Ellie
Saturday, December 31, 2011
A toddler is like a ghost
Living with a toddler is like living with a ghost. Things are always just a little off and you can't always tell what's different. Things go missing only to turn up days later in a wildly unexpected place. Random hand prints show up on your walls and appliances. When you hear noises that you can't explain, it causes your heart rate to go up. When you can't see who is causing all the damage, you get worried. Stains being to magically collect. Your batteries always seem drained. Every now and again a smell will rub your nose and disappear. You will not know why that smell appeared or where it came from. Objects move from one side of the room to the other when you step out of the room for only seconds...
Thursday, December 29, 2011
Walking and talking and day care, oh my!
My lil turkey decided to show off for her Nanny and Buppa. She repeatedly took 4-5 steps all over their house during our holiday vacation stay at their house. We were consistently shocked and delighted. And as predicted by her PT, her talking has dramatically increased. We're all so proud. Once again, I'm excited and anxiously awaiting her next PT session.
Tomorrow we interview a woman who is running a day care center out of her house. I've written down a list of several questions. I'm hoping it works out. I'm nervous, anxious, happy, sad. My big girl is growing up!
Tomorrow we interview a woman who is running a day care center out of her house. I've written down a list of several questions. I'm hoping it works out. I'm nervous, anxious, happy, sad. My big girl is growing up!
Sunday, December 11, 2011
Bad News/Good news?
I took Ellie to the pediatrician on Friday. She has a cold, with some fluid in her right ear (presumably that's the one the tube fell out of). Not contagious, or so we were told, but her daddy and I both caught it. The worst, however, was the weight loss. 16 lbs 10 ozs. The pedi tried to tell me not to worry b/c its a net gain, and since she's been sick own. her appetite has likely been dbut honestly I wanted cry. Looks like we're not about to lose the GI. She weighed 17 lbs at her last appointment, and she should have gained since then. So crushing and heartbreaking.
Ellie surprised the dickens out of me. I sat her on her stool and said "Stand up and walk to mommy!" AND SHE DID! I couldn't believe it. We did it probably 100 times. I recorded it 2 or 3 times on 2 cameras. To top it off, I let her hold my scarf while she walked down the hall. She basically walked on her own for the most part, I barely held the scarf at all. I'm so proud of my big girl! Of course now I'm worried that she got my hopes up and will never do it again.
Looks like her 7th tooth finally came through, poor thing. It was really bothering her today, she didnt want to chew her food at all. No cookies or goldfish, or she'd eat them on 1 side of her mouth.
At least she's feeling better.
Ellie surprised the dickens out of me. I sat her on her stool and said "Stand up and walk to mommy!" AND SHE DID! I couldn't believe it. We did it probably 100 times. I recorded it 2 or 3 times on 2 cameras. To top it off, I let her hold my scarf while she walked down the hall. She basically walked on her own for the most part, I barely held the scarf at all. I'm so proud of my big girl! Of course now I'm worried that she got my hopes up and will never do it again.
Looks like her 7th tooth finally came through, poor thing. It was really bothering her today, she didnt want to chew her food at all. No cookies or goldfish, or she'd eat them on 1 side of her mouth.
At least she's feeling better.
Thursday, December 8, 2011
Progress?
Not really. That's why I haven't posted in over a month. She can walk, she just won't. She hasn't said any new words, just babbles. Speech therapy is going to be a long process, I can tell already. Tomorrow I'm considering getting her weighed in hopes of dropping the GI. The GI appointment isn't until the end of Jan (thought it was Dec but when I called, they said no appointment was on record). So my thought process is that if I get her weighed at the pedi, and she's 18 pounds, maybe we can tell the pedi to contact the GI and have her dropped. Pipe dream, I know.
Anyway, back to walking. The PT and I are still pulling our hair out wondering why on Earth Ellie is refusing to walk. She's physically capable, she just doesn't want to. The PT assumes its because crawling gets her everywhere she needs to go (and she can do it at a very high rate of speed). She has very poor spatial awareness so we're working on falling (putting cushions everywhere and just letting her fall onto them when she reaches the end of the couch). PT says she has a contraption of some sort that someone built for her that she will bring to the next session. Which leads me to my next thought process.
Losing PT. If PT is out of tips and tricks, and we can't make Ellie want to walk, maybe its time we save our sanity and give up on PT. Technically Ellie isn't behind yet (18 months is behind), although she's getting there rapidly. On the other hand, I don't want her to start to get behind. Still, walking is the only working on and Ellie will do it when she wants, and not a minute before. Of course, if Ellie is going to start daycare in January, we need her to be walking before then. Cutting out PT could make that more difficult. It's not like we're paying for it, and the PT has been a great success until this point. It's only costing me my sanity and time at this point.
Decisions, decisions.
Anyway, back to walking. The PT and I are still pulling our hair out wondering why on Earth Ellie is refusing to walk. She's physically capable, she just doesn't want to. The PT assumes its because crawling gets her everywhere she needs to go (and she can do it at a very high rate of speed). She has very poor spatial awareness so we're working on falling (putting cushions everywhere and just letting her fall onto them when she reaches the end of the couch). PT says she has a contraption of some sort that someone built for her that she will bring to the next session. Which leads me to my next thought process.
Losing PT. If PT is out of tips and tricks, and we can't make Ellie want to walk, maybe its time we save our sanity and give up on PT. Technically Ellie isn't behind yet (18 months is behind), although she's getting there rapidly. On the other hand, I don't want her to start to get behind. Still, walking is the only working on and Ellie will do it when she wants, and not a minute before. Of course, if Ellie is going to start daycare in January, we need her to be walking before then. Cutting out PT could make that more difficult. It's not like we're paying for it, and the PT has been a great success until this point. It's only costing me my sanity and time at this point.
Decisions, decisions.
Wednesday, November 2, 2011
Tuesday, October 25, 2011
Things I hated about having a one year old
This was so spot on I simply had to share.
A friend of mine recently celebrated her daughter's first birthday, and when we were talking about how fast the year had gone and the fun of first birthdays, her voice suddenly trailed off a bit and she eventually said, "So ... 12 months seems like a really hard age so far. Did you think it was challenging?"
Ha. Ha ha. HA HA HA DID I THINK IT WAS CHALLENGING.
Does a pope wear a funny hat in the woods while standing in a pile of bear crap? You bet your ass I thought it was challenging.
In fact, I wrote some notes about what life was like with my youngest son, Dylan, when he was 12 months old. I call it, creatively, My Least Favorite Things About 1-Year-Old Babies.
They walk, yet they are babies. This is a horrifying combination and should be forbidden by nature. I feel it is a massive Darwinian fail to design babies to be able to heave themselves up on wobbly legs and stagger around like PEOPLE, when they are clearly INFANTS, as evidenced by their total lack of knees/knuckles and their propensity for ferreting out every single choking hazard in the entire house and cramming it in their cry-holes.
Speaking of, they put everything in their mouths. Here is a partial list of what I once fished out of Dylan’s mouth over a 24-hour period: a Curious George sticker, a Band-Aid, a small rock, fifty thousand pieces of paper, a pen cap, his brother’s shoe, a chunk of what I fervently hoped was dried mud, and one mysteriously non-Duplo-sized Lego that must have manifested itself out of another dimension because I swear to GOD I had already hidden all the chokey-sized bricks what the HELL. This was the same baby, mind you, who routinely gagged on RICE CRACKERS and mostly turned his nose up over chunky foods, probably because I didn’t WIPE THEM ON THE FLOOR FIRST.
They have a hair-trigger gag reflex. I became so reluctantly experienced at dealing with a Surprise Cough-Barf, I had an entire honed, efficient tactical action plan involving paper towels and Mrs. Meyer’s Lavender Spray and baking soda and simultaneous bath-preparation and laundry-starting activities and, frankly, this is not one of those life skills I ever wanted to be good at. Dear child: yes, post-nasal drip is gross, but re-enacting the pea soup scene from The Exorcist is infinitely more disgusting for all involved parties.
They are emotionally unstable. Whine, whine, whine. I can’t reach that ball, someone took the pen cap out of my mouth, I don’t like these shoes, this diaper change is filling me with rage, I’m riddled with invisible demons and I don’t know what my problem is so I guess I’ll just scream for about a goddamned hour straight. God, it’s like their brains are still forming, or something. Like they have limited communication skills and get easily frustrated and are constantly bonking their heads on things. SO IMMATURE OMG.
In other words: yes. It's a very challenging age. My god.
However, in the interest of fairness, I do have a few things I love about 1-year-old babies, such as:
They dance. There is nothing, NOTHING like seeing a 12-month-old bopping along with Eninem’s “Crack a Bottle." Uh-oh uh-oh, bitches hoppin’ in my Tahoe.
They love to laugh. Like when you get down on your hands and knees and pretend to be a bear and crawl after your baby going RRWAAR!, and their eyebrows shoot up and they go shriiiiiiiiiiek with pure insane joy before they laugh so hard, they fall over and hit their head on the entertainment center? That’s pretty rad.
They talk all the time, about GOD KNOWS WHAT. “Ba blah da doe blmphz da DER DER pah gee DOH,” they say, and you go, I know, right?
They're full of love (when they're not full of rage). They are in the perfect sweet spot between actively choosing to be cuddled (vs the passive human-represents-food pleasure of the newborn) and figuring out that almost any other activity is more fun than snuggling with Mom. They run full-tilt into your arms. They press their cheek against yours. They sit back to drink you in, then lean forward to sigh happily against your chest.
Their butts are ridiculous. I defy you to gaze upon a 12-month-old’s naked bottom and not feel certain the world is in fact filled with unicorns and rainbows.
I know everyone always says that you should enjoy whatever age your child is, because you'll miss it so much later—but I can't say I miss my children as 12-month-olds. I mean, okay, maybe I miss their squishy little bodies, but that's what photos and loving memories are for.
How about you—where do you stand on the 12-month-old stage? Did you love it best of all ... or mostly suffer through it?
Linda Sharps
A friend of mine recently celebrated her daughter's first birthday, and when we were talking about how fast the year had gone and the fun of first birthdays, her voice suddenly trailed off a bit and she eventually said, "So ... 12 months seems like a really hard age so far. Did you think it was challenging?"
Ha. Ha ha. HA HA HA DID I THINK IT WAS CHALLENGING.
Does a pope wear a funny hat in the woods while standing in a pile of bear crap? You bet your ass I thought it was challenging.
In fact, I wrote some notes about what life was like with my youngest son, Dylan, when he was 12 months old. I call it, creatively, My Least Favorite Things About 1-Year-Old Babies.
They walk, yet they are babies. This is a horrifying combination and should be forbidden by nature. I feel it is a massive Darwinian fail to design babies to be able to heave themselves up on wobbly legs and stagger around like PEOPLE, when they are clearly INFANTS, as evidenced by their total lack of knees/knuckles and their propensity for ferreting out every single choking hazard in the entire house and cramming it in their cry-holes.
Speaking of, they put everything in their mouths. Here is a partial list of what I once fished out of Dylan’s mouth over a 24-hour period: a Curious George sticker, a Band-Aid, a small rock, fifty thousand pieces of paper, a pen cap, his brother’s shoe, a chunk of what I fervently hoped was dried mud, and one mysteriously non-Duplo-sized Lego that must have manifested itself out of another dimension because I swear to GOD I had already hidden all the chokey-sized bricks what the HELL. This was the same baby, mind you, who routinely gagged on RICE CRACKERS and mostly turned his nose up over chunky foods, probably because I didn’t WIPE THEM ON THE FLOOR FIRST.
They have a hair-trigger gag reflex. I became so reluctantly experienced at dealing with a Surprise Cough-Barf, I had an entire honed, efficient tactical action plan involving paper towels and Mrs. Meyer’s Lavender Spray and baking soda and simultaneous bath-preparation and laundry-starting activities and, frankly, this is not one of those life skills I ever wanted to be good at. Dear child: yes, post-nasal drip is gross, but re-enacting the pea soup scene from The Exorcist is infinitely more disgusting for all involved parties.
They are emotionally unstable. Whine, whine, whine. I can’t reach that ball, someone took the pen cap out of my mouth, I don’t like these shoes, this diaper change is filling me with rage, I’m riddled with invisible demons and I don’t know what my problem is so I guess I’ll just scream for about a goddamned hour straight. God, it’s like their brains are still forming, or something. Like they have limited communication skills and get easily frustrated and are constantly bonking their heads on things. SO IMMATURE OMG.
In other words: yes. It's a very challenging age. My god.
However, in the interest of fairness, I do have a few things I love about 1-year-old babies, such as:
They dance. There is nothing, NOTHING like seeing a 12-month-old bopping along with Eninem’s “Crack a Bottle." Uh-oh uh-oh, bitches hoppin’ in my Tahoe.
They love to laugh. Like when you get down on your hands and knees and pretend to be a bear and crawl after your baby going RRWAAR!, and their eyebrows shoot up and they go shriiiiiiiiiiek with pure insane joy before they laugh so hard, they fall over and hit their head on the entertainment center? That’s pretty rad.
They talk all the time, about GOD KNOWS WHAT. “Ba blah da doe blmphz da DER DER pah gee DOH,” they say, and you go, I know, right?
They're full of love (when they're not full of rage). They are in the perfect sweet spot between actively choosing to be cuddled (vs the passive human-represents-food pleasure of the newborn) and figuring out that almost any other activity is more fun than snuggling with Mom. They run full-tilt into your arms. They press their cheek against yours. They sit back to drink you in, then lean forward to sigh happily against your chest.
Their butts are ridiculous. I defy you to gaze upon a 12-month-old’s naked bottom and not feel certain the world is in fact filled with unicorns and rainbows.
I know everyone always says that you should enjoy whatever age your child is, because you'll miss it so much later—but I can't say I miss my children as 12-month-olds. I mean, okay, maybe I miss their squishy little bodies, but that's what photos and loving memories are for.
How about you—where do you stand on the 12-month-old stage? Did you love it best of all ... or mostly suffer through it?
Linda Sharps
Saturday, October 22, 2011
Weight loss, ear tube
Ellie caught a cold. She's down to 16 lbs 1 oz. I am NOT okay with that. She has less than 2 months to gain 2 pounds now. I don't see it happening since she should have gained more since her last weigh in in September anyway. She should have had another pound on her.
The pedi says one of Ellie's ear tubes fell out. We think her right one. The pedi says that unless Ellie gets an ear infection or it causes her pain not to call the ENT. So we're following that advice, even though it was prefaced with "This is what I tell my non-PRS babies."
The pedi says one of Ellie's ear tubes fell out. We think her right one. The pedi says that unless Ellie gets an ear infection or it causes her pain not to call the ENT. So we're following that advice, even though it was prefaced with "This is what I tell my non-PRS babies."
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