Thursday, September 06, 2007

Day at the farm

We had a good weekend last week, we worked on the house, planted our gardens and went back to the farm with the petting zoo.
Ellie had a great time. She seemed to really understand that those things in the pens were actually animals. She really like the chickens and had a good time petting the donkey. But, try as we might we couldn't get her to stop calling the pigs "Gus." They were some pretty big pink and black pigs, I don't know how they reminded her of Gus, other than that they too might eat anything and everything.I like this picture, because I think it is actually talking about her hair and not the goats that live in the pen.Gus is healing well from his surgery, and can't wait till next Monday when he gets his stitches out so he can swim again. All in all the house is starting to look like a home, especially now that we have a kitchen sink and counter tops. Ellie is doing very well. She is handling the three nights off of TPN well. She seems to have stalled again with weight gain, but she is still growing. We had to go buy new shoes, real shoes not crocs, yesterday. We are trying new foods, adding a fourth meal in and trying to keep her eating as much a possible. Mainly she eats baby food mixed with rice cereal but we are trying some bits of our food when ever we can.
Her favorites are avocado, banana, pickles, pretzels, and carrots. She likes almost any baby food we give her, we just have to be careful and make sure it is something that a short gut kid can tolerate. We mix almost everything with rice cereal so that it will stay in her colon for a longer period of time, so she can get more liquid from the food. We try to have bananas or apples in her diet at least once a day also. Peaches and peas are the only thing that we have seen a negative reaction too. Negative as in too much ostomy output. So we just keep offering her foods and hope for the best.
Ellie has also started to really pick up on the sign language. Not as much as other kids that we know that are signing super stars, but Ellie can get her point across. Last week we were reading a book Christian gave her and she surprised me by giving the sign for fish. Growing up in this house we knew that we were going to see the word Fish sooner or later from her.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

What wonderful pictures! Ellie's good health and enjoyment of life continue to be soothing and inspirational. Thanks for your ongoing sharing.

Anonymous said...

This is Jessica, the speech-therapist from Criterion EI! I just wanted to say again that Eleanor is a very smart, beautiful, and brave little girl! Best of luck with everything!

Anonymous said...

Your pictures are wonderful (loved "Very Curly",too!)

We're so thrilled that Ellie continues to do well.

Collin Matthew's Grandparents