Lots of Catching Up!

Yes, I've been quite remiss in blogging lately. I'm not sure what the excuse is. Part of the problem is uploading photos. The photos that E shot on the camping trip were in RAW format, which means they take more time to process (i.e., he wants to fiddle with them). So that's mostly the hold-up, getting pics uploaded. I'm in the process of uploading pics, there may or may not be any in this entry, but if not now then soon.

G had her 6 month birthday on Monday. We can't believe how time really is flying. 6 months! I was extremely anxious about this too, for a number of reasons, the main one being getting her shots again. If you don't remember, G had a bad (in my mind) reaction to her 4 month shots and spiked a fever by evening and we had 2 failed attempts to give her Baby Tylenol which involved a lot of spitting up. The other thing on my mind was starting solids.

6 months is like the golden milestone. I might even argue that it is more significant than double digits of turning 10, the Sweet 16, being able to vote and go to war at 18, and the one everyone looks forward to, drinking at 21. For each of those milestones, there's just one or two rewards. 6 months is in anothe league, opening the floodgates of opportunities! At 6 months, G can now go on a cruise (she was not allowed to go on a recent cruise with E's family because she was 2 weeks shy of the Big Mark), she can start eating solid foods (meaning watery rice cereal and extremely blended baby food), she can use bug repellant and sunscreen, she can have ibuprofen, her doctor's visits are now every 3 months instead of 2, the list goes on. We didn't do much to celebrate all her new freedoms, just laid low after her shots to help her recover and be as comfortable as possible.

Well, I guess we did do one thing, we signed up G for a gymnastics/tumbling class. Since it was our first, I asked E to come to participate and document the experience for us. G had a blast! The class only had 3 babies in it, the others were about 8-9 months. G never once looked scared or fussy, and because of that, the teacher used her to demonstrate the moves throughout the class. The class uses music and movement to help the babies develop their muscles to get them ready for crawling (which the other two could already do) and walking. There are a number of "exercises" that we learned to do with G to help her muscles, for upper body, lower body, and back. G's favorite parts? Jumping, the bubbles, the rubber balls, and rolling in all sorts of new ways (horizontally with Mommy & Daddy, and vertically along a steam-roller type of thing).

Arm & shoulder exercises:

Here we are under the parachute:

G just woke up from her nap, so more to follow...

It's been ages...

I know, things have been crazy around here.

Last week, G turned 4 months. That means that she got loaded up with shots at the doctor's office. The last time she had shots, she slept through the next two days. We were told by her ped. that typically babies will react the same way for all their shots. She did sleep, and seemed really sad and wimpery all day. But she also seemed hot. As the afternoon wore into evening, she seemed to get hotter and hotter, and I got more and more worried, and had E pick up some baby Tylenol from the store (the normal drops kind, last time he picked up some in rectal suppository form, eeww!).

When he got home, we prepared to give her some after debating what exactly 0.8 dosage meant (0.8 of the dropper not full but where the line marks the full dosage, and not 8 drops). I squeezed it slowly, just like they did at the dr's office for her oral vaccine (which I failed to mention that she promptly spit up and they wanted to re-give it to her, but we became concerned about overdosing so we dressed her and left without the second serving). For some reason, maybe because it was taking a while, I squirted the last bit in. G promptly spit up all of it. We called the dr's office advice line (our first time, not bad for 4 months and first time parents!) to find out if it was ok to give her another dose since she spit it up. We got the go ahead and did another dose, this time very slowly. G spit that up too. Second call to the advice nurse. But by the time they called back, her fever seemed to have gone down and she was nursing so we just decided to forgo the Tylenol. The nurse suggested if her fever went up again to use the rectal suppository form (great, we already have that!) and walked me through the instructions on how to insert them (apparently flat side in, not pointy side).

By the next day, her fever was definitely gone, but G was not her typical self. She nursed longer each feeding (and spit up more), still seemed sad and wimpery, and for the next few nights woke up at 5-6 hrs instead of her usual 8-10 hrs. After the few days passed, it seemed like all the vaccines had messed up her immune system so that she ended up catching the cough and congestion that E had earlier, and that S was beginning to catch. It's a dry cough, that makes S gag, but poor G hasn't mastered the ability to control her gag reflex yet, thus all the spit ups. We've broken out the nose sucker to use (yes, G hates it) once or twice a day. We are prepared to put saline drops in her nose also, but she seems able to breathe fine, so we are holding off on that.

Anyways, that was my last week, and my reason for not posting.

Also, E's parents were in town this past weekend visiting. We went to Hakone Gardens with them, which was pretty and peaceful (there was one wedding party there taking pictures and another one that had rented out the gardens for their ceremony/reception).

Pictures to follow later when I get a chance to go through and upload them.