Our Little Lady Turned One!

On August 17th our baby turned 1! I'm still kind of in shock that we have a one year old. It turned out to be a fun day.

While I was making Hallie's birthday cake I realized that I needed to level off the bottom. So I decided since Hallie doesn't get treats very often, that I would let her have a little bit of cake with her breakfast.

Well, while I was trying to get her to look up from her cake to take I picture, I said the wrong words. I said "where's Hallie?" without even thinking what her response would be.

Well, this is the response I got....

Which resulted in this. :)

So Hallie enjoyed a birthday morning bath.

After which a wonderful birthday nap. Lately she will crawl into a ball on the living room floor, and start sucking her fingers. A sure sign that it is time to go to sleep.

The Birthday Bash

For Hallie's party we invited our friends and family to the park by our house to play, and have cake and Popsicles. It was fun to celebrate with everyone.

The invitation

Her ladybug birthday cake, made with allergen-free cake mix

With Daddy

We had bubbles, because they are Hallie's favorite right now

With Mommy

Yum!

The one year old, herself

The birthday cake progression...

The icing was her favorite part

Good to the last bite.

Do you think she liked it?

So do I.

The aftermath. Hallie ate almost the whole head!
She would have kept going too, but we were afraid she would

get a stomach ache.

With the Negus Clan

Hallie with her La La & Chad

Brayden (Nick & Ela somehow dodged the camera)

Hallie peeking through her new tunnel

Opening Presents

The Hall Family, my dad, and my grandma

Kelly & Bryce

After talking to Grandpa Dennis & Michelle on the phone, and playing a little bit longer, it was time for bed.

Good night!
Thank you everyone for enjoying Hallie's birthday, and first year with us. And thanks for all that you do and mean to us. We know we don't tell you enough, but we really do appreciate and love you all. We really couldn't ask for better family and friends.

What Hallie does at age 1

Hallie has reached age 1, oh my goodness! How did that happen? This is what our little monkey does at age 1

Hallie....

-waves bye-bye

-says mom, daddy, duck, doggy, hi, and no

-will point out mom and dad and Hallie in pictures

-is starting to drink normal soy milk

-loves to eat fruits and vegetables, not that she really has a choice

-doesn't like to wear shoes

-bear crawls when she wears a dress or skirt

-loves to press the buttons on the DVD player

-gets in trouble for pressing buttons on the DVD player

-likes to shower, and bathe, and really anything to do with water

-loves for mom and dad to stack her nesting cups, then knock them down

-makes crazy noises with her mouth and tongue

-loves to be tickled, thrown, chased, walked with, etc (I'm afraid she is going to be our little adventurer)

-wants to be part of the action

-does not stand on her own or walk

-loves cell phones, and she talks into them

-has a hard time falling asleep at night until she knows we aren't doing something fun without her

-thinks the dirty laundry is a fantastic place to play

-is thinning out, but still has the cutest chubby legs

-is the best little girl any parents could ask for!

We love you Missy Mae!

Happy 1st Birthday Miss Hallie Mae

Can you believe it has been a full year since this little girl joined our lives? We can't either. What a blessing she has been.

We love you baby girl!

Happy 1st Birthday!

Update

Okay, so they are going to release us in about an hour, but here is what we know. The doctor came back in this afternoon to look at Hallie one more time before he discharged her. He basically said that he thinks it is just a viral infection, much like a cold, and she had and asthma-like attack, and her airways constricted. He said she is too little to tell if it is asthma, but he basically just said that its a possibility either way. He also said that its possible that she will respond to another viral thing similarly in the future. But for now she looks good enough to go home, she will have to have nubulizer treatments at home for a few days, and be taking medicine to try and beat the virus. So that is the excitement with us. We are very happy to be able to go home, and sleep in our own beds.

FYI: We have a sick baby

Just so everyone knows, we are currently at the hospital with Hallie. She has had a pretty good cough since Friday, that has just gotten progressively worse and worse. But this morning, it got REALLY bad, and she got to the point that she couldn't breath very well. By the time Eric got home from work, we decided we better take her to the doctor. Once we got there, and got back to the room, they were instantly very concerned. They did an oxygen reading which was around 85, and it should be up around 95, they diagnosed her, at that point, in respiratory distress. So they gave her a nebulizer breathing treatment, and called down to the pediatric floor of the hospital. After jumping some hoops, they worked it out so that we could bypass the ER and go straight to pediatrics. So we headed down to the hospital.

Once at the hospital they ran the gamut of testing, and we've kind of played the waiting game ever since. They took a chest x-ray, and eliminated pneumonia, and they took a mucus sample and eliminated RSV. Both are good news. For now they are keeping her on an oxygen monitor, with breathing treatments every 4 hours.We will have to wait for the long-term tests to come back before we know any more. But we'll keep everyone updated as we find more out.

For now, she is eating a Popsicle, and then hopefully she'll go to bed for the night.

More Camping Pictures

I may have made our camping trip out to be worse than it truly was. Though it was probably up there on the worst camping trip ever scale, but that was partly due to our lack of preparation, and logical thinking (whether that illogical thinking was due to lack or sleep or not is up for debate).

Dave, a friend from work, invited us up to Trout Creek, by Strawberry Reservoir, for Pioneer Day, so we thought that would be fun. We got all packed up, and went to meet Dave and his family at the mouth of the canyon to follow him up, 2 hours later we left. :) By the time we got up up a very rocky road to camp, and set up it was easily 1 am, and Hallie had been fast asleep in her car seat for hours by this point.

Hallie packed in with our camping gear

Then, we decided to move her, she woke up, put her in her pajamas, and tried to put her to sleep. That, most definitely did not work out so well, as you can tell from our other post. Nothing we could do would help her to stop crying, other than play with her, and that only worked for about 5 minutes. Plus, Eric and I were both extremely tired, and were sleeping on gopher holes and rocks, because we hadn't thought to grab air mattresses. So we weren't in the best of moods to begin with.

Our campsite, I would guess around 5 am

So at a loss for what else to do, once it was light outside, we packed up and headed home before anyone else was even up. Hallie was asleep almost instantly as we put her in the car.

Eric packing up

The deer we saw on the way out.

Looking back, we should have done things much differently. We probably should have just waited til morning to leave for the campsite, or slept in the car, and not worried about moving Hallie. Or just put her back in the car when she wouldn't go back to sleep. Or we should have just at least stayed that one day, and headed home later. Oh well, you live and learn. There will be other camp outs I'm sure. It will just take better preparation and a lot of bravery to try it again.

The Allergist...again

7.20.09

A few weeks ago we ran into a friend, who has a little boy about Hallie's age who has food allergies too. We got talking, and were asking each other questions about what has worked and what hasn't, and we got talking about what allergists we have gone too. Eric and I have been a little frustrated because we really don't know what steps we need to be taking, or what to do if she has a reaction or anything like that. Ours friends had started out with our same doctor, then changed to a new one. So luckily we were able to change to him too. Unfortunately though his office is in Salt Lake, it isn't that far really, but still kind of a pain.

Just waiting...

We were very impressed with our new allergist, Dr. Hendershot. I guess he started out as a pediatrician, then went back to specialize as an allergist, so he was so good with Hallie, and took his time to do what he needed to. When he came in he asked who we had seen previously, and we told him, then he said that Dr. Yeates doesn't really like to deal with food allergies, and doesn't like to see little kids. So that was good to know, it wasn't that he was just trying to be a pain.

Anyway, they retested her, and she is still allergic to peanut, eggs, wheat, and has a sensitivity to milk. But this time he sent out blood work to get an idea of how severe each allergen is. Which is nice because they can rerun the blood work later, and see if she is out growing them.

While they have the scratch tests going on her back she can't have anything rub against it for 15 minutes, so we were distracting her with food. As you can tell she really wanted her Cheerios.

We did have to go to Primary Children's Hospital to have her blood drawn, because the lab there didn't have pediatric needles, and didn't want to have to go in more than once. Hallie was amazing though, Eric distracted her with some toys, while she sat on my lap, and she hardly even flinched. She even got a prize from the nurse after.

Waiting a Primary Children's

Though it's when you go to a place like that that you become very, very, very, grateful that all you are dealing with is some food allergies. When you walk in the hospital it is very friendly looking, and a generally happy atmosphere. But then you look at the signs that say radiology, oncology, cardiology, critical care, neurology, etc. and then you realize that you are in a pediatric hospital, and it really is humbling. You just want to grab the parents walking down the hall and give them a big hug. It just really drove home the idea that there is always someone who has it worse.

At dinner after, look at her little arm bandage.

The testing came back early this week and they said that they are all in the moderate range, and in the low gray zone, so she has a high likelihood of outgrowing them, which is good. We go back on August 11, and Dr. Hendershot will set up a plan with us, and go through the results more fully.