Addison's 1st tooth, rolling over and chest x-rays

As you can see in the title, it's been a busy few weeks for Addison. Her first tooth is cutting through on the bottom. She had a week of absolute fussiness and screaming in the middle of the night and the little bugger is slowly making its way through her gumes. She loves to chomp on anything and everything including our hands and if you've ever felt a tooth as its coming through, you know how sharp the little bugger's are. It hasn't pushed all the way through yet, about a 1/4 of the way, and we're pretty sure her other bottom toothnext to it is right behind it. We excitedly anticipate it's full arrival so we can see how cute she is with a little chomper.

In addition to the tooth excitement, at 27 weeks we've finally mastered the art of rolling over from front to back and back to front. She is quite proud of herself and always has a "wow, how did I end up on my tummy and the world looks totally different from this perspective" look on her face. For us, this means no more leaving her on the middle of the bed and running to get something. Surely this also means she's one step closer to crawling so we should probably get going on installing the little drawer and cabinet locks and put the gate up at the top of the stairs.

Lastly, we had a very frightening experience at the doctor this week. Addison has had a cough for a couple of weeks now and on Monday she spiked a fever of 103.5. She was breathing as though she had just been running so I called the doctor and they told me to bring her in asap. We went in and they checked her out, ears looked excellent, throat looked a bit red and swollen, temp went down a bit after I had gave her a quick dose of motrin but was still fevering and her chest sounded okay. The Dr. decided to do a chest x-ray to rule out pneumonia and a nose swab to rule of influenza b. So, Addie and I went down to x-ray where they placed her in the strangest contraption called a pigostat. She was in just her diaper and they place her legs on what looks like a little bike seat and then have the parent (who at this point is getting nervous) hold her arms straight up above her head while they enclose her in this plastic case thing that keeps her still. All the while she is screaming at the top of her lungs, bright red and tears are rolling down her cheeks. Did I mention that the parent stands directly in front of her to hold her arms up thereby forcing them to stare right at her and be of no help at all. It was downright awful. Not realizing they wanted her to continue to scream to get a good x-ray, this mom was singing the ABC's to her and the three little fishies song until the nurses told her to stop because they wanted Addie to cry. AHHHHHHH!!! In the end, she was red in the face and had tear stained cheeks and I was red in the eyes and had tear stained cheeks. The happy part of this story is that she doesn't have pneumonia. I can only hope we never have to do that again! There was however no clear cut reason for her cough and fever so they gave her amoxicillan in the hopes to curb any upcoming ear infection. She is back at daycare today with no temp and feeling quite better!

One week shy of 6 months

Life on Perry street has developed into a routine dictated by a 16 lb 11 oz almost 6 month old. This is totally fine with us as her presence in our lives is wonderful. I was talking to a colleague this week about her and I realized how excited I got talking about her and how every molecule in my body just seemed to become weightless. What I have come to know is that having a child is a natural upper! Even on the days when she's a bit fussy as the little hidden chompers debate whether or not they'll be maing an appearane this month, the days when her poopy diapers are so stinky you have to hold your breath, and on the days when she refuses to eat her bottle and instead sings you a little song with her new ability to make gurgling noises, she is a natural upper and it's impossible to be in a bad mood when she's around.

These days she loves green beans, squash and sweet potatoes. Fruit doesn't seem to be a favorite as she scarfs down the veggies and scrunches up her face when offered apple sauce and peaches. She seems to know when it's dinner time and gets excited flailing her arms and legs when you sit her in her high chair. We've also started giving her rice and a veggie in the mornings and she chows this down at daycare also.

She has yet to roll over and doesn't seem terribly interested in doing so. She pushes her upper body up when laying on her tummy and has pushed her bottom up in the air in a crawl like motion but hasn't made any further progress. After watching the mobile babies cruise around daycare getting into anything and everything, we're okay with the fact that she's taking her time. She is getting very good at sitting up on her own and just needs a few pillows around her for those times that she loses her balance and tips over. She's really started noticing Lucy, our yellow lab, and now smiles and laughs when she sees her.

We continue with the struggle to get her to take a bottle, regardless of whether it is breastmilk or formula, and took her back to the doctor a week ago to check her weight and have him look inside her mouth. She continues to gain weight and move up on the growth chart which is amazing to us because she was only eating between 3-4 ounces every 5-6 hours (generally, a baby her age should be eating 7-8 ounces ever 4-5 hours). Dr. Mullen checked out her mouth, looked at her weight growth chart and decided that she more than likely has reflux in her lower esophagus again and told us to start giving her the liquid Zantac (aka: dr. magilicuddy's) again.

We started giving it to her again and within days she has been much better with taking bottles. It's much easier to give it to her this time and one usually finds a situation that goes like this: One of us puts the syringe in her mouth towards the very back while the other one starts singing yum, yum, yummy,yum, yum, yummy. Apparently we are very convincing because it seems to work and she doesn't gag or cry like she used to. :-)

On the sleeping front she's fabulous. She goes to bed for the night around 6:30-7pm and sleeps until 6:30-7am. We're all feeling so much better as the days of little to no sleep are behind us.

Well, that's the great one week shy of 6 months update. It's spring break on campus and Deb is in Eagle River, WI visiting her parents for a couple of days. Addie and I are holding down the fort at home and hoping to get a shopping day in this weekend. The little weed is growing out of her clothes again and we certainly need to shop for summer clothes!

Addison Laughing

Addison's Pink Zone Women's basketball game

More first foods pics

Green Beans, Rice and Addie's first boyfriend

Addison has officially entered the world of fine eating. Well as fine as you can get from the pureed world. She has been eating rice cereal for about 2 weeks now and tonight was her first experience with vegetables. After a great debate on which veggie to start with, we settled on green beans. Not too sweet, not too tart. In the past we assumed the position that we would always taste everything we gave her to make sure it was not too obnoxiously disgusting. However, since she has entered this new world, we've decided that she's on her own. :-) We assume that Gerber has a fine record of providing nutrional meals to babies across the world and therefore we need not join her in her meal time quests.

Fortunately and unfortunately, the introduction of green beans was quite uneventful. She made one small scrunched up face and then continued to eat her first tablespoon of green beans in addition to her rice. We were really hoping for some amazingly funny faces but she actually seemed to like them. She'll get 2 more days of green beans before we move on to her next veggie.

On an exciting note, we found out today that our friends Grocho and Bob are expecting a little boy in early June. They had waited to find out the gender of the baby until Valentine's day and then sent out the cutest pic of her belly with a big heart drawn on it and "it's a boy" written in the middle. We're certain that Addie & Baby Boone will be instant boyfriend and girlfriend and can't wait to meet the little one. He'll surely be a bouncy, spitfire of a kid as a result of his genetics! :-)

103.6 degrees is very frightening

As you can guess by the title, Addie has had her first illness. She has been congested all week and not wanting to eat. On Sunday, I was changing her diaper and I happened to put my hand on her stomach and realized how hot her body was. We immediately took her temp and it was 102 degrees. Being the new parents we are, we paniced and immediately called the after hours nurse who instructed us to start tylenol and keep a close eye on her. We followed her instructions and took her temp about every four hours. We set alarms to wake up and do this and also give her the deliciously grape tylenol that she seems to love. She was such a trooper about getting her temp taken and even smiled and talked to us while we did this. All night long she fluctuated between 101-103 degrees so we decided to call the after hours nurse again around 3:30am and were instructed to give her infant motrin and push fluids. We did and this seem to be more effective as her temp dropped to 99.1 after a few hours. When we all woke up at 7am, it was back up to 102. We decided to call the Dr. and take her in. We were concerned 1st with her temp and 2nd with the fact that we could not get her to eat and therefore she had been lacking fluids for about 12 hours. If anyone has ever tried to "push" fluids into a 20 week old and been successful, I'd love to know your tricks!
So, we get to the Dr.'s office and are escorted into an exam room. I undress Addie and she immediately begins to wail. The nurse takes her temp which is now 102.6. She continues wailing for the next 20 minutes, yep 20 minutes, while we wait for the Dr to come examine her. What Dr makes you wait that long with a fevering and screaming 20 week old???? What's lovely about the experience is also the fact that the nurse who took her info asked the last time she had been given tylenol and I told her that we gave her motrin at 3:30am and the nurse said "no, no, no she can't have motrin if she's under 6 months". I replied that we had called their after hours nurse and this is what she had instructed us to do. Argghhh!!! They really all need to be on the same page!!
Fast forward to the Dr's arrival. She examines a still wailing Addie, shows me how to tell if she's dehydrated and settles on a diagnosis that she has an ear infection. She prescribes an antibiotic and we are on our not so merry way (Addie is still wailing and has started to moan) to the pharmacy. We get home and I administer the first dosage of the strawberry flavored magic medicine and Addie gives a preview into what feeding her fruits and veggies will be like. The rest of the day is spent holding her and attempting to get her to eat which she still refuses. Around 3pm her cheeks are apple red and she is moaning and unable to open her eyes. We take her temp again and it's up to 103.6. We immediately call the Dr and are told to put her in a lukewarm bath and call them back in 30 minutes after taking her temp again. Happily the bath works and she's down to 101.9. The bath works so well that she even eats 3 ounces of breastmilk and gives us a big gummy smile.
So, it's now 8:15pm and we've been battling this fever for 30 hours. Addie has had her 2nd dose of the antibiotic and she's sleeping on the bed next to me so we can keep an eye on her to make sure she doesn't have an allergic reaction to the amoxicillin like I did as a baby.
We're hoping her fever continues to go down and she'll be back to her smiley self soon. This has been by far the scariest experience as new parents. Not knowing how to help her besides giving her tylenol and holding her and watching her moan and be incoherent was terrifying. I'm sure she'll have many other colds and illnesses as a result of her days at daycare (did I mention it only took 6 days of being at daycare for her to get sick!) and at least we'll know what to do to help her as much as we can.

Cheers,
Mic