9 months.

Pip turned 9 months old two days ago. 9 months. It's hard to believe 9 months ago today I was fighting for my life and my baby girl was getting hers established. I think.. I think that her coming early was just the beginning. In her little lifetime so far she has had nothing but downfalls.  Being premature. Having a dislocated hip. Not being able to roll over, sit up or even crawl. But I also think that we need to learn from her. She doesn't let the cast hold her back. She giggles and "jumps" in it. She loves. Loves her brother, loves her daddy, the pups.. and me. Unconditionally. The way she watches her brother makes my eyes water every single time. The way her eyes light up and she wiggles in her cast happily when I walk up to her bed. I love it. I feel like it's hard with her.. to bond. She can't exactly be held to eat a bottle. Hell, holding her in general is hard. Awkward. We can't really snuggle. I try. Trust me. She moves from bed to bean bag chair to someone's legs, sometimes the floor, sometimes the car. . Back to bed. She doesn't seem at all bothered. Well, in a sense. She is bothered sometimes and gets fussy. But we have a great routine down now. Wake at 6/7, up til 8/9, nap from 8/9-10/11, lunch, nap from 12/1230-2/3, up til 4/5, nap from 430/5-6/630, dinner and up til 8, bed 8/830.. She wakes up sometimes twice a night.. now that she has that Amber teething necklace she eats and goes back to sleep.

I'm so ready for this MRI on Wednesday. So ready for the news to be a brace, not another spica. Maybe I'm getting my hopes up to high. Maybe I should prepare for a second spica. But I'm ready to start moving on. I'm ready for my baby girl to move after her big brother. I'm ready to cuddle her when she needs it, rather than try to hold her against me awkwardly. I don't want her to spend 12 more weeks thinking this is it. This is get life now. Because she doesn't know anything different. She'll be one in less than 3 months. She should be moving around after Alek. She should be able to sit up and play on her own. She should be up in the high chair at dinner with the family. Not looking up at us from the bean bag chair. Or on my leg.

So, here's to wishing for excellent news. News that puts spica days behind us.

2 weeks 5 days. It needs to hurry up and pass.

Not much longer. I'm ready for this cast to be off. I'm sure she is too. She's trying to pull herself up by lifting her torso. She wants to move so badly. Her mri got cancelled, and they never called back to reschedule so I need to call them. There is no way I want to prolong cast off day, so the day they wanted the mri rescheduled for - Sept 4th - was out of the question.

We went and got her an amber teething necklace since she was up every night screaming for at least an hour and not even eating in that period. She's sleeping better already! It's only been 3 days. She's still waking to eat at least once, but no screaming. Success.

4 more weeks.

I'm so over this cast. I'm so over sleeping only 2 hours - maybe 3 - at a time. She used to sleep through 8 hours. I'm ready to go back to that. I'm ready to snuggle my baby without a bulky cast.

She and I are both ready for her to move around. She tries to move so much. She'll try to pull herself up by tucking her chin to her chest. I'm ready for her to sit up by herself so she can play with her brother better. And so she can use the high chair at meals instead of the bean bag. She wants to be up where we are.

The cast is finally starting to have a stale urine odor. After 8 weeks. Pretty good if you ask me. I'm so nervous for when it comes off. I try to clean down as far as I can but it's really hard. And really gross. I really hope she doesn't have any breakdown or horrible sores under it. I'll feel horrible for not being able to know. :(

And the fact that he said there might be a second cast? I can't do this again. I can't sit by and watch my already behind little girl fall further behind in gross motor. I want a brace on September 2nd. That's all. But I guess on August 27th they'll have better knowledge. She goes for a mri that morning. I don't know what they'll be looking for entirely. Her xray looked awesome!

We're ready to be done with this cast business.