Cooking Lego beets

Roz is really into "cooking" this weekend and actually stirs things in pots instead of just banging them around. :)
Since this toy she's cooking is bright pink, we'll call it a beet. Or maybe rapsberry jam- that sounds tastier!

Spoon feeding

Roz is learning to spoon feed herself. It's quite a mess but sooo cute.

Self feeding

And for those of you who have trouble with the videos...

Getting my fix

I now understand how excited y'all get about a new photo on the blog. Corey sent me this photo because I had to leave for class before Roz woke up this morning. With family visiting the last several nights, Roz has been up a little later than usual. Corey wants to let her sleep in, but on mornings when I have an early class, I really miss seeing her before I leave. It meant a lot to get this photo and see her eating breakfast, and I look forward to snuggling her a lot tonight.

Outside play

Roz is in a silly stage- or maybe she's just plain silly in general. Many of the videos of her lately, my first inclination is to name it _______ silliness.

Outside play

When we came home yesterday, it was just warm enough to play outside with Roz for a little while. She enjoyed running around the yard and falling down., and pointing at all of the plants and the airplanes flying overhead. She got her tights nice and dirty.
With our new fruit trees and berry bushes being planted soon, I think we'll have a lovely spring playing outside in the dirt!

Laughter

This girl knows how to laugh, and it's absolutely contagious. We've had a lot of laughter around our house lately. :)

Fashionista

Aunt Meg can be Roz's fashion adviser because that's certainly not my strong suite- and look, they're starting early. :)

Bathtime books

I've always enjoyed a relaxing bath with a good book, and luckily they make "bath-friendly" books so Roz can start this habit early, in spite of dropping things in the water a lot. This is a long video, but I thought she was too cute "reading" in the bath. Then she and Corey had a meeting of the wills as to whether the bath letters should remain i the tub or outside of it. I didn't catch the whole thing, but Roz really enjoys throwing wet toys all around the bathroom.

Rozi's first recital

When aunt meg was here Monday, Roz have a nice recital on her instrument of choice- the drums.

More swinging cuteness

Another video of Roz swinging the other day. She LOVES the swing, but I think partly she just likes being out there watching the dogs run around. Watch about halfway through the video- she starts shaking the swing. Meg and I couldn't figure out why she was doing it, but she sure was cute. :)

Lightin' Up

About a week ago, Roz and I went next door to visit Shanna and Andy. Roz found this little reading light to play with and was absorbed with it for quite a while. It took me a while to get the video posted because the audio in the background was Andy having a work conversation on the phone. So I took that off and added some theme music. Enjoy!

Drumming

I think I've posted a photo like this before, but here's Roz playing her "drums.". She put on a little concert for Aunt Megan the other night.

Swinging

Yesterday didn't turn out like we had planned. Aunt Meg and I were on our way to the aquarium with Roz when we were rear-ended on the off ramp downtown. We are all fine (Roz was checked our by her pediatrician), but the time to file a report, get her checked out, etc made it so we couldn't go to the aquarium- bummer. Instead, we came back to the house and had fun on the swing since the weather was nice, playing with the dogs, watching Roz eat spaghetti (with sauce, wearing white pants), and then of course having bathtime. In the end, our evening was quite nice even though the day had some bumps in the road.

Our friends Christa and Franz had thierry baby boy Lucas yesterday, so we look forward to meeting him this weekend.

The sad news from yesterday is that a friend of ours took a 50 ft fall yesterday while jogging (he stepped on a low ledge to let a group of people pass, tripped, and fell off the other side in Atlantic Station). He's very banged up, and they still aren't sure whether he will walk again. This is Erinleigh's brother Richard. So, if you're the praying type, please keep him in mind. Even as a best case scenario, he has several more surgeries and months of intensive recovery ahead.

silly stories

Like I said in the last post, I haven't been able to get great photos recently, so here are some cute Rozi stories...

Bathtime:

Corey has been doing most of the baths lately because my hands get so dry and chapped in the cold weather, and too much water makes them worse. For some reason, every time he puts Rosalyn in the tub, she immediately pees. When I bathe her, she doesn't do this, so it kind of frustrates Corey. He has to drain the water, rinse and refill the tub. In the meantime, she gets cold and cranky. The temperature is about the same as when I run the bath, and she getting fed and bathed at the same time of night, so we aren't sure why it's just for Corey that she pees. :)

Dinner table:

Roz continues to enjoy eating at her big-girl table, although she often stands at it instead. She also likes to drop food on the floor. Sometimes she gets down on the floor after she's thrown it all off the table and eats it herself (we try to keep the floor fairly clean), but most of the time we let the dogs in to eat it. It funny how much she can be like the dogs. They prefer drinking out of dirty bird baths and the drip pans under flower pots rather than fresh water from their bowl, and she seems to like getting her food a little dirty before eating it too.

The other night when she was finished with her meal, and I was standing a few feet away washing some dishes, she got impatient for more food and started licking her table. I guess dinner was especially yummy that night.

Doors:

And the final story for tonight: it amuses me how captivated she can become by something new, and then all of a sudden it's boring the next day. Today Roz figured out how to shut a door. Corey was in the extra bedroom/office working on the computer, and I was sitting at the dining room table reading a magazine while Roz played in the hallway between us. Then she went into the room with Corey and pushed the door. It wouldn't shut all the way because one of her toys was in the way, so she kept banging it until the toy slipped out of the way. Then she would sit there and knock on the door from the inside, and then she would get upset that the door wouldn't open and pitch a fit until Corey opened it. Then she would play in the hall again for a few minutes before starting the process over again. We must have done that 10 times in an hour. By the end of the night, doors were boring again.

Oh wait - one more: stairs:

I just remembered this story from two weeks ago which I don't think I've posted yet. We don't have stairs in our house, but Roz learned to climb stairs while we were in Macon over Christmas. A couple weeks ago, we went to Babies-R-Us with our neighbor Shanna to help her register for her baby, which is due in March. On one aisle, Roz saw one of those huge moveable stairs that are common in big stores like Home Depot. She got so excited, but of course I wasn't about to let her play on it. She practically somersaulted out of my arms trying to get to it. She was so upset and adamant about playing on the stairs that we had to leave that aisle and meet up with Shanna later, avoiding walking past that entire area of the store for the rest of our visit. Not that it's any surprise for Corey's or my family, but what a strong-willed child we have!

Blurry photos and bronchoscopy

I don't have any photos to post tonight because everything I've tried to take lately is blurry, or the action is over before I get the camera ready. However, I do have some cute Rozi stories and an update on her lung problems. As you may have noticed from the sudden decline in blog posts this week, I just started back to school, so I may be less frequent for a few months, but don't worry Granny - it's me, not your computer.

Roz had a bronchoscopy about a week and a half ago. The doctor saw lots of inflammation, but no anatomical abnormalities. This week I spoke with her doctor, and she had results back from most of the tests they ran. Overall, the bloodwork shows her immune system is strong, so the lung problems are not an inability to fight off minor infections. Secondly, the specific types of immune cells that were drawn out of her lungs indicate an "acute" problem rather than a chronic inflammatory condition like asthma. However, her "acute" problem seems to be occuring constantly/regularly. This was especially interesting to me because the type of analysis that gave the most meaningful results is the exact thing I did frequently on rats and mice when I worked at atherogenics, so I knew all about how it works. Not that it matters, the doctor can tell any parent what they need to know about the test and interpreting the results, but I appreciated having a very strong understanding of it. Rosalyn also had a fairly high amount of bacteria in her lungs even though she wasn't "sick" at the time.

So, what could the "acute" problem be if she doesn't really have asthma? - we're still trying to figure that out. The doctor said that there are two likely possibilities. One is that a bad infection she got a while back (probably when she went to the hospital the first time in September) never completely cleared up. Even though she took antibiotics and seemed to recover, she has never been as healthy as she was before that happened. Most of her problems are at night, but the inflammation in her lungs may be a constant irritation by some bug that just won't go away. So, she's on a long course of antibiotics (3 or 4 weeks) to see if that will knock it out. As a result, we are feeding her yogurt daily at lunch and adding probiotics to her last food before bed to hopefully prevent any intestinal side effects or diaper rash.

The other possibility is that she has "silent" reflux, which is basically just acid reflux that doesn't cause the typical symptoms. If she is having reflux and aspirating at night because she's laying down, that could cause inflammation in her lungs as well. So, she's also taking Prevacid to treat reflux. After she's been on the prevacid and antibiotic for a couple weeks, we will return to the doctor to see how she's doing and go from there.

Overall she seems happy and healthy, but she still has trouble with her breathing/coughing at night, and we are always worried that it will escalate into another hospital stay, which is miserable for all of us, but especially for her.

Morning hair

The color of Rozi's hair may get blonder and blonder each day, and it's difficult to tell how curly it will be, but there is one way that her hair is very much like mine- the crazy morning hair.
This photo was taken after patting it down, combing it, and doing a spit smooth.

Bye bye high chair

Roz loves her new table so much, we decided to let her go ahead and eat her meals there. The high chair is packed away (but not too far away, just in case). She's been sitting on the chair/bench at restaurants or when we visit other people's homes, and I think she does much better like that because she has a little more freedom of movement. :)

Snow day

Even though I wasn't able to accomplish the long to do list I had prepared for my last "daycare" day before my school starts back on Monday because they closed due to snow, Roz and I enjoyed the snow day. We didn't play in the snow because there wasn't really enough, but we did get bundled up an go outside to see it once. Otherwise we just cuddled, napped, played with the letters on the fridge, read some books, and played with the puppies, of course. :)

Puppy love

Roz can't get enough of the dogs- she likes to feed them, pet them, "talk" to them, watch them, etc. They are the first thing she wants to see when we walk in the house, and I think she makes extra messes with her meals because she knows we will let them in to eat the food off the floor.

Roz feeds the dogs... cheerios

I got Roz some snack trap cups that you can put cheerios in for them to carry around without spilling too much. I thought it might also slow her down eating them because she can pick them up from her tray by the fist-full and shove them in her mouth. So tonight I gave her a snap trap with some cheerios, and she promptly sat down at the gate that keeps the dogs in the sunroom and fed the cheerios to the dogs. They all seem to enjoy the process quite a bit. Now she's trying to feed them to Corey. :)

Bronchoscopy

Here's a photo from before the bronchoscopy- she was in a pretty good mood and enjoyed cuddling in Corey's lap and reading a book.
Roz's bronchoscopy is over, and she just returned from recovery. She has tons of inflammation and mucus in spite of not currently being sick, but no foreign bodies or anatomical abnormalities.
They took lots of samples to test the cells in the area, etc, but it will be days or weeks to get those back, depending on the test. The doctor is recommending a reflux med for now because sometimes reflux will cause irritation in that area even without other more typical symptoms.
After the procedure, she has had to stay on oxygen a little longer than planned, and at one point they thought she would need to be admitted overnight. She's still on a little bit of oxygen but doing much better, so we expect (and hope!!!) to still go home today.
Now she's enjoying drinking apple juice out of a straw and heading toward a nap on Corey's shoulder. :)

Snack food

Roz has a new favorite food. She's had a love affair with Graham crackers for several weeks. We were almost out of Graham crackers yesterday and have her some of these crackers when she needed a snack. Later, she was standing at the kitchen cabinets right under where the box of crackers had been, pitching a fit. I tried to give her a Graham cracker, but she threw it on the floor. Then I got these crackers back out and she was happy as a lark. This child knows what she wants in life.

New favorite

Roz with her Breton mini crackers. Um, um, good.

Another aquarium photo

Happy New Year Roz

Well, Rosalyn rang in the new year with us tonight. We certainly hadn't planned to keep her up that late, but it happened. We had some friends come over for dinner around 7pm, and she played with them. She seemed to be so happy that none of us realized how late it was getting. Eventually, we realized it was after 11, so I figured that if she was up that late, what was the harm in staying up until midnight.
Unlike the aquarium, she never got too cranky, and when I just laid her down in bed, there was not a single squeak of protest.
Here's to a happy new year, and here's to hoping Roz sleeps until 9am!