Lights

Emily helped us put the lights on the Christmas tree but someone just wanted to play in them.



more updates

Two posts in one day!! AHHH!

Emily is doing much better the past few days. She is finally over the uti and her first TWO teeth have broken through. I thought this girl would never have teeth. She now has two bottom teeth that came one right after the other.

She is still having clusters of spasms and a few seizures daily. The past few days her seizures have been down to 3 or fewer.

So now we know that a uti and teething are seizure triggers for Emily. Now we are dealing with biting. Fun.

Visually, Emily is really progressing. She is seeing so much better and is tracking and following more objects. Used to you would have to introduce something to her from the side and hope it would catch her attention but now we can start closer to mid line.

Another big thing is she is interested in the TV! She does not care for therapy so her PT suggested we turn on cartoons, I laughed to myself because she has never been interested in cartoons before, well she proved me wrong! She loved it and we got through PT without any major melt downs!

A friend gave us some DVDs to try and she loves them!

Here are a couple pics of her watching TV.

She really likes baby Einstein.

Emily and her daddy watching videos on the computer.

I want to get her an ipad so badly. I know she would love it!

We are weaning her topamax slowly and when she is off of that she will only be on phenobarb. We are defiantly seeing more of Emily since we began weaning meds. She is pretty happy but she is very opinionated if she does not like something. Especially when she is tired.

She finally broke the 20 pound mark! She has always been on the small side and now that she is on the ketogenic diet she does not gain weight very quickly. She is small but proportionate.

We did get Emily's bath chair. We decided to go with the Rifton Blue wave bath chair with a tub stand to make it taller when we need it. Emily seems to enjoy it and it supports her so much better.

All of the support straps are movable. We don't use the chest and leg straps because she does not move enough to use them yet. She loves kicking her legs in the water.

We also got her stroller. We decided to go with the Special tomato EIO. I don't have a great picture of it yet. There are many reason we chose it. It holds up to 90lbs and it reclines all the way back so she can sleep. We also got the special tomato soft touch liners to support her better and they can also be removed and used in a chair for more support later.

So far I am very pleased with it. I wish it had a bigger basket under the chair to hold her diaper bag. We carry so much stuff when we go anywhere.

So that is pretty much it. Oh and I turned 30.

Looking forward to some more good days.

Christmas cards

I hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving! We sure did.

We stopped by for a little bit and visited my mom, sister, sister's bf, and brothers. Next up was Joe's mom and step dads.

Emily tolerated it well, she shut down but no seizures or fussing. Joe has been off for a few days from work and it has been nice spending time together and SLEEPING. I am so thankful he is such a hands on daddy.

Tomorrow we are decorating for Christmas. I love this time of year. The smells, lights, snow I love it all!

I also love cards! Just ask my husband, I love cards for any occasion.

Last year we did not send out any Christmas cards because Emily had just been diagnosed with infantile spasms. The months of December and January were a blur.

Do you all like to send regular cards or photo cards?

This year were are sending photo cards because we just had some amazing pictures done.

I have been looking through Shufferfly's extensive list of Christmas photo cards and I can't decide on one.

I like this one because I want to have more than one photo on the card and you can save the pictures!

I like this one too because you can fill you friends and family in on your year.

There are so many to choose from!

If you would like to try them out and you have a blog go here and follow the directions and you can get 50 free photo cards too!

I can't wait.

Be on the look out to see which one we choose.

Good days

We have had several good days now. I think we are at 5 or 6 really good days! Thank you Jesus!

By good I mean little to no seizures, minimal spasms (but still there) she is alert, responsive, visually tracking us and toys and babbling like crazy!

She has been such a joy the last week! I don't think she has really cried much either. She is sleeping at least 5-6 hours at night. Most nights she does not go to sleep until 12:30 or 1am but I will take it!

Previous to our really good week she had probably some of her worst weeks, hence the no blogging.

She was seizing like crazy no matter how much meds we gave her. You could tell she was just so out of it and "off". Long story short-low grade temp, strong smelling urine, extremely fussy and increased seizures= massive urinary tract infection (e coli to be specific) Things got worse once we started the antibiotics and I was so nervous because she has never needed them before so I did not know how she would react. Just a couple days in and she was doing SO much better.

We noticed the weather forecast was calling for mid to upper 70's last Friday and Joe and I really wanted to get some family/18 months/Christmas picture taken so we asked our good friend Rebecca to take them for us. Also Joe's dad, step-mom (Brenda) and his grandma Mae were coming in that week too so that was a bonus. They were originally coming next week to celebrate Thanksgiving but Brenda and Lonnie are going to be grandparents again and they were cutting it close to the due date. Can't wait to meet Ava!

We got some great pictures! Rebecca is so talented and I am so thankful to have these pictures to look back on. I don't think she understood how grateful we are! To capture such great pictures on a beautiful day and one that Emily was feeling great, we will always have these to look at on bad days to remind us that it is not always going to be bad. Thanks again aunt Bec!! You can follow her here on facebook.

So I will leave you with a few of the pics! Have a blessed week!



One of my favorites!



This color was amazing!



She amazes me!



off

I don't really want to blog right now but I am making myself.

Things have not been good lately.

Emily's seizures have picked up in spite of everything we are doing.

She has what we think are seizure-free days once or twice every week to two weeks but I am not sure that they are really seizure free.

The past few days have gotten really bad.  She is having so many seizures and we are giving her a lot of meds to TRY and slow them down but they are not working well anymore.

She is weaker than she has ever been and has not been herself in a few days.

She is twitchy and very seizurey looking.

We took her to the ped yesterday just to check labs and urine to make sure it's not something simple like an infection or off labs we are dealing with but they were normal.

I really don't want to go the hospital (especially during cold and flu season) we have oxygen and and a monitor at home and we have been using it lately. She has only needed oxygen once but we are thankful we had it.

We are taking her in to see the neuro the beginning of next week and hopefully we can figure something out.

I want my happy smiling baby back.