Moving, immunizations, specialist appointments, and everything else that's been happening in my crazy days lately

Hello, hello!

Sorry it's been so long since my last post. There have been so many things going on lately that I just haven't had time to sit down at the computer and update you all. 

The biggest part is that we have moved! We are now in our own place instead of sharing a house with another family. We have a beautiful, big yard and the house is much bigger which gives Abby a lot more space to run and play. 

The living room is my favourite room in the house.

I love how much room Abby and the dogs have to run and play outside.

I have been slowly tackling all the unpacking and cleaning that has come along with this new place. It was not in the greatest shape when we moved in so it's been a BIG job. Hanging blinds/curtains, washing walls, cleaning baseboards, installing light fixtures, installing a new dishwasher, fixing the oven....the list goes on and on. We also have a separate suite on the side of the house and it has boxes to unpack in it as well as another bathroom and kitchen that need cleaning. The garden also needs a lot of attention as it's quite overgrown. We're getting things crossed off the to-do list, but it's slow going. A toddler and a 3 month old baby take up a lot of time and energy!

This is a very small portion of our garden, but it's completely 

being taken over by nasty brambles.

Since moving in at the end of February Julia has had her first round of immunizations as well as a couple of doctor appointments. We saw the pediatrician and it seems that everything is going really well! She is sitting right in the 50th percentile for her height and weight. At 2 months old she was 14 lbs. I can imagine she's 15 or 16 lbs now! I'm so used to Abby being in the 97th percentile that Julia seems little, but I have to remind myself that she is sitting right smack dab at the average which is still quite awesome. She's developmentally hitting her milestones too, which is so encouraging. 

She smiles.

She coos.

She's reaching for things.

Now I'm waiting for that first baby giggle!

Abby is really starting to love her role as big sister. She gets concerned when Julia cries, says hi every time she walks by, and tries to share toys and snacks. 

We just went to the ophthalmologist on Tuesday. I had been slightly concerned that something was going on as she woke up with her eye looking like this:

I tried to remind myself that this can happen to anyone and she most likely burst the vessels by crying too hard, sneezing or something to that effect. The fact that we have to watch out for things that might signal increased intracranial pressure made me a little nervous. I started imagining that her pressure was increasing (which can affect the eyes) and that the blood spot was from that and we were going to have to go through major surgery earlier than expected. But her fontanelles seemed soft and she wasn't showing any other symptoms so I kept my faith and waited to get her checked.

Thankfully my worry was for nothing.

At the ophthalmologist yesterday we found out her eye pressure is perfect. She is supposed to have a combined pressure of around 20. Her eyes were 7 and 9, so a combined pressure of 16 is fantastic.

Insert sigh of relief!

Her optic discs look great (when they were checked at 4 days old one of them looked a little abnormal so this was great news!) and the blood supply in the area also looks normal. Because of the difference in skull growth that happens with Apert syndrome there can be problems with blood flow, but so far everything looks good and normal. 

Julia wasn't given a totally perfect bill of health though. Dr. Lyons noticed that every once in a while her right eye doesn't quite line up with her left. He wants to jump on it early which means that our little munchkin gets to wear an eye patch for an hour a day. It's both sad and cute at the same time. I'm so thankful that we can catch this early though! The sooner we can work on strengthening her ocular muscles the better the outcome. And, the fact that overall her eyes track normally and are straight 90% of the time is very positive. 

We patched for the first time today and it was a little rough. I thought that things would be smooth sailing since as an infant she wouldn't notice the same as an older child would. Unfortunately, I didn't give her enough credit. She was okay for the first 15 minutes and then it all went downhill. I got the impression that only using her right eye was actually quite tiring for her. Really, that means that what we're doing is highly necessary for her vision but it was still hard to watch her struggle. I tried to comfort her and distract her by going for a walk outside but she wouldn't calm down. So, she only wore it for 40 minutes today. We will just have to work up to the full hour I suppose. Poor little lady.

On a happier note, Abby is getting much more helpful around the house. We baked a cake together for the first time which was a lot of fun. We also just planted some flower, lettuce, and pepper seeds together and will watch them grow. Having a toddler is so wonderful (most of the time!) as they cause you to appreciate the simple things in life. Watering a plant or measuring out flour is fun and exciting and not just a daily task to check off the list.

Sneaking outside in pj's and daddy's shoes is also fun.

The next big step with Julia is an appointment mid-April with her plastic surgeon. We are hoping to have a few more answers and start a plan in regards to her first surgery. The last we heard, she will have a finger and toe release surgery at 6 months of age so we get to discuss that next month with him and see whether that is still what the future looks like. With Julia beginning to use her hands now I would love to have the surgery done sooner than later so she can learn to use her fingers from a young age. But, it's surgery on my little baby so obviously we're apprehensive about the whole thing as well. There will be many more surgeries to come, but the first one is going to be incredibly scary.