Lily meets a bunny

Our friend Caryn takes awesome photos!

Things are great in the Owen House. We apologize for the lack of blog updates lately. No excuses, we have just been lazy i guess. This should pretty much take care of the past 3 months. Lily is an eating machine and is getting so big. She is doing so well, and is really looking forward to Christmas. We got to go see Santa today and Lily loved him. Please enjoy the pictures. Merry christmas to you, and have a happy new year.

The Owen's


(as always, double click on the picture to expand)

Doc Appointment

Today Lily had her first cardiologist appointment since her surgery. Dr. Nicholas was very pleased with how everything has gone. He said he is very happy about her weight gain and how she looks. we go back in 3 months and from there we will gauge how often we need to return for cardiologist appt.'s. Lily goes back to daycare tomorrow and is really looking forward to playing with her friends again. She loves daycare and has shown tremendous progress both socially and physically. She is curious about so many things and is learning from the other children.

Thats it for now, I am tired after a long day in Northern Illinois. Hopefully I will be back at home soon to be with the fam.

Our new baby

I am not sure if there was a switch at the hospital or what but we have a new baby. We're still calling her Lily, but she resembles nothing of our former child except they look a lot alike. The new Lily has gained over a lb since right before the surgery. She eats like Kobayashi and she drinks like a fish. Tara and I have strapped shoes on her a lot lately and she is really doing a heck of a job standing on her own. The biggest difference we notice is that her endurance has increased 2-fold. Depending on who you ask this is not always a good thing...haha. Especially in the middle of the night.

You could say life has returned to normal here at the Owen house. Fall is upon us and with the Park being so close we take lots of walks. Lily and Dad went to the zoo last week and had a picnic out at the lake. Lily loved the Tortoises. Many times they would get into staring contests that would last for minutes. I think the Tortoises met their match.

Monday we go to the cardiologist to get a final checkup. Keep your fingers crossed that we will get taken off our medicines.

More updates after monday...

we r at home!

We are so glad to be back you can't imagine. We got into the car and Lily instantly started smiling. She was so happy to see her car seat. She slept the entire ride back from STL. The childresn hospital is nice, but we have no intention on going back anytime soon. Thank you everyone for your thoughts, gifts, prayers, and well wishes.

Best news yet...

We are getting out of here! Tomorrow at around 9 am we are headed home. Probably in time to meet the remains of Hurricane Ike. We want to thank everyone for their prayers. we are out 2 days ahead of the proposed schedule.

Tara and I are exhausted and have no concept of time. Lily is pretty re-arranged as well, nights are days and visa versa. hopefully it won't take a real long time to re-adjust.

We can't wait for the 4 of us to be sitting in the living room of our home again. (4 including Allie-Thanks grandma and Grandpa Owen and Uncle Ross for watching Allie while we were gone)

We ask that people hold off on visiting for a little while. We understand you want to see Lily, but she is still recovering and adjusting and her feeding schedule and most importantly her exposure to germs or lack there of is paramount. We promise in time everyone will get their fill of Lil.

Thanks again!

****when we get home I will upload all the pics we have been taking since her surgery.

She's Back....Almost

Today Lily had a big morning. First, Tara stayed with her last night. She decided to stay up late and slept for about two hours. So at 12:30 AM, she wanted to play. They were up about 1.5 hours and then she went back to sleep. She then woke up at 3:30. Our nurse Jenny put her in the wagon and she sat out with the night nurses while Tara got some sleep. She was scheduled for a blood draw, echocardiogram, EKG and chest xray. Those went better than they did on Tuesday. We changed her dressing for her incision and gave her the medicine (of the hour). Right now, her and Jared are sleeping. Later today, we get the results of the tests and if they are good we go home tomorrow! Jared said that we will be travelng in some nasty weather-of course when we probably will be traveling home with a post heart surgery 15 month old. Should be fun!!
She is sitting up in bed now palying with toys. She is eating and today on the xray table she rolled onto her belly. She wasn't quite sure about that after she did it though. Things are progressing better than we thought. Today we are going to try to make her nap early and give her a sponge bath. Her hair finally has most of the tangles out but lots of medicine in it, making it a sticky mess. Hopefully, this will help her sleep better tonight to rest up for her arrival home!