A Rough Start...

Ellie's first month as a one-year old has been a rough one to say the least. It got started with a bit of a tumble at Mom's house. She's pulling up on everything and one of her favorite places to do it is on the window ledges at Mom's. They're really low to the ground and allow her to see out the window, which she loves. So, Aaron and I were out for the night and all three kids were at Mom's and from what we can figure (Sam was the only one that actually saw her fall), she slipped, caught her cheek on the window ledge on the way down, and then smacked down on her hand, REALLY hard. She ended up with a lovely bruise on her cheek and by the next morning, a really swollen hand. We were so worried about her hand that I took her in for x-rays the next day. No breaks - just really bruised, but since her bones are completely formed yet and much of her hand is cartilage, the entire thing was bruised and looked terrible. We wrapped it up for a few days to help with the swelling and to keep her from hitting it again and while it looks much better now, more than two weeks later, you can still see the bruising across her knuckles and it's still a little sensitive to the touch.

Our next trip to the doctor was early Saturday morning when Ellie woke up covered in red welps - yep, it's chicken pox. She was scheduled to get her first dose of the vaccine in two months, but she was evidently exposed at some point in the last week. We're really not sure where she got them because she doesn't come in actual physical contact with many other kids, but nonetheless, she's covered. I think it's a pretty mild case, hardly any on her arms and legs, but it's still no fun. She had a few that looked infected, so the doctor put her on an antibiotic just in case, some eye drops for her left eye that also looked really red, and a prescription-strength antihistamine to help with the itching. Thankfully, the antihistamine seems to be working really well because she's not scratching at all. She's such a trooper, but it's so hard to see her pretty little face covered up with those nasty bumps. Poor little thing! Let's hope the other 11 months of her first year turn out a little better!