She learned how to clap!

Emily stumbled upon the art of clapping today. She was very excited about the whole thing and proceded to give herself a huge round of applause.


The hands come up for air and prepare to clap again.


It's always cute when you put a baby in a laundry basket. Really, it is.

9 Month Checkup & Ear Infection

Emily had her nine month well-baby checkup yesterday. She's doing great except she's got ear infection #3. I'd taken her in a few days ago to get her ears checked because she started waking up a lot at night and her nose was running. At that time the doctor (not her regular physician) said her ear was inflamed but not infected so he wanted me to wait before putting her on an antibiotic. Her cold got worse after that and I guess that's why the ear got infected. She seems happy though and not in any pain and she started the antibiotic yesterday. Now for the good stuff.

Emily weighs 20 lbs 3 oz. and is in the 75th percentile for weight and head circumference and 50th for height. She's on target with everything cognitively (bangs toys together, makes eye contact, turns her head when you call her name, says "mama"). She's a bit behind with mobility, but I think she just wants to walk and is not interested in crawling. She loves to stand on her own too.


Here she is standing on her own with the help of one of her toys. Don't be fooled, she's not really ready to do this without supervision. She fell backward about 30 seconds after I snapped this shot and hit her head on the rug.

Sweet Potato Face

This is one happy kid. She's eating more and more at mealtime ever since the speech therapist gave us some great tips such as:

• Sit with her for 45 minutes to an hour for EACH meal.


• Don't be control freaks - let her hold the spoon, make a mess, and drink her formula when she wants.


• Make it fun. Let her play with toys, give her lots of choices - different textures, colors and temperatures.

I try to stay relaxed and not rush Emily while she eats. I sit and talk with her and sometimes I read a book. I feed her cheerios (her favorite!) in between bites of baby food and I always have both juice and milk nearby so she gets practice with the cup, but can have her milk if she wants. Lots of times she'll drink some formula and then start eating solids again. I also give her toys whenever I get up and leave the table to keep her occupied and I always end with a Gerber teething cookie (another favorite). The side effect of all this table time is lots of Emily time. Ana likes to sit at her table and draw while Emily eats and it's just a very laid back, content time for all of us.

Little Girls, Little Girls...

Here are a few pictures to share. Emily's just one of the girls.


Ana loves her "baby" Emily.


Chloe and Emily hold hands.


Layla gets a turn to sit with her cousin.

Me Love Cookie!!

Here's Emily with her favorite toy - a talking Cookie Monster. I'd let her sleep with the thing if it didn't say things like, "Me Love Cookie!" and "Me Love to Giggle - Ha Ha Ha Ha!" every time you close its mouth.

I've debated posting things like this - things completely unrelated to the NAM or clefts or her treatment. But I think it's important to demonstrate that the time between surgeries and whatever other issues (speech therapy, eating, etc.) is just normal baby/kid family time. It's a time to enjoy our babies and children as they grow, learn and play just like any other child. I'm sure that as we approach Emily's palate surgery in April, this blog will become dominated with posts about the preparation and subsequent outcome of that experience, but until then she's just a baby who is nearing toddlerhood. A year ago I never would've imagined that her issues with the cleft would not be all-consuming all the time. Looking at her now, it's hard to believe I ever felt that way.

Lots of Pictures

Good morning, Em. Actually this shot was taken right after a 2.5 hour morning nap (the third one this week). She was very chipper considering the room was dark and I walked in flashing the camera at her.


I got in a little closer so I could get that fluff of hair. I can't believe how big she's getting. Her speech therapist said she's acting like a one-year-old. My baby!


Here's a good shot of her scar which looked really good today. Her nose is also "settling" into a nice shape. We massage the scar every day (some days I'm lucky to get a couple of minutes in) and apply Creme de la Mer to reduce the redness. Her lip is softening up, but her nose still feels really hard. Jim thinks we should massage it, but she doesn't even like when I wipe it!


We had a breakthrough today at mealtime (this picture doesn't demonstrate it though). Here she is after refusing a yummy breakfast of chocolate pudding, cheerios and meat sticks (don't ask). Jim reminded me that chocolate isn't such a good thing for a baby to eat due to the caffeine. oops.


Okay, here's the breakthrough shot. I sat Emily down for dinner rather late today (around 6:45 pm) because she'd had a bottle at 5. I didn't expect much. Before today, she's never had more than 3 or 4 spoons of baby food, but her speech therapist paid us a visit on Thursday and gave us LOTS of ideas to try. So I tried them all: lots of variety, different temperature foods, different textured foods, pile the food in front of her and let her play with it, give her toys at the table, put her cheerios in the growing mound of mush (that works surprising well, actually). What finally did it today was that I thickened her food a lot (spinach and potatoes) and scooped it up with one of those toy links and then used that as if it were a spoon. She ate it! She ate the entire bowl!! Then she drank a full cup of juice! Okay, she wore half the juice, but still!! I was so amazed. Maybe now she won't wake up for the 1:00 am feeding. I hope this wasn't a fluke and we have some success tomorrow.

Happy New Year

"Hello, and welcome to my blog! I am Emily and my grandma gave me this fluffy pink hat. Okay, I'm ready to take the hat off now."

We have no grand news or updates on Emily. She's making progress with sleeping and generally sleeps about 11 hours at night and wakes up about once per night to eat. The nightly wakings only take about 10 minutes and she's right back down again. This is definitely better than ever. We suspect she just went through (or is going through) a growth spurt since she had a marathon nap yesterday and has been eating more formula than usual. Still not much progress with getting her to eat solids, though if I sing, make funny noises and stand on my head while belting out the National Anthem she'll generally take two or three spoonfuls of baby food before returning to her pile of cheerios.


Emily is happily gumming a plastic hand she got as a stocking stuffer. We got her lots of different teethers at the suggestion of her speech therapist so she could get more comfortable with putting things in her mouth again. She's still not crawling, though she's starting to sort of scooch over on her butt (only if she's REALLY motivated) and she can roll like a champ. She's quite capable of rolling around as a means to get from point A to point B, but she doesn't do this unless I get down on the floor with her. Her favorite thing to do is to hold onto furniture and stand. I wouldn't be surprised if she skips the crawling thing completely and begins creeping around furniture first.