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.