How Things Are Going

I took this picture in the middle of the night when Alex finally fell asleep. Precious!


A close up of her little sleeping face. The dot you see on her hand is from the IV... :(

Alex's fever broke on Sunday so I was happy about that. She got to have a real bath today for the first time since before her surgery and loved every moment of it. Alex HATES sponge baths...and LOVES normal bath time - she even plops her face in the bath water from time to time and comes back up smiling with bubbles all over her face! So cute! Her incision looks great as far as incisions go and her urine output has increased greatly - which I'm assuming is a good sign. We have to go for an outpatient procedure in the middle of February to get the stent removed from Alex's left ureter. She will have to be under general anesthesia for that but no cutting her open so that's good. Then 2 months after that we go in for a kidney/bladder ultrasound and if all is well we can finally stop giving her the prophylactic dose of an antibiotic she has been on since birth (to prevent UTI due to her kidney condition).

Alex took her first steps today! 5 or 6 steps on her own initiative from the toy fire engine to her little activity table! We are going to try to get her to take a few steps on her own again tomorrow and get it on video. Alex gives lots of hugs and kisses now and says "mm-wah" when she goes to kiss you. So cute! She talks up a storm in her own little language and is very loud and expressive about it. One of the ladies in the hospital called her Chatty-Cathy! She loves books. One of her favorite play time activities is to take her books off of her little book shelf and look at them or hand them over to an adult to read. Alex also loves the clothes dryer and enjoys taking clothes out of it and them putting them back in. I am currently transitioning Alex from 2 naps per day to 1 nap a day. She was still wanting to take 2 naps a day but then would be wide awake in her crib playing from 8:00 p.m. till about 11:00 p.m.! 3 nights of this gave me a clue that maybe it's time to make some changes...We tried it today and it worked great!

As always, thank you for your friendship and prayers!