Happy Birthday & Yay Hope!

Ladybug Cookies

Hope trying some of the frosting from her birthday cookies

The HAPPY Birthday girl!

Daddy, get this off my head!

Celebrating Christmas with Grandpa & Grandma Holtz

Hanging out with Grandpa & Grandma Holtz

Opening her new Christmas tree ornament with Grandma

Snuggling with Grandma

Hope has been very busy these past few weeks.  She celebrated her very big 2nd birthday!!  She spent most of her birthday sleeping as she has been cutting an awful lot of teeth lately.  (And how many birthday girls wouldn't want to spend a wintery birthday snuggled warmly in their bed?)

She celebrated her birthday a little bit early with Grandma and Grandpa Holtz.  They spent a week visiting with her and she just ate up all of the attention!  She got to play and snuggle and celebrate both her birthday and Christmas early with them.  She doesn't think she's the least bit spoiled though.

On the day of her birthday she celebrated with Mommy, Daddy and Grandma and Grandpa Robinson.  She opened lots of presents and nibbled on some frosting from her ladybug birthday cookies.

On a medical note, we went to U of M on Wednesday to meet with a new pulmonologist.  We had gotten quite frustrated with the pulmonology office in Grand Rapids.  We were hoping that the doctors at U of M would agree with us that Hope was ready to be closer to getting off of the ventilator but they blew even us away.  They were surprised to see how high her settings were and they immediately lowered them.  They even took Hope off of the ventilator briefly to see how she would do - Daddy and Mommy were speechless! - Hope did great!  Starting right away we are going to start "sprinting" Hope.  This means giving her periods of time where she will do more of the work of breathing on her own - kind of like training for a marathon in little runs.  Right now the ventilator makes sure that she breathes 16 times each minute.  If she doesn't it will kick in and give her a breath.  Her first "sprints" will be to turn that feature off and make Hope do all of the breathing on her own.  She is doing this twice a day for two hours at a time (and doing fabulouslly with it!!).  Each week we will add an hour to each of the time blocks until she is doing all the breathing for herself.  Once she is doing that we will start "sprinting" her by actually disconnecting her from the ventilator for period of time.  We are so happy and excited to have this plan in place!! 

HAPPY BIRTHDAY & YAY HOPE!!