Hallie at the Beach

Hallie finally made it down to the Shore this weekend. We'd be trying and trying, but our foray to the beach (which is a mere fifteen or so minutes from where Grammy and Aunt Laura live) has been sabotaged by bad weather or bad health or mommies' inability to make it out the door in time with all of our beach gear on various occasions this summer. We're happy to report that none of the above applied on Sunday.

Anyway, we're thrilled to report that Hallie has ocean in her blood and that she was not in the least freaked out by the sand and surf. Instead, she dug right in, so to speak.

Mommy held Hallie at the water's edge and they 'jumped' the waves together (Hallie was in mommy's lap the whole time). The water was impressively choppy since it was pretty windy and just about high tide. Hallie thought the whole experience was a blast.




Meanwhile, the two moms didn't exactly win any parenting awards when they totally forgot to put Hallie into a swim diaper before all of the aforementioned activity. In the past, they had put on the swim diaper too soon and ended up with a puddly mess. This time, they only managed to change Hallie into it after she had a huge blowout diaper that required two or three adults, several diapers, a chuck, and much distraction to be changed. Live and learn. Smile.

Here's Hallie enjoying her first ever ice cream sandwich. More wich than sand, fortunately, since Hallie decided that there IS a non-edible substance she's not terribly interested in putting in her mouth. We were happy to find that to be the case, though we'd like her to not put the seaweed schmutz and pieces of straw and rock that wash up on the shore in her mouth, either.



Late in the day, the sea air had gotten to Hallie and she began to settle in for a bottle and a nap. But before beginning to suck in earnest, Hallie teased mommy, and mama caught it on video:



A good day, indeed a lovely weekend, was had by all (---thanks Grammy for watching Hallie on Saturday night so that the moms could have an all-too-rare night out!), and Hallie wants to do it again, SOON.

Meanwhile, we're gearing up for Hallie's joint ENT/GI/PULMO scopes tomorrow. Everyone here is a bit nervous (well, Hallie doesn't really know what she's in for, thanks goodness, but the moms certainly do. We hate, hate, hate the idea of her quite likely being intubated and placed on the ventilator when we were fighting so hard to extubate her this time last year, and we're a bit concerned that none of this invasive and surgical procedure (complete with general anesthesia) will yield information that we can translate into a way of solving her congestion/reflux issues. But hopefully we'll know something more about the damage to her trachea, her vocal cords, and her GI tract and whether there is evidence of aspiration or allergies that aren't otherwise visible. We've been trying to treat Hallie with shots in the dark and that has obviously not been terribly productive. Hopefully this will help us do something to make her more comfortable.