Goodbye, Rat-jamas.

Last night was the last nigh Piper could fit into her Rat-jamas, as I call them.  These jammies I bought long before she was born and just loved them!  I don't know why (and my mom just shakes her head at me), but I love the character they have!  These rat-jamas say "spunk", which I think Piper has lots of.  Lucky for us, they are fairly gender-neutral, so we can always put them on the next kid.

But its these little things that remind me that Piper is growing all the time!  Growing nice and big!  All of her bones, brain and blue eyes are always getting bigger and stronger.  Luckily, her heart is also.  The human heart is about the size of your fist, so Piper's is about the size of a small plum (large cherry maybe?).  Can you imagine that?  And inside there are 4 ventricles and arteries and veins and all sorts of tiny things!  and somehow, they've got the instruments to fix it all, even at that size.

When we last talked to the cardiologist, he mentioned surgery in mid-November, but said he couldn't give us a firm date, due to emergency surgeries coming in all the time.  He said, that in the month of November, they knew of 20 fetuses due to be born with heart defects that need to be operated on stat.  20 unborn babies that they know of!  I mean, its amazing that they can know that pre-birth, but crazy at the same time.

I feel good now, not having known about Piper's heart defect before she was born, as I just would have fretted more, and there was nothing we could do about it then anyways.  So in a way, I do feel blessed that we didn't know anything ahead of time.  The fact that these babies will need immediate surgery once they are born tells me that it is very serious.  Again, I feel blessed that we were allowed to take our baby home and "fatten" her up pre-surgery.  We spent a day and a half in the nursery at the hospital after she was born and that was enough for me!  I would not want my brand new born baby in there recovering from serious heart surgery days after meeting her...

God knows just what He is doing, and just what I can handle.

Piper loves, loves, loves being outside.  She can be screaming inside for some reason or another, and I take her to look outside and she quiets right down and starts talking to the trees!  Yesterday, I could bring a blankie (for me) and a Bumbo chair (for her) outside an we read, talked and watched the cars go by for like, 2 hours!  She stares at the weeds and loves to get her hands in the flowers and grass.  This might get trickier as the weather gets yuckier.  Lets just hope she likes the deck...