The Rowans 4: December 2015

Merry December!
It has been a long time since I have updated this! Yikes!
Life here at the Rowan house is going really well! We are getting closer and closer to welcoming our son to our home. I am 32 weeks pregnant and feeling rather large and ready. But I still have 7 more weeks! Actually, I will need every bit of those weeks that are left to get everything in order. We are in the process of moving Hailey into a new room with a big girl bed. She doesn't really understand but she will in a few days when we make the move! After that I can start getting Austin's room in order. That's right! We finally decided on a name! Austin Evan Rowan! I decided to decorate his room in an airplane theme. We can't wait to meet him and start our lives as a family of 5. We just continue to pray for healthy development and a smooth delivery when the time comes. We are so thankful and excited that God chose us to be his parents!
Well a lot of time has passed since my last post- so I will summarize the best that I can! For Halloween the girls were Doc and Lambie. They sure looked cute together. If you're not familiar with those characters they are from a cartoon. Doc is a doctor for toys and Lambie is one of her toys. In November Hailey turned 2! I just really can't believe it! She also decided that she was ready for potty training a month or so before her 2nd birthday. She let me know by taking off her diaper and sitting on the potty all by herself. She did her business and then went to the sink to wash her hands. I took that as a sign that she was ready. Haha... it is still a work in progress but she is doing really well!
Mimi came to visit for Hailey's birthday. We decided to have a relaxed celebration at home with just us. It was wonderful! The next few days that followed her birthday proved to be some of the most stressful days that I have ever had. Chile, our sweet puppy, had another ruptured disc episode. This one was severe and left him completely paralyzed and unable to go potty on his own. It was truly a heartbreaking thing to watch. Terribly difficult decisions had to be made about our "first baby" (well first dog baby). We decided that Chile's quality of life was more important than our wishes for him to stay with us. These episodes had become more frequent and seemed to be worsening in severity. With terrible heart ache and sadness Chile was put to sleep. Callie thinks that Chile is in heaven playing with her Pap. It was a hard few weeks but we are slowly feeling better and remembering the good times that Chile boy gave us. As if that wasn't traumatic enough, Hailey got sick the day after her birthday. Really sick! She had a terrible case of croup. I stayed with her in her room that night and I'm glad I did because she woke up and just had a terrible time breathing. It was so bad that I got her in the car and started driving to the emergency room (which unfortunately is 45 minutes away). While we were driving she cleared up and was breathing fine, so with the advice of the nurse hotline I went back home. I regretted that decision the next day though. I had an appointment already scheduled for early that morning by the nurse hotline so I waited for that since I could get her there before the ER. They took her immediately to the back at the doctors office and gave her an Epi shot to open her airways. Then they administered multiple steroids and finally we saw improvement. They were really close to sending us by ambulance to the hospital in town, but luckily she started to improve. It was the worst case of croup that they had seen in the past few years. What a stressful couple of days that was. Poor Mimi was here to witness the Chile incident and Hailey's first sickness- that just happened to be pretty scary! Whew! We were glad that was all behind us and were ready for a better week ahead!
For Thanksgiving, Marty and Debbie flew out to spend time with us! We are so glad that they were able to come. We spent a few days in a hotel at Knottsberry Farm Amusement Park. Callie of course LOVED it. She is such a thrill junkie! Hailey is getting more adventurous too! There were actually quite a few rides that Hailey could do and she loved them all! After that we came back home and shared a wonderful meal together! I love Thanksgiving and taking time to reflect on all that we have to be thankful for! So glad that we got to see family on Thanksgiving! The girls were happy to be spoiled as well!

Well we blinked a few times since then and now its December! Callie continues to do wonderfully in school and absolutely loves it! She loves her teacher and all of her new friends. I'm so proud of how much she has grown and learned this year. Callie also completed her first season of soccer. She learned a lot and finished strong. At the end of the season awards Callie got, "Most dramatic performance". Hahahahahah! If you know my child, this will not surprise you one bit. I mean how fitting and perfect. We did have some drama filled "injuries" throughout her soccer season... but I really was proud of the progress she made and how much better she got! She also is in dance and will have her first recital this month. She loves ballet! I cant wait to see her first performance!
Little sister Hailey is doing just great! She is a chatter box, strong willed two year old! She is busy, busy and never stops making us laugh... and go crazy all at the same time. Haha... oh the 2's are such an interesting time. We are trying to soak it up though because I know how quickly it goes and we will look back and miss parts of this season. Hailey is doing well with her letters and sounds and numbers. She loves reading books, counting to 10 and can identify most letters and probably half of the sounds. She must be picking a lot up from big sister who is just reading like crazy these days!
Matt and I are doing good too. I'm feeling like I'm about ready to pop but other than that I'm great! I have had an easy pregnancy so far! I thank God for my family and praise Him for all of our many blessings. Through the good and bad times of the past month he has been there holding us tightly in his arms.
I hope this finds you all well and I hope that you all have a very lovely holiday season! The Rowan's are thankful for God's love shown in action by sending Jesus to the Earth to save us from our sin!
Much love!!
Erin