Playing Sure Helps Work Up an Appetite!

On Friday when I picked up Hallie from preschool, Lea was sleeping in the stroller. Hallie had just finished a PT session that involved a lot of running, jumping, and climbing up and down the stairs, but she was still full of pent-up energy. There were a couple of other kids hanging out on the grounds of the preschool and I know that one of the little girls is someone that Hallie has occasionally played with at our local playground (we actually have quite a few local playgrounds, but one is a mere half a block from our house so, even though it's far from the nicest of the bunch, it's the one we frequent most often). Anyway, I was hopeful that Hallie might join in with them in their play since their small number wouldn't overwhelm her. Hallie had other ideas, and while they didn't involve other kids, they did involve using her imagination.

She crept behind one of the evergreen bushes and when I came and stood next to her, she said, "look, that's a spooky forest!" Since she went on to say, "look, there's the Boots the Monkey!" she was apparently referring to a Dora the Explorer Halloween special that aired last about nine months ago. I can't confirm this since I have nowhere near the prodigious memory that Hallie possesses. But never mind: in what I think was good Floortime form, I shouted, "look, there's a ghost!" and proceeded to make all sorts of scary goblin ghoulish noises. She thought this was hilarious, and the whole thing ended up turning into a big game of chase with sound effects.

Then we went on to play Hide and Go Seek. She still doesn't get the idea of hiding when it's her turn to do so, but she gets a kick out of looking for me (I do, however, suspect she's peeking since she seems a tad bit too good at this game). We raced around and hid from one another for quite some time.


Just as Lea awoke from her nap, Hallie asked if we could go get ice cream. This has turned into a ritual of sorts: at least once a week she'll request ice cream--chocolate, of course--and we'll head off to the Haagen Dazs shop on South Street for a kiddie sized cup. This time, however, Hallie requested a cone. She's never requested a cone, let alone eaten one before, and I was happy to indulge her.

Hallie did not quite get that you are supposed to leave the napkin wrapped around the waffle cone to catch the drips. Nor did she actually eat the cone. But she loved holding it. Ultimately, however, things got too messy to eat that way so I dumped the remaining contents of the cone into a cup and Hallie proceeded to devour the remnants of her treat. Start to finish it took her less than 20 minutes to eat about 4 ounces of ice cream.



This was, of course, far from a neat prospect. She ended up wearing quite a lot of the creamy chocolaty stuff:




After Hallie was done with her ice cream, Taylor and Renee joined us. The girls were thrilled to see each other for the third time this week. We ended up having a grand time at Three Bears Playground, which was virtually empty. Of course, it was about 6:00pm, which is probably prime preschooler dinner hour. Hallie had already finished up her 'dinner', which was the ice cream. She did go on to eat a couple of slices of bread and butter when we got home later on but I think most of her calories came from the ice cream. As of her last weigh-in a couple of weeks ago, Hallie tipped the scale at 34 lbs, 5 ounces and we are hopeful that she might keep it on this time. I think Haagen Dazs must be responsible for at least a couple of pounds of this healthy weight (Hallie is at the 50th percentile for weight and 90th for height---she is now just shy of 43 inches tall).

The Irony of It All: The Not Quite Lake Woebegone Life we Lead

Lea had her 1 year check up today, and, as it turns out, she is perfectly average, which in our world is a very good thing. She is at the 50th percentile for pretty much everything, and weighed in at about 20 lbs. 6 ounces and about 29 inches tall (please note: the inexactitude is related both to my not having been at the appointment and the fact that, at least where Lea is concerned, we've totally distanced ourselves from trying to make sure we have weights and heights down to the last gram and millimeter, respectively. She has looked fine to us, and that's what counts).

The ironic part: Hallie was bigger both in terms of height (at above the 75th percentile) and weight (at around the 60th) at the same [adjusted] age as Lea is now. Our pediatrician, of course, remembered this little factoid, and so did we. Who'd have thunk?

Of course, Hallie still remains taller than average, at over 40.25 inches (putting her between the 75th and 90th percentiles for height) and at pretty much average for weight, at about 33 lbs. 8 ounces as of last week (meaning that she's put on over a pound in the month of January, during her post pneumonia recovery). We're not sure how this happened, but there you have it.

Clearly, though, where Lea is concerned, we just don't have to work as hard (and consequently don't work as hard) to keep her at average: we don't worry about whether she eats 2 cheerios or 20; a couple of tablespoons of yogurt or none at all; etcetera. She just does what we does and we do it with her. We follow her lead and she knows where she wants to go.

With Hallie, honestly, most of the time we do the same thing: Hallie's therapies are, for the most part, very much Hallie-directed and that is a good thing. Even her eating is mostly Hallie directed, with the exception of our feeding-therapy directed 'snacks' (which now incorporate tiny bites of banana, much to Hallie's chagrin. But she's pretty much doing it, and that's important since we need to push her a bit out of the comfort zone on the eating front, even if we try not to go too far and only stay within the parameters of the excellent instructions provided to us by her wonderful feeding psychologist). And, of course, we still fortify those darned bottles, but whatever I'm putting in that goat milk really is doing the trick, and for that (and Hallie's decision to eat toast, fries, pizza, cheese, bacon, and now McDonald's hash brown) I am very grateful.

Anyway, we love living here in what is not quite Lake Woebegone: not everyone is above average, and, you know, that's a good thing. Average is just fine with us.

GI Update

We saw the GI today for the first time since December.

First good piece of news is that Hallie hasn't lost too much weight. We knew she's slimmed down a little, but were afraid that her newly-restricted diet of goat cheese and pears (if only I could turn this into a salad with crunchy fried prosciutto, walnuts, and a nice orange-raspberry vinaigrette, it wouldn't be too bad of a diet, really) had led to a major drop in weight. People kept telling us that she looked 'great' and 'huge', but you know how us micropreemie moms are---we have been calculating calories and running spreadsheets all week about this. Anyway, Hallie weighed in at 11.82 kilos, or 25 lbs. 15 ounces, so the most she lost is 2 or 3 ounces, and that's not too bad. She's still at the 50th percentile for weight.

She did shrink though! Not really...it never ceases to amaze me how wildly different heights and head circumferences are when we get different people doing the measurements. Doing them on a screaming kid (you'd have thought it was an RSV shot, the way our kiddo yelled) doesn't help any, either. I can't wait until next year, when she's three, and they can get her height while standing. Given the number of times our girl has been pinned down for all sorts of procedures, can you really blame her for screaming?

Second piece of good news is that the GI fellow didn't really recognize Hallie. She has hair now, and more importantly, she looks like a toddler and acts like one, too. (That's both good and bad, obviously) Anyway, Hallie behaved really well for Dr. J and he was quite impressed by her. Nothing new to us, but it's nice to hear.

Third piece of good news: We don't need to go back for six whole months! Woo-hoo. The GIs agree that a lot of Hallie's tummy issues are allergic responses, so if we see progress on that front, we can start reducing the Reglan and Prilosec. We'll take it slow, obviously. But we've already gotten rid of the miralax, and honestly, we see no negative change where pooping is concerned. We have added a new probiotic (Lactobacillus GG, which is sold under the brand name Culturelle) and this has perhaps added some help to her GI system, but so has getting rid of some probable allergens.

Anyway, not a terrible appointment all around, even if we did have to wait for the GI (we saw the fellow very quickly, but then had to hang out and see his supervisor) for a while. We were in and out in two hours, though, which all things considered isn't too bad. And since the weather here is cold and rainy today, it's not like we missed much park playtime.

On the park front: Hallie is not only more independent in the playground, but also is more interactive. She had a nice game of catch with an almost-three-year-old neighbor yesterday, and stole a ball from a 14 month old (in her defense, she did try to engage him in a game of catch, too) and wanted desperately to partake in a fast-paced soccer game in which some 8 to 10 year olds were engaged (at least she wanted to steal their soccer ball; she has a fetish for them---I can't wait until we can sign her up for a soccer league). I hope the weather improves some soon because Hallie really does relish her playground time!

The Weigh-In

The weight is back! Yay! We just visited Hallie's pediatrician for a weight check and found out that all of our hard work this past two weeks has really paid off---Hallie gained a pound in 10 days. Woo hoo! Let's hear it for 30+ calorie goat milk formula and 6 ounces of baby food per meal. She now weighs 25 lbs. 5 ounces (an all time high for 'playing weight').

She's still snarfly, though, which sucks, since it means that we are back to our daily refunds. But her ears are clear and she's clearly not feeling ill. It's either a cold or teething (she seems to be getting her first year, second year, canine, and eye teeth all at the same time. Lucky us!). But either way, she's weathering things well and we're glad for it.

We also talked to our pediatrician about our speech concerns and, while he feels that Hallie is still a bit young to warrant serious concern, he understands where we're coming from, and, as he put it, we need to get her the best possible therapist because she's an amazing little girl and deserves the best. We love this about our pediatrician. We pretty much love everything about our pediatrician. Anyway, so he is all for me drafting the kind of letter that will work with our insurance, he'll add in a lot of serious-sounding medical stuff that makes our argument compelling, and that's all we need to do. No neurologist (he doesn't think that hooking her up to a bunch of electrodes and subjecting her to a lot of tests will tell us anything that will prove helpful), no developmental ped. Just one really supportive doctor. This rocks.

Otherwise: Hallie's sorting skills keep getting better and better everyday and she's beginning to pretend play: she's feeding me and her babies from her favorite Duraclear margarita glasses (that are still proving to be indestructible, amazingly enough). This is very cute. She is also all about cuddles and kisses right now. And she did the cutest thing this evening. We were watching one of our new Signing Time DVDs (volume 10: "My Day", which is already one of my favorites) this evening after we got home from the pediatrician's. The video opens with the kids waking up and beginning their day. The second sign Rachel teaches us is "good morning." Well, Sharon and I kept on repeating 'good morning' and learning the new sign. Meanwhile, Hallie raced off to her bookshelf and found her book "Good Morning, Little Bert," and brought it over to us. As Telly would say, "she is sooooo smart!" Of course we proceeded to read it and SIGN it to her. I know it's only at the preschool level, but heck, our signing is getting pretty good too!

Finally, it seems like Hallie is about to step down to one nap a day. This is not our call, but hey, we all know who calls the shots around here and it ain't us.

Cute pictures later on...it's way too late to fiddle with downloading and uploading!

The Good and the Guarded

This was supposed to be a uniformly positive, upbeat post. We've all been really quite upbeat lately with what has been going on with Hallie and I've been meaning to post for several days now but have been crazy busy and not able to sit down and write (and deal with converting a couple of recent movies we took into MP4 format).

Anyway, let's start with the really good stuff:

For the first time, ever, on Tuesday morning, Hallie said 'Mama'! Sharon was getting ready to leave for work and Ami had Hallie on the changing table and was changing her diaper. Hallie flipped over and stood up (as she is wont to do--this is one of those things we find bone-chillingly frightening), tried to reach over Ami to Sharon, and said "mama". Sharon had been trying to get her to say "bye-bye" (Hallie still just waves), but this was a pretty great substitute. Sharon called me just as I was getting off the train to Lancaster to give me the wonderful news.

So, of course, we tried several times to get her to say it on Tuesday night so that we could document the event. The only thing that worked (and that still works) is getting Hallie upset. Fortunately, our DVD player complied quite nicely with this request. Hallie had been bopping with Elmo to the "Bump-Bump Baby Bump" segment of one of the Sesame Beginnings videos we own when the frame paused mid-bump. For those of you out there interested in scientific experiments, let me just say that we've proven that sweet potato chicken splashed into a DVD player on numerous occasions is pretty much guaranteed to break it. Anyway, we got this video, which ends with one nice "mama" and a few classic whines. Forgive the real-life camera work.



Other than the DVD player dying a slow, painful death, we had a pretty good week until today. Hallie is teething--she appears to be getting 6 to 8 teeth right now and they are in various stages of popping through and so she is pretty miserable (and sleepless, as are all members of her family), but she's being a pretty good sport about things. Her vomiting is still way down (we've had 11 out of 22 days in February that have been totally vomit-free), and while her appetite has been off yesterday and today, it's been pretty good otherwise, and she's really been enjoying her Coach Farm drinkable goat yogurt. She has also been having a ton of fun with Karina, whom she has seen every night this week. We got the following cute video of the girls the other night: Karina shows off her penchant for hamming it up for the camera, and Hallie demonstrates her skills as a motorist and a climber. I, once again, demonstrate why I am not a gaffer, a best boy, a key grip, or a Foley artist:



So, other than the fact that we are all delirious because of teething (I really was up until 4am with Hallie, whose teeth were killing her, and then co-slept with a very fitful toddler until 8:30 this morning), things have been going quite well. So, where's the problem?

The problem was with Hallie's weight check today. We were in for our monthly Synagis shot and plopped her on the scale as usual. And we were SHOCKED. Hallie had lost about 13 ounces since February 6th---which amounts to close to an ounce a day. While it is true that we had backed off on the added calories and had first taken away the Karo syrup from her bottle and then decreased and finally removed the extra goat milk powder, we did not expect this kind of loss---just a leveling off of her weight. We had been joking that our girl was getting chubby, when indeed she had been wasting away. This threw us for a loop and sent us panicking. So, the Karo and the extra powder have now been added back into the formula and we are back to sleep-feeding her that final, huge 8 ounce bottle at bedtime. We are slated for another weight check and appointment with our pediatrician in two weeks. So much for not having to be back in his office until August!

This all shocked us, and made us realize, more broadly, how little Hallie is able to eat in a day. She is so dependent on her formula for calories, protein, and most of the good stuff that goes into her diet. Other than her goat milk formula, the kid eats about 2.5-3 jars of baby food a day, another few ounces of goat milk yogurt, a few ounces of homemade fruit puree, maybe a cheerio or five and a small cluster of Veggie Booty and some juice laced with Miralax. That's not much at all and we have been unable to increase the volume. This is clearly a problem and I wish that, one day, it would just go away on its own, but until then, we apparently have to micromanage Hallie's intake. This is sad, because we've been getting so much more relaxed about things and have clearly learned our lesson. I also suspect that some of the decreased vomiting is related to fewer calories in the bottle, and it's hard to admit that you'd prefer vomiting to weight loss, but this is all too true. Talk about a rock and a hard place (or at least a messy place).

So, in addition to feeling exhausted, I am (and Sharon is) a bit dejected. We are hoping that once the teeth are in, Hallie's appetite will improve and that, if she can gain back some of this lost weight---she has never lost weight before, other than the time last April/May when she was doing very poorly---we can begin to work on things like getting her to eat solids. We're hoping that this turns out to be just another one of those one-steps-back-to-take-two-steps-forward kind of a thing, but either way, this really put a damper on the week.

'

Finally, a real well-baby checkup

Hallie had her somewhat delayed 18 month checkup this past Wednesday and I've been trying to get around to blogging about it ever since. First, it was notable that the reception staff no longer knows us by name. It used to be, last spring and summer, when we were there on average once to twice a week, they had our charts pulled before we could exit the elevator door. Not kidding. On Wednesday, they had no idea who we were. That was lovely. (On a side note, the CVS folks see us so frequently that they hand me Hallie's various meds without me having to say a word, let alone identify us. It probably doesn't help that I am known to hang out in CVS giving Hallie a bottle while praying fervently that she finally goes down for a nap in her stroller).

Anyway, I digress. We waited a few minutes for Leanne, Hallie's wonderful nurse, to call us in for assessment and Hallie ran around the waiting room, waving at kids, playing with the toys (I ran after her pumping her little hands with sanitizer) and having a blast. When Leanne called us in, we stripped her and checked her head circumference (44.8 cm or 17.64 inches) and height (32.3 inches or .82 meters). And then we plopped her on the scale (it was the heavy one in the back; and of course we know this. We have, in the past, actually asked them to check her weight on both scales on the same day. They are about two ounces apart). We were shocked. She is now 25 lbs. 2 ounces (11.39 kilos) (which is just shy of 20 times her birth weight). She has gained about 10 ounces in ten days (conservatively) and this is with all of the vomiting (no doubt in part this is attributable to our double-feedings, since we will refeed her after every significant, seemingly belly-emptying upchuck). But still, Hallie's weight astounded me and we have decided to cut back on her last bottle of the night. Instead of basically compelling her to take 8 ounces at bedtime (something that Sharon can do but I cannot), we just are going to let her take what she wants. This ends up being 3-5 ounces, and that seems fine. It'll mean more sleep for mommy, earlier crib time for Hallie, and some end of the bottle in sight for the whole family.

We attribute a lot of this rapid weight gain (she went from 21 lbs in early October to 25 in early February) to the fact that she is absorbing more nutrients from her food. This is part and parcel to getting rid of the cow dairy in her diet.

When Rubin (her excellent doctor) came in, he was beyond impressed with her. The first thing he said was that he had been comparing notes with our GI fellow (Friedlander), and that he knew things must be going well since NO ONE had heard from us for quite some time.

But seeing Hallie is what really impressed Rubin. He had never seen Hallie walk before, and this was the first time that she vocalized at all for him. Hallie's coloring is good and clearly she is thriving (she is at 50th percentile for weight, 50th for height, and finally made it on the charts for head circumference at somewhere between the 5th and 10th percentiles. I asked Rubin if he was concerned about this and he said that he was not---her growth curve for HC is exclellent and Sharon also has, as Sharon puts it, a pinhead.). Rubin did suggest that, as we begin to move towards more solids, we might want to get Hallie tested for other food allergies or intolerances (we agree---we strongly suspect an egg allergy and would not dare to give her tree nuts without hard data that she isn't allergic to them). But that's down the road. Meanwhile, even though we are still on mostly stage 2s with some thicker fruit purees, Rubin was heartened to hear about the cheerios and other assorted relatively-meltable crunchy foods and he thinks that there's little reason for a huge amount of concern (largely because of the fact that he has never known us to drop the ball).

So, the appointment was all lovey-dovey (and Hallie was generally happy being there, except for when Leanne stuck her with the HEP-A needle---but at least she only had one shot). I did have to remind Rubin that we still need to be vigilant because of the extremely high propensity that micropreemies have for all sorts of learning and behavioral issues down the road, and he agreed that this vigilance was warranted, but from his perspective, he couldn't be happier right now. We agree.

And we especially agree since the omegas are still working their magic. Hallie has begun to take an interest in stacking blocks and her stacking rings (she never used to want to do this at all, and perhaps the timing is coincidental, but still, the biggest issue is that she is staying 'on-task' a lot more these days and has a much longer attention span and a much lower frustration level than she has had up until this point. She is also happier in general, and this with teething (I suspect some stomach teeth are coming in now...is there no reprieve?). And the talking is going really well--she says 'kitty' and 'teddy bear' much more articulately now, and has extended 'bu bu' (big bird) into something getting closer to big bird (not quite there yet, though). She also articulated "m" for the first time this morning (two or three times) and I am hoping that we hear a 'mama' or variation thereof out of our girl yet.

So it's been a good week. And I almost forgot: we have now had two vomit free days in a row again, bringing the total for the year to 8 vomit free days (three apparently urp free; the only reason I qualify this is that two of those days were nanny-days and not mommy-days and so we were not on hand to witness this). And we have 2 2-day stretches. So February is ending up to be a bit better than it had started out in that respect.

Meanwhile, I've been an awful mama and we've taken very few pictures of our girl this week. But I did take a few last night of her chubby little thighs.



And, just so you know, these are all muscle...something very quickly revealed when Hallie leg thumps you with full force...oy.

Finally, a word about the cup. We've been giving Hallie Coach Farm Goat Yogurt drink, which she LOVES (I think it's really weird tasting---it's kind of like soupy runny chevre). Hallie especially enjoys it from a straw in the bottle (she has quite a good suck now, when she wants to) but that's sort of messy. So last night I gave her some in the cup she's holding in this picture. She immediately realized it was a Sesame Street cup and started to name the characters. Then she realized that the cup was even more fun: the straw pulls right out and is a corrogated texture. Better yet, the lid pops off EASILY. How fun! How messy! Needless to say, I won't be using this cup with her again for quite some time.

Still Growing Strong...

I've been a bad mama---not only are there no pictures this time around, but when I went to take a picture of Hallie who was looking super cute in Sharon's scooter helmet, I realized that I had let the battery on the camera run down. Sigh. Can't keep everything together!

Anyway, it appears that molar number four is about to make its appearance. Hallie was super fussy at the beginning of this week and would NOT under any circumstances go down to sleep at night, not even after her bath. This is pretty atypical for her, and unfortunately not only amounted to hours spent by Sharon trying to get the kiddo to calm down and take her bottle but also involved cleaning up the vomit after the bottle came right back up at her. Sheesh... We are hoping that we get some reprieve. I suspect that we might already have since today has been very calm, despite the RSV shots that Hallie just got. Hallie's been in a super mood today and has gone down for her nap twice without protest (both times in the stroller. Yes, it's a little weird to buckle your kid into the stroller for a nap, but heck if it works, I won't complain!) I have not had the chance to do a mouth sweep but will later on and see if I feel anything.

Yesterday, was my birthday and in addition to getting a very lovely gift from Sharon--a first edition of Mikhail Gorbachev's Perestroika autographed by both him and Raisa, his wife--I was also spared going to the FEES study (flexible endoscopic evaluation study) with Hallie by virtue of the fact that I had to go to work. It turns out that, even though it was not the most fun anyway ever had, Hallie did do fairly well. According to the ENT, while her left vocal cord is still paralyzed, the right is compensating well and things are virtually at midline. The reflux swelling is gone, and there was no notation of laryngomalacia. So there are no structural reasons why Hallie cannot swallow food and indeed at least limited indication that, in small controlled sips while awake, she can do okay on thin liquids. We'll still thicken the bottles and even the juice she gets from her straw cup somewhat, but we will work on experimenting with backing off of the thickener after our next Swallow Study in March. At least that will mean one major expense (for the Simply Thick, which I get off of Ebay) might go away.

The more troubling stuff that we're dealing with, however, is Hallie's speech. She won't mimic speech at all -- with a rare, rare exception of mimicking 'up' for me during and after her bath last night; of course I was thrilled but today she no longer does this -- and she has lost all of the 'words' she used to have and has not replaced them with new ones. It is possible that she is working on something else and hence not interested in speech, but what is interesting is how quickly she is picking up sign and how thrilled she is to do it. We are very happy about that, but worried about the speech. So Sharon talked with the excellent speech therapist at CHOP yesterday (who followed up with me today and will call again on Monday....plus she remembered us from the swallow study in August and not only remembered us, but the precise stuff Hallie was dealing with. In a word, she was awesome). Anyway, Staci, the therapist, is not an expert in Apraxia (and neither is Jenny, our also excellent ST through Early Intervention). But the symptoms Hallie is presenting with -- especially given how amazingly social and interactive Hallie is -- are worrisome to her. So we will fill out some paperwork and get ourselves an official evaluation and perhaps also visit neurology (there is a nagging sense we both have about Hallie's unilateral left IVH level 1, but even moreso, about the 'speck' of blood in the frontal lobe that no one could ever explain. I'm not sure how knowing about the IVH or other bleed would change things, but still we are curious. And once we get this evaluation, if it turns out that she is diagnosed with Apraxia, we can begin to get speech therapy that is tailored to that disorder---it is, from what I understand, very specific and very different than the sort of play therapy Hallie now gets. We hope that Jenny can learn some tricks for things to do with Hallie because we LOVE Jenny and Jenny loves Hallie. But we can also see if my insurance (evil thing that it is) or Sharon's (once it kicks in on March 1st...a month later than we thought) can cover additional private therapy. We'd do anything for this kid (and any kid, really) and want her to be as happy as she can be. Meanwhile, we are thrilled that she adores her Signing Time videos and are eager to learn this language with her. But someday, someday, we'd both love to hear 'mama' or some variation on that come out of our little girl's mouth...

To this end, and on the aforementioned topic of supplements, we've begun to add in some Omega 3-6-9s from Nordic Naturals that are supposed to be amazingly helpful for the speech for other kids with issues speaking. We know that a lot of the omega fatty acids are things that babies get from their moms via the placenta in the 3rd trimester and, since Hallie never had one of these, it's something that she missed out on. They cannot hurt, and if nothing else, they add in a few calories.

On the calorie front: we're not changing anything and are going to keep on keeping on. Hallie weighed in today at 24 lbs. 6 ounces, which is an 11 ounce gain since last month. This did not sound like a lot to me since she was 23 lbs 11 ounces last month and 24 lbs 2 weeks ago (on a different scale) but when the nurse charted Hallie for me, it turns out that she moved from the 41st percentile to the 42nd percentile for her ACTUAL age of 19 plus months. That's tremendous and we're not complaining. So, while we won't back off on the Karo syrup or the flaxseed oil or the added goat milk powder, we are still on track and if we have a bad day, it's a bad day and not the end of the world.

On that note, I gotta go get ready: Sharon, Aunt Renee and Aunt Kim and I are going to go out and celebrate my birthday tonight. Ami is going to babysit Hallie and we're going to have a great time! It's the first time that the birthday club has gotten together for a whole night out since June (we used to celebrate each of our big days this way).

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.

Synagis Shot No. 3: Poor Baby!

Hallie had her third Synagis shot of the season yesterday. She hardly shared our opinion of these injections (which are not quite vaccinations, but rather infusions of live antibodies subcutaneously that are designed to protect---though not vaccinate you against---respiratory syncytial virus, which is what causes a common cold in most of us but can land preemies and others who have lung damage on ventilators). While we might conceive of yesterday's infusion as an early Christmas present for Hallie, it is pretty clear that she saw it as a huge lump of coal (in each thigh).

She kind of knew what was happening, too. At first, she was very eager to be at the ped's office---we let her run around instead of confining her to the stroller. Now that she can walk and isn't on all fours on the carpet and isn't quite so prone to putting things in her mouth. We purelled the heck out of her and the table top toys and are hoping for the best. There were literally no other kids in the waiting room and it was totally quiet, so that made us feel better. Lee Ann, Hallie's favorite nurse, was thrilled to see her walking and waving and even got to hear "diaper" and a few other words from Hallie. So that part, and the usual marauding that Hallie does in the examining room were fun: she shreds the exam table paper, reaches for the scopes to use them as phones, opens and closes the drawers under the exam table, and other fun things. It's IMPOSSIBLE to take her in to the doctor on one's own and still retain sanity/have the capacity to discuss what's going on with Hallie with nurses, doctors, etc. While this is annoying, it is also part of Hallie's singular charm and frankly I love it that our little girl enjoys exploring her universe so thoroughly, even if she does leave a bit of a destructive debris field in her wake).

Then, however, Hallie realized that other kids were screaming from rooms close by. Hallie has inherited Sharon's empathy streak; this is a good thing, but can be a problem in situations like these. So she was virtually on the verge of tears when the two nurses came in to double team the Synagis shots, which are now (like Hallie) pretty hefty in terms of dosage. She screamed, bawled, squirmed, and tried to get away from me and Auntie Neystice (my co-conspirator in RSV shot administration). Then, after the injections were done, she continued to cry and shake. It was pathetic: she soaked my sweater with gallons of genuine tears, held onto Bailey (her new baby that was a present from my mom that Hallie absolutely loves) and Grover (the other big light of her life right now), and was inconsolable. We dragged her pants on (which probably made things worse, but it was 35 degrees and raining out and we were not going to transport her to the car in her diaper) and fled the office. She calmed down the minute we left the doctors' office because she knew that the pain of the RSV shots was all that she was to endure and that she was now safe. But it took quite a bit to calm her down even once we got her into the car and I was thankful for her bottle and for her binky. Then Hallie fell asleep, hard and long, and we sat in the car parked in front of the house for two and a half hours while she slept it off.

By evening she was fine and back to her usual self. She's still pretty irritable, but this is largely attributable to her teething (those molars really are coming in---her gums are all shredded feeling but no teeth have cut through yet; their arrival could not come soon enough for me because she's LIVING on tylenol these days. Whenever she sees the tylenol bottle, she smiles, reaches for it, opens her mouth and calms right down. Yes, we have a junkie in our house and yes we keep the bottle far away from her because she is clever enough to figure out how to open it and ingest its contents. We do not want an unscheduled ER visit any time in the near or distant future.

On the eating front: she's kind of on strike right now and we are not sure whether this is related to the teething, her increased willfulness and the appearance of some obviously behavioral eating issues now that she is older, or her delayed gastric emptying/constipation. It could be all three, really. She's been pretty good with her bottle and her bear (milk) and decent with her juices (though she likes the miralax free version better than the stuff laced with laxative). But she's been horrible in terms of purees and baby food. She did accidentally get fed some mac and cheese gerber stage 2 food earlier this week and this might have set her back; in any event, we are going to start the goat trial over again, and I think I will back down on the calories some more and see what happens. Miralax does not seem to be working. This could be because she isn't getting enough of it in her system or it could be because its benefits tells us are limited when constipation is a result of an allergic reaction (why the GIs failed to mention this is beyond me; sometimes I wonder why we see them at all). Milk of Magnesia works great but may lead to malabsorption of nutrients and the GI doesn't want her on it (I might seek a second opinion, given our opinion overall of the GI), But maybe fewer calories plus more liquids will help. Her diet is already replete with all sorts of anti-constipating foods: mangos, prunes, very ripe bananas (turns out these are great for constipation whereas the green ones are great for diarrhea. Who knew?), berries, karo syrup and the like. She eats mostly fruit these days, and she drinks juices, and is off of yogurt (but takes probiotics in her formula) so she should not have a big problem with pooping, but alas, that is not the case. We'll see how it goes and if I need to try her on soy milk, we'll do that next.

But meanwhile, she continues to grow. She's now a whopping 23 lbs. 12 ounces, which puts her at close to the 50th percentile for her actual age. She is doing phenomenally where that is concerned. We're not sure how this happened, but we're thrilled at her size and sturdiness and we promise not to ask too many questions. All I can say is that there is no evidence of her crawling down the stairs (thankfully, since in our house with its boxed in windy staircase this is too frightening to imagine) and raiding the fridge in the middle of the night (I should know: I am up in the middle of the night. Sigh).

So, if we could only get her GI tract working right motility and elimination wise and then figure out how to handle the texture issue, we'd have it made. So, if anyone can figure out how to give me that scenario for Christmas (yes, Virginia, I am Jewish, but it's okay to believe that there is a Santa Claus, isn't it?), please do... I am tired of boring everyone with tales of vomit (I did not even bother to tell the story where she vomited this week on herself and Ami and I ended up washing Ami's cellphone) and poop and want instead to talk about Hallie's laughter, mischievous streak, antics, words, and the like.