Some parts faster than others, admittedly. Here’s how she measured up at her doctor’s appointment on Monday:
Height: 13th percentile
Weight: 37th percentile
Head Circumference: 83rd percentile
Her height’s about where we expect it to be. Her weight, not so much. We’re not going to deny her food or anything. (Do I look like I’m crazy?) Maybe it’ll burn off when she starts walking, maybe not. And her head? To quote my mom, “Oh, good! It’s normalizing!” (Both Ben and I have unusually large noggins.)
Our doctor also told me it was okay to let her cry it out at night because she shouldn’t be hungry. I think that she is hungry; after a long night of crying, she’s now in the worst mood I’ve ever seen her in. She kicked me while I was changing her diaper, she’s been screaming since she woke up, and she’s refusing to nap. I’d be glad to feed you in the middle of the night, my evil little witch!
For starters, it was Christmas! And on Christmas morning, you woke up and … had a fever. =( Poor girl! I dosed you up with Tylenol, which brought your temperature down, but you were still a sad sack. When I took your temperature at night, it was up to 104.1F. Tylenol AND Advil. You slept in our bed that night, too distraught to sleep in your crib. My poor baby!
And you woke up the next morning to the same thing. I was thinking that it was starting to get less fun.
And the third morning, you woke up with a fever AGAIN! And an attitude to match; you were *cranky*. I called our doctor, got permission to take you to urgent care in Boston, and then waited in a germ-infested hospital for three hours. The diagnosis? “I think she has a cold.”
Well, you didn’t have a cold; you woke up the next morning with a rash and a temperature of 97.0F. It’s called Roseola, EVERYBODY gets it, and it’s not dangerous but is a pain in the butt. But we’re done with it!
Anyway … you began to play with your Christmas presents after you kicked the fever. Some of your favorites were your marble track (because you could chew on it and the marbles), which made me feel very good about myself because I picked it out, and your donuts (a set of toruses that you can stack on a “banana”), because you can chew on the donuts, too. We’d set you down on the ground and watch you play with your loot, offering you your less-played-with toys with the promise of, “You can chew on THIS part of it!”
And then, on New Year’s Day, the magic happened: you rolled over to get the toy you wanted. Now, you’ve rolled over before, but this was purposeful and well thought-out.
And then you discovered how to stand up using Grandma’s hands.
And then you stood up by pulling yourself up on the coffee table. I walked into the family room to find you standing there awkwardly; I didn’t even see you pull yourself up.
And then you learned to play “So big!” Right now, you don’t play it when we ask you how big you are — you randomly clasp your arms over your head and wait for us to exclaim, “So big! Norah is so big!”
And then you learned to play peek-a-boo. You’ll hide behind something, like a donut, and then pull it away and smile while we yell, “Peek-a-boo! I see you!” The really funny part is that you’ve also learned to play with your hands, but you don’t see a need to cover your eyes. You like to put your hands over your mouth and look at us sneakily, then lift your hands and wait for us to say, “Peek-a-boo!” I suppose at some point we’ll have to get stricter with our peek-a-boos, but for now, you can have it. We’re thrilled!
Your mobility is increasing every day. Currently, you’re army crawling, and it’s pretty darn cute. Not very fast or effective, but very cute. I give it a week or two before we’ve got a real mover on our hands.
Note: I thought I had a video of you crawling, but I don’t. I apologize for all who’ve asked to see such a thing.
We’re still not quite sure whether you’re a right or a lefty. Up until this month, I was SURE it was lefty; you *only* sucked your left thumb. Now, if you go read about this, most websites will tell you that you can’t tell because they change handedness preference every couple of weeks. But you haven’t! You suck ONLY your left thumb — and you always have!
But then you started army crawling and it was your left arm that kept getting stuck underneath yourself. So now I have no idea what’s going on with my favorite little Southpaw.
Now, at this point, you were still waking up two to three times a night to eat. It was driving Mommy batty. Mommy can’t do that; Mommy is too tired. You’d wake up at nine, suck on the boob, and go back to sleep until one in the morning, wake up, suck on the boob, seem to go back to sleep, and then wake up screaming bloody murder half an hour later. I’d rock you to sleep, but you down, and you’d wake right back up. I did this rock-to-sleep, put you down, wake back up, and rock-to-sleep routine three times and finally tossed you back in the crib and went downstairs, completely frustrated. I told Grandma and Grandpa to just leave you to cry yourself to sleep. They managed to do that, and you did indeed fall asleep on your own — only to wake back up at four.
People promised me that this phase would end, but nobody could tell me when. “It won’t be more than another year.” A year!?!? I’m dying here, people! DYING!!! I need you to sleep through from 7 – 7. Please.
And then … you did! You woke up at nine and I rocked you but did NOT feed you. The rocking didn’t work; you woke right back up when I put you down in your crib. And you woke up several more times that night, but I didn’t come to get you. And after several (meaning maybe ten or fifteen) minutes, you went back to sleep.
And you repeated your feat the next night, too, but with less crying.
Mommy is amazed and so, so grateful for this, Norah. Hallelujah! Thank you so much for changing your sleeping habits. It’s stupendous!
The bad stuff? Well, you’ve rejected the bottle again. =( I guess you put up with it until you realized that it wasn’t the “real thing,” and then you were like, “No way! Take that back! I DON’T LIKE IT!!!” Which stinks.
I love you to the stars and back, kiddo. Just please don’t grow up too fast!
Well, you made it to eight months! Not bad, considering that you’re not sleeping. Seriously, dear, you’re waking up somewhere between two and five times per night, and IT’S GOT TO STOP.
Grandma is analyzing your situation — how many times you eat during the day (trust me — it’s a lot!), whether you eat enough to keep you full during the night (I don’t know if I give you enough to tide you over until morning, but I guarantee that if I feed you once — which I’m happy to do — you’ve got enough), whether peas make you sick (that might just be me), etc. I’m afraid she’s just going to conclude, as I have, that it’s not an empty tummy that’s waking you, it’s that you’re a light sleeper who wakes up and doesn’t like being lonely. And a bigger stomach isn’t going to fix that.
So, for the love of all that’s holy, could you please give Mommy a break one night? What happened to those nine-hour nights you were giving me in California? PLEASE???
Also, there’s the itty-bitty biting issue. Please refrain from tightening your jaws around Mommy’s nipples. It’s painful. Also unnecessary; if you don’t want any more, just spit it out or start screaming or something. I’ll get the same idea without the urge to smack you upside the head. Oh, and cackling evilly after you take the bite? That isn’t helping your cause, either. It’s just aggravating Mommy even more. And at this point, with so little sleep under her belt, I wouldn’t want to do anything else to raise Mommy’s hackles.
Fortunately, there are some cute things you’ve begun as well. When I’m feeding you solid food, you SCREAM when you want another bite. LOUDLY. OK, it’s not cute, but it doesn’t suck as much as the stuff I mentioned in the previous four paragraphs.
You’re a very stable sitter! (Though I think we’ve got your weeble-wobble shape to thank for it rather than your incredible core strength.) You’ve only fallen a couple of times — straight forward! Either Zamboni comes over and gives you some unexpected kisses or you really want the toy centipede that Daddy’s dangling in front of you, and SPLAT! — down you go. It’s really funny. =)
You love rattles and blocks. Grandma gave you a new rattle yesterday, in fact, and you shook it like you were playing the tambourine in … one of those songs that feature tambourines! I guess you liked the color, too; it was pink and shiny. You look like a princess!
You’re not crawling yet, but I can see your desire to increasing every day. Please stay tuned for updates on your locomotion — it’s not too far away!
Thanks to Grandma, we’ve discovered that you WILL take a bottle! Hallelujia! This means Daddy and I can go on a date. He could also give me a night off and let me sleep … hint, hint, Ben!
However, none of these things, bad or good, have any effect whatsoever on the amount I care for you. You’re precious, punkie-dunks, and I love you to alpha-centuri and back!
December 6, 2011 at 10:14 am
· Filed under General
Just wanted to report that life down here in Longmont is really good! I’m loving the shades we have on the windows, which block out the sun =), walking the dogs is easy (the neighborhood is a great place to do it!), Norah loves the playground (despite the fact that by “playground” I mean “the baby swing IN the playground”), and I love being close to the grocery store and Target. Life is good!
Also, if you read My OB Said What!?!?, you’ll notice my [anonymous] post going up sometime today. =)
Well, here I am a week late with only the excuse of packing our entire house and moving down to the flatlands to show for it. I’m sorry!
This month has been all about sleep, or not getting enough of it. It began while Daddy was in California for a week: every other night, you’d wake up screaming three or four times a night. Sometimes for hours. I complained vigorously to Dad, who assured me that he’d be home with his parents in a few days and I’d be able to hand you over to Grandmama when you were like that.
And then he got home and you were perfect. This is not exactly a good thing in my mind, because it gave the impression that you were always good and Mommy is nuts. Seriously, you were sleeping when they walked in the door. Granddaddy asked if he could wake up you up to say hello and I practically bit his head off. “No! Absolutely not!” I admonished. When you did eventually wake up, two hours later, you smiled and cooed as if you’d been doing it all your life. Exactly not as you’d been behaving the past week.
And you were pretty good their entire visit. There was one night when you woke up several times in the course of two hours, all before ten at night but after *I’d* fallen asleep, that Grandmama volunteered to rock you back to sleep, and I felt slightly vindicated.
Then they left and you reverted to waking up a bazillion times. Norah, in case you don’t know why this bothers me so much, I’ll spell it out for you: I’ve had several strokes which have made sleep like gold to me. When I get enough sleep, I feel pretty normal; when I don’t, I feel really terrible. There’s no halfway in between; it’s either good or not good. Oh, and because I’m bad at it and am on a stimulant that makes me pretty wired, I can’t nap, so count the “sleep when baby sleeps” strategy out.
I agree that this imposes some unusual and pretty strict boundaries on us both. I now go to bed at 7:30 or 8:30 each night — a big change from my usual 11:00 turn-in time. If you could do me the tiny little favor of STAYING ASLEEP at night I’d really
appreciate it.
Anyway, I was down to my last shred of energy on Thanksgiving Day this week. (We enjoyed spagetti, by the way.) I was doing every thing in slow motion and just felt EXTREMELY tired. And that night? You only woke up once. =) And once I can deal with.
I swear I don’t leave her in the swing with the intention of taking a nap — it just happens! One minute she’s playing with Samuel the Sheep or her rattle and the next, she’s conked out! Cold! She’s REALLY asleep!
And since then, you’ve been getting up twice each night. It’s not as good as once, but it’s WAY better than four times. So we’ll take the first one (which happens at 11:30pm, five hours after you go to sleep) and work on eliminating the second one (3:30am, four hours after your 11:30 wake up). But HALLELUJIA!!! I mean it. Thank you, Norah.
Grandmama suggested that you might really enjoy a walker, so I bought on Amazon and assembled it as soon as it arrived. It’s too big for you. Even on it’s smallest setting, your feet can’t touch the floor. I’m so sorry, Norah, but you are 100% Mommy in the height department. I returned the walker (no trivial task, given that the pieces mate together as if for life!) and am currently scouting ones that we can test out before purchasing them. And that don’t play loud, obnoxious midi songs. (They drive Mommy and Daddy crazy!)
And I believe you’re coming around to your next new discovery: object permanence. I noticed it one night this week (OK, so in your eighth month, but I’m putting it in here because my monthly post has been so delayed anyway) when I was bathing you. I put the baby oil in the bathtub to warm it up, as Grandmama suggested, and you loved chewing on the bottle. Eventually, I took the bottle away to get you out of the tub — and you screamed. You wanted that bottle! NOW! I gave it back to you and you stopped crying. I took it away again and Bam! were you angry with the world. I gave it back and you calmed down. But when I took it away again and took you out of the tub you went ballistic. Oh, the fun things you can do with your children! Look! I know how to make my daughter cry!
However, this new notion that things can disappear has more dire consequences. i left you in the rec center’s babysitting room (I can walk to the rec center! Yay!) and you did NOT like that. At ALL. I came back in, twenty minutes later, and you were screaming. I sat down and fed you, then handed you back over to nice lady in charge. Twenty minutes later, I heard a message over the PA system calling me back down to the babysitting room. Yes, you’d been screaming for fifteen consecutive minutes. Sigh. We’re going to keep working on it, though! We’re going back to the rec center until you’re comfortable sitting in that babysitting room and hanging out even if it takes until you’re fifteen! (Well, ok, the maximum age of kids allowed in babysitting is six or seven. But you know what I mean.)
Keep working on the sleep, kiddo, and soon I’ll be wishing for this wonderful time when I can toss my baby up in the air and listen to her cackle in glee. Which won’t be much longer!
We just returned from the doctors! (OK, OK, we went a couple days ago — so sue me!) Here are Norah’s stats:
Height: 24.5″ 8th percentile
Weight: 15 lbs, 8.5 oz 24th percentile
Head circumference: 17″ 66th percentile
So you’re beginning to even out a little bit, my dear!
In other news, our pediatrician also gave us permission to go ahead and test her for my genetic mutation, MTHFR, and check her homocysteine levels. OK, no problem — except that you need blood to do that, and she’s about as attached to her blood as her mom is. We went to the hospital yesterday and they tried twice, but couldn’t get anything. They then stuck her heel — still not nearly enough for even one of the tests. And poor mom had to sit there helplessly holding a girl who was not even a LITTLE bit happy to be poked. I’m so sorry, dear!
It’s been half a year since you arrived, and boy are you doing a lot of stuff now! Let’s go through the list:
(1) You’re sitting up by yourself! (Well, almost. I should say that you’re sitting up for about two minutes by yourself. Usually.)
Sitting up and playing with the toys that Grandmama sent you (thanks, by the way!):
(2) You learned how to pull the handle on the cow toy I bought you in California. It makes a really neat noise when you do that. You go, girl!
(3) You go to sleep really well now. There’s hardly every ANY crying at your morning nap time, little to none at your afternoon nap time, and the last couple nights, you’ve even put yourself to bed at night with no fussing. WIN!
(4) You’re a professional traveller. We finished up a three week ‘vacation’ (in quotes because it was anything but — Daddy worked like a horse the entire time and Mommy took care of you!) in California, and you handled it like it was old hat. Time changes? Not a problem! Hotels? Ditto! And we picked up a new carrier — the Ergo — that you sit in really well and that doesn’t hurt Mommy’s back. Score!
Here we are at the wharf in San Francisco:
And here’s a license plate that could only be found in NoCal:
And here you are, killing time and learning the signs for all the colors of the squares on your monkey quilt:
(5) You’re a swimmer! Daddy and I took you to the [warm-water therapy] pool at Mapleton two weeks ago, and you went in like a fish. It was so much fun! I can’t wait to go back!
We still don’t know what color your hair’s going to be! I just about convince myself it’s brown, and then it shows up bright red in another picture. That’s plenty okay with me! Either you’ll have dark hair like me and Daddy, or you’ll have red hair — and I’ve always been partial to red-heads =)
There is one thing I’d like to work with you on, however: these nighttime wakings. Norah, when you were tiny, like under four months, you slept in bed with us, so it wasn’t a big deal to wake up and feed you whenever you were hungry. But now you sleep in your crib like a big girl, so when you wake up I have to go get you when you wail.
MOMMY IS TIRED. So very tired. I would like to sleep a straight ten hours, two nights in a row. That’s all I want. You’ve gone 11 hours before, so I know you’ve got the capability to do it — I just need you to do it consistently. Please?
I’m going to postpone the posting of the video of your first meal until Daddy gets back from California.
BUT … you’ve gotten your first tooth! No pictures — there’s really nothing to see anyway — but how exciting is that?!?!
Love,
Mommy
Dear Annie,
I love your little sister so very much, but that doesn’t diminish the fact that you’re my first — I love you every bit as much as I love Norah. I hate that it’s not YOU I’m sneaking Cheerios when Daddy isn’t looking, I hate that it’s not YOUR clothes I wait until after your morning nap to put on because your diaper explodes, with little variation, around 9:30 every morning. It’s not fair to you.
I don’t know how to express my love for Norah in terms of my love for you. I love you both so much, but I’m falling more in love with her each day. I get to see her grow up, and it’s wonderful! I apologize for not getting to share that with you.
I guess it’s just different — I love her because she’s evolving, and I love you because you’re stuck as that beautiful baby who never cried, not once. I was talking with some old friends about how much I hated saying goodbye to you, and they said that 23 weeks isn’t that long when you really stop to think about it. If I had been able to say what I was thinking (without these pesky strokes getting in my way), I would’ve said that it isn’t the time that makes it tough — it was tough because I loved you already.
I don’t know how love works. I don’t know if you are simply endowed with a constant amount of love for each of your children or if you grow to love them more and more each day. Personally, I feel that getting to hold you and name you was a fantastic, worthwhile experience that really did help me to heal. Does it mean I love you more than I did before I knew that you were a girl? I don’t know.
