Faith's Mom's Blog

At least once a year, Faith's school has a fun week where there is a theme each day on how to dress. When Rob was getting Faith ready in the mornings, he really didn't put too much effort into making sure Faith was dressed according to the theme of the day. I used to love having these fun weeks at school and I loved getting Faith ready each day this week.  Here is what her fun week looked like: Monday - Faith's favorite day of all - Pajama Day! Tuesday - Backwards Day - even Faith's smile is backwards! Wednesday - Tie Dye Day! Thursday - School Spirit Day Friday - Wacky Day!

November 30 is Newborn Heart Defect Screening Awareness Day .  I think it is very important to spread this awareness, especially since congenital heart defects (CHD) are the number one birth defect in babies. CHD affects 8 out of every 1,000 newborns and is responsible for more deaths in the first year of life than any other birth defect.  A simple screening, which is done via pulse oximetry done within the first 24 hours of the baby's life, could prevent such deaths from happening. One such death was a five-day old baby named Cora.  I was born with a congenital heart defect   (CHD) ,  and nobody knew until I was about five or six months old. My mom began noticing that the simplest act of eating from my bottle completely wore me out. And when my lips and fingernails began to have a bluish tinge to them, she knew something was very wrong.  Unfortunately, at that time we lived on an Indian reservation in Wolf Point, Montana so there weren't a lot of specia...

Me and my little family of three have a Thanksgiving tradition of going out for thanksgiving dinner on our own. This year, though, we invited another family of three to join as they had done years ago after we first moved to Mandan. We had met this family at a church in Mandan and have recently reconnected with them as we all now go to New Life Church. So thankful to be reconnected with this wonderful family! So today we headed out to one of the buffets at a local hotel. I was looking forward to eating a delicious turkey dinner and having pumpkin pie with whip cream for dessert. As we walked into the dining room, however, the first thing I noticed was that the pieces of pumpkin on the dessert tables were not topped with whip cream. I wasn't going to complain though, as I didn't want to appear to be ungrateful on Thanksgiving of all days. As we sat around the table, enjoying our delicious turkey dinner I couldn't help but notice that nobody was taking the bare pumpk...

It seems we have won the battle over Faith getting up and getting ready for school in the mornings. She is no longer protesting and wakes up in the morning excited to bring a "special guest" to school. Last week she pretended to get Clifford the Big Red dog ready for school, but he couldn't fit in our van, so he had to ride on top. She also talks about how when she gets to school, she is going to help take care of one of her friends who is also in a wheelchair. A few things are helping Faith with her morning routine. One she is getting more rest and not feeling so fatigued throughout the week as she is only going half-days on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Another is that we have been feeding her Pediasure with 1.5 times more calories than what she has gotten before. This is helping with both her energy and her weight. Rob took her in to get weighed last week and she has gained almost a pound since getting the added calories. While the mornings have been going great, we have a...