10/30/07 21:16:37 - October Update
Tania recently had her four-month well-child visit. She is officially 25 ¾ inches and weighs about 15 lbs. She got four more shots, and was quite upset about those – for about ten seconds. After that, she was fine. (The next two days, after her legs got sore, were a different story.)
Aren had his first well-child visit since… well, probably since he was about nine months old. He also got his first shots since he was about a year old, and he didn’t like them at all. In fact, he was more upset than Tania was. We knew it might be trouble once he requested that he be knocked out before he got the shots. Try as we might, we couldn’t convince him that it would probably hurt more to access his port than it would to just get the shots. He still complained (read: “Cried”) for about 30 minutes after the shots.
It’s actually been a pretty eventful month. We have some good reasons to celebrate. I’ve finally finished school, and Tania is healthy. Aren is now celebrating the two-year anniversary of his transplant, and seems to be getting healthier by the day. (Over six months without breaking a bone! Knock on wood…)
But it’s been a bit sad, too. Sunday the 21st marked the point where Lily has been gone longer than she was with us. And sometimes it is difficult to look at Tania and just see what Lily would have been, had she been healthy – Tania is only 2 inches shorter and 3 pounds lighter than Lily was when she died, and the resemblance between the two (at that age) is uncanny.
On the other hand, it is so wonderful to see her so healthy and happy. She has now figured out how to roll over onto her belly, but she can’t quite do anything once she gets there – including rolling back over to her back. She is happy and alert, and has decided that she sleeps best when she has two blankets: one on each side, so each arm can bring a corner of a different blanket up to her face. The added bonus for her is that upon awakening, she can choose either blanket to chew on. (We have lots of soggy baby blankets around the house.)
It is also interesting to see the differences between Lily and Aren and Tania. Tania is much more active than either Lily or Aren was at that age. She has figured out how to roll over, a trick that Lily and Aren didn’t learn until they were about six months old. Her technique is fun, too. First, she bends her back (almost at a 90 degree angle – backwards) in order to get over onto her side. The rest is just gravity. Getting onto her back again is a bit trickier, but she seems to have that down, too.
She’s a lot more vocal than the other two were, as well. It seems like she’s always either babbling or screaming. She has a couple different sents of screams, too. There is, of course, the classic “I’m angry/hungry/tired/dirty” scream. But what’s more fun is her “I just want to make noise” scream. You can see a video of both here
So, that about wraps everything up. Hopefully, I won’t be as lazy in the next few weeks. I’m finally done with school, and so I hope to be able to stay caught up a bit better. We’ll see…
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Velda wrote:
Hey Rick! didn't get notification on this one. I'm loving the pictures :-D
10/12 19:06:09
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Aren is undergoing a bone marrow transplant to fix the immune system defects that caused the loss of his little sister, Lily. To learn more, click here.