It's a Very Special Day...

when APF is the same day as Elle Belle's Birthday! Our little lady is 13 months old and we are so incredibly blessed by her little life. So what is going on with our little lovebug?

- She's weighing in around 19lbs...we just made the switch from formula to pediasure because she needs more calories with each meal. Her gastro dr. is hoping this will help boost her weight gain and growth

- She is super active and her amount of liveliness increased about 100% when we started the pediasure! Sucrose (sugar) is the second ingredient and I am not loving that fact. We're going to try is out for a month to see if she adjusts to the new ingredients.

- She is still being fed via the feeding tube but we switched to a new kind of pump. It's called a Zevex and is so small that Elle can wear it in a little backpack while she is being fed - which is awesome for us because we no longer have to figure out ways to keep her still for the entire hour long feed.

- This past week she has made huge strides at both physical therapy and occupational therapy. She loves carrots so I have been boiling carrots like crazy to soften them up so she can eat them. We are starting to experiment with other table foods too. We've tried apples and pancakes - all pureed. Carrots are still the hands down favorite. In pt - she got up on her hands and knees and took 2 small crawls on Wednesday!

- She is a super army crawler and can go from on her tummy to sitting up with no problem. She is pulling up on everything and even taking a few small steps while holding on to the furniture. In pt, one of her exercises is to stand against the wall. She is doing so well!!! We still want her to crawl so we are still working hard on getting her to get up on hands and knees rather than army

crawling

- She is a talker! Her vocab is expanding daily. Aunt Shay painted her a growth chart for her birthday that has these huge flowers on it. She points to them everyday and says "wowers." It is the cutest thing. If we say something and emphasize the syllables - she will mimic the syllable sound. I am always so impressed with her talking...and so is her sign language teacher. She calls Elle her little genius! - Sign language is going so well! I attribute a lot of it to my mom working with her everyday and signing everything she says to Elle. Elle will not only watch your mouth as you talk, but she will also watch your hands. She knows milk, drink, eat, more, all done, bath, brush (hair and teeth), no, yes, mom, dad, smart, girl, pretty, frog, dog, horse, cat, cow, ball, pig, mouse, elephant, bear, monkey, hat, fan, light, and Witt.

- She has started pointing at everything. Our goal now is to get her to point to pictures/objects and do the sign. She started doing it last night while we were making dinner. We had a few stuffed animals out and we would ask her where the monkey was or where the dog was. She would look at it and finally by the end of our little practice session - she was pointing at the animals and doing the signs. She is such a smart little girl!

- She is getting in to everything! Especially when she is in her walker - yesterday is figured out how to open our cabinets all the way to start pulling out the pots and pans. Guess we will be baby proofing our kitchen this weekend!

- She loves to wave and blow kisses and she is always smiling. I love that little smile!!

We are so blessed by this little lady and are so excited to see how she grows up! I just can't believe that she is already over a year old - time just goes by sooo fast!