Face Update

Kaylee's face looks so much better already - the bite marks are nearly gone, and there is just a little bruising showing up. I would have thought it would be dark purple (or green, yellow...) by now, but maybe she won't turn too many colors.

Yes, I have lots more Christmas photos to post, but am still going through them and haven't had a chance to post any yet...soon!!

Scarface Update

These are a couple pics of Kaylee's face this morning. It's shiny because there's more ointment on it, though I'm not sure it really needs it - figured it couldn't hurt! Looks much better than last night, though right under her eye looks a little darker, like a bruise could be coming in (hard to see that in the photos). My guess is within a week she'll be completely healed...we'll see!

The mush on her hand/face is banana - I was going to give her a few bites of mine and she ended up eating a little over half of it (she'd already had her meal!). She loves bananas! She'll come crawling over top speed if she sees that I have one. Very cute.

Christmas Calamity aka Doggie Drama

We all survived the madness of our Christmas week of running around like crazy...but some better than others! Today we went to my uncle and aunt's house for another family gathering. While we were opening gifts, Kaylee was playing with some opened ones on the floor and crawled over to one of the dogs who was sleeping. Apparently he did not appreciate being startled awake by her grabbing at his fur, so he snapped at her - getting a piece of her face in the process. She was/is fine; she only cried for about a minute. Seriously. By the time I'd gotten some ice for her, she was moving on and wanting to play with stuff again, incident behind her. So no ice, but we lathered her with Neosporin and gave her some baby Tylenol. Battle wound photos below. (Looks like she's sporting some sort of tribal warpaint.) We got home and she took a nap - it looked better when she woke up, and even better still before she went to bed for the night (after more ointment and tylenol). Hopefully it'll continue on the "looking better" trend, but I wouldn't be surprised if she has a colorful bruise show up soon.

Merry Christmas! Again!

Merry Christmas, everyone! Kaylee woke up and got her presents from Santa (Noah's Ark little people and a stocking full of goodies) and opened her gifts from us (more little people - Nativity and Little Drummer Boy; also a "Super Sleuth Tigger" from her fave show: My Friends Tigger & Pooh, and some bath toys). She's napping now, then it's off to Gramma and Grampa's for more Christmas fun. Tuesday and yesterday we stayed at Poppy & Nana's in Rome and celebrated with them, Uncle Robbie and Aunt Brooke, and this past Saturday we celebrated with Grandma Barb, Uncle Robbie and Aunt Brooke. And after today we still have two places to go! We've managed to keep it to just one place a day this year somehow, though. Kaylee seems to be enjoying all her new toys so far. I think she was getting bored with some of the ones we had, so now we can maybe put a few of those away and have new ones out, then swap back and forth if she gets bored. Definitely have lots to choose from now, with more to come, I'm sure! Here are a few photos from this morning. (Daddy didn't want to be in photos because of his non-Christmasy PJ's, but you can see he was here. Maybe Santa will find some for him at an after-Christmas sale??)

Ear Update

I don't think I've posted anything about Kaylee's ear/hearing issues in a while, but we've taken her to the ENT a few times in the past couple months and went again today. The last time we went (mid-Nov), she had an OAE (Otoacoustic Emissions) test done. The test showed that her right ear is fine, but the left passed the two highest frequency levels, was close to passing the middle frequency and failed the lowest two frequencies. So we will continue to trudge back and forth to ear doc appointments...

Today, the doc said she had a lot of wax in her ear, making it hard to see, so he used a weird suction device to try to get it out. Kaylee was crying and very squirmy during that, so he didn't get it all out. He said she doesn't have any fluid in her ears, which is good, and had the audiologist do the tympanometry test again. Her left ear was still showing signs of "stiffness" (recap: basically, when eardrum doesn't flex as much as it should when hit with soundwaves).

The doc looked in her ear again after that test, but said there was still so much wax, that might be interfering with the test. Unfortunately for Kaylee, this meant they had to "papoose" her - strap her down on a table with wrist cuffs and a big body cuff. Add to the restraints the fact that the suction device probably sounded to her like a very loud train...needless to say, she did not like that at all and screamed/cried the whole time she was strapped down. Don't worry, she calmed quickly and was smiling again within about 2 minutes after we picked her up. During that suction procedure, the doc pulled out a HUGE chunk of wax that just stuck to the end of the suction tube - it had to be wiped off so he could continue. So he was able to get quite a bit out that time. Just took the full body restraint system.

(First pic here is just a cute one from a couple days ago - she gets so happy when she stands up on her own! Others are from today...obviously...)


The audiologist redid the tympanometry test, and Kaylee's ear did much better. The results indicated that the wax was indeed interfering with that test, and the doc concluded that based on the results of that and the OAE test done last month, her hearing loss is likely an inner ear issue. Good news is, if it's an inner ear thing, she won't need tubes. Bad news, she might need a hearing aid. He referred us to a Pediatric Audiologist, and we'll try to get an appointment with her in January. She'll be able to do more in depth testing and figure out what our next steps should be, whether it's wait and see, go ahead with a hearing aid or something in between. They keep saying she'll develop normally, and so far that seems to have been the case. So honestly we're not sure if a hearing aid is really necessary at this point, but we'll see what the professionals have to say...

If you're interested in a bit more info on the hearing screen process for children, a good, easily understandable site I've found is at http://kidshealth.org/parent/general/eyes/hear.html. (FYI, the site has detailed info on what is involved with Tympanometry, OAE and other tests.)

Week old photos

Last Friday we had a photographer (the sister of someone I know) come over to take some candid photos of Kaylee. She put all the images on a CD and dropped it off on Sunday. So it's taken me a while to go through nearly 175 images and find some to post here. Sorry for the delay. So far my grandparents are the only ones who have seen any of these! (Unless you've visited them since Wednesday night, maybe.) Here are a couple handfuls of our favorites... (As you can see, Kaylee wasn't too cooperative for a family photo - there are others with various similar faces that I didn't post - thought this one was the funniest.)

By the way, the little brown chair in some of the photos was mine when I was little...hence the already-banged-up-ness.

To tide you over...

Okay, okay, I give...here are a few pix from Thanksgiving. First two are on Thanksgiving Day, at Robbie and Brooke's house, then Kaylee with her Gramma at Gramma and Grampa's house on Friday.

Kisses and more

I know I haven't posted any photos in the past week or so...I have some and hopefully will get around to it soon!!

Kaylee is the clapping queen! If we say, "can you clap?" she does and gets so excited about it; it's adorable. She's also started giving kisses. When I ask, "can I have a kiss?" she leans in for one (usually mouth wide open, hah). One of my favorite things so far - she has to give Mommy lots and lots of kisses now!!!

Yesterday I hung up a (pretty much life-size) Santa face (painted porcelain; Jamie's honorary grandmother made it). At first Kaylee wasn't sure what to make of it, either looked confused or scared, but by the end of the day when I asked her "where's Santa?" she'd look over at it with a huge smile. Today when I asked her, she would look at it and smile and laugh and want to touch it - cute! It also plays music when you press the fuzzy white ball at the end of Santa's cap and she seems to enjoy when I sing along to the tune (medly of Rudolph and Santa Claus is Coming to Town)...I would guess moreso for the music than for my singing...

Don't know what else to tell you. Kaylee's pulling up on anything and everything, including the dustbuster (I thought that was funny). She loves to hold our hands and walk around, or use the walker, though ours doesn't work as well for her as the one she used at Erin's house last week (see post below). She holds her own bottle now and is getting more and more independent. I'm tired and can't think of more for the time being... Hopefully this weekend I'll have a bit of time to post some pictures, so check back next week!

Little Walker???

We went to a friend's house for a playdate lunch today (with Erin & big sis Ellie) and Kaylee pulled herself up on the little toy walker they have and walked across the room all on her own! She ran into a dead end at the fireplace, so I turned her around and she walked all the way back, too! Only slipped a couple times, which was funny, because she was still holding on to the handle of the walker, but was completely under it except her arms and head and got this, "what happened?!?" look on her face. Of course I left my camera at home, so didn't get a video. Oh, well, I'm sure she'll do it again!

8 months & counting

These are a couple pictures we took last week - took a bunch in this outfit and her Santa photos outfit to get some for this year's Christmas cards. Ended up with a bunch of good ones that we had to narrow down - we picked 4 to put on the card.

Kaylee is 8 months old! Seems like the time has flown by, but I also can't seem to remember what things were like without her around! I guess we got out of the house more? Though staying in and watching her grow up has been quite entertaining and fulfilling in and of itself; I must say I haven't really missed watching movies that much!

We finally got the professional portrait taken at Kaylee's church dedication...

We had to lower Kaylee's crib...again...she's now pulling up on anything she can get her hands on, and I walked in to see her standing up in her crib today, waiting for me to rescue her. It would have taken some REAL effort on her part to get out of the crib at this point, but we went ahead and lowered the mattress today rather than waiting until we absolutely had to. Hopefully she won't be climbing out any time too soon!

Maybe watching her pal Erin is helping motivate Kaylee to do more, sooner. Erin's 8 months older than Kaylee and walking and Kaylee basically crawls after her all day on the days they're together (usually twice/week). Very cute, but I think she gets frustrated that she's not able to keep up and do everything Erin can. Soon enough!! Slow down with the growing up so fast!

Kaylee is also a little sponge! She knows quite a few words...
**Puffs = Gerber Puffs/a baby finger food; she LOVES them
**Bee = a stuffed bee on a string in a hive that's hanging from her closet doorknob; pull the bee and it plays a lullaby
**Shadow = our cat's name
**Tigger = a little stuffed Tigger toy (not our other cat, sorry Tig)
**Smacky = her stuffed giraffe
**Baby Kaylee = a photo collage of her in her playroom
**Splish Splash = splashing in the tub (if we say it, she slaps the water and it gets on everything)

Hmm. I think she either knows or is learning "Erin" and "Dada" and maybe "Mama." I know there are more words she responds to, but I can't think of them. Oh, we have flashcards and she can pick out the baby and teddy bear cards (except that they've been put away for a week now...oops).

I can't think of anything else for this post; more photos after Thanksgiving, I'm sure - hope everyone has a happy holiday week/weekend!

Unfortunately, no, we didn't go to NYC

First of all - if you click this photo and look closely, you can see Kaylee's little teeth coming in! She's very stingy with showing them off and we hadn't been able to get a picture of them before today (of course when we were trying...here I wasn't actually going for the teeth shot, but got them in there!).

We dressed Kaylee up in one of her Christmas outfits today to have photos done with Santa at "Christmas in Central Park." Scanned in the images and of course they're not as good as what we bought printed (scanner is on its way out for one thing, I believe), but they'll have to do for blog viewers.

We took the family pic first, then the one of Kaylee alone with Santa and Mrs. Claus (in case she freaked out, we wanted one good pic!) - she did great, though, and when I went to get her from Santa, he said he would just keep her the rest of the day and she could be in everyone else's photos, too. :-) She was dressed for the occasion! We figured we'd see more kids dressed in holiday attire for pics with Santa, but I think Kaylee was the only one! I did see some in red or green, but not a specific Christmas outfit like hers. She got a lot of comments on it. Well, she does enjoy the attention!

Dr. Jekyll and Miss Hyde??

Kaylee with Grampa, and with the folks.

And here's our little daredevil - she likes being upside down, and will even throw herself backwards while we're holding her to get us to do that sometimes!