Christmas is Coming

Well, things have been going really well for Julianne lately...I mean REALLY well...I mean AWESOME! She had basically stopped gagging and retching this past week. It has been a super great, early Christmas gift. Unfortunately, she seems to be coming down with a cold so that always means more gagging/vomiting. We are hopeful and looking forward to the end of the cold when the gagging / vomiting will end again. We are EXTREMELY thankful that God gave Julianne's doctors the insight to try this new medication which seems to be helping! The New Orleans doctors are marking it down for future use as this was a suggestion of the Boston G.I. do doctor that Julianne saw. The doctors here had never used Periactin for this purpose and really didn't expect it to do much.

So, with less / no gagging, Julianne has been more willing to taste foods. In fact, she LOVED eating sour cream off the end of a taquito several nights ago. She wanted more and more and kept asking for "Ah bite, ah bite?"

Julianne eating sour cream

Julianne had her 15 month check-up on Friday. She weighed a little over 25 lbs and was about 31 1/2 inches long! She has gone through a serious growth spurt as far as length goes. She's now in the 75th percentile for height and weight and that is GREAT!! Her pediatrician was almost as excited as we were to hear that she's standing and trying to crawl. He was also blown away by her speech as she sang parts of the patty-cake song while he was asking me questions. She says, "Rolllllllled it" "Paaaaaaad it" "Puuuush it in tha!" all while doing the hand motions. Its almost too cute!

Last weekend Julianne had a personal visit from Santa Claus! She did so much better than I thought she would. Julianne is pretty sensitive to strangers touching her these days so I totally thought she would freak out. She hung out with Santa for a good 5 minutes before losing it!

Julianne continues to make great strides in her gross motor development. She's getting closer and closer to real crawling. She's moved all four limbs in a crawling motion a few times now, but has not quite gotten the hang of the whole thing yet. Meanwhile, we have oh-so-much babyproofing to do...

I see something I want, but how do I get there?

Julianne, Kent and I went to "Celebration in the Oaks" for the first time last week and we really enjoyed ourselves. It was a perfect night to go with the temperature in the 70's. Julianne loved all of the lights and music. She and I rode the carousel at City Park for the first time. I couldn't see her face during the ride but I could hear her saying, "oooohhh..." By the way, that was THE FASTEST carousel I've ever been on! I felt like I had to hold on to Julianne for dear life!

Outside of the carousel building

Daddy, Julianne and a giant rocking horse...we left out the pictures of a 20 foot, tail-less t-rex with 4 velocoraptors following it

The time traveling carousel...ok, it wasn't fast enough to travel through time. It was too fast to get good pictures though.

Finally, we too enjoyed the south Louisiana snow. We didn't get near as much as our friends and family in Zachary and Baton Rouge, but we did get about 1 to 1 1/2 inches. This is the only good picture I got of Julianne with the snow. Its pretty hard to take a picture of the baby you're holding AND try to get something good in the background. We do have a couple of great snow videos, but I am posting from a different computer and don't have those files right now. I will try to post those after Christmas.

Julianne's first snow (Sort of...we were in Boston during a winter storm back in February. Julianne, however, was in the CICU at the time and couldn't even see it out of the window. So, we're calling this her first snow.)

Right now, Julianne and I are with my Family in Zachary. Kent had to head back home and work Monday, Tuesday and 1/2 of Wednesday. He'll then return to Zachary and lead the music for the Christmas Eve service at church. After that, our sled takes off for Lafayette. We hope you all have an absolutely wonderful Christmas. Enjoy your families and really take notice of all of the special moments you have with them. Most of all, we pray that you'll experience the hope that came into the world on the day Jesus was born. Merry Christmas!