Illness Update

Yesterday we took Ellie to the doctor. She probably didn't really need to go, but I was tired of panicking at 7pm each night wondering if Ellie needed to see a doctor right then. Everything seems worse at night, when the doctor's office is closed, doesn't it? Anyway, we took her in and the doctor said she has bronchiolits and "possibly a mild case of RSV." We have to watch for wheezing, a high temperature, and rapid breathing; however, the doctor thinks she'll be better in 5 or 6 days - just in time for her 12 month shots. Fun.

Tim started feeling a little yucky last night and woke up with a sore throat this morning. I am hoping that he doesn't get hit as hard as I was.

I am slowly recovering. I hope to be back to 100% in the next few days. Today marks day 10 of this crud for me.

It looks like things are shaping up for Ellie to have a fantastic first birthday on Monday - her sick, Daddy sick, and Mama recovering. Woohoo...

Not Slowing Her Down Any

Over the past year Ellie has been a pretty healthy baby... until recently. She has had two colds in two weeks, the second far worse than the first. I have also had the worst cold I've had in years, and now have bronchitis. Daddy has thankfully managed to escape it so far, and has been pulling "night duty" for a week now while Mama sleeps in a NyQuil haze.

Ellie has had a low-grade fever, cough, and a ridiculous runny nose. She doesn't seem to feel too bad, though. She actually likes to have the saline squirted up her nose and will pick up the bottle, hold it near her face, and make the "swooshing" sound the spray makes when the bottle is squeezed. She's a silly girl, but I'm not going to complain - one less battle when cleaning the boogers out of her nose is a good thing!

As you can see in the pictures, though she is sick, she is keeping herself (and us) as busy as ever!

Reading the newspaper, a.k.a. pulling Mama's recycling pile onto the floor.

You can see how red her little nose is in this shot. Poor sweetie...

"Helping" Mama unload the dryer; she pulls the clothes out faster than I can fold them.

"Helping" Mama unfold all the nicely folded clothes and throwing them onto the floor.

Oops! Mama caught me! Ellie pulled all the the toilet paper off of the roll...

I have a friend (Hi Melissa!) who has pictures of both her girls, Becca and Sophie, doing the same thing when they were Ellie's age.

Fun down to the last bit of tissue...

At Least It's Not a Real Baby...

Ellie received a baby doll for Christmas from Grandma and Grandpa B. She loves it! Although, as the pictures show, how she displays her "love" for the baby is a bit unique.

Don't all babies belong in pianos? Why won't she fit?

Maybe if I try to dangle her in from this end...

Giving the baby "pat, pats" and "loves." Typically this involves licking the baby's face, but I didn't capture that on camera (yet... I think it would be a great picture to pull out and show her first boyfriend...)

Let's see what sound it makes when I bang the ball on the baby's head.

This picture brings back memories of a certain niece of ours (Kieron....) doing something very similar with a kitten (a real kitten) when Kieron was about a year and a half old. Only Kieron dangled poor Cooper by her tail.

A blurry, but darn cute, picture of Ellie with "bed hair" after nap time.

Miscellaneous Pictures

Ellie was sick with a high fever at the end of last week. We went to the doctor last Thursday and he said that she had a slight cold (which we knew) but he wasn't sure why her fever was spiking to 103.6. They ran a test or two and they came back negative. Eventually the fever went away and she was feeling okay on Saturday and back to her normal self by Sunday. The cold has now passed as well and she is back to our happy, clappy girl! Yay!

Here are some random pictures from the last few weeks. I'll add some pictures from our Idaho Christmas trip when I get them from my parents. (We only took a few with our camera...)

Christmas morning with Daddy at Grandma and Grandpa B.'s house.

Presents from Grandma and Grandpa.

These next pictures are of Ellie playing with uncooked rice I found in the pantry that was quite old. Rather than throw it away I thought we'd have some fun with it. Rice is a fantastic "manipulative" for little ones to play with (as long as they don't eat it!). We used to have it in the sensory table at our preschool and kids love to feel it, scoop it, dig in it, etc. What's even better is that you can nuke it in the microwave for 30 seconds and kill all the germs! I'm hoping to get Ellie a sand and water table this summer. I know that she would have a great time with it!

Moxie was helping...

Yes, that is a giant drool coming out of her mouth. This was the day before she went to the doctor. After we returned from the doctor I disinfected all that rice!

Throwing rice.

Look What I Found!

Leave her alone for 30 seconds and Ellie will make her own fun. Yes, those are feminine hygiene products. Hey, at least they are "sanitary!"

Advise?

Around the time Ellie was born the American Academy of Pediatrics came out with a study that said giving your baby a pacifier at nap time and bedtime for the first 12 months reduced the risk of SIDS. So, my "pacifier-free baby" vision ended, and she got to suck away to her heart's content. (While she does use a pacifier for more than just sleep, we've managed to limit its use to the crib, car, and stroller.)

Here's my question: Now that we are approaching the 12 month mark and she no longer "needs" the pacifier to prevent SIDS, how do we get rid of it? Or do we even worry? Should we ween her off of it slowly, go the cold-turkey route, or just let her take her time and decide on her own?

Any words of wisdom out there?

Eleven Months Old

Where does the time go? Next month we'll be celebrating Ellie's first birthday! So much has happened in the last month; I'll try to remember it all.

How Ellie has changed over the past month:

• Walking! Ellie cruises all over the place. She is getting more confident each day. She has been walking only when we stand her up first, but yesterday she pulled herself up at the coffee table and then let go to walk by herself. She is also trying to figure out how to stand up from a crawling position without grabbing anything to help her up.
• Teeth: Ellie started this month with just two teeth, and now has six! She has three on the top and three on the bottom. A fourth on top is about to pop through.
• She can now not only turn lights off, but also can turn them on.
• Ellie knows lots of words/sentences that we say now. When asked, she can point to our nose, chin, and cheeks. If we ask, "Where's Mama/Daddy?" she looks at the correct person. She also seems to know the dogs' names. I'm not sure if she knows which one is which, but she definitely knows that "Kip" and "Sebastian" mean the dogs. She will turn on/off the lights when asked. She "gives love" to us, the animals, and her toys - this involves burying her head in said object.
• She knows how to pat the animals. This is a big improvement from pulling their hair/tails/ears. We can say, "Pat-pat Moxie/Kip/Basty" and she pats them. This is usually followed by her "giving love" to them.
• No more nursing at night. This is less of a change in Ellie and more of a change in Mama, but it affects her all the same. Ellie had really began seeing nursing as "Mom's all-night buffet" and it was affecting all of our sleep. Now if she wakes in the night we go in and "shh shh" at her, pat her back a time or two, and then sit in a chair in her room until she goes to sleep. As I said in a previous post, I'll write more about this process when we are through the "sleep training."
• Ellie is all but through with jarred baby food. She has become very picky about being spoon fed, and is not quite ready to spoon feed herself (though we try), so she mainly enjoys eating finger foods that she can pick up and feed herself. The exception is yogurt, which she really enjoys eating for breakfast.
• Two naps still. She naps at roughly 9:ooam for about an hour and again at 1:00pm for about 1 1/2 hours.
• Bedtime is getting closer to 7:15pm instead of 7:45pm.

Events of the past month:

• First Christmas. We spent five days in Idaho and had a wonderful time with family. Santa filled Ellie's stocking (which Grandma B. made) and also brought her some LittlePeople ark animals. She really had fun ripping open her presents.
• Ellie slept through the night twice.

New Year, New Skills

Ellie has two new skills for the new year.

First, she slept through the night last night! She slept from bedtime at 7:30pm until she woke up for the day at 6:15am. This is the first time in her entire life that she has slept the entire night. Tim and I have been working hard on intensive "sleep training" with her. If our good fortune continues, I will post exactly what we did for all you other sleep-deprived Mamas (and Daddies) out there.

Second, check out what Ellie started doing the day after Christmas. (I know the clip is short, and the quality terrible. The problem with having a fancy HD Camcorder is that you have to have fancy software to put the videos on your computer - which we don't have. So this was taken on the "movie" option of our digital camera. It is short because Ellie was about to walk down the stairs and I had to stop her...)