Eating, Crawling, Sitting

It's hard to believe that E has been in our lives for half a year.  In some ways, it feels like we brought her home just yesterday, and in other ways, it's hard to imagine what life was before she arrived.  It's so much fun to watch her personality come out.  She is such a happy baby, and we feel blessed for that.

She has been sitting up extremely well since she was four months old.  In the past two weeks, I've been forgetting to put the pillow behind her more and more since she topples less and less.  She is gaining great core strength.  I've watched her rock backwards, just inches from the floor and pull herself back up to sitting fairly easily.  She's also figuring out how to catch herself with her hands as she begins to lean too far to one side.

She still hates to be on her belly for long periods of time.  She will roll over sometimes, but typically resorts to screaming and putting her head down, face first, into the floor, waiting for us to rescue her.  She can be a bit of a drama queen at times.  I think she just prefers to be upright.

We began solids at the beginning of the month.  So far, E has tried pumpkin, butternut squash, acorn squash, pears, applesauce, potatoes, carrots and avocados.  She loves pears and butternut squash and doesn't care much for potatoes or carrots.  Her diapers are quite a sight, too!

Still no teeth yet, but her gums are raised and she chews on everything she can get her hands on.  It should be a matter of weeks, or maybe even days.  We'll see!

Six Month Well Baby

Today was E's 6 month well baby exam.  She's doing well - in the 75th percentile for height and weight.  The doctor also approved her for riding in a pull-behind bike trailer, so when we are ready to make the big purchase, she's good to go!

We had a little vaccination snafu, which made Dr. Kawahara very upset.  Probably because she's the one ultimately responsible if I were to be severely pissed off.  It seems that at the last well baby exam, E got the polio vaccination instead of dTaP.  The alternative vaccination schedule that we had decided on had never made it into her chart, so what I thought was dTaP, was really polio.  Luckily for Dr. Kawahara, my main concern is the amount of vaccines at one time, not necessarily the particular vaccine.  Of course, if this had been HepB, Chickenpox or MMR, I may have reacted a bit differently.  She was originally scheduled to get polio at 9 months, so we just changed the third dTaP to that appointment and everything is fine.  I had also brought a copy of the vaccination schedule with me today, so we got it scanned into her online chart so we won't have this problem again.  So today we had dTaP and HIB.  E didn't react at all to the dTaP shot, but the HIB made her scream worse than any other time before.  I nurse her while she gets her shots so she has something happy to do when the pain comes.  Last month when she got her first HIB, she was a little upset, but she was able to go right back to nursing.  This time, she didn't seem to care that there was a boob in her mouth.  Poor baby.  Once the screaming finished and she went back to nursing, all was right with the world again.  We set up our appointments for 7 month vaccines and 9 month well baby, then went to the grocery shopping before coming home for a nap.  She's never had much grogginess with vaccines, so I'm sure she'll nap her usual 45 minutes today.

Until next time...

Mother's Day

Yesterday was my first official Mother's Day.  It very well may beat out Halloween as my favorite holiday.  I had total strangers stopping me in the street to wish me a happy Mother's Day.  You don't even get that on your birthday, unless you're wearing a sign.  That was pretty cool.

The day started out the same as usual - Paul & I got up, he took a long shower, I followed, thinking I would run out of hot water.  Then I got the Belchigator ready for church.  Paul was lounging on the couch.  I scanned the living room, looking for two socks that matched and found some next to the TV.  I got them on the kiddo, then asked Paul if he was ready to go.  He said we didn't have to leave just yet, so I got him to scoot over on the couch so I could snuggle with him and E.  Mind you, all this happened in the span of about 10 minutes.  We sat on the couch for another minute or two, and then I saw them - two giant gift bags on the floor, inches from where I had been standing.  How the heck did I miss that?  I thought it was magic, because typically, I'm a present hound.  I can sniff one out pretty quickly, and then I must open it immediately.  Paul thought that maybe I changed, and wasn't quite as crazy about presents.  My mind probably just couldn't comprehend the fact that there were presents waiting for me, so it chose not to register them.

From Paul, I received the cutest metal planter - made to look like a dog.  He also informed me that a plant comes with it, but he wants me to pick it out.  Now I have to decide what I want.

From E, I got a box of Godiva chocolates.  I'm trying not to eat the whole box in one sitting.  It's very difficult, but I want to savor every one.  So far I've had a couple raspberry filled chocolates, and a dark choclate ganache, and a white choclate wafer.  It's divine.

After church, we had brunch at Sweet Tomatoes, then we took a walk down to the Tigard Farmer's Market.  The Tigard Farmer's Market is lame compared to Beaverton, but it was a good walk, and I got more strangers to wish me a happy Mother's Day.  We came home and E took a three hour nap at 6:30, and when we went to bed at 10, she complied, even though at 9:45 she was wide awake and full of squeals.  So to the end, it was a perfect Mother's Day.