We love solid foods!

We are working on the solids. I feel maternally deficient as far as that goes, though, because all the other 7-month-olds are eating a wide variety of fruits and vegetables and cereals, and our guy gets oatmeal or rice cereal mostly when we feel like it and have the time and inclination to deal with the mess. And what a mess it is. He's such a good little helper that he insists on controlling the spoon himself. Sometimes it even works!

The picture is of him "eating" this teething biscuit. He goes crazy for them because I think they make his gums feel better--he's got his first tooth fixing to pop through one day soon now--and also because he gets to hold it himself. These are a treat we like to save until just before bathtime.

I'd like to take a half a day sometime soon here and make a bunch of baby food to freeze in ice-cube trays. You can pop the cubes out and keep them in freezer bags to heat up one at a time whenever you need them. Sounds like a good idea to me.

Frenectomy

(That's "tongue-clipping" to those of you who never had to deal with this and would have no reason to know what it's called.)

(Picture is unrelated but fairly recent and painfully sweet.)

(I resolve to stop talking in the parenthetical!)

One thing we've been thinking about since Elliot was born is whether or not we should have this done. The doctors said he was "a little bit" tongue-tied. This means that the little piece of skin that connects the tongue to the bottom of the mouth is longer than most kids. His wasn't too bad, but he couldn't stick his tongue out very far, and when he did it looked a bit like the top of a heart.

For some babies, it interferes with nursing. We saw a lactation consultant who recommended that we get the frenectomy done, though he was doing okay with eating. Other concerns about tongue-tie include possible speech impediments (though many kids with tongue-tie compensate in other ways and don't have anything noticeably different about their speech) and difficulty doing things like licking ice cream cones. Or French kissing. And you know with Obama making kindergartners learn everything about sex by the time they're five, he's going to need to be able to do that, well, any day now!

A lot of people take a wait-and-see approach. I don't think there's anything wrong with going that route because why subject your kid to a surgery (of the most minor kind, but still surgery) he doesn't need? Especially if he's nursing fine as evidenced by the below-the-mean-but-still-perfectly-fine weight gain?

We went back and forth on this and it wasn't made easier by the professionals we consulted. I guess it's quite controversial, though I never would have guessed beforehand. The lactation consultant said we should, his pediatrician said there was no reason to, the ear-nose-throat doctor said it was elective because Elliot's tongue-tie was a "5 out of 10" and he said he didn't know what he'd do if it were his own child.

So we read and read and talked and talked, and in my reading I came across a message board about tongue-tie that had a bunch of teenagers writing about having it. I saw so many comments about wanting to get the surgery, wishing they'd had it, feeling awkward on dates, getting teased...we knew, too, that if you're going to get it done, the earlier the better because they have more time to get used to the new movements, it can be done without general anaesthesia when they're babies, and if there are going to be any problems with a gap between the bottom front teeth, it's better to do it before they have those teeth.

For all those reasons, we decided to go ahead with it. He had it done today! My poor sweetie. The thing I hate about anything that's going to cause him pain (e.g., vaccinations) is that it's impossible to explain to him beforehand what's going to happen. So Brendan did me a great favor and left me at home for the morning.

Everything went really, really well. Elliot slept for most of the hour and a half drive to the place that does it, and he was fussy by the time they got there because he wasn't supposed to eat anything for two hours prior. They had to immobilize him in a sheet and Brendan had to leave the room--that part sounded awful. Brendan said he could hear him crying but that the whole thing took about two minutes. Then Brendan came back, Elliot went to town on his bottle, and he was cooing by the time they called me.

When they got back, Elliot seemed to be in great spirits and was busy experimenting with sticking his tongue out in ways he couldn't before. It was adorable.

I was planning on staying home and not sending him to daycare because I thought he'd be fussy and sore, but he seemed to be neither (they gave him Tylenol before sending him home) so we brought him in to play with his friends for a few hours.

All in all, I think everyone in the house is happy with the decision, though to be fair I have to acknowledge that by the time we can ask Elliot about this he won't be able to remember it.

The Week in Review

This is what we think of cell phone bills.

Anyway...

There aren't a whole lot of updates, really. This was just a pretty normal week. Peanut continues to amaze us all by growing several inches a day.

We continue to make progress toward the family goal of Finishing Grad School. Brendan and I both met with our committees this week, though mine was less formal. Apparently I'm going to be defending my dissertation on December 9 or 10. I suppose this means I better get to finishing it!

Elliot is doing really well in daycare. We are so lucky to have found this place. He's finally napping well there and seems to relish sucking on a toy giraffe. One day this week I dropped him off and then peeked in the window where I saw Miss Jessie dancing with him. It was such a sweet sight that I teared up.

He really seems to have an extraordinary focus. I'm going to try to get a short video clip of him in the bathtub. It's so funny--what he wants to do in the tub is KICK. You can't catch his eye, he doesn't smile, doesn't cry, doesn't do anything but stare at those feet and he'll go until I take him out because he's winded. The other day I went to check in on him while he was asleep (on a futon mattress on the floor) and he was awake and creeping towards a bottle I'd left on the floor. He was so intent that he didn't react to the door opening.

We're making slow but steady progress on the solid foods. So far he just eats single-grain oatmeal and rice cereal--the pediatrician says he should be having about 9 tablespoons a day, but we're lucky to get 6 because it takes so long and such a small amount makes it into his mouth anyway. But he's a great helper, grabbing the spoon and shoving it whichever-way-up in the general direction of his mouth.

Well, folks, I think that's about it! Hope you all are doing well and enjoying your weekends...

6-month stats

We had Elliot's six-month "well-baby" check-up yesterday. The stats:

Height: 27.75 inches (84 percentile)
Weight: 17 lbs. 2.1 ounces (35 percentile)
Head: 45.8 cm. (92 percentile)

What this means is that we have a tall, thin baby with an oversized head. Actually, his numbers are all in a good range and we figure the head size is just to contain the massive brains he clearly possesses. The only number that really surprised us was his weight because to me he's a little chunk, but I guess most babies are even more so!

Anyway, he's doing really well on his milestones--he's babbling and getting better at sitting up without help (still shaky) and he's so close to crawling that I bet that's coming in the next few weeks. He can't quite get his little round tummy up off the floor so for now he rolls or creeps to get where he wants to go. This weekend is going to be filled with baby-proofing. Thank God dust bunnies are mostly non-toxic.

In other news, we're still sick. Brendan's got the worst of it, and I thought Elliot was getting over it, but he's been cranky and stuffy all day so far. Maybe it's just from the shots he got yesterday or maybe the cold is still hanging on. We are doing a spaced schedule with his vaccinations, meaning that he gets almost all the standard vaccines but instead of getting them every other month, he gets half the amount every month. It means a few more shots overall and more appointments, but we decided that was preferable to getting all that stuff into his system at once.

Oh, and one more thing! It seems that he can recognize his name now, but it also seems that he thinks his name is Peanut. If we say, "Hi, Elliot!" he'll continue doing whatever he was doing, but if we say, "Hi, Peanut!" he'll look at us. Guess we should've seen this coming, but we've called him Peanut ever since we found out I was pregnant.

Everyone's sick...

Normally it's the week *after* a big stressful time when we all get sick, but this time some bug got us even though I have an important meeting to get ready for on Wednesday and Brendan's got an even bigger one on Friday.

Captain E. doesn't have a meeting, but he does have a doctor's appointment tomorrow at 4. He's doing better than any of us, finally, but the last few days have been really hard on him. His nose has been so plugged or runny that he's been having troubles eating or sleeping very much at a time. As I write this, though, he's conked out upstairs, as is his father, and I'm on my way up to join them!

So big!

I can't stand how quickly this kid is growing! It seems just like yesterday when he looked like this:



And now he's such a big boy! He rolls and rolls like it's nothing at all, and he's closing in on being able to sit by himself. Right now he does what they call "tripoding." Diaper changing has become an ordeal because he simply prefers to be on his stomach and now he can make that happen, instantly.

He loves playing soccer:



And spending time in this little activity center that we've come to call "The Office" because he can get such a stern little bossy tone to his voice when he's talking to the turtle and the duck:



Also, today was his second day of daycare. Today went so much better than yesterday did--it was so hard to leave him there that first time. He was happy and curious while I was there, but when I handed him to "Miss Jessica," his lip started to quiver, and there was this wild little toddler who kept making these crashing, banging noises. It was just all too much for Peanut and he started crying. I couldn't leave him like that, of course, so I stayed for about 20 minutes and he was calm, if not happy, when I left. He had a decent day, they told us, marked by intermittent bouts of crying, no good naps, and copious spit-up.

But today I only stayed for a few minutes and it sounds like he had a really good day. Miss Jessica reports that he likes to watch the big kids through the window, playing in their preschool classroom.

We're so lucky to have found this daycare. I know it's only been two days, but we couldn't be happier with it. If we have to leave him with someone who isn't family, the Easter Seals people seem just top-notch.

Some recent pictures

from his sixth month:

okay, clearly I've got a lot to learn about how to post pictures in blogger, so I'm going to come back to this project a little later...

Tomorrow, daycare

Heaven help us all.

Tomorrow, for the first time, we're taking Peanut to daycare. It's just going to be afternoons (12:30-5:30) and I know we need this, Brendan and I need this time, and I think it will be good for Peanut to get the time with caring, loving, competent adults who aren't us.

But jeez, this is hard. Brendan put him to bed tonight--in his own room! And we were laying there, Brendan already asleep, and I couldn't stop thinking about how now he's in his own room and pretty soon he's going to be spending 25 hours of his life every week with these people who are not me and not his daddy.

And I teared up and decided that I needed to get this blog started.

I want to try to back up, as I can, and document important things that happened in his life before this point in time, before he turned six months old! But for now I decided that I needed to get started so I can at least keep things current.

Our darling baby is such a sweetie and I'm crossing my fingers that things go well tomorrow. For all of us!