Jump til you PASS OUT

Rob and I went to a neighbor's garage sale when were about 4 months preggo. They were selling a "jumparoo" for $10.

"We don't need this."
"He already has a walker and that jumping thing you hang in the door"
"Its just one more thing to take up space"

Well, we ended up with a jumparoo even after all these reasons to not get it. And boy has it been the best $10 we've ever spent. And love it he does. Mom and Dad are eating dinner and baby is bouncing his heart out. Well, today I was cleaning and Ry was bouncing and we were both grooving to my MP3 mix, when I realized the bouncing noise had stopped. Here's why:

A squealin' Greek Anniversary

Am I making up for lost time or what? I feel like I have so much to talk about! 

Rylan went to his first Greek Food Festival. Unfortunantly for him, he had to have carrots and banana with a Similac chaser, no Greek food this year. Even though bedrest ended months ago, it still warms my heart to make it to events like this.

Falafel, Tabouleh (yuck!) and hummus

Notice the redneck bathrooms in the background

Next up for the Qualls was a trip to Fayettville. My mom and dad put together a family outing to see Fiddler on the Roof. This was a bittersweet time for my family because its been an event 20+ years in the making. You see, we moved from Kansas when I was six. Every Christmas we would go back to Kansas for a visit and listen to my dad's tape collection. Because we were kids, our favorite was the soundtrack to Fiddler on the Roof. What kid wouldn't love "If I were a rich man a doo doo doo do dodododo" or "matchmaker matchmaker make me a match." I have many a good memory cruising down the Kansas interstate with all five members of my family belting out "TRADITION!" And it was awesome. So glad my parents orchestrated this event. Rylan and Rob went over to Rob's sister Staci's house for some quality time with her family. It was a good time for all.

The Papa!

Zoe is totally not happy that Papa took "her baby" from her

Sometimes you leave your camera sitting around and you find this later.

My parents took Rylan for the weekend of Memorial Day and Rob and I had a sleepin' in, eating out, watching movie good time. It was a rainy weekend, so we decided against Riverfest and chose to stay indoors and work on our hobbies: scrapbooking for me, beer making for Rob. Both hobbies are labor intensive and seem daunting to get all the mess out and put away while caring for an infant. We had a LOVELY dinner out at Bonefish. I heart some Bang Bang Shrimp. Rylan had a great time getting cuddled and pampered at Grammy and Papa's house. From what I hear, he reminded them of the distgusting part of parenting (it involves diapers).
Rylan has taken to talking in a squeal voice. Its super cute except when you're in church. We got kicked to the cry room a couple weeks back. Before that he was a silent angel in church. I could listen to that little squeal all day every day.Here's a video taken during car ride.

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Ears tubes and tied tongues

We have discovered in Rylan's 5th month of life that he has a "tongue tie". The little skin thingy that attached the back of your tongue to the bottom of your mouth is the frenulum. Rylan's is grown almost to the tip of his tongue.  He has always had trouble eating whether bottle or breastfeeding, but the poor guy was called a weak sucker! When he began smiling and laughing on a daily basis, Rob and I noticed that the end of his tongue indents with the smiles. He doesn't stick his tongue out even though he looks like he wants to. So, we contacted our beloved in-family Speech Therapist: Aunt Tammy who gave us the positive tongue tie diagnosis.  If this were to go uncorrected Ry could have difficulty making certain sounds that require a "loose tongue" and have continued trouble swallowing.

Rylee-Roo has also had 5 ear infections and bouts of bronchiolitis since January. We have tried agressive inhaler therapy to "drain" the fluid out of his ear/nasal passages. After a few weeks of inhalers, I took Rylan to the 6 month Well Baby appointment and they saw more fluid in his ears, just waiting to infect the poor babe's ears. (May I just add that I was overwhelmed with happiness to go to the Well Child Clinic! We hadn't made it there yet, they've had to do his developmental checks at sick appt. cause he was getting sick so much.)

So, we were already scheduled for an Ear Nose and Throat doctor to discuss the tongue tie. He feels Rylan needs to have this cut surgically ASAP. He took a look at Ry's ears, saw the mini-swimming pool in there and decided he needed ear tubes as well. 

Rylan will have surgery at 7:30 am on June 15th. I work at the hospital he is having the surgery at, the Department Head of Anesthesiology to do his anesthesia (sometimes knowing certain people pays off) and I feel very good about the doctor he saw. I am hoping that I don't have a hard time the day of, but for right now, I feel very hopeful that we might get our little boy feeling good before long. Maybe the monthly infections will go away, maybe we can stop thickening his formula, maybe the albuterol updraft machine can be put up for more than a week at a time. Maybe.......

I tried to get in Rylan's mouth to take a pic of the tongue tie. You can't actually see the tongue tie, but you can see the effect it's having on his tongue.

Mother's Day

May I just take a minute to apologize for the lack of posts lately. Rylan had a rough sickly patch in April and I simply took time off to rock him 24/7 and got out of the habit of posting. I feel so behind, but I guess in the blogger world, there really are no rules. I kinda like the blog because its a place to post things that aren't worth a whole scrapbook page. Like this:

This cat was on our fence and from inside my house, it looked like a bear! Thought I needed to share.

My husband is just the best guy in town. I think I've mentioned earlier that everything seems so much more important now that Rylan's in the world. Even though he can't remember what we do, I feel the need to make holidays and outtings more memorable (such as the GREEN cake I had to make on St. Patrick's Day or the extra walking I did at the mall so that we could be in the glass elevators so he could see out). Well, Rob took it upon himself to make Mother's Day awesome for the whole fam. A couple months ago I had mentioned I had wanted a picnic. I never thought it was possible for Mother's Day, because it had rained cats and dogs for almost 2 weeks. The night before Mother's Day I was presented with this present.

A basket of wine, cheese, chicken salad, croissants, fruit and flowers. OH and chocolate covered strawberries. YUMMERS! And instead of picnic-ing in the rain, Rob set us up a picnic on our beautiful, but underused porch. It was so wonderful. 

The spread

My precious boys

My sweet doll-baby (as his babysitter calls him)

I'm going to just take the room down for a moment, but I have to express the happiness I feel at times like these. I took being on bedrest very hard. I was not the happy go lucky girl I usually am. You don't think about the fact that you are helping your baby stay in the womb and grow a strong heart and lungs and brains, so that he doesn't spend his first few days in an NICU hooked up to machines. You think about the fact that you can't make your own cereal, or help with housework. What got me through tough bedrest days was thinking about the day that I could have picnics with my family, cook for my family, and take a walk with my family. Such a small thing as a picnic was a dream come true for me.