"Fuf" and the pool

Mary's cousin Muffy came to visit last month. She is still talking about her. She calls "Fuf" on her faux cell phone at least once a night.

The following pictures are from yesterday afternoon. We belong to the pool at the golf course we live on but can only seem to make it on the weekends. Mary and I have the best intentions in the afternoon after work/daycare but we seem to get a thunder storm just about every day from 5:30pm - 7:30pm.

Yesterday we filled up her little pool and she was so thrilled. She kept squealing as I was getting everything set up.

All that playing in the pool made Mimi very hungry

...Ahhhhhhhhhhh

That is the sound of Chris and I exhaling. We have been holding our breath and hoping for great results since Mary's heart procedure in January.
She had her final appointment at Children's Hospital last Monday. After an echo cardiogram and an EKG the cardiologist was able to confirm the procedure to close her PDA was a success!

Her heart has started to grow around the coil that was inserted and the echo showed no blood flow in the wrong direction. Now all she is left with is a really cool story to tell her classmates when she is older.

Hooray for modern medicine!!!!!!!!

18 Months

Mary Catherine turned 18 months old on April 24th but she just had her well baby check up last Friday. She had a great appointment and is growing into a wonderful little girl.

Her stats are:

Weight - 26 lbs

Height - 31.5"

Loves....... shoes, saying "No", playing with Kecki (our neighbor's daughter Kennedy), watching Noggin in the early morning with Daddy, cheese, helping Mommy fold laundry, and decorating the front steps with her sidewalk chalk.

Dislikes....... most veggies, saying goodbye to Kecki, having to be quiet in church, being given any sort of instruction.

She is saying all kinds of things. My personal favorite is "sushi". Cracks me up every time!

Here are some recent pictures of Mary and her Daddy at the neighborhood playground

Mary loves to paint while Mommy makes dinner

This is Mary's favorite place to hang out.

Mary's Best Friend Kennedy

She loves walking her Teletubbies around the neighborhood.

Shhhhhhh, don't tell Mary they haven't made a new 'Tubbies episode since 1994.

My baby girl on Mother's Day

Happy Easter

We found these bunny tracks on our front steps on Easter morning.....I'm not kidding! Our lil' Bunny Mary's new backpack from the Easter Bunny
Resting after dinner
In the dress Daddy picked out
Every little lady needs a pair of shades

We hope everyone had a great Easter holiday!

Our Week in Pictures

We are seeing a lot of this face lately.

Sometimes naps aren't as refreshing as they should be...


A sleepy peanut is a sweet peanut

She talked us into a Happy Meal on Sunday

I have to confess, this is not her first trip to McDonalds.
Her first visit was on a road trip to New Hampshire.Mary and Ronald really hit it off...she didn't want to leave.

Picture Time!

We hope everyone had a nice Valentine's Day and President's Day long weekend. We've been battling the flu since last Wednesday. Chris and I spent our Valentine's evening at Nighttime Pediatrics begging the doctors for something to make me feel like a human again.

They were kind enough to prescribe Tamiflu which allowed Chris and Nana to avoid the full blown flu. I was not so lucky but was happy knowing the rest of the household would not have to deal with the 103 degree fever and all over yuck. As of this evening Mary seems to be coming down with something and as usual it has presented itself as a scary, croupy cough. Ugh!

On a much lighter note, here are some recent pictures taken right before Valentine's Day.

Thank you for my frog boops, Auntie Cis. I'm still learning how to walk in them but they are fabulous!

Ice, Ice Baby!

Yesterday's commute home was not for the faint of heart. Chris left Reston at 4:30 pm and finally made it home at 9:30pm. I left work at 4:00pm and pulled up to the house at 8:00 pm.

Between the icy roads and the subsequent accidents it was nightmare. But I am happy to report that Chris and I both made it to the polls to vote.

Am I bragging? Yeah, a little bit but I am just so impressed that neither of us bailed on our civic duty.

Breaking News

Mary Catherine Parks is a walker!

She took her first itsy bitsy steps when we were in New Hampshire for Christmas. She had a a big audience (all eight of the Broadbent kids) cheering her on and she seized the moment.

After all of the fanfare she took a hiatus until Jan. 27th. We went to Virginia to visit Mom mom and Mary decided Monica's apartment was the perfect venue for walking. She let go of my hands and took about ten steps right into Daddy's arms. Picture perfect, except there are no pictures :( Marilyn was there and is always prepared with her camera or video camera. She got what we thought was great footage but come to find out the room was way too bright and nothing came out.

This week she is really getting the hang of it and is choosing to walk instead of crawl about half of the time. Truly amazing. I was beginning to think she was going to crawl to kindergarten.

Stay tuned for pictures and video of the walking. She is too smart and stops walking when she sees the video camera come out.

Chris and I are in such trouble, aren't we?

Here are some pictures I took of Mary on Monday night. Chris was in class and I had to keep Mary up past her bedtime so we could pick Nana up at the airport.

Such a happy little peanut...

All Bundled Up and Ready to Go

Mary helped her Dad put up another gate.

Tubbies?

When is the best time of day to watch Teletubbies? Anytime, silly!

Mary Catherine cannot get enough of these strange Bristish ummmmm....creatures. She wakes up asking for Tubbies, points to the tv and asks for Tubbies after dinner, picks up Daddy's remote and tries to turn on Tubbies.

No, we don't indulge every request for Tubbies but we get weak, you know? An adorable toddler can only ask for Tubbies so many times before you give in and watch the creepy show.

15 Months

MC had her 15 month check up on Wednesday. Here are the stats:

21 lbs 7 oz
30" tall

She is in the 40 percentile for height and weight. Her head size is in the 75%. No surprise there :)

She has started to take a few steps here and there but is not a "walker" yet. The doctor explained she was most likely focusing on her fine motor skills and that has resulted in being a late walker.

She has lots of words such as Mommy, Daddy, puppy, cracker (we hear this one a lot), bath, nigh-night, go, bye bye, up, ducky............ok I'll stop. I'm just so proud of our little girl.

She insists on feeding herself with her fork and spoons (same ones that Daddy usesd, thank you Mom mom). It has been a messy process but she now gets more in her mouth than on her belly.

Mary had her catheterization to close her PDA on January 3rd. It went very well and she was back to herself in no time. It was an incredibly stressful day, the six hours in recovery were the worst! But we are only looking forward at this point. Her follow up appt is in July.

So that is our Peanut in a nutshell (pardon the pun)! We are enjoying her every minute. I think this is my favorite age so far. Many of you will remind me I said that at 6 months, 9 months, 12 months....

We've been Elfed!

Who said the Parks's couldn't dance?

http://www.elfyourself.com/?id=1387641887

In No Particular Order

Here are a few new pictures. Ok, so technically the Halloween pictures are not new. But they are new to you :)

Oh so that's Croup!

Last Wednesday Mary Catherine started barking like a seal (a cute little baby girl seal) around 3:00am. By 8:00pm the same day she was admitted to Anne Arundel Medical Center with a serious case of Croup.

After lots of nebulizer treatments, a few steroid shots and lots of hugs and kisses from Mommy and Daddy she was back to her wonderful little self.

The picture below was taken the morning after she came home from the hospital. She was not very thrilled with me but cute nonetheless.

Needless to say, Chris and I are relieved our Peanut is back to normal. We are also proudly displaying our newest Parenting Badge: "Overnight Stay in the Hospital".

Happy Hanukkah!

Playing catch up

It has been a while since I have posted. Like everyone else out there we have been busy with the early bustle of the holidays.

Here is a quick recap of the past few weeks:

* Mary got tooth number two. It is a big top tooth.

* Chris's company moved (from Rockville to Rockville, just a new fancy building). This meant no downtime for him this past weekend. If you see him and he is looking a little weary cut him some slack. Mary and I will see to it that he gets at least one "sleep in" morning this weekend.

* We've had a few appointments with Pediatric Cardiologists regarding MC's heart murmur. I'll make a very long story short. We all have a valve in her heart that is supposed to close permanently soon after birth. Mary's did not. It is called a PDA. When she was a newborn she went to the Children's Hospital annex in Annapolis, got lots of pictures taken of her heart and we were told to come back when she turned one. It was their hope (and ours) that the valve would have closed sometime during the year. Unfortunately hers remains open and will need to be closed. Letting the valve remain open allows too much blood flow to her lungs which would force her lungs to work harder than normal. It also leaves her susceptible to a viral infection in the heart called endocarditis. The procedure Mary will have done is called a Cardiac Catheterization. The doctors insist we call it a "procedure" and not surgery. We like this and are playing along.

She will have a small blocking device inserted into the open valve. It will be inserted via her femoral artery in her leg. This is much less invasive than the surgery that this condition used to require.

The doctor performing the procedure has the most experience on the east coast and was a pioneer of the procedure.
As of now the procedure is scheduled for Jan.4th. We will keep everyone posted.



* Mary had her first day at her new daycare today. She is going one day a week to see Miss Peggy and spending the rest of the weekdays home with Nana. We feel very lucky that Peggy had an opening available. She is Mary's best friend Kennedy's sitter and it will be so nice for the girls to get to play together during the week.
After Nana returns home to NH after Mary's procedure (see, I am trying so hard to not say surgery) Mary will go to Miss Peggy's full time.


* Mary got her third tooth....she now has a pair of front top teeth. They are marvelous!

* MC got her picture taken with Santa on Saturday. She may only be 13 months old but boy oh boy does she know who Santa is! She sat right there on his lap and gave him her best cheesecake smile. We are pretty sure her name is going to show up on Santa's "Nice" list.

* We are going with the Lyles's this weekend to cut down our Christmas trees! I am very excited about this. We have lots of boxes marked "Christmas" scattered around the living room. I can't wait to start decorating.


* MC is not walking. Crawling and cruising are getting the job done. Chris and I tried to convince her to give it a whirl last night. She took about 1/2 a step towards Chris then plopped down on the floor. In the meantime she has become a little dare devil around the house. She enjoys the following (with supervision, of course):
- Crawling up and down the stairs
- Standing up in her Anywhere Chair, spread her arms out straight and toss her head back.
- Stand on the door of the dishwasher to "help" unload the dishes.
- Her biggest "trick" to date is climbing over the arm of her kid size Anywhere Chair onto
the neighboring love seat. This cracks her up every time.


* I am making a promise to you (yes, you. Probably the only person that reads this thing) to post more pictures. I have a lot of excuses, none of them good ones.

Free Rice!

You've just got to check out this site.....

http://www.freerice.com

During a little "down time" here at work I managed to donate 600 grains!

TOOTH!!!!

The Tooth Fairy finally found her way to our house!

Mary Catherine is now the proud owner of one lower front tooth. We have no pictures of the blessed event because:

1. MC is currently very under the weather. She is fighting through a reaction to her Chicken Pox vaccine. She is grumpy, feverish and in NO mood to be photographed.

2. While you can feel the tooth with a freshly washed finger, the little guy is barely visible to the naked eye.

Happy Halloween

I use the term "happy" very loosely. Mary didn't have the best of days. I am almost certain her first tooth broke the surface today. She has another tooth very close to popping through as well. All of the tooth trauma has made the peanut cranky and very rashy.

While in the tub to help said rashes she stood up briefly and quickly fell and banged her mouth on the side of the tub. Oh the horror! There was blood and everything!!

She is resting comfortably in her crib with her three "honey bunnies", cookie monster, pooh bear and a fistful of binkies.

My poor baby. Keep your fingers crossed tomorrow is a better day for Miss Mary.

About the picture below.........while MC doesn't usually have a binky in the tub, tonight was that kind of night. Thanks to her Mom Mom she had just the right binky for the occasion.

Here is a picture of Mary Catherine one year ago today. My goodness what a difference a year makes.

You will have to trust me when I tell you she was having a good time in this picture. She was seven days old and in between a nap, a feeding and a diaper change.