my poor baby's diaper rash

Oh I feel bad for my poor baby. She just had a #2 and I changed her, but her whole bum was bright red. I was wiping her, and I think her skin's a little dry too (her legs feel all chapped, but she was still in her jammies so I know it wasn't carpet burn)... because when I wiped her I broke the skin in a few tiny spots. :( And I wasn't done wiping and couldn't very easily go get plain water since I'm by myself, so I had to keep using the wipes on her and since her skin was now broken, it hurt her. :( :( :( I tried to be as gentle as I could while still cleaning her all the way. Then afterwards I fanned her fanny and that seemed to feel better to her. She stopped crying and was just looking around. I put her in a disposable diaper (we had switched back to cloth last week) and she went right to sleep for her nap. But I still feel so bad b/c I can imagine how it was hurting.

I'm trying to figure out why the rash all of a sudden came like this, though. She's had little more than Cheerios and breastmilk all week, except for Sunday. For noon she has a bite of bread, and in the evening I fed her some of my On the Border Quesadillas (a little bit of chicken, plain avocado (i.e. not prepared into guacamole), a bit of cheese, a bit of onion). All things she's had before w/ no reaction.

But her poor bum. :( I hope the little sores heal up quickly.

saying words before she can talk

Babies of course make all sorts of random noises, and occasionally those noises match up with what could be construed as a word.

At 3 weeks old, she said "yes." Or a version of it, anyway. :P We were visiting out of town family, and one of my aunts was holding her, but Lydia was getting a little tired and hungry and was fussing. My aunt asked her if she wanted her mama, and in the middle of Lydia's fussing, she said a very clear "uh huh."

Then pretty much nothing until the past month or so. At church about 5 weeks or so ago, hubby was holding her and she looked at him and said "da da", only it came out more like "duh duh." She hasn't done that since, though, so we're not counting that yet. She's also said "ma ma" similarly, but I'm not counting that either, b/c it's usually not just "ma ma", but instead "mum mum mum mum mum."

After I feed her, I hold her and ask her if she needs to burp. Usually she still does, even at her ripe old age. She'll talk a bit before the burp comes up, and one time I had just asked her if she needed to, and she said "Bup." But it was more like "Buh - puh." where the second syllable was just a puff of air.

Changing subjects now briefly, when she was just a few weeks old I was getting nervous because I thought it was taking an awfully long time to "bond" with her, despite my having a drug-free birth and breastfeeding right away and staying with her all the time, all of which are supposedly supposed to help enhance the bonding process. But, it has indeed been a process and not something that happened instantly or even very quickly. Now, though, I have no doubt that I've bonded with her. The way she looks at me, the smiles we share, the sweet songs that she sings and squeaks, the learning I can see through her eyes, the touch of her little hands... all these and more just make me want to melt or burst or laugh or cry or squeeze her or kiss her or just sit and enjoy watching her... or everything at once. It's so amazing being a mom.

catching up on videos

Just thought I'd catch up on a few videos. I had hubby hold Lydia while I took a few videos this morning while she was in a good mood. Sorry some of them are sideways, I forgot that my camera can't do portrait-style videos. :P

In this first one, hubby's holding her just barely off the floor and she's kicking her feet and making noise.



In this next one, he's holding her above his head and she's kicking and smiling. She does this pretty much EVERY SINGLE TIME we hold her up like that.



And then in this last one, it's just to show that she's now accomplished at crawling, unlike her earlier video where she kept falling down.

the next "big" thing in solid foods

Tonight, for dinner, hubby and I were eating one of those rotisserie chickens you can get from the grocery store deli. I had a few pieces of breast meat and was also feeding Lydia a few strings of it. Then I decided to tease her a bit and pretend that I was going to give her a BIG bite. I put a whole "slab" of chicken on my fork and offered it to her, and sure enough she opened her mouth. I even let her taste it before I took it away. Then I repeated this a couple of times, but on the last time, she managed to actually take a bite! I took away my fork and there was a big hunk gone from my slab. This was surprising to me because she still only has 2 teeth. Hubby and I watched her closely to make sure she wouldn't choke. She chewed that chicken and swallowed it like she had been eating solids like that her whole life. I was surprised that she did that without any teeth. I mean I'd heard that you could mash food w/ just gums but it was neat to really see it in action. My little girl is getting big so fast.

the woes of the sippy cups

Well, Lydia knows very well how NOT to drink from a sippy cup. So far we just have Gerber ones, both soft spout and hard spout, but these are so spill-proof that you also have to actually suck pretty hard on them to get any liquid out at all. Nothing will come out if you chew or bite even the soft spout (which is all she does... no sucking on it at all). I hesitate to get some of the sippy cups that have a spout that's a little more forgiving of an imperfect suck, b/c I don't want her to get into the habit of biting to make fluid come out and then get a "normal" sippy cup and think it's broken or empty b/c nothing comes out when she bites it. I've tried a straw but that only works for sips at a time, and only when I hold my finger over it and let a little dribble out from the bottom. I've even tried just a cup by itself, and she either helps me tip it back way too far and too fast and gets too much and chokes on it, doesn't get any at all, or gets just the right amount but lets it dribble out of her mouth. I keep asking around and babies way younger than Lydia have mastered even the hard-spout sippy cups, and then I feel bad that I didn't introduce it to her sooner, and I wonder if she'll ever "get" it. Surely she will eventually. I mean, she won't stay a baby forever, right? I won't have to pack some bottles to send her off to college with, right?

my first call to poison control

So last night, I'm getting ready to go to church (we're in the middle of a totally awesome lecture series by a geologist, showing how the fossils and whatnot not only prove a young earth and creation, but at the same time they disprove evolution), and Lydia is on the floor close to me, crawling around. She crawls over to the wall, and in the crack between the carpet and the wall she finds something and puts it in her mouth. I didn't think a whole lot of it, thinking it was probably a piece of fuzz or something. But even so, I got down right away to fish it out of her mouth.

I felt whatever it was in there, and then I HEARD it go "squiiiissssshhhh" as she bit down on it. I was confused. I fished again and finally got it out. It was a capsule of some sort, looked exactly like a Vitamin E. Whatever it was was from prior tenants because we don't have any Vitamin E. My ibuprofens were soft tablets also, so I checked those, but those were green instead of amber. I didn't know if the Vitamin E would be toxic to her, or if it was even Vitamin E at all, so I called Poison Control. They said to watch her for any strange reactions and that they'd call back in an hour to check on her, and that if it was a medication or some sort that would produce a reaction, it would happen within 6 hours.

So I watched her the rest of the evening and she acted and looked perfectly normal. Went to bed at her usual time, woke up in the middle of the night at her usual time, was fine this morning. And we're out of the danger zone now, so it's back to normal I suppose. :)

standing up

Last night, hubby was in the living room watching TV, and Lydia was in her playyard there also. I was in the dining room sewing. All of a sudden, hubby says that Lydia has pulled herself up all the way to her feet! I asked if she was still standing there and he said yes, so I went to take a peek. So cute. She was so pleased with herself, too. And ever since she started pulling to knees, I've been using Puffs to "encourage" her to learn how to get back down, so hopefully we won't have any of those late-night "Mooooooom, I'm standing up now but can't get back doooooown" cries. Here's a picture of her standing up on her changing table, leaning on the wall... doesn't she look like she's about to be frisked? lol

eating and baby signs and dresses

Here's a little video of Lydia self-feeding some steamed veggies. I found out that actually steaming them on the stove makes them MUCH more tender and mushable than steaming them in the microwave. I also found out that already, Lydia is mooching the food off of my plate. Today after a ladies' Bible class, I went out to eat with a few people, and Lydia ate some fresh mozzarella w/ pesto, a crust of my grilled sandwich, and some roasted chicken. Then tonight she had some bites of a plain waffle. Who knows what she'll go for tomorrow? Anyway here's the video:



I've made myself another nursing dress. I'd been wearing the same dress to church every single Sunday and it was getting old. I could do skirts and tops, but I just really like the way dresses look and feel on me. Here's a picture. You may notice that the skirt portion looks a little familiar. It matches the pinafore that I sewed for Lydia a couple of weeks ago.


A few weeks ago, I started signing with Lydia. We do "milk" consistently, to mean nursing. And then "all done" when we're finished, and "sleep" occasionally. I'll add more as time goes on; I don't want to overwhelm her. But the other night when I got up for one of her night feedings, I really think that she signed "milk" to me. Of course, it WAS in the middle of the night and I was half asleep, so I could have been imagining the whole thing, but she seems to have done it a few other times since then. It's so hard to tell since she moves her hands around a bunch anyway, but the few times I saw her do it, it really seemed deliberate. I'm excited. :)

10 month appointment (stats, etc.)

We had Lydia's 9-month appointment today, but I'm calling it her 10-month appt since she'll be 10 months in just a few days. Here's her newest stats:

Head circumference: 16 inches.
Length: 26.5 inches.
Weight: 14 lbs, 8 oz.

Bigger than last time, but still a Very Tiny Baby. Very tiny. lol. She's on the chart for her head circ and length, but nowhere close to the chart for weight. She only was due for one shot today and didn't mind that, but then she was also due for some bloodwork (standard tests for iron and lead), and they took it out of her vein. Poor baby did NOT have fun with that at all. They had the needle in her skin and it took them about 3 tries before they were able to get it into her vein. Afterwards, they put a pressure bandage on her:

... and the bandaid was really sad for her when we were leaving. See, they took the blood out of her left arm, and her left thumb is the one she likes to suck. She tried to get her thumb to her mouth but couldn't do it right away because of the big bandaid on her elbow that was in the way. She did figure it out on the drive home, though, and is taking a nap now. I'd probably be sleeping too after all that.

Besides that drama, though, she has a clean bill of health and is a normal baby. She had an ear infection last time and that's cleared up, as well as her diaper rash. She supports her weight well on her legs (but doesn't have very good balance yet). Her dr told me to start "brushing" her little teeth with a washcloth so I'm going to start doing that. The solids regime (one day of "jarred" solids and one day of self-feeding) is fine and she's not having constipation from it or anything.