Prunes, overboard

So, after several days of mixing in dates and prunes into G's diet with only slight improvement, I decided to step things up and get serious about this constipation thing. Thursday (sorry, it happened to fall on Thanksgiving) I did an all-prune diet for G. 3 meals. Ok, there was a tiny bit of pear mixed in, but pretty much just prunes. Not even dates added. Just before dinner, after 2 prune feedings, G had a large poop, still mostly firm, but quite large, we'll call it a big lump, rather than the little rocks she had been passing for several days. We were both quite excited and happy about it. After her dinner, her 3rd prune feeding, all the cousins were sitting around hanging out, and I happened to check G's diaper... more "stuff", this time very smooshy, regular looking, yay! G's constipation bout was finally over!

We got home too late to give her a bath, so G just nursed and went to bed (a little more poop). We talked about how happy we were that G was "regular" again. The next morning, after she woke up from her early morning nursing, G pooped again, let's call it an explosion. After cleaning her up, we decided to do a baking soda soak again (we had been doing this earlier for her back end issues) just to clean things up. We decided that we would not give her any more prunes. We checked her diaper just before putting her down for her nap, to find more poop. 

After she woke up, we fed her lunch, which she hated, fussing the whole time. After both of us attempting to feed her, we finally gave up and went outside to look around our neighborhood (actually we were checking out the leaves that we had raked, we took turns whoever wasn't feeding G was raking leaves outside). While outside, I noticed something on her pants that suspiciously didn't look like her lunch... yuck, more leaky poop. This was the 6th consecutive diaper change with poop. Maybe the prunes worked too well.

Her dinner time diaper change was the first one the whole day that didn't have poop in it. 

But this morning there was plenty again. And again after her morning nap. Sigh. Will it ever end?

Here's our Thanksgiving spread. G only had prunes, but the rest of us had a feast!

Thanksgiving family portrait:

It's so difficult these days to get a good picture of G, as she's always moving and on the go. The second I sat her down, she was trying to crawl away. It was a race to sit her down and move out of the way fast enough for E to take a picture before she crawled or rolled away. We had to repeat this several times, this was the best we could do.

9 months!

G has entered her 4th Quarter.

At her peds appointment yesterday afternoon, she weighed in at 14 lbs, and measured 26 inches. I think the length might be a bit short, b/c G didn't want to stay laying down for the nurse to mark the paper. Anyways, she is in the half percentile for weight, and 9th percentile for height. She has gained some weight since her visit before our vacation. The doctor is not concerned yet, but wants us to continue trying to boost her solids intake and see how things are at her next (12 month) appointment, where hopefully she will be back on the growth chart. She didn't have any shots, but had a blood draw to check iron levels, results came back fine. I guess this is particularly an issue for breastfed infants, as formula is iron-fortified. G has been eating a lot of spinach b/c it helps with her constipation.

G is still constipated, but doing better. I'm upping her prune intake and have been laying off the grains. We have recently added proteins to her diet (yogurt, egg yolk, tofu) as well.

She's still a good sleeper, but no longer doing the 12+ hours at night. These days it's 9-11 hours, which is still good, but we miss the 12+ hour nights/mornings. Luckily, when she first wakes up, all she does is nurse and then goes back to bed for a few hours. G is still taking 2 naps during the day as well (not including the early morning one).

One of the things the doctor asked us was whether G could do the "pincher grasp" which means picking something up with your index finger and your thumb (a fine motor skill). I didn't think so because I've never really seen her do that, though most of her toys are bigger and she's not doing finger foods yet. When we got home, I decided to try it out and showed her a button (that fell off her pants and has been sitting in my bathroom for a while). She looked at it and promptly stretched out her hand and picked it up with her index finger and thumb. Quite impressive! I guess that means we need to start giving her little foods to pick up.

Another thing we discovered at the doctor's: G has a second tooth coming in, right next to the first one. So now she has 2 teeth coming in on the bottom.

First Family Vacation

This was written several days ago, but for reasons I'm not going into, I'm not home and able to add pictures to this entry, so I've decided to go ahead and publish the entry w/out pics and add the pics later:

So we all survived our first family vacation. There were a lot of firsts for G.

G got her first tooth, saw her first snow, ate her first protein (hard boiled egg yolk), and had her first bout of constipation.

Apparently, constipation is a common side effect of teething, traveling, and high altitudes, so we had all three covered. We did not realize she was constipated until almost the end of the trip, so S immediately began G on some dates (reconstituted dried dates), which was the only thing we had. G had been on a steady diet of pears all week which had only a minimal effect. The dates seem to be helping a lot (along with being back home), as G had several little poops Sunday, and several more today. Since it is our second day of dates, we can begin another food item, which will be prunes. The other advantage of dates and prunes are that they are easy to make, just add water and wait for them to soften and smush.

As far as first snow, G didn't seem impressed. We sat her down on the snow several times, and never really got a smile out of her. It was probably hard for her to smile since she couldn't move any of her arms or legs, being so bundled up in her snow suit, but at least she was warm. Then we opened up her suit so her hands could stick out and let her touch the snow. At first she was curious, then she decided it was just too cold.

The egg yolk gave us some great pics of G doing funny things with her mouth. I don't know if it was the texture of the egg or it just happened to coincide with her learning new mouth exercises.

The trip back was a little more effort. The plane was not full, but definitely not as empty as going. We all shared one row. G was also more fussy, probably from the constipation. She slept in the airport after we went through security and waited by our gate. She woke up just in time to board and nurse during take off (I timed it better this time around). G was up most of the flight, playing with snack bags, eating some ice and pear, and ripping up magazine pages. She never was full on crying, but was definitely cranky and loud. Oh, and we even managed to change her diaper while she was standing up. She finally fell asleep about 20 minutes before we landed, and we decided it was better to just let her sleep, though I had some grapes ready just in case she woke up.

Overall, it was a nice relaxing trip. We would have liked to snowboard a second day, but it was still great to be able to get our one day in (daycare was too expensive, so we ended up just taking turns watching her and going up on the slopes, which worked out really well anyways because the high altitude was hard on the lungs). On the other days, we slept in, walked around the town, and took a drive around the area. At one point, E asked me if it was really a vacation for me, since I was still taking care of G feeding her and making her food, and cooking for us. It made me think of what the definition of "vacation" really is. I don't (yet) feel like I need a vacation away from everything - for me, it was nice enough to just be away, in a new place where I don't have to look at the clutter or "things to do" around the house, even if I'm still cooking, taking care of G (making her food wasn't that difficult, but I am thankful that we opted to do the disposables instead of the cloth diapers), folding laundry, etc.

Teeth!

G's got teeth. Well, at least one, or half of one. It's starting to poke out on the bottom, the left front tooth. We're excited, but a little sad at the same time. Our baby is growing up.

Oh, and she can say "ttt" sounds now too. It's a race to see whether she will talk or walk first, she's been really practicing at both.

G takes flight

Our travels yesterday went fairly smooth, mostly. Check in was a breeze, did it curbside so we didn't have to lug our two suitcases and snowboard bag. Security quick and easy, except for the part where I forgot to take off my belt, so G and I beeped as we went through the detector, then, in my flustered state, thought I had to take G out of her carrier and have us go through separately, so I held her out at arms length through the detector. The guards just smiled and said it was probably a belt or something and the baby was fine. Duh. After getting through and putting all our stuff back together (stroller held the car seat, our jackets, and the diaper bag, rolly bag contained the computer, cameras, and misc. other stuff), we still had time to get a bite to eat and for G to take a quick nap.

The flight was practically empty, so we actually had two rows between the three of us. E had one row with the car seat, G and I had another row. During the flight, E was able to walk around with G and take her to different rows to show her the wings and other things out the window. She also took another short nap, I ended up waking her up because we were descending and I was concerned about her ears not popping.

The traveling nightmare was actually renting the car. After we got our luggage, we had a lot of trouble figuring out where and how to find our car rental place. It took us 2 hours to rent our car (took airport shuttle to another part of the airport, waited in line because there was only one employee, went back and forth about what sized car we needed to fit our stuff, ugh). I had mapped out a Whole Foods to pick up groceries and dinner on our way to our lodging, but we got there an hour before closing, barely enough time for me to nurse G, for E to eat half a sandwich and feed G her baby food we had packed, and me to run around the store trying to find everything we needed for the week and buy something to eat in the car.

By the time we got to our condo, it was about 11 at night. If the car rental had gone smoother and we hadn't gotten lost getting out of the airport, we could have saved about 2 hrs.

We spent today relaxing. G took a 4 hour nap in the afternoon, so by the time we got out to explore, it was already dark. So far, we are all adjusting to the altitude change. G hates the process of getting all bundled up for the outside, but is fine once we get going, and even fell asleep on the way home after dinner.

Day at the Doctor's

So G's been having some drama lately...

Last night we had quite a scare. G seemed like she needed to poop while we were feeding her dinner, so we took her out of her high chair and put her on the toilet. She managed to poop, which we were very happy about. The bad news was that she seemed to strain quite hard and had a tiny bit of bleeding. We immediately called the advice nurse, and was told that we didn't need to come in but to give her a baking soda (or salt) soak to help heal her bottom and to give her more foods to "soften" her up.

So, after struggling all week about whether G really had ringworm, I decided to take her back to her regular pediatrician today for a second opinion and to check on her backside. The good news is that she did not think G's rash looked like ringworm at all. The bad news is that she is actually only 13 lbs 13 oz. Today's weigh in was with a digital scale, and the one that is usually used to weigh her. The scale from last week was an older free weight scale, which apparently can make a big difference. So instead of being in the 8th percentile, she's below the 1st percentile. The doctor wants us to up her solid feedings to 3 times a day and eventually increasing to 2-3 snacks as well, and says we can introduce new foods every 2-3 days (we had been doing 1-2 new foods each week). So G is no longer on a "new food hiatus" and this afternoon we gave her yogurt. Later this week we will try pears.

After her doctor's appointment was over, I waited to get a copy of her immunization records (it's what airlines use for baby identification), and E went to work. A few minutes later I headed for the car only to realize that E had my car keys! To make matters worse, last week E's phone stopped working, so I had no way to call him until he got to work. So I left him a message and sat with G on a bench under the trees and looked at flowers. Then we went back inside the office so I could feed her. All this time, I was repeatedly calling E's work to see if he was in yet. Before I had finished nursing G, E walked in the door. He apparently hadn't made it to work yet but had stopped somewhere to pick up some lunch and when he was going back to the car he realized he had two sets of keys in his pocket. All was good, and G and I headed home while E headed back to work.

After her nap and feeding, we heard a lot of noise outside the house. The city was trimming our tree because I had called earlier in the week after noticing that a branch had cracked after the latest storm and was resting comfortably on our roof. G was fascinated watching the 4 workers with their 2 chainsaws, sawing and dropping and dragging and woodchipping huge chunks of tree branches. They will be back again in the next few days to finish up the tree trimming.

Oh, and while feeding G, I am fairly certain she said "mamama". I've been trying very hard these last few days to get her to combine her "mmmm" sound with her "aaaa" sound. I think I have been successful.

First words

G said "bwa" and "yayaya" today...

... oh, and she also said, "dadadadee".

New Chair!

I've been searching for a very long time for a portable chair that had a tray, but was not made of plastic, or at least was BPA-free. Being concerned about plastic and germs is apparently a difficult combination. For home use, I want a chair that is easy to clean (just a practical thing having been using one that is difficult to clean), not made of plastic (BPA-free for safety), and no tray (better developmentally for the baby to be at the table). This one fits the bill, but the price is steep, so we are holding off to save enough money for it. I also like that it grows with the child, and can eventually be a regular chair, so it seems less of a waste to spend so much money on it (versus an infant car seat that is only used for less than a year, but don't get me started on that soapbox).

Anyways, for a travel/restaurant use chair, I had different criteria, mainly, I wanted a tray because I just thought that the restaurant tables are so dirty and gross. There are plenty of chairs, of the clip on the table variety, that are not made of plastic. However, to find one that has a tray, that is an impossible task. If I had the resources, I would invent one and market it. This seemed to be a popular choice amongst a lot of parent-friends, and I almost gave in to buy it. It has the tray, but when I called Fisher-Price to get BPA info on it, I was disappointed that they just gave the usual shpiel about how BPA is safe, etc. I told them I was sorry that they were not listening to consummers concerns and that I would NOT be purchasing that product from them.

Then, I found this. It was pricey, and had no tray, but at least I could pull the chair further away from the table if I really wanted to, and just be tray-less and table-less. I liked that it was wood, and you could buy an attachment to make it a free-standing chair also. However, after thinking about it a while, I realized that G doesn't really need a free-standing little chair, if we're outdoors like at a park, she can just sit on the ground/blanket. And it was pricey.

So I kept searching, and eventually found this. The problem was that there wasn't much info online about it, reviews, specs regarding size/weight, etc. But a local baby store (not so local, 30 min away) had it in stock, so we made the trek after church to check it out. And ended up buying it and using it immediately at my family's for dinner. And I'm in love with it. Granted, it doesn't have the tray, but I'll live. It's super light, the wooden one I mentioned above is 5 lbs, this one is 3. Also, the "legs" adjust to three different chairback heights (though they do not adjust to really highback chairs like our formal dining table chairs). Because the legs adjust, you can also pull them out and pretty much store the whole thing flat at about 1-2 inches thick. I can even put it in the diaper bag (but it's easier to just hook it off the top of the bag). And the price is comparable to the hook on the table types, though slightly more than the plastic ones, but significantly less bulky.

Now if only they made a tray attachment for it...

The crib is down

all the way down... after she gave us that scare (but not so much so that we didn't take a pic of it) of her standing up in her crib. We took the bumper off and the mattress off and lowered her crib to the bottom setting. This took quite a bit of effort, as the holes didn't seem to line up as nicely as for the middle and top settings. It's a bit harder to slide the side rail up and down because the mattress is now up against where you're supposed to push in to hook and unhook it (apparently it's Daddy-proof). It's also harder to put her down into the crib because you have to bend your back a bit to get her in (ok, that's only my problem for being height-challenged). We'll adjust...

In other news, she's been practicing her "d" and hard "th" sounds (as in "the" not "thumb") as well as "y". It almost sounded like she said "daddy" but it came out as "dadadathadathathadadee" or something similar.

Sunday we were out the entire day, from 10-9, so no diapers saved today, it was an all disposable day, sad for the environment.

Crib updates

I forgot to mention that G also got her crib lowered last week. Here she is helping Daddy.

Here she is not sleeping in her crib. She looks so proud and happy. Mommy and Daddy were less thrilled, but thought it was funny enough to take the picture.Last night when we put her down for bed, we had to re-put her down several times as we kept finding her standing up. Finally we gave up, and so did she.

In other news, we took G to the doctor yesterday, I finally called to get advice about her sleeping less, recent weight loss, and the little rash on her face. The doctor says her sleeping less is normal as she's more active, and didn't notice any weight loss. At the doctor's office, G weighed in at 15 pounds, 8 ounces, so that was exciting! Less exciting was that she is just under the 8th percentile. The alarming news, however, was that the doctor thinks that G's rash is ringworm, a fungal rash that is infectious. She wanted to prescribe an anti-fungal cream which will take 2 months of twice daily application. I said I'd prefer to wait it out. After going home and of course, researching ringworm, I'm fairly convinced that she does NOT have it. I think it's just food/drooling-related eczema. We have her 9-month appointment coming up in a few weeks anyways, so we will see G's regular pediatrician (who wasn't in when we went in, saw a different ped) and see. As of this morning, the rash is barely noticeable and really doesn't look like the pics of ringworm that I've seen online.

New words

oooooo-bbbbbb-aaaaaa-mmmmm-aaaaaa

ok, G can't put all those sounds together YET, but they are all sounds she can make.

E & S are very happy.

Lots of updates!

We took her to a pumpkin patch to take some pictures. It was after Halloween, so there weren't many pumpkins left, oh well, I guess next year we will be more on top of things.

We also went to a party at the Little Gym, where G takes classes. G liked showing off to Daddy all the things she can do. Here she is crawling through a tunnel to Daddy. She got bored the second time around and Daddy came in to help coax her out. She was heading for a little container of bubbles she "won" in one of the carnival games at the party. As usual, she wanted to suck on it (but we didn't let her).

Here she is with Daddy jumping on the balance beam.
Playing peek-a-boo with Daddy on the bars.
And jumping on the low bars. Yesterday in class, we combined a low beam with these bars so G could "walk" along the beam holding onto the bars on each side.
G loved playing with Daddy and showing off all her new skills. Is that a wink?

Mommy had to do this one with G while Daddy took pictures. Here she is starting her roll:

Here she is with her hands down, that's a baby reflex.

Check out how excited G is to do her rolls on the beam!

We tried to put G down for a nap the other day and she wanted to have no part of it. After some time passed and it was clear she wasn't going to sleep, S went into G's room to get her and this is what she found. E rushed in and I told him to get the camera. You can't tell from the picture, but when she saw us, she had this big smile on her face, like she was so proud of herself!

The short story is that G finally figured out that one of the ties (in the corner) of the bumper was torn off so she could pull the whole thing down. I used a large  binder clip to clip the tie to the crib railing, but she managed to pull that off too. After much searching around the house, I finally found a needle and thread and attempted to sew the tie back on properly. So far so good. We also lowered her crib to the middle setting, but I'm sure soon enough we will have to lower it all the way down.

Feeding update: G is doing much better. We no longer have to strip her down to her onesie nor do we have to hold her hands down (much). While she still sometimes fusses, she will open her mouth and lean in when the spoon is in front of her. We are trying to do 2 feedings per day. We do, however, still think she's teething, as she's still more fussy than normal.