So I never posted acknowledging the fact that seven days ago Shanna turned one year old. I continue to be impressed and delighted with her. The day after her first birthday she decided, “Enough of this crawling business–that’s for babies and now I’m a toddler.” It’s been remarkable.
She is now saying something that sounds a lot like “up” when she wants to be picked up. When she eats food that she thinks is especially tasty she goes “Mmmmmm!!!” She babbles pretty much non-stop when we are home alone but she is somewhat more shy when around people she doesn’t know well. She now understands and correctly follows the command, “Gentle” when touching people or animals; it’s quite sweet.
She is nursing substantially less though her last round of teething screwed up her sleeping through the night and she is back to at least one nursing session in the middle of the night. We are unlikely to stop nursing any time in the foreseeable future as the continued benefits of nursing far outweigh the fairly minor inconveniences of nursing (for us–I am not judging other people who choose to wean I swear).
She is only up to five teeth and I have no idea when she will be getting more. Lack of teeth doesn’t seem to slow her down much in eating just about everything she wants to eat. She has favorite foods, of course, namely: bananas, dried cherries, ice cream (duh), mini-meringues, sharper cheeses, and all things bread.
She is playing with her toys more and more. She cuddles her dolly. She adores the dump truck that sings a song when you push a button. I kind of want to throw it out the window, but she’s having a blast so instead I just pray for the batteries to die. 🙂 She loves her xylophone and ball smacker thing.
She noticeably recognizes Sarah the best and she treats her as a perfectly adequate mommy-substitute in crowd situations. This pleases me enormously for many reasons. I love that her monkey sphere is expanding because it means that she is developing actual attachment to someone other than me and that shows me hope that she will stop being as dependent on me soonish. 🙂 At this point I’m not sure she has “stranger anxiety” but she no longer eagerly goes to all people she meets as a matter of course. She has a strong preference for people who are familiar and it takes her a bit to warm up to new people.
She now shows a decided preference for going in the potty and will hold her bladder/bowels for a bit trying to get a chance. Unfortunately she isn’t signing consistently yet so we still have a lot of misses because I don’t offer enough. I should start working on this because she shows all the signs I can see of wanting to be done with diapers. It’s really cool.
She shrunk back into 12 month clothing. This is cute and kind of neat only… I sent pretty much all we had to Texas for the arrival of Noah’s brother’s child because I thought we were done with it. Oops. Luckily I have friends with kidlets and we received another batch and some of hand-me-downs so she is certainly not running around nekkid (well, at least not more than she would be any way).
She starts vaccinations next week. Of course I am nervous about this, but I’m going to hope that the universe sees fit to keep her out of the group of kids who has side effects. Before the hysterical pro vaccination people start harping on me about mercury and autism (neither of which hit my radar in terms of worry) I will point out that the package inserts for vaccinations mention Guillain-Barre syndrome, Encephalitis, Encephalopathy, SSPE, and death. There are other serious reactions to vaccinations like Lupus, MS, arthritis, blood disorders, seizures, diabetes, pneumonia, life threatening rash, paralysis, and a few others mentioned on the package inserts. None of these things are hysterical reactions from ill advised people reading faulty medical information. Yes they are by and large rare; I don’t think I will feel comforted by the thought, “Well it’s only about a 1 in 100,000 chance that a child will have a severe reaction to a vaccination” if my kid is the one damaged by a vaccine. So I’m nervous. It’s time to start though. She is starting to get out and actually interact with the world and that means she needs more protection than just my milk. Though my milk continues to be awesome for her, of course.
She loves to “read” her books and she goes back and forth between her board books and older picture books. She is rather gentle with our books at this point so I don’t feel cranky when she pulls down a grown up book or two to play with.
I think that is about all I have the gumption to write about right now. Maybe I’ll put up pictures later (and hopefully I will be sent pictures from the birthday party. 🙂
I always thought that if I had a kid I would skip some of the recomended innoculaization, or otherwise spread them out… especially if like you I was home schooling and not dropping the kid off in daycare.
things like chicken pox, its not deadly for kids, just adults… so why give it to little kids, why not wait till later, lets say 9 when puberty starts to hit, to give it? ,,,,, other than I guess a lot of parents prefer it not wanting the hassle of staying home with the kidlet who has a bought of chicken pox.
Stuff like that. (I say this from the perspective of what kids got when I was a baby was way less than what they’re giving out these days, and when it comes to stuff like chicken pox I’m kind of like… isn’t that we have immune systems?
Curious how your opting to handle it. Are you gonna pick and choose what she gets?
Yes we will pick and choose and do them on an alternative schedule.
things like chicken pox, its not deadly for kids, just adults… so why give it to little kids, why not wait till later
Because sometimes it’s not “just” chicken pox. Sometimes chicken pox turns into things like Reye Syndrome. Which can be far more complicated than chicken pox. I say this as someone who’s had it.
I’m not saying K should absolutely give Shanna the vaccination – my point is only that sometimes there’s more to it than it initially seems.
Not familiar with Reye, ….
I just looked it up, it says its a result of giving asprin to any child under 19 with a any sort of viral infection that causes a fevor, not just chicken pox. Never heard of that before. Didn’t know you weren’t supposed to give asprin or acetaminaphin to kids with fevors….
Aspirin can be a serious problem in a bunch of ways. I just don’t have it in the house. Tylenol is less often a problem (from what I’ve read) but mostly I’m just a fan of not medicating unless there is true danger from a symptom.
I am aware that chicken pox can be a serious problem.
They didn’t have the chicken pox vaccine when the Dudes were little — you waited for one of their friends to get it, then you’d expose them on purpose and stay home for a week applying baking soda poultices and trying to stop them from clawing at themselves. Unfortunately, Miles caught it when Ben was still nursing, so I had to go through it twice 🙁
I hear that you don’t want kids to catch chicken pox before they are about two because they don’t pick up immunity that early. It’s kind of a balancing act. I think that if Shanna does not have chicken pox by the time she is getting to puberty then we will get the vaccination. Although my mom seems to have natural immunity without ever having had chicken pox. She has lived with four or so rounds of the disease in her house during her life and never gotten it.
I think thats about how old I was when I got it. Mom had jon stay with a freind of the family whose kid had it till she was sure he had it, then she stuck me in his bedroom.
I never got chicken pox, though I was exposed (not deliberately) a number of times. It turns out that I have the antibodies for it as a result of my exposure.
FYI in case you don’t already know: as far as all those autoimmune side effects go (MS, diabetes, arthritis, Lupus), if she’s genetically predisposed, then any strong immune reaction can set it off (particularly in response to a virus). Immunization is likely only linked because it’s one of the first strong reactions kids experience. Even then it’s not a promise: a good friend didn’t develop type I diabetes until after a bad virus at 30 despite a normal immunization schedule, and similar cases are more common than one would expect. Hopefully she’s not predisposed and will only have the normal side effects (eg lethargy).
On the chicken pox thing, my brother and I had it about the same time (either he gave it to me or I to him) but about one week ago at the age of 33 he got it again!!!
Fortunately he is recovering fine and going back to work today.
In Dec 2007 Ken got it after I had the shingles, he recover fine but he did have an upper respiratory infection after the pox cleared up.
So as adults you have to be more careful but base on these 2 examples adults can recover just fine from it.
-gee
The problem is that you can find anecdotal evidence on both sides of this issue and people are quite fierce about defending their experience. Chicken pox is generally speaking a pretty mild disease but it can cause severe complications. Some people think that the risk of complications and even the minor risk of suffering through the disease means it is something to be avoided.
Shingles is, of course, basically a relapse of chicken pox.
Chicken pox in adults is generally worse than it is for kids, though everyone’s responses will vary. But that’s true for kids, too. Despite repeated exposure, I never developed chicken pox (but did develop the immunity). I think that part of the danger for adults is that they are more likely to be partially immunocompromised, and thus the disease will hit them harder.
Kidlet has a couple of talking toys which end up getting turned off if she plays with them long enough while we’re nearby.
Kidlet also showed the same not-really-stranger-anxiety about the same age. It wasn’t nearly so bad as the literature (and other people’s stories) lead us to expect.
TODD-ler!
TODD-ler!
TODD-ler!
I was astounded at her walking at the party, and mused a little the day after just how much she’s grown since the first time she came over to Serenity. I mean…wow!
It’s wonderful to hear that she’s trying to get rid of diapers. I had a hideous time with that myself, so it’s good to hear it doesn’t look like she’ll have the same problem.
I look forward to seeing all of you at your next visit. 🙂 and Shanna is SOOOOOOOOOOO CUTE!