Evelyn at 8 months and a loss

Evelyn turned 8 months Monday. She is still such a happy sweet girl, but she has gotten a little spoiled. She is definitely a Mama's girl and wants to be held a lot. She has been teething and her first bottom tooth broke through last Thursday (right before turning 8 months old) and the second popped through a few days later. She has been getting up at night and is really hard to get back to bed. I was hoping to avoid this with her, but it looks like she is going to have to CIO soon. She has moved on from rolling from place to place to scooting. She starts of crawling, but then lays down to scoot. I guess whatever works best for her works for me. She has been waving for a while, but she just started clapping or "patty-caking" today. I noticed her trying yesterday, although Brendan thought I was crazy, but now she claps when I ask her to patty cake. She is growing so fast.
Evelyn at 8 months:


Lilly had her first dance recital on Mother's Day. I was REALLY nervous after watching the rehearsals, but she did pretty well during the recital. There was one point during the tap dance that she was more worried about where her "spot" was than dancing, but she got back on track. It was adorable to watch and a wonderful Mother's day treat. Lilly also helped Brendan make chocolate chip pancakes and brought them to me in bed. She also picked out a Pandora bracelet and the charms all by herself. It was a starter Mother's day kit with the Mom charm and 2 spacers, and she chose a running shoe charm, a heart with pink crystals (b/c she told the lady at the store my favorite color is pink), a little girl, and a little dog that looks like Isabelle. She is so sweet. Everyday is an adventure with her. You never know what she is going to say or do, but she has such a good heart. She also did a kids mud run today which was more like a mini obstacle course today. She loved walking through the mud and getting muddy, but had no interesting the obstacles.
Lilly after her recital:

At the mud run:

The girls with their Daddy at the zoo:


This week has been a rough week. This weekend I noticed that Harley's (our lab)breathing was more labored. Brendan had noticed that he was sometimes noisier when breathing about a month and a half ago, but figured it was some sort of allergen in the air or just getting old. He turned 11 April 26th. Brendan finally decided to take him the the vet Monday because I was really concerned about him. He was diagnosed with Laryngeal Paralysis which is related to poly-neuropathy. We were debating on whether or not he needed the surgery that does not fix, but helps the problem. It is about a $2,000 surgery that has side effects we were concerned with. If the dog eats to fast, drinks to fast, or throws up they have a high chance of getting aspiration pneumonia. Harley has always been a food vacuum and has a tendency to throw up so we were of course concerned the surgery would bring more problems for him. Tuesday morning he had an episode after Brendan took him out to potty. He couldn't breathe and panicked. He finally collapsed and we were able to keep him calm and he finally was able to catch his breath. It was the scariest thing I have every seen. We both thought we were losing him right then. So, we decided on surgery for the next morning because we couldn't go through that again. After speaking with the specialist we left him at the animal hospital for surgery. She ran more preliminary X-rays and noticed he appeared to have an enlarged esophagus and wanted to recheck it in a few days before doing the surgery. She called back about 45 minutes later because he had another episode like we witnessed Tuesday morning and she was very concerned that he was also dealing with a more serious neurological problem. Brendan was unable to talk on the phone so I talked to the neurologist and she very thoroughly explained everything to me and we were faced with a very hard decision. We could run some more tests to verify what she already suspected he had and it would take 10 days to get results back. They cost over $500 and it was just confirming something with the poly-neuropothy. There is no cure for the problem. She also told me that after getting the tests back if we did go ahead with the original surgery she could almost guarantee he would be in and out of the hospital with aspiration pneumonia due to the enlarged esophagus which causes regurgitation. We knew that was not a life for him and did not even think he could make it for the test results to come back because of the episodes he'd already had. At the hospital they were able to get him air after it, but at home we would be helpless. Since Harley was Brendan's baby he had to make the hard decision to let him go. It was very hard, but at least this way he went peacefully instead of during a panicky episode where he would suffocate. Brendan still is struggling with the decision. Lilly had a hard time initially, but I think she has come to terms with it. She still talks about him everyday, but doesn't get upset. She sees him peeking out from the clouds while we are outside and knows he is in heaven looking out for her.

Here is Harley with the girls last weekend. It is the last picture taken of him.