Merry Christmas from Shayla

Shayla's first Christmas!

Look what Santa left under the tree!

Shayla loves her new Pink Leopard!

When You're Smiling...

It has been seven days now that I have been on a no dairy, no wheat(gluten), no soy, no egg, and no peanut diet- NO FUN! This is per the instructions of the pediatric GI specialist that we saw last week. She suspects that Shayla has a protein allergy to one of the five most common allergens and when I eat this food it gets to her in my breast milk. So I have to cut everything out of my diet(and believe me it feels like everything... I especially miss bread and chocolate!). After a couple of weeks I will add them back in one at a time. We are feeling optimistic that it has finally started to make her feel better- and we are seeing more smiles!! YAY! That makes it all worthwhile!!

We finally got our baby girl to smile for the camera a few times. She smiles for us, but when we get the camera out she gets distracted by it. Here is what we've captured so far.

Grandma Lois & Papa Mike

At the beginning of the month we were so happy to have Matt's parents visit. They flew down from St. George and stayed with us for about a week. It was a good excuse for Matt to play some golf for the first time in Shayla's life. He enjoyed a few games with his dad. Other than that, we didn't do much but just hang around the house as Grandma and Grandpa got to know Shayla. They were so good to us. They took care of Shayla and allowed us to actually get to go to the mall TOGETHER- its been a while. We don't get out much :) They made us spaghetti and Mike's famous chili with lots of yummy leftovers! Shayla really seemed to like them. She finally got to meet her Papa Mike, who's voice on the speakerphone has been fascinating her for weeks now. She smiled and talked to Grandma Lois one day for longer than we have every seen her do it with us. We really had a nice time.

Shayla's "Day" Updated

Thank you everyone for your love and encouragement. We survived one more obstacle in this journey so far. The results of the MRI came back and we found out that Shayla has another heart defect called Partial Anomalous Pulmonary Venous Return (PAPVR). It's fortunate that they were able to find and diagnose this and the chances are good that it can also be corrected with surgery. The next step is to meet with the surgeons- armed with lots of questions- and hope to set a date for the surgery. We will keep you all posted.

Shayla and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day

We spent yesterday morning at Texas Children's Hospital getting an MRI of Shayla's heart. Normally an MRI is not that big of a deal, but when you are 2 months old and need to be sedated it is not very fun. We were not allowed to feed Shayla after 2am and so when we arrived at the hospital at 6am she was already unhappy. After an hour wait it was time to get an IV.

Here she is being so good while we dress her in a tiny circus print hospital gown. She didn't know what was coming. The nurses stuck her four times and still couldn't get the IV(you know how that goes they tie your arm off with the rubber band- which she hated- and dig around with the needle yuck!).

Its so hard when your baby looks at you as if to say "please help me, save me, feed me... do something" and you cant do anything for her. You wonder if she will ever forgive you.

After about half an hour of torture they decided they would have to put her under with gas to get the IV (so they could put her under...) Here is our tough little one fighting the gas.

Before you think we are crazy for taking pictures at a time like this imagine how interested she will be to see them when she grows up. The MRI took over an hour and they got all the images they needed. We took a sad little girl home to sleep off the drugs. The nurse said she would have a hangover for about a day and we could tell she was not feeling well. Notice her poor little bruised hands.

We have an appointment with our doctor next week to go over the MRI results.

Happy Halloween!

Halloween came to Texas and we noticed there was another Tigger in the house. Can you guess which one is the real Tigger?

We spotted the imposter hiding inside a jack-o-lantern. Clever disguise....

Later, we followed a trail of wrappers and found that the imposter had gotten into the Halloween candy and had gorged herself...

Once captured, the Tigger imposter attempted to frighten us with her ferocious ROAR!

We were finally able to subdue her and she was so cute we dicided to keep her.

6 weeks old!!!

Well, this week our Shay-Monster turned 6 weeks old. She got a new stuffed Panda Bear from Papa Mike and Grandma Lois, lounged by the pool like a celebrity, took an adventure to Old Town Spring, and graced us with her first smile! While we didn't exactly capture the smile on camera, we got pretty close. Take a look at the picture of her in the green onesie.

Stay tuned next week for another update. Enjoy the pictures!!!

The Shayla Dance