Many Thanks.

All decked out in Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving lunch Cereal & Squash

Post Thanksgiving nap

Mallory and her Paddy

Snuggling with Aunt Dee Dee

Grandma and her cake

The whole family

Mallory and Grandma

This week was Thanksgiving week! We have so many things to be Thankful for in our lives. God has blessed us enormously. We are so very thankful for our sweet angel baby girl, our amazing family, and all of our wonderful friends. We love our life and are ever thankful to God for all he has given us.
We have been busy this holiday week. Our sitter was off this week so Mallory's Mia (Cheryl) came down Sunday night and watched Mallory during the day Monday, Tuesday, & Wednesday. They got to play and spend a ton of time together one on one. They had a blast. On Wednesday night Ric, Meredith and Matt came down to spend the holiday with us. We spent Thanksgiving together and had tons of food and dessert. We stuffed ourselves silly and had a nap. Mallory even got to have a treat. She had Squash with her cereal for Thanksgiving. She wasn't sure about it at first but by the end of the weekend she was really enjoying it. We are going to try a new veggie each week. She is even eating in her high chair now. We have to stuff a thick blanket around her so she doesn't slide over to the side but it works very well.
On Saturday we spent the day at my parents. My Grandmother was in town and we had a huge celebration for her 90th birthday. Her entire side of the family came to my parents for the event. All of her grandchildren and 2 of her children were there. She had a great time, There was cake, presents, and even a slide show with a bunch of old photographs of her. It was a great party for her and we all had a wonderful time. We have had a wonderful Thanksgiving holiday with family. We hope you have as well.

Playing on the tummy.

Playing with the links

Concentrating

Naptime snuggled in pillows

YUMMY!

Cat nap with her face covered with her lovie

Sweet Bella after a very rough week.

Well I know the loyal Mallory followers were disappointed to find no posting last week. Sorry about that. It will be explained later in the blog. Last weekend Mark and I celebrated 6 years of wonderful marriage. We are truly blessed to have so much fun together and a house full of love and now with the addition of our sweet little one even more love. To celebrate we went to a wonderful romantic dinner and Mallory stayed with Nana and Pop Pop for the night. However at midnight Bella began having seizures again and by 7 AM she had had 8 of them. We were mentally and physically exhausted and devastated because she had such a great week. We called the vet who ended up meeting us and gave her a shot. The vet was not ready to give up and she helped us to get motivated to not give up as well. We have upped her dosage of phenobarbital and we have started her on a steroid regime to help reduce any swelling in the brain. The first part of the week was hard but this weekend we have seen great improvement and have had our first seizure free weekend in 2 weeks! We are hopeful that they will be few and far between for a while. And we will get to spend as much time as she has left with her happy and with limited seizures. But with all of that going on last Sunday there was no time or energy to post the blog.

As for our little angel Mallory. She has had a great week. We started rice cereal 2 time a week and the sitter says she LOVES the cereal in the day too. She has always been and continues to be a great eater! She like her momma loves food. :) We have decided she is our little roly poly now. She rolls onto her tummy and then rolls back over onto her back. She plays with her toys on her tummy and then she rolls over to put them in he mouth. When she is tired of that one, she rolls over back onto her tummy and gets another toy. Her favorite are the "links" We bought a package of 25 and she thinks they are great. We have them on her floor time quilts, her bouncer, and in her pak n play. She also is very into colors and lights. If a toy has bight colors or lights it can keep her attention much longer than anything else. She has begun to really focus on items and grab them. You can see her brain working and concentrating it wonderful to watch her learn. She has officially become a tummy sleeper. As soon as we lay her down at night she rolls right over to her tummy. One night I put her right down on her tummy. She sleeps like that all night. Also when she is sleeping she has an affinity for having her face covered. When she falls asleep on her back during nap time she has to have her lovie or her taggi covering her face. She has taken this liking to her crib at night. She rolls over and gets up close to the bumper until her face is up against it. By the morning time she is up in the corner of the bed all snuggled into the corner of the bumper. At first I panicked but have realized if I flip her over or move her I am getting bad sleep and she doesn't like it anyway and is going to be up against the bumper before I even get back to bed. So I have learned she is mobile enough to move her face if she cannot breath and she will sleep better snuggled up next to the bumper than not. Since becoming unswaddled and mobile all at once she sleeps through the night but usually wakes up about 3:30 or 4 AM and needs her paci. We are working on that. Sometimes she fusses and goes back to sleep and sometimes we need the paci. Hopefully as she gets more comfortable with her ability to move around this little wake up call will go away. We get lots of laughs now and tons of smiles. She smiles with her whole body so we love getting them because they make us laugh. Her smile is infectious.