Meeting Santa

Waverly was finally able to meet Santa for the first time this afternoon at the Sink family Christmas dinner! She didn't want to wake up at first but finally opened her eyes for the occasion!

Waverly at 7 months

Today Waverly is 7 months old!  Our little girl is growing and growing (Can you tell by the pictures?!?)!!!  Now that we're past Thanksgiving, we've been pulling out some holiday outfits.  So cute!

 One big accomplishment this month was feeding her by mouth!  She's not getting little tastes of food on the spoon, and loving it!  So far she's had bananas, sweet potato, ice cream, icing (at her 1/2 birthday party), and chocolate creme brulee (on Thanksgiving).  As you can tell, we've added a few fun things in there!  

 Waverly got to have her first Thanksgiving this past month.

 She also enjoyed another date with her man Ryan.  (Ryan is 4 years old and has Miller-Dieker Syndrome like Waverly.)

 We had fun at the UVA vs. Virginia Tech game the Saturday after Thanksgiving (although UVA played a horrible game!).  The weather was actually pretty warm, so we decided to go and had just planned on me leaving with her once the sun went down and it got too cool for her to be outside.  However, we had a surprise!  We were so blessed to be able to spend the second half of the game in a suite with my cousin Diana (who's sweet husband switched tickets with us so that we could be there out of the cold).  The rest of the family was jealous that we were able to go up to a suite, since they've been attending games since the 1980's and had never gotten to be in a suite yet!  I guess you get special privileges when you're special! 

 A cute Wahoo!

 Our BIG news of this month is that our girl is BACK!  Her smile and talking have returned.  She came back to us the week of Thanksgiving...what a gift!  We love seeing her precious smiles after missing them for a month.  We hope the seizures will leave her alone and let her "stay" with us now. 

She is very interactive again with people, and loves for people to talk to her and just be near her.  She's also pretty content laying on her playmat, in the swing, or in her carseat as well.  She's really a pretty easy baby in that she's not too fussy.  She still loves to be cuddled and held, but will let you know when she's had enough and just wants to lay by herself.  She's been growing, and is now 14.5 pounds!  Today is also the last dose of her steroids, so we may see the puffiness start to go down some.  She's still at about the 5th percentile on all the growth charts, but her weight for height is at about the 90th percentile!  Chunker!  She wears mostly 3-6 month clothes, although is still in some 0-3 month pants (she's got a tiny waist, and pants tend to fall off of her!), and can wear some 6-9 month shirts.  Her arms seem to be kind of short too, so we often have to roll up the sleeves on her shirts and sleepers.  As far as sleeping, she still has an awake period in the middle of the night, sometime between 2 and 6.  Sometimes it takes her a while to settle back down to sleep.  If it's any time before 5a.m., I usually give her melatonin to help her settle back down (otherwise, she can be awake for several hours).  She also seems to like it when I put music on my ipod for her and lay it beside her head.  Alison Krauss is her favorite.   :)  She's had a cough for several weeks now, but we've continued to monitor her closely, and other than that, she's had no symptoms, so we think it's just her clearing her throat from mucous or something.  I think I've started to notice some "pretend" coughing too to get attention.  Smart girl!  We have noticed her wrists turning in more lately, so we are in the process of ordering her splints for her hands, wrists, and arms to help with that.  We are so grateful for our sweet girl, and for how well she's been doing.  As we enter the winter and cold months, please continue to pray for her health, that her body would be strong against all the germs out there.

Bananas!

On November 17th, Waverly got her first taste of food, bananas!  She really enjoyed it!  Since then she's also had chocolate creme brulee (see Thanksgiving post) and sweet potato.  She LOVES "eating" (even if it is just a few dips of baby food on the spoon), and she seems to do really well with it, much better than she handles the bottle when we try it.  The big kids are really excited when she eats too, and love to get in on the action!

Thanksgiving

We enjoyed a nice Thanksgiving as a family this year.  We had the special treat of my family being able to travel down and join us.  Waverly had fun with it being her first Thanksgiving, and we treated her to a taste of CHOCOLATE to celebrate!  She cried at first, I think because it was a little cool (it was chocolate creme brulee), but once she tasted it, she seemed to enjoy it. 

Crafts with Grandma.

Pumpkin pie

Chatting with Grammy.

Waverly is showing one of her skills, sucking on her hand.  It's always her right hand, too!

 The chocolate sequence.

Chocolate face!

Wordless Wednesday: Sisters (with a brother thrown in at the end...)

Jackson's Birthday Party

 We had lots of fun celebrating Jackson's birthday (in September...yes, this is a late post!)  Enjoy some pictures from his special day!

He was so excited about his Cars cake!

Cute boy!

Waverly enjoyed hanging out with her Grandpa.

 Present time!

 Almost time to blow out the candles!  So excited! 

He loves his Buzz!  He was watching Toy Story with him!

Waverly at 6 months old!!

Our little girl is HALF A YEAR OLD!!!! We are so excited to celebrate this milestone with our big girl!

Waverly had many firsts this past month. Her first seizures (as far as we know), her first trip to the Emergency Room:Her first hospital stay:



Her first Halloween:Her first time at Grammy and Grandpa's house (and meeting Maddie the dog):

On our trip up there she enjoyed snuggling with her Grandpa on his 50th birthday!

She also had her first experience seeing snow (on our visit to Bridgewater), voting, wearing leg warmers, and tasting ice cream.

These pictures are from today, comparing her in the stroller today:

And her at one month old, in the stroller for the first time. Can you tell she's grown?

Again, her in the carseat today:


...and at 3 months old....and at one month old, the day she came home from the hospital.
She now weighs 12lbs 13oz! She has quite the chub on her, with little rolls on her arms and legs. She wears size 3-6 month clothes mostly, although she's still in some 0-3 month pants and can wear some 9 month shirts.  She's still only in the 5-10th percentiles for her height, weight, and head, but she's proportionate for her body, and cute as a button! Unfortunately, because of the seizures, we have lost her smile for now. We are praying that it comes back very soon. She also doesn't "talk" much any more, but we feel like the past week or so we have seen a little more of "her" behind her eyes, so we are hopeful that she will regain those skills. She's now been seizure free (at least from the Infantile Spasms) for one week!! She is still working on her head control with physical therapy, and has started speech therapy as well. Because of the new seizure meds, she isn't sleeping the greatest, and is often awake at various points in time during the night (sometimes for a long stretch). She still doesn't have much of a schedule during the day, but we're ok with that since we are always on the go with various doctor's appointments and family activities! She does really well when we go out, and is a trooper in her carseat, on trips, on errands, etc. She is still the apple of our eye, and we are so in love with our sweet little girl. Happy 6 months, baby! We love you!!!