life well loved: I'M BACK!

I can't believe its been 3 weeks since I've written! Dad actually called me today asking me to post so it was good motivation to update. I'm just glad he misses it. :)

So Kelsie is 16 months old this week and still changing so fast. Biggest milestone this week is climbing! She has been doing a little bit of climbing for a while but she's doing a lot more of it over the past couple of days. Twice today, she got quiet and I found her in a chair. Once in the rocking chair in the bonus room, and once in big chair in her room. Just found her sitting there reading a book. I had to laugh. She is also crazy about being outside. She will go find her shoes, carry them to the door and start begging (fussing) to go outside. She will even bring my shoes to me when she is ready to go outside haha. She repeats a lot of what we say and is always learning to say new words. I just bought her some big blocks (like Legos) and it is the first toy that has held her attention for more than 2 minutes! She will actually sit there for a significant amount of time trying to put them together! Finally, an activity to hold her attention! : )

In terms of her CF, we have had some GI issues lately so that's been a little challenging. She had a stomach virus a month ago, she vomited a few times over the course of 24 hours, and had a fever but then seemed fine until a week later when she started having really large fatty loose stools. Her doctor was concerned and suggested we change to a different batch of enzymes (in case the ones we had were defective) and when that didn't work, she had us increase her reflux medicine (because the antacids help the enzymes work better). That seemed to do the trick because her stools returned to normal the next day. However, the following week, she had another random very large loose stool, then vomited a huge amount the next day. At that point, her doctor asked that we bring her in for xrays to rule out constipation or DIOS (distal intestinal obstruction syndrome) which is a serious complication of constipation that predominantly affects people with CF. And the xrays did in fact show that Kelsie was pretty significantly constipated. This was surprising to me because she had about 2-3 soft formed stools everyday so I never really questioned her being backed up. But she was, so we had to do a massive clean out! Poor thing has pooped so much the past week! 35 times to be exact! haha. She had to take high doses of Miralax (4 capfuls the first 2 days which is a huge amount - normal for her age would be like 1/2 cap!). So needless to say, its been a messy week. And now my challenge is how to figure out how to manage and monitor this so it doesn't happen again. The doctor feels we will probably need to keep her at maintenance dosing of 1/2-1 cap every day or every other day depending on how often she is going. People with CF have a harder time with constipation. This was our doctors explanation on why "Once we are treating their pancreatic insufficiency, so not giving them a reason to have loose stools, then the chloride channel defect can mean less water going into the stool, the same way there's less water going into the lung secretions. And that can lead to intermittent constipation. Some kids seem to have major problems, some have none. It's hard to know." She said that we will just have to monitor stooling, appetite, and vomiting. As with everything else, I will just have to stay attuned to any subtle changes. Otherwise, from a respiratory standpoint, she is doing great! So we are very thankful for that!

We have had a busy 3 weeks and I have a lot of cute pictures and videos that I want to share. :) (Facebook has been getting all my updates lately, simply because its easier to post there directly from my phone). So i'll start adding them on little by little.

Kelsie's 1st time fishing on grandpa's boat, Father's Day!

Going down the slide at the park. She is still a little scared about going down by herself. :)

Eating right out of the chip bag, because she has CF and can eat all the fat and calories she wants!

She LOVES dogs and thinks this manikin at Old Navy is so cool!

Kelsie and Cousin Will - for one its the paci, for the other, the thumb!

Kelsie's new favorite activity.

Blowing me a kiss as I leave for work. Its still hard to leave her!

Drawing on her face with sidewalk chalk (and eating it!). But at least its Carolina blue. I guess she's just starting earlier putting on her Tarheel game face! ;)

She LOVES corn on the cob! Here is a video of her eating corn from dad's garden.

At our cousin Zack's Wedding, 6/23/2012 : She was looking pretty adorable running around the dance floor and hugging on boys (her cousin Cole).

Then we took her on her the lake and on Papaw's boat for the first time this year!

Playing in the pool with cousin Will.

And tickling baby Ava's toes. :) She likes to do this now, she will just come up to our feet and try to say "tickle tickle tickle". She makes her voice high like we do and it so cute!