Nagshead!

We’re here and it feels so good to be on vacation!!  Me & Ryder left around his bedtime last night and arrived right before midnight.  Daddy is on his way now on the motorcycles with Pop-pop and Slick.  Here are some pictures from our first day of Ryder’s very first vacation!!

 

More to come…stay tuned.  And try not to miss us too much :-)

More Weekend Fun (the manly part)!

After Church, the weekend took a quick turn from being “girly” to being extremely MANLY!  First, we met up with Paw-paw for lunch and he bought Ryder a new fire truck!

Then once we got home, Uncle G came over to show Ryder his new dirt bike.  OH wait, let me back up, sometime this week Alan & Gregg bought Ryder all FOUR of these:

So, the newest obsession is bikes and wheelies!  Okay, back to my story, Uncle G shows up driving a real, live dirt bike!  Gregg came inside and showed it to him out the window, and Ryder was instantly excited!  He wanted to see it, touch it, sit on it, and…you guessed it…ride it, of course!  Ryder & Uncle G came back in to plead their case on why this would be a good idea, and me & Daddy were saying “no, no, no”.  About 5 minutes later we’re putting shoes on, getting the camera, and Ryder is hyperventilating because I’m not moving fast enough and he needed to ride that bike ASAP! 

 

 

Uh-Oh, he let go.  Okay, new plan…”hey babe, remember that back pack you used to carry Ryder in??”  I can’t believe I’m going along with this.  “Yup, sure do, I’ll go get it”…

 

 

And off they went.  My boys.  I love them.  And they came back in one piece…in case anyone else was worried, or was that just me?!

Weekend Fun (the girly part)!

This weekend was busy and FUN!  We started it off Friday night by going out to dinner with Jamie, love this girl and SO excited that she’ll be joining the Mommy club in a few months!  We talked non-stop on the way to dinner, during dinner, then through our ice cream stop, and then the whole way home…that was about 4 hours…we never run out of things to say, that’s for sure!  Ryder was our true entertainment though, he makes everything fun!

  

Saturday, Daddy rode to OC for bike week, so me & Ryder went to keep our best buddies Nicki  & Mikayla company!  We went to the fair where Ryder got to see and touch lots of animals, stroll around, try cotton candy for the first time, and get dyed blue by a gigantic snow cone that we shared.  Good memories :)

 

After the fair, we went shopping at Target, got a movie from blockbuster, then went back to Nicki’s where Jen and the boys came over for a pajama party.  We made homemade pizzas, had bath time,  and watched a movie then crashed by about 9pm, we were all exhausted!  We got a good nights sleep and were up and ready for Church Sunday morning :)

 

Thanks for having us over guys!  We had a blast, as always! 

18 Months Old!!

Wowwwww!!!  Ryder is ONE and a HALF today!!!  Can you believe it??  Me either!  I must say though, that I am loving every second of this age.  I love seeing his personality, and hearing him talk, and watching him walk, it amazes me that Alan & I created a life…a life that is now his own person making his own decisions, it’s amazing!

Here’s what’s going on at 18 Months Old:

• Talking, talking, talking!  I’m not even going to name new words that he’s saying because I’m losing track, but believe me it’s a LOT!  His little country boy accent is adorable…deer to Ryder is pronounced “deeyerr”.
• Walking, walking, walking!  All over the place.  People said that would happen once he got the hang of it, and they were right!  He doesn’t stay still long, and he knows it, you can often hear him saying “Go, Go, Go” or “Run, Run, Run” or “Around and Around and Around” because…that’s what he’s doing!
• He is still so sweet, he asks for a “Tiss” and wants you to kiss him and all of his animals.  And he FINALLY said the word love!  I said “Ryder, Mommy looooooves you!” and he said “Lub!” then the next day I said “Ryder do you LUB mommy??” and he thought about it for a second, then shook his head and said “no”.  Thanks buddy!
• This month he has started to tell us “poop” and “peein” when he is going potty, as he becomes more aware we’ll start to introduce the potty, so I guess this is the start of good things to come :)
• He’s staying small, still wearing 12 month clothes, size 4 diaper, and a size 4 shoe.  He’s really good about putting shoes on now and does well walking with or without them.  He gets fitted for his Orthotics next Monday!
• He loves to listen to music! He asks for me to put his CD on every time we get in the car and he has favorite songs and songs that he doesn’t like.  He’ll let me know that he doesn’t like it by saying “noooo” and then I change to the next and he’s happy.  I know which ones he doesn’t like so sometimes I put them on just to see if he’s paying attention.  He always is!
• Speaking of paying attention, not much gets past this guy!  He is very aware of what goes on around him and remembers so much, like where people live and what kind of car they drive, and even something that they said to him or did with him.  He will piece stories together (one word at a time!)
• He’s very sociable and friendly, always saying “hi” and waving, and wanting to play with other kids. 
• His favorite things right now are: Vaseline (i’m serious…he carries it with him everywhere yelling “LEAN!”, takes the top off, gets a tiny bit on his finger then rubs it on his arm!), his fort, Chick, fruit snacks, Pop Pop, keys, and anything that he can ride!

We’ve got big things coming up in the next month…should get answers to ongoing insurance/therapy issues, getting his orthotics, Daddy’s birthday, and Ryder’s very first vacation! 

The Journey to Walking

The area that was most effected by Ryder's stroke was definitely in his motor skills.  He has reached every developmental milestone a little late, but he always reaches them and we are always over joyed when he does!  Now that he's a professional walker, I thought I'd put together a little montage of his journey to show how he got here, and how proud of him we have been every step of the way. 

Make an on-line slide show at www.OneTrueMedia.com

Funny Stuff!

Does it surprise anyone else that my son already knows what the Harley Davidson emblem looks like AND what noise a Harley makes? 

 

 

Tonight, me & Ryder were reading a story before bed out of his Children’s Bible.  The story we were reading was about Jesus going to the desert to pray and the Devil coming there and trying to tempt him. 

 

As I got to this page and read “But Jesus told him to go away…”  Ryder started to shew the picture of the devil saying “Go way fwy! Go way!”  (Thank you Ressa for teaching Ryder how to shew the flies away!)  I couldn’t help but laugh because the artist did make Satan look like a fly that was buzzing around his precious Jesus!   My heart melted for a second as I silently prayed that it will be just as easy for Ryder to get rid of the devil when he is being tempted himself, saying “GO AWAY FLY!  You’re bothering me!”

A Picture of a Stroke

Today we had a parent meeting with Ryder’s Neurologist.  We scheduled this appointment way back on March 26th when we got the news that our son had suffered a stroke in-utero.  It seemed like a really long wait to be able to get some questions answered, but in a way I think God might have delayed this appointment in order to spread some of the “heaviness” out and let us just enjoy Ryder and watch him develop for a while without someone telling us what he may or may not do.  Now we know that Ryder can walk, we hear him talking up a storm, we see him beginning to use his left hand, so all of these serious, scary questions that we would have had back then are completely pushed out of our minds as we watch our miracle baby defeat odds right before our eyes.  That still left us with a lot of questions, and I’ll share some of the answers we got:

What part of the brain did the stroke occur in and what does that section control?

Ryder’s stroke happened along the right lateral ventricle effecting the white matter, which is not the part that houses each of your functions.  Because of the location, it is not a function that will be affected, but instead it is the signals that the functions are sending to his left side asking it to react properly.  Since there are millions of little wires making all of these connections, it’s impossible to say exactly which ones have been damaged and which ones will make new pathways.

When did the stroke occur?  And why?

It is estimated that the stroke occurred somewhere between 24-30 weeks gestation because A) there is a cyst around the stroke location which would only happen in utero when the brain is still forming, otherwise it would be surrounded by scar tissue, and B) he was thriving when he was born and never went through an extremely “sickly” period, which would have happened if the stroke had occurred during or after birth.  There is no answer for why it happened.

Is Ryder at risk to have another stroke?  And what about any future babies that we might have?

NO and NO!  Shewww. 

Could his eyesight have been affected?  Sometimes we notice his right eye drifting while his left eye stays focused.

This is called Strabismus and it is actually common in many children, even those who aren’t stroke survivors.  It is best to wait and see if it corrects itself by age 2.  If not, follow up with a Developmental Ophthalmologist will be needed.  Your brain processes your eyesight directly behind your eye which is not near the stroke location, so it is not directly related to the stroke, but could have happened in some indirect way which wouldn’t show on the MRI.

So what is his diagnosis?  Sometimes we hear Hemiplegia, sometimes Hemiparesis, and sometimes (gasp!) Cerebral Palsy.

Cerebral Palsy is a term, not a diagnosis, referring to a motor development problem caused by damage to the central nervous system.  So by that definition the term cerebral palsy could be used to define the damage caused to Ryder’s brain that has left him with some motor impairments.  Hemiplegia is complete paralysis and Hemiparesis is partial paralysis or weakness, so his correct diagnosis is Left Hemiparesis.

Your outlook on the situation?

If someone were going to have a stroke, the best time to have it is in utero, the best place to have it is in the white matter, and the best chance to recover from it is as a child.  So everything is working in his favor but no one can say how much of a recovery he will make because the brain is an extremely complex thing…and everyone is different.  He most likely will not recover all of the sensation in his left arm, hand and fingers, and his left side will definitely be less coordinated…but whose isn’t?  This happens naturally as one hand dominates and the other becomes weaker.  As he gets older he might be able to tell you little quirks that are different for his left side than right, but most things he won’t notice because it will have been normal for things to feel that way his entire life.

So, before I show you a picture of Ryder’s stroke, is this not the most adorable brain you have ever seen?

Was that weird?  Okay sorry, I couldn’t help it, I think it’s cute!  Onto the real stuff, below is a picture of Ryder’s stroke.  The right side of the picture is normal, the left side shows the damage that was done.  It looks bad, but the Neurologist assured us that if it had spread and reached the outer part (the gray matter) it would have been devastating.

 

So there you have it, a picture of a stroke…but let me show you what a stroke looks like to us:

We look into these baby blue eyes and see a heart of gold, a determined spirit, and a child who has a genuine love for life.  He might keep his fist clenched, and he might end up walking with a limp, but whatever happens, he is a survivor.  And he is a true gift that could have only come from God above.