The past few months, Kevin and I noticed that Allison’s right eye tends to drift off to the side when she’s eating or “spacing out”.  It only would happen for a second and then realign, but it was something I wanted to mention to her pediatrician.  At her 6 month appointment, I mentioned to her doctor that she appeared to have a lazy eye, but that it only occurred every now and again.  He looked at her eyes and had her follow a light and said he didn’t see any cause for concern and that I should wait until she was 18 months to get it formally evaluated.  He said that what I was seeing may be pseudostrabismus where the eye only appears to be out of alignment.  I hesitantly took his word for it and left the office.  Over the following week, we kept noticing her eye drift more and more, so I took it upon myself to find an ophthalmologist who specialized in pediatric strabismus (abnormal alignment of one or both eyes).  I found Dr. Simon in Slingerlands, and made an appointment.  We had to wait a month to get in, but it was worth it.  He was wonderful with Allie and appears to be one of the most knowledgeable doctors in his field.  After her 2 hour evaluation, she was diagnosed with amblyopia.  Amblyopia is when the eye appears healthy, but visual information is not transmitted or recognized properly through the visual and neural systems.  More commonly, “lazy eye”.  Allie’s right eye is not seeing as well her left eye, and therefore, her brain ignores the information received by her right eye in order to avoid blurred or double vision.  When she isn’t using her right eye it drifts outward.  We were advised by Dr. Simon to administer homatropine drops to her left eye (her “good” eye) in order to blur her vision and force her to utilize her weaker eye.  We are hopeful that her vision will improve in her right eye and her eyes will remain in alignment.  We go back to Dr. Simon in a few weeks to check for progress.

Here is a picture of her that we took a month ago while she was eating – when her lazy eye is most evident.  You can see her right eye is drifting a bit.

This picture was taken last week after we applied homatropine drops.  You can see her left pupil is dilated much more than her right one.

Today was another “eye drop day” and she is tolerating them very well.  We have noticed her left eye drifting a bit now and then which is a good sign.  It means she’s using her right eye like she’s supposed to.  Hopefully we’ll get a good report when we see Dr. Simon in August!

This video was taken 5 days ago.  Since Allie was around 3 months old, I would turn on Nick Jr. while I ate my breakfast in the morning so she would be somewhat entertained.  Since that was usually around 6:30am, she watched a lot of “Ni Hao, Kai Lan”.  Now it’s her favorite show and she gets so excited to see and hear the opening song.

In the video below, Allie is starting to get the hang of crawling.  She still doesn’t crawl independently yet, but she can definitely get around by scooting on her belly.  I have a feeling we’ll have a true crawler in the next couple weeks.  Time to get out those outlet covers!

  

 

Not to be cliché, but where is the time going!? It seriously feels like yesterday that Dana and I were racing  to Bellevue at 1am to meet Allie… and now she’s climbing me like a rock wall, wiggling her way around “AllieLand”, and slowly transitioning into only taking 2 naps a day. She recognizes and smiles at people she knows, and gives the stink eye to strangers (until she warms up of course). Her hair goes past her shoulder blades in the back, and beyond her nose in the front… It’s all things that developmentally should occur, but it still amazes me to watch her go through it all.

Anyway, here is a video of Allie out in our side yard from the other day during a photo session, along with one of the photos.  Enjoy!

Allie has been on solids for about three weeks now.  She has done so well with a variety of flavors and textures.  So far she has enjoyed apples, pears, bananas, apricots, sweet potatoes, and squash.  She has had mixed reviews on avocado, peas, and carrots. 

I’ve started making my own baby food using organic fruits and veggies.  It’s really easy to do and I think it’s cheaper.  The only drawback is that it’s not as fast as popping open a jar, but I feel good knowing exactly what’s being fed to her and I can control the consistency.  It’s also better for the environment because I’m not getting rid of all those glass jars!  This weekend, I plan on visiting the local farmers market to get fresh local produce and tomorrow we’re going to try some peaches.  Yum!

Allie was a busy girl this month.  She had a visit from her cousins, Maggie and Elise, and also went to Florida where she saw her cousin Katie.  She also started eating solids and began using her big girl car seat.  Her 6 month doctor visit revealed that she weighed just shy of 21 pounds and was over 27 inches long.  Click the photo for a month of pictures!

Today, Allie had her first taste of rice cereal and she loved it!!!  Here’s the video to prove it!

Our little goose-goose is almost 6 months! Can you believe it!? She is starting to interact with us more and more each day, and is really a fun loving little girl through and through. Here are a few videos of Allie from the past week.

At five and a half months, these are Allie’s favorite things:

Allie began sitting up on her own just a few days after she turned 5 months.  This video was taken the first day she began demonstrating sitting independently.  She was doing really well until Roxy walked by and she just wanted to watch the dog! haha!  She’s started having a real interest in the dog and even reaches out to touch her.  It’s really cute.

Click the photo to see 30 days of Allie!

We have a second baby as of late this afternoon.  His name is Ferdinand.  2 more to go! 

Below is a picture taken this morning.  You can see Cecil feeding Sonya.  You can also see Big Red watching the action.

Yesterday Allie became 5 months old.  Too old if you ask me!  This month she began really reaching for things.  She started gaining interest in faces and loves to reach out for your chin or nose.  She also started getting her two bottom teeth.  Luckily, she never got too irritable from teething and didn’t  end up waking up during the night.  She’s starting to tripod sit, but much prefers to be standing.  When you get her into a sitting position she'll only stay like that for a few seconds and then she’ll hurl herself  backwards in an attempt to stand.  I have a feeling that we’ll have an early walker.  Kevin and I have continued to take a daily picture of her, so we’ll have the month of April up in a few days!

On a side note, our house has become an animal sanctuary.  We live across from a pond so we always have ducks and geese walking up on our lawn.  We’ve also found turtles on our steps.  Then we have a neighbors cat that is constantly traipsing through the backyard… always on the prowl.  We used to have a skunk living under our back deck, but the skunk got evicted by a fox who then decided to make a family.  Now we have a bird who decide to make a nest in my hanging plant on the front porch.  This bird has since became family.  We’ve named her Cecil Martinez (I named her Cecil and Kevin thought that name sounded Hispanic so he gave her the last name of Martinez).   She had four eggs in her nest and we were able to watch her from one of our windows.  Then, couple of nights ago, Kevin mounted his webcam to the porch and we were able to watch her on our TV.  Tonight, one of her babies was born.  We named the little one Sonya.  While watching the new mom and her baby, we also saw the dad (nicknamed “Big Red”) stop by to drop off some food.  This is a picture taken from our webcam video.

Obviously, the plant has died.  I didn’t want to disturb nature.  Hopefully we’ll have three more babies by morning!