welcome to Alcatraz

It finally happened.

She's walking! She started right before her birthday and has gotten better and better every day since! This video was her first real attempt at taking several steps.

Now that she's walking it was imperative to keep her off the stairs, which are like a magnet to her. So the baby gates have finally been installed. Our household now resembles a carefully crafted baby prison and I can't say I'm too crazy about it. The logistical complications still present a challenge: how do you simultaneously carry a baby and a basket of laundry while trying to maneuver opening the gate? How do you keep her confined, but still allow Winnie the freedom to roam? HOW DO YOU OPEN THESE DANG GATES WITH ONE HAND??

So far we've managed to implement a few ghetto creative measures to keep life a little easier. Exhibit A: 

Not pretty but it works. I wish actually opening the gates were as simple...unfortunately they have proven to be adult-proof as well as baby proof. I can't count the number of times I've grumbled and struggled to get them open.

Petunia, on the other hand, finds them to be a delightful new addition. She first of course had to check them out thoroughly in the manner which she inspects everything these days....with her mouth.

mmmm...aluminum

The bars are great for standing and walking so she has enjoyed them thoroughly. I however am counting down the days until she's skilled enough to maneuver both up and down the stairs without threats of serious bodily harm. We've also put up outlet protectors on every single electrical outlet in the house, which thankfully she has not managed to remove. Next up will be another mildly-irritating-but-completely-necessary babyproofing measure: drawer and cabinet locks. 

In other  news, she is doing fantastic on her new medicine and we've made tremendous progress with solid foods. A little background: when her new GI doctor in Baton Rouge saw us in December and performed the endoscopy, he was checking for evidence of 2 possible conditions that he suspected might be causing her problems. Her did a biopsy to check for eosophillic esophagitis, but the biopsy came back normal. He next wanted to do a medicine trial for another condition he suspected: gastritis, or delayed gastric emptying. He said the medicine should work pretty quickly, and if it helped her, it was likely that gastritis was the culprit.

We started the new medicine in the beginning of January and she has done fantastic!! No more constipation, no more refusing food or bottles, no more night wakings/fussing from pain, no more vomiting, nothing!! She has just happily eaten her food and bottles like a normal baby! It's been amazing, and I am so incredibly grateful to Dr. Alberty for actually listening to me and taking her ailments seriously and being willing to aggressively search for a solution. None of the other doctors we saw from August through December were willing to do that. Thanks to my persistence and Dr. Alberty's treatment, we finally finally finally have Caroline in a good place. When we visited him for a checkup last week we found that she had gained 2 pounds in the last 6 weeks!!! (Previously she had only gained 2 pounds in the entire 4 months from August through December.)

blueberries were well-received

So yes, she is currently taking 3 different medications which doesn't thrill me, but at least she is feeling better and eating well and gaining weight well. Our next challenge is to establish good solid food eating skills and hopefully get off the expensive formula by late spring or early summer. After that we will start to work on slowly weaning off the medicines one at a time. Hopefully by next fall we will have a 100% formula-free, medicine-free baby!! It will be like getting a raise for our budget! 

peaches: not so much

I tell you what though, "cleaning up after dinner" has taken on a whole new meaning. It used to mean rinsing off 2 plates and scrubbing a pot or 2. 10 minutes and you're done. Now it means digging out scraps of food from every crack and crevice within a 10' radius of her high chair. Somehow I had always envisioned a laborious cleaning process when dealing with messy foods, like spagetti and meatsauce. But to her, anything and everything can be a food missile. (And somehow I ended up with the only dog in America who has no interest in eating fallen food off the floor.) So far she absolutely LOVES chicken, will tolerate some vegetables, and doesn't like fruit. Go figure. Ah but as long as she's eating and happy I'm totally content.

All of this means we have reached another significant milestone: I am NO LONGER keeping track all of her input and output! (number of diapers and amount of formula and food consumed.) Every single day for the past year I had carefully logged her number of wet and dirty diapers and amount of food eaten/not eaten/vomited into an app on my phone. It was the only way to keep track of her health and notice when things were going well or not well. It was my lifeline to her...without that information I had no cold hard facts/evidence to present to the doctors. But now she's doing fine. Absolutely fine. As long as she's happy and growing, there's no need to track anything anymore. I feel so liberated!! So while our little rugrat may be adjusting to the new confines of her baby prison, I on the other hand am enjoying a whole new sense of freedom! Now If I could only get the baby gates to open....

she's eating! happily! and not having any
gastrointestinal discomforts! whohoo!!