Here are a few cute Easter pictures :)
Saturday, April 23, 2011
Happy Easter!
It's Kinsey's first Easter and we're having dinner with Pop-Pop, Jen, Roger & Jay.
Here are a few cute Easter pictures :)
Here are a few cute Easter pictures :)
Thursday, April 21, 2011
Introducing Baby Food . . .
Heads up: there are LOTS of pictures in this week's blog! Enjoy :)
This week Kinsey tried something new - Prunes! Baby food prunes that is of course. She took to the idea of it pretty easily, but she just wasn't convinced at first that it was food. I mean she would eat it without any problem, but she would complain after a couple of bites that she wasn't getting what she wanted - the bottle. It took a little trial and error, but I think we discovered it works best if you give her the food after at least some of the bottle. Anyway, she seems to like the prunes just fine and has been eating them pretty well all week.
We had our appointment with the ENT on Tuesday and, long story short, they are going to order the headband hearing aid for her. It will take at least a few weeks to get here. He's not concerned about doing the CAT scan or surgery until she's at least a year old. He said her ear canals can open up some on their own as she grows and, in fact, they already have a little bit, so it's not worth doing surgery yet. I'm glad they're going to move forward with the hearing aid (At first they started giving me the run around about needing to do the test again because they don't take test results from other doctors, blah, blah, blah. . . I'm learning to stand up to them and say no. All these doctors just want to take more of our money and waste more of our time and I'm not having it anymore!)
Last weekend Pop-Pop, Jamie and I took Kinsey to Starke for the Strawberry Festival. Kinsey just happens to have a little red and white dress with strawberries on it, so of course she wore that :) Here's a picture of us with the giant strawberry.
So Kinsey's favorite activity every day is Bath Time! She knows when you take her in the bathroom that she's about to get in the tub and she gets all excited. She splashed all around in the tub and just loves to have her hair washed and the water poured over her. It's so cute! Here's a picture of her in the tub with her duckies.
We also finally got our pictures from the photographer this week. I've included all of them at the bottom of this post (in case you haven't seen them already on Facebook). They're great and I actually just booked a beach session with the same photographer for July - Kinsey will be 8 months be then! Should be fun!
Kinsey did something else new this week - she TRULY laughed for the first time :) For several months now she's been making little grunts and noises when she smiles that you know are happy sounds, but she'd never really laughed. On Tuesday I was playing with her and she actually giggled. It was the sweetest sound! I cried . . . then ran to get the camera to see if I could get her to do it again. I couldn't get her to do it to the same degree again, but I got something close. Here's the video (make sure your sound is on): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HB3h6b5P8Fg
That's it for this week - keep an eye out for a special Easter post on Sunday with some super cute Easter pictures :) Here are the photographer's pictures:
This week Kinsey tried something new - Prunes! Baby food prunes that is of course. She took to the idea of it pretty easily, but she just wasn't convinced at first that it was food. I mean she would eat it without any problem, but she would complain after a couple of bites that she wasn't getting what she wanted - the bottle. It took a little trial and error, but I think we discovered it works best if you give her the food after at least some of the bottle. Anyway, she seems to like the prunes just fine and has been eating them pretty well all week.
A friend of mine suggested a baby food recipe book that is supposed to be really easy - it's called Baby Love. We had started with Gerber, but I just got the book today and I'm going to try to start making her food instead. I think it's healthier and hopefully it will be easy.
We had our appointment with the ENT on Tuesday and, long story short, they are going to order the headband hearing aid for her. It will take at least a few weeks to get here. He's not concerned about doing the CAT scan or surgery until she's at least a year old. He said her ear canals can open up some on their own as she grows and, in fact, they already have a little bit, so it's not worth doing surgery yet. I'm glad they're going to move forward with the hearing aid (At first they started giving me the run around about needing to do the test again because they don't take test results from other doctors, blah, blah, blah. . . I'm learning to stand up to them and say no. All these doctors just want to take more of our money and waste more of our time and I'm not having it anymore!)
Last weekend Pop-Pop, Jamie and I took Kinsey to Starke for the Strawberry Festival. Kinsey just happens to have a little red and white dress with strawberries on it, so of course she wore that :) Here's a picture of us with the giant strawberry.
So Kinsey's favorite activity every day is Bath Time! She knows when you take her in the bathroom that she's about to get in the tub and she gets all excited. She splashed all around in the tub and just loves to have her hair washed and the water poured over her. It's so cute! Here's a picture of her in the tub with her duckies.
We also finally got our pictures from the photographer this week. I've included all of them at the bottom of this post (in case you haven't seen them already on Facebook). They're great and I actually just booked a beach session with the same photographer for July - Kinsey will be 8 months be then! Should be fun!
Kinsey did something else new this week - she TRULY laughed for the first time :) For several months now she's been making little grunts and noises when she smiles that you know are happy sounds, but she'd never really laughed. On Tuesday I was playing with her and she actually giggled. It was the sweetest sound! I cried . . . then ran to get the camera to see if I could get her to do it again. I couldn't get her to do it to the same degree again, but I got something close. Here's the video (make sure your sound is on): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HB3h6b5P8Fg
That's it for this week - keep an eye out for a special Easter post on Sunday with some super cute Easter pictures :) Here are the photographer's pictures:
Friday, April 15, 2011
Busy Week
Boy have we had a busy week - full of appointments and visits with friends!
Kinsey had her monthly checkup with the pediatrician and got another vaccination. She seemed to have a little reaction to it, so she's wasn't too happy that day, but has been doing just fine otherwise. According to our scale at home, she is up to 10 lbs 12 oz!
Kinsey's head (and brain) is growing slowly, which is to be expected given her condition, but she is definitely learning new things and developing every day. She's getting better and better at picking her head up and looking around the room. She doing it for a longer period of time before she gets tired now, so that's good. The Occupational Therapist's evaluation is that she is performing skills at the 3 month level, so she's not terribly behind.
Now I know you're not supposed to plop your kids down in front of the TV all the time, but Kinsey loves the TV! We lay her on the floor propped up in the Boppy and she watches Sesame Street, Finding Nemo and she even likes to watch Daddy play Rock Band (all those notes moving across the screen are very entertaining). I took this video of her watching Finding Nemo the other day (make sure your sound is on and you can hear her talking to the TV): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zjdGu5s1lLw
I also took this picture of her intently watching (and Emma getting in on the action):
We have our first appointment next week with the new ENT (ear doctor). We are hoping they will go ahead and get things started with the bone conducting hearing aid that she can wear on the headband. We know they will want to do the CT Scan to evaluate whether her ear(s) could be corrected with surgery or not, but we'd like to go ahead and get the hearing aid and worry about those other things later. Every day that passes that she can't hear well is another day that her ability to learn is affected.
Anyway, I'll end on a funny note: sometimes Jamie holds Kinsey upside down when he's playing with her. Well, the other night she went pee while he was holding her that way and it ran right down the front of her onto him. I guess diapers don't work well if you're upside down! :)
Kinsey had her monthly checkup with the pediatrician and got another vaccination. She seemed to have a little reaction to it, so she's wasn't too happy that day, but has been doing just fine otherwise. According to our scale at home, she is up to 10 lbs 12 oz!
Kinsey's head (and brain) is growing slowly, which is to be expected given her condition, but she is definitely learning new things and developing every day. She's getting better and better at picking her head up and looking around the room. She doing it for a longer period of time before she gets tired now, so that's good. The Occupational Therapist's evaluation is that she is performing skills at the 3 month level, so she's not terribly behind.
Now I know you're not supposed to plop your kids down in front of the TV all the time, but Kinsey loves the TV! We lay her on the floor propped up in the Boppy and she watches Sesame Street, Finding Nemo and she even likes to watch Daddy play Rock Band (all those notes moving across the screen are very entertaining). I took this video of her watching Finding Nemo the other day (make sure your sound is on and you can hear her talking to the TV): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zjdGu5s1lLw
I also took this picture of her intently watching (and Emma getting in on the action):
We have our first appointment next week with the new ENT (ear doctor). We are hoping they will go ahead and get things started with the bone conducting hearing aid that she can wear on the headband. We know they will want to do the CT Scan to evaluate whether her ear(s) could be corrected with surgery or not, but we'd like to go ahead and get the hearing aid and worry about those other things later. Every day that passes that she can't hear well is another day that her ability to learn is affected.
Anyway, I'll end on a funny note: sometimes Jamie holds Kinsey upside down when he's playing with her. Well, the other night she went pee while he was holding her that way and it ran right down the front of her onto him. I guess diapers don't work well if you're upside down! :)
Friday, April 8, 2011
Happy 5 Month Birthday!
Kinsey will be 5 months old on Sunday - It's hard to believe that 5 months have gone by already!
Her photo shoot went well last weekend. She was pretty good except she fussed about one of the baskets we tried to put her in. She let us know when she was tired of the whole thing and was asleep the second we put her in her carseat. Here are a couple of the pictures I've gotten so far. I'll have the rest in a few weeks:
Pop-Pop has volunteered to take her one night again this weekend. We are going to get very spoiled, but we're taking advantage of the opportunity as long as Pop-Pop is in town!
Kinsey is now up to 10 lbs 5 oz and 23.5 inches. She's actually tracking along with the small side of "average" on the growth charts. An "average" 6 month old is between 24 - 26.5" and 12.5 - 16.5 lbs. so she's on track to hit those by 6 months. And besides that, she's blowing the Trisomy growth charts out of the water. A Trisomy baby typically hasn't gained anything or grown at all yet.
Kinsey's Physical Therapist (PT) came again this week and she was very impressed with the progress Kinsey has made since last month. Primarily she was impressed with Kinsey's ability to pick her head up, but also bringing her hands to her mouth and tracking objects. She suggested we look into getting splints for her hands to help open them up more and also doing Serial Casting on her feet to straighten out the bones. Splints would follow for her feet as well.
We also had a new Occupational Therapist (OT) come today. The first one was extremely difficult to get ahold of and when she finally did come once, she was a bit odd. The new person is much better and we already have a weekly appointment scheduled with her. (OT will come weekly to work with Kinsey, while PT only comes once a month.)
Things went much more smoothly with Kelly (the nanny) this week! Kinsey must be getting used to her. Kelly does a really good job playing with Kinsey and trying new things. She was here when the PT came and was very engaged with her and interested in learning the things we need to do with Kinsey to help her development.
Here are few more pictures of Kinsey that I took this week:
Her photo shoot went well last weekend. She was pretty good except she fussed about one of the baskets we tried to put her in. She let us know when she was tired of the whole thing and was asleep the second we put her in her carseat. Here are a couple of the pictures I've gotten so far. I'll have the rest in a few weeks:
Pop-Pop has volunteered to take her one night again this weekend. We are going to get very spoiled, but we're taking advantage of the opportunity as long as Pop-Pop is in town!
Kinsey is now up to 10 lbs 5 oz and 23.5 inches. She's actually tracking along with the small side of "average" on the growth charts. An "average" 6 month old is between 24 - 26.5" and 12.5 - 16.5 lbs. so she's on track to hit those by 6 months. And besides that, she's blowing the Trisomy growth charts out of the water. A Trisomy baby typically hasn't gained anything or grown at all yet.
Kinsey's Physical Therapist (PT) came again this week and she was very impressed with the progress Kinsey has made since last month. Primarily she was impressed with Kinsey's ability to pick her head up, but also bringing her hands to her mouth and tracking objects. She suggested we look into getting splints for her hands to help open them up more and also doing Serial Casting on her feet to straighten out the bones. Splints would follow for her feet as well.
We also had a new Occupational Therapist (OT) come today. The first one was extremely difficult to get ahold of and when she finally did come once, she was a bit odd. The new person is much better and we already have a weekly appointment scheduled with her. (OT will come weekly to work with Kinsey, while PT only comes once a month.)
Things went much more smoothly with Kelly (the nanny) this week! Kinsey must be getting used to her. Kelly does a really good job playing with Kinsey and trying new things. She was here when the PT came and was very engaged with her and interested in learning the things we need to do with Kinsey to help her development.
Here are few more pictures of Kinsey that I took this week:
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| This is my new all-time favorite picture! |
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| Sleeping Beauty (and her cow) :) |
Friday, April 1, 2011
Nannies, Poop & Other Adventures
Kelly, the Nanny, started this week. Her first day was a bit rough - I think the two of them just need to get used to each other. Wednesday was better, but they still have some adjusting to do. Hopefully next week will go more smoothly!
*Warning - skip this paragraph if you don't want to hear poop stories* We've definitely had some adventures with poop this week! First Kinsey pooped in the bathtub for the first time (I knew it was only a matter of time before she did that to me!). And I guess now that she's figured that out, she did it again! Fortunately, she's still small enough to fit in the sink, so it was easy to clean up and start over. The next adventure was a little messier - I was feeding her and holding her on my lap- she pooped and the diaper leaked. I didn't even realize it, but when I went to pick her up, the poop was all over my skirt! Fortunately, we were at home and I just took both of us directly into the laundry room to get cleaned up and threw the clothes into the wash. I can't imagine what I would have done if we had been out and about when that happened. I always carry extra clothes for her, but I'm beginning to think I should carry an extra outfit for me as well!
Kinsey is doing really well sleeping without her pacifier, but she was squirming so much that she was waking up a lot because she kept sliding down in her chair (the vibrating chair she has always slept in). So we decided to see how she would do sleeping in her crib instead. She's been doing well with that all week. She even seems to fuss a little less in the evenings when we put her to bed. The last couple of nights she has stayed awake talking to herself, but not really fussing, so that is good.
Kinsey is consistently eating 4 oz each feeding now (sometimes even more!). Her 3 month size pants are still too baggy for her, but she's too long for the newborn size ones - they look like high waters on her. :) I'm going to have to dust off my sewing skills and start taking some things in at the waist to make the 3 month ones fit her.
The Occupational Therapist finally came to see Kinsey this week. She gave us a couple of new exercises to do with Kinsey, but most of the stuff overlaps with PT at this point, so that's not real eventful. She will see the OT each week though, whereas the PT only comes once a month.
This Sunday we are doing a photo shoot with our favorite baby photographer! She did just an amazing job with Kinsey's newborn photos, I can't wait to see these. I even bought some special props and outfits for the shoot :) I just hope Kinsey is in a good mood and feels like cooperating! Of course I'll post these pictures as soon as well get them. . .
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