Happy New Year!

Looks like I haven't posted since Thanksgiving, so I've got some work to do to get you caught up. Here's what happened in December for us.

 First, the bad: Sophie spent a few days in the hospital the week between Christmas and New Years. About a week before Christmas, Sophie was diagnosed with a urinary tract infection (UTI). She slept a lot and didn't eat much, but felt much better once she got on antibiotics. But then she started getting sick again the night of Christmas. A trip to urgent care the next day, and she was on a different antibiotic. But then that night she got even worse, and after vomiting 4 times in an hour and with a 105 fever, I took her to the emergency room. They admitted her to the hospital to get some IV antibiotics and some IV fluids, and to do some tests. The culture for UTI came back negative, but her doctor still thinks that was what was causing her fever.  Sophie wouldn't let me put her in the crib to sleep, so we slept together in the rocker or on the couch. We were at Cardon's, which is nice and new and accomodating to kids, but I wasn't terribly happy with the service or the lack of updates from our doctor (our pediatrician, not the hospital doctor). Overall not a very restful or fun experience for either Sophie or me. Sophie was still not feeling well for a couple of days after we got home, but this week is immensely better and back to her happy self.

 Other than that, our Christmas was good. Sophie wasn't that into the presents thing, probably partly because she wasn't feeling well. We tried not to go overboard with gifts for Owen, but the grandparent's could not be contained! Owen was most excited about his Cars (and in fact probably would have been just as happy if that's all he got). He's still obsessed with acting out "scenes" from the movie. Sophie got some great toys that her therapists recommended.

 And we really enjoyed seeing family. Keith's aunt and uncle visited earlier in December, and Keith's brother and my brother and his family were here for Christmas. Owen enjoyed playing with his cousin.

He also enjoys playing with his new neighborhood friends. There's a cute 2nd grade girl that lives down the street that keeps coming to our house to see if Owen can play. He's usually at school when she comes by, so she acts all disappointed when I tell her he's not home. Owen's too young to play outside by himself, but when we get a chance, one of us goes out with him. It's fun to see what kinds of games the kid's come up with and what they talk about. Why they have such an interest in having Owen play with them (since he's so much younger than them), I don't know, but it's cute.

Now that Sophie's feeling better, she's been moving around a lot.  She likes crawling over things.  If we play outside she likes climbing up, and then sliding down, the cornhole boards we got for Christmas.  She can go down the stairs now if she already has her feet at the top stair, but hasn't quite figured out how to turn around when approaching from the top.  She knows that she has to go backwards, but since she doesn't turn, she just gets farther from the steps when she backs up.  This frustrates her, but is funny to me.  She'll eventually get it, but I can tell these things come slower to her because of her syndrome.

 So now it's January and we put away the decorations, and attempt to pack up some of the old toys (and our stuff!) to either keep for Sophie or give away. Keith convinced Owen to go through his Cars 1 cars to sell the ones he doesn't play with anymore (the stores only sell Cars 2 cars now, so there is a good market online for the old ones). It took him a while to understand the concept. Keith kept telling him that he wouldn't see them again, but Owen kept responding with "But we'll be able to play with them at their house!" So we'll hold on to them for a while before we actually get rid of them, but he's so busy with his new cars that I don't think he'll miss them. I also want to instill empathy in Owen and get him involved in giving away toys to those less fortunate, but I'm not sure he's quite old enough to understand that. Nor do I *want* him to understand that yet; I want to keep him in his happy little world forever!