Wordless Wednesday: Happy Halloween from Baby “Bee”!

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What’s up, doc?

Baby B had her 9-month check-up this morning at the pediatrician’s office, and it went well. Our appointment was at 7:45 a.m., so I let her crawl around the waiting room since we were the only ones there. She found a huge Tonka truck that’s bigger than she is, and she had fun trying to roll it of the shelf. The nurse called us and took us to the exam room, where she measured her and weighed her before the doctor came in.

While we waited, I had to fill out a questionnaire that asked six or seven questions about Baby B’s development. I was so hoping that one of the questions was going to be, “Does your baby desperately want to grab this piece of paper away from you, wrinkle it up, and put it in their mouth?” Because our answer to that one would have been a resounding yes. I barely got all the boxes checked because I had to balance her on one leg, try and write with the other hand, and try to keep the paper away from her somehow. Definitely a challenge.

The doctor came in and examined at her, saying she looks very good. He said her weight (15 pounds, 15 ounces) is in the 10th to 25th percentile while her height (27 1/2 inches) is at the 50th percentile, but he said that’s not unusual to be lower proportionally on the weight once they first become active. He asked, “Would you say she is active?” and I said most definitely. She’s still our itty-bitty baby. 🙂

The nurse came in to do a blood draw from her toe for a hemoglobin test (came out exactly normal) and then gave her a booster for her flu shot. Two band-aids later and we headed out for some errands before heading home. Next scheduled appointment: the day after her first birthday in January.

Measurements:

Height: 27 1/2 inches (50th percentile)

Weight: 15 pounds, 15 ounces (10th to 25th percentile)

Head circumference: 17 inches (25th to 50th percentile)

The daily grind

Now that Baby B has teeth on both the top and the bottom, she’s found a wonderful new game: grinding her teeth. Though, it’s not really grinding her teeth in the sense that I usually think of it. She moves her lower jaw front to back, making the teeth scrape against each other repeatedly. I cannot properly describe the depths to which this sound makes me want to burrow underground so I don’t have to hear it anymore. Seriously, it’s worse than nails on a chalkboard.

I’ve read that this is normal behavior–she’s just exploring her new buds–and there’s not much we can do to prevent her from doing it. It’s just funny because it’s one of the (many) things we’ve encountered along the way that we’d never really thought about beforehand.

Looks who’s talking

For a long time, I’ve joked that I would have no idea when Baby B said her first word because she likes to babble nonstop, and sometimes (even waaaaaaaaaaaay early), I’ve sworn I heard real words thrown in there, but I know it wasn’t really the case. One of her favorite sounds is “ba,” which she repeats over and over like this: “Ba ba ba ba ba ba ba!” It actually goes on much longer, but you get the point. She’s even thrown in some “ma ma ma ma ma” and “da da da da da” over the past month or so, but obviously she didn’t associate those sounds with anything in particular. She liked how it felt to say them, so that’s what came out of her mouth.

Okay, so yesterday afternoon, The Husband was settling down in the the recliner with Baby B on his chest to take a nap. As she usually does, she was fighting the nap at first, taking any distraction as a chance to lift her head and look around. I said something out loud since I was about to run an errand, and Baby B lifted her head and looked toward me. The Husband said to her, “Did you hear your mommy?” And without missing a beat, as plain as day, clear as a bell, she immediately said, “MAma!” The Husband and I stopped cold and immediately looked at each other, wondering in stunned amazement if the other had heard the same thing. It’s hard to convey the difference in writing, but she wasn’t just saying her random syllables of “ma ma ma ma.” This was very deliberate, and in response to hearing “mommy.” Coincidence? Perhaps. But I’m truly about 98% sure she said her first word. Sure enough to write it in the baby book anyway.

But it gets better. I started saying, “MAma! MAma!” over and over again (as I have for months) in an effort to get her to repeat herself. She didn’t say it again, but you know what she did? She said, “DAda.” Again, this sounded very different from her usual babbling. And about 10 seconds later, not among any babble or anything, just by itself, she said, “BAYbuh.” I got confused on that one at first, but The Husband thinks it may have been “baby,” which I do say to her all the time. (“Are you my baby?” “Oh, my baby is so cute in that outfit!” “Did you know you’re a baby?”) Once he said that, I could definitely hear that in what she said.

All of this happened within the span of less than a minute. I think we were both taken aback, not really believing it but also very sure of what we heard. The one that got me the most was “MAma”–not just because that’s me but because it was said right after she heard “mommy” said out loud. It was a fantastic moment.

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Baby B is definitely understanding what to do when I excitedly say, “High five!” She raises her hands to smack mine more emphatically each time we practice.

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Baby B has yet another tooth that has cut through the gums, this time the left upper central incisor, giving her a grand total of three. Well, that’s three that we know of. Sometimes she barely lets us check her gums for front teeth, so I have no idea how we’ll know later on when she gets her back teeth. The Husband joked that she probably already has them all, but we just can’t get in there to feel them. Baby B took a little while to start teething (well, a little longer than the “average” of six months), but now it seems like it’s full steam ahead, and I think there might be one or two more ready to surface very soon. She’ll be eating caramel apples in no time. 😉

Nine months later

Baby B is nine months old today. Instead of just being amazed at how quickly time has passed, I tried to think of why it seemed like this milestone was such a big one. Then I realized that it’s because up until this point, more than half of the time she’s existed was in utero. But from this point forward, more than half of her life will be time spent in the outside world.

When I picked her up at daycare a couple days ago, I’d put on her cute fall jacket so we could leave, but she decided she wanted to crawl over to Squealy D and Big Buddy to get in some extra playtime. In that moment, as she was crawling away from me and I couldn’t see her face, she seemed so much older than even nine months. She’s well on her way to becoming a little girl.

It was a little bittersweet, though. As I watched her crawling toward her friends and away from me, I was struck by the idea of just how often that scenario is going to play out for us in the future as she becomes more independent and is her own person. My job is to make sure she’s well prepared for the outside world that’s not nearly as cushy and protective as the womb but nonetheless has some fantastic things to offer.

Momma’s gonna buy you some turpentine

I think I’ve mentioned here before that I’m horrible with lyrics to children’s songs, so I usually end up making up my owns songs–both words and tune. Sometimes I’ll attempt to sing a traditional children’s song but inevitably get stuck on one lyric or another. But does that stop me from singing the song?

Not on your life.

Here’s a good example of some of my song-writing brilliance. Feel free to sing along to your own child.

Hush, little baby, don’t say a word.
Momma’s gonna buy you a mockingbird.

If that mockingbird don’t sing,
Momma’s gonna buy you a diamond ring.

If that diamond ring don’t shine,
(HERE’S WHERE IT GETS GOOD!)
Momma’s gonna buy you some turpentine.

If that turpentine don’t stink,
Momma’s gonna buy you a kitchen sink.

If that kitchen sink don’t clean,
Momma’s gonna buy you a lima bean.

If that lima bean tastes bad,
Momma’s gonna buy you a big notepad.

If that big notepad ain’t white,
Momma’s gonna buy you a big, blue kite.

If that big, blue kite don’t fly,
Momma’s gonna buy you some red hair dye.

If that red hair dye won’t come out,
Momma’s gonna buy you a bottle of Shout.

You get the point. I could go on indefinitely (and sometimes I’m sure The Husband feels like I do!).

Truthfully, my lyrics aren’t that much more ridiculous than the real lyrics (which, yes, I had to look up). Children’s songs are quite, um, odd sometimes.

Tales from daycare

I’m told so many stories about Baby B by the teachers at school that I wanted to share a few here, since most don’t really warrant their own post.

*The babies at school all have nametags above their cribs. Apparently Baby B decided she wanted a new nametag a couple days ago because she stood up in her crib, pulled hers off the wall, and put it in her mouth. It was close to time to change the nametags anyway, so the teachers made fall-themed ones with acorns. If you glance around the room, you can see all the new nametags above the babies’ cribs…and then you see Baby B’s nametag about four inches higher on the wall than all the others. Makes me chuckle every time I see it.

*Baby B’s “boyfriend” Squealy D was in the jumperoo yesterday, and Baby B decided she wanted to crawl in there and take off his socks (and then started to put it in her mouth before someone stopped her). I guess she likes her boys barefoot.

*They’ve got a little mini play kitchen there, and I’m told that she and one of the other girls love to play with it together. I wonder what goodies they’re cooking up!

*They play music in the room most of the day (usually kids’ CDs, but sometimes things like classical or Celtic music), and they say that Baby B loves to “dance” around. We do this all the time at home, so I’m very glad she enjoys it there, too.

*Baby B’s closest friends seem to be two girls who are about a month older than her. We’ll call them Big Buddy and Curly. Apparently Baby B, Big Buddy (so named only because she’s big for her age), and Curly all crawl around following Ms. Chatterbox like obedient little ducks. Everywhere she walks, she’s got three little crawlers right at her feet. I’ve had a chance to witness two of them at the same time, but I imagine all three of them together is even cuter!

Wordless Wednesday: The tooth revealed

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Big-tub bathtime bonding

Bathtime has taken a different turn lately since Baby B wants to stand up all the time, even in her tub. She still fits in her infant tub just fine, but she doesn’t want to sit down in it, instead standing up and leaning on the side of the bathtub near us. We tried a bath in the big tub, but she’s still just a bit too small to be in there alone. (Actually, she’s fine for playing like that, but she doesn’t like being washed in there alone.) So some nights we still use the infant tub, then on the other nights (probably half the time), either me or The Husband will don a swimsuit and hop in the regular tub with her. She still tries to stand up, but at least the person in the tub with her has a little more leverage to keep her from slipping.

I must admit that I love my nights in the bath with her. Maybe it makes me feel like a kid again. Or maybe I just like plopping my butt in warm water. Whatever the case, I’m always a little bummed when it’s not my turn. 🙂

Milking the freezer stash

With a little bit of free time before going to bed last night, I finally decided to plop down in front of the freezer garage and figure out how much stored milk I have left and how long that would last me.

Assuming I’m still able to nurse on the weekends, in the mornings, and in the evenings (which are big assumptions, I know), my current stash is enough to last until approximately the end of November. This is not including additional milk I will pump during that time, just my freezer supply.

I have two choices. I can either continue giving 100% milk and make a complete switch to formula when that runs out to get us through to the end of January when Baby B turns a year old and she can be switched to whole milk. Or I could start now sending bottles of half milk and half formula to daycare, which probably would stretch out my supply until we switch to regular milk.

After talking with The Husband, we decided to do the half and half bottles. I think this may be the best way to help protect my emotional well-being in preparation for that time when my body’s supply dries up. I do not think formula is evil; I was a formula-fed baby, and Baby B previously got one bottle a day of formula for the first four or five months. But there’s definitely an emotional element to giving up nursing, especially when it’s not your choice, after spending all those months being her primary source of nutrition. Breastfeeding fosters a sense of natural nurturing, which just can’t be replaced by formula. At a time when Baby B is becoming more independent each day, it’s nice to know that she still needs me for something that’s very important to her existence.

I never realized breastfeeding had so many emotional strings attached. That’s something that people never warn you about. It’s one of the most difficult things I’ve done, but without a doubt it’s one of the best. I’m definitely trying to enjoy each moment of it now, even the dreaded pumping, since I’m not sure how much longer it’ll last.

The tooth, and nothing but the tooth

One of Baby B’s lower central incisors came in recently, we expected the one right beside it to it to come in next according to what I’ve read about the typical order of baby teeth. Baby B’s shown some teething signs in the past week or so, and we kept feeling that bottom gum but never did feel anything coming to the surface. So we were a bit surprised when we noticed a top tooth that has surfaced enough for us to feel its sharp edge. However, it’s not one of the two central incisors like I thought it might’ve been since those are typically the first top ones to come in; instead, it’s her left lateral incisor (right next to the center two).

And yes, I had to look up all the names of the teeth, as geography of the mouth wasn’t very fresh in my mind.

Elevated cinco

After Baby B mastered clapping on her own, I decided it would be an amusing thing to teach her how to give a high five. It’s amazing to see how fast she’s picking up on things these days, because after just a few lessons, she’s able to recognize what I want her to do when I hold up my hands and say, “High five!” She’ll very deliberately raise her hand open-palmed to me at my request, then gives a big grin when I make contact.

I bet we have all the kids in her classroom high-fiving by the end of the month!

Mom hip and Mom grip

I was “blessed” with wide hips, and I was always told by others that I’d be thankful for that when I had a baby, which I always took to mean the actual birthing process. (And really, maybe that’s part of the reason Baby B’s birth was relatively easy.) But I’m now learning that my wide hips are coming in handy for what I like to call the “Mom hip,” when you hold the baby on your hip with one arm supporting their upper body. Take that, you slender, no-hipped girls!

Something fun I’ve acquired since having a baby is my “Mom grip,” those lightning-fast reflexes required to catch something that is dropped before it reaches the floor. Probably 7 or 8 times out of 10, I’m able to catch the sippy cup as it’s quickly tossed to the side (she makes it quite clear she’s done with each drink), sometimes quite magically, it seems.

Now I just need to be fitted for my “Mom chip,” which will limit my speech to such tiresome mom sayings as: “Do you think I’m made of money?”, “Don’t make me stop this car!”, “Don’t talk with your mouth full!”, and “I don’t care who started it…I’ll finish it!”

Sweet dreams are not made of this

I woke up this morning, quite startled, from an awful nightmare. It was one of those dreams that felt so vivid at the time that I was sure it would stick with me for a while instead of being lost among all the other fleeting dreams that cycle through my head each night.

In this dream, The Husband and I had gone out for a while, and a friend was watching Baby B for us. We got home and my friend was in a panic, saying that someone had broken into our house and had tried to take Baby B, and they had gotten our baby in their arms and she had to fight them to get her back. We checked into it further, and it turned out it was our neighbor, who had gotten mad over the fact that The Husband had turned his XM radio up too loudly, so he decided to steal our baby.

I woke up with that awful sinking feeling that I couldn’t shake for a while after I got up. You see, one of my biggest fears has always been someone breaking into my house and hurting me, but now that someone could break into my house to steal my baby….well, it’s an absolutely unbearable thought. Ever since having a baby, it’s been extremely hard to hear stories of babies and other children being kidnapped because it makes me think about how awful it would be if it happened to me. But you can’t just turn your attention away from those stories and completely ignore them because you have to be aware of the risks in order to avoid situations where this could happen.

When I was out in public pre-baby, I used to routinely quiz myself on what I would do if someone were to attack me at that moment, just so I’d know what my options were, where I could run for help, etc. Now when I’m out with Baby B, my mind turns to what I would do if someone tried to snatch her from me. Is it likely to happen? Statistically, no. But obviously we live in a world where these things happen, and I would be naive to think it couldn’t ever happen to me.

I guess George Clooney and Noah Wyle were on vacation

I got a call yesterday afternoon from Baby B’s daycare teacher saying that she was wheezing when she’d breathe. She’d had a runny nose and minor head cold symptoms symptoms since over the weekend, so I just figured it was her cold going into her chest. I made sure to ask if she had that quick breathing she had before with pneumonia, but they said she didn’t, so I decided to wait it out and keep an eye on things. The Husband picked her up from daycare and they were taking a nap when I got home. She woke up around 6 p.m. and her chest sounded pretty horrible, and her breathing had become very quick. Since it was after office hours, I wasn’t sure what to do since I wasn’t sure if this was considered an emergency–certainly not as much as some traumatic injury would be.

We decided to count her breathing, and she was at about 55 to 60 breaths per minute, and last time when she had pneumonia, they told me to call after hours if her breathing reached 60 breaths per minute, so I decided to go ahead and call the answering service. A pediatric nurse called me back to ask about symptoms and even had me put the phone up to her so she could hear her congested, fast breathing. The nurse wanted to call the on-call doctor to see if I needed to take her to the ER. A few minutes later we received a call telling us they did want us to go to the ER, so we quickly finished Baby B’s dinner and packed up the diaper bag, arriving there around 7:30 p.m.

I fully expected a super-long wait in the ER judging from the horror stories I’ve heard, but the waiting room was fairly sparsely populated, and we were called back within five minutes of checking in. A nurse took us back to take her temperature (100.7 degrees), weigh her (16 pounds, 2 ounces), and measure her oxygen level (98%, which is good). Naturally she had a dirty diaper before having her temperature taken rectally, so we had to clean that up without a good changing space available. The nurse gave her some Tylenol for the fever, then took us back to our room. We were greeted by a parade of people all in between a fair amount of waiting.

A nurse came to get us settled in, then a physician’s assistant came to assess things and decide what to do. She ordered a breathing treatment via nebulizer and also ordered a chest x-ray. The treatment went well, and Baby B cooperated very well, even smiling and opening her mouth to inhale the vapor. Unfortunately, the respiratory tech working with us had the personality of a piece of cheese. After that, she started breathing much better, so it was nice to see some kind of effect virtually immediately.

More waiting, then they came to get us for the chest x-ray, which went well. One picture from the front and one from the side, then she was done. We went back to our room and waited for the results, which confirmed a little spot of pneumonia in the middle of the right lobe. Just as I suspected from our experience last month.

The PA sort of scoffed when she found out she hadn’t had an x-ray to confirm pneumonia last time. That time they had diagnosed it based on listening to the lungs, then checked her oxygen levels (fine), and had to give her an antibiotic anyway because of her ear infections, so the treatment at that time wouldn’t have been different if they’d confirmed via x-ray. I’m sure their thinking was why expose a baby to x-rays when you don’t need to. What irked me was the PA’s tone about it, almost implying that she really didn’t have pneumonia before. If that’s the case, however, then why did we recognize the symptoms and know it was the same thing this time, if that’s not what it was before?

Anyway, the PA ordered an IV for antibiotics and a steroid to help her lungs, so we had to wait for the nurse to come in and set up the IV. Baby B was starting to get antsy, so we gave her a bottle of milk while we waited. The nurse finally arrived with supplies in tow, and they inserted the IV. That was the worst part for me by far. I’m not good with needles anyway, and then to hear my baby screaming in pain was unbearable–way worse than getting her shots. Thankfully the nurse was good and got it on the first try, and The Husband was there to help soothe her. (I was in the room, but I had to sit down and couldn’t watch.) We waited while they went to mix the meds, then they came back and inserted the steroid dose (The Husband joked that now she couldn’t compete in the Baby Olympics today), then got the antibiotics drip set up with me sitting on the bed and Baby B on my lap to keep her from moving around too much. It took 30 minutes for the medicine to go through, and the hardest part was keeping Baby B from touching the apparatus in her arm. We tried to watch a little TV to pass the time, but I couldn’t actually watch much TV because I had to keep my eye on her 100% or else she’d grab at her arm.

They disconnected the medicine when it ran out, though they left the IV in for the time being while we waited for the dud of a respiratory tech to come back from an emergency elsewhere in the hospital to show us how to use albuterol and a spacer to relieve wheezing (just as needed) for Baby B. I’m going to be sure to talk to the doctor at her 9-month appointment in a couple of weeks about asthma, since both The Husband and I have it, and what we need to do to test for it and control it. The PA kept asking us if she was around smoke at home (no) or at daycare (uh, no!) and acted like she didn’t believe us when we kept saying no. She was a bit lacking in the bedside manner department, as well.

We had to wait an additional 45 minutes for the nurse to come back and take out her IV and give us the discharge instructions. We were finally able to leave a little after 11 p.m., three hours past the tired baby’s bedtime. But hey, at least her oxygen was okay and she didn’t have to be hospitalized; this could’ve been much worse. We left with two prescriptions that I filled this morning (an antibiotic and a steroid), stopped to grab a quick dinner on the way home, then I fed Baby B and got her to bed by about 12:30 a.m. The Husband and I followed soon after, exhausted.

I’m so proud of how well Baby B did through all of this. Several people commented (jokingly) about how she was faking her sickness because she was so happy, and she really was except for when the IV was being inserted, and I certainly can’t blame her then. She smiled a lot and would do her clapping, so she was doing pretty well considering how bad she felt and what they were doing to her.

I stayed home with her today, and she slept until a little after 8:30 a.m. Her chest still sounds very congested, but she doesn’t seem to have the trouble breathing that she did yesterday. Her pediatrician’s office called this morning to check on her, and they’ll check her as a follow-up when we go in for her 9-month appointment on the 30th of this month (though we’ll obviously call if things don’t get better or become worse).

I cannot wait until we all feel better again. I’ve had sinus issues all week because of the weather changing so drastically back and forth, and two bouts of pneumonia about 4 1/2 weeks apart isn’t my idea of fun. I hope this treatment knocks it out of her and out of this house for good.

Wordless Wednesday: Puppy love

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A laundry list

I realized over the weekend when shopping for some clothes for Baby B that I’m kind of picky when it comes to choosing things for her. (She’s still in 3-6 month size clothes, but it’s all summer stuff, and we need some mix-and-match items to get us through until she can wear her warmer 6-9 month clothes.)

So, without further delay, here are my (personal) general rules for baby clothes shopping:

*Pink is fine, and frankly it’s often unavoidable in girls’ clothes. But I refuse to make it look like I used Pepto-Bismol as her laundry detergent.

*Even though Baby B doesn’t have much hair, I don’t mind dressing her in “boy colors” like blue or brown. Seriously, who cares if at first glance she looks like a boy? (And no, I will not use a bow or headband to declare to the world she’s a girl.)

*Nothing with a collar if possible. (The collar almost never stays down.)

*Snaps are definitely preferable over buttons.

*No pants that are too tight around the tummy (and thus might make her spit up…even though her spit-up days are in the past, I’m still nervous about this).

*Onesies need to be long and narrow, not short and wide, or else they won’t fit her.

*No shirts with cutesie words like “Diva” or “Princess.”

*If it’s an outfit, preferably it’s something that has pieces that can be mixed and matched with other items she has. Generally I don’t want a shirt that can only go with the pants it comes with.

*Typically skirts aren’t ideal because she likes to play with the skirt part and lift it up to put it in her mouth.

*Nothing that has cute buttons or other decorations sewn on that could come off and be a choking hazard. I sometimes wonder how some items of clothing were ever approved because of all the potential choking hazards on them.

Comparing notes

Much as I don’t like the idea of comparing my baby’s development to that of other babies–I hate the snotty “my baby is better than every other baby” attitude that many moms dish out–it’s almost impossible to avoid. I confess that I love it when Baby B’s teachers tell me all the things she does before (or better than) other babies either her age or even slightly older. And I admit that I feel a temporary twinge of jealousy when I hear about a baby slightly younger than Baby B who achieves a milestone–big or small–sooner than my precious girl.

I know babies do these things on their own schedule, and Baby B has been either on time or ahead of the “typical” development schedule, but I always want to cry out, “But my baby is tiny and weighs probably four or five pounds less than your baby, so of course she’s probably not going to be way ahead of the curve on many physical feats” when I hear about someone her age reaching such a milestone first. It’s a natural defensive response to what is essentially an implication that your child doesn’t quite measure up to their child.

I certainly don’t like that feeling, but I think it’s one that’s unavoidable for the most part and will be for as long as humans exist. This is not a phenomenon limited to parents comparing their children, of course; we all want to compare ourselves to others (whether we admit it or not) and desire to know where we rank among the others.

While by definition we all cannot be better than average, the fact is that we all want to be better than average. And what’s so wrong with that, really? It helps keep us in check. It helps us know what we need to work on to improve and gives us goals when we rate less than we’d like. It helps gives us pride and a sense of success and pushes us along to further heights when we come out on top.

The difference, however, is what we do when comparing notes with others. We can be loud and obnoxious and cocky about it, like so many moms are, or we can more quietly take note and take pride in the things our baby excels at before the other babies and encourage her to master the other things that previously were just out of reach. I choose to take the latter approach as best I can. There’s nothing wrong with thinking to myself, “Wow, I can’t believe Baby Chunkers at daycare isn’t crawling, or even moving around much, at all right now, yet Baby B is just four days older than her and is zooming all over the place on hands and knees.” I can think that and take pride in it, yet draw the line at how far I go beyond that. Talking with The Husband about it? Sure. Bragging to the mom of Baby Chunkers about how well Baby B is doing with crawling? Not such a good idea, no matter how great my excitement is. Direct comparisons can lead to hurt feelings, and what good comes from that?

I’m sure I will fail at this goal many times throughout my momhood, but I vow to make an effort to not be that ultra-annoying mom who is constantly one-upping everyone else with tales of their Perfect Child (you know…the one apparently born with wings and a halo). Because really, my baby might not be any better or worse than their child, but I’m certainly a better mom than they are! 😉

Check me out!

There I am, along the right side of the page, blogging away in the nursery. 🙂 Like it? Create your own image at Meez.

What’s new in the world o’ Baby B?

There have been several things I’ve neglected to mention here lately, so I think I’ll take the chance to do that now.

*Baby B has never really been interested much in playing in her crib either before or after sleeping; it’s been her space for sleeping, and that was it. However, in the past few weeks, she’s taken to crawling around and playing in her crib before going to sleep, and a couple days ago she pulled up to standing for the first time in there. (She does it on other things, but never in her crib, at least not that I’d seen myself.) She also started playing with the spinner on the crib aquarium. Looks like it’s time for the mobile to come down (it was just up for decoration at this point) and to put her mattress on the lowest possible setting.

*I’ve noticed in the past few weeks that Baby B doesn’t use her thumb nearly as much as she used to, though she’s still able to calm herself down relatively quickly. Is she possibly weaning herself off the thumb? We’ll see.

*Baby B has hit two toys together for a while and even hit her fists together, but she recently started clapping open-handed. Goodness knows we clap around her often enough, both when she does something good and when we’re dancing around to music, so I suppose it was time for her to pick it up herself.

*Baby B is very good at drinking from her sippy cup, so out of curiosity I decided to see how she’d do drinking from the side of a regular cup (no sippy spout). She absolutely loves doing this, smiling and flailing her arms and legs excitedly after each drink. And she’s really good at taking sips without spilling; if anything gets on her, it’s because of my unsteady hand. (Yes, I’m holding it for her…she’s not that advanced!

*Not surprisingly, peekaboo is one of Baby B’s new favorite games. We play two varieties. One is where she’s lying on the changing table and we put her sleep sack (or other piece of clothing) over her head, ask where she is, and she quickly pulls the item off her head and smiles and laughs. The other kind is where one of us goes just out of her view, peeks around the corner to say hi, then quickly hides around the corner again. That one is my favorite, because she tries to lean over to the side to see around the corner to look for us before we pop out and surprise her.

Not so pumped about this change

I was warned about a month ago that because a division of our company is physically moving from California to our office building, our human resources interview and testing room, where I pump each day, will no longer exist and instead will become the office of someone who, no doubt, gets paid way more than I do and who has not nearly as much of a need for a private space as I currently have. (But that’s beside the point.)

Well, our HR manager told me yesterday that the woman who will be in that office will begin to use it during the week of October 22 (probably the 24th), but they’ll probably have to prepare the room as an office before then, which would mean sometime next week. The translation: Very soon I’m losing the private pumping space I had to fight so hard to get.

Here’s the thing, though. I feel like my company has if not an obligation then at least a courtesy to provide me with a reasonable space for pumping, as it allows me to continue working and feed my baby the most nutritionally perfect food for her. However, I’m down to pumping just once a day at work and I’m not yielding much quantity at this point, so who knows how much longer I’m going to be pumping at work. It could be another week, or it could be another 3 1/2 months as I’d like. I just don’t know, but I do know that I don’t want to be pressured into no longer pumping just because my work is taking away my space.

I sort of want to fight for a new space just on the principle of the matter. However, I feel very half-hearted in my fight this time around because I am near the end of this need, and it feels a little silly to raise a stink when I could very well stop pumping at any time.  But then again, it annoys me that the HR manager hasn’t really offered up any alternative solutions to the situation; she does not know about my pumping specifics, so as far as she’s concerned, I’m still pumping multiple times a day, indefinitely. So it’s not like she’s just not trying because she knows I don’t have a need for it much longer, but it seems like she just doesn’t care in general.

She did offer to move the lock that we have on the door somewhere else since that particular office worker won’t need a lock on her door. That’s a great offer, which I appreciate, but what’s the use of having a lock if I have nowhere to put it? Once these new employees move into our building, that takes away all of the individual office space that had previously been available. We have two conference rooms, but both of them are used regularly and frequently. Half of an entire floor is empty, but it’s all open space that offers no privacy. I even looked in a fairly roomy and isolated coat closet on that floor to see if there was perhaps an outlet in there, but no such luck. That wouldn’t have been an ideal solution, but better than nothing. I suppose I have the option of using the one-person bathroom in the basement, but it’s tiny and there’s no place to sit other than the toilet, and I don’t think I’m being too picky when I say it’s just not conducive to pumping, which requires a certain degree of relaxation.

I think my most reasonable alternative is to pump on my lunch break, which also isn’t ideal, but it would mean I can do it at home. The Husband even suggested adding on an extra 10 or 15 minutes to my lunch break if I do that, especially since the HR manager doesn’t seem to be too keen on arranging something for me at the office. Whatever happens, I’ll make it work and remind myself that it’s just a temporary thing and I won’t be doing this forever. I just wish some things didn’t have to be so difficult at times.

Waiting for the other shoe to drop

I’ve personally not ever really seen a point to a newborn or young infant wearing shoes (mostly I’m talking about in warmer weather), and I’ve read that they don’t really need shoes until they’re walking, and even then mostly just for walking outside since they get better footing with their bare feet. Aside from that, Baby B is a very kicky baby, and we could never keep socks on her last winter, even when she was tiny, because she would always kick them off immediately, and now that she grabs everything, I figured she’d pull off her socks. So, Baby B owned no shoes until a few weeks ago, when we bought some only because the weather was going to start getting cooler and we couldn’t send our darling girl to daycare shoeless. I was a little afraid that she either wouldn’t take well to wearing shoes or that she’d pull them off immediately as she previously did with her socks. I had these visions of an endless cycle of her pulling off her shoe, throwing it on the ground, me retrieving it and putting it back on, only to have her take it off and start the cycle yet again.

I’m pleased to report, however, that her shoe-wearing days are going well. We made sure to get her shoes that don’t come off easily, and I always tie her laces in a double knot because she does like to pull on those frequently. But she doesn’t seem freaked out by the foreign object on her kicky feet, and so far she doesn’t make a big effort to take them off.

**************

In other shoe news…

Because seven of the eight babies in the daycare infant room are either semi- or fully mobile, we have to take our shoes off before entering the room since street shoes inadvertently track dirt all over the floor, which then gets on the pants of the crawling babies. I’d noticed an increase in the dirt on Baby B’s pants, and while it comes out just fine in the laundry, I don’t really mind having to take my shoes off before entering the room because it’s for a good reason.

Anyway, because Ms. Chatterbox is quite the talker, I tend to get a little distracted when I’m trying to gather up Baby B’s things and leave. I had a feeling this was going to happen eventually, and it finally did after about a month of the no-shoe policy: I started to walk out the main door without my shoes on! I didn’t get far enough out the door that it shut behind me, but I did get far enough that I had to back up and set down Baby B’s car seat in order to slip them on.  Maybe Baby B will let me borrow some of her new shoes if I drive home without mine. 😉

Post-partum positives

Thankfully most of my negative pregnancy symptoms went away nearly immediately after I gave birth: I could bend over to touch my toes or pick up things off the floor, I was no longer hot all the time (in fact, I got cold after she was born and had to ask them to turn up the heat in my room), and lying in bed was almost immediately comfortable again. Some things that were nice about pregnancy–the fact that my leg hair had basically stopped growing–also changed back to normal pretty immediately. But I’ve noticed some other changes that have happened after having a baby…things that I wouldn’t have really imagined beforehand.

*My asthma has all but disappeared, so I seem to be one of those fortunate women who seems to have been cured as a result of pregnancy. It can often go the other way and become worse, so I’m very thankful that didn’t happen. In the first few months after giving birth, I used my Advair sporadically, but I haven’t used it at all in probably four or five months. I think I’ve had to use my rescue inhaler just once or twice in that whole time (and even then I think I could have gotten by without it, but went ahead and used it anyway to speed things up).

*I seem to have an obsession with pizza. Some background first. The Husband has always loved pizza in ways I could never fathom. I liked pizza fine maybe once a month or so, but he would have it every meal if I’d agree to it. But since having a baby, I’m the one who seems to want pizza all the time, and while The Husband is very happy about this change, I’m just waiting for the day when he says, “Eh, I’ve kind of had it too much lately.” I don’t expect that point to come anytime soon (did I mention he loves pizza?), but if it keeps up like this, it may!

*I’ve never really been a big peanut butter person, but I’ve wanted a lot of peanut butter-based sweets lately. All I talked about for a solid week was wanting Nutter Butter cookies until I was able to make it to the grocery store to buy them. I made some peanut butter cookies recently, too. (Don’t know if I’ve ever made peanut butter cookies myself…at least, not since living on my own.)

*I lost most of my bitter taste and coffee doesn’t taste repulsive to me like it did before. I still don’t like hot coffee, but I do enjoy a good cold coffee fru-fru drink occasionally.

*I sleep so much better now (probably due to tiredness, but whatever, I’ll take it) and I get up to pee a lot less during the night now. (Even pre-pregnancy, a good night was getting up to pee about twice a night. Now I may get up once during the night, but sometimes I do not have to at all.)

Wordless Wednesday: We’re gonna have to keep an eye on this one!

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Mommy and baby, lying on the couch, N-A-P-P-I-N-G

As perfectly as Baby B sleeps at night, she’s actually a fairly horrid napper. I agree with Ms. Chatterbox’s assessement that it’s not because of too much sleep at night–we actually have to wake her up most days, even on weekends when we don’t have to get her ready for daycare–but because she’s so curious and social, and she wants to be a part of whatever else is going on nearby. If there’s something to observe or explore, she wants to be the one to do it.

At home, she’ll nap well in the crib or Pack N Play maybe one out of every ten tries. She used to nap fairly well in the swing, at least back when she didn’t have as much strength, but now she just wants to lean forward and play. Both at daycare and at home, it’s considered a good day if she takes any nap longer than half an hour–and two naps in a day, no matter how long, is considered fantastic for her. You’d think she’d be a cranky pants with such little napping, but she’s really not at all. However, as she’s become more active, she wears herself out more often and definitely needs a nap on some days.

Much as I didn’t want to start this for fear of it becoming a habit, the best place she naps? Lying on my chest either in the recliner or on the couch. I don’t want her doing this permanently. I don’t want this to be the only place she’ll nap, because they obviously can’t do that for her at daycare, plus it makes it impossible to get other things done around the house at naptime.

But I confess that I love it. As Baby B is quickly becoming more independent, I love that it feels like she needs me in order to get a good nap. (And get a good nap we do–often for 1 1/2 or 2 hours on weekends!) I love the closeness I get to share with her at those times. I love the feeling of her head nuzzled into my chest or on my shoulder, positioned just perfectly for me to become drunk on the perfume of her baby smell. I love the chance to slow down, take a break, and bond with my baby. I love when she wakes up first and bonks me on the nose or pulls at my hair to wake me up. I love seeing her I-just-woke-up-and-boy-do-I-feel-good dimpled smile.

So yes, maybe I’m creating a bad habit that I’ll later regret. Or, maybe I’m just creating memories that I’ll later cherish.

Is there a nurse in the house?

I am a copy editor. I read magazine pages and check them for factual and style errors. But twice in the past two weeks, I’ve been asked if I was a nurse, and I have no idea why.

The first time was when I saw my family doctor when it looked like I had strep a couple weeks ago, then it happened again when the pediatric CPR instructor asked me the same thing over the weekend. My only guess is that it’s because of how I listen to people when they’re talking to me. I do my research beforehand, and I tend to nod and acknowledge that I have a previous understanding of what they’re talking about (and they’re not talking to a dummy) or to let them see that I comprehend the new information they’re telling me. I did that in both situations recently, and that’s the only link I can figure out. Aside from that, I’m at a loss.

I had to resist laughing both times I was asked if I was a nurse, though. Some people are made for the job, and I really admire that, but I am not one of those people! The thought of piercing someone’s skin with a needle to draw blood or give a shot makes me weak in the knees, so I think I’ll just stick with dealing with commas, not comas.

Who hit the fast-forward button?

Thinking back over the past two weeks or so, I’m amazed at all of the developmental advances Baby B has achieved in that short amount of time. She’s become a master at hands-and-knees crawling and is exploring every corner of the house (which obviously requires constant supervision as we observe the things we need to babyproof that we hadn’t initially realized). She’s started to take a big interest in standing up on her own, using either us (especially if we’re sitting on the floor) or using nearby furniture for help. She still has to correct her balance when she does this, but she’s getting stronger at it every day. She’s become really good at moving from a horizontal position to sitting up on her own and has almost perfect balance in this area. She’s even closer to her first tooth coming in (you can see it starting to surface and it feels very sharp, but the bulk of it hasn’t come through the gum quite yet). She’s the master of the sippy cup, and she’s become very proficient in using her pincer grasp to pick up her puffs. She’s started to understand that peekaboo is amusing freaking hilarious as she’s starting to understand the concept of object permanence. All of this has happened over just the past couple of weeks, and when I think about all of it, it makes me feel like someone hit fast-forward on her development and skills, and there are no signs of it being turned off anytime soon. She’s very quickly becoming an independent little person, not just a teeny-tiny baby. It makes me so proud each time she attempts a new skill for the first time or perfects one she’s been working on for a while, and I truly cherish each of these moments while also looking forward to what’s on tap next.

No-brainers

Here’s a multiple-choice question for you:

Question: You and your husband go to a Chinese buffet with your baby, who is probably four to six months old and is brought into the restaurant in an infant car seat. What do you do once you’re seated?

Your answer choices:

A: Place the baby in a safe spot and take turns going to the buffet to get your food.

B: Put the car seat on top of the table, near the edge, and both of you leave the table at the same time to get your food at the buffet.

Seems like it would be a no-brainer to me, but I would choose answer A. And perhaps I’m being a bit judgmental, but I couldn’t help but wonder about the couple who chose B yesterday when The Husband and I had met at a Chinese buffet for lunch. The Husband and I look at each other as they walked away, obviously silently asking the same question in our shared, knowing look to each other: “They didn’t really just do that, did they?”

There are several issues here, but two that worry me the most. The first is obviously that someone could have easily taken their baby and gotten away with it before they could do much about it, as they didn’t even seem to be particularly concerned with peeking back at the table as they loaded up their plates. I love me some crab rangoon, sure, but I love me a baby way more. I almost wanted to go over and start walking away with their baby just to make a point, but I would never actually do that. And two, if they’d read their car seat manual, they would’ve seen that it’s not safe to place a baby in the car seat on top of a table, especially when the baby has the ability to rock the car seat and possibly send it crashing off the edge of the table.

It turns out it’s the mom and dad in question here who are the no-brainers, not the question itself.

Phantom pumping

Shhhh….I’ve got a secret! Okay, so last week I had to start pumping just once a day at work because I wasn’t getting enough milk to make it worth my time to do it twice daily as I was before. So now I pump around midday, just before lunch, whereas previously I did it around 11 a.m. and about 4 p.m. My co-workers have no need to know the specifics of my pumping schedule other than the fact that I have one.

So, even though I don’t pump at 4 anymore, a couple of times in the past week I’ve left my pump in the room I use and go there at 4, lock the door, and just stretch out on the floor and relax for 10 or 15 minutes, enjoying time that is completely my own. (Well, I guess technically it’s company time, but I wouldn’t do this if I were swamped with work. I’ve done it on slower days.) It’s been so nice to have that 10 or 15 minutes to clear my head of everything else and not have to worry about work, laundry, washing bottles, nursing, wiping runny noses, applying teething gel, or anything else.

It’s funny…I never really appreciated my occasional moments of boredom in the pre-baby days, but I definitely appreciate those rare gems of time now.

Look what turnip in her bowl

We’ve been through most of the major fruits and vegetables with Baby B, and now we’re branching out to some of what I call the more “exotic” foods before really getting started with introducing finger foods. When I went to the grocery store the other day, I checked all of the stage 1 jarred foods to see if we’d skipped any that we’d forgotten about, but it looks like we’ve covered all of those. So now we get to have some fun with making foods that aren’t really offered in jars, which is one of the advantages to making our own food.

Baby B recently finished a round of fresh papaya, which she really seemed to enjoy, and the last two nights she enjoyed turnips (which I didn’t even try myself for the first time until a few years ago when I went to visit The Husband’s family for Thanksgiving). On the heels of that will be pumpkin (probably with nutmeg or cinnamon added), and maybe parsnips after that. So far she’s been very receptive to trying all these new foods, so we might as well let her try as many as she’ll let us give her.

It’s funny to think I was ever nervous about starting solid foods because it’s really been quite fun. Of course, now I’m nervous about feeding her finger foods because we introduce the dangerous possibility of choking. Not coincidentally, we’re finally taking our hospital’s infant CPR class this weekend, which includes instruction on choking, as well.

Unexpected connections

Baby B has two teachers in her infant class, one that gets there a little early and leaves a little early, and one that arrives around 9:30 and is there until the last child goes home. It is the afternoon teacher that I see most often since I’ve got pick-up duty. I will call her Ms. Chatterbox, because she’s just that–quite the chatterbox. Sometimes I’m lucky to get in a story or two of my own in between her stories, but I like that she’s so chatty because it means I get a really good sense of the kind of day Baby B had while she was there. Ms. Chatterbox has always mentioned her (adult) children, but I didn’t really think too much of it.

We were talking yesterday when I went to pick up Baby B and somehow got started talking about what high school her kids went to, which was the high school I attended. Again I didn’t think too much of it because I graduated from a class of nearly 400 people, but I realized that she’d previously said her daughter was 30–my age–so I asked for a reminder about what her name was. She told me, I asked about her last name, and sure enough I knew her. In fact, she was one of my closest friends in 7th and 8th grade! We went to high school together and had some classes together, but by that point our social circles diverged a bit; we were still friendly with each other and talked in classes but didn’t socialize outside of school. I can’t believe that Baby B’s teacher is the mom of one of my closest junior high friends! Oh, and I know she remembers me because she’s a friend on my myspace page. I hate to say “it’s such a small world,” but it really is true sometimes.

Wordless Wednesday: Enjoying the perfect fall weather

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Late-night wakings, version 2.0

Over the weekend, Baby B woke up a couple times during the night–very unusual for her–because of bad teething pain. (There’s a hole in her gums and you can feel the actual tooth, but it still hasn’t erupted yet, at least not as of this morning.) Knowing that it’s the teething that’s bothering her, I admit that it’s very nice to not have to be the one to get up and take care of her, because I was the one who had to get up during the early days since I was a human milk repository.

Thankfully she has not woken up during the past two nights, which her working parents appreciate very much. I hope this tooth pops through soon, but I know this is just the beginning. Is it too much to hope that all of her teeth come in by this weekend?

Playing dress-up

Feel free to laugh at me if you want. Last year I went on and on (though not in this blog) to a couple of friends about how it bugs me when parents dress up their babies for Halloween and take them trick-or-treating, though I did reserve the right to change my mind about it once I had a kid of my own. So…I’ve officially changed my mind about it (well, part of it). It still makes me roll my eyes when parents take their young kids trick-or-treating and ask for candy since you know it’s just so the parents with a sweet tooth can get some goodies for themselves, but I changed my mind and ended up getting Baby B a Halloween costume. My rule was that I had to keep it under $15–some costumes run upwards of $50, and I just can’t see spending that–and I did even better than that, as I got it on eBay for $5 (still less than $10 with shipping). The costume will be only for pictures of her first Halloween–there will be no trick-or-treating for several more years (at least).

For right now, I’m going to keep the costume a secret, but I will say that there’s a clue somewhere in this blog post. 🙂 Any guesses?