Emily and Lily Share...

Lily and I have recently done activities that Emily did last year, so I thought I'd make a post about them. Last summer we went to the Houston Children's museum, and the other day Lily and I went to the New Braunfels Children's Museum.

Emily and Robby catching a fish.
Lily liked playing with the cooler and touching the ice.

Here's something they have in common. Neither one likes hats!

Emily and I last summer when I was pregnant with Lily.

Em's trying to eat her thumb, and Lily's trying to eat her book. Neither one are interested in taking a picture with their mom.

We went to the zoo this week. Lily's mad in this picture that I won't let her crawl around.

We went with both girls in October.

Emily was able to go horseback riding for therapy. She really enjoyed it.

Lily got to ride a pony on Saturday. She wasn't sure what to think, but she did like petting him.

Emily's Birthday

We were able to start some nice family traditions for Emily's birthday yesterday. I made breakfast tacos in the morning, because Emily loved scrambled eggs and salsa, but after making them I decided next year I'll honor her better by buying them at Taco Cabana! The day went as well as it could be, I think. It was hard, but it was nice to remember all of the fun times we had with Emily. I looked through all of our old pictures and we watched a video from when Emily was one. We showed Lily how much Emily liked to roll. Lily liked it too! I bought a Caldacott award winning picture book for Lily, because now Emily can enjoy the pictures with us. (Emily was blind-she could see some colors but not pictures).

It looks like Lily is being so attentive, but really this is the only page she looked at before she decided she was done!

We decided to release balloons for Emily's birthday, and then I remembered that for Christmas I had given Emily the book "Emily's Balloon." I had searched and searched for a book with Emily's name that I could give her for Christmas, and this one was perfect because it was about a little girl who had a yellow balloon, and yellow is the one color we knew Em could see. I read Emily the book almost every night from Christmas until she passed away in January. So we read it last night before we released the yellow balloons.

Lily was kind of tired, and didn't really get the balloon release until the last one, which she actually watched float all the way up. This one was the 2nd, and she didn't get it yet!

We gave Lily a ride for the first time in Emily's wheelchair. She wasn't sure what to think of it!

Daddy showing Lily how to roll. She thought it was quite fun!

This has nothing to do with Em's birthday, but it was very funny. Lily had pulled this car out from it's parking spot and was hitting it, so I put her in it to give her a ride. Any time that I would stop moving she would do this fake cry. It made me laugh, and I had to get a picture!

We went to a friend's house over the weekend for dinner and Lily had strawberries and avacado in a little chewer thing that she can gum to death. She was quite content and would cry any time she was out of strawberries. She later had a bath! And amazingly, the dress did get clean.

We Miss Emily!

Tomorrow will be 6 months from when Em passed away, and Tueday is Emily's 5th birthday. It's a rough few days. I thought I'd put some pictures on from when Emily was born. I don't like thinking about that time too much, because it was really, really hard.

Emily was born full term at 5 pounds, 8 ounces. We didn't know anything was wrong, but I had a gut feeling something was when I was pregant. Em had a hard time breathing, and we shortly discovered that she had heart defects. We also had a nasty doctor who told us all the things Emily might never be able to do. We've always said that we need to sent a picture of Emily to her. She was at Utah Valley in Provo in the NICU, and at 10 days old they sent her to Primary Children's Hospital in Utah and she ended up on a ventillator for 3 weeks. We were told there that she had a stroke and would most likely never be able to come off the ventillator. Oh, how she proved them wrong! And that's what she spent her life doing. She came home from the hospital after 7 1/2 weeks, on September 12. She was on oxygen and had a NG tube in her nose because she had a hard time drinking. I discovered that if I bounced her and rocked her back and forth all at the same time that she was able to drink, and we were able to get rid of the NG tube after she had been home a month.

Emily came off oxygen at 5 months. She just needed less and less, until eventually she didn't need it anymore.

This is one of the first pictures of Emily. She's I think 3 days old in this picture. It's her first outfit.

Emily's first bath. She was very content!

I love this one. She was just so cute and tiny!

This was when Em was 9 days old-the day before she ended up in Salt Lake. She was a daddy's girl from day one.

This was one of the top 5 happiest days of my life-the day she came off the ventillator. She's wearing bipap, which looks worse than it is! It was the day that we knew she was going to make it. I can't even describe that feeling. My sister said it was the first time she saw me smile in a month. Mom went home this day, but I was so glad she got hold Emily before she left.

This one below is our first happy family picture. Emily was getting close to coming home, and Robby and I went up to see her before going to a BYU-Norte Dame football game. We weren't allowed to stay at the hospital, so we would go home around 5:00 every day and come back in the morning.

Emily really seemed to like this bunny. It was so great to see her using her eyes!

This was the day we brought her home. We posed for a picture to put on the NICU wall. I used to see all the pictures on the wall of the babies who got to go home and hated it, because I knew that some babies didn't get to go home.

This was right after we got home from the hospital. Janica came over with Ryan and Kacey. Kacey's taking the picture.

This was Em's first bath. It was tricky to do with all the chords, let me tell you!

Robby's mom came and helped the week Em came home from the hospital. Emily looks more like Grammy than anyone else, which is why she and Lily look alike-they both take after Robby's mom.

This was our first Sunday home from the hospital. We didn't take Emily to church, but I really wanted to dress her up! This dress was mine, and Lily wore it on her first Sunday, too.

Emily checking out her crib, her first day home.

Lily's Tricks

This month is kind of a tough one. On the 20th it will be 6 months from when Emily died, and the 21st is Emily's 5th birthday. She was due on my birthday, but I was induced the day before. We've thought of some things that we'll do for Em's birthday-I want to make it a day of doing things that Emily liked to do. I went and visited her teacher today, who taught her for 2 years, and when I told her some of the things we thought of, like eating scrambled eggs and salsa (breakfast tacos) and she said, "Well, you have to roll!" I just laughed, because she's right-that was what Emily loved to do more than anything else-roll back and forth and back and forth as fast as she could. So I think we'll have to show Lily how much fun rolling is on Emily's birthday. Too bad we don't live by a nice, grassy hill like they have in Washington!

Lily's been doing great, though today she only took one 1 hour nap-what's up with that? She pulls herself up on everything and has just started to figure out how to walk along things the last few days. Some of her favorite places in the house are the bathrooms-she loves to pull herself up and look into the bathtub, and Emily's bed. I change her on it, and as soon as she can get away from me she pulls herself up along the windowsill and walks down to the foot of the bed.

Lily loves to stick her tongue out. She's heading over to the books to pull them all out.

Lily crawls under anything she can. This is one of her favorite spots to crawl under and then pull herself up on.

If you click on this picture to enlarge it, you can really see her two bottom (and only) teeth.

This is another new Lily trick-carrying things around in her mouth. It's pretty funny to watch.

Here's the smile!

Lily loves to bang on Robby's drums. She also drums on EVERYTHING she pulls herself up on.