*red or blue*

Things have been quite yet busy around here! Delilah is learning and growing up so quickly it just makes me want to cuddle her and tell her to always be my little girl. Last week she learned how to clap and how to pull herself up to stand on furniture. Yes she was pulling herself up to stand holding on to a rocking ottoman and fell flat on her face, but still she did it! She is scared to "walk" along furniture but has no problem turning away from a couch and attempting to walk away from it, falling again on her face. With her learning all of this I have learned something valuable as well, when she falls on her face she doesn't bruise easily thus I do not look like i neglect and beat my child :) I'm sure this lesson will come in handy as she starts to walk and climb therefore falling more lol! She is also learing her colors and often will pick up a block and tell you if its blue or red. I am teaching her young that red is much better than blue and she is catching onto that rather quickly. On Saturday we went to Wingers with my brothers and a few friends to watch the U of U vs TCU game. Delilah got very excited started to clap her hands and said "go utes!" Yes she already knows red will always be better than blue!

We have been introducing new foods every couple of days and lately she hasn't had any reactions! She does however have a horrible texture problem and will vomit almost on cue. For instance she loves grapes cut up into tiny pieces. She will chew on one until the "middle" part is gone then gag and choke on the "skin" until I get it out of her mouth or she gets it out. How in hell does she expect me to peel a grape! Silly girl. She loves crackers, apple puffs and kix cereal (all of which are dairy and soy free for those of you who care). We are going to start to introduce well cooked pasta next week plus a few more suggestions by my mommy friends on babycenter.

Yesterday I took Delilah to a follow up with her GI and to the dentist for the first time :) Her GI was impressed at how well she has been doing the past few months, since being put on Zegerid. He has wanted to do an EGD (scope) for a while now but with her reaction to anesthesia last time we have just kept putting it off. But now that we are doing the T&A he is very happy we decided to do the EGD as well. He feels it will be normal with her being on the neocate for 4mo and the zegerid for 2mo but he wants to make sure and take biopsy's.He then told me that no matter what the EGD shows he wants to keep her on the Zegerid until she is about 24mo since he now "knows" that its not behavioral reflux.(He has been a great dr but i didn't know he thought Lilahs problems were behavioral up until now.He basically said he was wrong and the zegerid is obviously helping, DUH!!!) She is still having aspiration issues while drinking thin liquids (unthickened liquids) but its also getting better. I have been trying to give her regular water to help her get used to unthickened liquids but she usually just sputters, coughs, chokes then aspirates.

Lilah will have her RAST testing Jan 12 with the allergist and after that is completed we will decide how to best approach a formula change. If it says shes highly allergic to milk we will stay on neocate or go to neocate jr and if it shows its just a mild allergy we will start introducing Nutramigen then most likely proceed to Good Start then to milk around 18mo. At first he said if the allergy was mild he wanted to go straight to milk but then changed his mind and I'm glad he did because there is NO WAY I'm going from neocate right to whole milk! Can you say anaphalytic shock!??!
I called the surgery scheduling at Primary Childrens and they are still trying to coordinate with GI,Pulm and ENT so we don't have a surgery date yet. I'm hoping they let me know soon since she is to be kept home and away from others for 2wks following surgery and with her first Christmas coming up Im nervous that it will be smack dab before Christmas :( But we will take whatever we can! Especially since they are having to coordinate between 3 drs schedules!

Her breathing issues have gotten better (we hope) and she has only had one blue spell in the past 2 months! YAY! I dont know how she is doing at night since we are no longer using the apnea monitor but she wakes up every morning so i guess shes doing ok. I am very anxious to get her tonsils out so we can get her healed and repeat the sleep study to see if it even helped.

Her dentist appt went very well! I had a cleaning so the dentist just had me bring her so she could ride in the chair, look at all the stuff and get a toothbrush.She was so good and even let him see her 2 pearly whites. She loves the toothbrush which is shape like a crayon and is also a rattle. I on the other hand had a few cavities and need a new crown. Not even my red new toothbrush made me feel better. And to top off the cavity news I go in for cortisone injections in my lumbosacral ligaments tomorrow. Boy am I nervous! They call it out patient surgery and basically they inject you with lidocaine to numb the area then insert a very long wide needle into your ligaments (by my hips) and inject them with cortisone to reduce inflammation and ease the pain. Since Lilah was born my lower back has constantly hurt. I had an MRI a few weeks ago that showed 3 slipped discs so I went to see a spine dr. He then told me that after you have a baby your ligaments tighten up and hold your core muscles together and stabilize your body. Well, Delilah had stretched my ligaments to their breaking point and they never tightened back up which has left my back unstable and constantly aching. I really hope these injections help!

As for Scott and I, we are doing good and trying to remember that we are not just parents but also husband and wife. We get so caught up in all that is going on with Delilah that sometimes we forget this. To help remind us though we are going to go to Little America this Saturday night for a belated anniversary celebration. Our anniversary was September 8 but Lilah wasn't doing very well at that time so we decided to wait until things calmed down. And boy am I glad we waited!! Scotts work just came out with Jillian Michaels (trainer from biggest looser) diet supplements and to celebrate her debut with the company they had a drawing for a bunch of prizes. Scott got me a goodie bag full of her diet supplements, one of her workout DVD's, her new book and he won a free night stay at a tower suite at Little America and a $60 meal credit!!! Hooray for a free night away! He couldn't have won this at a better time as we NEED a night away so badly! My mom was nice enough to agree to watch Lilah overnight so I wont have to worry about her at all.

And to end here is a picture of what Deliah looks like when her daddy dresses her for bed. Enjoy!