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Tuesday, April 29, 2008

Hallie's Week in Review



I guess we'll start at the most recent first, and then move our way back through the week.

First piece of news: After a hellacious ten or twelve day vomit-ful stint, Hallie just came off of FOUR days of no vomiting in a row. Tonight, sadly, that record was broken at dinner when we probably gave her too much to eat and drink (about 3 ounces of juice, followed by 2 ounces of milk and 6 ounces of puree) and she was having too hard of a time clearing it out of a system (read: she has been backed up once more). Still, that brings us to 36 days in 2008, which doesn't quiet preserve our 1/3 of the time without vomit goals for the year, but we'll still take it. It's amazing how much calmer we both are and how much better our relationship is when we are not constantly on edge about vomiting.

Why was she so good the past four days? Because her pooping was better. Now, one theory has it that eliminating all but pears, goat yogurt, goat milk, and, now carrots from Hallie's diet makes her digestion faster.

That's one theory. Another theory suggests that the really bad day that we had on Tuesday was not just any old GI bug but Fifth Disease and that this, even in our delayed gastric emptying kiddo, made it easier for her to poop. There is certainly evidence in this direction.

We came up with the diagnosis of Fifth Disease after Hallie developed a bright red rash on her cheeks and lighter ones on her neck and legs and arms on Friday. The rash comes and goes, and this is what it looked like on Sunday (not the worst of it, but we did not take pictures of the worst):




Fifth Disease was probably what felled us, too, but adults don't develop facial rashes from it. (And once the rash comes out, the child is no longer contagious and the rash itself is not painful. It's a cruel irony not to know you have a problem--just a low grade fever maybe, and some fatigue and joint pain--until AFTER you have been contagious for some time.

So this probably explains what happened Tuesday. We were looking for something exotic, or some preemie-related ailment. Instead, Hallie had a very common childhood illness.

But not all of last week was consumed with illness. Indeed, Hallie was feeling pretty good most of the time, and the weather was lovely, so we spent considerable time in the park, swinging and sliding and trying to steal older kids' balls.

Hallie spent an equal amount of time playing with the neighborhood kids on the sidewalk in front of her house. Karina was out on her tricycle and Hallie took a turn. At first she had no idea where to put her feet, but Karina showed her by putting them in the correct position. Hallie's steering and pedaling skills still are sorely lacking, but she'll get there!



Here's a lovely picture of Hallie on Karina's trike and Karina on Hallie's Fisher Price bus:



Later the same day, Hallie tripped a bit on the sidewalk and got her first ever scraped knee. It's sort of amazing that it took so long to fall this way, but Hallie is generally pretty well coordinated and so she usually remains upright during her super fast running down our block.

Here are a couple of pics of Hallie's poor knee. It's only now beginning to heal and the scab is really bugging her.



And, lest I forget, we had a great, if abbreviated March for Babies. Team Halliie and Olivia raised over $2800 dollars for the March of Dimes. We thank everyone who contributed to this very worthy cause.

Here's the small team standing in front of the March for Babies banner:


This shot is funny: the innocent passerby whom we coaxed into taking this picture cut off the word "babies" and framed his shot only to include the letter "b" which, for Hallie, is a major word. It connotes bubble, ball, bert, big bird, bird, and probably other words:



Alas, "B' does not mean 'baby.' Rather, 'day-dee' does.

Our walk was truncated--the weather was nasty, my mom (who had come down for a couple of days) could not possibly walk, and it's become increasingly hard to confine Hallie to the stroller for long stretches of time. Nevertheless, we had a wonderful time at brunch and, by and large, Hallie was wondefully behaved.

After the walk/brunch, we headed over to speech therapy. I have to say that i think that, whatever our speech therapist is doing is working. We are getting a whole bunch more speech, including 'yellow duck', 'some' (which is the cutest word that Hallie says, 'tak you' (Thank you), and 'buh-buh' for bubbles. There are probably others that have become part of Hallie's repertoire but I cannot think of them offhand.

However much we're not thrilled with the feeding thing, the speech thing has been excellent so far in getting Hallie to talk more (be it using real words or babbling).

We are so proud of our little girl!

5 comments:

Sara Cohen said...

She really is beautiful! Glad everyone is feeling better!

Kara said...

Just want to give you a heads up that it took Truman about 2 months to get over Fifth Disease. When we came close to putting in a feeding tube last December, it was actually Fifth Disease and the accompanying sore throat that was causing not to eat or keep anything down.

Judith and Jason said...

Sister has a nice set of gams!
Seriously! :) No wonder she can run fast. She is strong!

Heidi said...

Wow, that last picture I immediately thought she doesn't look like a baby anymore! She looks like a little girl, getting so big.

Billie said...

Awwwwww! I love, love, love that last pic! I agree with Heidi, she doesn't look like a baby anymore:)