Gather 'round folks!

Here it is! The very first picture taken by me of an in focus, front facing, smiling Kennedy.

She has been doing so well with sitting up lately! She was sitting in her bumbo today and it took her a whole 15 minutes before she started to get tired. It might not seem like very long, but up till now she has only spent 5 minutes at most in there before she would start having a hard time breathing and we would have to take her out. She did so well that I put her on the counter and she watched me wash her bottles. She has been eating better that past few days. For about two weeks she was having problems with her bowel movements and the longer it took her to have one the less she would eat. We were giving her suppositories, but if you aren't careful babies can develop a dependence on them so I spoke to Kennedy's Pediatrician and she recommended giving her 1-2 ounces of apple juice a day to see if that would help and so far it has worked great. She is not too fond of the apple juice on its own, but we have been mixing 1 ounce of diluted apple juice with 1 ounce of formula and giving that to her daily. We call it her apple milk and she seems to be ok with the 1:1 ratio. I can't believe that Kennedy is going to be 7 month old on Thursday. Pretty soon we are going to need to start her on solids so I am going to talk with the nutritionist at the BPD clinic on Thursday about it and see if we will have to supplement her calories once she moves on to solids. She hasn't been gaining weight as well as she once was, but I think that has a lot to do with some side effects she had from trying to discontinue medications as well as the constipation causing her not to eat.

This past Wednesday I started to feel run down in the afternoon and by Thursday morning I was miserably sick. Shawn stayed home from work to care for Kennedy and Friday my mom took her while Shawn was working. Once Shawn was home it was his full responsibility to care for Kennedy so that she would be exposed to me as little as possible. I wore a mask and washed and sanitized a bunch, but today Shawn said he wasn't feeling well before he left for work. I am much better, so this time I will be able to care for Kennedy if he is sick. Now we have to watch and wait to see if Kennedy will get what we have and hope that it isn't RSV. I will keep the blog updated and let you know if she comes down with something.