Seven Months Old

Ally turns 7 months old tomorrow! It's hard to believe that much time has gone by since she arrived. She recently graduated from the panda bear class to the polar bear class at day care and is now surrounded by kids who are becoming mobile and starting to scoot & crawl. She's sitting up by herself for longer and longer periods of time and topples over a little less than she used to. Yesterday she got up on her hands and knees for the first time- it was very brief, but I happened to catch her do it so I clapped up a storm and she was very proud of herself.



One fun new game we've started to play involves a Tupperware bowl filled with some rings or little toys. I hand it to her and she dumps it out. Every time she dumps it she gets a huge smile on her face and giggles. She hasn't mastered refilling the bowl yet but we're working on it.



Ally has become fascinated by water- both in the bath tub and the sink. Last night she learned how to turn on the kitchen faucet and was absolutely mesmerized by the water flowing out of it. When I turn on the bathtub for her at bath time she goes positively nuts and squirms all over the place trying to get out of my arms and into the water. It's really cute.



Matthew and I spent our first night away from Allison last weekend. We attended the wedding of a friend on the Eastern Shore of VA. Thankfully we were only about 45 minutes from home so I wasn't too panicked. We left our girl in the competent care of her Grandma and Granddad Martin. They came over to our house on Saturday afternoon to pick up Ally and the dogs (the really had their hands full!) and took them all back to their home. She ate fairly well for them, napped a little bit, slept through the night, and let them sleep in until the late, late hour of 5am on Sunday morning! We called to check in only once (although we thought about it a lot more often!) and enjoyed our night away. We stayed in a beautiful bed & breakfast in Cape Charles and enjoyed sleeping in until 8am in the crisp white sheets with the down comforter! It was heaven. After breakfast we were ready to get home to all three of our babies so we headed home and were reunited with our family by noon. I'm sure we'll get better at leaving her behind occasionally, but for now 22 hours was long enough!

Last week Allison went to see the pediatric GI specialist at Naval Medical Center Portsomouth. We had a great experience! The doctor spent about 45 minutes with us taking the most complete history I've ever seen. He agrees that something is going on with her since she's still not eating solids, hasn't been able to switch to a high flow nipple without gagging, arches her back and screams when we try to feed her, etc. The most common theory at this point is esophageal dysphagia which is the fancy name for a swallowing disorder.

We got a referral to CHKD, the local children's hospital, for a barium swallow test. They put some barium into her food then take Xrays to see where it goes and if it's going to the right place. Our appointment is tomorrow- I'm taking the day off work because it's supposed to be a pretty time consuming procedure and they only do it in the mornings so I'd miss too much of my day anyway. We probably won't get any concrete results for a few days and we'll have to go back to the GI specialist at Portsmouth to discuss them. I'll do my best to update the blog again on Thursday though with the preliminary results.

Thanks for checking in!