Paige "winding down" before bed

Bubble Trouble

Here are some pictures of Grandma showing Paige what to do with bubble Gum!

I wish Paige's little body was growing as fast as her language skills! At this rate she'll be taking over paigesuponpaiges in no time! In addition to mimicking just about any word or sound you can throw at her, she has quite a working vocabulary. Here are some highlights.

Mama/Dada--No explanation needed.

Bubbos--We use this one a lot in the tub, at the Maple Grove Community Center (they have a bubble shelf in the pool) and, of course, blowing bubbles in the back yard....and living room.

Ah-Chee--See earlier post

Duuuuh?-- Poor Linda. This is what Paige calls our wonderful daycare lady.

Bob?-- Bob is Linda's husband....not sure why she refers to these two in the form of a question....

Out--She uses this one when she wants out of the crib, out of the high chair, and out of the car. I was holding her the other day and she wanted to get down. She doesn't have the word "down" yet so she said "out! out!"

"Oh, geez"--Really funny! Usually when she's been napping and someone turns on a light.

Feet/foot/shoes--LOVES her feet....not as much as she loves her shoes. Toes are kind of a new discovery, not sure where her allegiance to them is yet.

Juice--Occasionally sound like shoes, but the context helps determine which one shes looking for.

Hot Dog

Ballooooon!

Mine

Peas

Please--This one actually sounds a lot like peas...BUT...please is said 50 or 60 times in rapid succession usually when you have something like yummy bananas or an envelope nearby that she wants. She doesn't generally beg for peas...though she does like them a lot.

Uh-oh!--no explanation needed.

Nannas--Bananas.

baybah--Baby.

Amma--Grandma.

Whats that?

Spoon--....she (thankfully) has not tried "fork" yet.

Hey!

Huh?

No--sigh...yep. This one comes with the head shake too.

Eyes/ears/nose--She can also point to "teeth" and "mouth" and "hair"...I don't think she can say them yet though.

House

Meat!--yes...with gusto.

Oh WOW!

she busted out "diaper" this morning, but I can't get her to do it again....I'm sure I'm forgetting some....As excited as I am about all these new things, its hard to feel like she's not my 'baybah' anymore. :(

--Mommy

Easter 2009

This first bunch is of Miss Paige (and her fancy pants purse) on our way to church.


Here are a few at church, waiting to drop her off in the nursery. Only 8 friends to play with in there today.

Fed, napped, and changed into her egg hunting uniform. Paige had a lot of fun with this! Grandpa wanted to know how she knew what to do...was there some Easter egg hunt classes she took through the community education? Toddler instinct? Who knows. Things got a little out of hand when Grandma tried to get Paige to pick up eggs from the neighbors yard (shame on her)! and it was kind of gross when grandpa found a dead bird.

Fun with Uncle Ben and Aunt Katie. Aunt Jessie and Uncle Jaden were there with Kirby earlier....but since it was lunch time, no one stopped eating long enough to take any pictures!


I love my girl SO much. Its impossible to explain the way it feels.

Its excruciating...and...joyful...seriously, I don't want to be too cliche, there just really are not words for it!

Parents know.

Holidays overall are very different now than they were BP (before Paige). Did we do an Easter egg hunt in 2006 when the youngest person at the party was 24 years old? No. We did not.

But holidays like Easter and Christmas have changed for me forever in another way because of Paigey.

God....who loved His son..

loved His son...

sent him to earth knowing that he would be hurt...and die...on a cross.

For a father to have to do this to his child...

And then I remember that he did it...

for me.

WHAT!?

To know that God loves me enough that he could sacrifice His son is astonishing!

I love my Paigey more every minute.....every second of my life.....this adds a profoundly deeper meaning to Easter.

What an AWESOME Father we have!

A rather lengthy post today...

Since I have the day off (Good Friday) and a few moments of peace (naptime) I thought I should update the blog with something more substantial than a ketchup bottle jpeg.

We've had a pretty exciting week!

We had dinner in Fridley for Katie's 3rd birthday. The menu: Kool-Aid, Hot Dogs, Macaroni and Cheese, Cake, and Ice Cream. Pretty adorable, clearly by special request. Oddly enough I was thrilled to have a hot dog. I HATE hot dogs! Once (maybe twice) a year I think..."oh fine...I'll eat a hot dog if I HAVE to" so I was a little taken aback that I was so pumped....weird.


Right away when we arrived Paige got her hands on one of the zillion balloons in the living room. Naturally, Katie was concerned (any red blooded American 3 year old would be) that her cousin had one of HER balloons. A struggle ensued, ended with Paige dazed and balloonless. Katie calmly announced that "paige wanted to share that one with her." Riiiight. She is too darn cute. If you haven't had a chance, click on Kristi's blog link on the right of the screen (thetiessenticket.blogspot.com).



On Thursday Paige and I headed downtown to Amma's (Grandma Blake) work. I guess technically its Auntie Jessie and Uncle Ben's work too, but it was really Grandma's gig. She was a little shy around the lab ladies but overall had a fun time looking at the pictures of herself in Grandma's office and spinning in her desk chair.

Friday (today) we headed out to Mike's work for lunch. We got to break in the highchairs that he ordered for Medtronic. It seems strange to me that a company that size (with so many employees who have children and grandchildren visiting for lunch on non-school days) would' not have had highchairs available. Its been a real pain for us the last year to try to hold Paige or feed her in the stroller. Mike submitted the idea/request to a committee at work and got the green light! What a smart daddy!



After lunch we headed over to Rum River Veterinary clinic. Because Tuffy has renal failure she needs to eat (expensive) special (expensive) prescription (expensive) not cheap (expensive) dog food. When we arrived the guy said he "had a proposition for me." "Go on.." I said. Seems a lady recently bought a large bag of the (expensive) food that Tuffy needs. She did open it BUT her dog now no longer...ahem..needs it. Infer. Anyway, she wanted it to go to someone who could use it. He told her he would make sure it did...more or less to make her feel better. He said he assumed it would get tossed in the trash at the end of the day and then we came along. We got to take the HUGE bag free of charge! Maybe a little creepy, but a deal is a deal!



As if that wasn't great enough, we got home to find that the fed-ex guy had dropped off Paigey's new shoes! Aren't they cute! I LOVE them and so does she. She's napping with them right now. Not on her feet...she's cuddling them along with bun-bun. What a girl.



Our girls test results are back from her lab appointment by the way. I'm not sure who has/hasn't heard the results yet, so I'll post the details in case you haven't. The tests for "general inflammation" came back fine. The tests looking at her kidney's came back fine. However, one of the 5 tests they did looking for celiac disease came back positive. We've been referred to the U of M to see a pediatric GI doctor to discuss what needs to happen next. Celiac disease is very serious if it goes undiagnosed. However, Dr. Dessa has assured us that she isn't going to die of malnutrition while we figure this out. :) The GI appointment will be several hours long. Sigh. We'll find out then (May 4th by the way) if a test is needed to definitively diagnose or rule out celiac as the cause of Paige's growth problems. The test is an intestinal biopsy, we don't know much more than that. She will also have an echo cardiogram and see a pediatric cardiologist that same day for her heart murmur. In the mean time, we are stuffing her FULL of food. Its been hard enough eliminating dairy from her diet, the idea of eliminating wheat/gluten too is a little overwhelming. On the other hand, we are extremely grateful that we have a pretty healthy kid. They could diagnose her with everything under the sun and we would still be the luckiest parents to have such a great baby!

16 month sweetie

Here are a few recent photos from another session at JCP. She was a little on the stubborn side this last time, but as you can see, we managed to get a cute shot or two. :)

In our effort to help Paige gain weight, we've started doing a few things to make meal time more interesting. For example, Paige now eats on a little cafeteria tray so she can sort her food better (she likes to organize her food into weird little piles before she eats it). We put her booster chair next to her high chair so what ever baby, or dolly, or pony, or mayonnaise jar, or shoe she was playing with can sit next to her and "eat" too. We've also introduced her to ketchup, REALLY big hit. She figured out right away to dip her hamburger bits into the ketchup puddle. Then she figured out you don't even need to eat the burger, just suck the ketchup off and dip again! She is also getting to be such a big girl with a fork and spoon. Mike likes when she puts food (visualize a bite size piece of banana) in her left hand and brings it to her mouth at the same time as the fork in her right hand. Its especially funny when the food falls out of her fingers anyway. I personally like the 'pick up the food with your hand, jab it onto the fork and THEN eat it' method.

Does this diaper make me look fat?

A few posts ago I mentioned that we were working hard to get Paige to 'bulk up.' She was on Dr. Dessa's short list last month for falling off the growth chart. After 4 weeks of stuffing her, that little turkey only gained ....5 oz. Sigh.

SO, after our check up it was off the the lab for more blood tests. Really Shi*** thing to have to do to your baby. I'm not in the mood to be clever with my description of that experience.

I really don't want to turn this is to a play by play of our little girl's possibly/probably not that big of a whoop health condition....but I won't lie....I am a little scared. I've spent enough time in the blogosphere to know that there are families whose little kids awfully sick.

At the very least we have more appointments & test results to sit around and worry about...even if all is well in the end. At the very very least, today sucked....hard enough to be thoroughly documented.

So here is what we found out:

The blood work was to look for three possible problems. First, kidney function. A problem with her kidneys could explain her weight loss and other symptoms. Second, Celiac disease. In this scenario, Paige's weight loss/lack of weight gain would be caused by intestinal malabsorption because of a gluten allergy. Third, miscellaneous inflammation. Just checking to see if she's got an infection someplace.

We've also been referred to The U of M to see a pediatric cardiologist for an echocardiogram. This is to rule out a connection between the heart murmur and her other symptoms since they all appeared at the same time.

Paige is doing just fine tonight. Ate all her dinner, walked around the house with her Easter basket, brushed her teeth, tossed out her barbie band-aid, and went to bed. :)