latest obsession: baby clothes

baby clothes are adorable.  it's hard to find things that don't look too boyish or too girly, so when you do - and they are on sale - you just have to buy them.  lately i have been a huge fan of zulily.com.  i am still waiting on another shipment from that bargain site.  so far we've sound other sale items at janie and jack, gap, old navy, pure blankz, and kimono baby.  while it's hard to resist things with ruffles, hot pink, little airplanes, or anything else totally gender specific - i think we've found some pretty cute stuff.

i still need to launder everything and get them ready for a baby, but i think we've still got time.  so, until further notice i will keep hunting for bargains and keep collecting gender neutral clothing.  but, when a phone call happens and i know we're going to baby boy or baby girl land - everyone better look out for the flood of blue or pink!

illy in recovery & some cradle bedding

iliana is slowly but surely recovering from her pancreatitus.  she and her sister are still having squabbles over food, which is to be expected due to the cushing's disease - but other than this we are in a much better place then we were last week at this time.  today she decided that she was going to skip out on her pain meds by locating them in her food and spitting the pills out on the floor.  luckily i caught on to her, and with some extra crafty burying i covered them in wet food and got them into her.  she's getting back to her old self in "wiggle worming" on the carpet to scratch her back, searching for chew bones (even after we put them all in the garbage), and demanding things that she wants by scratching, digging, pacing, and barking. 

this evening i opened the front door to find that our cradle bumper had finally been delivered.  it could not match more perfectly in our room!  i am so happy with it!

sickly doggie baby

Tuesday afternoon our sweet baby dog (Iliana) seemed to get very sick very quickly.  She had a recheck appointment at the vet later on that evening, but by 3:30pm it was apparent that she was not going to make it to that 6pm appointment.  I called the vet and they had us come in right away.


Iliana is 10 years old and has had struggles with anxiety, aggressiveness (towards her sister dog) over food, problems with stomach upset, and several other ongoing issues that have sent us back and forth to the vet for the past few years.  We knew that stress was triggering our girl to get upset tummies and to do anything to be with us when we prepped to leave the house.  The anxiety got so bad a few months ago that we had to put her on medication. 


The problems on Tuesday including diarrhea and vomiting at the same time.  Yikes!  It got so bad that I could not control it, and off to the vet we went.  After about three hours of tests they determined (from x-ray) that her liver was enlarged and that she was testing positive on a CPL test (alerting us to an issue with the pancreas).  The vet gave her an injection of an antibiotic, told us she likely had Cushing's Disease, told us to buy some Prilosec to give her on a daily basis, and to follow up with the ultrasound tech to confirm this disease.


Kind of in shock, I left the vet - just accepting what they said, doing what they said, and not thinking things were too serious.


When we got home Iliana tanked up on water (like she always does) and I gave her the Prilosec.  Within minutes she was projectile vomiting.  She continued to throw up (every 15 - 20 minutes) until 9pm.  At 7:30pm we called the vet and told them about the vomiting.  They told us to take her off food and water and try the Prilosec again in the morning...


At 10:30pm she started dry heaving again.  At this point, the hubs decided we needed to get her to the ER.  The more we Googled, the more nervous we got.  I feared she had pancreatitus, and reading about pancreatitus you can learn that it can get so severe that it can be deadly.  We called the doggie ER and told them we'd be on our way.


They took us straight back to a room and took Iliana to another room.  They started running tests on her as quickly as they could, while I pulled out the arsenal of paperwork to document what was done earlier in the day and all of the bottles of pills that she's been on recently.  The Dr. examined her and quickly told us that they suspect she had pancreatitus and Cushing's Disease - all signs pointed to "yes".  They admitted her to the ICU and promised they'd take good care of her.  They told us we could call and check in on her throughout the night and that they'd be in touch by 10am the next morning.


Wednesday we had a long (3 hour visit) at the Doggie ER. Illy was diagnosed with all of the following: Severe Acute Pancreatitus, a tumor on her spleen, an enlarged liver, enlarged adrenal gland, kidney stones, a heart murmur (grade 4), bladder infection, UTI, and they are 90% certain she has Cushing's.




WHOA!


The doctors took their time to explain everything to us and talk to us about what the future would look like with a sweet baby that has Cushing's disease.  Hopefully with the right medication and a watchful eye she can live a happy and relaxed remainder of her life.  It's hard to digest it all when you look back and all of the symptoms she has had over the year are now screaming out "DUH!  Hello, why did you not notice this before!"  I feel so bad that she has been suffering with this Cushing's disease for who knows how long, and we've been treating the individual symptoms, but never seeing the big picture.


Thinking about all of this cannot help us think how we'd feel if this same situation happened to our human baby.  It's been so hard to handle the fact that a living creature is suffering because you cannot read their symptoms and get them the treatment that they need to feel better.


Illy kept down food for 12 hours without getting sick, and this afternoon we got to bring her home.  She is on quite a few medicines and a special diet.  They will recheck her on August 4th and will talk to us about the treatment plan for the Cushing's once the pancreatitus has settled down.
 
Please keep us in your prayers.  I feel so guilty for not pushing harder with vet #1 to get her some anti nausea medication then and there and taking their response to our alarm when we called.  I felt helpless then, but I knew something was not right.  It's difficult when you put your trust in someone else's judgement to help you make a decision over a helpless living being.  However, I know that if everything had not played out the way that it did, we might not have ended up at the ER vet on Tuesday night and Illy might not be laying here sleeping on the bed right this minute.

comment bug

i've heard from many of you that there is some sort of "bug" preventing you from commenting on the blog.  we did not know what it could be, but husband did some research and figured out a way around having to re-install all of the blog page settings and hopefully everyone can now get their comments on!

sorry for the issues, and hopefully this clears up the problem!

craft project number 2 - part 2 - cradle

cradle time.

i know the baby only sleeps in the cradle for a short period of time and that it will find its way to the attic shortly after the baby finds their way to the nursery.  i logically know all of this.  however, i cannot pull myself away from the cradle obsession.

i was on the mission to find the perfect cradle, and then to get said cradle assembled.  i did not want to spend a lot of money on this cradle, knowing what i stated above.  daddy visited with mommy and spent the entire 4th of july building this cradle.  we took all of the parts we had, measured the openings, evaluated what we needed to make this work (safely), and then made two trips to lowe's to get everything we needed.  we gathered the drill, the newly purchased "missing parts", our patience, and sat down for an afternoon of getting this all together.

i am in love with the sanding that i did on that early saturday morning a few weeks back, but i am not in love with the mis-matched silver and gold screws/bolts etc.  i have been contemplating spray painting those screws and bolts to better blend in with the cradle itself.  not sure which way we'll go on that.

that all being said, once i determined that we were going to have to spend $16 on missing screws, i knew that we were not going to attempt making cradle bedding for this cradle and would be ordering the bedding.  i think i finally decided to order the following combo to match with our bedroom:

we're thinking that the cream matelesse will be the exterior fabric, the zig zag stripe will be on the interior of the bumper, and the robins egg fabric would be on the piping and ties.  we know it's blue and blue is typically for "boys", but it matches our bedroom and we think that is the direction we should go.

photo time!

will got me my 10 year wedding anniversary present early so i could learn how to use it before the baby comes.  i had been looking for a digital slr camera for a while now and finally decided on the one i wanted to get.  we went today to look at them and see them in person, and before i knew it we were walking out of the store with a new canon eos 7d and all of the start up accessories!

stay tuned for some photos with the new camera - once i read the manual - watch the demo - and charge the battery!

hopefully by the time the little darling deer arrives i will know what i am doing!

craft project number 1 - part 2 - burp cloths

the mommy was here for several days to help me figure out the sewing machine and the remaining work that needed to be done on the burp cloths.  bless her sweet heart, she had bronchitis and just did not feel well, but she worked diligently to get me set up and teach me how to use the machine. 

we had numerous trials with the bobbin thread running out, the needle breaking, the fabric getting jammed, and the stitch skipping.  mom kept her patience and worked with the machine to get everything properly working.  after many hours of effort mommy and i had come up with a dozen uniquely crafted burp cloths. 

some of the stitches are crooked, some have stitches that are skipped, some of the fabric is off center, and we have no idea how they will hold up in the washing machine.  they may not be exactly perfect, but they were hand made with love and i would not trade them for anything.

craft project number 2 - part 1 - cradle

i know - you are thinking what happened to the burp cloths part 2? 

well - you see - the sewing machine and i got off to a rocky start and i called my mom one night a couple weeks back, at about 11pm when i needed some assistance.  i begged her to come and help me right then!  she thought it was hysterical, but did agree to come help me when she could.  turns out tomorrow is the day.

projects and i have had a rough time here lately.  i thought it would be a great idea to purchase a cradle off craig's list and make the cradle bumper and we'd have our own unique hand assembled piece.  we found a great deal (or so i thought) on this cradle and went to pick it up about a month ago.  it sat, unattended in our garage, for almost a month until the dog woke me up last saturday morning at 6:30am and i could not go back to sleep.  i cruised on out to the garage and began scrubbing, sanding, and inspecting the cradle.  after some thought about how all of the parts would fit together, i realized that we were missing quite a few screws. 

this part, above, is the only thing that was preassembled and the rest of it is missing bits and pieces.  will decided there would be no more purchasing from craig's list and we really should not be doing any more projects.

before i resorted to agreeing with no more projects i decided i would go and price out the fabric and all of the pieces to create our own custom bumper.  i found the inserts online for $20 and then went to the fabric store and found out the fabric i wanted was about $30 a yard.  after doing all of the math i determined that it would just be cheaper (and easier) to purchase our cradle bumper online.  will was right.

so on july 4th my mom will be helping me learn how to sew and my dad will be helping me find the missing pieces for the cradle.  hopefully we will wrap up all of these unfinished projects and i can find something else to occupy my time and my project oriented brain.