3 year old boy. The boy took an interest in Nina so the parents took an interest in me. The woman was 38 weeks prego which still slaps me in the face...I, of course, did not bring up baby boy... I never bring up baby boy...they is really no mainstream conversation starter about deadbabies. I can talk about Nina being 1 pound and in the hospital for 102 days and yada yada yada but I really do not tell strangers about her sisters...
Maybe I should...maybe I just save it for theapy...
Anyway we got talking about Nina being 1 pound and blah blah blah...told them about her PT and OT...they just keep telling me how good she looked and she'll catch up right??? What does that even mean anymore?