A long overdue update

I need to apologize for my absence from blogland the past week. Things have been crazy to say the least and I haven't had time to think, let alone use the computer for pleasure. I have tons of things to update on but I will space them out over the next few days. Today will be all about Eli!


Big things have been happening in the world of toddlerhood at our house. Our tiny miracle boy is officially a one year old. His 12 month adjusted birthday was in the middle of this week and Eli celebrated the occasion by WALKING!!! Yes, we are now the proud parents of a walker. He still crawls almost all of the time but if you stand him up or he pulls up on something, the little stinker will walk 10-12 steps to get where he wants to go. Unfortunately that location is usually to get one of the toys his big brother is playing with. This tends to result in either a small shouting match between the two that goes something like this....

"Eli, no! This is my toy!" -C
"AHHHH......" -E
"NOOOOOO! Get your own toy." -C
"Na na na AHHhhhhdadadadda" -E
"AAHhehehehaaaa. Shut up Eli!" -C

Then Carson shoves Eli down and Eli with his "new walker" balance falls on his butt, hits his head on the ground, cries, then gets back up to try and get Carson's toy away from him again. By this time Carson is in time out. Did I mention that I have been tired this past week???





Eli also added two wonderful developmental milestones last week that we have been waiting to see for months. Our baby started waving and clapping!!! It is so cute to see him clap when we play patty-cake. I need to stop referring to him as the "baby" pretty soon as you can see. Eli is turning into a rough and tumble toddler right before our eyes. In this pic he was enjoying some truck time in the backyard at Gigi and BobPop's house with Carson. Boys will be boys. Aside from the dirty boy persona, Eli must think he is the most adorable baby ever because the child flirts shamelessly with every girl he sees. He will smile, tuck his chin to his chest, then wave at any female he can, the whole time keeping this sheepish grin on his face. Boy, I'm in trouble with Carson and Eli.



Now for the medical update on our peanut. Eli is doing well. He is 20lbs even and just over 30". His chromosomal microassay came back completely normal! YAY! Unfortunately his growth hormone testing did come back low (specifically his IGF-1 for all of your medical people reading). We haven't discussed treatment direction yet with his doctors but growth hormone replacement in the form of daily injections is most likely in the future for Eli. It's not the worst possible outcome in the least but a parent never wants to give their child a shot every night. The blood test for Smith-Lemli-Opitz Syndrome came back negative as well, just as suspected. Eli's GI doctor believes that he has an allergy to milk due to his problems with rashes, bowel issues (severe constipation then changing to nasty diarrhea--never a happy medium) but since he is on an elemental formula and is pushing away a lot of milk products on his own now, she is holding off on testing him unless his symptoms get severe. His surgery is scheduled for December 4th. The surgeon that preformed his Nissen fundoplication in May will do the incisional hernia repair and the 2" muscle biopsy out of one of his thighs. Then his GI doctor will do an endoscopy and colonscopy with biopsies from both. The surgery will take a little over 2 hours but they can get all four things done under the same anesthesia. I will only be 12 days post-op from my own major surgery (see post later this weekend) so Al is going to need to help out a lot with Eli and his recovery!

Now that this Eli update is super long I will leave you with a pic of a tuckered out Eli laying on Gigi's lap. He loves to swing on the front porch on her lap just like I did when I was a baby. Our teeny, tiny miracle boy has made huge strides in the past week and we can't wait to take him to the neonatal clinic on 10-12 to show him off to the doctors who told us he would have CP!