Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

We hope you all had a wonderful Christmas - we did! Pop-Pop came over on Christmas Eve and we all went down to St. Augustine to see the Night of Lights. We went out to dinner then walked around to see the lights. When we went into the park where all the trees are lit up with a ton of white lights Kinsey was staring up at the trees and just couldn't take her eyes off the lights. It was so cute! We took a great family picture in front of the Christmas Tree in the park:

Kinsey got lots of great presents for Christmas and has been enjoying playing with them! Our living room looks like a toy store! A couple of her favorite presents are her new chair and the remote control car she can ride in (which I think is really more of a toy for Jamie). Kinsey sits in the car and Jamie drives her all around. We even went for a walk around the block with her in the car! Here are a couple of pictures and videos:

 

Videos: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1l5WmBvN5L4
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2pBGy5bfjBk

This week we had our appointment with the new Allergist. He recommended using the topical ointment we've been using only on Kinsey's face on all the spots on her body instead of the oil the dermatologist had prescribed. He also recommended lathering her up with a rich ezcema lotion on top of the ointment. We've only been doing that for a few days now, but it already seems to be making a difference. Her skin is almost completely clear and really, really smooth (like a baby bottom)!

One of my Christmas presents from Jamie was a camera so I can check on Kinsey while she is sleeping. (Like the video monitor I wanted but was too cheap to buy). It has night vision so I can see her at night or while she's napping during the day. I love being able to check on her, but I also like to just watch it sometimes because I do like to watch her sleeping and now I can do it without the risk of disturbing her. Here's a picture of her sleeping right now:

That's it for this week and 2011. We're all looking forward to 2012 and hoping it will be as good to us as this year was. Happy New Year everyone!

Growing & Learning New Things!

Kinsey is really eating like a champ lately! She's been eating her baby food like she actually wants it instead of fighting us and eating 2- 2.5 jars a day. Plus, after eating her food she will sit in her high chair and eat a bunch of puffs and tiny bits of pancake too.  And she's eating 7 oz of formula regularly too! As a result, in just 5 days she gained 12 oz and is now up to 19 lbs 4 oz!

One of those molars that was being so mean to her a few weeks ago has cut through the surface of her gums. The other one is right there too!

We had a follow-up appointment with Kinsey's ENT this week and told him about the CAT Scan mess. We were relieved to hear that he doesn't think it's necessary to try it again. Instead, we have scheduled time for him to be able to look at her ears while she is under anesthesia for the cleft palate surgery in late February. He won't be doing a CAT Scan at that time (as I mentioned before that is logistically not possible), but he will be able to get a good look with a microscope and will be able to clean out her ears (he is concerned about build up of skin cells and wax since that would only further block her ears and it's more likely to happen since her ears are so narrow). Hopefully he will be able to tell us something more about her ears after looking at them this way. We are comfortable with this and glad we don't have to put everyone through the CAT Scan thing again! The Dr. also mentioned that her ear canals are very deep and have gotten deeper as she grows, which is a good thing.

We do a lot of exercises with Kinsey to practice listening by making sounds with objects that are out of eyesight and getting her to respond to them. She does this well, both with the hearing aid and without. She also definitely responds more to things that are near her right ear, which is only partially blocked, as opposed to her left which is completely blocked, although she responds to both sides.

Kinsey has learned a couple new things lately - how to turn on the bathroom faucet and how to open cabinet doors! One night after drying her off from her bath, I sat her up and she learned forward and grabbed the sink faucet and turned it on. Now she does it nearly every time she gets a bath! Last night, I was entertaining her while her bottle warmed up and had her standing on the kitchen counter. I took her hand and put it on the cabinet knob and she pulled it open. When she let it go and it closed, she immediately reached out for it to open it again! It amazes us how quickly she learns things sometimes and it's so exciting to see!!

Last week I forgot to mention that Kinsey also got her new splints (boots) for her feet. These are a lot bigger than the last pair! The guy who fitted her for them said her foot grew 3/4 of an inch since she got the first pair, which was about 6 months ago. That's a pretty impressive growth percentage-wise considering how small her feet are! She still wears a size 2 baby shoe and sometimes even that is too big. Anyway, the new boots seem to be working out just fine - we are still easing into them, but she will wear then 8 hours a day just like the previous pair. I haven't taken a picture of them yet, but I will soon.

Finally, I took some new pictures of Kinsey wearing her Santa dress. Still not the best pictures, but here they are:

13 Months!

Kinsey is now 13 months old! She's still about 18 1/2 pounds and 29" long, but somehow everyone lately is saying she looks like she's grown. Her hair is getting pretty long and it has lots of curly qs all the way around - it's so cute!

So, we didn't have the CAT Scan today, but not because we didn't try :( Kinsey's Dr. cleared her for the procedure, but then the nurses at the hospital said we couldn't use regular sedation because of her heart conditions and said we would have to put her under full anesthesia, but actually recommended we don't do that either. They convinced me that we could do it with her being sleep deprived. Knowing my daughter, I shouldn't have agreed to it, but I did. We scheduled it for her nap time this afternoon and I kept her awake all day. I sat in the back of the car with her and practically had to hold her eyelids open to keep her awake on the way to the hospital. Once there we got her to fall asleep, but when we moved her to the scan room, she woke up and we never got her back to sleep after that. We were there for 3.5 hours for nothing and now the poor thing is exhausted (and us too)!

Our plan from here is to talk to her pediatrician and see if there's anything we can give her to make her drowsy (like Benadryl or something) and try to do it again sleep deprived. If there's nothing we can use or we try it and it still doesn't work, I'm not sure what we're going to do. I'd like to say we could do the scan while she's already under anesthesia for the cleft surgery, but we've already been told that's logistically not an option. Plus if we did that, we wouldn't be able to fix her ears at the same time as the cleft if we waited until then to do the scan (if that's even the resulting option). Who knows what we'll do if it comes to that, but for now we're going to try our second option and go from there. SOOO Frustrating!

We also had a checkup with the cardiologist this week. The thickening of the heart wall had increased slightly between her last 2 appointments (May and September) so they checked that, but there's no change this time. They increased her medicine again, but that's just to keep up with her growth. Nothing else to report on that visit.

On a fun note - Kinsey is learning something new - how to feed herself with her hands! We started handing her little Puffs (they look like Cheetos Puffs, but they're for babies) and she would put them directly into her mouth and eat them - no big surprise since everything goes directly into her mouth. But she does a good job biting them and chewing them up (sometimes she shoves the whole thing in her mouth, but most of the time she bites them). They kindof dissolve in her mouth so they can't get stuck in her cleft, but she definitely chews them too. So this week we tried putting a bunch on them on her highchair tray and letting her feed herself - she does a great job and she really seems to like it too! Right now we're giving her several different kinds of Puffs and some Yogurt Melts, but we're going to try other things like cereal, bread (which she's already had), pancakes, waffles, potato - anything soft that will sort of dissolve in case she doesn't chew it. Here's a video of her feeding herself: http://youtu.be/jehddY6zxC8

We are truly in awe of every little thing she learns how to do - she's a pretty amazing, impressive little girl!
Her speech therapist also gave us a cool new bowl and spoon so Kinsey can work on learning to feed herself with a spoon too. I'll get a video of that soon too.

A couple of weeks ago we had a photo shoot with a new photographer. This one was donated to us by Dreams Come True as part of the things they did to make Kinsey's birthday extra special. Since we already had a birthday photo shoot done, we decided to do some holiday photos. They didn't turn out all that great (this photographer wasn't as good with Kinsey as the others have been), but they're still cute:

I really want to get some cute pictures in her santa dress and the hat so I bought some props and I'm going to try to take some myself. We'll see how that goes . . . 

The Arrival of 1 Year Molars

Saturday Kinsey will be 13 months old! And as usual, her teeth are coming in right on schedule. This week a couple of her 1st Year Molars started coming in. These teeth are apparently a lot meaner than the front teeth and she's not liking them one bit! Her nose has been pretty stuffy and runny with the teething and we're hoping it's just that and not a cold. If she has a cold they will have to postpone the CAT Scan that is scheduled for next Friday. We'll keep you all posted on what happens with that.

Last weekend we went to watch the Boat Parade from the Julington Creek bridge (right by the house). Kinsey enjoyed watching the lights, here are a couple of pictures:

Kinsey has also been enjoying playing with all of her fun birthday presents:

She likes to swing in the backyard (Thanks Aunt Cheri!)

She likes to "drive" around in this (right now her feet don't reach, so we have to push her).
We take it outside and push her around in the driveway. She holds onto the steering wheel and smiles.
 Thanks Gramma!

Kinsey is getting better at eating food and we've even been working on giving her some soft solid foods like bread. We went to Sonny's and I gave her a tiny piece of garlic bread then Jamie started letting her bite a piece off the bread herself. She did well with it and we've given her bread a couple of times since then. We've also been giving her more of the baby/toddler puffs to eat on her own. She grabs it and puts it in her mouth herself! She's getting better at learning to chew and move the food around in her mouth. She's also practicing drinking from a cup that has a recessed lid (instead of a sippy cup with a spout). That's important for her to learn since she won't be able to drink from a bottle or sippy cup after her cleft surgery.

Here are some pictures of her eating garlic bread at Sonny's:

Anyway, that's it for now.

The Holiday Season Has Arrived

Let me begin by apologizing for a gap in the blog. I wrote a post before Thanksgiving because I knew we would be travelling, but then I forgot to post it for you to read.

So we went to MN for Thanksgiving to visit Jamie’s family. We had a wonderful visit with Jamie’s brother Steve and his wife Kristin. Thanksgiving was great with lots of family around and we had a big gathering on Saturday for a lot more family to come see us and meet Kinsey for the first time. She enjoyed all the cuddles, hugs and attention from everyone! Kinsey was also a good traveler although she was a little fussy on the flight home. Here are a few pictures from the trip:

On the plane with Daddy

Meeting Great Grandpa Barto

A little snow falling

Learning how to hunt deer with Uncle Steve

Meeting Grandpa Gangestad

We've been so focused on all the exciting things happening lately that I haven't provided updates about the doctor visits, etc. First of all, Kinsey is getting new splints for her feet. She hadn't worn the original ones in a few months because she had a bad rash on her calves and by the time that healed the splints didn't fit right anymore. So we had her feet casted for new ones that she will get in a week or two.

We've also recently scheduled a couple of procedures - Kinsey will have a CAT Scan on Dec. 16th so they can determine the cause of her hearing loss. If it turns out her ears are simply blocked by skin, but there are eardrums under the skin, it would be an easy fix to open them up (maybe at the same time as her cleft surgery). That would be the ideal situation. If the ears are blocked by bone and/or there's no eardrum, that's a bigger deal that they wouldn't be able to fix until she's about 5 years old. So we'll know more about her ears soon. She does have to be sedated to do the CAT Scan though. It will just be outpatient, but there's always a concern when anesthesia is involved.

The next thing is her cleft surgery, which is now scheduled for February 23rd. That's more significant surgery and she will stay 1 night in the hospital and will have a 3-week recovery period. She won't be able to eat food and will have to drink from a syringe or an open cup during that time. It will be really hard on all of us, but it will be so helpful to her in the long run to have that fixed. We'd really like to get it done sooner actually, but that's when the dr. is available so we will have to wait. Kinsey is doing well with her food for the most part, but sometimes she really struggles with getting it stuck in her cleft. We think it's holding her back from learning how to eat correctly.

We also recently scheduled an appointment with the allergist to hopefully find out what is causing the rashes on her hands, arm and face. And finally, we scheduled an appointment with an orthopedist to take a closer look at her feet, hands and her skeletal system as a whole. Those appointments aren’t until the beginning of January though.

I think that’s it for the updates for now. Below are the pictures from the recent family photo shoot we had:

Kinsey's 1st Birthday

Well, it's official Kinsey is now a 1 Year Old! It's impossible to believe so many things about that sentence - the time did go by fast, we made it to that milestone, she is doing so well, etc.

As you know, we took her to Disney for her first birthday! Grandma Deb, Pappa Wayne, Pop-Pop, Aunt Cheri, Hope, Patrick and of course Jamie and I were all there to celebrate with her! We weren't sure how she would like it or how long she would last, but boy was she ever the trooper! We had our pictures taken with the princesses; rode Dumbo, the Carousel, and It's Small World twice (she LOVED that one); saw the small parade; took tons of pictures; got Kinsey some Mickey ears; and overall just had a blast.

My aunt and cousin came down from NY and a lot more people (some of you) joined us for Kinsey's official 1st Birthday party today!!! We had perfect weather for the party, had Sonny's BBQ, and the most beautiful ladybug cake from Cinnotti's and cookies (thanks to Camille and Janice from Flippin' Good Cookies). Kinsey got tired during the party and actually fell asleep in someone's arms (she never does that). But we were able to do the cake smashing before that and just had to wait and open presents at our house later. She got a TON of great presents and had fun opening them!

Thanks everyone for all the well-wishes, presents and love!

Tomorrow we move from celebrating the Princess to the Queen and celebrate my birthday (which is on Monday)  :)

Here are the pictures from Disney. Birthday Party pictures are below that!