There Can be Miracles: Pictures. Small Pictures. But Pictures.

By the way I'm living my life right now, you'd think I'm a glutton for punishment or something. Teething baby. Moving. Promotion at work. *sigh*

At least the teething let up for about a week or two. Or maybe it's been longer than that? Time means nothing to me right now... but we have had a reprieve from the angry teething baby until today, when she decided to start grumping again and was chewing on anything she could get her slimy little hands on. And her slimy little mouth, which gave mommy and daddy some slimy little kisses today. I don't even care if she only gives open-mouth, baby-bird, super-drooly kisses... it's the cutest darned thing in the world.

So, all this teething and... not a tooth in sight. Her gums look maybe a little different now than they did a few months ago, but that's really grasping at straws. I seriously think her first tooth won't be making its appearance any time soon. Bah!

I've been reading some of my old blog posts and reminiscing on times past, which has greatly helped to put things in perspective for me this week. She's actually been doing very well lately, despite her ongoing issues with sleeping at her grandma and grandpa's house, which in turn causes a domino effect of bad bedtime, bad sleep, and early wakeup time. But other than that, she does great- she's usually in bed by 7:30 or 8, sound asleep in her crib with hardly a peep. And most nights she sleeps for a good 12 hours straight without waking for a bottle, which is, of course, always subject to change. She doesn't need a nighttime bottle anymore, but sometimes she wakes up and just can't get herself back to sleep without some help.

The few times she has woken up for a middle-of-the-night bottle recently have been because of Pampers Cruisers. Yep. Add that to the list of diapers that Emma can't wear. UGH. My mother-in-law bought a box of them when a local grocery store was going out of business and had everything on sale. They don't sell size 3 Swaddlers in the grocery stores around these parts, so the Cruisers were the next best thing. Well, apparently for my Baby Bird, Cruisers= nighttime pee pants. The Swaddlers can hold the biggest of all of the Emma pees without a problem. Ever. In fact, I don't think Emma has ever had a leak with her Swaddlers that I can recall... even when they've been poorly fastened. The Cruisers have a "three-way fit" and apparently none of those three ways actually fit Emma's little bottom. So she pees out the top back of the diaper in the middle of the night, which is a really exciting discovery (not) at 4:30am when I go to lift her out of her crib and am greeted by soaking wet pajamas and crib sheets. Because what I really want to do more than anything at 4:30am is change the crib sheet and give the baby a baby wipe bath (AKA a Hudson baby bath). Then feed her and beg her to go to sleep, because by that point she was completely wide awake and ready to party. Thank God for her swing. So her Cruisers are used during the day, and her Swaddlers at night because, well, if she wasn't spoiled enough already, she now has her day diapers and her night diapers. Next up, is her weekday Power Wheels and her weekend Power Wheels.

Speaking of Power Wheels. We're closing on our new home in 9 days... holy mother of God. There's so much left to do... pack, pack, pack, paint, pack, clean, paint, clean, unpack, unpack, unpack, reorganize, clean, unpack, pass out and die. We'll finally have a big garage (our current garage is more like a 1 1/2 car garage because we really wouldn't be able to comfortably fit both cars in it) so we can park both cars in it, PLUS the third garage bay, which is perfect for a little pink Barbie Power Wheels Cadillac. Duh.

As I was sitting here typing up this blog entry, Baby Bird start screaming bloody murder out of a nice, calm sleep. I jumped up and almost dropped my laptop on the ground in the process because this kid rarely cries. And when I say rarely, I mean I-can't-remember-the-last-time-she-really-cried kind of rarely. Actually, no. I do remember the last time she cried- it was when she had her shots at her six-month well-child appointment. She had a booster shot a couple of weeks ago but hubby took her to that appointment, but she obviously cried at that too. But otherwise, she'll grump when she's in pain or overtired, yell and fuss and scream (not cry though) when she's way overtired and doesn't want to sleep, grump/yell when she's hungry, or whine when she doesn't want to be put down or wants out of her crib when she's done napping. But she doesn't truly cry. So, yea. That startled me and I ran into her nursery and picked her up out of her crib. The poor thing looked at me and cried harder as I pulled her head onto my shoulder and calmed her down... sheesh. Usually she sees me and laughs, squeals, and smiles. So something was definitely amiss with my little miss. I'm still not certain what it was... she continued to cry a little and angrily grunt in my arms until she drifted to sleep again. I held her extra long to comfort her (ok, and me) and she tooted a few times. When I put her back in her crib, she woke up a little and started kicking and fussing like she sometimes does, but there were some angry grunts peppered in. And another toot or two. So maybe she has some gas that's bothering her? I know, I know... I don't subscribe to the whole "it's gas!" excuse that everyone uses anytime a baby is less than happy. But this could be the real deal, the elusive true gas pains. Or it could be heartburn. Or teething. Whatever it is, she's definitely in some pain tonight :(

We elected to discontinue her reflux medications at the end of January (oops, didn't tell her doctor. That may have been a good thing to do first...) for a few reasons. A few people had suggested that I have the pharmacy request an increased dosage since she's grown so much since her original script. At 17+ pounds, she was still on the same dose she was on when she was about 8 or 9 pounds. The doctor's office said the only reason to increase the dose would be if she was having more symptoms or getting worse, which she wasn't. In fact, she doesn't spit up like she used to and she's a generally happy baby. So I figured the medication probably wasn't doing anything for her anymore since it was such a low dose. And we were having to give her Colic Calm, Tylenol, or Motrin for her teething pain, so we skipped a few doses because she was really not feeling the whole medicine dropper thing after a while. The discontinuation of her reflux meds was accidental at first, but then we decided to just not give it to her anymore. She seems to be doing just fine.

My chubby little baby is starting to move along with her gross motor skills now. She rolls from tummy to back like she's been doing it all her life and is starting to sit on her own without support for short periods of time. She still face plants quite often, though and grumps afterwards. I can't help but laugh at that. At the rate she's going with her fine motor skills, she'll be a concert violinist at the age of three. The pincer grasp is now her grasp of choice and she loves to grab at tags with her little fingers all day long. She'll grab a stuffed animal and immediately turn it over and around until she finds the tag, and then proceeds to play with it. She usually doesn't even try to put it in her mouth; she just plays with it with her fingers. Put a toy in front of her, and she can reach right for it, grab it with one hand (depending on the toy), and pull it to her to inspect and decide if she wants to play with it. She doesn't even have to try hard anymore, her hands can do whatever she wants them to do without hesitation. Now she just has to work on getting her legs and the rest of her body to cooperate, and we'll be in good shape.

So here's my sad attempt at posting pictures. I'll include the link to my Flickr account that I created just so I could possibly post pictures on this blog. This is the best I could do for now... most of the pictures are from Christmas, but the first one is from her seventh month-day on February 9th. My, how she's grown!