October 5th , 2006 - Brandy and Shane Surgery Day for Amalie After 4 months, the day of Amalie's surgery has arrived. We arrived at Children's Mercy South at 6:30 this morning to begin the prep for her 7:30 surgery. She put on a little tiny gown and greeted all the doctors and nurses, no sign of the fact she had not eaten since 1 AM. The surgery lasted about an hour and a half, with all the cleanup and recovery making it almost 10:30 before we got to see her. Upon seeing her for the first time it was a bit strange, as some major features had changed. We were given a recovery room with the plan that we would stay overnight. As we heard her cry for the first time we could tell that there was a slight change. We learned how to feed her using a special syringe and are on a 48 hour schedule of 3 tiny feedings an hour, around the clock. Her arms are in braces to prevent her from getting her hands on her stitches. Needless to say the doctor did an amazing job and it is truly amazing the scope of the change to our little girl. We spent the afternoon getting settled into the recovery and care efforts that will fill our days for the next 48 hours or more. Amalie is a real trooper and she did so well that we were sent home about 6:00 tonight. Marc and Penny came to help and are sharing shifts, making things a little easier. We are glad to be home and very impressed with the success of her surgery. Things will get better each hour for the next few days and then the challenge of how to entertain a 4 month old that can't mover her arms, for a whole week, will keep us busy. We want to express our thanks for all the folks that have expressed their thoughts and prayers for Amalie and our family.
September 9 , 2006 - Brandy and Shane Our Last Minute Labor Day Realizing that we had not been to the Landry’s house in St. Louis, since last Christmas, we decided to setup a last minute trip to take advantage of the holiday weekend. Amalie did surprisingly well during the 4 hours journey, plus we were able to fit all of our “essentials” and have just enough room for Bella (trying to pack for a baby is very humbling). Amalie’s grandparents, Mary and Justilien, have been dieing to have their granddaughter come swim in their pool. Since our last visit they have made so much progress in making their “new” house, the home they envision it being. We got to swim a few times with Amalie and Bella, Amalie’s first time swimming, she even took a few dives underwater and loved it. On Saturday we went to have Amalie meet her great grandmother, Joyce Landry, which was exciting for both of them along with those that stopped by to investigate the little visitor. That night we ate a great meal prepared by my cousin Josh Landry at Spiro’s Greek restaurant. On Sunday we headed to the Missouri Botanical Gardens for a double bill of the Dale Chihuly glass installation and the Japanese festival. The day was amazing and we all enjoyed all the sights and sounds, this was so amazing it gets its own gallery. For a quick holiday weekend it was very relaxing and allowed for some great quality time.
September 1 , 2006 - Brandy and Shane Amalie Hits 3 (Months) It is hard to believe that 3 months have passed since Amalie joined us, on the outside. I guess the time seems to fly because of the lack of sleep, but watching her grow and change is truly amazing. She has so much personality now, so many moods, strong likes and dislikes. As she has gotten older she has grown so engaged with the world around her that it is often hard to get her to go to sleep, and turn off the fun. All the milestones she has reached have been a treat to watch. She is sleeping through the night, most nights, in her crib without anyone in her room and with lights out. As her vision has sharpened Amalie has found watching the world around her to be some of the most fun she can have. Anything she can get her hands on makes its way to her mouth, with her greatest love being anything fabric or the old standby of her entire hand. Standing, sitting up, rolling around, playing on the floor, and trying to crawl are all exciting to her and us. Our excitement as she has started trying to talk is now tempered by her new found love of screaming or talking so much she needs her own show. Everyone has really settled into our new family life, even Bella and Amalie are best pals now. We can’t even begin to guess what the next few months (let alone years) will bring, but everyday is an exciting new challenge to try and nurture and shape Amalie into best person she can be.
Gallery - Amalie 3 Months
Gallery - August 2006
August 16, 2006 - Brandy and Shane Back to School for Brandy Since Amalie was born the day after school got out for Brandy, they got to spend the entire summer break together. The plan was for Brandy to take maternity leave starting this fall and return to school in mid-October, but Amalie brought us a surprise. With her surgery scheduled for October Brandy was able to shift her leave to start the first week of October. With this shift she is able to take leave from October until just after the new year, the entirety of Amalie’s recovery time. In the mean time we have an amazing woman named Heidi coming to our house weekdays. Brandy returned to school on August 14th to another exciting year at Pleasant Ridge.
August 7, 2006 - Brandy and Shane Alice Nelson Turns 90 August 6th we headed to Topeka, to join in the celebration of Alice Nelson’s 90th birthday. With a number of Alice’s friends and family in attendance, there was a large turnout. This was Amalie’s second chance to meet her great mother and her great grandfather Charlie.
Gallery - Alice turns 90
August 5, 2006 - Shane A New Job for Shane Well I have some news, I know shocking. The day Amalie was born I was offered a new job. After over 6 years with Sprint, designing and developing web technologies for training, I was presented with an amazing opportunity to change my career in a major way. This new job is a lead design role within the Sprint User Experience Design team which is part of the Product Development organization. It is an opportunity I was not expecting at this time in my life but it was an opportunity I was open to. I must say that I feel like my efforts and approaches to design and business had a great impact over my time at Sprint, as was evident in the 8 weeks between job offer and me starting on July 31st. My new role is focused on designing the best possible user experience for Sprint customers, in particular the way users shop whether online, in stores, and even on the handset itself. This is a very challenging move for me to make at this time, but I truly feel that it is putting me back on course to the design interests I have pursued for so long. With this being an internal move it provided some logistical benefits, but also afforded me to ability to showcase my last 6 years of work without the legal concerns around the proprietary nature of my work in pursuing this new position.
July 22, 2006 - Brandy and Shane Amalie Children’s Mercy and Surgery On July 21st we took an early morning journey to Children’s Mercy Hospital in downtown Kansas City for a full day of appointments at the Clef Clinic. We spend most of the day visiting with a variety of specialists to determine the best course of action in working to correct Amalie’s clef lip. We met with surgeons, geneticists and others all focused on getting Amalie the best care available. We found out lots of good information and at the end of the day walked away with a timetable for her surgery. Some very interesting information we received was that her lip was not caused by genetics but rather by unknown environmental factors and we should not be worried about it for the future. The surgeon that will be performing the procedure is truly world class and has performed close to 1500 of these in the last 12 years. The details about her surgery, recovery and the overall timelines for both, were very helpful. Amalie will be having surgery to repair her clef lip on October 5th at Children’s Mercy Hospital South Clinic. We will return home the next day and face a few difficult weeks of recovery for her, but this should be the only surgery she will need for a full repair. The total recovery, including minor additional care will take about 3 months but in the end she will have no noticeable physical reminders her old smile. It will be very strange to have a new smile on our little girl, after so many months of her big smile, but by having the surgery sooner than later she will not memory of it or the recovery and there should be no impact on her speech development.
July 9, 2006 - Shane More Amalie Pictures So Brandy and I have been taking an obscene number of Amalie photos (thank goodness for digital). Can you blame us? Since most of them can't be tied to a particular event, outside of everyday live with a newborn, I will just post this gallery. Soon Amalie will be helping to launch her own page here at BSLandry.com, and I must admit that I am shocked it has taken this long. I am sure something has rubbed off as I build this site with one arm holding her and the other used to build the site.
July 6, 2006 - Brandy and Shane Amalie is 5 weeks old With our eyes on the calendar, the only way we have of perceiving time currently, we have been taking pictures each week of Amalie. Since seeing her in a fog induced by a lack of sleep, dirty diapers, feedings, and crying (screaming) has prevented us from seeing the simple and dramatic changes as she grows we hope this gallery will help us and delight others.
As an update Amalie has started sleeping in her own bed most of the night, which means Brandy is no longer sleeping in the nursery. The times that Amalie is awake are growing in length, frequency, and overall level of alertness. She is tracking faces and voices, even at distances. To our delight she has started smiling when she is happy, it truly melts the heart. She is gaining weight, grown another 2 inches taller,
her red hair is getting longer, and she has discovered her tongue especially when paired with a tasty hand. As a family we are venturing out more and planning our first overnight away from home. The four of us have been walking each evening and enjoying the uninterrupted family time. And now that Amalie is no longer wearing Newborn diapers, we can call her a big girl.
June 18, 2006 - Shane A Fathers Day of Firsts
Fathers Day this year was extra special, as you can guess, and we had to do it up right. Both of Brandy's parents and mine came and joined us for the day. In addition Erika and Karl came over too. It was my first Fathers Day, as a father, and the first Fathers Day as grandfathers for Justilien and Marc. It turned out to be a great day, both for its many firsts and for the chance to get together with family.
June 4, 2006 - Brandy and Shane Welcome Amalie Colleen Landry
We just got home from the hospital today, Sunday June 4th. In tow is our beautiful baby girl. After 40 weeks of very comfortably growing, a sonogram on her due date revealed that she was one big baby. With a big head and big abdomen the doctor gave us one week to have her naturally or she would have to perform a c-section. Well, needless to say our little girl was very content and made no attempt to come naturally. This past Thursday (June 1st), we went to the hospital for a 12:30 c-section. Things went off without a hitch and both baby and mom are doing great. You will be happy to know that she was born with red hair, and quite a bit of it.
Amalie Colleen Landry was born at 1:28 pm on June 1st, wieghing 9 lb 2 oz and was 20" long.
Things are going very well... It is amazing how busy a newborn really keeps you. Baby is sleeping for 3-4 hours at night and we are getting some needed sleep also. We are having a blast and are so happy she is finally here. She has be a wonderful baby so far!!!! We just thought we would let you know that "baby L" was born with a very minor cleft lip... she will be getting a little plastic surgery at about 4 months once she gains enough weight for the anesthesia ...doctors say we are very lucky it is so minor and it will be easy to fix... with barely any trace of it after she heals... 1 in 700 babies are born with it...
May 18, 2006 - Brandy and Shane Welcome to BSLandry.com
As the "BS" of BSLandry.com, we are so excited to launch or very own web site to house all our BS. We hope to make this site a great place for our family and friends to
keep up with the many adventures our growing family. As you all know we hardly have a minute of downtime, but we will try our hardest to keep this site up to date with all the things we know you are looking for.
