Flirting with Daddy and Our Little Reader

We go through phases where we make lots of home videos and then upload them all at once.  It's a time consuming process for us so we often end up with several video posts in a row.  I hope you don't mind.  These two videos were especially cute, showcasing a very happy Peanut.  I apologize for the weird lighting.  Depending on the time of day, the lighting is either bad, or worse :(  But I think they are cute anyway.


First up: Flirting with Daddy while Mommy talks on the phone with Aunt Haley.





Next up: Some light evening reading with Mommy

New Formula, New Food

Since all our renewed problems with reflux, we've put Leah on a new formula, Similac Alimentum.  It's a hypoallergenic formula that stinks (really, it smells awful) and costs twice as much as the regular formula that we still have five cases of.  I hope she outgrows the reflux in time to use the old formula otherwise that's about $200 down the drain.  For a while she was refusing to eat the Alimentum because I was making the powdered kind which smelled even worse than the liquid ready-to-feed kind.  Finally, I broke down and bought the ready-to-feed kind and Princess Leah is willing to eat that.  The good news is that her eating habits are pretty much back to normal.  She is gulping down six ounces at a time and wants more (this kid has no portion control).  We are slowly increasing the amount for fear that we'll overfeed her and get thrown-up on again.  But so far, since we started the Prevacid and the Alimentum, she has had zero throw-ups!  Yay!!!!  She still coughs a lot in her sleep - which is incredibly distracting, but not necessarily disturbing because I've read that reflux babies do that.

In addition to new formula, we started solid foods!  Leah LOVES the rice cereal.  I should clarify - she loves the action of eating, not so much the consumption of the rice cereal.  She will see me coming with that bowl and spoon and she will start kicking her legs and swatting her hands with excitement.  She attacks every bite and is just having a ball eating the food, and then spitting most of it back out.  I don't know that it's helped her sleep any longer at night; she is still waking up around mid-night to eat, but she's only eating once overnight, which is an improvement.  She has started waking up around 4:30 a.m. to whine and fuss and we're not quite sure why she does that.  So we are back to plugging the pacifier every 15 minutes from the wee hours of 4:30 a.m. for as long as we can stretch her, usually until 6:30 a.m. when we give up and feed her. 

Needless to say, neither BA nor I are well.  We've both been sick for about 3 weeks now.  He's had a non-stop cold and I started out with a cold and then added the stomach flu on top of that.  I'm pretty much nauseated throughout the day and am sick of eating saltines and dry toast.  Here's hoping the weekend brings us both restored health.

Peanut's Post: Blogging, It's Harder than it Looks

Peanut here.  I wanted to take a moment and let you into my world a bit by describing how I blog.  It's actually harder than it looks.  The hardest part is coming up with a topic to blog about. 

I usually look for inspiration in the regular places.  I start by watching the news ...

I make some phone calls and chat with my baby friends about what they are blogging about.

 

And of course I check my smart phone for the latest CNN updates. 

"Let's see.... it's www.etrade.com...Man, the market is tanking"

Ah - I've got it!

Once I have an idea, I have to take some photos because, let's face it, no one wants to just read text.

"Darn, that last shot was totally washed out."

Then I upload the photos to my computer. 

 

It's a PC so of course I have processing issues and have to seek help from the big people to use the Mac.  But once that's done, you have a Peanut's Post!

 

And that's how it's done, folks!

Family Hike

We took Leah on a hike the other day.  We went to an area of the Santa Monica Mountains called the Backbone trail.  It's over 67 miles long but there are several access points where you can just hop on and walk as much as you like.  These days it's so hard to find the time and energy to do outdoor activities, so I was really excited when we finally made this hike happen.

BA and I used to go hiking with just 2 water bottles and our car keys.  Now we have gear.  Lots of gear.  Leah was a trooper even though she was feeling under the weather. 

We were doing well for 45 minutes until Leah got tired.  And then she gave me this "look" which said "time to turn around Mom."

I'll probably be seeing more of this when she's a teenager.

And she's out.

BA's Corner: For the Record: Da-Da and 6 Months

Great news! Leah said "Da-Da."

We've been working on it for a week or so pretty heavily, and it's finally taking hold. Monday night, she was in an incredibly good mood and paying really close attention to us. She was really vocal and active, and she started to make the motions with her tongue, so we kept saying it over and over again. Finally she started to mimic us to a point where she actually said it. The more she said it, the more we cheered, and the more she kept saying it. It was like Christmas all over again!

Bad news: To Leah, "Da-Da" means virtually everything. Within 10 minutes of her saying, "Da-Da," Leah had advanced to "Da-Da-Da-Da-Da-Da....." Here's a page from Leah's 6-month-old dictionary:

Da-Da: I'm hungry
Da-Da: I'm bored.
Da-Da: I'm tired.
Da-Da: I need a new diaper.
Da-Da: I need another toy to throw on the floor.
Da-Da: Have I mentioned that I'm hungry?
Da-Da: Wow, check out my hands.

But for now, I'll pretend "Da-Da" means: "Dad, you're the greatest. Thanks for feeding me, taking care of me, and doing a bunch of extra laundry recently. Sorry about all of the late nights and fussy moods. But I love seeing you walk through the door to pick me up from daycare, I love spending all day with you on Saturdays, and I just love riding around on your shoulders - grabbing your ears and hair while I giggle in the mirror and grin from ear to ear. Thanks for the laughs."

Yeah, that's what "Da-Da" means to me.

In other milestones, Little Leah is 6 months old.
Her Stats: 25 1/2 inches long (40th percentile), 15 lbs 4 oz (30th percentile). Rascal-ability: 110th percentile!

"Hey, where did everyone go?!?!"

Since we ate so much junk over the holidays, I decided to go "healthy" and get Leah a carrot cake to celebrate her 6 month birthday.  I had been looking forward to this milestone since she was born, so I decided a full-size cake was in order.  Happy Half Birthday, Leah!

For the Record: Mirror Mirror on the Wall

Leah, this was you during your 4-month checkup.  There's a huge mirror on the wall behind the doctor's table.  You liked to look at yourself in the mirror at home a lot, but I think this is the first time you actually recognized yourself in the mirror.  You got a big kick out of it.  (You did not enjoy the next couple of days though....those shots were no joke). 

And here you were at your 6-month checkup....

Reflux is Back

I am so discouraged.  For the past month we have been trying to get Leah to sleep flat in her crib, not on the sleeping wedge.  We wanted to do this because (1) she is 6 months old, (2) she wants to move around a bit, and (3) she cannot self-soothe on the wedge which results in a lot of nighttime soothing for BA and me.  So about 3 weeks ago, we decided to take her off the wedge.  She did not take to this well.  She fussed/cried all night for the first week, and then she started coughing all night.  After about 30 minutes of coughing, one of us would give up and get out of bed to pick her up and soothe her.  The minute we picked her up, she'd throw-up all over us.  This week we have spent the hours of 2 a.m. to 4 a.m. every night cleaning up the mess.  There would be spit-up everywhere - on her crib, our comforter, our carpet, her sleeper, our clothes.  It is terrible.  And this week she started refusing her bottle.  At this rate, I'm not even sure how much she is eating.  We can only get her to eat about 4 ounces at a time and she is literatlly throwing-up every other bottle.  I'm estimating that she is eating half of what she was just two weeks ago.  We called the doctor today after she threw-up twice in four hours and he put her on Prevacid.  I was so excited about this - despite the $180 price tag for 30 pills - hopeful for any improvement.  She took it a lot better than that nasty Zantac she was on, and she ate 4 ounces at dinner, but then 10 minutes later she threw it up.  BA ran to the bathroom and held her in the bathtub while she threw-up two more times.  

Aside from how worried I am about Leah, this has turned our life upside down.  We get thrown-up on at least 3 times a day.  It's disgusting.  We are constantly doing laundry.  BA and I are averaging about 3-4 hours of sleep a night for the past 3 weeks.  I am sick and he is having allergic reactions due to a weakened immune system.  We are lucky to have my Dad visiting us and helping out but even he isn't immune from the mess.  He hadn't been here 24 hours before Leah spit-up all over him during a morning feeding.
 
And I am constantly trying to figure out what to do next.  I am a problem-solver by nature.  I will sit awake at 5 a.m. and google "reflux" looking for a solution that we haven't already tried.  I incessantly pose new ideas to BA and he's seriously tired of my problem-solving because everything we try seems to fail.  But I can't stop thinking about solutions and formulating action plans.  It's just so confusing because we thought the reflux had eased up a bit when  just last month she seemed to be doing well, spitting up less.  And now everything is back, worse than ever before.

Through all of this, Leah has had the best attitude.  She will throw-up her entire bottle and then look up at us and smile.  She is just the sweetest baby and it kills me that I can't help her.  And I suspect that most of her aversion to naps and the non-stop crying that we were fighting has to do with reflux.  She doesn't want to lay down when the acid is just going to cause her pain.  I feel so bad for getting frustrated at her when she won't sleep but we are all so tired and desperately need the rest.   

So I don't really know where to go from here.  We are going to keep her on the wedge and give the Prevacid a try this week.  Hopefully this will settle her stomach and stop the constant throwing-up.  I am going to add rice cereal to her bottle and we are starting solids soon.  I can only hope for some improvement.

A Peanut in Peanuts

I just finished my last, first week of school, EVER!  I am so excited to be almost done.  My schedule includes Constitutional Law, Federal Income Tax, International Commercial Arbitration, and Trial Practice.  Originally I thought my class schedule would be boring as hell, but after three days in class, I'm thinking it will in fact be boring as hell.  Ha.  No really, it's not going to be as bad as it first seemed.  I am actually pretty excited about Fed. Tax - finally a useful class!  I am loving it so far, probably because I have an amazingly funny professor, but also because the subject matter is directly applicable to real life.  And trial practice is going to be fun - we'll be acting out every step of a medical malpractice trial from jury selection to closing arguments.  That class will hopefully give me a vague idea of what it's like to do a trial and help me decide if being a trial attorney would be something I am interested in pursuing.  The other two classes will likely be snoozers, but at least I can see the light at the end of the tunnel. 

But that's not why you checked the blog today ...

This is one of my old baby outfits from the early '80's.  My mom saved it and I wanted to snap some pictures of Leah in it.  She looks cute in it, even if it does make her look like a boy :)  

As we were throwing out some old boxes from the holidays, we decided to have a little fun with our little peanut. 

"Excuse me, exactly what is going on here?"

"Dad, I'm not so sure about this."

"Oh, it's a toy!  This is fun!"

Dear Leah

January 11, 2012

My baby girl Leah,

I love you so much.  You and your father have made my life complete.

Around 3 months you started recognizing me when I went in to get you up in the morning.  I would turn on the lights, you would squint and rub your eyes as if you were thinking, “Who the heck would turn on the lights and wake me up!”  Then you’d look up and see my smiling face staring back at you saying, “Good morning, baby.”  And you’d get the biggest grin on your face.  Your whole face would light up and you’d start frantically kicking your legs as if you couldn’t wait for me to pick you up and start the day.  It was the most wonderful experience for me – to start my day with this little person who had so much joy in her little body simply from seeing her mommy looking back at her.  You don’t really do that anymore.  Now when I turn on the lights, I’m lucky if I get a sleepy smile out of you.  You are growing up. 

You are the most adorable baby I’ve ever met.  You are sitting up now and that makes you so proud.  And you smile all the time.  You have so much energy.  The bath is my favorite example.  You kick your chubby legs so hard, water going everywhere, in your eyes and all over your face, and you don’t care.  You love it.  By the end of your bath, you’ve kicked up so much water that your daddy and I are wet.  It never gets old; for you or me. 

When I sneak in late at night to give you your pacifier, and I put it in your mouth, you shake your head back and forth rapidly like you are a little pit bull terrier shaking a chew toy.  It’s adorable and I love it.  It’s one of your little quirks that make you, you.

I love to watch you sleep.  You look so peaceful, your face all scrunched up and your lips pooched out.  It reminds me of the few fuzzy images I got of your face on the ultrasound.  When you fall asleep with the pacifier, and the pacifier falls out of your mouth, you continue making sucking movements with your little mouth.  You are in a moment of peace and I am overjoyed.  Sometimes, you will fall asleep in my arms.  I whisper into your ear that I love you and that you are fresh from heaven.  

I look at you and I am absolutely amazed at how you got here.  One day, you just started growing, and then almost 9 months later you were born.  And now 6 months into your life on earth, you have started to become the little person that you will be.  And I couldn’t love you more. 

Mom

My beautiful girl at 6 months!

Peanut's Post: Hanging Out with Mom

Peanut here.  It's been a while since my last update.  I am currently going through some changes in management structure at home.  The parents want me to sleep in my crib - Alone.  I know ... it's crazy.  And I am trying to assert my authority as the authority in the house but they are giving me a lot of push-back recently.  But, just so you know it's not a constant battle at home, I'd like to share one of my favorite activities with you - hanging out with my Mom.  

P.S. I like hanging out with Dad too, but I don't have any photos of that right now.

Mom and I like to chill, usually on the weekends, but sometimes at 6 a.m. on a Monday, too!



We just chat about current events, how cute I am, and whether or not I'm planning on pooping today.  It's so much fun!

Sometimes I like to lean in close if I'm trying to express my opinion ....

Mom says I'm a little pistol.  I don't know what that means but I'll assume it's a compliment.

Staring at Aunt Haley

Over the holidays we discovered that Leah is obsessed with her Aunt Haley.  And it's a good thing too because Aunt Haley is just as obsessed back (although she is a little more discrete in showing her affection than Leah is).

(Turn up the volume)

The Crying

I am really losing my mind over Leah these days.  Since we are trying to transition her off the sleeping wedge and into sleeping flat in her crib we have not had a peaceful night.  She really hates sleeping alone in her crib.  The wedge became a substitute for her parent's arms and she would sleep pretty well on it - waking once or twice a night to feed (since she was born she has never slept through the night; she went 7 hours once but that still included a 9:00 p.m. feeding and a 4:00 a.m. feeding - in other words, our standards for a "peaceful night" are extremely low).  It was predictable and manageable.  But since we've moved her off the wedge she is not shy about telling us how much she hates this idea.  She is still in our room because we had company over the holidays and we have more company coming, so this is a small part of the problem because when she cries it is at full volume and no matter how hard I press my hands over my ears I cannot dim the noise.  It is so loud in there my ear drums start hurting.  Last night she woke up crying at 9:30 p.m.  So I tried to feed her thinking she didn't get enough during the day, but when I tried to give her a bottle she turned away.  So I changed her diaper and put her back in her crib where she slept until about midnight.  Then she woke up screaming at the top of her lungs and did not stop for an hour.  There is no logical reason for all the night waking.  I know this because the minute we picked her up from her crib, the crying ceased, and she started smiling at us - like she was thinking "gotcha!"  I am so frustrated with this.  She cannot, or will not, calm herself down in her crib.  This has been going on for too long.  And at this rate, I don't feel sorry for her - I feel sorry for me.  I cannot take this anymore.  Plus, after she cries for an hour in the middle of the night I cannot calm myself down.  By that point I have so much anxious energy over the crying that I am literally unable to fall back asleep because I am just waiting for her to start crying again in 10 minutes and wake me up again.  So I lay in bed with butterflies in my stomach over this.  I didn't fall back asleep until 3 a.m. after her hour of screaming at midnight.  BA is being much more patient about the whole thing but even he is cracking.  She woke up again at 4:00 a.m. last night, this time just fussy and whining, but BA was able to ignore it until 6 a.m. when he got up to feed her.  There just seems to be no break in sight for us.  Every time I think we are turning a corner we relapse.  It's just so hard right now.

But, let's think back to happier times ...  We did so much over the break that I couldn't blog about everything at the time, so here's another one of our adventures from the holidays.  

My mother has been watching the Rose Parade every year for as long as I can remember.  So this year, during her visit, we decided to attend the float decorating that is open to the public in the days leading up to the Parade.  It was so cool to see how they are assembled.  The floats must all be covered in some sort of natural, organic material and even though it takes over 6 months to build the floats, people work round-the-clock to decorate them in a matter of days just before the parade so the flowers don't die. 

A sample of some of the organic materials used to cover the floats

Check out the path made of potatoes

Taking a break with Grandma

Yay for the Rose Parade!

Christmas 2011 - Better Late than Never

Better late than never.  It's not that I forgot about Christmas, it's that we've been so busy doing other things that I haven't had time to stop and blog about it.  So here is the re-cap.  Christmas morning, we made my family's traditional eggnog pancakes - it's my Dad's recipe and during Christmas time he would substitute eggnog (sans the booze) for the usual buttermilk the recipe calls for.  My mom flew in from Florida later that morning and we opened presents that afternoon.  Leah got a ton of presents.  She was by far the most popular family member this year.  And Santa even stopped by and brought her a new high chair!

Santa Leah just waking up - Peanut had several "costume changes" throughout the day as you will see

Discovering her new highchair

Grandma has arrived!

Merry Christmas from Baby Leah!  She's now changed into her present-opening outfit from her Nana

Even babies have to take a break from the excitment

BA had an especially wonderful surprise gift for me.  It was a personalized book he made online called "A Story for Leah" and it was all about Leah's first 5 months with us and our first 5 months as her parents.  It was almost 50 pages of our photos and it was just beautiful. 

We wrapped up the day opening our stockings.  Peanut got a second Wabanub (pacifier with a stuffed animal attached) a bottle of Ajax, some baby spoons, and a case of formula!  The rest of us got the traditional goodies, candy, notepads, little gifts.

And BA and I gave each other a night out on the town.  A few days after Christmas we went to dinner on Rodeo drive at McCormick and Schmick's (thanks Dad for the gift card!) and then we went to a Cirque Du Soliel at the Kodak theatre in Hollywood. That's the same theatre where they host the Oscars. Grandma and Aunt Haley babysat Leah and BA and I had a wonderful time.  It was a great holiday season.