11 months of fun!

It really has been a fun month! The holidays were good to us - both Alivia and Tyler were showered with gifts from Santa and family, and we greatly enjoyed celebrating the season. The kids visited with Santa at Tyler's daycare, as well as went on a few fieldtrips to various holiday goings-on in our community. They even met a real reindeer with Tyler's class!

Somebody did NOT love Santa.

We didn't make our annual trek to the Chicago suburbs for Christmas Eve dinner this year - a first in many years. As we began the trip up there, we hit some pretty bad snow. So we still have some family members who haven't yet met Alivia, but hopefully that changes soon!

It's a little unreal that we are a month from Alivia's first birthday. We are starting to plan her party and ordering her gift, which is a little hard to decide on with Christmas just ending. It's kind of the opposite problem we have with Tyler's birthday being six weeks BEFORE Christmas.

Things continue to go well for her. She's still growing nicely, which is our best indicator that her heart is doing OK. And she's been busy learning new things - standing, stepping, talking, etc. Pretty exciting!

We do have to take her to feeding therapy later this month. We're not sure if she's delayed due to her hospitalization or if it's her extremely sensitive gag reflex, or both, but she's not the best eater when it comes to baby foods or table foods. So most of her calories still come from formula/breastmilk. We're hoping the therapists can help her get a better handle on table foods. She already has shown she can learn to tolerate foods, such as Cheerios, after some practice, but it can be messy getting to that point, and we always need to watch her VERY closely. We don't want her to unnecessarily throw up - every calorie counts with her!

Current stats: 18 pounds as of Tuesday (13th percentile!) and 27.5 inches (18th percentile). She's finally fully in 9-month clothing and even can wear some 12-month stuff if it runs small enough. :-)

Of course, I couldn't get a shot of her today standing solo.

Milestones: Standing without assistance, ALMOST taking more than one step solo, talking (dog, duck, cat, dad, mom, uh-oh), waving hi and bye, identifying "nose" and "bellybutton" among a few other body parts, drinking juice from a sippy cup without help, blowing out the lights, and drooling like crazy (teething finally?)

Always moving. :-)

Likes: the pets, her new stroller and piano, music, juice, shredded cheese (one of the few things that has yet to make her gag), Cheerios, blankies and pillows

Dislikes: breakfast (still!), Daddy cleaning crusties off her nose, staying still

Despite the shopping problem, which really isn't a problem, I really like Alivia's birthday being in early February. It makes the post-Christmas blahs a little less...blah. Happy 2011 to you all! We're hoping that God blesses us all with a calmer year.