February 14, 2011

Happy Valentine's Day! Hope everyone was able to do something sweet for another person (or the reverse) today. Patrick started his new job today and now we're having a quiet evening of laundry and Harry Potter. Charlotte and Patrick are both sick, and I'm crossing my fingers that I won't catch their cold (although Charlotte's tendency to cough in my face makes this unlikely). I was a bit relieved this weekend when Patrick developed a sore throat because it answered the question we've had for the past week and a half as to why Charlotte wasn't sleeping. Perhaps it's partially the transition, but we're sure it's mostly because she's got a bug.

I took a few pictures of Charlotte as we played on Sunday. Saturday we took a trip to the MOA, and it wore Charlotte out. Sunday we decided to keep her home and let her get some rest and start recovering.
And she walks!!! She took her first steps last Thursday, February 10 (her 18 month birthday) for Patrick. So far she's probably taken 5-6 steps in a row, and she has started standing without support much more frequently. I'm trying to get video of her walking, so hopefully soon.

She knows where her socks go! When she tries to put them on it reminds me of Peter Pan trying to stick his shadow onto his feet.

And here she is telling me our photo shoot is over by giving me the camera lens.

Last week Charlotte had her first appointments with her new GI Doc and Pediatrician. We think we're going to be happy with both. Her GI Doctor is very proactive, or a J on the Meyers-Briggs for those of you familiar, as opposed to the laid back "art of medicine" approach we were used to with her last doctor. For example, this new doctor told us with an air of certainty that Charlotte was allergic to dairy products and that's why she threw up so frequently. How incredibly frustrating because we asked our previous doctor about this and he said this wasn't the case and left her on the dairy-based formulas. Who knows if she's correct, because if Charlotte had an allergy, she has outgrown it.

Also, our past GI doctor told us to relax and stop weighing Charlotte and that it was ok she hadn't gained weight because she had gained weight faster than we wanted to. Well, new doctor, new philosophy: She wants us to weigh Charlotte weekly and she wants her to get 4 cans of pediasure per day instead of just 3.

Charlotte loves her scale and thinks it's a fun chair. On Sunday she weighed 20 lbs 0 oz.

Charlotte's pedatrician also seems very nice, and my favorite thing about her is that while she's only in clinic 2 days/week, she has some evening availability. Charlotte's next appointment is at 6:45 p.m.! So nice to miss a little less work for appointments. Oh, and we can e-mail her!

One frustration we've had with the new doctors is their insistence that we're being too tentative with Charlotte's feeds. We feed her at a rate of 125 mls per hour and have been slowly increasing. They think we should be able to bolus her feeds in just a few minutes. Well, we tried this weekend and she threw up everywhere. It was so sad, and just a reminder that doctors don't know everything (almost everything, though!). :)

To be fair, this weekend wasn't an entirely fair test. Apria had some issues verifying our insurance last week and didn't get us Charlotte's monthly refill order before the weekend, so we ran out of the Pediasure Enteral Formula on Saturday. Our GI Clinic told us that the flavored Pedisure in the store is the same stuff, so that's what she's been getting. Since we started the flavored formula she hasn't eaten anything by mouth, so I wonder if the "flavor" is upsetting her stomach. Our regular formula should arrive tomorrow or Wednesday.

February 6, 2011

Charlotte is ready to cheer on the Packers.

February 1, 2011

We are feeling very grateful because Patrick has a job! Back in December he interviewed for an Executive Accounts Specialist position at the U and on Friday they offered him the position. It's exactly what he wants to do, and he's excited to start on Monday already! With both of us working full time Charlotte will be in daycare all day (instead of half-days like before). She started today with a half day, and seems to have done ok. I think it'll be an adjustment for us all.

Charlotte has been picking up lots of new information lately! She now loves to push her push/walking toys up and down the hallway, crawls onto the seated position of her scooters (but doesn't yet know how to move herself), and understands more verbal information as well. She knows what "brush your teeth" means (and only recently really started letting us brush her teeth), and she now says "up" to be picked up. A couple weeks ago she learned "uh oh" and says it anytime she throws something onto the floor or if her pump alarm goes off.

Recently Charlotte's eating took a nose dive and she was barely taking water anymore. The past few days things have improved and over the last 24 hours she's eaten almost an entire container of stage 1 baby food and loves to eat water on her spoon. If only one could survive completely on water, she'd be all set.

We are happy to be completely unpacked and the owners of a new-to-us recliner. Because we lived on campus at Tech we had very little furniture of our own. Now we have two chairs in our living room, which will be good enough until we find something more permanent.

Oh apartment living. We like our new home, but our neighbors have made things more interesting than we'd like. They apparently view the police as a conflict-resolution resource and, in the two weeks we've lived here, have called them twice. The second time the police arrived was this past Saturday night. I was unpleasantly surprised by them as I exited our basement (external door) to a flashlight being shone in my face. They assumed I was the person who had called, but after figuring out I wasn't involved in a domestic dispute they told me to go upstairs and lock the door. Lovely. I would laugh, but today I read about a domestic disturbance in Zumbrota, MN that resulted in a shooting death. We're hoping they move or break up.

To emphasize the positive - yay Patrick! We can't believe how fortunate we've been. Life is good.