Ten Months Old

This month has been the month of clapping - Pearl loves to clap! She claps when she's excited or when she's finished with something, and when she half-wakes in the middle of the night to nurse. She even knows the word for it and will gamely clap when I say "Clapping!" I find it very cute and it hasn't gotten old yet. She has also resumed signing and asks for milkies a lot, though I still haven't seen the potty sign from her, and waving is an off and on thing.



She's learned another sort of sign this month - pointing. It has been very fascinating and completely thrilling to see what she wants me to see, to talk to her about the things that catch her interest and to have further insight as to what is going on in her mind. She loves to crawl under our dining table - which we refer to as her fort because she spends so much time down there - and point at the workings of the butterfly leaf, and she points any time she sees her shadow. We were in an alcove at the library the other day and she was pointing up and I looked to see where a mural had extended onto the ceiling of the alcove, something I wouldn't have noticed unless she showed me.


She has begun imitating my voice and is pretty accurate in echoing my pitch and tone after I say something or make a noise. In fact she gets so close to saying "Yay!" when she's clapping, like I do, that I think it counts as her second word! She also says "Ooooh" a lot, in a very drawn out and serious manner, often when she's pointing at something.

Pearl got her third tooth earlier this month - her upper front left tooth. I predicted April 7th as the date her next tooth will arrive as they seem to be coming in a month apart. So she has a cute little snaggletooth grin now. Also, I forgot to mention last month but she got her first freckle! On her left cheek, off to the side of her mouth. It's visible in the larger versions of several of the pictures I have posted, including the one below. Her hair is getting longer and it's hard to say what color it is. Sometimes it looks to be a very dark brown; other times golden. She's also been mistaken for a redhead. Her eyes are still the same beautiful blue though.



She is getting more adventurous in her cruising now, grabbing onto a new object with one hand and stepping over to it while releasing whatever she was holding onto originally. I don't think she'll be walking any time real soon. She doesn't seem very impressed when I hold her hands and help her to walk; she knows she can crawl much faster.

Pearl still isn't eating a whole bunch of solids, just milkies mostly. We are letting her drink (with our help of course) water from a regular cup rather than a sippy as she gets more that way, and she loves to grab it and bring it to her mouth and stick her tongue in the cup and her fingers in the water, having fun exploring the experience in general.

This last weekend I had some family in from out of town and we did something with them each day. Though Pearl was pretty reserved she surprised me by keeping her cool and not freaking out too much, even at a very loud and busy restaurant when it was past her bedtime. She's not as friendly and outgoing as she was at about seven months but she allows people to hold her, which is more than she has at some points.



She loves to be silly and get tickled and play after she nurses, and often she gets crazy and wants to play like that right before bedtime too, which is really funny because she is wound up and tired and being downright hilarious. She loves to be turned upside down and jiggled and will fling her head back, giggling and wanting to do it again. Peekaboo is still a big favorite, and she loves to knock over anything we stack up, and take the diapers out of the diaper basket and the books out of the book box and the toys out of the toy box...



It has been another joyful month that has flown by in the wink of an eye.


Though time has passed a bit slower during the times she decided she needed to crawl around the table over and over at warp 9 at 3am...

A Peach and Pearl Daffodil

I got my new camera on Friday night, after much stress and strife caused by UPS. Yes, my apartment is funky and my door is on the opposite side as all the other apartments, but the guy is a delivery man. His job is to find doors. He couldn't find mine so he said the apartment number on the package was wrong - my apartment is #1 - and that the apartment numbers started at 2. Why, oh why, would they start at 2?!

At any rate, after myriad phone calls and thanks to my hero of a husband who hunted it down for me, my new camera is safe and sound in its new home. I bought on a Nikon D50 with a 50mm f/1.8 lens, a 18-55mm lens, a reversal ring so I can play around with macro for cheap, a SB600 Speedlight flash, and a remote. Fun!

I also bought Understanding Exposure by Bryan Peterson because I don't know much about the techinical aspect of photography. I'm looking forward to learning all about it and having more control over the images I make, but in the meantime I've been playing with my new camera on the more automated settings and am very pleased with it so far. There are some more photos I uploaded yesterday on my flickr page.

Scratch That...

I'm feeling less certain that the dairy caused Pearl's stuffiness, as I myself have come down with a little cold. At any rate, I'm still going to hold off on trying it again for a while and perhaps even hold off on going to Baby Bookworms at the library... they should call it Baby Bookgerms.

Oatios with the Daddio

Pearl loves her oatios! It's so cute seeing her eat them. Usually the pincher grasp works for her but sometimes one ends up in her palm and she shoves her whole hand in her mouth trying to get it in.

I did indeed eat the leftover pizza and Pearl did not have any reflux! That is wonderful but she is snotty and stuffy again. I am really starting to feel that it is because of the dairy but it's hard to say so with certainty due it being cold season, teething, etc. I'm going to hold off on the dairy until cold season is over at least and then try again, try to figure it out for sure. I'm glad it no longer causes her pain but it's still heartbreaking to see her try to nurse with a stopped up nose, stopping and gasping for breath every few sucks, having to let the milk run out of her poor little mouth.

I Ate Pizza!

I had my root canal finished this morning - what a fun few hours that was. Lots of waiting, lots of holding my mouth wide open, x-rays, shots, drilling, poking, and the like. I am not a person who has a big dentist anxiety thing so it wasn't really a big deal, just discomfort. Pearl spent the time with her daddy, who managed to get her to take a nice long nap in the car, and fed her cheerios in the waiting room to the adoration of the receptionists.

To celebrate the completion of all the dental work I had done this month my family went out to our favorite local pizza restaurant and my husband and I enjoyed a delicious pizza, made with thin crust and pepperonis and delicious, delightful cheese, cheese made from cow's milk. The last time we were there was with my parents, when Pearl was nearing two months old, and that dinner cinched my suspicions that dairy didn't agree with her.

Now I'm waiting to see how she handles it this time.

I started feeling anxious and guilty a few hours before dinner. I was worried it would hurt her, thinking that perhaps it was selfish of me, perhaps a better mother would have forgone the dairy until her child had weaned rather than testing to see if the baby had outgrown the allergy and risk causing her pain. Mr. Peach told me that he didn't think it was selfish. So I went ahead with it. And I did enjoy it. Maybe it wasn't quite as glorious as I thought it'd be... but it was certainly delicious.

There are two pieces still in the fridge. If Pearl doesn't seem to be suffering any ill effects, I might just eat them tomorrow. I love cold pizza.

What a Scary Baby!

I play this game with Pearl where when she makes a screeching, roaring noise, I say, "Oh, what a scary baby! Oh my! You must be a little baby monster!" and proceed to scream and act scared and be silly in general. It's pretty fun.

Last week Pearl and I went to visit my sister and her baby, K. While we were there Pearl happened to do her Scary Baby routine (Pearl LOVES my sister and goes into super-playful-funny mode whenever she sees her!) and K actually found it frightening - she stared at Pearl, then her little bottom lip popped out, and then came the wails. It was funny but we tried not to laugh where K could see us, poor little thing.

A few minutes later, when the two babies where standing by each other holding on to this Little Tykes castle climbing toy thing, it happened again - Pearl roared and K stuck her little lip out, leaned her forehead against the castle and just started sobbing!

She is a very sensitive little baby and I am always amazed at how different she is from Pearl. Pearl can take a tumble and she'll just roll over and go on her merry little way; whereas falls seem to not only hurt K physically but wound her feelings as well. She is much snugglier than Pearl too, and I once witnessed, to my astonishment, K simply falling asleep just laying on my sister's chest. In a movie theater. While a loud movie was playing. With no bouncing, nursing, rocking, driving, or ssshhhhhing involved. It was wild.

Silly Baby

Pearl often does something funny right after she has a bite of food and I'm not sure if it's something all babies do, or some babies do, or just something Pearl does! She reacts very strongly to the taste and/or texture of the food and shudders and shakes and makes funny faces. She does this for the first several bites and then it subsides, even if it's food she's tasted before. She doesn't do it with every food though. At any rate, it causes a lot of amusement around here.

Swinging!

Today we went to a little park and Pearl swung for the very first time! She seemed to like it.





Another first today: I noticed her pointing, at her swinging shadow!



There are a few more photos on my flickr page.

Little Bitty Updates

I am feeling mostly normal in the mouth, though one spot is still tender. I need to make an appointment to get the root canal finished (it was left open to drain (ew) and the oral surgery necessitated waiting to finish it) once I can open my mouth wide and then we will be going out for pizza! Or having pizza in. I'm not sure which I would revel in more. Either way, I'm really looking forward to it.

The situation of Pearl's napping and the lack of an exercise ball seems to have settled down after a week or two of upset. The past few days I've gotten her down for two long naps by nursing, with a couple of false starts and retries. Currently she is up at 3:45am, having woken at 3:05am, which leads me to believe that she might be getting her next tooth sooner than in a month's time as her pattern has been! Usually that's what the midnight wakings are about. We shall see.

I've decided to put a portion of our tax return towards a digital SLR after all, and put the rest towards braces - whether the remainder will be enough to cover the cost, get me started, or just put away until we have all the funds will be determined after a consultation with an orthodontist, which I will still be doing. So I've been spending the past few days researching, looking at lenses and flashes and all sorts of interesting things.

It has come to my attention that the content of my blog is centered when using Microsoft's Internet Explorer. This is not intentional and I didn't realize it, as I use Mozilla's Firefox. I will be consulting with my husband to fix this soon!

Good Morning, World!

It is a beautiful day.

Teeth are Gone; Spring is Here

Yesterday was a jewel of a day - it had finally rained a real rain, complete with thunder and lightning, the night before. Everything looked clean and refreshed. There is the faintest blush of green across the hills now as buds begin to open, and the world is full of crystalline color. The Bradford pears - snowy white - and Japanese quince - shockingly pink - are in bloom, as are the crocuses, reaching up from their humble spot on the ground, and the daffodils, bobbing cheerfully in the breeze.

I made it through this winter with just a slight touch of depression - worse than last winter but better than I have experienced before. It generally starts in December or January as a feeling that people don't like me, that they are excluding me or ignoring me. Then towards February it moves on to a feeling of being trapped, of wanting out, wanting something else. By March it has faded to a dull hopelessness, then Spring arrives, and I am in ectasy.

By now I realize that the thoughts and feelings I have during the SAD season are not my own, not quite real, and that is such a weird sensation - knowing that the emotions you have aren't quite true, that in a few months you will feel quite different about things you feel darkly about at the time.

The past 24 hours have been a whirl of pills, pain, and sleep. Oh the sleep - every mother should have her widsom teeth out! The operation itself was just like a nap, and the pain pills I'm on carry me off to sleep far more gently than codeine. I've had so many nice naps. I haven't felt this well rested in a very, very long time. Of course there's the blood and the vomit and the pain, but naps! It's wonderful!

I have decided that once I have the dental situation under control I am going to treat myself to pizza, real pizza from a restaurant with cheese from an animal that moos rather than maaaas. Pearl didn't seem to react to the cream in the scones I ate - I think the snottiness is a cold - so I want to try cheese and see if she's over the dairy thing yet. Hopefully the poor girl is!

Clapping!

Over the past few days Pearl has started clapping. It is about the most adorable thing ever.




My root canal went well, as far as dental work goes I guess. I feel much, much better, though still a little sore. I am planning on going ahead with the widsom teeth removal tomorrow.

Agony Update

I have an abcessed tooth. Fun. I am going to have a root canal in two hours. More fun. I got more T3 but it only takes the edge off for half the time it's supposed to so for two hours I stare at the clock as my tooth throbs the seconds by.

And my poor little Pearl is indeed sick. My husband thinks he's coming down with it too so he's gone to get some Emergen-C to combat it along with some probiotics to lower the likelihood of Pearl and I getting thrush from the antibiotics I'm on.

Now I have to decide if I should go ahead and get four wisdom teeth out two days after a root canal, with the possibility of me being sick by then. I really want them out.

Pain, Agony, Sickness; Misery in General

So I'm having my wisdom teeth out on Thursday. I'm actually looking forward to finally getting it done because then I won't have to deal with them trying to grow into a space where there isn't enough room for them as I have been for over a year, a very painful and irritating thing.

Last night however the pain became unbearable. My whole jaw hurts. I think it must be an infection of some sort, from my wisdom teeth moving in and out or from another tooth, I don't know, I just know that it hurts so bad and I'm over the limit for ibuprofin I can take in a 24 hour period. Now, I have a very high tolerance for pain. I am someone who does not take medicine until it is to the point where I have to. In fact, to give you an idea of how much this hurts, here are a few things on Fuzzy Peach's Scale of Pain, which goes from 1 to 10:

-Plucking eyebrows: 1
-Toothpick in the knee: 2.5
-Shot of morphine in the hip: 3 (Until the morphine kicked in)
-Baby always trying to wedge her head beneath the rib cage in utero: 4.5
-1.75 hours of being tattooed on the lower back: 5
-Navel piercing: 6
-Natural childbirth, no drugs at all: 8
-Having a nurse massage uterus after childbirth to shrink it back down and get all the clots out, supposedly: 9
-Tooth pain like this: 9

9 is enough to make me cry. I reserved 10 for worse pain; I'm sure it's out there. I have an appointment to see the dentist this afternoon and I just took the one codeine I had left from my last big dental issue (okay for breastfeeding, don't worry). Hopefully it hasn't expired or anything, and hopefully it will hold me over until the dentist gives me more this afternoon. Which he had better darn well do.

In other dental news, Pearl has her third tooth, her top front left one! She was acting all crazy last night - flailing at her mouth and screeching, not crying, so we thought it was funny - even took some video of it which perhaps I'll get around to sharing sometime. She's also had some night wakings recently, so I thought one might be on the way, and when I held her upside down this morning I saw it peeking out, then felt it to be sure, and sure enough, it's another tooth! At this rate her next tooth will appear April 7.

Yesterday I ate some dairy, sort of. It was in scones that listed "heavy cream" as the second ingredient. I had 5.5 of them. I wanted cinnamon rolls but there were none so I got those instead, as I've been hesitantly wanting to test Pearl's reaction to my dairy consumption. So far there has been no sign of reflux, which is good; however, yesterday she was snotty, and she is still today. This is after several days of non-snottiness as she got over the last cold. Now, it is possible that she has caught another bug; we've been out and about all over the place lately. It's even possible that the snot is due to her new tooth. But I'm worried that this is a new reaction to dairy, because when I was a child I reacted poorly to eating dairy - in the form of serious congestion, lots of mucus, and also a high incidence of urinary tract infections. My younger brother also shared the dairy-induced congestion.

Something I find interesting is the fact that all through my pregnancy, I ate a lot of dairy, and I had several urinary tract infections, one of which is a prime suspect for what caused my preterm contractions, though I never noticed any symptoms from any of them. Then after this last Christmas, when I ate a lot of goodies made with dairy in them and gave Pearl reflux, a week or so after that I developed a painful UTI.

It's hard to tell whether it's all connected, or whether it's coincidental. Trying it out again is the only way to tell I guess.

On top of Pearl's new tooth and her snottiness, the poor baby has been falling down quite a bit today and suffering more bonks than usual. We're pretty pitiful around here.

Bubbles

Up and Running!

This is my new template! Still a tiny bit of tweaking to do, but it is complete for the most part. Thanks to Jason Gaylor for the photoshop brushes, which are exactly what I have been looking for, found via Dooce. The light blue looks kind of obnoxious on the laptop but it looks good on our PC... so, uh, sorry if you visit me on a laptop! ;)

Cold Turkey

Since Pearl was very, very young, we have gotten her to sleep by bouncing her on an exercise ball. Occasionally she will fall asleep in the car or nursing, but bouncing is usually what we do to get her down. I have been wanting to stop using the ball for a while now, as she is getting heavy and I am just plain sick of bouncing. I was trying to transition her to falling asleep rocking by bouncing until she was mostly asleep, then moving to the rocking chair until she was all the way out, which often ended with me nursing her back down when she woke up upon being put in bed, but if she is rocked when she is fully awake but tired then she gets irate and yells at me.

Well, a few nights ago she woke up at 2:30am and I bounced her, then she woke up, then my husband bounced her, and while they were bouncing the ball popped. Not an explosion or anything a la Defective Yeti; after reading that I made sure and purchased one that wouldn't pop. It just deflated with a slow hiss.

So yesterday we were without a ball at naptime. I thought about getting another ball and I'm still not sure that I won't, but this just seems like such a good reason to make myself stop using it. The down side is that Pearl needs it to go to sleep. It's like without that motion to trigger her to sleepiness she doesn't know how to get there, and it frustrates her, understandably. I suppose it is entirely my fault for getting her used to being bounced to sleep every single time, but I didn't realize that's what was going on until it was too late and she was set in her ways. Not that I think we're doomed to only take one thirty minute nap a day, as was the case yesterday, but I feel really bad when she's tired and it takes three rounds of nursing, getting back out of bed, nursing again, trying to rock, until finally she passes out.

Anyway, I'm in the process of redesigning my blog, so be prepared for changes! I can barely stand to look at it any more; I don't know what I was thinking when I made it. Never design a website eight weeks postpartum I guess.