I’m not sure why but Shanna’s teeth are coming through in pairs. Three and four have arrived and they are pretty big in terms of her mouth. I no longer feel I have the right to complain about the fussing of the past few days. 🙂
I put Shanna on the floor in the living to play while I went to the bathroom. Once I got there I realized that she hadn’t peed yet since her nap. So I called out to her that if she needed to pee she should come to the bathroom. So she crawled from the living room to the bathroom. I put her on the potty. Then she peed. She’s nine months old.
HOW COOL IS THAT!
And then this afternoon she finally managed to put all of the pieces together and crawl on her hands and knees.
Dangerous. 😀
Shanna pulled herself to standing tonight! This is so exciting. Yeah, I wonder if she will be walking before she full on crawls.
Hey parents! I know I don’t usually want advice but I’m feeling mildly anxious so I figure I’ll ask ya’ll about this. Shanna is terribly congested and I feel very bad for her. Is there much that can help her?
On the upside: since she’s been sick (post teething) she has been sleeping 10-11 hours at night and two or three naps adding up to four or five hours of sleep. Her body is obviously working hard on kicking this bug. She hasn’t slept this much in months and months.
And her second tooth is through. The first one took almost a week to get fully through. The second one took maybe two days. I think it’s been only eight days total for the first two. Cool!
And I’m back to not bitching about her sleep. 7p-5:30a last night (she nursed again when I went to bed and for about three minutes at 2a), a nap from 8:30a-10a, and she’s been napping for about 40 minutes so far with no sign of waking.
Man I have an easy kid.
No one told me that “teething” meant that each individual tooth could take a week or maybe a month to come in. No one told me that during teething she would get a terrible diaper rash, have a runny nose, and not be able to sleep consistently for a week (so far). Ok, I sorta knew those things about teething, but my kid has been so darn easy up to this point that I didn’t think it would be so bad. This is our first bout of sleep deprivation and I get the impression that we still may have it easy. Last night out of desperation we swaddled her so that she would go to sleep. It worked pretty well until about 1am and then didn’t work anymore. She has always hated swaddling, from when she was tiny so I’m surprised it worked at all. We are also going 100% diaper free for a while in efforts to help with diaper rash. Trying EC full-time is kind of scary, but we did go all night without her wetting the bed! Yay! I’m just nervous because she hasn’t pooped yet and she’s due. Missing pee doesn’t bother me much; I really don’t want poop all over the floor. ick. So I’m pottying her every 15 minutes. heh. Aunt Sarah also gave us some teething tablets; I’m not sure if they are helping or not but she is a bit happier today. Given how many things we are trying at once it’s hard to tell what is doing what.
It doesn’t help that I now have a stuffy nose and sore throat. Bodies kind of suck.
Shanna has been super clingy and fussy for a few days while nursing way more than usual. I had the idea to look in her mouth today. A tooth is erupting! How cool is that!
This morning Shanna was having a hard time. She wanted to nurse. And nurse. And nurse. And nurse. Eventually I came to the conclusion she just wasn’t going to be done any hour soon and I had stuff to get done and places to go. So I pulled her off the boob and went about getting stuff done. She cried really hard and I had to struggle with my “bad mommy” feelings. After I finished doing what I needed to do I picked her up again and held her on my lap and rocked her and sang her a few songs. She continued crying for a while but it gradually tapered a bit. I told her that I understand that she’s very frustrated with me but sometimes she can’t spend the whole day on the boob. She finally calmed down and I grabbed the stuff to head out for errands and socializing. She then had a good day.
My lesson from this: it’s ok to hold her while she cries and not fix it. Even if I can fix it, maybe I won’t really be fixing what is going on in a permanent way. Sometimes there is no permanent fix. And life has to go on anyway.
I was thinking earlier today. I was in a funk earlier this week and for part of last week and it was annoying, but really not so bad. I have been sad for short periods in the past few months. I get angry every so often. But I haven’t felt self-loathing in a long time. I can’t remember when I last hated myself. It’s kind of weird to think about, but I loathed myself for most of my life. I remember what it is like to think terrible thoughts about myself constantly and I’m surprised I didn’t notice it stopping. Somehow I just let it go.
That’s really awesome. 🙂 Man my life is good.
Oh, and in other news: Shanna sat up from laying down today for the first time. 🙂
It’s very cute to watch her dive bomb towards peas. 🙂
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Shanna is not quite crawling yet, but she is self-mobile. She is getting across the room to try and eat my Christmas presents. 🙂 After being able to roll for three months and being unimpressed with it she has now decided that rolling is awesome. She rolls over and over so she can go get things.
She is also pushing up into a bridge shape on her hands and feet. I think she’ll be crawling any day now. I told her it would be a great present for mommy if she crawls by Christmas. 🙂 She looks like she is thinking about it.
She is trying really hard to get back to sitting once she falls over. She isn’t all that close to doing it but she wants to so bad.
Her playing with toys has noticeably changed. Her attitude and behavior is different. She is going for the stuffed animals as much or more than the rattles now. She holds them up and “talks” to them. Sometimes she will talk to them and then move them around. It’s really cute to watch. She loves books and she’s trying to open them on her own.
I haven’t weighed her recently. I’m starting to not care that much how much she weighs. She’s big, happy, healthy, and active. That’s good enough for me. She wears size 18 month clothes but they are a bit big. We went up to 18 because in her last super chub out stage she couldn’t squeeze into the 12’s very well but then she slimmed down. I’m willing to bet she could wear 12’s at this point but I shipped them to Texas already. Oh well. I think she would still need to be in 18 pants and I roll the sleeves on shirts once. That works. 🙂
She is “talking” to us more and more. Signing isn’t happening with any sort of consistency partially because Noah doesn’t try to do it at all so I’m giving up. I was doing it with her well for a while. *shrug*
She was sleeping through the night with only one nursing for a while but she has been rather a booby-monster in the last week or so. I really want to go back to one nursing so that my shoulders stop hurting so much.
Anyone who says that breast milk shouldn’t be all *that* influenced by what I eat is full of shit. I’ve eaten uhm more than a few cookies in the past couple of days and all of a sudden I am engorged again. It has to be the fat. I have had more fat from cookies than I have had from anything else since I started WW. It’s incredible how strongly it affects my milk. Shanna seems *thrilled*.
She has started being obsessed with Puff, which is really cute. Puff doesn’t seem so thrilled about this, but Puff is nosing around a little closer just lately. I’m watching their interactions pretty closely because I’m a trifle worried about Shanna being too rough and Puff defending herself. Neither of them will be doing anything wrong under those circumstances, I just want to intervene and prevent injury in either direction.
She still isn’t all that into eating solid food. She still likes her banana when we give it to her, but otherwise she isn’t that interested. And she only takes two or three bites when we do give it to her so it’s not a large nutrient source.
She’s becoming more and more like a kid all the time. It’s fascinating to watch. She’s going to be seven months old on Wednesday. 🙂 I’m still thrilled that I have the privilege of getting to stay home with her.
When Shanna is upset and/or she wants to get picked up she says, “Mamamamamama.” When I come get her she stops and snuggles in close.
Here is Shanna enjoying some tasty Christmas tree. 🙂
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| From Shanna |
There are 23 more if you click through…
Today I made four batches of Cinnamon rolls. This was after a fudge on the first attempt when the dough wouldn’t rise. Bother. I also made and put in the fridge: molasses crinkle dough, sugar cookie dough, and refrigerator cookies.
I went through nearly 10 lbs of flour and like 3 lbs of sugar. I need to go buy more flour before I can make more cookies. 🙂
This is so much more fun that studying for the comp exam. 🙂 I asked Noah for a laptop-free day and he was awesome about it. He read me some Peter Beagle stuff for a while and he spent some time reading The Moral Animal and talking to me about it. We also MST3K’ed a few Christmas movies. It’s really been a wonderful day. 🙂
And now my darling little boobie monster is falling asleep while eating. I’ve been impressed by her overall good nature today as I’ve spent very little time with her.
You know how sometimes when you poop you can tell exactly what you had to eat? By that metric, Shanna’s first food was Great Fir.
And it seems that her first favorite food is banana. She’s still not that thrilled with broccoli or avocado, but she’s starting to lurch for banana. And she’s chewing! It’s very cute to watch. 🙂 Still no sign of teeth. I’m probably grateful given that she’s still my little booby-monster.
And right now I am alone in my house. I’m not sure what to do with myself. Hm. On one hand I feel like I should go do chores. On the other hand–this is the first hour I have been alone in my house in over six months, screw chores.
hmmm
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| From Shanna |
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Have I mentioned that EC is just the niftiest darn thing imaginable? Being only somewhat diligent about it leads to four dirty diapers in a 24 hour period. Those happened when I was immersed in tasks and I didn’t bother to go potty her. That’s really neat! It seems that EC is the biggest thing I can do towards using less water in drought awareness. heh Noah is the one who does the most consistent pottying though and I have to give him mad-props. He gets up with her at least once and usually twice every night to sit on the potty for a while. Seeing as I wake up in the middle of the night disoriented and I stagger enough to hit walls, I’m grateful. Best daddy ever. 🙂
Today I need to:
– take my mom to the Great Mall. While I’m there I will go to Bev Mo for the last few Christmas presents.
– Put together chairs and the other table.
– Dig up the table cloths and napkins and wash the plates sitting in storage.
– Take the dog down to San Jose so it can stay with my sister (a compromise was reached–thank goodness).
– Figure out what I need to get at the grocery store and get it.
– Start the brining process for the turkey.
– Juggle stuff between main fridge and mini-fridge to make room for the turkey.
– Work on Power Point presentation for my Spanish class.
Uhm.. I think that’s it.
I finally found a client for Picasa (I’ve been lazy about it) and I uploaded a messload of pictures, most of which no one has seen outside of my house. 🙂 Here is one of the most recent ones:
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| From Shanna |
Here is one of the oldest ones:
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| From Shanna |
Wow she’s changed. If you follow through to the album there are just shy of 200 pictures there now. In no particular order, though you can follow tags to see things by age. 🙂 She’s going to be six months old next week. I am amazed by how much she has changed!
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| From Shanna |
and a couple of others: Continue reading