Gwen's 1st Trip to the ER

Gwen got to be moving too fast today and fell against some carpeted stairs. As you can see from the picture, her face swelled up something fierce, forcing her eye shut, and that's quite the rug burn too, isn't it?

We called her pediatrician and took her to the closest instacare and were told by both to take her to the ER at Primary Children's, so off we went to the U of U.

The biggest concern the docs had there was that she might have broken her cheek bone, so she had to have a CT scan. She didn't like it at all, but she held still enough that they were able to do the scan without needing to sedate her. Results were negative -- no broken bone. Whew!

The secondary concern was that she might have gotten rug burn on her eye as well as her cheek. They don't think so, but put some fluorescent dye in her eye to see. As you can probably guess, she didn't much care for that either. And her eye was too swollen shut for them to be able to tell, so we've got a follow-up visit with her pediatrician on Friday to check that.

Of tertiary concern is that she may have pooped her nose over a little, but we can't tell that until the swelling goes down. If it looks out of place after that, then we have a referral to an Ear, Nose, & Throat clinic to help with that.

Gwen handled it all rather well. It did take her a while to stop crying, of course, but she was smiling and laughing for the doctors in the ER just before they'd work on her and make her mad. She's asleep now and is lying on her side with the rug burn on the mattress, so it must not be hurting her right now, at least. We tried moving her onto her back, but she just pops back up on to her side.

All in all a very long evening.

Gwen's Walking!

She's been taking a step or 2 every so often for the past couple of month when she couldn't think about it and "just went" but yesterday she finally decided that she didn't want to pop down and crawl to where she wanted to go and thus started lurching around all over the place. Teri's calling her a zombie due to how she's got her arms stretched out in front of her and how she does kinda lurch as she takes her steps.

I should have at least updated back at her 1 year appointment with her statistics then, but. . well, I often forget I have this blog, frankly. She was 20.3 pounds (35th percentile still) and . . I don't recall the exact height but she'd gone up to 90th percentile, so she's even taller and skinnier now than she was. She can still barely fit her 12 month sized pajamas, but for the most part we've got her in the 18 month size now. They still "swallow her up" but she's growing fast, so that won't be for long.

It's the Day before Halloween!

We saw the movie I talked about in my last post last night. It was really cute, and really good. I've seen a few other reviews of it from when it was on the film festival circuit earlier this year and they mentioned that the ending had a twist that resolved everything and didn't feel like a cheat and. . .they were right. It was very well done! I think I'll want to own the dvd whenever it comes out.

In other news, Gwen didn't want to take her nap this morning. Well, no... she didn't cry or anything becuz she knew she was tired, but she still fought it. To the point that when she couldn't keep herself awake anymore she was still sitting up. Instead of falling back, she fell forward, and this was the end result:



Too cute!

New Movie Trailer

Back when I was at Ricks College, there was a guy named Daryn with whom I became friends. In a "small world" coincidence, I ran into him in Aurora, CO several months later since I'd been called to the Denver mission, and he was temporarily serving there while waiting for his visa to go to the San Fernando, Phillipines mission.

Why this backstory? Becuz he directed a film, that's why! Here's the trailer:



I think it looks cute, and I'll admit to having had a crush on Alyssa Milano ever since "Who's the Boss?" back in the 80's. I look forward to seeing it in order to support my old friend, even if I haven't seen him in a very long time.

More "PenGwen" video

Ever since Gwen's been able to "army crawl" she more or less stopped rolling around, but today she decided it was a fun way to play, so I got the camera out and took this video:

Vital Statistics

Gwen had her 9 month doctor visit last week. She's now 18.0 lbs, and 28 inches tall. This puts her at the 75th percentile for her height and 35th for her weight, meaning she's tall and skinny. She was "short" when she was born, so she's been outpacing that growth curve, but as far as weight goes she's been consistently on the 35th percentile line.

In other news, she is loving solid food. It's hard to even snack on anything without her crawling over and begging for a taste. She loves the vegetable baby foods, but so far hasn't been too keen on any of the fruits. She enjoys the Gerber Graduates and also loves bread. Don't worry, we only give her little bites so she won't choke, but she'll go through a complete slice of bread in a single sitting, as well as some nibbles of string cheese and a half a tub of baby food to boot. And yeah, she'll chase it down with 2 oz. of her bottle on top of that.

Funny thing about her crawling is that while she can crawl up on her hands and knees, she generally only does it in her crib or when she's reaching up to the furniture to pull herself up, but otherwise prefers the "army crawl" on her elbows/forearms. And yeah, she cruises the furniture too, albeit slowly.

She's finally fully cut a tooth to boot. We can see 3 other teeth hanging in her gums, and she's had teeth pop out then go back up before, but this one's staying out for sure this time. She likes to reach into her mouth to feel it with her thumbnail.

And another big milestone is that last night she slept for a 7-hour stretch, which is her record for longest ever single sleeping period. Her prior record is about 5 hours, which she's only ever done once. A typical night still sees her up about every 2-2.5 hours. Hopefully the long stretch last night is an indication of good things to come. She had a good nap this morning as well and finally doesn't have dark circles under her eyes anymore.

Hopefully this picture of her in "jail" is cute enough to accompany this post ;)

New Fun Stuff

Yeah, I know. . I don't update. Bad me and all that. I just don't often feel the urge to write anything here.

But, we've been able to make a few videos of Gwen the past day or so and I thought I'd share them.