Cute Leah is okay!

We haven't made a blog update in a while, and we wanted everyone to see how cute Leah is. Right now she is so playful and fun to be around. She really loves to play with her toys and loves to be tickled. Here she is being silly with her pacifier. She is working on her fifth tooth now and uses her pacifier as a teething toy.
I bought Leah a hat for the winter weather, only her head is just too big, so baby hats won't fit on her head. So, Stephen and I have been on a mission to find her a hat that would fit her head, especially since it has been so cold in Gainesville recently. We found this hat that is a little big this year, but she'll be able to wear it now and next year too.
This picture was taken literally minutes before Leah decided to do a belly flop onto our kitchen floor out of her car seat that was sitting on our kitchen table. We know that car seats should not be on elevated surfaces and that she should not have been left unattended, but she has never tried to get out of her car seat before. Stephen saw it happen, and was one step away from catching her. We got her up and found that her tongue was bleeding from biting it, but couldn't see any other signs of where she hit. We were afraid she had hit her forehead. We called our pediatrician who said that because of her past she wanted us to take her to the ER, so we took her. She and I were both pretty inconsolable. We were checked in immediately and were seen by a resident soon after. They put a neck brace on her because of the type of fall and made her lie flat on the bed. The attending doctor came and decided that he didn't want to do any scanning, but just wanted to observe her. Leah was not exhibiting any symptoms of trauma due to a fall like loss of consciousness, vomiting, convulsing, etc. She was just pretty upset. After a while, they took off the neck brace, let me hold her and feed her, and she calmed down. Our friends Travis and Christy came to be with us at the hospital and when Christy was holding Leah, I could see a bruise on her chin. We realized that was what part hit the tile floor (along with her tummy!). After we realized that, I felt a lot better. We stayed in the ER for about 2 hours. When we were discharged from the hospital, the doctor told us to just watch for different behaviors. So far, Leah is acting like her normal self and we are calming down, too. In fact, you can hardly see the bruise on her chin. Today in church many of our friends with children were telling us their stories of children falling, and Stephen and I were realizing that this is one of the first "normal" medical experiences we've had with Leah. It was nice to feel "normal" even if it was at the expense of our little girl. To make it up to her, we went out and bought her an exersaucer today. Here she is playing in her new toy!