The Rankin Zoo 

For those of you who look at my little Twitter feed on the side of the blog I just wanted to follow up on my mention of a pediatric ENT - I don’t want anyone to worry!

Pearl has unilateral choanal atresia - which basically just means that she was born with one nostril that is basically closed. This isn’t a big deal, her other nostril is fine and allows her to breath without any trouble. However, for a few different reasons, we’re thinking of having them do a procedure to open up the closed nostril. This requires a CT scan so the doctor can see exactly what he’s up against. We went in for the CT scan this morning but the order from the doctor wasn’t specific enough for the technician - it didn’t say exactly what she was supposed to do the CT scan of. It was fairly dumb because the order did say “choanal atresia” and that is a condition of the nose - hence the CT scan should be of the nose.

It probably wasn’t the tech’s fault but she couldn’t do anything until someone (she claimed it had to be the doctor who ordered the CT) told her what exactly to do CT of. This was 8:15am so our doctor wasn’t readily available. Being in a hospital full of doctors apparently didn’t help either. However, when the radiologist finally got there he apparently said something to the effect of, “duh, we should do a CT scan of her nose.”

So, it all worked out fine. Pearl was such a great kid that they didn’t have to conk her out - she stayed still for the quick scan. It will be a couple of weeks before we know the results of the scan and make a decision about her nose.

About a week ago Pearl started to babble. It’s pretty standard baby babble but we love it. First of all, Pearl has been such an “easy” baby - her temperament is just so chill that she doesn’t make tons of noise. Sure, she cries now and then but for the most part she’s pretty quite. Second of all, it seems like Coral learned out to talk when she was two weeks old - so it’s been a long time since we’ve had a babbling baby in the house.

It is very cute. If you respond to her babbling she usually babbles more - with even more expression. I think she really thinks she’s having a conversation with you. If you get a good babble conversation going with her she can go non-stop - except for the occasional break to flash you a super-cute smile.

I’ve been meaning to post this for a while now. Coral has a friend, Champe, whose mom does some work for a company called Handwriting Without Tears. Coral’s nanny, Kirstin, is also a photographer. Somehow, all that stuff came together with some kind of photo shoot and the result is Coral’s picture up on their web site.

Unfortunately, Coral did not get paid for this engagement but we’ll add it to her portfolio. I’m sure she’ll hit it big at some point. I can’t wait!

It seems that time flies and my pre-loaded pictures of the day have run out already. I have a plan for getting more pictures in the pipeline but I haven’t enacted the plan yet. So, no pictures for now but the feature should make a comeback soon!

Yesterday we took Pearl back to see Dr. Fields (the pediatric pulmonologist - he rocks). He checked her out and asked us how things looked when we monitored her with the pulse oximeter. We gave him an update on things. He listened to her lungs and declared her pretty much good to go (from the lung perspective). So, for the first time since November 14th Pearl got to sleep all night on “room air” - no supplemental oxygen!

We had the pulse oximeter on her all night and would check on it whenever we happened to wake up (which, not surprisingly, is fairly often when you have two kids in the house) and she looked good all night. We’ll keep monitoring her for a few nights and if everything looks good we’ll just spot check her here and there until our next appointment with Dr. Fields (in about a month).

This is a great milestone and we’re happy to be done with the oxygen (hopefully - we’re keeping it around in case we need it). Once we get through winter I think the Dr. Fields will let us off the hook for good (or at least many months).

In other news, on Tuesday the pediatric ophthalmologist (who happened to go to med school with Dr. Fields), diagnosed Pearl with congenital alternating exotropic strabismus. Sounds fancy but apparently it’s not a huge deal. However, it does mean that we get to have Pearl wear an eye patch for about 90 minutes each day (alternating eyes), which I’m sure will be tons of fun. The good news is that this treatment solves the problem for most kids but I guess it will be a few months before we know how it’s going.

Pearl’s other ailment these days is a rash on her skin that seems to come and go. I think it’s most likely a combination of the really dry air and our detergent. So we’re rewashing everything in a different detergent and we try to keep the house humidified. Various creams and oils are being applied. B is trying to avoid the next step, which is cutting dairy from her diet, and I’m trying to avoid what I suppose would be an eventual step: a pediatric dermatologist! If I had a nickel for every pediatric specialist we’ve seen… I wouldn’t even come close to covering even our co-pay!

The paradoxical thing about all of this is that if you look at Pearl (okay, with here eyes closed so you don’t see that they wander and her clothes on so you don’t see her rash) she looks like a totally healthy, strapping, big baby. In fact, she is quite healthy and strong - it’s just all these little things that seem to pile up.

Maybe I’ll get some photos up one of these days…

Sorry for not updating more frequently. I will try and get some photos and videos posted soon. In the meantime, here are some updates.

Over the Christmas holiday, mostly due to the activities, Coral started skipping nap from time to time. In the past, skipping nap resulted in a very unhappy evening but Coral has been handling it well. She still naps on about half the days. We’re in a bit of a tough spot. If she skips nap the afternoons can get a little rough and bedtime has to get pushed up to 7pm or so. If we do a nap then she tends to sleep for 2 hours and then it’s hard to get her asleep before 10pm. We’ve tried giving her a short nap and then waking her up but that hasn’t worked well at all - it makes the evenings really hard and she stays up late. Hopefully we can move through this phase fairly quickly because it’s a bit annoying.

Coral has started gym class and ballet class and it’s hard to say which one she loves more. Gym class is every Saturday and she enjoys jumping on the trampoline the most (big surprise there). Ballet class is every Tuesday and it’s a much smaller class. Coral’s nanny, Kirstin, had already taught her the basics so she was able to get up to speed quickly (the other girls in the class have been at it for a few weeks already).

Pearl is doing well. She had a bit of a cold a couple of weeks ago that made her a bit cranky but she got over it quickly. She had her two month check-up this past week and her lungs seem to be doing great (we’re visiting the pulmonologist next week). The doctor was a little concerned about her eye so we’re going to add pediatric opthamologist to our collection of specialists - we should know more next week. Pearl is smiling and even laughing some, which is really funny (I’ll try to get some pictures or video). She’s even grabbing at things some - at least that’s what it looks like to us. It looks like some of her hair fell out but not much and what she has left seems to be getting longer - and it’s still red.