Pumpkins, football, and fun...

Well, a one year fun birthday meant a 12-month checkup wasn't far behind. Savannah was healthy at 21 pounds. The goal is to triple the birth weight by a year, so she was just a half pound below that which wasn't bad at all. Yay! She was 30 inches tall. She was 49% in weight and 67% in height... tall and skinny! The doctor also commented that she was smart with her words and catching on to things he would do and say. He called her "exceptionally sharp." :)

Savannah hasn't been able to tolerate switching to regular milk... her tummy just doesn't handle it. So, we're going to leave her on her special formula until she is 15 months and then try again. In the meantime, we are supposed to be working on getting her to drink her formula out of a cup instead of a bottle. She loves her juice in the cup but when you put her milk in there, she'll have no part of it. I'm afraid we might have to do sippy cup bootcamp and just pack all of the bottles up and go cold turkey... but I'd really rather not go that route. Ugh, parenting is hard sometimes!

Now that she is a year old and over 20 pounds, she can legally ride in her car seat facing forward, which she doesn't like much better than backwards! :)

A checkup also unfortunately meant vaccinations. I recently did some research on vaccinations and I learned a lot of cool stuff. I had never really thought anything about them before because I just figured if we were supposed to get them, then that was that... whats to research, right?! Well, I read a book by Dr. Sears (I know he is kind of weird) and while I did not agree with everything in the book, he did make some very good points and I thought his research was solid. His book was called the Vaccine Book (original, I know) and was actually not an anti-vaccine book like I first thought. It gives the ingredients of the vaccines, tells you about how they are made, tells you the history of the vaccine as well as the history of the disease, and then kind of gives a risk vs. benefit summary. I thought it was very educational. All that to say, after reading it, I did have a few concerns about the side effects of some of the vaccinations Savannah was scheduled for. Since she didn't get any shots at her 9 month appointment, she was scheduled for seven shots at her 12 month appointment, which would have resulted in a total of 10 vaccinations at once. Well, when I started to think about it... does it really make sense that we'd put 10 scary and sometimes deadly diseases in a little body at one time and ask it to produce immunity? In real life, a child would never be exposed to chickenpox, hepatitis, measles, mumps, rubella, polio, pneumonia, etc... all in one day. Anyway, it just didn't make sense to me. So, I wrote down my concerns and discussed them with the doctor at her appointment. He was very understanding and very much in agreement with my feelings. We agreed that while vaccinations are an awesome thing and they have eliminated a lot of illnesses and prevented a lot of deaths, there were some we wanted to wait to get at a later time.

The reason for this approach is two fold. The first reason is that as the child gets older, the risks of side effects are minimized. Their bodies are better able to handle the pressures of the vaccines in an efficient way. The second reason was that as Savannah gets older, she will be more able to verbalize any weird feelings she is having... so for example if she got a really bad headache or felt dizzy, at the age of two she could tell me that instead of just screaming so that I wouldn't know what was wrong.

So, to sum this whole really long thing up, Savannah received most of her vaccinations, but we decided to delay hepatitis A and MMR for now. We also declined the chickenpox, but we may end up getting that next time... I have to research it some more. She'll end up getting all of the vaccines by the time she is five, but just more spread out than normal.

Hepatitis A had a larger side effect risk than most vaccinations and she has a very low chance of contracting hepatitis since it is primarily transferred through promiscuity or dirty needles. She will get it at 18 months rather than now. MMR is one of the more dangerous vaccinations and the side effect list for this one is quite long and intimidating. However, I noticed when I did my research that the deadly side effects almost dropped off the charts when the MMR vaccine was given at 24 months or later. Well, it just made sense to me that my sweet baby get the MMR vaccine at 24 months instead so that her risk of brain damage or death was almost nothing. Seems simple to me! :) And the chickenpox vaccine... well, I survived the chickenpox and now I have lifelong immunity. If Savannah gets the chickenpox vaccine, she only gets 10 years of immunity, so she has a chance of getting the chickenpox when it would be really hard on her. And the chickenpox vaccine hasn't been around too long so a lot of research hasn't been done. But then on the other hand, if she never gets chickenpox, she could never get shingles, and that would be great. So I'm still debating on that one.

Savannah got 4 vaccines at her 12 month appointment: hepatitis B, pneumonia, hib (prevents menigitis and ear infections), and polio. She ended up running a high fever of 103 for three days and was very miserable, so I was glad I made the decision to put a few vaccines off for a little while. She has never handled shots well and its just better to do a few at a time.

On Friday, Darren and I were supposed to go to a conference for church, but in light of Savannah's fever, we decided to keep her with us instead. Well, Darren has never been known to miss a Salem football game, and so we took the newest little Salem fan with us (we figured she wasn't contageous, just felt crummy) and she had a blast! She clapped every time the fans did, waved at lots of strangers, and ate a few of Daddy's m&ms. :) Notice the worlds smallest salem sweatshirt! :)

Here she is walking to the game with Daddy from her grandparents house.

Our house is also officially on the market! That means a lot of cleaning and picking up toys, and leaving every time somebody comes to look at it. We've had four people come see it already, and we're hoping for more since we haven't had an offer yet! :) Anyway, we came to mimi's to do laundry and hang out while people were viewing our house yesterday and this is what I found.

Is there a baby in there?

Who knew life could be so fun with a baby around?! Even laundry is enjoyable. :) Well, sort of.

I'm excited for pumpkins, football season, and everything to come in the fall! Its my favorite time of year for sure. :) Stay tuned for more of our fall adventures!