9 month update

Last week Elyse turned nine months! It's hard to believe how fast she's growing and these past nine months have gone. A friend of mine who shared the pregnancy with me, just emailed to say her 10 month old just took her first steps! I can't believe it. Elyse is far from taking steps or even crawling for that matter. Kurt and I joke that she's just "fat and happy!" Truly, the girl has no motivation to crawl, walk, or even sit back up after tumbling over because she's just so content!

She's a smiley little girl. Her smile lights up a room and she just beams at the boys. She gives great high fives, waves, even says "hi" with the wave, occassionally, and has her own word for dog! She's quite obsessed with Soward right now! All three of our kids' first word has been, "dog." Obviously Soward is a big part of their lives. (Let's just say the movie/book Marley and Me hit home a bit...)

Unfortunately Elyse welcomed the start of her 10th month with some scary moments. Sadly, she had her first ear infection (actually, a double ear infection) on her 9-month birthday, so we started her first round of antibiotics. The next morning she was a BALLOON. Her face was so swollen, she didn't even look like herself. Her eyes were so swollen they were little slits. She had hives all over too. Obviously she had had a terrible allergic reaction to the antibiotic. We were very close to having our first ER visit for any of the kids, but I gave her benedryl after speaking to a pharmacist and the doc on call and she started to get a little better. I couldn't bare to take photos because she looked so bad, but after two strong doses of benedryl and 8 hours, I finally took some. She looks 200 times better than she originally did, but this gives you an idea.
She's completely better now, after blood work and lots of benedryl. Now we know - stay away from penicillin!