Holiday (Un)Wrap-Up

It's been quite a holiday for Hallie.

First, in the process of picking up numerous last-minute gifts last week, I saw this onesie at the Baby Gap (for a whopping $4.99) and had to get it for Hallie:



The shirt says it all!

Actually, I was looking for another in Hallie's size, but they were all out. What was its slogan? "Diape(red)" of course. I did get it in a much smaller size for an expecting friend of ours (whose identity will not be divulged quite yet since she's only 13 weeks along)

Then, on the 22nd, after a copious amount of drooling and finger sucking, we realized that Hallie's first one-year molar has poked through. Allow me to assure you that it is already quite sharp and that Hallie will no doubt hone it to even more of a razor like status in the upcoming weeks. Oy. Three more are clearly on their way. Should be fun around here. I guess that Hallie has reinterpreted that old ditty, "All I want for Christmas is my back teeth."

On the 23rd, Sharon and Hallie headed off to Aunt Laura's (forgetting the copious number of goat milk bottles that I had prepared -- but happily they had enough to get them through the night); I stayed behind to finish more grading (it's now DONE!) before joining them the next day.

Hallie, Grammy, and Sharon picked me up at the NJ Transit station straight from Fisher's Shoe Store, where Hallie was outfitted with her first real pair of walkers (having just outgrown her prewalkers, something that we did not realize until Auntie Neystice pointed it out to us). Hallie is really proud of her new shoes but still prefers chewing them to wearing them.

Then, it was off to Dawn and Bill's for the annual seven fishes dinner (though I think there were really only four fishes, and assorted cheese, chocolate etc). Hallie had a ton of fun pulling on the snowman's nose and banging on the basement door in the hopes that she might descend the steps and play with the bigger kids. Sadly, she was stuck with us.

Then it was time to change into jammies and await the big morning. Hallie had a typically rough night (with her teething comes more reflux and vomiting, alas), but that did not stop her from getting up the next morning for the reading of Santa's Letter (which included her, for the first time this year) and the wonderment and excitement of opening presents.

Hallie was super excited because Adam and Hannah were super excited; even though she did not quite know what was going on, she knew that something was up!



The tree was lovely, but sadly I did not get a good shot of it. Hallie surprised all of us by NOT eating the ornaments (though she did make several dives for the garland beads strung on its branches).



Hallie was very excited at the prospect of ripping bows off of presents and trying to undo the paper on most of the gifts.

And, of course, our little girl got tons of great toys and clothing and books and found the whole experience quite enjoyable.




Aunt Laura got a ton of snuggles in with Hallie and this made both of them really happy:



Cousin Adam's dream of becoming a fireman came true on Christmas Day:



And, I might add, he's probably the first fireman whose main tool is a vacuum; he LOVES vacuuming more than anything else and spent most of the day sweeping up the carpets with his very realistic (and realistic sounding) toddler-sized Hoover Wind Tunnel. At the end of the evening, as he was being changed (quite reluctantly) into his jammies, he even swept through the house with his vacuum in the all-together. Happily I spared him much ridicule as a teenager by failing to get a shot of that!

Later in the afternoon, Grandma Sandy, Poppy Jack, and Great-Grandma Ruth (Uncle Bryan's mom, dad, and grandmother) came for dinner. We had an all Jewish Christmas dinner...very funny.


Grandma Sandy held Hallie and Hallie loved it.

Here's the same shot in February 2007:


Wow, what a difference a year makes!

Alas, Hannah and Adam began to come down with a cold on Christmas Day, and by yesterday, so did Sharon and Hallie. Hallie ran a fever last night and began getting snotty, and Sharon developed an awful sinus condition (she always does when she gets a cold).

But the good news is that, aside from a little upper respiratory snarfliness and an increased tendency towards barfiness (great!), Hallie's doing all right. She had a pulmonology appointment this morning and satted 97-100% and her lungs sound clear. Hopefully she'll keep this up (and hopefully I did not just jinx her by saying this).

Liz, her pulmonology fellow, was thrilled by how Hallie looked; it's been 3 months since the last visit and Hallie has really taken off in all sorts of ways since then. And Hallie's weight gain has been most impressive---as of this morning, she's a whopping 24 lbs (and a walking advertisement for how bulimia does NOT make you lose weight). Anyway, we hope that this gives her the reserve she needs to fend off any major problems from this cold and that she's back on track soon.

Holiday Photos of Hallie

Here are five of the thirteen shots of Hallie we got last night. Thank goodness we borrowed Mark and Vanessa's Digital SLR Nikon camera; our lovely but very small Sony was not equipped for the kind of shots we needed to take of the walking and crawling princess. Hallie has become a very fast walker, and not just a super-speedy crawler, so she headed off in some direction (usually dangerous) as soon as we placed her near a wrapped faux present or particularly fetching ornament. I am not sure how old a child needs to be before they heed photo-taking directions, but hopefully it'll coincide with our next holiday shot in approximately a year. Meanwhile, we feel lucky that she was smiley and hamming it up despite her lack of a nap and that her vivacious personality shines through in these shots.







In other news: Hallie spent Saturday and Sunday with her cousins and had a really good time. I missed her a lot, but had a huge amount of work to do that kept me busy. While in New Jersey, her cousins taught her how to shake her head 'no', which she thinks is hilarious. We're trying to get this on film and if we do, I'll post it (strikes me that I haven't done a movie in pretty much forever). But even though she uses 'no' in a lot of contexts where its usage is unwarranted, she definitely knows what it means. She has been using it consistently to signal the end of a meal (usually around 3-3.5 ounces into it, which is fine). I suspect that she'll be using it (and hopefully, someday, its oral analogue) with us a whole lot more and in many different settings. Woe is us.

And, finally, on the feeding front: she had a great day yesterday (Sunday). Four poops, no vomit. Our third emesis-free day in that many weeks. It could be related to the pureed baked beans we gave her for breakfast, lunch, and dinner two days in a row. She also got fruit and some stage 2 stuff, but those beans were apparently potent and does make one question the expression 'full of beans.'

I was hoping that we'd be able to congratulate ourselves today on a new record, but no such luck. She had a small 'urp' during her pre first nap bottle, but we were not even counting that. Problem was that, despite napping a whole 1.5 hours today, our kid was in no mood to go to bed after dinner. So Sharon had her on the futon and Hallie was her usual playful self and was thumping all over the place. This is not a good thing to do if you have weak sphincters after downing 3.5 ounces of bottle. So up it, and perhaps some of dinner, came. I guess the laundry gods thought that three loads this weekend was not quite penance enough for me. One bath and a new bottle later and hopefully we'll make up for, dare I say it, spilled milk. But we're still waiting for our record. Any betting fools out there? I should start a pool for guesses about when we'll finally hit that important two-vomit-free-days-in-a-row milestone.

(NOTE: This post was begun on Saturday with the uploading of images but text was added on Monday)

Giving Thanks Belatedly

I've been meaning to post for days now, but between work (we're screeching in to the end of the semester and my students are not the only ones who feel the pressure to get work done and handed in---or in my case back....on top of doing the normal reading and extra huge amount of grading [yes, I know, it's my fault for assigning it in the first place], there are also a bunch of other things that I need to do for work and that has kept me on campus late a few times this week and is making it likely that this weekend will prove to be a perfect storm of work. On top of this, it's been an emotional week, what with the holidays approaching (always hard for lots of different reasons) and Hallie's eating and GI tract making things a bit of a rough ride for us.

Nevertheless, I did not want to overlook posting our Thanksgiving because it was a very nice one (after we finally got out of the house after feeding and cleaning up the returns on three or four breakfasts and dealing with the fact that Hallie spit up her whole bottle in the carseat and all over herself a mere ten minutes into our hour-long ride to Aunt Laura's). The rest of the day went smoothly, so it's not like there was *nothing* for which to be grateful.

Actually, there was plenty, and is plenty, for which to give thanks. First, our family: since everyone at Aunt Laura's was well, we did, as I mentioned already, get to go down there for the day. The kids were really happy to see one another:



All of the cousins got to spend time with Hallie and Hannah and Adam were beginning to see Hallie as a peer. Hallie even got to play the baby in our game of house (I was the older sister, and Hannah was most certainly in charge). Here's a cute shot of Hannah and Hallie after dinner. Hallie lost pants privileges (not sure why) and looks very chunky in this shot:



And here's a picture of Adam just being his cute, adorable self:



Hallie somewhat willingly even modeled Adam's mouseketeer hat:



Dinner was very nice and both Sharon and I got to eat together at the table for once. Hallie was upstairs on the floor of Hannah's room (we were afraid that the little thrasher would roll herself out of bed) and we did have the monitor on downstairs just in case, but she slept soundly for at least forty-five minutes, which was more than enough time for both of us to eat yummy turkey, stuffing, potatos, and the like.



Hallie woke up in time to be fed dinner, which, in addition to the usual Stage 2 fare, included the filling of the pumpkin pie which she slowly but admirably well ingested. By the time we left (in a turkey-carb coma), Hallie was much more settled than she had been earlier on in the day and we got home without any further refund incidents. For this we were very grateful.

Indeed, we are grateful for so much:
*For supportive family and friends who help keep us (somewhat) sane and grounded in the face of it all, not to mention help us out with all of the awful and long doctor's visits.
*For Hallie's growth despite everything.
*For Ami, Hallie's nanny, who truly loves Hallie and who is helping her learn to nap in her crib, eat from a spoon, and learn the power of the word no. She also teaches her lots of fun things and Hallie very much enjoys the three days a week she spends with Ami and we enjoy the peace of mind that Ami provides us.
*For Hallie's whole team of therapists, who also love her and would do anything for her. Jenny, Hallie's speech therapist, actually went up to St. Joe's with us on Monday, she's that dedicated.
*And most of all, for Hallie, who has taught us so much since she came into the world and especially since she came home. And, no, not all of these lessons were about the fine art of stain removal. Not at all...

Anyway, other than that, we've had quite a week. As I said, we went to St. Joseph's on Monday and it turns out that Hallie has put on even more weight---she now weighs in at a hefty 23 lbs. 6 ounces (the scale might be a bit heavy, but it's no more than a few ounces off). This is good because it gives us some leeway to experiment with table food purees. This is harder than it sounds and so far things have been hit or miss (with more misses than hits) where feeding Hallie is concerned. But we are trying, and hopefully that will help things along. The extra weight means that we are up again on the Reglan dose to 1.5 ml three times a day. Gastric emptying is nevertheless still an issue and we need to try to get this under control to progress on the eating front). This is all very frustrating, but we are trying and hope that at some point things take. I am sure that this will not be my final post on this issue. Sigh.

But to end on an upbeat note: Hallie is now officially an independent walker. She walks all over the place, turns corners, pivots around on foot and dances a bit. It's great, and she is so steady looking on her feet.

And even more importantly: we just finished the day WITHOUT a single vomit. This makes it two days in the last month taht were vomit free, and that is great. I have no idea what tomorrow will bring (come to think of , it it is already tomorrow) but at least we have had a good day.

And on that note, I bid all a good night!