billandcorrie.com

We’re all packed up and ready to go!  Goodbye, snow and ice…Florida, here we come.  The next time I check in, it will be from (hopefully) sunny Destin, FL.  The next couple of days promise plenty of adventure as we transition two adults, one baby, one dog, and half of their entire belongings over a distance of 1000 miles.  Bill and Angus will be leaving by heavily-laden car first thing in the morning, and Lily and I will be flying out Saturday morning — meeting up with Bill when he picks us up from the airport near Destin.  I am wary of the flight — managing a nine-month-old on my own on a plane for three hours is not my idea of a fun time.  Fortunately the flight is divvied up into two 1 1/2-hour legs, so at worst we can only annoy our fellow passengers for 90 minutes.  I have a bag full of fun gadgets that Lily has never laid eyes on, so that should buy us seven or eight minutes.

Regardless, it will all be more than worth the effort to get away from this climate.  As soon as the weather warms enough to melt away the snow and ice, here comes another cold front.  Seriously, February in the Midwest is not fit for most humans.  And then I read my friend Sara’s blog, and she says it is 40 degrees BELOW zero with the windchill at her home in Minnesota.  So I guess it could be worse here!

Wish me luck in transit, and I’ll check in from our vacation destination!

This is the scene we woke to this morning:

So today Bill lowered the crib mattress.  I can’t believe my little peanut is able to pull herself up to standing.  Two days ago she learned how to sit up on her own, which is turning out to be a lifesaver for mommy!  There are a lot fewer shrieks of protest from a baby who has fallen over and can’t get up.  These developments — sitting up and pulling to stand — occured literally overnight.  In fact, we have awakened in the night a few times now to whimpers.  I found a sad baby girl on her hands and knees, backed into the corner of the crib, unable — in her half-sleep state — to lie back down.

And, later today… (drumroll, please)…

Lily started crawling!  She still has a few kinks to work out, but we’re calling it crawling.  So, there goes the neighborhood.  Within five minutes of her first tentative forward movement, she crawled to the potted ficus tree, pulled up to it, lost her grip, whacked her head on the planter and got a cut right by her eye.  The first casualty of mobility…first of many, I’m sure.  So we have a crawler.  We are so proud of her!  I’m still trying to get a good video clip of her showing off her new skill, preferrably one where she’s not protesting the whole time.  So hopefully I’ll have that to post soon.

A big weekend for us!  I hope everyone else had a great weekend, too!

We’re on about Week 5 of Lily being ready to crawl “any day now.”  Just before Christmas, she looked like she was going to take off at any moment.  And now, she still does.  She just gets so frustrated once she’s on her hands and knees, like she can’t believe the injustice of her situation.  A pediatric physical therapist by trade, I can’t help but encourage her to try, try, try on her own, which she finds remarkably cruel.  Sometimes I can’t help but laugh a little at her, because her shrieks and whines are just so disproportionate to the offense!

Despite the lack of true hands-and-knees crawling happening, the child is mobile.  She rolls like a champ, scoots, pivots — pretty much anything but linear movement.  If she is seated anywhere within a two-foot radius of her toy basket, she will manage to get to it, pull up to her knees, and pull every item out in turn until it is emptied of all toys.

Speaking of toys.  Lily is bored with all of them.  Bill remarked yesterday that he is amazed at the speed at which a new toy becomes passe in her little mind.  She was wild about a fridge magnet set I brought home…for a few days.  Now she stiffens like a board if I try to seat her in front of it.  No interest.  Dang, that had worked wonders to give me a few extra minutes in the kitchen.  Conversely, however, she never loses interest in non-toys.  Bill and I are guilty of giving her all sorts of things to occupy her for a few precious moments — during diaper change time, for instance.  “Can you hand me something inappropriate for her to play with?”  Bill recently requested.  Diaper changes are a non-stop shriek session otherwise, with challenging acrobatics involved.  Some of her favorite inappropriate and marginally safe non-toys include:  Butt Paste diaper cream tube, Baby Orajel tube (more useful for teething than the actual gel in the tube), prescription medication bottles (but only if they contain prescription medication), car keys* (*See post below for recommendation to refrain from certain usage of car keys), baby Tylenol bottle, bottle of eye drops in my purse, plastic gift cards (without magnetic strip), and eyeglasses (these are fabulous toys that people wear around on their faces purely for Lily’s amusement).  For the grandmas among you who are appalled, please note that these items are only allowed under close supervision, and typically under duress of the parents.

Here is a two-minute clip of Lily, which starts in pre-crawling mode.  As a bonus, midway through she sort of says “mama” (if you listen closely!), to which my response on the video is completely downplayed so as not to scare the baby with an eruption of boisterous maternal pride.  I know it doesn’t mean anything as a word yet, but it’s a step closer!

I’m trying to learn how to embed video in the blog.  This will be especially useful soon, as Lily is about to become independently mobile!  Here is a quick clip of Lily a couple of evenings ago, when she was in a good mood after bath time. According to her, Mommy is quite the comedian. (The lighting is poor, but the laughing is great!)

Well, now I know.  Lily and I ventured out south to Whole Foods yesterday (a fabulous place to wander and kill some time), and we spied these cupcakes.  Supposedly, it is a polar bear, but the resemblance can not be denied.  Angus, immortalized as a cupcake.  Even he felt he was looking into a mirror… 

Oh, and here’s a tip that applies to Whole Foods, or grocery stores in general, or anywhere in general:  Resist the temptation to let an eight-month-old tour the store while playing with your car keys.  Infants can not be counted on to safeguard items of import, and may decide to cast them aside, unbeknownst to you, requiring several trips through every aisle in a mounting panic as you realize you may have to spend the night there.  I’m guessing.

We are wrapping up an uneventful weekend — sometimes that’s the best kind!  Bill essentially became a single dad for most of the weekend while I attempted to get caught up on a few commitments that have been falling by the wayside lately.  I spent the ENTIRE day Saturday (well, after I made pancakes…so Sandra Lee of me) working on the budget reports for KCPA, a professional organization for which I have somewhat inadvertently taken over the role of president.  For the past three years, I was the treasurer, and I’m afraid my bookkeeping pretty much nosedived after Lily was born.  So I had a lot of catching up to do.  I’m happy to say — it’s finished!  What a great feeling to complete a long-nagging task.

Also, Bill has sweetly been taking the lion’s share of parenting for the past couple of days because I am getting over yet another cold.  I recently covered a maternity leave for another physical therapist — it was at nearby preschool/daycare.  And somehow getting sneezed on, coughed on, and nose-wiped-on non-stop by a bunch of toddlers during cold and flu season broke my long running healthy streak…three colds in ten weeks.  This one was a doozy, though, and Bill even let me sleep in a bit this morning while he gave Lil a bottle.  Thanks, Billy!

Tomorrow morning is our appointment with the nutritionist, to further discuss Lily’s weight.  I am really hoping that we are told she is absolutely fine and we can stop worrying.  Actually, I can honestly say we pretty much have stopped worrying, but it would be nice to hear it from the experts (”experts?”).  I mean really, can anyone say this baby looks unhealthy?

Hope everyone had a nice weekend!

Lily and I were at our second home yesterday, aka Target, and I overheard a conversation that made me smile.  Two young women were perusing a baby registry while standing in front of the exersaucers.  I discerned that these women were not mothers themselves, based on their impractical high heels, un-ponytailed hair, and oatmeal-free garments.  Basically they did not resemble me in any way.  One woman stepped forward to more closesly examine a bouncer seat, saying, “Well this one is on clearance, so it’s only $39.99.”  To which the other woman, glancing up from the registry, replied, “I’m sure she wouldn’t care which one.”  At this point I thought to myself, oh, ladies.  If you only knew.  That registry listing probably reflects no less than 37 hours of cummulative research and discussion of infant bouncy seats.  Thirty-seven hours of reading online reviews, interviewing other mothers, searching lists of recalled baby equipment, comparing prices at every known retailer, discussing with a bored spouse, and delibertaing between colors.  All of this done by an expectant mother — a hormonal pregnant woman who probably neared tears on at least one occasion during that 37 hours, because the weight of this decision was almost more than she could manage.  Sure, she probably won’t care!

Of course, I’m personalizing this situation.  That was me.  Actually, it was Bill, too, as he took an almost unnerving interest in all things baby during my pregnancy.  (It was Bill who kept insisting on pink everything for our girl, despite my constant reminders that gender nuetral would be more practical for any future children.)

And then I thought about this unknown mother-to-be, the soon-to-be recipient of the incorrect bouncy seat, and I thought, if she only knew.  We are surely not the first parents to discover that the amount of time spent selecting a piece of baby equipment will be inversely proportionate to the time baby will enjoy said equipment.  We could have saved ourselves a lot of time and expense by skipping all baby positioners aside from the two loving arms conveniently attached.  Lily quickly grew bored of the swing, the bouncer, the Bumbo (if that term is unfamiliar to you, you have clearly not acquired an infant between 2006 to present), the jumparoo.  [Incidently, we say Lily is "bored" with most things because it conveys a heightened intelligence and need for intellectual stimulation, rather than a high-maintenance temperament.]

It’s interesting the way perspectives change.  You move from the swingin’ singles scene through marriage, then the first baby.  This is where we are in our journey.  But we have no idea what lies ahead.  Will that bouncy seat — the one we tirelessly researched, the one Lily disregarded — will it be happily used by a future baby?  Babies?  Will it be offered to friends, in their own pregnant anticipation?  Will it be tagged and sold off at a future garage sale?  Will it cradle a grandchild?  If we only knew.

It has been a rough few days around here!  Lily, our little peanut, has been having to go to the pediatrician monthly for weight checks, because — according to her pediatrician — she wasn’t gaining weight fast enough.  My question is, according to what standard?  I mean, we know she’s bitty, but she always has been.  She was barely five and a half pounds at birth.  I like our pediatrician, he’s a nice guy, but I don’t think he’s seeing the big picture.  Lily is doing everything she’s supposed to developmentally, and she’s a social, happy, active baby.  Still, there’s that darn growth chart.  The one still used by the American Academy of Pediatrics, developed in the 70s, when formula feeding was the norm.  And little Lillian is just below the curve.

At her eight-month appointment last Friday, she weighed 13 lbs, 14.5 oz.  That reflected only a half pound gain in a month, so the pediatrician started talking about seeing a nutrition specialist and running tests for metabolic disorders.  It’s funny how all of my confidence about my perfectly healthy baby can evaporate in the doctor’s office.  We agreed to the testing, but when it was over, I cried because I felt like we had put her through it for nothing.  Three big vials of blood to find out what a mother already knew — that there’s nothing wrong with her.

The doctor called today to give us the results, and he told me that he “wouldn’t diagnose her as failure to thrive,” since that diagnosis tends to include a social aspect of families not doing everything necessary to help their child grow.   Well, I should hope not!  Quite frankly, I’ve never met anyone who has gone through as many challenges as Lily and I have with breastfeeding and made it this long.  And “failure to thrive?”  What a terrible sounding diagnosis.  I feel like I already have a heaping helping of guilt on my plate.  I mean, when you are your baby’s primary food source, and someone keeps telling you she’s not growing enough, the word “failure” is already circulating in your mind.

But, today my outlook is much improved.  I am armed with encouraging words from my LLL leader, a prescription for domperidone (a milk supply increasing med), and data from the World Health Organization on the growth of breastfed babies.  On their chart, Lily is right where she should be — following the little peanut growth curve (3rd percentile), which is where she was at birth.

Today, like most days, she wore me out.  She is on the verge of crawling, so she wants to go, go, go all the time.  She is in constant motion.  She is active, she is bright-eyed, she is laughing, she is thriving.  And anyone who knows Lily knows that it’s true.

So it seems these days everyone and his dog has a blog, so I have been feeling a bit behind the technology curve.  Besides, I could use an additional responsibility to absorb some of the limitless personal time I’ve acquired since having a baby.  Until this point, I’ve simply enjoyed checking in on friends’ blogs, but eventually the need to keep up with the Joneses began to tug.  Now, it would seem to me that having a husband who is so computer savvy would automatically appoint him as our resident blogger, but instead he has set things up for me to try my hand at this.  So I will be using this as an opportunity to a) fulfill my adolescent need for publicly expressing my daily woes and triumphs — diary-style, and b) advance my very rudimentary understanding of html and coding.  I also have a few other reasons to start a family blog:

• Having a baby sort of obligates me to bore others with updates of her developing motor skils, appreciable cognitive superiority, and bowel movements.
• I hope that this will help connect us a bit more to long-distance friends and family, particularly my parents-in-law, who are far, far away and don’t get to see Lily as often as we’d all like.
• I am constantly reminded by my dad to “write it down,” a mantra shared by a man who has raised two daughters and knows how quickly the seemingly mundane activities of daily life with children can fade to a distant memory…then completely from memory, if not recorded for posterity. 

So this is it!  My first post.  It’s a new year, a time to try out new things.  Of course, if this blog is anything like our family’s website, it will lie dormant and underutilized for years, a nagging afterthought at the bottom of the to-do list.  We shall see!  Happy New Year to anyone who stumbles across it!

Oh, and because I am trying to push the envelope with regard to my coding skill, I will now attempt to post an introductory photo…

Angus and Lily on a snowy December day