We Haven't Suspended Blogging...

Far from it. I'm busy at work on my post reviewing the soon-to-be-released Volumes 3 and 4 of Baby Signing Time. Oh yeah, and chasing around a very active, quite adorable nearly-28 month old with a penchant for strewing toys about and writing on the walls in marker that is getting ever-harder to remove with Mr. Clean Magic Erasers (please note: the originals work better than the cheaper Safeway knockoffs). Oh, yeah, and holding down a full-time job, too.

But in the interest in not losing our candidate's--oops, I mean our kid's--audience, I bring you the following:

Hallie has had a wonderful, nearly vomit free weak (sad when that's the headline, but such is life with a food allergic microtoddler). She is now on day 117 of vomit-free existence and the only incidents this week (2 small ones) related to a. her mommy trying to forcibly excavate a booger from Hallie's nose and b. Hallie's ingestion of a stub of a french fry she found on the floor after dinner on Thursday night. Neither are of terrible concern to us, and in days gone past, we wouldn't have even counted them.

Hallie is also being extra cute these days. She has long done this thing where she hugs an object tight, lays her head on it, etc. That on its own is really cute, but we've fairly recently discovered that this is a signal that she wants a hug from one of us. We always oblige, and this seems to have reinforced the behavior and taken it to new lengths. These days, our favorite huggable object is a small speck of toilet paper---Hallie will unwind some from the roll, will usually stop when we ask her to, but by then will have pulled off a few sheets. She'll hand us all but the tiniest bit, and hug it fiercely and then lean into whoever is with her for a hug. Very very cute. And extremely silly, which sums up our kid pretty well.



Hallie now knows all of her animal names and sounds (and many corresponding signs) and will walk around pretending to be a monkey, or a duck, or a kitty on cue. She also appears to have picked up the names of some more obscure animals like panda bears (not polar bears yet; she isn't quite at the point where she is working on endangered species). And she's begun to fill in the words of her favorite song---"Sing, Sing a Song"---which we'll often sing before bedtime. She even sort of sings it, which is very sweet. She's long been filling in various words from her favorite books (Mr. Brown Can Moo, Can You; Don't Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus; The Pigeon Finds a Puppy among others) but now seems to know which words they are on the page, and will turn to the correct page when we ask her to do so. She is one smart little cookie.

And finally, in addition to enjoying writing on the walls, she's also really into stickers right now, which she likes to plaster all over my body, Sharon's body, her own body, the floor, and every other surface imaginable.



She also likes to place them on her tongue (think communion wafer) and then race off around the house while we chase her down so as to avoid any 'incidents.' This has turned into quite a sport for her (as has her naked run from the bathtub while I try desperately to dry her off and prevent her from slipping on the floor). What a silly little kid we're raising!

And I'd like to Thank....

Nancy!!! Seriously, it was lovely to get this award even if it's taken me basically forever to write this post. It's been a busy week, and I'm a bit backlogged. If I manage to get this post written, that'll be two of the three that I planned this weekend. Read through to the end of this post for a preview of the third (which will no doubt take another week to finish).

Anyway, we are thrilled that Nancy thought of us, since Caitlyn is one of our micropreemie role models. If you spend any time on our sidebar, you'll probably have noticed that a lot of the kiddos we keep tabs on are in the preschool-and-under set. I'm not sure if this is reflective of the technology at hand---both blogging and NICU practices---or just of the fact that we found out about a lot of these kids via their excellent parents who are fellow members of the micropreemie blog moms group to which we belong. Regardless, blogging your baby does seem to be a fairly au courant thing to do, so it does not surprise me at all that so many parents of babies in (too much of) a rush to get into this world keep electronic records about their kids' milestones, shenanigans, and whatnot.

That said, I want to pass on this award to a few of the bloggers who have been an inspiration to us on this journey.

Billie, mom to Holland and Eden certainly deserves our award. Your blog was one of the first we discovered in those frantic days immediately following the birth of our girls. You gave us hope that we could embark on this journey with grace, fortitude, and a sense of humor.

Then there is Liz. Thank you so much for taking the time to find us. Your invitation to join Preemieblogmoms saved our butt in such a serious way. After we got home from the NICU, we had so many questions and so little support from people who knew what we were going through. By founding this group and helping to create this community, you have done a major service to all of us unlucky enough to have to be members of this society.

Likewise, Liz's intrepid fellow-moderator, Sarah, deserves an award. Not to mention that I always like to send kudos in the direction of fellow academics and social scientists. We don't get the credit we deserve most of the time. Not to mention that keeping abreast of Shoshanna's antics and insights gives me a sense of what's coming down the pipeline from our headstrong little girl.

Laura, a NICU RN and mom of five, the youngest of whom is Daniel, a 24 weeker whom she and her husband adopted, most definitely deserves this award. I love following the story of the Big Tent and very much appreciate the craziness of their daily life, not to mention a peek into the world of competitive dancing and tattooed moms.

Finally, there are Heidi and Kit. They are parents to Bennett, another 23 weeker with lots of spirit, who is sandwiched in the middle between two other brothers and two other sisters. Heidi and Bennett are inspirational parents and there's never a dull moment around their parts.

OK---duty done. Now here's the instructions to all of you who received these awards (and who probably are too busy to follow up immediately, what with your new babies, underway semesters and all that jazz):

Here are the instructions for the following Brillante Weblog Premio award recipients:



1.Place the Logo on your blog


2.Link to the person who awarded you


3.You can nominate up to 5 blogs


4.Add their links to your blog


5.Leave a message in the comment section of their blog to notify the winners.

And finally, a word about Hallie, who needs to be mentioned in every post or else. She's doing nicely right now. We're up to 113 vomit free days (I swear that only other micropreemie parents think it's cool that we keep count. Seriously, is this normal behavior? Probably not, but then 'normal' is not a word we tend to use a lot around here, and that was probably true way before we embarked on parenthood). She seems to be having another language explosion. She is beginning to sing to herself ("Sing, Sing A Song" appropriately enough; she really likes the "La La" part but fills in a lot of the words) and is talking while she plays. This is much more than labeling and I suspect we're about to start seeing sentences of sorts. Some of her words are very clear now (duck, pig, farm, goat--of course, thank you, etc) and some rely on context (was that 'pigeon' or 'chicken'? who can say really unless you have a pigeon book or a farmyard puzzle at hand). She also is beginning to jump---she has cleared maybe a centimeter off the ground, but she's well on her way to impersonating a monkey on a bed. And she is even gigglier than usual.

Good thing she's cute though, because she's been a nightmare to put to sleep. Sharon can no longer rock her in the chair in the room-that-should-be-Hallie's-room-except-for-she-sleeps-with-us. Hallie is way too heavy and kicks like she's got a black belt (Note to self: regardless of aptitude, we're not enrolling Hallie in martial arts until such time as she finds a way of going to sleep that does not involve kicking). So she's just plain dangerous, and we're already in the most dangerous part of the pregnancy and can't afford to make things more precarious right now (Sharon had a back ache this week that ended up with an L&D triage visit yesterday that showed no contractions and a closed cervix, but we need to make sure that she can take things easy, and lifting Hallie and putting her to sleep in her arms does not fit within this game plan). So a few nights ago I pinned down Hallie for the sleep time struggle, which lasted about two hours. And last night we put her to sleep on the couch in front of Classical Baby: The Music Video, which is often how I get Hallie to nap during the day. That was great. Tonight we tried this again and again we struggled for two hours, probably more. We ended up switching to our demo DVD of Baby Signing Time, Volumes Three and Four (look for the review by later this week) and that calmed down Hallie but did not produce any somniferous effects. Indeed, Hallie found the DVDs engaging and riveting and happily signed along with them while she nursed her bedtime bottle. Finally, we brought her upstairs and it only took another twenty minutes to get her to sleep. By this point Sharon and I were delirious and fading in and out of sleep. Of course, now I'm awake again (hence the post). Sigh. Anyway, we hope this phase ends soon because we're not terribly interested in being any more sleep-deprived than we already are!

On that note, off to bed!

Meeting Jake

As many of you know, Hallie was conceived using donor sperm, and way-back-when before this micropreemie journey started, Sharon and I joined the Donor Sibling Registry so that we could find out about the other children whose parents used the same donor. We already knew that there were pregnancies reported, but we had no idea how many or where the parents were located. And we also thought it would be a good thing to have potentially useful health information (turns out that we were right on this one, and that more than several of the donor siblings have allergies--seem to be primarily atopic stuff, but this is related to food allergies).

Anyway, we found out very quickly that the mom of the oldest donor sibling, who is now 4, had started a yahoo group for 1876-ers (the donor's number). I forget now at that point how many parents had registered or how many siblings there were, but there are now about 15 to 20 kids (one set of parents have two babies from the same donor) who are spread out across the country and who have all kinds of families (some with a mom and a dad, some with two moms, and some with a single mom; no two dad families yet, though). There is, I believe one other set of twins (in Puerto Rico, I think). The parents post updates about their kids from time to time, and we've come to learn that many of our little ones are enormously tall and sturdy; they don't like to sleep much; they do like to be incredibly active; and they give their parents a run for their money. Most of them have very straight hair that's on the fair side and many of them have very very pale skin. That certainly holds true in the case of both Hallie and Jake.

We also found out that we were not the only ones who had pre-term labor, but in all of the other cases, the labor was caught in time. There is one other preemie in the group, but she was a 34 weeker feeder-and-grower type.

At first I thought that none of the siblings lived anywhere remotely near us, but that turns out to have been wrong. We just found out this summer that Jake and his mom live a mere hour away in central New Jersey. We were thrilled to be invited to Jake's third birthday party, which took place last weekend.

Jake and his mom and her family and friends are super and we felt right at home immediately. Hallie had a blast playing with Jake, his little girlfriend Jordan, and the other kids at the party. , Jake's mom, and her friends,took Hallie under their wings (or at least gave her butt a nice boost) when she scrambled repeatedly up the huge inflatable slide bouncer (that's the best I can do as far as naming this immense structure!) that they had set up in the backyard for the occasion. Hallie is intrepid--she knows no fear where climbing is concerned (unlike her less-than-intrepid-but-bookish mama). Sharon, obviously, wasn't going to take on the climbing wall and bouncer at 19 weeks pregnant. So we were thrilled that Gina and her friends were willing to keep an eye on our girl and facilitate her incredible fun.











Hallie and Jake scrambled up the slide like pros:



And had fun hanging out at the bottom, where they bounced and rolled around:



Here's one of all the little kids in a group photo:



And finally a nice picture of the birthday boy alone. Isn't Jake cute?



We have plans for lots more meetings, and hopefully the next one will involve pumpkin picking. Hallie LOVES Hallowe'en (for some unknown reason; perhaps she understands that it was her first holiday at home?) and we could use some nice pumpkins around here. So we can't wait to see them again and have some more sibling fun!

Signing Time--New Baby Signing Time Videos, but No Longer on PBS

As everyone who reads this blog knows, we're big, big fans of Signing Time. The work that Rachel Coleman (and her entire family) have done is fabulous. Rachel is an inspiration to me and Sharon; when she learned that her daughter Leah was deaf, instead of accepting that Leah would be shut out from communicating with her peers, Rachel and her sister Emilie responded by teaching Leah and Alex sign. But this--which alone was great--was not enough. Rachel and her family decided to bring signing to all families--those whose members were typically developing and those whose members had various special needs--in a way that was fun, friendly, and educational.

We've seen how powerful Rachel's enterprise is first hand. If you scroll back into our archives, you will note that Hallie used no words consistently and babbled only very infrequently until some time this past spring/summer. She was nearly 2 years old and had already been in speech therapy for more than a year. We had taught her a couple of signs on our own (more, all done, and book) but we had no way of communicating with our charming, adorable, and clearly very bright little girl (her receptive speech was well above average).

Signing Time changed all that. First Hallie learned dozens of signs. Then, this summer, she learned dozens of words. And then, to our amazement, Hallie learned the entire alphabet -- both in English characters and in sign. She can identify all of the upper case letters, most of the lower case ones, and all of the signed ones.

We are amazed, and if we had to do it all over again (wait...we DO get to do this again, we hope, this winter when our hopefully-full-term little baby girl arrives!!!), we'd start even earlier. I know that there has been a lot of research about television/videos being detrimental to kids' development. But my own sense (as an educator and as a parent) is that this very much depends on what you expose your kids to, and how you view these visual materials. We never just plop Hallie down in front of a video and ignore her (at least not too much--just for bathroom breaks and to get her lunch). We watchthem with her and we interactwith the materials. Sharon and I have learned to sign along with Hallie and this has been a great help because, even though she is saying words at this point, she is still speech delayed (probably at the 18 month level, but she's 27 months old) and has trouble with articulation. Knowing sign, signing to her, and setting up a framework of communication still helps us meet her needs and helps avoid excessive frustration and the horrible tantrums that accompany the terrible twos.

Anyway, we can't recommend these videos enough, and many of our friends with full-term children (some who are speech delayed and some who are right on target) agree. Kids love to watch other kids and they learn from them; the songs are catchy; and the videos are charming. What's not to love?

And now there are some new additions to baby signing time--the previews are below.





But, on a sobering note, sadly, Rachel has had to pull Signing Time from PBS because it's too expensive to air these videos without sponsorship (public television, like so much else, has been gutted as far as funding is concerned over the past eight years). This is deeply troubling to me, because that means that only those of us with extra resources (and that is a shrinking number of folks in this economy) will be able to get access to Signing Time for our kids. I talk about Signing Time a lot with our OT and ST and our OT has recommended the series to several of the parents of children with whom she works. We live in a city, and a lot of the kids that Jenine handles on her caseload are super poor. Their families don't have money for toys, they don't have computers with which to order things on the internet, and their kids are missing out. Signing Time on PBS was one way they could get access to a resource that really does help.

That Rachel has been forced to pull Signing Time from public television will further widen the division between haves and have-nots in our country, which strikes me as so very very wrong. Helping poor families gain access to resources and helping kids whose parents' educational level is something that all of us should get behind. This will make for a stronger, better, more united country with a stronger, better, more educated youth.

I don't blame Rachel; I blame the lack of federal funding for birth-to-three programs. The ideal would be to restore funding levels for these programs to a proper level and for our society as a whole to commit to making good resources accessible to all. But a second best would be to secure sponsorship for Signing Time to restore the series to PBS. So, on the off-chance that you are reading this and have a company that makes oodles of money and is looking for a quality place to advertise, or if you know someone who knows someone who knows someone who can fundraise and make contacts to advance this endeavor, please contact Rachel (see Hallie's favorites and follow the links, or just leave me a message). If I had a million dollars, I'd forego the nice Chesterfield and an Ottoman and the Reliant automobile and the real green dress and the pre-cooked bacon and sponsor Signing Time myself. I am almost certain that the Barenaked Ladies would agree.

Why Buildings Now Stand: The Portrait of a Young Girl as Architect

Hallie has owned blocks since before I can remember. We got her the soft Parent blocks first, then some fisher price blocks with 'grippers' on each side that were supposedly easy to stack, then some peek-a-blocks, then some bristle blocks, and of course lots of mega blocks. Hallie was pretty uniform in her use of these blocks: she threw them all over and loved dumping them out of the many bins that we needed to purchase for our overwhelming number of blocks. She was also a master deconstructionist (and not of the Derridean variety, either). If I built it, she knocked it down. She could have authored Why Buildings Fall Down: How Structures Fail had Matthys Levy and Mario Salvadori had not beaten her to it first. However, there was no way in the world she could have written Salvadori's companion book, Why Buildings Stand Up: The Strength of Architecture. At most, she'd cantilever a few mega blocks (Frank Lloyd Wright might have been proud, but then Falling Water is apparently falling into the water, so I'm not sure what to make of this). But mommy, who just happens to be an architect, not so much. Our girl showed approximately zero interest in and even less aptitude for constructing things.

Until yesterday. Hallie asked to play with her blocks and actually began to build with them. She seems to prefer monochromatic patterns (all the yellows together, all the blues together) and has an adventurous style wherein she tries to put wider structures atop narrower ones. But she is building with her blocks and has made her mommy proud. So I guess we can put this concern to rest, much as we did when she loved to dump things out of containers but never back into them.



And one more milestone, while we're at it: Hallie's speech therapist taught Hallie that the proper answer to "What is your name?" is "Hallie." We've been trying to get Hallie to answer this question forever (more or less) and today she learned to do it in five minutes. We're not sure whether this will stick, but it's a nice addition to her list of social communication, which thus far has been limited to "Hiiiii!!!!" "Bye!!!!!!" "Please" and "Thank you." Sadly, "uh oh," and much less "Elmo", "Abby" and "Pigeon" aren't really great conversation-starters (even for the two-and-under set).

A is for Asleep, B is for Bawling ...and T is for Teething and Tantrums and the Terrible Twos

Hallie no longer takes morning naps...just one more or less decent-sized one in the mid to late afternoon. She's usually up for the day around 9-ish (as early as 8:30 on some mornings, as late as 9:30 on others); naps after lunch (so around 2:30 or 3:00pm) for an hour to two and a half hours, and is ready for bed at 9:30pm and asleep by 10 (in Sharon's arms, with a bottle...please refrain from comments about falling asleep with bottles. It's the only way we can get sufficient food into her).

Not your normal 2 year old's schedule, but it works for her (and us); it allows us to get her meds into her, food into her, and still have enough time for her to play and hang out with two working moms.

Anyway, that's how it was until recently. Sure, she'd have a random day here or there where she'd wake up at 3am or 5am, and most of the time it's a pain in the butt to get her back down again, and a random day here or there where she'd refuse to nap (this is generally VERY rare), and she'd get whiny and tired and want to go down earlier, but most of the time she stayed roughly within her schedule. Her schedule is a thing of glory to us: Hallie, when on her schedule, is a very happy little girl who cries rarely (usually when she hits her head or we take away some sort of dangerous object she's managed somehow to get a hold of) and whose whining was minimal.

Not the case anymore. We're not sure what's up, really, but we think it's some combination of the terrible twos, teething, and me going back to teaching (also the main reason why there have been no blog posts of late). Hallie's been sleeping horribly lately, and waking a lot during the middle of the night (sometimes for as long as a two hour stretch) AND getting up either very early (a quarter to seven today; that's why she's down for a nap right now and I'm able to blog) or very late (10:30am yesterday, and had to be awoken at that). The whining is almost non stop, even when our girl is not tired, and she is now doing that classic two-year old thing where she throws herself on the ground and bawls uncontrollably at the drop of a hat...

We miss our sweet, well adjusted not quite two year old. Where did they hide her? And more importantly, exactly how long is this going to continue?

We're now adopting an 'ignore all whining' policy (though we still try to intervene to prevent it to turn into major crying which leads to major vomiting, which is our least favorite thing to clean up). Maybe that will help. Regular tylenol is helping a bit, but if her earlier bouts of teething are any indication, this teething thing tends to go on a long time for Hallie and is very painful. Poor kid! We wish there was something we could do that would help, but ibuprofen and baby orajel make her vomit, and so the only real option we have is tylenol (and a stiff drink--or at least a glass of wine--for me....Sharon, sadly, doesn't have that option, and last time I checked, mint iced tea wasn't known to take the edge off of anything).

That said, Hallie is still her terribly cute self and we do know that this phase will pass. Even though she wakes up in the middle of the night, she's not whiny then (just during the day, really). Indeed, she's super smiley: she sits up in bed, starts waving frantically (think beauty pageant winners on a parade float) and saying "HIIIII! Mama! Mommy! HIIIII!!!!! Elmo!!!!).

The other thing she's been doing lately is saying the alphabet spontaneously (she seems to know all of the letters in order, unprompted) and trying to sign it, too. She knows how to sign about half of the alphabet accurately and she sort of just makes up the rest. Getting her to focus on the alphabet when she's tantruming has turned out to be a pretty good way of breaking the tantrum.

In terms of the alphabet, she's also trying to write letters. Sharon and our substitute baby sitter and I have all been teaching her how to make her letters and this is sort of working. She's been drawing fluid "O"s and even attempted an "A" on the wall the other day.



Thank goodness for washable crayons! (FYI: blue and green washable markers are harder to get off of yellow paint than reds and oranges and browns. And crayons are definitely easier to erase than markers. Most of the markers, and especially the blue and green ones, have gone missing of late. I can't imagine who took them. Can you?)

Finally, on the more-annoying-than-cute front, Hallie is in a major disrobing phase.



We don't mind shirt and shorts removal too much, but handing her diaper to us on a regular basis needs to end immediately. It's back to onesies for her, I'm afraid. And she's definitely not ready for potty training, either: she needed to poop in the bathroom after her bath last night and I tried to put her on the potty. She, however, preferred the floor. So unless we're thinking about moving to the turkish toilet model around here, which we're not, we'll be supporting the Pampers folks for quite a bit longer, I'm afraid.

On the daily vomit count: teething isn't helping our cause, but we are up to 107 days....

Anyway, here's some really cute recent pictures of Hallie that don't quite fit into the narrative above:

Aunt Laura dressed up Hallie in some of Hannah's princess-wear when they were down there for the weekend. This is our favorite shot of Princess Hallie Bippety Bop. Notice the red cheeks; she was running a low grade teething fever. At all other points in time, Hallie is the whitest kid imaginable.



And these are from her second year pictures, which the annoying Picture People finally managed to upload for us:

Make That 103!!!!

Well, we've more than made our Labor Day goal of 100 days, so why not go for a bit more? (I feel a tiny bit like the overachieving Soviet Stakhanovites who over-fulfilled the plan about whom I shall be teaching in a few short days, but unlike the producers of bricks and steel in Stalinist Russia of the 1930s, we're actually investing in a one-of-a-kind genuine and above average and excellent little girl around here).

Hallie's had a great bunch of days, and had fun at Grammy's and with Aunt Laura and the kids this past weekend (two weekends in a row, soon to be three, as I toil away both in preparation for and on Labor Day once again this year). Hopefully Aunt Laura will take up the mantle of Guest Blogger soon! The little kids (her lovely cousins Hannah and Adam) tired her out, but not so much that she was unable to wake up this past morning at 6:00am and ask me to read to her. Sharon slept in until she needed to get to work, and Hallie and I had some quality time downstairs. She was in a great mood all day, fell asleep for our guest-nanny in the high chair at lunch, and went full steam ahead until 10:30pm tonight. Hopefully she'll stay asleep a bit longer tomorrow (or is that today?).

No pics tonight, but maybe Aunt Laura will post/send me some from Hal's time at the beach and pool soon!

That's all folks. This tired mama has got to get to bed!

Princess Hallie's Magical 100 DAYS!!!!

We just hit a major milestone---100 vomit free days this year. Woo-hoo!!! Since August 22 is the 234th day of the year, that makes it nearly half a year so far that is vomit free. And today was also three days in a row where Hallie didn't have an incident, so we are beginning to feel like we are back on track.

The zyrtec, we think, is really working and Hallie sounds a heck of a lot clearer and is much more comfortable. She played in the playground for over an hour this morning, and then in the backyard at the sand-and-water table (seems to like the sand more than she used to now that she visited the beach) and had an overall great day. She got to see Baby Taylor (Aunt Renee's and Aunt Kim's little girl, who inherited Hallie's vast collection of clothing and has yet to wear the same onesie twice in her short life of two months) and hung out with Ethan, Karina, and Cole this evening. So our girl had lots of fun, played hard, and kept her food down.

There may be some drop-off in terms of her appetite now that we pulled the periactin, but it's fairly minimal and given Hallie's robust size, we're not too concerned. We're just happy that Hallie (who woke up this morning even more cheerful than usual) is having a nice time and feeling good and that we moms don't have to clean up more than the usual toddler mess (which now includes some fetching artwork rendered in washable markers on our walls each evening).

And, on top of all of this good news, I located our camera, so here are the lovely Princess Hallie photos that I promised:



Here she is holding out her foot for the glass slipper (or at least glass croc):



And here's a lovely closeup of Hallie's pretty little face:

Captain Underpants

I think it's safe to say that Hallie is pretty into 'dress up' these days. She loves to try on our shoes (and even socks....she had me help her put on Sharon's socks today and thought that walking around in them was just grand. I must say that they went very well with her princess outfit, courtesy of Cousin Hannah, though I still think that the highish-heeled princess shoes that match the outfit do look a tad bit better with it).

Anyway, she's always into trying new looks, and this has got to be one of our recent favorites:


Yes, those are little panties on her head. She really did enjoy wearing these around for a while before getting ready for bed!

So, to indulge her new passion, I decided to order her an orange and black tutu for Hallowe'en (she'll pair it with something spooky, or just a bit crazy, I'm sure!). She is totally in love with Hallowe'en and everything related to it (she often asks to wear her various pairs of Hallowe'en socks and, quite literally, every book related to Hallowe'en that she owns (four or five, I believe) are in shreds because she needs them to be read to her, and must chew, pull on and rip them as often as possible). So, given that Hallowe'en is kind of a year-round holiday in these here parts, I thought a nice tutu would go over quite well.

Indeed, it appears to have done just that:


But far be it for our kid to wear a tutu only in a conventional way. It serves just as well as a wig, or even more fetchingly, as a boa.


Quite the diva, our girl is!

(And, Hannah, I promise that there are pictures of Hallie in the princess dress....they just haven't made it onto my computer yet since a certain toddler I know appears to have hidden the camera again).

Speaking of which, Hallie has expressed a heightened interest in looking at herself in the mirror (was always fun, but is now even more fun) and in pictures on the camera and my computer. And, now, instead of calling herself "Hallie" she says "Had-dee" which is totally cute. She still doesn't answer the question 'What is your name?" but that'll come soon enough.

And otherwise Hallie's language is getting better and better all the time. Her articulation is much clearer, she is using many many more words, and she's much more interactive with everyone. We're pretty darned pleased. On top of this, she is practicing signing the alphabet (and not just saying the letter names out loud) and has begun to trace the shape of english language letters in the air. Finally, she also knows most of the alphabet in lower case. I suspect we'll find out that she knows even more than this once she can communicate with us more fully but suffice it to say: we're very impressed.

We're also impressed that she's doing a bunch better this week relative to the last couple. The allergist put her on a pretty hefty dose of zyrtec (5 ml/day) instead of the periactin and it seems to be helping. She may or may not have a cold on top of this---hard to tell still---but we've been giving her the flovent and atrovent twice a day just in case. We're still off of bananas and taking it generally slow with the feeding, but she's now up to 99 days vomit free this year, and we're hoping that 100 is just around the corner.

So, in the spirit of Hallie reaching new heights, I'll end this post with this picture of Hallie climbing onto the arm of her chair (no doubt so that she could get at something forbidden that we'd hidden away in the pack-and play).

Seasonal Allergies????

Real quick update:

Sharon was talking to Laura (her sister, Hallie's aunt) yesterday about cousin Adam, who has a horrible case of the sniffles. They're keeping Adam away from Hallie in the meantime, just in case it's a cold, but in passing, Aunt Laura mentioned that Adam's issues were probably related to the recent onset of Ragweed season.

And that brings us to the following intriguing possibility: what food (among others) cross-reacts with Ragweed? Banana.

Fascinating. (I get a lot of this info from the fabulous boards over at POFAK---see link on the left if you have a food-allergic kid and are reading this and are not yet a member. The 25 dollar membership fee is TOTALLY worthwhile). Anyway, after doing a bit of research last night, I emailed our allergist at CHOP, who said that this would not surprise her in the least. Periactin, while a good appetitie stimulant (but one we're not sure is working) is not the best antihistamine out there. She'll email me back (I hope) with recommendations for a different drug or drugs (talk of some kind of nasal inhaler) and the appropriate dosage(s).

Before bed last night and upon waking, I began to think again about our past experiences with Hallie. We were pretty certain back in April/May of 2007 (when Hallie was still shy of one year old) that she was experiencing seasonal allergies, raised this with our pediatrician, and was told by him that this was not possible since she had never lived through an allergy season. Although I retorted that people---including us---probably brought pollen into the NICU on our clothing, this got me nowhere. Life was miserable from April/May until September/October (14 week cold, a couple of brief hospitalizations, a triple scope, failed attempts at antibiotics, three ear infections, then ear tubes). Things got much better when we pulled milk in November, and even better in December and January (when the kid lost weight but went two whole weeks without vomiting). Things remained fairly good unless Hallie was failing foods back in the winter and spring of this year, but there was a rough patch in January when there was unseasonably warm weather and hellishness again when things started growing in earnest in May. June was a bit better, with some rough patches related to her being out of doors and playing in fields (see our post about her vomiting in Olivia's grove, for example). And we were generally pretty okay in July but things got rough again in August, pretty much at the moment Ragweed season got underway here.

OK---so this is my sense of what's going on. The kid has food allergies to some significant things (positive on skin tests for egg, wheat, barley; unquestionable food reactions to cow milk, soy, buckwheat, and rice). She may or may not be allergic to peaches and blueberries (I'd guess not if I were a betting gal, and with Hallie as the subject, there's frankly too much risk involved!). Beef...who knows? But seasonal allergies...yeah, I think we've got those. So the question is what to do about them. Let's hope the allergist (who did after all email me at 7am on a Sunday morning) gets back to us soon. I suspect that we're going to put her on something stronger and my bet is that we end up with another allergy appointment (after allergy season ends, I hope!) that will involve us pulling Hallie off of antihistamines for a little bit and doing a few skin tests for seasonal stuff. I'm all for that. If we can figure out what's going on there, maybe we can figure out the food stuff. And down the road there are always allergy shots for the seasonal stuff should it become unbearable to her...

Alright, that's all for now. But I am relieved to once more be thinking that there are at least times of the year when our banana-loving kiddo can eat (bite small amounts off of) her beloved 'nanas'.

Re-Ducks

>


Hallie has always loved bath tubs and they don't really need to involve water, either (though she's a big fan of that too). Whenever we get a new tub (which has sadly been all too often because the inflatable tubs spring leaks really easily and no one can ever find the tiny little included patch kits when they do), she has to check it out by getting inside it, lifting it and throwing it in the monstrous clawfoot tub (the big reason we have her in a toddler tub at this point to begin with), etc.

Well, the ducky was an emergency purchase for us by Aunt Vanessa when our last tub not only sprung a leak but refused to stay inflated beyond pancake status. It was too small for Hallie from the outset, but it sure beat not having a tub for our nightly baths. So this week we replaced it with a Primo Eurobath (which is a great tub, though Hallie hates it...she wants to be able to kick at will and push forward so that she can reach the faucet, the soap dish, and anything else that might not be nailed down. The Eurobathhas positioners to prevent the baby or toddler from slipping forward that get in Hallie's way and as all of us who know Hallie know quite well, we should NEVER get in our girl's way when she wants something).

Anyway, we've left the ducky tub in the bathroom this week (mostly out of laziness) and Hallie's had a blast playing in it. Lately, she's loved mirrors even more than usual (she always has liked them, and needs to check out new accessories she's wearing in a mirror or mirror-like object like the TV or dishwasher front). And her favorite thing to do when looking in the mirror is to say "Hallie" and point at herself. Sometimes Hallie sounds like Hallie and sometimes it sounds like "Haddie" but we definitely know that she can recognize herself.

And she can totally recognize these kids, too:




She may not be able to jump yet, but she sure as heck had a great time in the trampoline with the little cousins last weekend.

Ever since we got home, we've been checking out photos of the cousins this past week and Hallie loves saying "Ah---dam" and "Han-nah" and made us very happy since she pointed at a picture of Aunt Laura and said "Laura" as clear as day.

Right now she's headed back down to the shore to see the cousins and Grammy and Aunt Laura and Uncle Bryan. I need to go to DC for work tomorrow so I can't join them (but I can blog about Hallie to stave off my loneliness and how much I'm missing my girls).

Anyway, speaking about blogging, blogging helps a lot when you need to reconstruct a timetable around things. Sadly, the things around which we need to reconstruct timetables mostly seem to be food-related, and once more we are dealing with a mystery as to what is going on with Hallie. Truth be told, after a fabulous last couple of weeks in June and most of July, she's been having a hard time in August. After failing beef, having a hard time for ten days to two weeks after we pulled the beef, and then failing blueberries last week, we decided to suspend any food trials for a while. So we didn't add in anything this week, and still things are rough. The blueberry fail seemed unclear at best, but we decided to pull them in case they were what was leading to increased hiccups and then once-daily vomiting. Given that the reaction for blueberries seemed comparatively mild, we were pretty sure she'd clear up fast. Not so much. The vomiting has continued, and if anything seemed to all of us (Sharon, Me, and Ami) to be correlated to banana consumption. So we decided after much soul searching and great grief (especially since Hallie now points to bananas, and reaches for them when she sees them, and wants to eat them) to pull bananas on Thursday. Friday, sadly, was only a little better than Monday-Thursday had been (one of those days were vomit free, inching us ever so closer to the 100 day mark...we're now standing firm at 97 days that are spew free this year). She apparently retched and heaved for no reason, and then today, did the same thing. Now, on the face of it, today's vomit was related to her crying when I left the car (she hates it when I get out of the back seat to do an errand and crying often leads to spewing) but I think the problem goes deeper than this: she had been gagging on apples at both breakfast and lunch. This concerns me A LOT: is she suddenly developing problems with the few foods (was six, now five, perhaps headed to 4) that she used to tolerate? We are having trouble ensuring that she take in a balanced diet as it is and were pretty certain that 6 foods as a long-term kind of thing wasn't such a good idea, so 4 foods are even a worse bet where sound nutrition is concerned. Is she still healing from the problems she had with beef (this seems WAY too long ago) or is the problem bananas and needs to heal from taking in so many of those? And is this a banana allergy or intolerance (like, can she handle them in small quantities but not big ones)? Cell-mediated, non-IgE allergies are really sneaky and weird. We probably won't have answers....ever....to most of these questions. And the older she gets, the more despondent I become about her growing out of this stuff. We have no idea how in the heck she keeps growing the way she does (what is in that goat milk formula, anyway?) but we are grateful that she does; now we just want to figure out what we can safely feed her so that she keeps more food in (we'd love 'all,' but will settle for 'more'). Hopefully we won't drive ourselves stark raving mad in our search to figure out this Hallie food puzzle. But if we do, I at least hope that we manage to help her in the process.

Little Drummer Girl

We are perhaps the only parents in the universe who are thrilled that our kid has a drumset. But when your kid has spent a lot of time in silence and has a paralyzed vocal cord, you do get kind of a thrill when you hear her make big noise.

Thank you Aunties Neystice and Kim for the lovely birthday present. Hallie loves it (and for some unknown reason is particularly fond of carrying around the snare's 'stand'. We'd love to know why, but this, like many things toddler, is a big, huge mystery to us).

Friday Photos

These are just the ones we took earlier this week, but I figured that if I didn't upload them now, I never would.

Owing to the lighting and the water and such, most of the aquarium pictures came out 'artsy' but quite wobbly-looking. These were the best of the school:



Notice how Hallie is just as interested in the face painting on the nearby toddler as she is in the fish swimming around in the tank.


I do think that the aquarium did make an impression on our girl as she has been signing 'fish' (and saying FISHEEEEEE) furiously all weak during Dorothy-related segments on Sesame Street. She's also been obsessed with playing the Elmo world rhyming game on my computer (at PBSKIDS.ORG) and saying "Dorothy" (or her approximation thereof) over and over. Not that she really plays the game...she has yet to figure out the trackpad on my MacBook and just pounds its poor (and quickly disintegrating keys) furiously.

In the next pics, you see her eating a banana.





She ate perhaps another 1/16th of one again today. She does pretty well with it, but just doesn't eat much in any conventional sense of the word 'eat.' She prefers to slurp down her purees rather than chew solids. We're hoping the chewing of solids is a skill that kicks in at some point. She can do it...I just fear that she has little practice and is a bit lazy.

We're still not sure what to make of the blueberries. I gave her perhaps an ounce of blueberry/apple puree at lunch today, and she 'urped' (not a real vomit, just a few mouthfuls) after her nap today. "Nap" should be qualified here: she was down perhaps 45 minutes total. I am not sure if she woke up because she had a tummy ache (I do wish she could tell me) or if the phone ringing downstairs (it was a pesky robocall) disturbed her sleep. But it was a bit disheartening to watch her first get the hiccups (always a sign of reflux), then watch her reflux into her mouth, then watch it come up. She was on the stairs at the time and I grabbed the closest vessel (the kitchen sink of her play kitchen) but caught perhaps a third of the mess. It's clear her reflux is acting up (she's had the hiccups a bunch over the past few days) and that she is constipated, but it's not totally clear that this is an allergic reaction. I think we'll give the blueberries one more day and if we have a repeat performance (4/5 of the past days have been vomit-full days...just once a day, but still more than is typical of Hallie when she's not reacting to food), we'll pull the berries and maybe try them again in a few months. It's hard to believe that we've hit upon the only 6 foods this kid can handle, but that's the way it seems right now.

We're not sure where to go next in our food trials. I think we'll take a few weeks off to maybe get her over the teething we suspect she is doing (that always provokes a reflux flare) and to give the two people who will be filling in for Ami while she's on tour in Texas (she's a nanny by day and a musician by night) a bit of a break. Ami also needs a break (I hope she gets one in Texas!) and, like us, is disheartened by our latest bout of vomiting (it's been two- three weeks now that we are stuck in this cycle). And, like us, she pushes through because what else can we do? I suspect that Hallie feels the same way, but she just can't really articulate this to us at this stage of the game.

Anyway, off to bed since it's plenty late. Ami watched Hallie tonight while Sharon and I went to a Phillies game (we lost in extra innings...deeply tragic but alas it is the end of the summer and we need to head into a downswing if, as usual, the home team is to give up its first place position and manage to do in an otherwise stellar season). I think this is the final date night of the summer (very very tragic). The two of us have gotten used to hanging out again, but we're soon going back to the traditional schedule where we only have Ami while I am at work (AAAAAGGGGGHHH....I HATE THE END OF SUMMER). Sadly, while our budget sort of accommodates a nanny (do we have any other choice for our former micropreemie who has massive food allergies and doesn't eat in an age appropriate manner? Not really. We're just lucky we're able to afford to do this rather than send her to daycare), our budget doesn't really allow us the extra hours during the school year for babysitting at night on top of Ami's normal schedule. So we'll be looking forward to winter break for our next date. Hopefully Sharon will be in good health, big with child, and not on bedrest. Dates on bedrest are not precisely what we have in mind for December! But heck, that's a lot better than some of the alternatives we can think of and which we prefer not to mention!

Bad Mama

OK---I'll admit it. I am too lazy/too tired to upload some cute pictures of my kid eating 1/32 or perhaps 1/64 of a banana voluntarily. I am likewise too lazy to upload pictures of her at her first-ever aquarium visit this past Saturday (apparently, one of the few things worth visiting in Camden, NJ, where we proceeded to get lost in some pretty dodgy neighborhoods). (Note to others: even if your kid has a thing for Dorothy-the-goldfish on Sesame Street, if they are young-acting preemies, 2 may be a bit too young for them to be absolutely riveted by sharks. However, that does not mean that they won't be absolutely riveted by the face paintings worn by other kids slightly older than themselves whom they nonetheless call 'babies.').

Anyway, I am battling my laziness and fatigue and trying to produce a coherent update here, so bear with me!

Hallie has had an okay week. We're not sure that she's okay with the blueberries that we are food-challenging, but we're pushing forth nonetheless since it seems sad to be allergic to such an innocuous fruit and her vomiting of late may not really be related to this antioxidant rich bush grower. It's kind of too soon to tell, but she has had one good day out of the past four, and the three bad days were none too bad (no congestion, just weird and hard to explain vomits at various points). So we've hit 94 vomit-free days and we're hoping for 100 by Labor Day. Seems reasonable. Otherwise: she's been eating bits of banana, huge amounts of chevre-mixed-with-goat yogurt and...drumroll please...chunks of solid prunes (dried plums). Her dinner often begins with a Hallie-approved 'trail mix' (as Sharon termed it): chunks of prunes, strips of goat mozzarella and gerber baby dried apple pieces. It almost seems like it's approximating standard toddler fare, even if the assortment is a bit odd.

Otherwise, she's also doing great. We've confirmed that she can, indeed, count to 15 (I am trying to get her to internalize 16-20 now) and she's been talking up a storm. Her EI speech therapist (Jenny) was pleasantly floored by Hallie's major speech spurt this past month, and, after some initial shyness (Hallie will absolutely clam up when she is around new people, and Jenny has been away nearly a month), Hallie showed off all of her new skills to Jenny. Had I not forewarned Jenny of this spurt, I think she might have cried (as she did when Hallie finally signed 'book' correctly). Anyway, it was gratifying to hear it from a pro that Hallie's made a great deal of progress this month (even though we already knew this about her).

Not much else going around here. I do promise to try to get some pictures up soon!

Hallie Haberdashery

Lately, Hallie's been into hats. Not just regular hats (she is especially fond of putting on Sharon's Grover baseball cap backwards), but special hats, like pots, and pails, and occasionally swim diapers. While we're not holding out much hope for her wanting to wear hats once the weather turns cold and nasty again, we do think it's awfully cute. She's also all about wearing her bicycle helmet (and has remarked to us that her favorite Sesame Street characters always have theirs on when engaging in wheeled sports), but unfortunately, she prefers to wear the strap around her neck and the helmet part draped behind her, cowboy hat style. We're not so into this and often have to chase her down to save her from a choking hazard in the making.

The other thing that Hallie has been into a lot lately are her animals. I bought her a set of animal magnets the other day and her favorite by far is the "raff", which is her word for giraffe. I am guessing that she takes after Aunt Laura who adores giraffes, too.

And speaking of adore, yesterday morning we were lolling around with Hallie in the living room when Hallie walked up to Sharon and said "Mommy, love you!!!". That was the sweetest thing ever. She's been saying "love you" for a while now, but only doing it prompted, either when we say or sign it. That time it was totally spontaneous and it made Sharon's heart melt.

Finally, the other thing we learned about Hallie this week is that she can count to 15. Ami has been counting with her constantly, and so have we, and so have Sesame Street and Rachel Coleman. And one of Hallie's favorite things to do is to count as she comes down the stairs from the second floor to the first. Not coincidentally, there just so happen to be fifteen of them.

Overall, Hallie had a pretty nice week. She was reacting to something on Monday and Tuesday (we think one of the foods that seemed safe for her was cross contaminated---my vote is for the pear butter, which should have contained only pears and pear juice but is made on the same lines as a lot of other products that are not safe or for the goat ricotta since the same creamery makes several flavored varieties of the cheese that would not work for Hallie). But by Wednesday, she was feeling much improved and Thursday and Friday were great days. So 92 days vomit free so far, and hopefully still counting!