Happy New Year!

The day after Christmas we went to Pocatello to celebrate Christmas with Mike's family. Ryleigh received some nice gifts from Grammy and Grandpa Freeman. She also got some early birthday gifts from Angie's family (mike's sister), Shawna's family (one of Mike's other sisters), and Grammy and Grandpa. She enjoyed playing with the ribbon from the gifts for a little while.
While we were in Pocatello we were able to attend the baptism of one of Angie and Ryan's daughters. During the baptism Ryleigh took a quick catnap.
One of the gifts Ryleigh received is this beautiful poncho and matching hat. It was made by a friend of Mike's mom. I love it!! I just wish Ryleigh would keep the hat on instead of trying to eat it :)
Ryleigh is only nine days away from her first birthday!! She has made so much progress in the past couple of weeks. She started to clap her own hands together in the past two days (usually she would slap our hand or face or the side of her bottle), she army crawls all over the place, she loves to stand up with a little bit of help, lately she has been holding onto the metal frame from our kitchen table and working her way around it, she's starting to get the hang of chewing her food, and she is a little chatter box! It has been a wonderful year and we wish you all a happy new year :)

Ryleigh's First Christmas!!

Good times!

The first picture is Ryleigh laying on a bed of nails at the science museum! (She wasn't a big fan of that.) The other picture is from the science museum also. The platform with the paper on it swings back and forth and the arm that holds the marker stays where it is and it makes a cool design.
The last group of pictures are from a trip to Rexburg, Idaho at the beginning of November. My older sister Amy had to train some employees at the Best Western there and she needed to bring the kids, so I went over to baby-sit. I was a little worried at first but the kids found ways to stay busy!
The first Rexburg picture is of us enjoying dinner at the local pizza place, Craigo's-I just had to have one of their pizza bombs.
The girls loved putting on the shower caps and pretending to be lunch ladies. In the picture Lexi is "calling" the second grade down over the loud speaker to eat!
The kids spent a lot of time in the indoor pool. It was a lot of fun. Ryleigh even went in the pool a couple of times.
The last picture is the Rexburg temple. It is so big and beautiful.

Ryleigh does not want to cooperate!

Deer in the headlights











Ryleigh's favorite chew toy











Making faces at mom











Sick of getting her picture taken











Blair witch picture

Watch your fingers!

This is a picture of Ryleigh's first two teeth. She started cutting both teeth around August 16th.





If you click on the second picture you can see the four teeth she started cutting the same weekend she had her surgery (September 13th). Needless to say, she had a really rough month! Since her surgery she's been doing really well. In the past couple of days she has started rolling over a lot!

Laughter makes the world go round :)

What a tough girl!

This video was right when we got to the hospital and we were waiting to go downstairs for her surgery. She was in a lot of pain but she was too weak to cry much.


Ryleigh was taking a cat nap while she was waiting to go into the operating room.




This is the day after. If you look closely, you can see some blood on her ID bracelet. Ryleigh decided she no longer wanted her IV and she went ahead and pulled it out!


The white tape on the top of her head is where the incision was made. It is a very small incision and they didn't need to shave any of her hair. She needs to keep the little hair that she has!


This is her surgeon, Dr Cherney :)


Home sweet home!

Our sweet angel

This is how Ryleigh has spent most of the week. On Wednesday Ryleigh could not keeping any of her food down, she couldn't stay awake, and she was just not acting like herself. We called the doctor's office and were able to get her in that day.

The pediatrician, Dr Granwehr, had some of Ryleigh's blood drawn to do some tests. She thought it was probably just a virus, but because Ryleigh was having trouble staying awake, (and with Ryleigh's history), she wanted us to come back Thursday (yesterday).

On Thursday the blood tests came back normal. Ryleigh was only able to eat 2 ounces at a time and she normally has 5 ounces at a time, she was still sleeping a lot, she whimpered a lot, and now she was having a hard time focusing when she would look at us. So Dr Granwehr told us to go have a CT scan done.

The scan revealed that Ryleigh has excess fluid in her brain which is causing the ventricles to swell. Today we spoke with the pediatric neurosurgeon and Ryleigh will have surgery tomorrow. The neurosurgeon, Dr Cherney, studied Ryleigh's CT scan and he said that it looks like there is some tissue that wasn't there before that is now covering the place where the fluid normally drains out of the brain. So the surgery tomorrow is to create a bi-pass for the spinal fluid. If everything goes well with the surgery she will not need a shunt.

Quick note

This is a dog that Ryleigh got from Becky Graham as a gift. The picture on the wall is one that was in Ryleigh's crib while she was in the NICU. A couple of weeks after Ryleigh had been home from the hospital I found the picture in with all her papers and so I hung it on her wall. As soon as she saw the picture she got a really big smile on her face! I told Becky this story and she sent this dog out not really knowing what the picture looked like. Isn't it crazy how similar the spots are?


We finally caught Ryleigh rolling over on camera! She hangs out on her side a lot but doesn't like to actually roll. In this past week she has cut two of her teeth! She has been so great during the whole thing you wouldn't even know they were coming in.

A message from Ryleigh

Hi everyone! This is Ryleigh, I just wanted to share some pictures from my busy week. On August 6th I went to a party for NICU graduates! Some of the kids there were in the NICU over 10 years ago!! While I was there I bumped into Javier, he was my neighbor in the NICU for a little while (and our parents used to go to the same ward). I also saw Dr Snyder, he's the one that resuscitated me, I wouldn't be here without him :) He was really surprised with my progress. This weekend I went swimming for the first time. It was a lot of fun but a little cold. welp, I'm gonna go play.

Sprouting like a weed

The first picture is of Ryleigh when she was 3 1/2 months old. The second picture is of Ryleigh now, 6 1/2 months old! (The chairs have different designs but are by the same company and are the same size.)

Ryleigh is on the move!

The first picture on the top is where I always put Ryleigh in her crib at night. The second picture is the foot of the crib where I found her last week. The third picture is where I found her at the head of the crib this morning! Keep in mind that Ryleigh doesn't crawl, rollover, or even scoot yet. She wiggles her body around enough in her sleep that she moves around the crib!!
The fourth picture is Ryleigh trying to block out the light, and yes, she is asleep. She has never been a fan of bright lights. The last picture is Ryleigh and me first thing this morning :)

July is almost over!!!

I can't believe how fast the year is moving. Ryleigh is growing so fast. She's now 14 lbs and is acting like a completely healthy baby. She turned 6 months old and as you can see, she's beautiful. Mike has 2 weeks of Calculus left and then a 3 week break from school. Kristy is getting really strong. We take walks 2 or 3 times a week and are eating much healthier. Once again, we would like to thank everyone who came to visit and those who offered love, prayer, and support to us in the first few months of the year. We love you all.

Happy 4th of July!!

HAPPY 4TH OF JULY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Summertime!

It has been a busy month for the Freeman family! Mike is taking a "survey of calculus" class this summer. (It's calculus for business majors.) I have been doing a little bit of baby-sitting for our friends. And Ryleigh continues to grow and get smarter each day. A week and a half ago on Saturday the fourteenth Ryleigh and Mike met soccer star Mia Hamm (top picture)!

This past month we celebrated Mike's first Father's Day!! The black and white picture above is a picture of our hands that I printed out Walgreens and using their photo machine I was able to add the words "Together Forever" right on the print. That was one of Mike's gifts and it now sits on his desk at work.

Ryleigh's newest accomplishments have been the occasional laugh and she rolled over once last week!!