Happy Birthday Suzie!

Our precious girl is one year old today! I can hardly even believe it was a year ago that she came into this world, three months before her due date. One year ago we were told that our baby girl had a 40% chance of surviving. And now here she is, healthy and happy and doing so great! We praise God for blessing us with this little one and for allowing us to be stewards of her for however long He allows. We praise Him for teaching us so much over the past year and for blessing us far more than we ever imagined. Happy birthday Little Suzie!

July 18, 2008


July 18, 2009

Here is a little recap of some the events of the past year, thanks to the wonderful calendar my sis made for me:

7/17 Mom checked into the hospital due to lack of movement from baby
7/18 Suzie is born at 5:44am
7/19 transferred from Glendale Adventist to Huntington Memorial
7/24 Mommy got to hold baby in her hands for the first time
7/19 Suzie first tried Mommy's milk
8/4 switched from intubation to c-pap machine
8/7 Mommy held Suzie in arms for first time!
8/7 switched from c-pap to nasal cannula
8/9 Daddy held Suzie for first time!
8/11 Suzie's first surgery to install a reservoir to relieve her hydrocephalus
8/16 first time doing cuddle care
8/18 started wearing clothes
8/21 moved to first step down nursery B
9/4 first attempt to drink from a bottle
9/8 Suzie's second surgery to put in her shunt (back to critical care nursery A)
9/13 moved from incubator to crib
9/14 moved to second step down nursery C
9/30 drank a whole bottle
10/8 first attempt off oxygen
10/10 due date! Weighed 6 lbs. 2 oz., 20 inches
10/11 back on oxygen
10/14 off oxygen except for feedings
10/15 drank all 8 bottles on her own
10/18 Suzie came home after 92 days in the hospital
11/7 third surgery--laser eye surgery
11/23 Suzie laughed for the first time
12/25 first Christmas
1/6 first session of therapy
1/18 six months old!
1/27 started scheduling
2/13 first time to see snow
3/3 completely off oxygen
3/16 started solid foods
4/8 can sit for a few seconds on own
4/26 first time going to church
5/2 NICU reunion
5/4 first two little teeth appear
5/18 became a cousin again to Ashley Sharon Case
6/5 surgery to repair shunt
6/6 came home from hospital
7/18 first birthday!!

Suzie's First Year

With Suzie's birthday just two days away, I wanted to post some pictures from the past twelve months of her life. We can hardly even believe how big our little girl is! She continues to be such a delight to us. We go to the doctor on Monday, so I will get her current stats then. Also, her therapists are currently doing her one year reports, so I should have some info on where they put her developmentally. She is getting closer to sitting on her own, but she really doesn't like it because it pulls on her tight muscles on her right side. She would much rather prefer to stand or lay down. More info on her development to come, but for now, here is a picture from each month of her life. Look how much she has changed!! We think she's cuter now than ever:)

On the day of her birth, weighing 1 lb 14 oz, and 13 1/4 inches long. She was about 27 1/2 weeks along, but pretty small for her age.


One Month


Two Months


Three Months


Four Months


Five Months


Six Months


Seven Months


Eight Months


Nine Months


Ten Months


Eleven Months


12 month pictures will be posted soon!!

Great Grumpy's Birthday

On Friday my family all got together to celebrate my grandpa's 92nd birthday! We call him Great Grumpy because that is the name my sister's kids gave him a while ago. We had a great time celebrating with him and we are so thankful for his very generous and loving heart.

Here is Suzie and her Great Grumpy!


This is Suzie and her newest cousin Ashley, exactly 10 months apart! Although it's more like 7 months. Suzie looks so big!!


All the Wahler grandchildren all lined up from oldest to youngest. Shelby at 5 years, Jason at 2 1/2 years, Suzie at 1 year, and Ashley at 2 months.


Jason and Suzie both playing with their toes:)


Showing some tummy with Daddy


Showing a little attitude


Happy with mom:)


Our newest family pic!

The Big Switch-A-Roo

Well it's almost July and time is just continuing to fly on by. We are certainly enjoying the cooler weather and I try to take Sue out for walks as much as I can. I wrote a few weeks ago that Suzie has been waking up a lot earlier...like 6:00am instead of 9:00am! So we decided this week to switch rooms with her and put all her stuff in our bedroom and our bed in the little cove in the back of our living room. So far, this is working out much better and Suzie is able to sleep in later now that she has a door to shut out all the morning noise (eh hem...Kyle eating cereal and getting ready for school:) It took her a few nights to get comfortable in her new surroundings, but last night she went down without a whimper and woke up happily at 8:30am:) Here are a couple of pics of the new set up.





Suzie is wearing a combination of 3-6 and 6-9 month clothing and is still in a size 2 diaper. One of her new things is that she wants to roll over and explore things when we're changing her diaper. This can make changing a poopy diaper an even greater challenge!



I also wanted to give a brief update on her development. Here are some areas where Suzie is falling behind and we are working on catching her up in therapy:
-sitting up by herself (she can sit up for 10-15 seconds but she should be able to sit up and play by herself for long periods of time)
-weight bearing on her arms
-fine motor skills (grabbing, shaking, turning objects) with her right arm
-some fine motor skills on left side (using her thumb and index finger to grab)
-more consonant sounds (she does a lot of "b"s but not "g"s and "m"s etc.

Here are some things we are working on that she's not necessarily behind in for her adjusted age:
-relational play (getting her to brush a baby doll's hair and feed the baby doll a bottle)
-wave bye-bye (she loves to look at my hand when I wave and will occasionally move her hand as well, but not waving so much)
-crawling (sitting is the first step, but we're trying to get her into crawling position to help her learn to put more weight on her arms)
-taking rings off a ring stacker (she can do this but forgets and has to relearn every time:)
-pulling a cloth off of a hidden object
-give us an object when we tell her to

Here are some areas where she is right on track for:
-rolling from back to tummy back to her back (she is a rolling machine!)
-pivoting when on her tummy to face the direction of a toy (or mommy:)
-passing objects from one hand to the other
-pulling multiple objects out of a bowl
-banging two objects together
-bearing weight through her legs
-responding to sounds
-tracking objects and looking for a dropped object
-eating puffs and feeding them to herself (we introduced the puffs to her last week and today she started feeding herself for the first time! Here is a video of her feeding herself)

Yippie-Yah-Yay Mini Sirloin Burgers

There is this Jack-in-the-Box commercial that makes Kyle and me laugh every time. It's advertising their mini sirloin burgers so they have these little people roping miniature cattle and they sing this song in really high little voices. The song will get stuck in our heads and we'll sing it on occasion. Well just recently Suzie has decided that she really HATES that song! She will make this pouty little face and if we keep singing she will start crying. It's so funny.

Things are going well here. Suzie has now completely recovered from her surgery. She has decided that she wants to wake up earlier now, against my pleading for her to sleep longer:) Two of her therapists recently informed me that when she turns 1 (next month!) they would like to increase her therapy to two hours a week. She is doing really well with her left side but her right side is still behind. This is keeping her from sitting on her own for very long and also using her fine motor skills on that side. That means we will have five hours of therapy every week! As if we're not busy enough:) Here are her 11 month stats and percentiles for her adjusted age of 8 months:

Weight: 16lbs. 4oz. (15th percentile)
Height: 27 1/2 in. (60th percentile)
Head: 17.9 in. (90th percentile...down .3 inches since before her surgery!)

Other than that, we are doing great here! Our really good friends, Andrew and Kim Callaway, recently moved up North to be a youth pastor at a church in Redding, California. We really miss them but are so excited for them too. We will be transitioning to High School ministry this month to get some experience in youth ministry ourselves. And Kyle is officially candidating! He graduates in December and we are hoping to find a church to go to as early as January 2010. We are in the very early stages of talking with a church in San Antonio, Texas and look forward to visiting the church in the middle of August to see what the Lord might have in store for us.

Here are some more pics of our precious girl. She continues to bless us more and more each day and we continually praise God for her!

Recovering

Suzie has been doing very well the past few days and is very glad to be out of the hospital. She doesn't seem to be in all that much pain which is a huge blessing. Her main problems when returning home were eating and sleeping. She was very tired but had a little trouble staying asleep and would cry in her sleep which was very sad. She also had not been eating very much and was throwing up for a few days. As of today, she really seems back to normal! Her bandage fell off today and I think the incision is bothering her a little, but other than that, she is doing so well. We praise God for the quick surgery and recovery and are so thankful for all of your prayers! Here are some pics of her bandage and incision, as well as a few that our friend Kim took before the surgery.

Praise God

Thank you all so much for praying for us this morning, the past week, and really the past year! We continue to be amazed by God's kindness to our family. I was very emotional when it came time to let Suzie go into surgery. I just wanted to hold my baby close to me!! The surgery went just as long as they had predicted, and the problem was exactly what we prayed for. The catheter going from the ventricles to the reservoir was a little clogged, so they simply replaced it and sewed her back up. She was crying a lot when we first saw her and her voice was a little hoarse from being intubated. She also has half of her beautiful hair shaved off:( They gave her a little morphine to help with the pain. She is just exhausted but being the very finiky sleeper that she is (she wants to be in her crib and wants to be swaddled tightly in the her dark, quiet room with the fan running) she isn't sleeping too much. She finally took a little bit of formula and hopefully will go back to sleep soon. We hope to be released tomorrow!

Thank you again for your prayers. We feel the love of God through His children and are so blessed to have such amazing support!