Holiday photo collection

E with Aunt T

Fresh air stroll in the Bjorn

Making Christmas cookies

Cousins in our Christmas dresses

Mom why do you dress me up like this?

Ladybug tent for Christmas was a hit!

We move tomorrow so wanted to get some holiday pictures quickly posted before I forget!

Growing up too fast

Carrying Dolly in the Bjorn and holding our own bottle

Getting ready for Christmas Eve

Wearing cute Christmas jammies from Nana and Papa!

Message from Santa

Last year Santa freaked K out so we decided not to have her go sit on his lap again this year.  Instead we found this site that allows you to create a video message from Santa and she wants to watch it over and over.  Click to enjoy!  Ahh the fun  of technology  Kathleen's Santa Video

Here's Santa visit 2010... not very successful.  Hope she doesn't have to go into therapy because of this traumatic experience!

5 months

I love talking often shouting to be heard over my sister, I am sitting up if propped with pillows, grab for things, kick my legs like crazy and love putting toys in my mouth.

Gingerbread house deliciousness

I was lazy and bought a gingerbread house kit but K didn't mind! She had so much fun decorating and snacking on the candy. She also loved the colored frosting as seen by the hands died red!

Gazing at my big sister

Love this picture how E is looking up at her big sister. K loves being on the jungle gym with her too!

Finally!!

Story time

K was so cute this morning going to get books to entertain E while we got ready for work this morning.  Though I question if this is what she hears when we read her stories?! (blah, blah, blah)

Family of Four

We had family photos taken last weekend and K did have a bit of an attitude.  We had them taken at the Lincoln Park Conservatory which is an indoor garden.  Unfortunately as we walked in a guy was watering some plants and that was all K needed to see and wanted to go home.  About 5 minutes into the shoot she was putting on her coat saying she wanted to go home.  She also kept saying to the guy watering the flowers (who kind of seemed to be following us around!), "quit bugging me"  - where she learned that phrase I have no idea!  Here's a preview from the photographer's website.

And one photo I was able to get off the site.

 

Four months

Yep I am four months old! I am smiling and even laughing which my big sister makes me do. I am drooling like crazy so maybe teeth will be coming. I grab for my toys and "talk" like crazy.

Check out my drool - yikes!!  My big sister sure knows how to make me laugh.

Tiny dancer

K started "ber-lay" as she calls it. She was in a class where parents waited out of the class in the lobby and she hated it. So now she is in a class where I can come in with her and that is much better. Here are some action shots I snuck in!

Cute girls

Kallie showing off her underbite, E all wrapped up at the pumpkin farm and K wearing her first big girl head band. So much cuteness in our house!!

Happy Halloween!

From our little bugs

Rockin tummy time

Also known as "belly time" as K fondly calls it!

Our little pumpkins

Couldn't resist the matching Halloween cat shirts.  K loves that the eyes glow in the dark too! 

Three months old

Went back to work last week and life is a bit crazy so posting this a bit late. New motto is "too blessed to be stressed!"

Enjoying the last of summer

We have had beautiful sunny 80 degree days the past few days and we are soaking it all in.

Baking Cookies

Someone wasn't particularly interested in making cookies initially, but once she tasted the dough that was a different story!

She passed!

We are done with the medicine and blood draws unless she sleeps 10+ hours (I wish!). Just got home and am so thankful.

Halfway there

Blood draws
8 am: 95
10 am: 84
12 pm: 83

They will now do them every hour. E is sleeping now but is pretty fussy when awake. A lot of swaying and snuggling from us both.

Made it through the night

E and I made it last night with our roommate and his mom who were very quiet. Her blood draws through the night and this morning were in the 90s. Her last dose of medicine was yesterday afternoon. So that is good.

Poor little lady had her last meal leading up to 6 am and is now sleeping. They will test blood sugars every hour or two through the fast until 6 pm. We hope she can do it to put this chapter behind us.

Let the process begin

We are at the hospital and E has her IV in to get fluids tomorrow during the fast. She had her last dose of medicine this afternoon and will begin the 12 hour fast tomorrow at 6 am. I will be spending the night with her in a shared room. Wish we had our own room!

Three bells

Never heard from admitting yesterday so called today and we need to be there by 3 pm. Thank goodness for Grammy and Pappy to hang out with K this evening.

Just downloaded Blogger app for the iPhone so updates will be easier. Too bad this app wasn't around when we were in the NICU!

Tomorrow is the day

E will be going to Children's sometime tomorrow afternoon (still waiting to hear back from admitting with an exact time).  They think she will be there for about two days by the time the medicine gets out of her system and they can begin the fast.  Will post more as we have more updates.

Back to Children's

Today at E's endocrinologist appointment, they finally gave us the results of her genetic testing which showed no genetic abnormality causing her HI (this is a good thing).  The doctor thinks she might have transient HI which means it is temporary (caused by some sort of stress at birth) and could eventually go away.   In order to figure out more about her type of HI, the doctor wants to hospitalize E again to wean her off the medicine all the while closely monitoring her blood sugars.  Then when she's completely off the medicine, they would conduct a 12 hour fast to see how she performs.  My understanding of this process is basically to see if she still needs the medicine to maintain good blood sugars.  Sad she has to go back to the hospital, but it's the safest place to take her off the medicine.  She would not be in the NICU again rather she will be on the endocrinology floor where fasts like this take place quite often and the nurses are familiar with the procedure.

Overall the doctor is very happy with her blood sugar numbers. Instead of delaying things by continuing to give her medicine that she eventually outgrows in a few months due to weight gain, they want to investigate her condition further at this time with the hospitalization.  She also slept last night for five hours which made the doctor nervous since she hadn't eaten for 5 hours, but that is something a baby her age will start doing.  I did test her sugars after that 5 hour stretch and it was a 101 so it was fine.

I go back to work next week Friday, Sept 30th so the doctor is trying to get this process in and completed before I go back to work.  We don't have confirmed days yet but the average stay for this is around three days.

The only side effect E has experienced from the  medicine is the darkness of her hair and hair growth.  The doctor told us this would happen but it's pretty noticeable for a little baby which you can kind of see in the picture below.  She has it on her forehead, sides of her cheeks and a bit on her arms and legs.  Plus the doctor said the darkness of the hair on her head could also be effected by the medicine and could change if she ends up off the medicine.  The process of hair loss could take up to 5 months once she is weaned off diazoxide.  Thankfully this is the only side effect she's encountered since the other possible side effects can be pretty nasty.

Upgrading our Ride

No we didn't get a beautiful new car, rather we upgraded our single stroller to a double.  At least it's red!  It actually isn't as big as it looks and it easily fits through a regular sized door.  Not many double strollers can do that and it was important to me that ours does! 

I hold her

K definitely likes to help with her sister and we often hear the following: I burp her, I feed her or I hold her.  I won't post the pics of K nursing her baby so not to embarrass her in her college years.  :)  So here are pics of K holding E.  The first picture seems pretty harmless though she does have a vice-like grip on her!

And then E starts to cry and K clearly is frustrated.  Here is when she would be saying (or shouting rather) Don't CRY Ba-Ba-Beth.   Hopefully this is the start of a long friendship between these two sisters!

Two months old

Knocked out

That first round of shots will really knock a girl out.

Smiles!

E is at that fun age where she starts smiling.  It's so nice to get a little feedback from her with a smile!

Isn't the double chin ridiculous?  She really likes eating!

Reading with Big Sister

K takes her role as big sister very seriously and is reading to E in the bouncy chair.  She is very protective of her though isn't always completely gentle herself with her!  We're working on that.

Our big girl

Our first pigtails now that our hair is long enough.  She loves them and says "fancy!"

We also tried a pony tail but her  hair tends to fall out on the sides.  Might wait a bit more for a try again at the ponytail but she was so excited with it!

Capturing the newborn phase before it's gone!

E at one month old.  All photos courtesy of Kari Campos Photography

So peaceful - looks like she's sleeping on a cloud!

This might be my favorite one - love those lips!

There weren't plans for me to be in the pics, but sometimes comforting a pooped out little girl is a photo moment!

D thinks she looks like an oreo here.  Tasty!

Endocrinologist appointment today

Today we met with the pediatric endocrinologist for a follow-up appointment and she was incredibly happy with E's blood sugar readings over the past 3 weeks which have almost all been over 100.  A typical infant's blood sugars are somewhere between 70 and 100 so she's doing very well.  They want her to stay on the same dose of medicine (.15ml three times/day) but this is a weight based dosage and she's now up to 8 pounds 9 ounces.  When they started her on the medicine in the NICU, she was under 6 pounds so in a sense she's growing herself out of the medicine.  As she continues to get bigger, they want us to closely watch her sugars to make sure her readings are good because the dosage from this point forward is under a typical therapeutic amount.

The genetic testing results came back but the doctor didn't have time to review them closely before our appointment.  There seems to be a slight genetic mutation she said but it's not a big one and could just be a fluke.  This is her assessment after minimal time to review.  She wants to look at them more closely, review the information with a colleague in genetics and will call us with further information next week.

We have another follow-up appointment scheduled on Sept 20th.  Overall we left feeling good and were happy to hear the doctor say how well she is responding to the medicine and basically how surprised she was that her blood sugar numbers were so good/high.  In the past week they have all been over 100 with the highest being 166.  If any go above 170, we need to call because that is too high - oh what a problem that would be!

Thanks for all who followed up with us on this appointment and we'll keep you posted as she progresses.

From the archives of the camera

I've been so used to taking pictures with my phone and being able to instantly upload that I forgot we had pictures on our digital camera. Found this one from Memorial Day at the lake house and it was so cute to not share! Thanks Grammy for the cute flag t-shirts and hair bows!

Who's who?

Today El was sleeping in the bouncy chair in a Carter's watermelon outfit and I realized I had a picture of K in the exact same outfit and sleeping in the bouncy. I tried to recreate the picture and made them both black and white since the colors were a bit different. Can you tell who is who? Do you think they look alike? Take a guess in the comments by stating who is in the top picture and who is in the bottom.

Top:
















Bottom: