Almost Christmas

It's been quite a while since our last update. Everything's going very well with Nora. She had her first vaccine at her last doctor's appointment, just this past Tuesday. She received only the Daptacel DTaP shot this visit and will probably be getting the RotaTeq rotavirus vaccine next week. We wanted to separate them so if she had any adverse reactions we could isolate the cause to a specific one.

She's up to 12 lbs pound now and is 23" long! This puts her at the 75th percentile for height (is it length until she can walk?) and weight.

Nora has been doing a lot of babble talking lately, she has moods where she'll throw a fit until we put her onto her back and let her just talk to us. She's holding her head up extremely well and has been sucking a lot on her fist, but hasn't yet discovered her thumb.

Aside from that, things are finally starting to settle down around here. After our loss of Leeloo, unfortunately things got worse before getting better. My grandmother (my mother's mother, and the last remaining of my grandparents) passed away a little over two weeks ago. She had been having heart problems for the past year, had a valve ballooning procedure a few months ago, which worked well at first, and actually had seemingly successful open heart surgery about a month ago.

Unfortunately while the surgery and initial recovery went well, she ran into some problems later on. The most significant problem seemed to be excessive fluid retention, which may have been caused by an underlying problem, instead of being related to the heart. She was back in the hospital at least a day before her situation got really bad, so there was at least some time when the doctors had a chance to intervene. While they ultimately not successful, I'm happy she had a chance to fight, both in the months of heart procedures and in the end. She was 90 years old.

We're happy that Nora's Great Grandma had a chance to meet her a few months back. While we're so sad she's no longer with us, back when we announced our pregnancy she was pessimistic about her health and if she'd be around to see Nora at all. It's good that her first heart valve procedure gave her a few extra months of time to meet her first great grandchild.

Thanksgiving was a bust, but we're looking forward to the Christmas holiday now. For a while we were thinking about adopting a dog or a third cat, and now that Cosette is alone we're pretty settled on another cat now. It's at least something new to look forward to.