Foods, poop and Easter

We had two clinic appointments in the past two weeks. Ellie is gaining weight and has grown another inch. Everyone is still very happy with her progress and told us to keep doing what we are doing.

Ellie's milk pump is still only at 26cc an hour for about 20 hours a day. But she has really started eating more solid food. She eats 3 meals with many snacks in between. She also is drinking sippy cups of Elecare as fast as we can fill them. We still have to watch her intake and make sure she doesn't over do it, that means only an ounce or two of Elecare at a time. And we have to make sure that the foods she is eating are always short bowel friendly. We tried macaroni and cheese a week ago, and we just recovered from it a few days ago. Lactose is not Ellie's friend.
We have found that as long as she poops at least once a day she is pretty good at hydrating her self and we can give her a lot more freedom with what she eats. This means that we do have to use a suppository every once and a while to make sure things keep moving. It works really well for her, but Gib and I hate doing it.

Ellie is also now in a play group here in town and also goes to EI (Early Intervention) with me on Thursday mornings, I have a mom's group that I go to and Ellie hangs out in the other room with all the other kids. She loves going to both and never wants to leave. I know cold and flu season are not over, but we are close enough that we decided to give it another try. (please knock on wood)

The past week has been interesting, Karlene our one and only nurse has been out for spinal surgery. It wasn't a big surgery but it does require a 3 week recovery time that does not include chasing or wrestling with a toddler. We have missed her terribly, but we are managing to scrape by. Ellie asks about her daily and when some one pulls into the drive way Ellie yells, "Ka!" and runs to the window.



Ellie is also starting to talk and sign like a mad woman. When we were visiting some friends last summer their little girl Mia showed us the sign for zebra and caterpillar. Those are now Ellie's favorite words (she says zebra while signing it and signs for caterpillar) and she just started putting two words together, this morning she said, "bye mom"as she got out of bed with her dad to get unhooked from her pump. Altogether we guess that she has about between 25 and 50 signs, some American Sign, and some Ellie sign that only we and she would recognize. We should really write them down sometime.

I'm going to finish off with some late pictures of Ellie's Easter day, we spent it at my sister's house. Dying Eggs
Running to get the most eggs
"Look! a little chick!"
"Let's see if it can swim"
Showing Alex and Claire where to go next

"Hey! there's stuff in these eggs"
And Yes, Ellie collected both baskets worth of eggs.