51 Weeks Old . . . Already

Hello friends and family! I want to thank all of you loyal blog readers out there for checking in on us from time to time to see how we are doing. This has been a fun way to let you all know what is going on in our lives, keep a journal for little Olivia to see when she grows up, and for me to vent my frustrations and worries, share my excitement, happiness and joy and a wonderful way to get some great feedback and support from you guys to help us out along the way with advice, support and just general encouragement in the amazement of raising little Olivia. I cannot believe that she is already almost one! Can you believe it! It seems like just a short time ago we were bringing her home from the hospital:

Look how small she was!! It is truly amazing how much she has grown and thrived throughout this past year. And what a year it has been. We have had our ups and downs. There have been highs we cannot even explain (the highest being at the very first sight of her!), and scary moments when we were worried about her health or how to care for her, and, of course, frustrating moments when we just weren't sure what to do! But all in all, it has been just wonderful to have such a special little girl in our lives. She is truly amazing and it seems like she is learning something new almost every day now!

Here are some of the new things that she has learned:

• She can imitate a bunny by scrunching up her nose and making sniffing sounds (very cute)


• She very randomly said "night night" to me as I was putting her to bed one night this past week - now she says it almost every night! (we always say it to her, now she says it back!)


• She has learned how to say "more" this week. (to add to the other words she knows already: momma (though she almost never says that anymore!), dadda, daddy (which she says ALL the time, especially when asked to say "mamma" - then she laughs! hmph!), ball, kitty, no no, ow (like when you get hurt - though she just says that randomly to get attention). (she has also just generally started repeating what we say a lot! - time to watch what we are saying . . . )


• We also swear that she said "thank you" to Grant the other night. She wasn't feeling well (see later on in this post) so Grant put a cool washcloth on the back of her neck and she looked up at him and said "thank you" clear as a bell. We both looked shocked and Grant was just like "you're wel . . .come . . ." It was really strange. But we always say thank you to her and they do the same at daycare, so maybe she understands more than we think she does!


• She definitely understands her "ball" now and will most times go get it on command - or at the very least look around for it and point it out to you. She also knows which toy is her pony and her turtle (from the aquarium).


• She can sign for her milk (we've been doing the baby sign language with her and she learned how to sign back milk about a month ago)


• She can now almost run and even catch her balance mid-fall so that she doesn't fall much at all anymore. She can even lean over and pick things off the ground in the middle of the room without falling over.


• You all witnessed her climbing OVER the couch! She climbs on EVERYTHING now!

Ok, so now that I have reminisced a bit and caught you up on her in a more general way, let me catch you up on this past week. So you know that she had Hand, Foot & Mouth about a week or so ago, right? Well, she got over that last weekend and seemed to get back to normal for a bit the beginning of this past week. Then on Wednesday when I picked her up from daycare she felt a bit warm. I got her home and took her temp . . . 102.4 . . . uh-oh, not again! Ugh! Well, it climbed up to about 103.5 that night and I gave her the usual Tylenol and whatnot hoping that it was just a crazy high teething temp or something. Well, by the morning, it was back down to around 101 and my neighbor (daycare) said that I could still bring her over and head off to work (since I had missed most of the previous week with the Hand, Foot & Mouth stuff) to at least get a little work done. She said that she would keep an eye on her and that if it got worse or seemed like something more than teething, she'd call.

Well, by lunchtime, she called! Yeah, 102.5 temp again and not eating. ugh! I wasn't in the office when she called, so I had to head back, get my stuff to bring home to work from there and head out. By the time I was heading home, she called again and said it was getting even worse and she was burning up. When I got there, she was just laying there in Ms. Muriel's lap and looked pitiful! She had a 103.5 temp again and wouldn't eat or do anything. I brought her home, called her pediatrician and they said that a high temp is ok as long as she seems like she is fighting it ok. They said it was probably a secondary virus from being sick the week before and it should pass, but if I felt she wasn't fighting it well, I could bring her in. I did manage to get her to drink her bottle - so I figured she was doing somewhat ok. Later on her temp climbed up to 104.9!!!!! I put her in a cool bath to get the temp down and that seemed to help a lot. She was actually playing after that and even ate a little dinner. She went to bed in pretty decent shape.

A couple hours later, she woke up screaming - she was shivering, trembling and in awful shape. It was really hard to watch her hurting so bad. We just had to hold her and try to soothe her back to sleep as best we could. We figured that her fever was finally breaking. But in the morning, her temp was still over 103! So, off to the doctor's office we went (this was Friday). Well, they checked her out and everything seemed normal. Her throat was a little red, which they thought was probably left over from last week, but decided to do a strep test again - just in case. However, the doctor was pretty sure it would be negative as it is extremely rare for kids under 2 to get strep (but if they do, it is almost always a secondary infection - which this was!). He said it was most likely a UTI - and it was standard in little girls to do a catheter UTI urine test for high fevers lasting longer than 3 days with no other outward signs - and that the test was very painful and traumatic for the babies. Well, the strep test had already made her throw up and upset her pretty bad - so I was pretty upset with the news of that!

So here I was nearly in tears at at the doctors office, trying to get myself under control, help Olivia out (also dealing with some work stuff on the side, and keeping Grant in the loop over the phone) and the nurses came in to do the catheter, then the doctor stuck his head in and told them to hold off for a couple minutes to wait for the strep test to come back . . . just in case . . . fingers crossed . . . praying . . . thankfully - it came back positive. Now normally I would not be thankful for a positive strep test in an 11 month old, but in this case, to save her from going through the catheterization, I was very thankful! So, off to the pharmacy for some antibiotics.

Yeah, it was quite a stressful morning and she is finally starting to do better, but still is quite cranky and not eating well. But her fever is finally gone (as of last night) - so that is at least a little bit of good news. So, in thinking about the short 1-year life that she has had and all the time that she has been sick, she is going to be a tank when she is older - her immune system is going to be awesome, I mean, it has already been exposed to so much stuff and built all kinds of antibodies! Just look at her history:

Now we just need to get her healthy in time for her Birthday Party next weekend! Yeah! :)

Ok, so that's what's been going on here. So here are some fun pictures of the little one. Here she is in a very cute little sun dress that my friends (Heather, Cat and Melissa) got her for my baby shower that I have been waiting for her to grow into. Isn't it soooo cute!!!??!??!

Just doing a little housework . . or yard work . . . or house yard work (mowing the carpet) in her evening gown!

She's at it again!

Look at that face!
Our friends Jennifer and Reese came to visit us on Saturday (fortunately she had already been on her antibiotics for more than 24 hours and the doc said that she wasn't contagious after that! - And I had lysol-ed the ENTIRE house before they showed up!). Aren't they cute!

And here's little Olivia from this afternoon giving Daddy his physical.

And, of course, the obligatory cute picture pose:

Ok. Well, that's about all for now (as if that wasn't enough!) I'm out of breath and this is just typing! The only other thing I would like to do is wish a very big CONGRATULATIONS to Cynthia and Jason Spruill on the arrival of the twin baby girls! They welcomed Evelyn Louise (2 lbs 8 oz) and Jessica Catherine (2 lbs 2 oz) into their family Thursday night at 11:26 pm and 11:27 pm, respectively. Both girls are doing very well.