12 Months

Ellie is 12 months old! I can't believe that a year has gone by with our little sweet pea! It sure went fast, but we've had lots of fun with her throughout the fastness!

At Ellie's 12 month appointment this Monday, we found out that she had terrible ear infections in both ears, and I felt bad for her because she had had a hard day on Sunday, so I figured something was up. Her doctor looked her chart over, and when he realized that this was her 4th ear infection in 4 months straight, he decided it was time for tubes (HOORAY!)! He gave us a referral, and I called that evening and got Ellie an appointment for Wednesday. I was excited to get her in so quickly, because I knew the sooner we got her in, the sooner she'd start to feel better and stop having ear infections!

Anyway, her 12 month appointment was good, but she is on the small side. Dr. Nielsen isn't too worried about that though, because she's been consistent with her small-ness! She's currently 19 lbs 13 oz which puts her in the 27th percentile for weight. She's 29 inches tall and in the 43rd percentile for height, and her head is 17.6 inches around which is the 37th percentile. She's very small, and this is the smallest she's been with weight in a while.

We started giving Ellie whole milk a few days after she turned one, but she didn't really like it until lately. She's still figuring it out but definitely prefers nursing still. She is a good eater otherwise, but has started to become a bit picky.

Anyway, here are more things about Ellie at 1 year old!:

• She's wearing size 12 month clothes, but still some 6-9 month jammies.
• She wears size 3 shoes, but is getting close to growing out of them.
• She Loves to play with all the new toys from Christmas and her birthday, especially her puppy, activity table, corn popper, and school bus oh and her blocks, too!
  
• She takes 2 naps a day, but I can tell the morning nap is going to fade out soon!
• She goes to sleep at about 7:30 and wakes up around 7 or 7:30.
• Her favorite foods are blueberries, sweet potatoes, string cheese and saltine crackers, but she eats almost anything we give her.
• She LOVES to play with our neighbor's baby, Lexi and the are the bestest friends.
• She can say, dada, daddy, mama, na na (banana, or food in general) and hi. She doesn't say mama very often, but she'll come around ;)
• She loves to drink water from our camelbak water bottles.
• Bath time is still probably her favorite thing to do.
• She is hilarious all the time, and loves to be silly and dance to any music and sing the beginning to the Backyardigans theme song.
• She's the cutest little one year old there ever was, and we love her to death!

Look for another post about her 1st birthday party, which was of course ALL PINK! :D

But here's a sneak peek of what she looked like at her party!

We sure love Ellie, and we've had such a fun time being parents to her. She's the best decision we ever made, and I'm glad we took a leap of faith to start a family, because I would be so bored without her in my life!

Rough rough week

If you've followed my facebook posts, you know that things are crappy for us, and mostly for Ellie with her being all sorts of sick and in pain. The worst thing is, is that the sickness she has now isn't the first bad thing to happen to her this week!

The first rough happening for this week was on Monday evening, when Ellie decided to walk toward the TV at our neighbor's house. She fell forward on her face, started screaming super loudly, and then I noticed that blood was pouring out of her mouth! Such a scary sight! Apparently, she fell on her binky just right and cut the piece of skin that holds your top lip to your gums.

After getting her to calm down, and after stopping the bleeding, she decided to try to walk to David at our house, and lo and behold, she fell AGAIN--doing the SAME EXACT thing she had just done, but this time, she bled for over an hour, screamed like crazy, and we were freaked out pretty badly. I couldn't get her to calm down because of the pain, and she wouldn't fall asleep without a binky, and every time she sucked on it, she bled more! (talk about a HUGE mess!!!) Then I had a revelation! Why not put oragel on her sad little mouth so it would be numb and she could sleep! Worked like a charm!

In the morning, we cleaned up all the blood (luckily it came out of the sheets, crib bumper, towels, rags, and clothes she bled on!!) and she was good as new! No sign of even a bit of a fat lip!

The next crappy thing to happen happened when she was with David. He set her down so he could put something away in the fridge, and she walked into the fridge and hit her eyebrow on one of the shelves! (UGH!) More screaming, NO BLOOD, and a little bit of calming her down and she was good as new!

On Tuesday, we found out some grim news, and that was that a little boy our neighbor goes to babysit from time to time had come down with Hand Foot and Mouth Disease! This meant that the neighbor's baby, Lexi was exposed to HFMD, and earlier that day, Ellie had stolen a binky from Lexi and sucked on it! UGGGGH! We knew that it was pretty much inevitable that Ellie would eventually come down with HFMD, but we were crossing our fingers anyway!

Wednesday came and Ellie hadn't shown signs, but then Thursday hit, and she was starting to be crabby. Then last night she was up every 4 hours on the money. It seemed strange to me that she would be so miserable and she almost acted like she had another ear infection. This was also odd to me since we just BARELY finished her antibiotic on Monday!

So today, Friday, I got an appointment for 3:50 p.m. and boy oh boy, it was the LONGEST DAY OF MY LIFE! Ellie had been screaming all day. Really. All. Day. Long! I knew it was more than just the HFMD! And I was right! She DOES have a mild ear infection on top of teething, HFMD and just having a rough week.

The poor girl. I feel so bad for her and I just want her to be able to feel OK! She's having a hard time nursing and swallowing, which hopefully doesn't turn into dehydration!

Even though we've been hit with such crappy things, we're still thankful that we're parents to this amazing little girl! She's so much fun, and I can't wait until she gets better so we can all get some sleep and be happy again!