Happy Birthday Avery!

Avery is amazing.  Not that I have to tell anyone who has met her about that fact.  She is charismatic, sweet and she has spunk like you couldn't imagine.  She has enough personality to knock your socks off.

 Avery got pretty sick a few months ago.  She came down pretty quickly with RSV, but had a really rough time with it.  She was hospitalized for a few rough nights and on oxygen while she recovered.  She was on nebulizer treatments for about a week afterwards, but it took a lot out of her and about a three week period to fully recover.  It was a hard time for her.

Avery celebrated her one year birthday on May 13th!!! She had a homemade cake and she absolutely LOVED every bit of it.  Even though she is still primarily fed through her g-tube she is making a strong effort to eat things by mouth.  You can see in the picture below that she made a big dent into her birthday cake.  She had most of it all over her, but she was laughing and smiling and thought that everyone singing was just the coolest thing in the world.  

 The picture below is of sweet Pei-Pei and Avery.  She is the same baby that was pictured when Avery was first hospitalized.  It's crazy to see that they are STILL about the same size.  Pei will be one in October.  She's Avery's very best friend!

We've PCS'd (fancy way of saying moved) away from Grand Forks and the girls and I are currently in Texas.  Matt is in California while we wait for housing to become available.  Avery, Madi and Kailee are all loving being "home" in Texas with both sets of their amazing grandparents.  We've been soaking up the heat, lounging by pools and just enjoying being around family and friends for the first time since Avery was born.  It's been the most incredible time.  We are looking forward to moving to Travis AFB with hesitancy just because we don't know what lies ahead. 

It was so hard to say goodbye to our friends in Grand Forks.  We love them so much.  They were our rock during the hard times there.  We will miss them all so much.  You guys know who you are!

Life still isn't stable, normal or easy.  We are still trying to get into a "normal" flow of things.  Surrounding ourselves with friends and family has helped to heal the wounds of everything that has happened in the last year.

Avery is incredible.  She is now 15 months old.  She weighs about 18lbs and is about 28" long.  She is still teeny tiny in both height and length, but proportionate.  She is 50% for height to weight.  She had her OI clinic just recently and there were no new fractures confirmed.  We suspect that she may have had a fracture on her right ankle.  We discovered that she has growth stress lines on her bones in her legs from when she was malnourished as a baby.  As I understand it, it means nothing, it's just like a line from where she stopped growing for a while and then started again.  However, it frustrates me to know that it exists.  I wish I could turn back time and fix everything for Avery.  She did start PAM while we were in Omaha, though! Woo hoo!!!

We also discovered while in Omaha that there is a chance that Avery may be deaf in her right ear.  We have to wait until we get to California and can find a Pediatrician and Pediatric ENT who is good and will work with Avery. In the meantime, we've been teaching her some signs (more, please, mommy, daddy, hungry, sick).  She pretty much just says more and please...but it's adorable, so that's ok!

Avery still isn't walking.  She can crawl super fast now, though.  She just recently realized that she could crawl up the stairs.  And as of today she can officially stand up in the middle of the floor without any assistance.  It's incredible to see her growing in such amazing ways.  She really fills our lives with such pride and joy.

Avery still relies on the g-tube for all of her feeds.  She does take liquids by mouth now - she drinks from a straw!  She doesn't seem to be aspirating on thin liquids as much as she was before so hopefully when we get to California we can get a swallow study done to confirm what I'm suspecting and get her off of simply thick.  I'd also really like to start trying to wean her off of her tube.  I think her oral aversion has lessened a lot more now and she shows so much more interest in food and drinks than she ever did before.  She is always wanting to eat whatever everyone else is eating or drinking.

I'm looking forward to a new life in California.  I'm hoping that we can start over as a family and just make things work.  Things have been really, really hard on all of us and being in Grand Forks didn't help.  It was really hard being in a place where there were always people who knew us and judged us.  I always felt like there were eyes on me and our family.  It's going to be nice to go somewhere that no one knows us and our story is ours to tell.