7-Month Update!

Yes, he does take a big whiff of his socks above...  Boys will be boys.  Created with Gifboom

Last Friday as I was marking up my Lansinoh Mother's Milk bag with the date, I realized it was Friday the 13th.  That lead me to realize it was also Mateo's 7-month mark.  Already!

What can I tell you about Mateo lately?  Well how about how awesome it is that he can now go forward in his walker?!  He finally switched gears from Reverse to Drive and off he went!  According to my dad, he can spend an hour in his walker now, but as soon as either my mom or I get home, he'll start crying and wanting to be held.  We need to do something about that!

I need him to spend more than ten minutes in his walker at MY house!  Crying babies are not conducive to cooking dinner, and I've been dealing with it for 7 months now.  

Matayto Potato has also been epicurious lately.  With his newfound mobility, he's been wheeling himself to one room in the house in particular: the kitchen.  There you can find him begging like a puppy (did he learn from Mokee and Qori?) for "scraps" while my mother is cooking.  It's a hilarious sight.  Yesterday he scored a red kidney bean.  He was all dimples....

I don't want to jinx anything, but on the sleeping front we've had a semi-success.  I've experienced a total of two nights where he's gone to sleep around 8:30 pm and not woken up until 5 am.  If he DOES wake up in the middle of the night, I have increased the bottle from 4 oz to 6 oz and that has helped him sleep longer.

Other Tater Tidbits:

• Now that he's more mobile, he doesn't sit still on laps anymore.  He's very fidgety and kind of annoying but if you sit him down next to you he starts to cry because he wants to be held. (It's yet again, like a dog.  Let me in, let me out, let me in....)
• He likes to hold his own bottle, but still needs a lot of help in understanding how the laws of gravity works with liquids in a bottle.
• While laying in his crib, he's been scooting up his body as he cries to the point where if I don't get to him fast enough, I will find the top of his head touching the crib railing and possibly hurting him.  This worries me, so I have fastened the crib bumper back onto the crib, despite SIDS-related recommendations not to use a crib bumper.
• He's intrigued by the tags on his stuffed toys. (He's become a label Nazi -- much like his brother at that age)
• He doesn't need his Boppy pillow when sitting anymore, but he does need soft flooring for the occasional goof-up.  And now that he's better at sitting, he doesn't need to be in his carrier when we go out anymore! Yeah!

Mama's 7-Month Tidbits

• I'm not sure why (hormones normalizing?) but my hair is suddenly less frizzy and therefore more manageable.  I'm LOVIN' it.  I feel like a normal person again.  (Despite all the baby hairs due to the hairloss)
• Milk supply went down since our vacation and I'm working on stimulating it back up.

Hope you had a good Friday the 13th! -Shirley

Laborious Day

My goal is to have somewhere around a million pictures of Diego while he was a baby (OK, a million is probably stretching it). I've gotten ideas from other blogs of cute pictures that I want to take. Unfortunately most of the time my excuse is either that I don't have enough time, or because the whether sucks-out-loud where I live and I just really need sunshine to take a decent picture.

One of my photo ideas was to take a picture or Diego with my guitar (which is STILL on my list of things to learn to do). Luckily, on labor day the moon and stars aligned, which in turn made the sun come out and gave me some free time. So in between cooking for a Labor Day picnic, and grooming the dog in the yard, I was able to FINALLY take advantage of an elusive photo-op.

The Labor Day picnic couldn't have gone any smoother either. All in all - it was the perfect Labor Day. Why - just look at Qori's face!

Validation & Teeth!

Another milestone met, and this one I wasn't even expecting. People have been telling me that Diego might be teething since he was 4 months old. It was an assumption because of what a heavy crier he is. Each month that passed, and no teeth sprouted, I just gave in and accepted that my son was a crier.

In my last post, the baby sitter was at her wit's end with Diego, causing me to be at my wit's end with her. His crying was inexhaustible. Not only was he sick with Bronchiolits a couple weeks ago, but unbeknownst to us he was also in the middle of teething.

When I felt the little chompers with my own hands, I felt a weird rush of pride. Although it's not anything that he physically did on his own (it's just nature), I was still proud to know that my baby was teething. It's validation for me, showing the baby sitter that his recent cries were most likely due to his new pearly whites.

I'm still looking for new daycare though. My mom abhors the sitter, and for my sweet mom to hate someone so much says something. There's nothing like a grandmother's overprotective heart!

Javier now refers to Diego as our little "conejito" (English translation: little bunny - because of the two bottom teeth he now has). OK - little conejito, your pushy mom wants you to hop to the next milestone: crawling... Hop to it!

United We Stand

The same day that the baby sitter warned me about stressful moms, she caused me to become one. I had dropped Diego off to her in the morning, and by 1pm, she called me with him crying in the background. She was concerned because he was crying wanting to be picked up and his unconsoled crying was triggering a flare up in his chest causing his difficult breathing to start up again. She was nervous about the sound of his breathing, which I had already become accustomed to. His crying could only be consoled by carrying him, but the sitter let me know that the other kids were trying to sleep and she had a lot of dishes to wash and cleaning to do.

When she said this, I was not very sympathetic in my mind. Her primary job is child care, not house care. I understand that keeping the daycare tidy is important, but when priorities arise such as a baby that needs to be consoled so that his lungs won't flare up, it trumps house cleaning in my mind. I had already told her that the doctor said his breathing was fine other than the sound of the wheezing, which was now only visible during crying fits. I had also told her that the doctor said the virus was no longer at a contagious stage and he was allowed to return to daycare.

She told me that the other kids were putting their fingers in their ears to stop from hearing the crying. In my mind I thought, then why don't you pick him up? Then she said that she wouldn't be able to take care of him like this.

Seriously? You want to make me feel that bad about my still-recuperating baby? I took care of him the entire previous week while his wheezing was at its height. There was absolutely no way that this flare up could possibly be as bad as it was the prior week. I had also made sure to warn her that his medication made him more hyper and outspoken than usual. I got a sinking feeling in the pit of my gut. I'm not sure if she meant that she could not take care of him if he continued to cry, or if he continued to wheeze. I got the feeling that it was the crying that was mostly bothering her and that she no longer wants to care for my baby.

After some discussion, we decided I would bring her his exersaucer because that's the only thing that seems to calm him down for longer bouts of time. The exersaucer keeps him at a mostly standing, somewhat sitting position and there are lots of activities to keep him occupied around it. I think I may have mentioned before that Diego is all about standing and wants NOTHING to do with crawling. He often gets frustrated while sitting and laying down, and standing is what makes him happy in these cases. Though I was skeptical before, I now believe he is on the fast track to walking, not crawling. My mother has said many times that I did not crawl and went straight to running. Knowing the source of this information, I had my suspicions and doubts :)

But now, I'm rethinking the information to possibly be true, as evidenced by the picture below. That is me, in the middle of a sprint. How old do I look in this picture? Do I look like I might be 7 months or so? I honestly don't know. But my husband says I'm definitely over a year old. It's probably true, I'm not the best a gauging childrens' ages.


So for now, the exersaucer has done the trick. To quote the sitter, "That thing is like MAGIC!" The stress has been contained for now, but Javier and I will begin looking for alternate daycare options. It's always good to have a Plan B.

Bathtime Stress?

It's the beginning of a new work week and Diego is feeling much, much better. Unfortunately, he is not yet 100%. I'd venture to say that he is at least 92% back to normal. After his last appointment on Friday, his regular doctor told me that she was mostly convinced that he has Bronchiolitis, not Asthma. This is good news for me for the following reasons:
1. It's a virus, not a chronic disease like asthma. Although he's still on meds, the effects will eventually dissipate, and he'll be back to full health, unlike asthma which is an on-going concern.
2. For now, people can STOP blaming Qori, my golden retriever for Diego's wheezing. Qori is a very sensitive topic for me, and most non-animal lovers just don't get it, so I won't try to explain.

It was a semi-cold the week that I took off to care for Diego. I kept him nicely bundled up or at least with long sleeves most of the time. When I dropped him off at the baby sitter's this morning, I was ready to ask her to keep him warm with long sleeves and to not bathe him. She often bathes him when he cries a lot, and it calms him down. Unfortunately, my mother told me that she noticed the baby sitter usually has a window open at her house, and we live in a cold area.
This may be TMI but almost the entire week that Diego was sick, I did not bathe him. I was afraid it could lead to pneumonia or something. Additionally, my husband seems to be against bathing the baby. He says that I bathe him too much and that's probably why he got so sick in the first place. Last night I mentioned to him that I was going to bathe, Diego. Even after a WEEK of non-bathing glory, he still felt strongly that I should not bathe him. This turned into a strong disagreement between the two of us. Needless to say, I was going to bathe my son whether or not he liked it. When Diego woke up, he was in a foul mood. I prepared his bath and put him in. He screamed like I hadn't heard in the longest time! I was afraid from his reaction that the water was too hot and I was scalding him, but it was not hot. He screamed the entire bath; he's usually so good at bath time. I was a little upset that Diego was proving my husband right instead of me. After the bath, I was sweating from the stress of bath time. I was relieved that I didn't have to hear an "I-told-you-so" from my husband, though he was probably thinking it.
When I woke up this morning, it turned out to be the most beautiful day. I felt awkward asking the sitter to keep him warm, but living where I live, I know that these beautiful days are an exception rather than the norm.
While I was discussing how the week went with the baby sitter, I dropped my keys. Since I was holding Diego, I decided not to pick them up until I was ready to leave. I continued talking with the sitter, then my sunglasses fell. I guess the sitter saw how frazzled I was, which I usually am in the mornings. Before I left, she said that a stressed mother can also affect the health of a child.
I don't consider myself stressed, just busy which I like to be. Plus, I stay busy during the day, so I can have bonding time in the evening. It's the only thing that makes sense in my master schedule. The baby sitter only sees me in the mornings, my most stressful time. Though she's probably right, sometimes I could use a bubble bath or two. But when I play with my son in the evenings, who needs a bubble bath, really?! Just him :)