Update and.... um, hey that's my kid!!

I realize that it has been quite a while since my last update, but that is just because things are going great for us! We are enjoying life and the beginning of what I feel is going to be an extra-hot summer! Today was Anna Brooke's final day of Backyard VBS that Aunt Erin and Uncle Josh's church did. She had a great time! Emma Kate and I enjoyed hanging out with Jackson and a couple others at their apartment every day this week while VBS was going on. Anna Brooke had such a great time singing, dancing, playing games and of course, learning about Jesus! She has come home every day singing sweet songs and even got a CD today with all the songs they learned during the week. It was precious hearing her sing along. I have been trying to capture her with my phone singing, but she will not be having any of that, thank you!

Emma Kate has been progressing well, especially with her physical therapy and her eating. She is getting more mobile, reaching for things, doing the splits practically. She will probably be belly crawling by her first birthday (which is in almost two months!!!) She turns 10 months old next Friday, which is unbelievable to me! Yesterday she finished a jar of baby food and some rice cereal, which is more than she has ever eaten at one sitting before! I was so happy about that. EK is also going to get some teeth soon, I feel. She still doesn't have any, but I can feel the two bottom teeth ready to come through any day (I know Brooks will laugh at this when he reads this because I say that every day!) Poor thing has been miserable laying down for naps and going to bedat night, so I usually just try and give her Tylenol and Orajel before those times and she does pretty well.

So, I wanted to share something that Brooks and I found slightly disturbing. A few weeks ago, Brooks randomly Googled "Emma Kate HLHS." In the search results, he found a YouTube video that had a bunch of details about Emma Kate, like her birthday, her surgeries and her diagnosis (the facts were all jumbled) but the video was of all the pictures from this blog set to music. I was absolutely APPALLED! We looked at the person's YouTube user name who created this video, Brooks sent her a message and she took it down stating that they "forgot" to ask permission to use my pictures. But I just could NOT believe it! It wasn't the fact that it was a bad video or anything, but it just freaked me out a little. Apparently, this girl makes other videos of children who have health issues. I wonder if she "forgets" to ask their parents for permission to use their photos, too.

This type of thing is a little scary and it probably happens more than we realize. How freaked out would you be if you saw your picture (or your child's picture) in some place you never expected? I read a good example of this happening today on Yahoo: This Missouri woman gets a Facebook message from a friend who spotted her family Christmas card photo splashed across the window of a European foods store in Prague! How the heck did it get there? Click HERE to read the full story. It is just insane! You can read more about it by clicking HERE. Like she said, I guess this is the price we might pay for indulging in social media.

After we found that YouTube video, I seriously debated deleting all the pictures off this blog or deleting the blog all together. But the more I thought about it and talked to Brooks about it, I just decided to keep them up for a few reasons. The biggest one is this: we have been getting so many emails recently from other families who are finding my blog, contacting us and feeling HOPE seeing Emma Kate. Emma Kate is giving others hope! I find that so humbling and amazing. The second is that this blog is a documentation of Emma Kate's life, from the very beginning. There is no way that I would just completely delete it all. And if I made the blog private, then, well, we wouldn't be able to reach very many people that way. Believe me, it does scare me that her picture could be taken from the blog and used in some other way. I hope that others will respect our privacy and please, if you would like to use a photograph you see here, contact me and ask for permission before you do so.

Alright, enough about all that. Here, enjoy!