17 Months Old

At 17 months, Layla is as busy as ever. She now tries to climb on everything or run everywhere and as a result is falling a lot more as she tries out these new climbing/running skills. She loves when the phone rings and loves when people come to visit at our house. Layla still enjoys any kind of writing utensil (adding paintbrush to the list this month) and really has a love for music and dancing (her favorite dance floor is her crib). She is so fun and funny right now and Ryan has officially declared it as his favorite age.

In other news, the last month of Layla's life has been pretty memorable and right up there with momentous. One month ago today, Layla was officially diagnosed with having seizures. These are not grand mal seizures, but instead are staring episode looking seizures that are often not caught until years down the road when the child is school age. We were very lucky to catch them early (Ryan noticed them right around the year mark).

Enjoy pictures throughout of our future Shawn Johnson at tumbling. Ryan's school had conferences so his day ended early on Friday, which allowed for him to experience tumbling and for me to take pictures :-)

Since that day one month ago, we have gone for a second opinion to the reputable UW Madison and we were told the same information as we were told from the first neuro. Layla was indeed having seizures and needed to go on medication.

Although I know the seizures need to be stopped, the medication has been the single hardest part of this entire ordeal for me. It is funny how things work, when I was teaching I had a difficult time understanding why parents wouldn't just "try" putting their kids on medication if it was recommended by the doctor and if it could help their child. I now understand completely. Medication can change your child's personality, sleep habits, eating habits and the list goes on and on and on. Layla is currently on her first medication and is acting out more and not sleeping as well. But she is also 17 months old and constantly teething and has had a cold and a stomach bug in recent weeks...so as you can imagine we are unsure what is normal for a 17 month old and what is the medication.

On a very positive note, since going on the meds Layla's talking/babbling has somewhat exploded. She is talking and practicing talking all the time now. Most of what Layla says sounds very much like a foreign language (believe me it is still music to our ears), but she has successfully added dog, ball, Barney, pumpkin, dad, the monkey sound & "you do" to her vocabulary just in the last 8 days.

I will keep you updated from time to time about Layla's (hopefully complete lack of) seizures. In other words, we hope to keep this storyline as boring as possible :-)

Now on a completely different note...did I tell you about the one curl on top of Layla's head yet?

It is pretty unruly, but it is also the perfect home for a little barrette!

Have a good weekend everyone!!