i remember when that sounded so old to me. um, it still does to be honest.

we were kind of busy moving piper jane (aka thunder stealer) to blythedale, so we didn't have a lot of time to do much. we wound up watching breakfast at tiffany's in the late afternoon and eating veggie burgers. we'll do the real celebrating tomorrow. if it doesn't snow too much.

i wanted jake to take some pictures of me while i'm still young. it was really a beautiful day yesterday, so we had fun and didn't miss our coats too much for the 10 minute outing.

we are back at blythedale.

piper jane is in her old bed. with her old roommates and her old nurses. exhale...

january was crazy. it was eventful, the bad kind. we are all exhausted (see pic). but all i can think of is how lucky we are. i held piper jane on monday for the first time in three weeks. i fought the tears, but couldn't for very long because she knew who i was. it's always a worry when she gets so sick, we never know what kind of permanent damage there could be. we are so thankful that her little body has healed so remarkably despite the countless setbacks she has faced.

on wednesday morning i walked in and she smiled at me. the goofy, crooked smile that i missed so much. on thursday i clapped her hands together and she kept clapping after i was done and laughed at herself. how does she remember clapping after being asleep for two weeks and sedated for a month? how does she remember us? i'm amazed.

pippy has her days and nights mixed up. she took a one hour nap last night but otherwise played until the sun came up. i was with her for four hours today and she slept the whole time. she has no idea i was even there, ha. i took advantage by snuggling and rocking her, and then clipping her witch finger nails, finally.

hi! pip is doing much better, so we hear. we are still too sick to go to the hospital. how is that for ironic? what matters is, piper is finally awake! <-and p***ed off about it. although she isn't completely stable with her vitals and such, she is well enough to start the weening process. her vent settings have been so high and her medication cocktail is likely one of the highest ever. so, hooray for lowering them. i spoke with her doctor at blythedale today, hooray for returning! we are doing all we can to avoid the same song and dance of blythedale-wannaque-picu, so hopefully we can scare people into giving us our way. i'm really just thrilled to be going back to blythedale, even though it will likely be at least a few more weeks....and we will be going to the yellow unit. yep, green unit is for two year olds and under. she only sneaked her way in staying in green because she was re-admitted a few weeks before her 2nd birthday. so we will have new nurses that we dont know! kind of sad. really, can't complain though. this pipture is from about 3 days before piper got sick. pretty crazy that it was such a good day. i would have never believed the battle we were in for that week.then these piptures are just some old ones i came across from june 2008. i can't believe how little she is! this was just after her 1st birthday! she couldn't even sit up by herself yet and she is wearing a newborn romper. so nuts. also, those are katie-kate's fat feet in the background. this was their first cousin meeting.

she really was like a little baby in my arms. now she is so big! even though it takes much longer than the average kid, it still seems to fly by. wow....that's what i say to all that piper, jake and i have been through together.

it's been two months since we've been home from brazil and i never finished writing about our trip. i kind of forgot until a friend said "you never blobbed ipanema''. it got me really excited to do it. but mostly, i adore when people refer to this as my "blob". it tickles me every time. i've never dreamed of calling it anything else, and i love that my friends oblige.

if you remember that far back, we weren't happy to leave buzios. we loved it there so much and were missing piper like crazy, so we weren't looking forward to returning to rio for the last 3 days. it worked out perfectly that we ended our vacation in ipanema, because it's much less touristy and more low key, which was what we needed. i mean, compared to copa...the food is better, the service is better, the beaches are less poluted (but equally crowded) and the area is just more catered to the locals.

the day was hot as sin. we looked at a map and realized we were less than a mile from this big reservoir in rio. known as the central park of rio. it is 5 miles around, so we rented bikes, made a few loops and got some sucos de maracuja, or maybe it was guarana. here i am cooling off in the misters. i loved these signs. the trash all weepy for not being thrown in the proper receptacle.

after that park (if i hadn't procrastinated so long, i might have remembered the name) we walked to the botanical gardens. the gardens were pretty empty, maybe because of the scorching temps, but otherwise i can't begin to guess why everyone in rio doesn't go every day. the gardens are unbelievable. completely. everything was so gigantic. sometimes i had to touch stuff to make sure it was real. i felt like a tiny garden fairy flickering about.

jake took all of these pictures if you can't tell. they are all pretty amazing.

be glad that you can't see my face in this one. because i'm looking at a big, fat, scaley and crusty lizard. it was huge. we ran down to get a closer look and he waddled off into some bushes.

the shade hardly helped. our water was bathtub temperature in 15 minutes.

i have no idea what these pillar things are, but there were tons of them. in fact, the picture of jardim botanico that i saw in my Wallpaper travel book had these and that was what sold us on wanting to check it out. they had aged in such a cool way. i love these pictures so much. if i were an artist or something, these pillars would have inspired me to create something amazing and worth millions. just trust me on that.

stunning. i can't believe this is a real place. i remember not being able to tear myself away from this vivid greenery and a giant white bird flew right towards me. it was an amazing sight. mostly because the bird decided at the last second not to poop on us.

the gardens have different sections with international themes. i loved the japanese section. but instead of feeling like a fairy, i felt like a giant person. in case you were wondering, i'm much more of a fairy type, i have never really cared for being scary and stompy.

my poor little pip. no one is sure what is going on, but not only is she not getting better, but she got a little worse the last few days. her chest x-rays are continuing to be foggy with lots of lingering infection. 10 days of antibiotics and about a dozen other medications and still nothing. i think the doctors are as frustrated as we are. when you're working with a child who the medical history she has, it makes things really complicated. pippy likes to keep them on their toes by giving them all kinds of challenges.

i like that pippy isn't puffy like she was last week. she looks like her pretty self again, even though she is still sleeping most of the time. they have tried a few times to take her off the paralytic, which hasn't worked, but i was glad to snap these two photos of her cute legs crossed during the off-the-paralytic time. she sits like this often when she is not sick, so lady-like.

dont mind her bloody art-line. try to focus your attention on her adorable e.t. phone home toe.

i've been going through a little bit. and so has a very dear friend of mine. she came to see me for a bang trim (my first day back at work since jury duty/pip's sickies) and lunch. she complimented me on my handbag, and i replied with "this bag makes me happy. material things really do matter." we laughed a lot, because it was of course a joke. but then, seriously, we pondered for a second and agreed that it did feel good to buy yourself something that costs too much once in a while. even if it means no vacations ever again. and no college for your first two kids. and also it was my christmas present so lay off me.

this might be the most vein thing i've ever said, but my bag really makes me feel pretty. it's soft and fancy and i swear, my children's children will inherit it. and they will love it like i do (or else no college for them either). jake doesn't believe me, but he's wrong. very wrong. this is all about legacy, ok? plus, when would i ever have gotten such a great deal on an icon veneta again? never, right? you all agree, once in a lifetime, right? please? am i officially a tool for writing a whole post about my love for a handbag and how it gets me through tough times?

are tools only boys?

carefree days.

outdoor activities.

non-stressed husband.

and mostly for my birdie to feel better, she is still asleep. we are really missing her so much. it seems strange considering the insane amount of time we have spent at her side. i can't wait to hold her and play with her. i'm aching for the enormous, goofy smile that she earned by belonging to me (and i earned from my dad). i miss her pipsqueaks and tapping. but again, mostly that smile. my pretty pip, hurry up so we can play again soon.

we are out of real danger. she is starting to recover. it's just taking way too long.

it's ironic that i was telling my friend about the worst weekend of my life, just 3 nights ago. January 17th, 2008 was the night that Pip's heart rate slowly dropped lower and lower, until it was in the single digits as a result of a serious bacterial infection. we held our breaths and cried. the doctor shook his head and told us it was likely the end for her. after sitting around 6 for a about a minute, her heart rate started to slowly slowly climb back up. it felt like a miracle. i could tell the doctor was shocked to see us on his next shift two days later.

i think about that night sometimes. all the machines she was hooked up to, all the different lines she had in, all the blood transfusions, the oscillating ventilator, the medically induced coma and how she was so swollen that they had to goop jelly on her eyes because her lids couldn't shut all the way. she had stretch marks from all the fluid, she looked nothing like piper jane.

almost 2 years to the date later, we're there again. sorry if that was a long round-about way of it. this sucks. she is just short of that sick, which is a good thing, but she is very sick. it started on wednesday night when we met her in the emergency room at st. joseph's, i couldn't believe when the doctor told me she had almost had a cardiac arrest. the last two or three times she has been to the ER or PICU, it has been for moderate respiratory distress. i was kind of just expecting to see her breathing hard and a little upset. i couldn't believe she had been constantly ambu bagged since her arrival. total denial. around noon she was transferred to columbia. i rode in the front of the ambulance since the fellow was in the back with pip and the other paramedic (let me mention that we know these paramedics by name, they know piper like they know the back of their hands. this was her 17th ambulance ride) so i wasn't able to see what was going on. in my head i kept thinking that things are getting better already because we are going to columbia and it is one of the best children's hospitals in the nation. then the lights came on. then the siren came on. then we were going 90. have you ever gone 90 across the gw bridge? it's impossible (literally), unless you are in an ambulance.

this is getting long. it's good to write it all down, because i tend to get flustered and upset on the phone when i try to explain the situation. also, jake is still trying to get some sleep since we came home so late, and this keeps me busy.

we sat in the waiting area while they worked on her for about 5 hours. we were both not really sure what was going on. her heart rate started to drop, and they were having difficulty in trying to control it. the wound up doing and emergency central line, that goes directly to her heart, which helps a lot. she in on nitric, but as of this morning they have been able to ween that down by half (good sign). also, through the night they were able to take her off her blood pressure medicine. she got a blood transfusion last night because her count was low. her white blood cell was 3 times the normal amount because she is fighting pneumonia. she is on a paralytic drip to keep her still. so, she is medically comatose like she has been before. it's hard to see her just laying there, but compared to the morning when she was awake and crying out, i choose this. they had to tie her arms down and she couldn't understand why. she would just pull and pull at them trying to get them free. then she would look at me confused why i wasn't helping her. the hardest thing personally about these episodes is feeling helpless. i can't make it go away, and i can't make her feel better.


i just keep thinking, i can't believe this was only one week ago. i think i left out a lot of stuff, i'm pretty sure i rambled and proof reading seems too exhausting, so go read jake's blog.

"I'm sick of following my dreams. I'm just going to ask them where they're goin', and hook up with them later" Mitch Hedberg

there you have it.

i had a good day, despite my fears of driving to Wanaque by myself and seeing pippy sick. The nurses have been telling me she is feeling better, but i convinced myself that they were lying to me because they are scared of me. i have been really mean, so i dont blame them really. when i'm concerned about the pip, i really just can't keep my emotions together.

So, when i got there, pippy smiled a massive smile to welcome me. then we played and played. Piper Jane was herself. her spunky, silly, smiley, hyper-piper and throat grabbing self. i could do without the throat grabbing, but a minor con to so many pros. plus my throat is so grabbable.

her feeding tube disconnected and leaked all over my jeans so i went to the bathroom to clean myself off. i kind of felt like i shouldn't have left her like this, but it was so cute to look from the bathroom and see her standing there all alone and curious.

you can tell she is wondering if she is going to get in trouble for being alone. yeah right....pip in trouble.

when my parents were in town, birdie had a complete heyday with my dad's glasses, so i decided i'd wear some. the first thing she did was pull them off and then poke me in the eye immediately with no warning. and then she laughed at herself.

i might frame this one of the big chucks/little chucks. it was an accident that we matched, i was all "pippy, you and mama match!'' and she was like '' squeak squeak". and then she threw her Dora on the floor. She always does that.

Merry Christmas! We hope it's magical!