April 28, 2010 - Long Time No Blog

Our life has been pretty "regular" lately: Kristoffer works really hard at the office and plays squash really hard on the court; Grace reads really hard at home and plays really hard across the street with her friends; I do lots of other things really hard to keep us all happy and organized and good.

Our trip home to Boston is coming up a week from Saturday and I think the timing is just perfect. Grace's battle to gain weight has hit another plateau: she didn't gain any weight in the last 4 weeks which puts her, at 8 kg (17.6 lbs), well below the normal range for her age (about 0-1 percentile on any growth chart I can find). Two blood tests to screen for gluten intolerance (celiac disease) have come back inconclusive: the first time because we learned that Grace has a deficiency in one type of antibody necessary for the blood test to be accurate and the second time because the lab in South Africa screwed up. From 12 to 13-months-old and on a gluten-free diet Grace gained 300 grams, but this past month from 13 to 14-months she was also on a gluten-free diet and gained nothing. So we really don't know where we stand on that front, but what we do know is that she is eating a good amount of healthy food as well as foods that are really high in fat - yes I butter everything for her! - and nothing seems to be working. This is where our trip to Boston comes in; we are waiting for our appointment to be confirmed at Children's Hospital so that we can make sure that Grace is just perfectly petite and not facing a serious medical challenge to gaining weight.

The good news is that Grace is developing wonderfully, which is really the most important thing. She can walk for real now; even if she doesn't always do it she can do it perfectly whenever she wants and often does it when nobody is specifically asking her to. She can say a lot of words; the ones she says the most are "ball" and "Tsavo" and her newest word is "door" which she proudly says every time she sees or goes through a door. Example: today she screamed "door" over and over and over to the doctor and his nurse while pointing to the door because she hates being weighed and desperately wanted to leave. Or because she wanted them to leave so she could play with their toys in peace.

She has such a sweet and funny personality, with a bit of stubborn and bossy thrown in for good measure. And, even though she is small, she is still keeping up with all the other babes who talk on their mothers' cell phones...

...and send text messages to their friends.

[Note: not on the same day as these pictures were taken, but two weeks ago I left my phone unlocked by mistake and Grace did somehow manage to send a text message to my friend that said "fish" and nothing else. Think she is asking for it?]

LMW