Milestones!

It's hard to believe, but Katie turns ONE in just two weeks on August 1. Where has the time gone? Seriously, it seems like it was just yesterday that I was still waddling around in my maternity wear.
She is walking now - hide the sharp objects! - and so proud of herself. She is such a joy and is so pleasant, always smiling and a blessing. We're planning for her baptism now in early October and are having just a small get-together with family to celebrate her birthday.

Not only is she walking, she's almost completely off formula and any kind of baby food and is on table food. The child loves to eat! And much to our joy, she is a carnivore and loves meat of any kind. This morning at breakfast she ate a whole waffle and a half, and the has consumed a piece of pizza and five chicken nuggets.

She also needs to have tubes put in her ears pretty quick. Matt and I took her to an ENT specialist this past week in the Medical Center - which is a nightmare to navigate through - and the poor baby can barely hear at this point her ears are so clogged with gunk (the technical term for fluid that has failed to drain and has turned into a jelly, coating the ear drum). She has never shown signs of a serious ear infection (no fever, no pain), but has had other symptoms like pulling on the ears, runny nose, runny eyes, etc.) for the past two months.

After a couple trips to the pediatrician, two rounds of antibiotics (one of which she had an allergic reaction to and we had to pull her off after she broke out in hives), nothing cleared up the problem so we took her to a specialist. As I said above, it is not an infection and cannot be cleared/drained by meds alone, so we have to take the next step and put tubes in. It's pretty common and nothing to be alarmed about, but it is minor surgery and she will have to be put under for a brief amount of time, which makes any parent nervous. We're are scheduling the procedure on Monday for the next couple weeks, the sooner the better. Since she cannot hear very well, we don't want to impede her speech development and just need to care for as soon as possible. As the doc said, she's not in any pain and has been like this for so long that she doesn't know any better and just thinks it's the way life is. Once she gets her ears drained and the tubes in, by that afternoon she will be good as new and be able to hear better than she probably has most of her life. And here we just thought she was already developing selective hearing when told no! The reality is, the baby really couldn't hear!

Will keep everyone posted.