About that move... I tried desperately to prevent myself from getting attached to this new house just in case the loan doesn't get approved. The loan officer says everything looks great and our credit ratings were phenomenal (I'm so grateful that my parents were indoctrinating me on credit ratings beginning when I was too young to have a clue what they were talking about) so the loan should get approved, but I'm still not busting out a box or packing a thing until we know this is going to happen. But until then, it doesn't hurt to throw out some stuff that we should get rid of anyways. We also need to make this place sparkle because a lady is coming over on Tuesday morning to take marketing pictures so they can rent this place out. *sigh* so much to do.
Emma= Crazy Baby= Baby Bird= Baby Bean= My Little Sweet Potato. Just so you're aware that those terms are interchangeable. I think I call her Baby Bird and Sweet Potato more than anything, but I've made it a point to use her actual name here and there so hopefully she isn't too confused on what her real name is. Although I do worry that she'll be two years old and will be insistent that her name is Sweet Potato.
So my Baby Bird is officially 7 months old today. My, how time flies. When I was pregnant, everyone said to enjoy the baby stage because it just goes by so fast. Cliche as it is, it's true. Seven months isn't that long in the scheme of things, but when we're talkin' baby... seven months is practically a century. In seven months' time, Baby Bird has gone from a bump-on-a-log of a baby that would stare blankly at the blurry shapes comprising her world, suck on her hands when she was hungry, and sleep all day night to an interactive, silly, smart little girl who squeals so loud she sometimes startles herself.
So what has she been up to lately?
Teething. A whole lot of teething. And a whole lot of no teeth. UGH. The drama climaxed yesterday and the night before and I swore we wouldn't make it out alive, yet here we are. Still alive. She seemed to be feeling much better today but still. no. teeth. Her bottom gums are turning whiter, but I think we've still got plenty of miserable teething days ahead of us before those darn things decide to grace us with their pearly presence. In the meantime, I'm armed with Tylenol, Motrin, Hyland's Teething Tablets (read: baby crack), Baby Orajel Naturals*, chamomile tea, wet washcloths, chilled teething rings, Sofie the Giraffe, etc etc etc.
*I innocently purchased regular Baby Orajel. Actually, no. Not regular Baby Orajel. Super Baby Orajel... the overnight stuff with extra benzocaine, which is apparently baby poison. I didn't realize the FDA put out a warning about the use of benzocaine on infants until after I bought it and used it. So that went to waste and now I have Baby Orajel Naturals, which is a horrible tasting gel that maybe helps but mostly makes Emma scrunch up her little face, turn red, and start grumping at me for putting something so volatile in her mouth. Sorry, kiddo.
Rolling Over. Or not. Baby Bird is SO CLOSE to rolling over, she just doesn't want to. Still.
Babbling. Kind of. She mostly prefers squealing really reallllllllyyyyy loud over and over. And just today she discovered how to blow raspberries all on her own. It started at lunch, when she thought it was just hysterical to sputter her bananas and oatmeal (with cinnamon! Recipe by Chef Mommy) all over me and her highchair. Then tonight, I stuck a spoon full of green beans in her mouth and she instantly sputtered green beans everywhere... gross. I laughed. She laughed. Then the lightbulb went on and she realized that she could make this hilarious sound with her mouth. And so, for the rest of the night, she was blowing raspberries and cracking us up. I'm telling you... there are few things in life that are funnier than holding an already goofy baby that blows raspberries out of the blue while you're putting away blankets. I guess she's like me in a lot of ways: she likes to entertain herself during mundane tasks. I think my coworkers think I'm completely off my rocker because of that exact trait.
Sitting up. Alllllllllmost. The interesting thing on this one: she prefers throwing herself backwards. This stemmed from my attempt to help her learn to sit up without supporting her weight with her arms/hands. I thought it was a brilliant idea to sit her up on my bed because, if she fell backwards, she wouldn't hit her head and get hurt. Well, that backfired. She apparently thinks it's fun to launch herself backwards onto the bed from a sitting position. *smacks hand to forehead* Emma- 8763254876, Mommy- 0.
Pincer grasp. Achieved. I think we have an artist in the making because this kid is crazy good with her hands and fine motor skills. She reaches for everything in sight... especially faces. She loves faces, and she really loves trying to rip the skin off of your face. And trying to rip out your carotid artery. I think she's trying to kill me... anyways, it's difficult not to laugh when her little arm reaches up and she pats you on the face or grabs onto your chin. But the laughing typically ends once you realize that that little hand is slimy and has very sharp little raptor nails attached to the fingers. Not a pleasant experience.
Food. This fat kid eats like a fat kid some days, and other days you'd swear she was on a crash diet. I think most of that has to do with teething, but I could be wrong. She doesn't like to eat anything first thing in the morning... not a bottle, nor solid foods. But when she does want to eat, she really loves food as long as it's not peas that you're shoveling into her mouth. She's liked everything else so far, even green beans. The only thing I'm struggling with is how much to give her. She isn't a big formula eater as it is... before solids, she had been drinking about 32oz of formula a day, but that suddenly decreased to about 24-27. I want to make sure she's getting enough formula during the day so I don't want her to fill up on solids, but I also want to make sure she's eating enough solids too. And each website has varying serving sizes per age for solid foods. Doh! Advice? Resources? I've been trying to feed her three times per day, but it gets more difficult during the week when she's babysat and those days she ends up being fed solids once or maybe twice.
She's been pretty grumpy with the teething thing going on, but we're managing. I guess I much prefer grumping to screaming any day, but it still breaks my heart that my little booger is so uncomfortable. The funny thing is, you can definitely see the generation gaps when you have a child. It seems older generations attribute everything to gas. Gas gas gas. Like there's nothing else that could possibly bother a baby other than gas. Emma rarely has bothersome gas, and when she does have it, it's obvious because her belly gets distended and you can hear it rumbling around. But that hasn't happened in a long time. It still amazes me, though, when Emma is around someone and starts grumping because she's tired, overstimulated, or uncomfortable and someone immediately tells me that my child has gas. Or when she toots, and I'm told that the poor thing has gas and must be in pain. She's a baby. She farts. It's usually not a bad thing. So now I get this picture of all of these babies in the 70's and 80's that were teething, cold/hot, bored, overstimulated, tired, etc. having their legs bicycled and whatnot because parents at that time thought that the issue was always gas. And I'm not convinced that colic is gas. Not one bit. Because gas eventually has to come out, right? And during Emma's colic days, she didn't fart any more than she usually does and I couldn't hear the rumblies in her tumbly. What I could hear, though, was a crying, unsettled baby. And I also don't buy that colic has anything to do with dairy or cow's milk proteins. Why? Because it didn't bother her initially. And it doesn't bother her now. She's never had real diaper rash for even a day (knock on wood) and her reflux symptoms have been non-existent for quite some time. So, no... I don't think her colic had anything to do with milk or formula and it wasn't anything I was/wasn't eating because she was mostly formula-fed by that point. My theory? Nervous system and/or developing brain.
I've discovered a few things along the way... like, chamomile is a God-send. I realized that the teething tablets calm her, as does her Colic Calm gripe water. Both have chamomile in them, so I decided to give just chamomile a try and, shocker, it worked. And trust me, I'm not a "crunchy mom" and I typically don't subscribe to the whole natural remedies way of life. If I have a headache, I reach straight for the Tylenol. Things are a little different with a baby so I'm more apt to try natural and homeopathic remedies first and move on to the pharmaceuticals later. But chamomile is tried and true- I've found myself in a nice, foggy chamomile stupor after having some chamomile tea before bed many times in my life, so obviously this stuff works. So I steeped a tea bag, cooled it off, and poured about two ounces into a bottle. Then I added four more ounces of water and three scoops of formula, mixed it all up, fed it to the baby, and watched her eyes glaze over and she fell into a sound sleep in my arms. This was a few weeks ago, at which point having a sleeping baby in my arms was a rare occurrence. She went through a phase of terrible bedtimes when I had to stand up and bounce/rock her until she got groggy, then plop her into the crib and pray that she fell asleep and didn't start crying immediately. She's still having some rough bedtimes, but at least if she's had a bad day and is grumpy from being overtired or teething (or both! the worst!), I can add some voodoo magic to her bottle and help her find her happy place a little quicker.
I'm STILL trying to figure out a way to post more pictures without forking over some moolah to Google for "storage." Once I get that figured out, I'll be posting pictures. I PROMISE. I went through the Christmas pictures earlier and was smiling at the silly little faces and extremely surprised eyes in all of Emma's pictures. I sat there clicking away, looking at all of these sweet pictures of my fat baby girl and then... BAM. Four-pound Emma in an isolette with a CPAP mask, with my bruised arm reaching in, hand grasping onto the baby I had just delivered far too early. I've looked at her NICU pictures so many times and the ordeal is somewhat fresh in my mind, albeit mostly shoved to the back of my mind because I'm far too busy keeping up with this "preemie" to dwell on it. But it really caught me off guard tonight. She's over 17 pounds now... fat, healthy, a little delayed on her milestones for her actual age but right on target for her adjusted age, happy, silly. But there she was: skinny, red-skinned, scrunched up, with wires and tubes all over her. If she wasn't sound asleep in her crib, I would have run to her and cuddled her.
On a lighter note, one of my bestest friends in the whole wide world had her precious little bundle of joy yesterday! I briefly talked to her on the phone today and, dear God, did she ever deliver that boy like a total superwoman. She's my size (tiny) and delivered a 7lb 6oz (I think that's right, I'm too lazy to Facebook fact-check right now) perfect baby boy about 12 hours after being given Cervadil. She said she pushed for 40 minutes, but that was only because her contractions slowed. She's a champion child-birther and it sounds like everything went perfectly. I did an internal happy dance for her :) And another dear friend had her baby earlier this week! So many babies. So many cute babies. I need to cuddle them at some point *hint hint*
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