Libby Update

OK so let me first say sorry for not informing everyone about our troubles with Libbs other than the post that I did on Halloween. I really thought that we had told the families about it before then.

So here is the update:

We went to our appointment at Primary Children's on Tuesday. We met our therapist. Her name is Lisa and she is just a cute little thing. (You know you are getting old when your children's medical team are younger than you are, or at least look like they are.) Anyway, she did a full exam on her and determined that she has Left Muscular Torticollis and Plagiocephaly. At this point her Plagiocephaly (un-round or mis-shaped head) is not bad enough for a helmet but they are going to continue to watch it. They have a ranking system that they use; 1-7 is mild, 8-14 is moderate, and 15+ is severe. Libby was measured at an 8. It looks to us like it has kind-of got a bit better since we started sleeping her on her side like her pediatrician told us to. So hopefully that will work and we will not have to do the helmet thing. As for her Torticollis, we have physical therapy once a week for awhile and we have stretches that we have to do with her twice a day. As you can see in the pictures, she does not like doing her stretches very much. Poor little thing. We also had to buy this cushion thing that we have to use in her car seat that makes it so that she can't flop her head over to the side. She also needs to learn to like her tummy. Lisa wants her on her tummy as much as possible which is kind of hard with her reflux but she is actually getting much better at it. We have even caught her looking over her left shoulder all on her own and that never happened before. We have our next therapy appointment on Monday night.

"Side Bending Stretch"

Libby does not like the "Side Bending Stretch" very much.
"Rotation Stretch"

Libby does not like the "Rotation Stretch" very much either.

We were given the following "medical explanation" and information about Torticollis and Plagiocephaly from Libby's therapist.

Congenital Muscular Torticollis is a condition in which a child's head is tilted to one side and turned toward the opposite side. It is caused by having tight muscles on one side of the neck and weak muscles on the other side of the neck.

Plagiocephaly is a condition in which a child's head is not shaped correctly. these conditions may be noticed:

* The back or side of the head may be flattened.

* The forehead and cheek may bulge on one side.

* One eye may appear larger than the other.

* The ear on the flattened side may be pushed forward.

* The jaw may be tilted.

We received a copy of the letter that the therapist sent to Libby's pediatrician. The following is an excerpt from that letter.

"Libby has a left torticollis due to left side tightness and right side weakness of the cervical muscles. Libby's head shape displays moderate plagiocephaly consistent with left toticollis. There is right sided flattening of the occiput and parietal bones as well as bossing of the frontal bones. An asymmetry index of 8 mm is present. Developmentally, Libby is doing well with the exception of low tolerance to tummy time and decreased prop on tummy."

Well, I hope that my novel of a post has helped clear up some of the confusion and the unknown for our families. We are certainly learning a lot throughout this whole deal. I will try harder to keep everyone informed and up to date.

Reflections 2008

Bubba entered Reflections for the first time. The theme this year was "Wow". She entered the 3D Art category. She named her sculpture, "Happy Birthday Tyrannosauros Rex". I know that it looks like someone helped her but I can honestly say that she did it all by herself. Didn't she do a great job! I am so proud of her! She is such a talented little girl. It looks like she got the "Bitner Art Gene". Turn in day was Thursday. I am not sure when we will find out how she did but I will be sure and post the results so that I can brag about how amazing my daughter is and how proud I am of her. (That is my right as her mother, right?) Good job Bubbs!

Pumpkin Time

Here we are at Mrs Anderson's to buy our pumpkins. As you can see from the picture, Brookles is being her usual happy self.
Bubba complained at first that it was too slimy inside her pumpkin but by the end of the night she was playing in the orange tub of pumpkin guts. It was actually pretty nasty because when D cut the top off his, we found out that it was rotting from the inside out. It smelled terrible!


Brooklyn had fun pretty much just poking, scraping, and otherwise murdering her pumpkin. Derrek finally helped her by carving the face almost all the way through. Brookles just had to cut the rest of the way through and poke out the pieces. This was the first year that we have let her do her own thing and she had a blast.

This was Libby's contribution to the pumpkin carving.

Daddy's

"The Face"

Mommy's

"Nemo"

Bubba's

"The Scariest"

Brookle's

"Happy"

Libby's

"The Baby"

Halloween Shirts

We have another tradition in our family. The girls get a new Halloween shirt to wear on Halloween. This year I found these darling shirts at The Children's Place. (They glow in the dark too!)

This picture of the three of them makes me laugh. Brooklyn's hair is all over the place and she looks like she is so confused. Libby looks half asleep. Bubba actually looks pretty good which is opposite of how it usually is in pictures of the three of them together.

More Halloween

Jennika chose her costume all by herself this year. I admit, it was very hard for me to step back and let her do her thing. Halloween is a big deal at our house. We have a tradition that all costumes must be home made. That means that I usually sew them. This year Jenn did not need me to make anything. I did have to laugh though when she came to me and told me that I could make her some black pants because she new that I felt bad that I did not get to make her costume this year. She is such a sweet girl! I had a lot of fun making the lamb costume for Libbs. I have never worked with shearling fur. It was a little bit difficult to work with but the end result was well worth the effort. Isn't she the cutest little lamby you have ever seen!
Little Brookles has developed an attachment to blue. Everything must be blue. So a blue princess was pretty much the way to go for her this year. She is such a little stink pot a lot of the time but deep down she truly is our little princess.

OK, wow! Isn't he just so sweet and adorable!

Jenn and Brookles could not wait to get going. In fact, Brooklyn took off down the street all by herself several times and D had to whistle to get her to come back home till it was time to go.

Halloween 2008

The Bitner Girls

Halloween 2008

The Lamb

The Mad Scientist

And the Princess

Houston, we have a thumb sucker!

Well, it is official. Libby loves to suck her thumb. I think that it is pretty dang cute. Sometimes she sucks so hard that she pulls half her hand into her mouth. We are not too worried about this new development especially since she will still take a binky.

So, you can't tell too much by these two pictures but Libby is having some issues with her neck and head. We have an appointment at Primary Children's next week to have her looked at. They call it Torticollis. ( I don't think that I spelled that right but I am sure you get the idea, just sound it out.) Basically what happens is the muscles and such on one side of the neck tighten up or are too short. This causes her to always put her head to one side which then causes her head to become misshapen. Hopefully we can get this taken care of with therapy and not have to put her in a helmet. Even worse than a helmet is surgery if the tendons and such in her neck are too bad. Wish us luck next week.