Last Thursday I put Erin down on one of her activity mats for tummy time, turned away for a moment, and she had managed to kick/flail herself from her tummy to her back. Pretty crazy. She definitely didn’t ‘roll over’ and there is no way she could do it on demand, but she is also definitely getting bigger and stronger.
Most notably, Erin actually likes tummy time! I find it hard to wrap my mind around it myself, but there you have it…a kid who likes tummy time. I know kids were on their tummies all the time back in the day, but kids today seem to nearly universally hate it. Erin actually fell asleep on her stomach earlier today.
Erin has been taking 2 monster naps a day, curled up in a ball on my chest (plus numerous smaller naps throughout the day). It is very sweet and I usually doze underneath her, but she has been resisting sleeping in her crib in the evening until 11pm or later. She’ll sleep in your arms, no problem. But not on her own in her crib until pretty late at night. So we are trying to cut back on the napping and push more of the sleep into the evening hours (of course, this means less napping for me too).
Erin also sleeps pretty late, much to Morgan’s chagrin. The first thing Morgan wants to do every morning is go see her sister (Morgan still routinely gets up in the 6 o’clock hour, though she’ll occasionally hit 7). Left to her own devices, Erin will sleep until 8 or so. One nice side effect is that I’ve been able to get up with Morgan and do a lot of the morning routine with her. It is a nice little slice of one-on-one time for me and Morgan. Though I’m not sure Morgan appreciates the cheerios/banana/english muffin routine as much as I do.
All in all, the transition from a family of 3 to a family of 4 is going better than I had thought it might. I’m getting a decent amount of sleep (if in smallish increments) and I’m getting to spend more time with Morgan than I had anticipated. So that has been great. Morgan loves her sister to pieces. She’s thrilled when Erin grabs her hand, she likes to interpret Erin’s fussing for us (she’s hungry, she doesn’t like the red light, etc.), she loves to bring Erin flowers from the front yard when she comes home from school, she loves to hug and kiss Erin, and she loves to help with dressing, diapers, carrying, etc.
I’m a bit behind in my posting, but perhaps that’s just how things will be for awhile.
We took Erin in for her first doctor’s visit the Monday after we got home from the hospital (way back on April 2). Everything was great. She was down 2 ozs from birthweight (not at all surprising for a breastfed baby). She weighed 6 lb, 10 oz, coming in at the 35th percentile. And they measured her length at 20 inches, coming in at the 75th percentile. Note that this was slightly less than her measured length at birth. I don’t think she shrank. I just think balled up babies are hard to measure. And her head was 13.5 inches.
The doctor wanted us to come back in a week for a weight check and so we went in this Monday as well. She weighed in at 7lb, 1 oz, which the doc said was right on target. Apparently they should be gaining about an ounce a day around now. She’s a great eater. Her biggest problem is that I’m not great at burping her. So occasionally the air gets to be a bit much and she gets uncomfortable and spits up. I had completely forgotten to even try to burp her in the hospital. As a result, she gave the nurse a bit of trouble at one point. The nurse was trying to weigh her with no diaper, Erin got upset, and then pretty much cleared everything out. The nurse ended up having to give her a near bath in the middle of the night. And I felt sheepish. Always a chance to learn something new (or again). One should try to burp one’s babies. (In my defense, Morgan didn’t need burping for the vast majority of her time nursing. I have no recollection as to whether I was burping her at 2 weeks old.)
Morgan can count to 109. I don’t know how or why 109 became the number to count to, but it is.
She has gotten much better at pedaling her tricycle too. Yesterday she pedaled all the way down the hill and across the flat portion of the sidewalk at the bottom of the hill. She still insisted that she needed help pushing her up the hill back to the house. In her defense, the hill is pretty steep and her tricycle isn’t exactly a precision pedaling machine. I suspect this spring/summer will mean tons of practice time. She loves being outside (and hates being in the house).
Morgan can dress and undress herself entirely and easily, though she usually would prefer help.
She has moved to a big girl bed. That was about a week before Thanksgiving and we haven’t had any falls to the floor yet.
And she can write her own name. For a while now she’s been able to do the M and the O. But then she’d ask you to do the R-G-A-N. Then she moved on to just asking for the R-G and then she’ll finish up with the A-N herself. She can do the whole thing herself (I’ve seen lots of evidence on her art from school), but if Jim or I are around she still asks for help with the R-G. My guess is they refuse to help her at school so she does it there, but not at home.
And, in general, she’s just a ton of fun these days.
They are having a canned goods drive at Morgan’s school this week. The teachers talked to the kids about it last Friday. As we were driving home that night Morgan was adamant that we had to stop at the store on the way home to buy canned goods for the families that don’t have enough to eat. We told her that we had some things at home and that we would get some more at the store over the weekend, so we’d be sure to have something in hand on Monday morning. This was okay.
Cut to Monday morning…Morgan is super excited about taking her canned goods into school for the families that don’t have enough to eat.
Cut to Monday evening pick-up…Morgan wasn’t a great listener at school that day, so we were talking to one of her teachers about that. And she lost at a game of musical chairs mere moments before leaving (this is actually what freed us up to leave). And so on our way out the door she starts balling. I ask why she is crying (it could be any number of reasons) and she says (through tears) that she didn’t get to give her canned goods to the families that don’t have enough food! She misunderstood the nature of the canned good drive and thought that she would actually be giving the food to the hungry families herself that day. And she was distraught that she hadn’t done so. It brought tears to my eyes. Of course, I was also having to tell her about the importance of good listening and to remind her that we don’t hit our friends. But, still, it was very touching.
Morgan hasn’t taken a bath since June or July. It is all showers all the time. Now she even washes her own body (though I have to name the body parts to remind her), gets her own hair wet, tries to shampoo her own hair, and rinses her own hair. There have been a few times when I get to hang out in the bathroom, keep an eye on her, and only help with the shampooing. It’s almost relaxing!
And on logic…the other night we were driving in the car on the highway and she was worried that it was dark out (how could we see?). I told her that our car had lights on the front to help us see. She complained that she couldn’t see the lights, so I pointed out the headlights on the oncoming cars and told her we had lights like those. After a moment she said “if I can see their lights, they can see the lights on the front of my car!” Which is true. And surprised me.
She has also discovered that the turning of the steering wheel is associated with the turning of the car. She thought that was quite cool. It is a little unclear what she thought the driver was doing before discovering this, though she does know the driver turns the red lights on on the back of the car (the brake lights) to tell other drivers to slow down.
We just got back from a long weekend at the beach. Good times had by all and photos to follow soon. But I have a short story to tell.
We were trying to coax Morgan onto the beach and away from the pool (which was, admittedly, a very nice pool). So I told her I’d buy her some pails and shovels to dig in the sand and I took her into the hotel gift shop on Friday morning. And we pick up an assortment of pails and shovels. Done. Then she spies a My Little Pony type thing for sale. Two little ponies, one pink, one purple, a comb, a brush, and a couple of other such things. She wants it. I say no. And then I say “maybe we’ll get it before we leave, for the car ride back.” And I immediately forget about the whole thing.
Fast forward to Sunday morning, as we are talking about how we are going to go to the pool one more time before heading home. It’s the 3 of us talking and she says “well, I think I want something to take home with me from the trip.” And for the briefest of moments (before I remember the whole pony thing) I’m wondering how she knows what souvenirs are (does she want a sweatshirt? a hermit crab?). And Jim (looking slightly puzzled) asks her what she wants. And she sort of hems and haws for a minute or so. Until finally…”I don’t know. I was thinking about something, maybe something like a pony.”
Not only did she remember the whole pony thing (with no additional discussion between Friday and Sunday morning), she knew to bring it up before we left, and she wasn’t completely straightforward about what she wanted. She didn’t say “Mom, you said I could get the pony before we left” but rather went through a rather winding, elaborate, and earnest set up in asking for it. The kid is getting good.
Morgan (hands on her hips): Mommy, I am going to count to 3 and if you don’t blah, blah, blah, you are going to your room!
(brief pause as she stares me down)
Morgan: 1…2….3. Okay. Come with me!
Me (trying to stifle the laughter): Morgan, you are not the boss of me. You cannot send me to my room.
On the positive side, if this is how she sees me, it’s not so terrible. I wouldn’t have been embarrassed to have that all go down in public (obviously, since I’m talking about it here).
We got the lab results from the 3-year checkup, and the nut allergy news is promising.
The only nut/peanut allergen (of those tested) that had any reaction was peanuts, which is down to .47 kU/L (IGE) from 1.48 last year. Almonds, sesame seeds, cashews and pistachios no longer meaningfully register. <.35 is the cutoff for “indistinguishable from 0″. 4 is the cutoff below which they’ll begin doing food challenges at age 4. In the forums and support groups and so forth, it’s not unusual for kids with serious reactions to be in the 20-100+ ranges.
Morgan’s only reaction so far has been local contact swelling and blistering (as opposed to systemic), so her allergist is quite optimistic.
So, another year of strict avoidance (including of all foods “processed in a facility that also processes nuts”) and if her IGE tests come out anywhere near this well, they’ll start food challenges.