Peek-a- BRO!

28 Month Update

* At 28 months, Isay now weighs about 20 lbs. and I finally put away all of her 6 to 9 month clothes. YAY! Hello 12 months!

* There seems to be a slowing down on her weight gain, yes in spite of all the cream and butter we've added to her diet. It could be because she has been more physically active, and thus, burning more calories.

*She is usually standing now, leaning on the couch, and when she sits, we rarely find her doing the "W" sitting. She can also manage to "kneel walk", often climbs on the stairs to go and check herself out in the big mirror by the stair landing. She also crawls all over the house and gets into our bins and takes stuff out to make a mess (Yay!). Also, every now and then, we will find her standing without support for a brief 3 to 5 seconds, and she slowly bends her knees to get to the floor. WOW!

* One time I left her on the rug by the foot of the bed so I can go get some diapers. When I got back after no less than 30 seconds, she was on top of the bed. I was bewildered and really thought that I could have left her on the bed, blaming it on my faltering memory, only to actually witness that night, when I left her on the rug again and turned my body to go get her box of wipes, that she pulled herself up to get on top of the bed, using the doggie mattress beside the bed to help give her some height... it's really time to baby proof the house!!!  And yes, this is why she is burning more calories!

* We will be changing her feed routine. We will start off her nightly pump feeds at 10pm and end it at 6am at a rate of 40 mls per hour. We changed her daytime feeding schedule to 9am, 12noon, 3pm and 6pm. She takes in all her daytime feeds by mouth, eating about 120 to 150 mls of pureed table food with rice cereal or Gerber 2's or 3's each meal time (if her food is sweet we add about 50 mls of heavy cream and if it's salty we add about a tsp of butter). This way she takes in more volume and more calories. We hope this helps her gain the weight she needs. 

* We got orthotic inserts for her shoes to help support her arch. She cruises less when she has these on, but when really motivated, she can do it.  Check out the video of her cruising WITH EASE (sans the shoes).

Soon... she'd be WALKING soon! =D

To read about her last development update click here

My Little Noisemaker

We just had ear tube placement surgery (her third set of ear tubes). It was an outpatient procedure and there were no complications. She recovered really well.

When her brother got home from school that afternoon, she turned to him for the first time when she HEARD him call her name. My son was really happy to know that she heard him and gave him many head kisses. 

Also each morning while very one gets ready to leave for work/school, I see her trying to peek, from her crib, through the door that leads to the bathroom. She usually makes this whiny sound, maybe because she is calling for us, and she knows that one of us is in there. Every morning I see her do this and sometimes I call for her, while I make the bed to let her know that I'm in the room but she does not turn. The morning after surgery, however, when she HEARD the rustling of the blankets while I was making the bed, she turned, stopped the whiny sounds she was making, and gave me a big smile. I wanted to tell her I've been there all along, every morning, but I was too busy crying happy tears, cause she knew somebody was there when she turned at the sound of the blankets. =D 

Here is a video of her having happy back and forth vocalizations with me. YAY!

There is still the question on whether she has hearing loss. Her audiology tests are very inconsistent as it sometimes shows that her better ear is her left, but that recently it shows that it's her right. At the last hearing test, she had an ear infection on her left and some drainage, so they weren't able to test that ear, but her right shows a mild hearing loss, which may be conductive, cause she did pass the ABR test done when she was 4 months old. The audiologist is talking about having another ABR done to rule out the possibility of a progressive hearing loss and another hearing test when her left ear gets better. We'll just have to wait and see. Behaviorally, the deaf and hard of hearing specialist working with her says, she seems to hear us. At this point I just want to know what direction to take so we can move on to the next step and really start working on those language skills. We barely started using signs like "more" and "all done" with her. She does not use gestures (yet), does not wave bye-bye or point to things, but sometimes does a head shake to signify a "No", but we use the signs just to start something. We really need to work on her receptive language skills and it would really help if she can hear us wouldn't it? =D

27 Month Update

* Towards the end of January, we tried adding heavy cream and butter to Isabella's diet. This lead to a significant weight gain of a pound in a span of a month. If you look back into her history, you'd see that this is a definite weight milestone for her. At 27 months, she weighs in at 19lbs!

 

* She had a seizure at home. The first seizure we ever managed with the emergency meds (Diastat) and didn't need to call 911. She spiked a 102 fever right after and slept for a long time (3 hours). When she awoke, we were back to or regular programming. No milestones seem to have been affected.

* Seizure may have been caused by an ear infection we didn't know she even had. Another ear tube placement surgery is underway. 

* We have a "stair climber"... and I don't mean that in an exercise equipment sort of way. Check out the video! =D

To read about her previous development update, click here.