Still Very Sick

Gabriella still has the same terrible stomach bug. The pediatrician weighed her yesterday afternoon and she was down 0.75 pounds which is quite dramatic and absolutely significant on a 20 pound body. She lost 3.6% of her body weight in two weeks. The pediatrician wanted to weigh her again this morning and make sure that she did not lose anymore weight overnight. If she had, they were going to hospitalize her, but she had not, thank God. She officially stopped drinking yesterday. She wants nothing to do with her sippy cup so we have been having to syringe Pedialyte into her mouth every 15 to 20 minutes. She had no luck keeping food down again today, so the syringes of liquid are pretty much all that are sustaining her. It is extremely scary and it is preoccupying my every thought.

Even though Gabriella certainly must feel terrible, nauseous, and weak, she has not lost her spunk! This afternoon my dad was rubbing Gabriella's neck gently. She tilted her head down and bit his finger; certainly an effective way to communicate her desire to have him stop!

Ken was the lucky recipient of the same stomach bug yesterday, but it was gone by this morning. I luckily have not had it yet.

Sick Again

On Friday, it appeared that we were healthily heading into the weekend and decided to take Gabriella to La Salette Shrine to see their annual Christmas light display. She was not really acting like herself, but I assumed it because we had her heavily bundled up so that she would stay warm. While we were walking around Gabriella started vomiting. We quickly got her in the car and had a messy and nerve-wracking ride home. We had to pull over several times and even had to stop at Auntie Kathy's and Uncle Al's house en route home because she was having a really hard time. She clearly had another stomach bug and my mother had had the same bug on Friday night.

We stayed in all day Saturday so that Gabriella could take it easy and rest. The vomiting turned into diarrhea, but it was not as bad as the symptoms she had when she had her stomach bug right before Thanksgiving.

We took it easy again on Sunday and she appeared better with no more stomach bug symptoms. She was on a bland diet with Pedialyte until Sunday afternoon at which time she had a late lunch of pasta. She did not have much of an appetite, but did eat a bit. Since she seemed better we decided to take her out for about an hour to see a live nativity at a Church near my home. We got her dressed and bundled her up again in her snow suit. (We had our first real snow today. Last Sunday we had some flurries, but today's snow accumulated a bit) She instantly became fussy. I figured it was from being bundled up again and thought that once she saw the snow and her cousins she would cheer up. No such luck.

We returned home and we discovered the problem...from the last diaper change to that diaper change (probably less than 2 hours) she had developed a very red, sore diaper rash and that was clearly why she was fussing. We are religious about applying diaper rash cream during every diaper change because she tends to have diaper rash issues, but we have had to switch to the prescription cream for her yeast infection. Grammy and Grampy were over our house and were able to help us through this episode. We kept her diaper off and lathered her up with diaper rash cream and it seemed to ease the soreness and the redness subsided. She sat with us to have dinner and during dinner she vomited again. There doesn't seem to be a break for her...one sickness or issue right after the other. She is a trooper, though.

Hopefully things will make a major turn this week and she will have a healthy, strong week.

Visit to the Eye Doctor

Gabriella's has a minor eye condition called Entropion. Her bottom eyelashes are directed up and inward toward her eyeball. It is not really recognizable unless you stare at her eyelashes and it is not a problem unless her eyelashes begin scratching her corneas. The doctor feels that the problem will correct itself as her face matures but, if not, there is a surgery available to remove the excess skin of the bottom lids. Gabriella has to check-in with the eye doctor periodically to ensure that her corneas are still looking good. The doctor feels that if the lashes have not caused scratching to this point, they probably won't.

During the exam they dilated her eyes so that they could do a thorough exam of her eye. They put four drops of different solutions into each eye and told us to wait thirty minutes for the dilation. After thirty minutes her eyes were still not dilated, so we had to do three more drops in each eye. We waited again and her eyes were still only slightly dilated! Her eyes are so dark that the drops were nearly ineffective for the dilation. They still proceeded with the exam. Gabriella didn't enjoy having the drops put in and she certainly did not enjoy having the doctor shining the lights into her eyes and examining her.

It turns out that Gabriella's eye doctor is the same doctor who performed eye surgery on Ken about five years ago. I chose this doctor independently of knowing this and found it so ironic when I learned of this today. It makes it even more ironic since I had also chosen Gabriella's pediatrician independently of knowing that the father of her pediatrician was Ken's pediatrician.

Gabriella's First School Portraits

Today I received Gabriella's first set of school portraits. They were taken on November 6th and came out so cute.

Adventures at the Doctor's Office

Gabriella and I went to see her pediatrician again this evening. With our track record, it is not unusual to have several calls in and at least one visit to the pediatrician's office each week. She has an external yeast infection caused by the antibiotics that she has been on for her ear infections so I had to bring her in for a professional diagnosis and medicine. The good thing is that they also checked her ear while we were there and her infection is gone.

Gabriella is much more relaxed now at the doctor's office. In the beginning she would start screaming the second the nurse or doctor would touch her. Now she is much more tolerant. While we wait for the doctor we typically walk up and down the hall. Gabriella snoops around and flirts with all of the nurses and fellow patients! This evening she was especially funny during our hall walks. As she was walking down the hall, she would stop at the closed doors, bang on them, and yell. She wasn't banging hard enough so as to be a disruption, but it was so funny. Then, while outside one door, she heard a child inside coughing uncontrollably. She stopped and began mimicking his cough. She was right in sync with his cough patterns and all. This is not a new behavior. She did this once in the grocery store. She was in the carriage with Ken and a lady passed them in an aisle. The lady coughed, Gabriella copied her, and the lady started laughing. Gabriella will also "fake" cough and we will say "Is baby sick?" and she will play it up with more coughing. She is such a trip!

Moving to the Toddler Room

Gabriella is in the Infant room at day care. Infants are under the age of 15 months. Gabriella will be 16 months on Thursday and should be in the Toddler room by now. Gabriella is working with Early Intervention as she is not yet walking due to her lack of opportunities to practice walking in Guatemala and her language is delayed due to her sole exposure to Spanish during her first year. Early Intervention gave her a note to extend her stay in the Infant room by one month. My main concern is that she is going to get trampled while she is crawling around and all of the other children are walking. I am also concerned because the children are expected to be a bit more independent in that room than in the Infant room; Gabriella is not there yet. My mother spent a little time with Gabriella in the Toddler room yesterday, though, to begin to get her used to being there. My mother said she did really well and enjoyed it, probably because the kids are obviously older and are more interactive than the babies in the Infant room. Ken usually brings Gabriella to daycare, but I was able to go into work later today so I was able to bring her in this morning. My mother wanted me to observe her in the Toddler room. She seemed completey adjusted to being in the new room and seemed to enjoy herself exploring the new space. I almost started crying, though, because it hit me that she is not a baby anymore and she is getting more independent and needs mommy's help a bit less each day! It is, of course, my mission as her mom to raise Gabriella to be an independent and strong woman, I am just not ready for her to lose any dependency yet!

Santa

I took Gabriella to see Santa tonight. Santa was walking around the picture studio and I was sitting with Gabriella and pointing Santa out to her so that she could acclimate to the big man in the red suit. I was amazed that she was just looking at him and really showing no emotion. She certainly was not scared and I couldn't believe it. I called my mother and Ken from the studio and proudly shared how she was not scared. Well...that all changed once we went into the portrait room with Santa. She immediately started crying and clung on to me. Santa tried giving Gabriella a lollipop and that calmed Gabriella down but she would not take the lollipop from Santa, wouldn't touch him, and certainly wouldn't sit with him. We were able to distract Gabriella, though, while Santa snuck in the back and hid behind the Christmas tree. This was the shot we got!: