It's starting to feel a lot like Christmas!!!

The weather has dropped here in South Mississippi and we have pulled out the cute coat and hat John's mom got her!! Here is a picture of her wearing it the other day!!

My dad said she looked like she needed to be in New York, not south Mississippi! Ha! I had to laugh!! Now if I can just convince her to keep the hat on longer than 2 minutes we will be staying warm this winter!!

Shots and More Shots!!

Well, today was Mallory's 12 month appointment!! She had to get 4 shots and her finger pricked to check to make sure she wasn't anemic. She cried more than I have ever seen!! It was so hard to watch and I am surprised I wasn't in tears!! She weighed 19.12 was 28.5 inches long and her head was 43 cm. She is in 10th to 15% percent on weight, less than 10% on her head and 25% on height! I just knew she would weigh 20 pounds at this appointment, but I was wrong!! For some reason, the doctor always refers to her weight saying she is a "little bitty thing". I know she doesn't have much fat on her, but when she is around other babies to me she doesn't look that much smaller than them!! Out of curiosity I asked the nurse if she thought Mallory looked smaller than normal for her age and she replied "Yes, for a 1 year old she is small" . Well, I guess to me she is just Mallory even though others think she's really small!! Maybe she is just destined to be little like I have always been, well except when I was pregnant with her!!

I also got the clearance to start slowly decreasing her prevacid to see how she does!! I am hoping to be able to get off that medicine one day so Mallory can be medicine free!! I also, asked her for some suggestions on how to get her to drink Milk out of a sippy cup and her response was not what I really wanted to hear, but she wants me to keep her drinking it from the bottle longer cause of her weight. So, sadly we will not be bottle free for a little while longer... I was afraid the doctor was going to tell me this... On the bright side I can start giving her whole milk and no more formula!! Yea!! Now I just hope her stomach can tolerate it!! I guess we will be finding out pretty soon!

All in all we had a great appointment and don't have to go back until she is 15 months!!! I am very thankful for a healthy little girl!!

Happy Thanksgiving!!!

We had a wonderful Thanksgiving with the Davis family!! Ate lots of yummy food and laughed as Mallory and Ethan entertained us all!! Mallory was introduced to some new foods and loved them all!! She at Turkey, Mac-N-Cheese, Peas, Cornbread dressing, Banana pudding and pumpkin bread!! I am so thankful that her digestive problems are much better and we are still off the reglan!! She has been eating more and more solid foods than ever and we haven't had any problems!! Praise God for this!! Here are some pictures from the day. Enjoy!

Happy 1st Birthday Mallory!!!!!

Mallory has officially turned 1!! I can't believe it!! Last weekend we celebrated her day with a family party at my parents house. I think she had lots of fun and got way to many gifts!! I had lots of fun decorating and making her dress and birthday hat! Her dress however would not have looked nearly as good if John's Nanny had not helped me with the collar... boy she was right when she said collars are hard to sew!! I think it will be while before I try another collar!! Ha! Mrs. Beth Robinson a longtime friend of our family made her adorable cake!! It was not only delicious, but super cute too!! Enjoy the pictures I have included! Most of you may have already seen these on Facebook.

Mallory has also started walking more and more since then, which is so much fun to watch!! Luckily we haven't had any accidents yet, but I am sure there will be some to come!! Mallory has also started to say more words. Her letter of the week must be "D" because she has said Daisy, Dog, Daddy, and Duck!! I sure to love watching her learn!!

Answered Prayers, Birthdays and Mallory's First Halloween!!

Mallory's first Halloween was very low key this year. Due to her age we didn't take her trick or treating and our church didn't have a fall festival here so we opted to go with a friend and her little girl Kensley to the ZOO BOO. To be honest it was fun getting out, but all we did was push her around in the stroller and I didn't get very good pictures but will post some for you to see her. At first I wasn't even going to get her a costume but after some friends fussing at me and my friend Carrie finding me one on clearance with shipping for under 12 dollars we ended up with a really cute and fuzzy white tiger cub with the cutest pink ears! I am not to sure what Mallory thought of it but she didn't complain about wearing it, which surprised me!

Mallory's first birthday is coming up in less than 3 weeks now!! It's hard to believe that she is almost one!! We are having a low key party with just family this year and I am trying to do most of it myself except the cake of course!! Our wonderful and talented friend Mrs. Beth is making her cake and I can't wait to see how cute it will be!! The pictures are a sneak peak of her party dress and invitations!

The next good news is we officially have a new realtor, and don't get me wrong I liked our last one and he was super nice,but it was just time for a change since it's getting close to a year that the house has been for sale. Hopefully our new one will work her magic and sell our house!! She sure did put my mom and I to work with her long list (3 pages!!!) of recommendations she suggested we change!! The funny thing about the list is a lot of it was getting a females perspective over a males!! However, after we completed the list the house looks more like a model home than a personal residence and the best part of all this was most of the changes were free and didn't cost a penny!!

Lastly, I took Mallory off one of her digestive/reflux medicines about a week ago. She is still on prevacid ,but I took her off Reglan. This medicine is known to have some very bad permanent side effects and has the worst label (Black) a medicine can get by the drug approval people. You might have also seen commercials about attorneys sueing over this medicine!! I am sure you are now wondering why on earth would you give such a medicine to your child, well without going into a long history all the problems we have been through, I will just tell you that the risk of side effects did not out way the benefit she was getting from the medicine. In order for Mallory to keep food down, digest any solids at all, not choke on her spit up and gain weight normally - we had to have this medicine. I can honestly say that without this medicine I am not sure where we would be today with her eating and weight gain, so in a nut shell that is why we opted to give her the medicine. Well moving on to last week, Mallory all of a sudden started doing some strange stuff with her tongue, which is a side effect of this medicine ,plus we have been on it way longer that it's recommended, so I decided to stop it. So far so good, we have spit up a few times, but nothing like it was and she has been able to digest all the solid foods I have given her ,which is a huge answered prayer!! Also, the weird tongue stuff has subsided ,which is also a relief!! Praise God for all this cause I didn't know if we would ever make it this far about 3 months ago!! I will say that Mallory has been a little extra fussy since taking her off and I am hoping it's not cause she is in pain from the lack of medicine, so I will continue to monitor this, but until any other negative changes we are REGLAN free!!! My prayer now is that one day in the near future we can introduce some of the foods that she wasn't able to digest even while on Reglan and once that happens I will know her digestive system is finally maturing!! Praising God for all these steps in the right direction and for answering our many prayers!! God is good all the time and all the time God is good!!

I will close with one of my favorite bible verses. It's Philippians 4:4-7

”Rejoice in the Lord always. I will say it again: Rejoice! 5Let your gentleness be evident to all. The Lord is near. Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.”