Happy March!!!

The blog has been having some technical difficulties....I took off the pictures to see if that would help! Someone email me if you can see this at snrmikels @ gmail. com. Thank you!!

We have had a pretty crazy week at the Mikels!! I took Noelle back to the Neurologist early this week. In all honesty, it was a complete waste of time. He spent less than 5 minutes with us and the only question he asked was if Noelle was having seizures. He said nothing about the MRI or anything like that. He just said that we would follow up in 6 months. Whatever….I guess that is one less thing that we have to do and leaves more play time!

Hopefully, her shoes and braces will be in next week. In addition, the physical therapist thinks that the shoes and braces will help drastically and that she will be taking steps soon. So, we got an order for a walker with a portable oxygen device attached. I’m so excited about this. This will allow Noelle to learn how to walk without having to have the wires behind her. Super news!

Andon and I were able to get out this week and get all of his soccer supplies. He was so excited and even got all dressed up in his gear for a picture (he is showing you his muscles). I can’t wait for that to start.

I am so touched and grateful for Ms. Ada (my mom says that her friends call her AJ). She is my grandmother’s high school friend and we all have considered her part of the family forever! She has really taken on a huge roll in raising money for Team Go Noelle Go and I’m so thankful for her. Ada has had Noelle on her church prayer list since the day she was born. I know all of the thoughts and prayers helped Noelle immensely during her hardest times. We even got a care package today for the kids including great handmade teddy bears made from some of the wonderful church ladies and a counting book for Andon. They were both so excited!! Ada, I am sure you are reading this… THANK YOU! There are no words to thank you for all of the hard work you are doing for such an amazing cause. Granny, you sure do have awesome friends! I know my mom and dad have been helping a lot too! I love you all! There is a button that you can click on the blog homepage that will link you directly to my March for Babies homepage. This button will allow you to donate directly online. Or you can always send me a check made out to the March of Dimes. If you need our address, please email me at snrmikels@gmail.com .We are still so far from our goal, but people like Ada get us closer and closer everyday!!! I have a bunch of flyers…if you would like to put one up at your office, school, or church….please let me know! I want to spread the word about prematurity so that people know that it can happen to any of us!! I had amazing prenatal care…and unfortunately…it didn’t matter. There is no explanation as to why Noelle came so early…but she will have to deal with all of the side effects of prematurity for the rest of her life.

Yesterday, Kathy from Ross’ and my dad’s work donated a ton of toys to us!! The kids must think it is Christmas around here! They were so excited and Andon has been playing all day with the cool horses and barn sets. We even got our first “girl” toys for Noelle. We really have not bought her a whole lot because we had Andon’s baby toys. It is super exciting to see girl toys in the house. I must confess…I was so excited about having My Little Ponies around again….I might have to fight Noelle to play with them! :)

Speaking of my little peanut….Noelle has entered a phase (like typical toddlers do) of not wanting to go to bed at night regardless of how tired she is. She got so ticked off on Wednesday night that she pulled the cannula and brand new tape off of her face. I went up and replaced it and didn’t think a whole lot about it. Yesterday morning, I noticed that she had red bumps on her face and I just figured she had torn some skin off with the tape. This morning, it was terrible. The bumps had turned into welts and there was an abundance of puss pockets underneath the clear tape (eww…I know). I pulled the tape off and it smelled terrible. So, I ran her into the pediatrician and he diagnosed her with a pretty bad bacterial infection on her face. He was glad that we came in today…because if it had waited the weekend…it probably would have been bad for her. Now she has two more medicines to add to her list. You can kind of see the bumps in the picture with the teddy bear…but it looks much worse in person. Now the tricky part begins…we can’t tape her face for a while. So, we are doing some pretty creative things to keep her oxygen on. I think it will be an interesting weekend.

Nonetheless, we are so blessed to be on this journey with precious kids…and have such wonderful family and friends to support us! I didn’t realize how long this post turned out to be!! I’ll update everyone with pictures when the shoes and walker comes in!! I’m so excited! Happy Friday!!

Xoxo,

Stacie :)