ABC... West

Ugh. I don't like going to the doctor myself, let alone take Brynn!! On November 21st (Wednesday), Chad and I took Brynn to the doctor for her 4 month shots. (She's 4 months old already!!) She was not a happy camper.

Here are her stats:

Weight: 13lbs, 8oz!!
Height: 24"
Head: 40cm

We saw a different doctor than what we normally do because ours was in another office and I really wanted to do her shots the day before Thanksgiving. That way, if she ended up getting sick, we'd be home to take care of her.

Well, the doctor that we saw noticed that her eyes were crossing quite a bit and he told us that we needed to make an appointment with an eye doctor ASAP. The guy didn't have the nicest approach to it and really freaked us out. He said that he had a nephew or grandson or something (I was so freaked out, I don't remember what he said!) had crossed eyes and he's had four surgeries to attempt to correct it. He said that she may need to wear a patch or have surgery. Chad and I were so frustrated with this guy that we made an appointment with our regular doctor so that we could talk to him about it. Just a week and a half before this scary appointment, she had seen her regular doctor and he said that she should be growing out of it soon and he wasn't worried.

The next morning (Thanksgiving morning...) I got up and googled "crossed eyes" or something along those lines. I was really freaked out because it didn't seem like there was a good "solution" to the problem. Some of the results that I had read said that she may need eye drops, she may need to wear a patch, she may need glasses, or we may need to do surgery. A few of the websites that I was reading even said that if it wasn't treated by the time that she is 6-10 years old, she may go blind in the weaker eye. Talk about freaking a first time mom and dad out, we definitely were.

After reading all of the scary stuff online, we decided to cancel the appointment with her regular doctor and just go ahead and make one with the pediatric eye doctor and get her in there NOW. The next opening wasn't until December 3rd.

So, I took her to her eye appointment and she actually did really really well. I held her while they put the drops in her eyes to dialate them, which kind of freaked her out a little bit. She kept looking at me like "Mom, what did you just do to me?" Her pupils were HUGE!! Anyway, the eye doctor told me she can see out of both eyes and he really wasn't too concerned yet. I have to take her back in a month so he can check her again and then if her eyes aren't straight by the time she's 8-10 months old, we'll talk about doing surgery when she's about a year old. He said that her eyes aren't too bad, he said that they alternate being crossed, which is a good thing. He said that a patch wouldn't do any good because it's both of them that cross and it's mostly when she's concentrating on something. He said that the surgery isn't a big deal, it's an outpatient procedure and it only lasts about 15 minutes.

I talked to a girl in the waiting room, whose son's eyes were "different" too. She said that he is 8 months old and they are going to do surgery on him when he's about a year old. She said that two of her cousins had the surgery done by the same doctor and the results were great. Her son's eyes didn't start crossing until he was about 4 months old, which really freaked me out. She said that for about two months, they didn't think that he could see at all but they found out at their appointment last month, that he could!! You could tell she was really relieved. His eyes were REALLY bad, he went to look up at the ceiling and as soon as his eyes focused on a spot, they just started going crazy. They went up, down, left, right and in no pattern at all. I really hope the surgery works for them.

So, I realized that her eyes aren't as bad as what they could be. Atleast she can see, and focus. We're lucky to have such a beautiful baby girl!! I haven't posted any pictures lately where you can really tell that her eyes are crossed a lot, but in most of the others that we have, they are crossed.

Some interesting information... She's getting so big now, she's so much easier to hold. She loves to talk to you when she's laying on her changing table looking out her window and to cuddle and hold on to your arm when you're holding her. We've heard a few squeaks of laughs creep out of her but no big belly laughs yet!! She's so ticklish too!! Her teeth are going to be coming in any day now, her gums are really raw!! Boy, will she let you know when she's hungry. She's got some pretty big lungs now!! We started putting rice cereal in her bedtime bottle last week and (knock on wood...) she's been sleeping from about 8-6 every night!!

Baby Brynn, we love you so much and are so lucky to have such a beautiful, kissable chubby-cheeked little girl in our lives!!

We're really diving into it this year!! (Ha ha...)

Somehow we started buying those ginornous blow up things that go in your yard a few years ago and every year, we end up with one more!! I'm not quite sure on the rhyme or reason behind the mixture of what we have but whatever, it's fun!! Here are a few of Chad last weekend. And yes, "Size Matters"!!

Today, we worked on the inside of the house. We have a lot more room to work with in the new house so we aren't quite sure how to set everything up yet.

Here's a picture of the tree, this is pretty much what it looks like now. We bought this tree last year after Christmas, for $49.99. According to the box, it was supposed to be a 7.5' skinny not so cute tree but it was going to have to do for a few years. Instead, we put the thing together and after AN HOUR AND A HALF OF JUST PUTTING THE BRANCHES ON IT AND FLUFFING THEM, we got this beautiful HUGE tree!!