Throwback Thursday: Hip Dysplasia

I'm linking up with Jessica at The Mom Creative again this week for #TBTStories. Since we are headed to the hospital today for a follow up from my daughter's surgery to correct her hip dysplasia, I thought I would share a picture from her first open reduction back in Aug 2010.

Caitlyn was diagnosed with hip dysplasia at her 4 month appointment. I think she was about 5 months old when we finally got to meet with the pediatric orthopedic doctor. The initial step in treatment was to put her in a Pavlick harness, which has a great success rate when DDH (developmental dysplasia of the hip) is diagnosed early. Since she was on the older range of age for it to be successful, it was not.

Since the Pavlick harness was not successful, Caitlyn was scheduled to have a closed reduction in August of 2010. She was scheduled to be in a spica cast for 12 weeks but when she had an MRI done the following day, her hip had already slid out of joint so they removed the cast and she was scheduled for the open reduction a couple of weeks later. The picture was taken in the hospital after her open reduction. The one benefit of the doctor actually having to go in was that it reduced her time in the cast to six weeks.

After the cast, she was in a brace for months. After a couple months, she was able to wear the brace for nights and naps only. At this point I don't remember the whole time frame. However, her hip was still not exactly where it needed to be, so she was scheduled for a femoral osteotomy in February 2012. Thankfully that procedure did not require casting, just some down time to heal. Last May she had a follow up surgery to remove the plate that had been put in her leg. When we followed up in December, her external exams looked great but her x-rays were still showing that her hip was out of place. So she has just had her second open reduction as well as a pelvic osteotomy and another femoral osteotomy on June 9th and is in a spica cast once again. Thankfully we have had the same orthopedic surgeon for all of her procedures, which has been such a blessing. As a bonus, here is my sweet girl in her spica cast currently ... rocking the purple cast this time. She is my trooper and anyone who has known her would not suspect a thing since when she is not in the cast she is rough and tumble, loving to climb trees, run, dance and play.

Throwback Thursday: Father's Day Edition

In honor of Father's Day, I thought I would post a picture of my sister and I with our dad for Throwback Thursday stories with The Mom Creative.

This picture was taken in January 1985. Since my parents are currently here, I could ask the location of the picture. It was taken at our first home in Charleston, SC about a month after my sister was born, so it is probably one of the first pictures of the three of us. I hope you enjoy :)

Throwback Thursday Stories: Engagement

Once again, I am joining in Throwback Thursday Stories, hosted by Jessica at The Mom Creative. Yesterday marked the 9 year anniversary of my engagement to my husband. So I thought I would share the first picture we took after it happened.

So the story behind the picture: we were spending the day in New York City on our way home from a wedding in Massachusetts (one of my husband's roommates from college). We had gotten tickets to see Wicked on Broadway. We decided to go on a carriage ride through Central Park (this was of course after we walked around the entire park since we thought there would be another place to catch a carriage other than just in the front). My husband surprised me when he asked on the carriage ride. I had known that it was coming at some point, and somewhat expected it later that summer when we were scheduled to go on a trip to the British Isles.

My sister is in the picture because she happened to also be in New York that weekend with friends. We met up with her shortly afterwards and it took her about 5 to 10 minutes to notice the ring. I was on the phone with my mom when she walked up, so kept the phone in my right hand so that my mom could hear my sister's reaction. After this picture, we went out to dinner, and changed (in some random store) before going to see Wicked (for the first time). I'm so blessed to have this man in my life. Thanks for stopping by.

Throwback Thursday Stories: Graduation

Today you get two throwback pictures for the price of one :). One is from 9 years ago and the other is from 33 years ago.

So the story behind the photos: I am a second generation graduate from the United States Naval Academy. What I find amazing about these photos is that they took place 24 years apart (to the day) and that my father shook hands with and received his diploma from then Vice-President George H. W. Bush and I had the opportunity to shake hands with and receive my diploma from his son, President George W. Bush. The president, vice-president and Secretary of State rotate between the three service academies' graduations each year so not every class will have the President at their graduation.

I just remember that I had to walk across the entire stage to receive my diploma and commission from the President. Oh - a little more to the story behind the actual picture ... the official photographers were in a really terrible location to get good photos of the first 100 or so graduates. My husband found this and another photo taken by some of the yearbook photographers, so that I would have a much better photo of the occasion.

I can't believe that nine years has passed since I walked across that stage. We'll see if there are any future generations that will follow in our footsteps.

Throwback Thursday Stories

It's been a few weeks since I participated since Thursdays always seem to sneak up on me. I thought it would be appropriate to share a more recent Throwback Picture ... just going back a couple days less than a year to when my son was born since his birthday is tomorrow.

This is one of my favorite pictures of my daughter and husband with my son, James. This was the second day we were in the hospital and Caitlyn had fallen in love with her baby brother. James was about a week early, but waited for his daddy to get home from a close to two month underway to make his appearance (not long after his daddy returned). He arrived much quicker than his sister did ... about 5 hours after we arrived at the hospital. James was just eager to join the family :)

Happy Birthday (one day early) to my sweet James.

Throwback Thursday Stories: Wedding in Annapolis

It has been a couple of years since I posted. There has definitely been a lot of changes around here and the blog may take a new direction, should I become more active again. However, I did want to link up with Jessica at The Mom Creative with her new link up for Throwback Thursday Stories (#TBTStories).

Since our 8 year anniversary is next Tuesday, I decided to share one of our wedding photos for Throwback Thursday.

My husband and I met while we were midshipmen at the Naval Academy. We got married a little less than a year after graduation in April 2006. Since we were both graduates (and neither of us really claimed a hometown), we decided to get married at the Academy chapel in Annapolis. My mom did a lot of the leg work with planning the wedding since I was going to grad school at MIT and my husband was going through the nuke pipeline in Charleston, SC.

This is one of my favorite photos from that day. It was taken just as we finished passing through our sword arch. We are both laughing since we had just gotten the "welcome" tap from the end members of the sword arch (you can see the sword on the right down). For those of you that don't know the tradition, the bride (typically) will get swatted on the behind by the last sword bearer as that sword bear says "Welcome to the Navy (or which ever service)". In our case, since we were both active duty at the time, we both were swatted. My good friend from high school (a year behind us at the Academy), Dave, welcomed me to the submarine force, while Justin was welcomed to the Surface Navy by one of his friends, Rebecca.

I loved the perfect balance of our sword arch - we had 8 people total. There were 4 Marines and 4 Naval Officers as well as 4 females and 4 males (equally distributed between Marines and Navy). It was such a blessing to have them all participate in our wedding. The photo was taken by a good friend of mine from graduate school.

I look forward to sharing many more stories behind the pictures.

Christmas Project

I know that I have been very quiet on this blog. Hopefully I'll have a bit more time to post once in awhile. I haven't been doing a lot of crafting recently but have managed a few things.

So here's my big home made gift for Caitlyn this year and the big craft project that I have been working on:


I decided to make Caitlyn some counting bean bags. I used Chez Beeper Bebe's tutorial for the bean bags. I had originally gotten Sweetwater's Make Life charm pack to make bean bags but decided to use Andover's Maisey fabric instead since Caitlyn absolutely adores "Maisy Big, Maisy Small: A Book of Maisy Opposites" by Lucy Cousins. I had a lot of fun doing the hand embroidery on the numbers.

Here's a closer peek:

I think they turned out well and I can't wait to see Caitlyn's reaction when she opens them tomorrow. I hope you have a very Merry Christmas! May God bless you and your family during this season of remembering when Emmanuel (God with Us) came to earth as a baby who arrived in the little town of Bethlehem.