Here is the princess before PT on Thursday. She is feeling a little under the weather so no Halloween parties for us today. But we will definitely be taking more pics of Rowan in her costume. Hopefully we can finally get some good pictures of Sophie in her costume…as Darth Sophie.
Rowan, aka Peanut, is now officially a toddler. She’s not actually toddling yet, but who cares? Rowan is doing great. She’s willful, feisty, stubborn. She loves to “dance” to the opening credit songs of the Twilight Zone and NCIS. She will laugh and wave whenever Hugh Laurie is on TV. Rowan is also a huge flirt. Not shy at all. She will smile and wave at anyone. Recently we were waiting for a chest Xray. There was this poor man in the waiting room who was obviously in pain probably due to broken ribs. Rowan got him to smile and babytalk to her. Ridiculous! She is a charmer for sure.
Of course, the downside to this stubbornness is that Rowan is not eating at all. She just shakes her head whenever I offer her food. We’re back in therapy for it. One of the things I keep remembering is something Rowan’s PICU nurse Trent said. The day after her heart surgery, Trent said that he had a feeling that Rowan isn’t going to be the type of person to do something just because we want her to. She will do it when SHE wants to. That’s been the truest thing anyone has ever said about her! Once she decided to be mobile, she was. I have a feeling the eating thing will be the same way.
Health stuff: Immunology? “She looks great, I’ll see you in a year.” Cardiology? “She looks great, I’ll see you in 6 months”. We are being cautious now that we’re in cold/flu/RSV season though. I’m not taking any chances!
It’s crazy that Rowan has been here for 10 months. The time really has flown by! Rowan weighs 18lbs 20z and is hovering at right around 27inches long. She’s doing great! She has been healthy and the retching and vomiting has officially stopped. We are back on the eating train. We discovered that she likes ginger and soy sauce so Ryan is making her Filipino babyfood. She’s my asian baby afterall!
Rowan isn’t crawling yet and is getting increasingly frustrated about it. She WANTS to move but doesn’t want to have to bear weight on her arms, which is kind of necessary. She has learned to log roll to get where she wants to go. She will bear weight on her legs now so we’ve been practicing standing with support. Whatever. Rowan will do it eventually. Her ECI coordinator put Rowan at 12 months cognitively so I’m not sweating the physical stuff. Rowan’s communication is a little behind but that is also normal for tubefed/ low tone babies. She definitely has “the spark” as one therapist put it.
I also add pics to the photo gallery.
Just playing around with posting Video. Let’s see how this works…. (This is one of my favorites!)
Some newer:
And some older ones of her hanging in the backyard. Lomo effect made this pretty cool. Love the second one!
And of course, that wary look that makes her officially a Michael.
As of last week, we have a tooth. A bottom incisor has come in a full millimeter or so, and she’s fascinated with it. Chews her fingers with it, chews our fingers with it (ouch – pretty sharp, and her jaws are powerful). I keep trying to get some pictures of it, but trying to get enough light and Rowan to stop wiggling for long enough to get a clear pic is a challenge. We’ll get there. In the meantime, here’s her hanging with the dog (Sophie adores her):
As the cat looks on unamused.
And sitting up all by herself:
Big girl indeed. Tooth pictures promised in the near future. In the meantime, check out the photo page for some new images.
Cheers!
Nana (Ryan’s mom) took this picture of Rowan on her phone. She looks like such a big girl!
Rowan is definitely keeping me on my toes. Medically, we’ve had a lot of really annoying and occasionally stressful days. First, the important things..At her weigh-in last week she weighed 16lbs 4 oz and was 25.5 inches long. Basically she’s short and chubby. Healthwise she is doing well. She had a couple of weeks where she was really tired and lethargic for days. That was really scary and stressful. There was some drama involved in attempting to get medical attention from Rowan’s pediatrician but I won’t dwell on that. Suffice to say, he’s fired. We don’t know what was going but she is back to normal now. She has started retching again but we know have a GI doc who prescribed her a new medication that should hopefully stop that. Her previous med, Reglan, will probably be taken off the market due to neurological side effects (thankfully Rowan didn’t have any of those). In two days we saw the Endocrinologist (really just the endocrinology Fellow), the Immunologist (who said she looked great), the Cardiologist and the GI doc. Her cardiologist assured me that her heart is fine and wouldn’t cause any issues like lethargy. Did I mention that I love him?
Anyway, the retching has caused a step back in the eating department. Rowan will start retching the minute I put food in her mouth and she won’t drink anything. Today was a good day, though. She ate hummus off a pita chip at therapy today. A garlic, seasoned pita chip. She is clearly my daughter! I think once her tummy is back under control her eating will take off. Unfortunately, she doesn’t like baby food. Ryan and I are going to have to improve our eating habits if we are going to share our food with Rowan!
Rowan is also doing physical therapy twice a week now. She has low tone in her trunk and isn’t quite sitting on her own yet and won’t bear weight on her arms. Rowan is pretty stubborn so I think she will be ok. Once she decides she wants to do it, she will.
