Happy New Year?

It's been kind of a bitter sweet start to the year for us. Christmas was wonderful it was so nice to spend time with my family and have my dad and brother home. Here's Amber in her Christmas jammies giving her Christmas doll a hug! I'm not sure if she meant to do this or not. She did it a few times before she started eating the dolls arm :)

Good News: Amber is showing a lot of progress. She is using and opening her hands more, I even saw her open her thumb up to grab at a toy!! Her head control is way better. She is well on her way to supporting it herself! Her neurology appointment went really well. The Dr said that she had no reason to believe any of Amber's delays were brain related and she thinks the seizure like episodes she was having were due to bad acid reflux (sounds really weird but apparently that can affect the brain stem) She had her blood level re-tested (she's been off her meds for a month now) and the levels are normal! She'll have them tested again in February and we'll have more x-rays then too.

The Not So Great News: At her last appointment she was only 7 pounds :/ its not a great weight gain and I really thought she would be closer to 8 by now. Her 3 month well baby appointment is next week so hopefully she's gained more weight. My hope is that once she starts on solids she'll gain more and gain steadily.

She is becoming such a smiley girl and so talkative too! Here she is checking out her hands.

We spent a lot of last year preparing for this day but its not really something you can prepare for. Second time around and its still just as hard. We'll spend all of this year waiting for him to come home. At the same time we'll be missing my brother who deploys any day now. We did get to spend a lot of time with them before they left and had a lot of fun together.
It does seem like everyone is leaving. My grandparents, aunt and mom are all in Florida. Its very weird and quite here :/ at least I've still got my hubby here!! Well I'm not completely abandoned we still have family and friends helping out but there's nothing like a mother.

On A Lighter Note!! Are you wondering what happened to that to the gingerbread house?

It's hard to see but here's its fate:
It's being eaten! The fluffy culprit is Jada. She's not the only one Mr. Pickles has been helping eat it too. All the coconut snow is gone! Who would have thought cats would eat something like this!

Hope you all had a wonderful Christmas and a blessed New Year!