James Houston Blackburn is here!!!

James arrived on Wednesday morning. We are so excited that he is here. We are also totally and completely exhausted. We got NO sleep in the hospital and we are so happy to be home. Here are a few pictures. I'll do more posting later...right now, I'm going to try to catch a quick nap before he wakes up again!

If you've called and left messages or sent emails, we've heard them & read them and we really appreciate all your thoughts and prayers and good wishes!

Laundry?

This is where I found Emma this morning, before school. She was actually completely in the hamper, but by the time I got the camera, she was extracting herself from her little hiding place. Note to self...if Emma disappears, check the laundry!

School is going well and Emma seems to be settling in to her new routine. I was able to observe the class on Monday and was quite impressed.

As for me, my doctor's appointments continue to go well. I see the doctor again next Wednesday, and if we don't have the baby before, we are scheduled to be induced on Wednesday, September 10th...less than 2 weeks away!!

This blog will be the place for updates...check back often!!

Almost time!

Well...it won't be long now! We are officially under 3 weeks to go. If we make it that long! We are planning to induce the week of Sept. 8th, but as of my visit yesterday, my amniotic fluid has begun to decrease, so they'll be checking it twice a week (with an ultrasound) starting Monday and if the fluid reaches a certain level (don't ask me what it is), then they'll want to induce right away.

So, here are a few shots of the pretty much ready to go nursery. You'll notice a strange object in the crib...clearly, we have our work cut out for us!! We've caught her in there 3 times now.

First Day of School - K5

As hard as it is to believe, Emma is in kindergarten. Shocking! Where have the last 5 years gone? She is in a "developmental kindergarten" at Buena Vista Elementary. Her class is made up of 11 boys and 1 girl (that would be Emma) - half are in kindergarten and half are in first grade. All have some sort of developmental delays and are not really ready for "regular" kindergarten. Emma's teacher is young and excited, which makes us very happy. The aids are not quite as young and have lots of experience, which also makes us very happy!! It's a perfect mix!

As far as I can tell, Emma enjoyed her first day. School is an extremely stimulating place - lots of noise, lots of people and lots of things that she prefers not to deal with. Her coping mechanism for those situations is to escape them if possible and ignore them if not. She barely said a word to me for an hour after we got home and she is just now starting to act "normal" as opposed to withdrawn. I think it will take a while for her to get acclimated and not feel so overwhelmed by the whole experience. Since this is actually our 3rd full year of school, and our 4th "first day of school" in her young life, I'm not particularly surprised by her reactions and was pretty much prepared for this.

Side note - I just had to chase her out of our bathroom where she had pulled out a drawer and dumped it all over the floor - I think she's back to normal!

We are hoping that she'll be settled into her school routine before James arrives - we'd like to keep the "new" things in her life to one at a time instead of all at once. Of course, we have no control over this, so we'll just see how it turns out!

Baby Shower

Sandra, Cindy, Holly & Jennifer threw me a fantastic baby shower on Saturday. Thanks to all who came or who wanted to come!! And, thanks to all who thought to get a little something for Emma - she loved getting some of the goodies for herself!

Here we go!

OK - I realize that this blog is oh, about a year behind. OK, a bit over a year behind. My deepest apologies to those of you have given up hope that it will ever be updated again. In light of current events, I decided that a pink background was no longer acceptable. So, staying true to our Clemson heritage, orange it is!!

To summarize the past year in any sort of detail would take more time & emotional energy than I currently possess. The sad news first - since our last post, we've lost Brian's dad and Grandma & Grandpa Phipps, all to cancer. The entire family is reeling from the losses, but we are hanging in there. We still cannot believe they are gone and we miss them terribly.

The much happier news....

James Houston Blackburn is on his way! We've had a very uneventful pregnancy so far - very different from our experience with Emma. We are currently expecting him to arrive the week of Sept. 8th, if not before. Emma is not particularly impressed! She is intrigued by all the "baby stuff" that is coming into the house and has accepted that her old room is now baby brother's room. We can't wait to see how she reacts to him when he actually gets here.

In anticipation of the impending arrival, I will be attempting to update the blog a bit more regularly, so please make a note of the address and check back often!

If you ever wonder...

Just in case any one reading this blog wonders what life is like in the Blackburn household...here is a snapshot of today.

For those of you who wonder...she managed to do this in about 3 minutes while I was on the phone with dad. I could hear her at all times, and most of the time, I could see her. This girl is FAST!

That's one tube of lipstick down the drain....actually, um, Mom...I think it was a tube of yours that was left in the diaper bag....Sorry!

Now...I've got to get this published because I just caught her putting a small chair in the recliner and trying to climb into the small chair...that would have been fun...

There will now be a series of blogs that are out of order. :-) I am quite behind!!



These videos were simply too cute not to post. Watch them in order!

Horsin' Around

We spent Saturday afternoon at Granny's in Hendersonville celebrating my cousin Shannon's graduation from MUSC (she's now a Speech-Language Pathologist!).
My Uncle Larry & Aunt Deb have several horses. As you can see, Emma was NOT in the least bit afraid of the horses. We have really got to think about hippotherapy for this child!

On the Road!

Emma's been doing a great job of riding a tricycle in therapy. Thanks to her papa and his great deals, she now has a tricycle at home. She hit the road for the first time and we were all very impressed with her tricycle riding expertise!

This is my first attempt at loading a video onto the blog, so hopefully it will work. If you have trouble viewing the video, let me know!

Strawberries!

We headed out to Youngblood Berry Farm on Sunday afternoon to pick strawberries. This is the first time we've tried this with Emma. She *sorta* figured it out immediately. It took no time for her to realize that those were strawberries on those litte bushes, and that we were taking them off the little bushes. She did have a bit of trouble with leaving the bushes intact, with not walking ON the bushes, or over the rows, and with leaving the green berries alone. And, despite my firm objections, she could not be prevented from eating a few of them on the spot!

We are now enjoying the fruits of our labor with some yummy strawberry pie. I'm not making jam this year, because I still have jam from last year. But, I will probably freeze some of the berries for strawberry ice cream later on this summer.

Sleeping Beauty

We have finally recovered from our long illness. Everyone in the family was sick. Brian and I both had strep, and then, of course, Emma got it! Yikes! I am STILL doing laundry!!

But, I've managed to plant our garden and I'm almost done with the ironing, so I have hope that by next week, we'll be all caught up around here.

I thought I'd post these pictures...Emma wasn't feeling very good...it was the beginning of our sick week....she LOVES to sleep in her indoor swing. As you can see, sometimes, all that can be seen of her is a foot!

Hopefully, more pictures soon of our garden, and, maybe, of strawberry picking!!

The Lord is Risen...He is Risen Indeed

We had a great Easter. Despite the fact that it was FREEZING cold here (literally, below 30 degrees overnight), we dressed in our Easter dresses and headed for church. We had a great service, and Emma HAD to bring along her baby doll, who also had a matching Easter dress! We did have a little egg hunt for Emma in the backyard, but she lost interest fairly quickly (she's already been on several hunts). One thing we've learned about Emma...if you want her to hunt eggs, there had better be something in them! She's really not interested in empty eggs! Gary & Sandra came over for dinner and we ate until we were stuffed, and then took a nap!

Happy Birthday to Emma

On the swingset with GGpa. Pushed in the wagon by Papa.

Emma's own special cake. This is the swing, behind her.


OK...I'm going to post several things all at once, because I am REALLY behind! Thanks to Cathy for hounding me about getting this thing updated!





Emma had a great birthday. We didn't really have a party, we just had family over, we ate shrimp and played with Emma's new toys. We think Emma's favorite gift was a swing that we've been thinking about purchasing for a while. She loves it! We should have bought it a year ago! She spends a lot of time in the swing every day.

We cannot believe she is 4 years old!





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Emma & Aidan

We've been hanging out with Aidan for the past couple of days. Aidan's mommy (Shannon) is going to have twin boys soon, but hopefully, not this week. So, while she's been hanging out at the hospital, we've been hanging out here. Thought those of you who've prayed for Aidan over the past couple of years might enjoy these shots - he is such a cutie!!

Can't start too young

Just thought you'd like to see these shots of Emma. For those who don't know, I HATE to vacuum - really, really, hate it. Brian does most of it, but it looks like he's working on training up a replacement!!

Support RTS bracelets available for $5

I'm sure you've all seen the various rubber bracelets that are worn in support of a variety of causes - pink for breast cancer, etc.

Well, we now have a "support RTS" bracelet available. A Nobel-prize winning researcher has written an RTS specific research proposal, and the RTS community is actively raising money to fund the first year of research.

This is a quote from the RTS research website....

"Dr. Kandel's Published Research on RTS - Last Summer, the RTS community received some promising news. Dr. Eric Kandel, a Nobel Prize winning neuroscientist, published the results of his memory research dealing primarily with the same protein that is deficient in RTS patients in the June, 2004 edition of “Neuron” magazine. He has already done ground breaking research on mouse models with Rubinstein-Taybi Syndrome. Dr. Kandel and his associates have been able to partially eliminate the cognitive dysfunction associated with RTS in mouse models, and has offered to pursue this research in hope of finding a treatment for our children."

The "administrative" work is being done by RTS parents, so all the money above the actual costs will go to RTS research.

The bracelets are only available for a few weeks....they are $5 each. If you'd like one, please let me know by February16th and I'll order them all at once.

Snow Day!

Finally! It's February 1st and it is about time! Unfortunately, our snow did not provide ANY usable snow for even a small bowl of snow cream! Maybe next time!

We got out and played for a little while. Emma really had fun throwing snowballs at her daddy! You can't really tell in the picture, but Brian was throwing snowballs at Emma from the top of the slide. She loved it!