7 Months

Christmas this year was amazing. Having Sophia here gave the holiday a whole new meaning. Christmas Eve we tried her in a restaurant. We went to Legal Sea food. Sophia enjoyed being passed between people at our table and watching the commotion going on around her. She even made friends with the people in the next booth. She is a ham!

That night she put on her Christmas PJ’s and fell fast asleep. She woke Christmas morning around 5:30am. Ignoring Daddy’s objections, we went right out to open presents. She had a blast! So did Daddy and me.

She loved emptying her stocking. She did most of it herself.

Then came her presents. People told me that she would be most interested in the paper. Not Sophia. She ripped open the presents and was interested in the actual present. We would try to move it out of the way so she could open more but she would roll over to it and play with the box.

So Daddy and I used her interests in our favor. She would unwrap a gift and then Daddy would set it up. While she was exploring the new toy Daddy and I would exchange gifts. It worked out nicely. Around 8:00am she had a meltdown and went right to bed.

After her nap she played in the pile of wrapping paper we left for her.

We spent the rest of the afternoon at my sister Teri-Ann and Adam’s house with my Mom, Don, Adrienne and Keir (Adrienne’s fiancé.) We had a great time!

Sophia had us all laughing because she kept pulling herself up on her new wagon Nana Deb and Don bought her and trying to get her presents out of it.

Some of her favorite gifts were her wagon and talking dog from Nana Deb and Don, her floppy green frog from Auntie Teri-Ann and Adam, her sweater and hat (the one in the picture above) from Auntie Adrienne and Keir, and her singing stage from Daddy and me.

Christmas night she fell asleep and slept through the night….something we don’t see much of these days!

My family Christmas party was rescheduled due to the snow storm that we had. The party was the Sunday after Christmas. Normally Sophia would cry if a lot of people tried to hold her, but that day she didn’t care. She played the typical Sophia game of, “I will ignore you if you are looking at me, but I will ham it up to get your attention if you are not!” She played that a lot with her great grandmother, Nana Betty.

Everyone thought she looked beautiful in her Christmas dress that her Nana Ferrara bought her.

Of course, she was spoiled at the party. She got her first truck, Care Bear, books, and an ornament for our tree…along with a lot of other great gifts. It was a good time. I am already looking forward to next year’s party.

Developmentally Sophia is doing amazing. She has decided that she isn’t going to put a lot of effort into crawling. She will get on all fours and rock back and forth, but that’s about it. If she really wants something she will roll to it. Her newest trick is that she can independently pull herself up to standing from sitting. Once she is standing she can take a few steps to the side holding on to the furniture. She also has learned that she only needs to hold on with one hand. She can throw a ball independently. She has begun to make fishy faces and her raspberries have become more frequent and wet. She now waves bye-bye and hello. All you have to do is say bye-bye and she waves. It is funny when a stranger says it and she responds with a wave. She also claps all the time when she does something she is proud of or when you say, “Yah, Sophia!” Her claps always come with a big two- toothed smile. She also bounces when you sing “bouncy bouncy bounce!” That too comes with big smiles. We are still introducing new signs with her and are hoping in the next month or two she will start using them fluently.

Of course I can’t write without touching on her medical status. The beginning of December was great and it has been a little hairy the last couple of weeks. I am glad to report that we have had no ear infections. Yesterday, we went to the doctors for a sinus infection. He treated her with an antibiotic to clear it up and to prevent an ear infection. He also ordered some blood tests to test her immune system before we give her any more vaccines to make sure that a virus isn’t causing her rashes. Rashes? Read on!

We began introducing more food the second week of December. Every food that we introduced she would break out into a rash. At first the rash was small areas and light red, but recently the rashes are covering larger portions of her body, are redder, and are occurring with almost every food I feed her; even the ones she was fine with days and weeks before. I contacted the GI doctor on Friday and she wanted Sophia to have the RAST test done, it is a blood test that checks for allergies. I went on Monday and they couldn’t get blood from her. The lab technician told me to wait until the bruising went away and then try it again. This would have been fine except on Tuesday she broke out with a rash from her rice cereal. This concerned Mike and me, so I contacted the GI doctor and she was also extremely concerned. She took Sophia off all solids foods until we figure out what is going on. She also requested that I take her to have her blood drawn today at Mass General West.

Desperate, I contacted my allergist and he was able to see her today. After hearing her history, he immediately did skin tests for high allergy foods. The only problems with these tests are that most of the foods in the tests Sophia has not been exposed to yet. Though white potatoes, carrots, peas, and chicken were part of the test and she was exposed to them only getting a rash from peas. She did get a rash recently from chicken and carrots but I think it was caused by the rice cereal I mixed with it not the actual foods themselves. The tests verified she was allergic to celery and peas….Who is allergic it those?! What concerned the doctor with this test was the reaction didn’t show up for 20-25 minutes after the test. It should have showed up 10-15 minutes. This could mean that she has delayed allergic reactions to foods. He is doing a 48 hour test right now testing for skin reactions to soy and milk. This is done by taping two silver plates to her back one with soy on it and the other with milk. In 48 hours I will remove them and see if they left eczema marks. If they did then she has allergies to them. He plans to see her back in one month to test for environmental allergies, fruits, and other foods. Since we are not sure what is causing these reactions, the doctor wants her to carry an epi-pen. He wants to be cautious. The doctor also ordered some blood tests that we had done today.

So, tests have been done and we wait for results. At this point, we know she is allergic to peas and celery. We are waiting for her labs to come back to shed some light on her immune system, if she has other food allergies, if she has been exposed to lead or if this could possibly be Celiac Disease. We will be getting her labs back in about a week. I will update you all when I know more. Thankfully I have an amazing husband who took the day off and came with me to these appointments. He even went in with Sophia to get her blood drawn. I waited in the hallway because I couldn’t bare to hear that “why are you letting them hurt me cry” one more time.
On the upside, Sophia has no idea what is going on. She is a happy baby without a care in the world. She is gaining weight and thriving, which makes me believe this is something she will outgrow and in a few years this will just be a memory to tell her about when she is older. Like a wise woman told me when I gave birth to Sophia, “Don’t worry until there is something to worry about.” I am taking her advice and it is getting me through everyday.

I hope everyone is having a great start to the new year and that it brings only happiness and good health!