Genevieve has finally started getting up on all fours and putting herself into a sit position. My mom and dad said yesterday that she crawled for a bit, so she is emerging in her crawling skills. April 1st was the first time I went to get Genevieve from her nap and she was standing in her crib. It's very common now. She has another ear infection and cold. We go to the doctor again today for a follow-up on this.

Below are the pictures from Genevieve's test shoot with The Kim Brooke Modeling Agency.

This is the picture they chose for her Head Shot

These days Genevieve points at everything!

Here I left the room for a minute and she was rocking out.

We tried to take a picture of Gen's new teeth coming in. She has the top teeth coming in.

Dr. Update

Genevieve had her 9-month wellness check today. It seems like she has a bit of a cold again so we have to start her on flo-vent again, but she only has to be on it for 3 weeks. I asked the doctor about how Genevieve is not putting herself into a sitting position or getting on all fours and he said that we'll just keep a close eye on it. For the time being he wants to see her every other week to monitor her medication. We are hopeful she will grow out of the GERD so she doesn't need to have surgery. Apparently surgery for this would putting an artificial valve in her stomach.

Gen turned 9 months old yesterday. I can't believe how big she is getting! She has been doing very well health-wise. Last week we saw a different doctor because Dr. Jolley was not in and he suggested that we stop the flo-vent with the inhaler. We have another doctor's appointment today and I am guessing that Dr. Jolley will put her back on it because she has had a runny nose and congestion. At any rate we really can't complain. She does very well with the inhaler and taking her medicine. Chad and I have started the process of getting the house put together to put it on the market. We would like to sell it and move to an apartment closer to Chad's work. The ultimate goal is to build a house, but we have to pay down some debt first.

Genevieve gets a kick out of sitting in big people chairs :)

Thanks Grammy and Poppi for the adorable outfit.

Thanks Aunt Sarah, Unckey Monkey and Cousin TJ for letting me borrow this walker!

Gen reading her "Who Loves Baby" book.

See Grammy and Poppi love Genny. Uncle Eric and Aunt Jennifer love Genny too!

I love this picture. It looks like she is telling us all about it!

Tastes great too!

Lately she does this thing when she is excited. She lets go with one hand and bounces. She looks like she is in a rodeo.

We babysat TJ on Saturday and Travis and Sarah babysat Gen on Sunday.

It was good training for soon to be big brother. He was great with Gen.

Unlike Gen, he gets a kick out of sitting in baby chairs.

Hi mommy.

Whee!

Lovin' it. She's a natural

at the Saxophone.Extreme Close-up!

We went to the parent meeting at the Kim Brooke Group modeling agency. I liked how upfront she was. She said that your child may never get a modeling job. There are no guarantees in this business. She doesn't know what the clients will be looking for. We were surprised to learn that 75% of the kid division is TV or film work. They do a lot of training videos. I thought it would be mostly print ads. We got to see the head shots and we will be getting copies of them. In less than 4 weeks we will get to the shot that Kim has chosen for Genevieve's head shot. I'll share the pictures from them when I get them. Other than that, it's wait and see.

Milestones

Genevieve has hit quite a few milestones lately and I wanted to document them. At 8 months she started army crawling, eating finger foods, and experiencing a little separation anxiety from mom. At 8 1/2 months she started waving. I also forgot to mention anywhere that Genevieve was sleeping in her crib in her own room at 6 weeks and sleeping through the night at 8 weeks.

Gen has been much better since we started her on her medication. No more coughing and congestion! Woo hoo! We have been seeing the doctor once a week to check on her progress. He said that if she doesn't get better without meds by the time she is one (which isn't far away), she might need to have surgery. I'm going to ask for more information about this at her appointment tomorrow.

The frustration she is really dealing with right now is wanting to move all the time. She doesn't get anywhere very fast with her army crawling. We keep trying to show her how to crawl but it's something she'll just have to figure out, or not. She might just go from army crawling to walking, who knows? Everyone says she is super strong so I can't imagine she isn't strong enough to crawl.

We took Genevieve in for a test photo shoot with a local modeling agency called "The Kim Brooke Group". After two weeks of waiting we got the results back and they said she had great expressions and the photographer said she was easy to work with. I can't wait to see the 8 x 10 picture of her from this shoot. We have a parent meeting on Thursday for this. We don't expect Gen to be a superstar, but we thought this might be a nice way to beef up her college fund.

I've been sick lately so I haven't taken too many pictures. I'll try to take some tomorrow to post.

Genevieve Update

I tried to take Gen to daycare on Thursday and she just wasn't having it. As soon as I dropped her off she was very upset. A sure sign that she is not feeling well. So I turned around and went back home. Unfortunately Chad was sick too! He felt well enough in the afternoon to take Gen to the doctor with me. It turns out Gen does have Acid Reflux. This surprised me because she doesn't spit up more frequently than I would expect her to. The doctor says that the spit up isn't making it all the way out but often will spill into the lungs. This is causing her congestion and coughing issues. Based on the scan he said that she spit up 13 times in one hour! And that's with her laying perfectly still on an incline. He also said that this is causing aspirations that we can't even see visibly. Her right ear infection had cleared up, but then her left ear was very infected. Dr. Jolley said that is probably what was bothering her the most. That's the bad news. The good news is at least we know what we are dealing with now. She is on 7 different medications: Two inhalers (to be taken twice a day), an antibiotic-for ear infection (once a day), ear drops - to soothe ear infection, Reglan-for Acid Reflux (4 times a day), Zantac-for Acid Reflux (twice a day) and Nystatin ointment - to clear up a fungus related diaper rash caused by diarrhea caused by Augmentin (antibiotic she was originally on, the doctor switched her antibiotic because it wasn't working and it was causing the rash).


We went back to the doctor on Saturday and he said her ear infection is clearing up, but he would like to see her in a week. We can start weaning her off of one inhaler (and see how she does without it) and she doesn't need the Nystatin anymore. We are down to 5 meds!

Chad put one ring on Gen's leg and the left the room for a second.

He came back and she had put the other ring on her leg. :)

(Rings courtesy of Uncle Tim)

Saturday after the doctor's appointment we went for Gen's first trip to the zoo and then to the mall. We got there at 3:00 pm and didn't realize that they close at 4:00 pm. They allow you to stay on the grounds until 4:30 pm. I ended up being just enough time for us. Genevieve was very interested in the large animals that had big movement such as the Beluga Whale. She was also very interested watching other people and loved riding in dad's backpack.

We had to take the hat off for a minute to get a pic of Genevieve in her ponies :)

Despite the look on her face in these pics, she did smile while we were there, we just weren't able to capture it on film :)

I'll work on adding the videos later.

Pictures from Gen's scan today.

Gen had to get a nuclear scan today to see if Acid Reflux is causing her coughing. They strapped her down to a board and she had to stay there for an hour during the scan. Poor girl. Here are the pictures. They aren't the best, they were taken with Chad's cell phone.

We made an exception to our no T.V. rule. We watched "A Bug's Life".

She fell asleep for about 15 minutes.
A shot of how strapped down she was. They had to wrap her legs, torso and chest to a board so that she was still throughout the scan.

Just before they stopped recording she spit up so it was good that they caught that. She also spit up again after they stopped recording. Hopefully through all this we will find some answers. She is on antibiotics for the ear infection which caused diarrhea which caused a really bad diaper rash that Desitin isn't helping. I called a nurse and she suggested an over the counter anti-fungal creme. Hope this works. It seems like now the cough is the least of her concerns. We have another doctor's appointment on Saturday to see results of this scan and if they didn't find anything she has another scan a week from today.

Gen's Health

Yesterday (2/16/09) I took Gen to a new doctor to get a second opinion. He ordered a chest x-ray, tested for strep, tested for MRSA, said she has an ear infection in one ear and fluid in the other, said she has walking Pneumonia, and had me take her to the lab to get tested for RSV. See I knew my little girl was sick. I'm just glad someone is finally listening to me. He gave her a shot of antibiotics, gave her a prescription of antibiotics and asked that I give her albuterol (with an inhaler) every four hours and flovent in the evening and morning. He also asked that he see her again today to see if her breathing has improved. We have an appointment today at 10:30 AM. I really don't want to have to keep her on the inhalers because it is peer torture for her, she doesn't understand why we are doing this to her, but if it makes her better I'm all for it. We had stopped doing the inhalers because we had no proof that it was actually helping at least this way we will know. We had to miss swim class last night, the doctor advised us not to take her. Oh well, there are worst things for sure.