Summer Days

We've had a busy summer so far.

We took a trip to Savannah in early June to see a friend of mine - Amy. She has beautiful kids, Francie and Charlie. We had fun going to Tybee Island and walking around their really FLAT neighborhood.

Kayla has also been going to a music class on Tuesdays. It lasts about 45 minutes and she basically gets to listen to some songs and shake a few instruments.

We also went to Daddy's softball game this week and walked around Carrollton with Mya and Ashli last week.

Unfortunately she got another UTI with a high fever and febrile seizure this past weekend so we're going to have to run more tests and maybe have the endoscopic procedure to fix the problem done sooner.

Kayla is great at sitting up and can move herself around in a circle pretty well but is not crawling yet. Any day now I predict!

She is almost 20 pounds and is saying dada, mama, baba - but they are just sounds to her - not objects just yet.

Well here's what you really want....pictures!!!

Here we are in Savannah making a silly face on the porch:

And here's Daddy and Kayla on the beach:


Here's Kayla and Mya on their playdate in Carrollton. We were at the Gallery Row Coffeeshop.


We went to Ledo's Pizza for Father's Day - I can't wait to give Kayla a taste of their pizza.


Here's Kayla at her music class:



And here are just a few recent favorites:



This weekend we are going to Lake Lanier for a few days with Cary's family. It should be a great time!

Memorial Day Weekend

We had a pretty exciting weekend. Kayla's uncle Adam graduated from highschool on Sunday. Prior to that we had a party at Dad and Donna's house. Everyone enjoyed seeing Kayla sitting up and smiling and playing. She actually did pretty good for most of the graduation ceremony, but Cary had to take her out during the commencement speech. Good thing there were only 25 graduates to sit through (for her sake). I think she thought everyone was clapping for her. Here's the graduate, Kayla, and I ready to celebrate!


On our day off from work we went out on our lake in Cary's Dad's new boat with Kayla, Cary, Adam, Dad, Donna, and even Cash came along. We had a great time soaking up the sun, swimming, and playing fetch with Cash.


We also went to a pool party later in the day. Here's Kayla having fun with Mya - her friend that's a week younger and then Kayla enjoying the pool.



Kayla is teething like crazy. She has 6 teeth coming in at once! 2 on the bottom and 4 on the top. She's been a little cranky due to that but is otherwise happy and healthy.

Kayla's Urology Appt.

The long awaited visit with the pediatric urologist is finally over! The news is good in my opinion.

Kayla will stay on a low dose of antibiotic for another 5 months. When she is a year old she will have another set of tests done like she did at Scottish Rite. If the reflux is still present with no change, we will proceed to the next step. The Dr. said there is a chance she will outgrow the reflux by her first birthday, which is what we are hoping for.

The next step if she does not outgrow the reflux is an endoscopic treatment to fix the problem. It is an outpatient procedure with a very quick recovery time of less than a day with an 80% success rate. All the info about that procedure can be found here.

So now we wait again! Kayla is tolerating the antibiotic just fine so hopefully she will have no breakthrough infections before her next set of tests in a few months.

I'm going Thursday to view her 6 month pictures we had done at Judith Ann Photography. They should look really good!

Sunday Adam graduates so that will be Kayla's first graduation ceremony.

Someone slow her down!

Kayla is growing and changing way too quickly for me!

She now has a tooth coming in on the bottom and can sit up all by herself. See below:


I had a wonderful first Mother's Day and I got to spend the weekend with my Mom as well.

Kayla's the greatest gift of all, but as previously stated she is growing up way too fast!

An overdue update

We've been doing pretty well lately. Kayla is feeling like herself again.

We took her to Scottish Rite (a children's hospital) to have tests done and found out she does have kidney reflux. It turns out she has Grade IV-V which is pretty bad, but it turns out she has two ureters (tubes) going from her right kidney to her bladder. She should only have one so the extra tube is not functioning properly and is allowing urine to back up into her kidney and cause infections. She's on a low dose antibiotic to keep her urine sterile until we can get her scheduled for surgery. I don't know much about how they'll do the surgery but we have an appt. on 5/20 with a pediatric urologist to find out more. As long as we keep giving her the medicine, she should be fine.

Here's a picture of us at Scottish Rite after the tests were done. She did so well during her tests. The first one was an ultrasound so she just had to be relatively still - which she was. The second test is called a VCUG. They put a catheter up to her bladder and injected a dye first. Then they filled her bladder so she would be forced to go potty and they could see where the dye was going to see if she had reflux. She didn't cry at all when they put the catheter in and the nurses said that was the hardest part. She got a little fussy halfway through because she wanted to move around but she was so good! It was great to have Cary's Mom along for help during the tests. The nurses loved her and gave her the balloon which is still inflated at our house and she really likes it.


The following weekend, Kayla's Mimi came for a visit. My Mom got up with her both nights she was here and watched her while we went to dinner. It was great to have her here and she and Kayla had fun together. My Mom sees lots of similarities between Kayla and me when I was a baby - in looks and personality.


Kayla had her 6 month well-baby visit and she's growing like crazy. She's 27" long and a couple ounces shy of 19 lbs. She's wearing 12 month clothes already! Dr. Huque said we can give her solid foods several times a day and she's doing great at eating from her spoon. She likes everything I've given her so far, but seems to like veggies better than fruits. In the next three months she should be sitting up all by herself, crawling, and pulling herself up to a standing position while holding on to something. She's really rolling all over the place and is pretty close to crawling these days. Time to baby proof the house!



We took a trip to Birmingham this past weekend for a family get together. Here is Kayla playing with her Aunt Gigi (Jennifer).


And finally, here is a picture of Kayla and Cary after church one day:

Scary day

We had a real scare with Kayla on Sunday. I put her down for a nap in her room and when I went to check on her, she was having a seizure. I called 911 and by the time the ambulance arrived she had stopped and we found out she had a fever of 102.3 and that most likely caused the seizure. Fever-induced seizures are called febrile seizures. They are not harmful and cause no damage - just very scary for a parent!

At the hospital they ran many tests to diagnose what caused the fever. They drew blood, got a urine specimine, took a chest x-ray, and the hardest part was the spinal tap. They gave her a shot to numb her back and then drew out some spinal fluid to rule out meningitis. The Dr. concluded it was most likely a urinary tract infection that caused the fever. We're not sure if this infection is a new one or the original one she got about 2 weeks ago. This week I have to take her to the Dr. pretty much every day for shots of antibiotic, another urine culture, and our tests at Scottish Rite got moved to Friday. Phew!

Hopefully we'll find out what's going on after the tests on Friday. Thankfully we have lots of support to help get us through this trial.

As for Kayla today, she's getting back to her happy self and has really discovered that she can grab her feet and stretch them towards her mouth. It must be fun to do.

First Vacation

Cary and I had a great trip with our friends to Orange Beach, AL. The only bad part was that Kayla started feeling bad during our trip. When we got home she was definitely under the weather so we took her to the Dr. It turns out she had a urinary tract infection. After antibiotics she was feeling much better in a couple of days. We will be having some further tests done to make sure the UTI is nothing serious. Below is a picture of her when she was sick. It was pitiful! Many thanks to Dad and Donna who took care of her while we were away.


Like I said, she was feeling better within a few days so were able to go on our Myrtle Beach trip. We left at 3am Wednesday morning so that Kayla would sleep in the car and she did great! She slept almost the whole time. When she didn't sleep she would drink her bottle or play with whoever was in the backseat. We stopped a few times to get her out so she could stretch but she was a great rider.

Here is Kayla on the beach for the very first time! She was enthralled with the ocean but didn't really like when I stuck her foot in the water.




This is Kayla and I at the Citadel. Adam will be going to college there next year so we were lucky to be able to see it. It was an awesome place. We got to see the parade, but Kayla didn't really like when they shot off the cannons.

I know this is "Kayla's" blog but here is a picture of Adam at the Citadel. We are so proud of him!


Here is Donna's Mom - Kay. We stayed with her and her husband Bob. Bob has dubbed Kayla "Baby Spook" since she was born on Halloween. Bob also has lots of funny poems that he was teaching Kayla. It was a nice, relaxing trip and Kay made sure we were all well-fed the entire time. Here's Kay and Kayla:


We've started Kayla on solid foods. So far she has tried green beans, sweet potato, pears, and apples. She always looks a little shocked and scared after the first bite, but quickly opens her mouth for more! Here's little carrot face!

And here's Kayla in her new hat on our back porch. We were sitting outside in the beautiful weather blowing bubbles.

Well as much as I adore having Kayla - it sure is hard work! It is really hard seeing her sick or in pain and I pray that those times are few and far between. I'll let you all know how her tests go - hopefully it's nothing!