To celebrate Lilly’s One Month birthday, her doctors let us take her on a walk through the garden outside of the hospital. This was the first time Lilly has ever been outside. The flowers were beautiful and fragrent. The birds were singing. The warm wind was blowing. We even were able to show her a bumblebee.
I have posted some photos from the walk as well as a few other pictures from the weekend.
Before Lilly’s birth, we posted a collection of pictures that represent the last nine months of Samantha’s pregnancy, starting with the joyful moment when we learned Samantha was pregnant with Lillianne.
No little girl could have been more wanted than Lillianne Rosemarie. She is a wonderful little girl who I fell in love with the moment I laid eyes on her. These last nine days have had more than their share of heartache and fear, but they also have been some of the best days of my life because I am lucky enough to be the daddy of this little girl.
Lilly’s ventilator tube has been removed and she is breathing on her own. For up-to-date information, you can visit Lilly’s CaringBridge Site. I have posted a few pictures of Lillianne and her family over the last couple of days.
I have posted some pictures from Lilly’s first week of life. Samantha was in the hospital recovering from her cesarean for most of this week and we were both spending most of our time with Lillianne in the NICU. Peter was with his grandparents and I was staying in their guest room, reading stories to Peter after coming back each night around 11:00pm. I don’t think anyone was getting any sleep.
Our daughter Lillianne Rosemarie Rossow was born Friday the 23rd of June. She is a very sick little girl fighting for her life right now. As I write this, I am home from the hospital for a few hours hopefully to get a few hours of sleep.
Lillianne’s grandparents have been dutifully updating a website of their own to keep people up-to-date about our daughter’s condition. That site can be found at http://www.caringbridge.org/visit/lillianrossow.
I have posted some pictures from Lillianne’s first day of life, including her baptism late friday night.
Easter was enjoyed by all of us this year. As usual, the Easter Bunny made a visit to our house and left a large supply of Easter eggs strewn across the front yard. In addition to the eggs, he left lots of good stuff in an Easter basket. The Easter Bunny has good taste in books. “Don’t Let the Pigeon Stay Up Late!” by Mo Willems was a great pick.
Samantha’s cousin John and his wife had the whole family over for an Easter luncheon. Amazingly enough, the Easter Bunny visited their house as well. This meant many more eggs for Peter. I suspect he will be eating Easter candy for a long time. We took lots of pictures of the “Egg Retrieval Process”.
We visited the Gulf Coast of Alabama this spring for a week in March. We stayed in the Mobile Bay area. Samantha’s family rented a beach house on Dauphin Island just outside the bay. The tiny island has a history going back 300 years. At one point it was the capitol of the Louisiana Territory, which covered nearly two thirds of the United States.
The west end of the island was damaged by Hurricane Ivan and then pretty well destroyed by Hurricane Katrina, but the east end of the island where we were staying was hardly touched. Our end of the island was pretty sleepy, but the damaged west end experienced a traffic jam of contractors each weekday as they rebuilt the multi-million dollar beach houses.
It was a relaxing week spent walking along the beach, eating good food, visiting with family, and sightseeing along the coast. We put a about 1000 miles on our rental car during the week, so there I guess there was quite a bit of sightseeing.
Not far from the beach house where we were staying on Dauphin Island was Fort Gaines, which played a key role in the Battle of Mobile Bay during the Civil War.
The Union fleet, under the command of Admiral David Farragut fought their way into Mobile Bay, which was defended by Fort Gaines and Fort Morgan and a torpedo field between them. This would be referred to as a “mine field” in today’s terminology. The USS Tecumseh, one four Union ironclads at the battle struck a mine and sunk. The Union fleet hesitated. Up to this point, Union forces had believed ironclads to be virtually unsinkable.
Farragut then ordered his flagship, the USS Hartford and the Union fleet to press on through the torpedo field and on into Mobile Bay with his famous order, “Damn the torpedoes! Full speed ahead!”
The battle that followed mostly destroyed the small Confederate fleet and after a few weeks both forts fell to Union forces. The city of Mobile remained in Confederate hands, but the port of Mobile was closed to blockade running.
Samantha’s dad has spent a lot of time over the last year working in both Biloxi and New Orleans. We spent some time in both cities during our trip.
The damage in Biloxi from Hurricane Katrina was dramatic, as the full force of the storm sat over the city for many hours. There are whole areas of the city that were wiped off the map, with only foundations left standing.
The damage in New Orleans seemed more widespread, partially because the population base was so much larger. You can drive for mile after mile through New Orleans and it looks like a ghost town. In many areas everything is still standing, even the cars parked in front of apartment buildings and homes, but you don’t see any people. Everything you can in every direction is uninhabitable.
The difference between the areas of New Orleans that flooded and the area that didn’t are striking. The areas that weren’t flooded are filled with people and commerce and look as nothing has happened.
We finished our afternoon in New Orleans with a walk through the French Quarter. This was the only area of New Orleans where I felt comfortable taking any pictures.
On our trip to Alabama, we visited the Gulf Coast Zoo in Gulf Shores, Alabama. This is a little zoo with about 300 animals. It was a great place to visit with a little boy who likes animals.
The zoo had only recently reopened after having been closed for 18 months due to hurricane damage. The zoo took the brunt of by three hurricane strikes over the course of 14 months. Each time they were close to finishing reconstruction, they were hit by another hurricane. The zoo staff had to evacuate all of the animals to higher ground each time.
The zoo has been the focus of a television series on the channel Animal Planet entitled “The Little Zoo That Could“. The series chronicles the zoo’s efforts to rebuild after the hurricane damage.
My understanding is that the zoo’s long-term plans are to relocate to higher ground.
The Rossow family web portal 