Fun stuff updates

I've been so caught up with Noah's excema and fussiness, I haven't gotten around to updating his fun progress. The last week has actually been pretty fruitful for him. 

He has...

1. Discovered his feet. He loves to pull his foot into his mouth. Look at his tongue out with effort! So cute!

2. Rolled over from front-to-back. He can now roll from back-to-front and from front-to-back, though he hasn't done a complete 360-degree roll yet. Interestingly, he seems to be much better at rolling when he doesn't have clothes on. I don't really see a reason for this, but I guess it is his preference.

3. Much improved sitting up. He can now sit up and balance by himself for a few seconds before he falls. We practice this every day. 

Excema

We took Noah to the doctor today. He's had a rash on his face for a while now and he's been so fussy the last few days, so we just wanted to get it checked out. The doctor said it is just excema. We just have to keep it moisturized and put a little hydrocortisone on it if necessary. Noah has been so itchy and miserable lately. I feel so bad for him. This all started with the hives outbreak. Now we've entered a terrible cycle where he itches his face and makes the excema worse, which makes him more itchy, etc. Look at his poor face, and this picture is not even from the worse day.

Brutal

Our darling little boy has not been sleeping well. Every nap, every night, he screams and cries and fights sleep. He doesn't want to be held, he doesn't want to be put in the crib by himself. He won't fall asleep in the stroller, in the car, in a baby carrier. I don't think he wants to be swaddled, but he absolutely can't fall asleep or stay asleep without it, so he has to be. He eventually will fall asleep at night, when he is exhausted because he has barely slept all day. It is generally exhausting. This is the revenge for Noah not having colic and not crying that much previously. Something like this happened once before when he was about 3 months old, and he eventually stopped that, so I hope he will stop this soon....hopefully before Mom and Kristy come, or else we will lose precious baby-sitters.

Giggles - Monster/Wild animal

Video 1: Noah has been awfully giggly lately. Lots of fun. 

Video 2: Noah has also learned to make a new sound when he is protesting things that sounds awful. It sounds like wild animal. I call it his monster-wild animal call. He basically does it whenever we are putting him down for a nap or at night. It's different than crying, and in that way is easier to listen to because his face doesn't look like he is that upset when he is doing it. But it certainly isn't pleasant to listen to, by any means. I hope he forgets about this sound soon.

Emergency room run

We took Noah to the emergency room last night for the first time. It wasn't a terribly traumatic situation, so in some ways it was a good test run.

Noah was having a hard time sleeping last night and was being really fussy. The room was dark, but I decided to turn on a light and look at his face. Poor thing was bright red. The reaction to the formula had gotten worse and his face was all blotchy with a hives-like rash. He was probably super itchy, which is why he couldn't sleep.

We called an after-hours nurse's hotline, and they suggested we take him to the ER, to check to make sure the reaction didn't progress and effect his breathing. I think everyone was erring on the side of caution. 

I kind of felt dumb because by the time we drove to the ER, Noah looked much better. Plus he was in a great mood. All smiles and giggles. He thought it was a great adventure being up that late at night.  His face was still a little red, but much better than when we had left the house. The ER nurses probably thought we were over-protective freak parents, which is still partially true, but in our defense I wasn't planning on going to the ER until the phone nurse told us to. Anyway, I know people have problems with Kaiser, but so far I've been so happy with our experiences there. We waited in the waiting room for about 20 minutes, then got in to see a doctor who told us that we could give him a little children's Benadryl if Noah was really bothered, but that otherwise he seemed fine, and we were sent on our way.

Noah fell asleep in the car ride home and proceed to sleep for the next 5 hours in his crib, without any Benadryl, so I guess he wasn't that bothered after all. After dropping us off at home, poor Grant drove all around trying to find an all night pharmacy to buy some Benadryl, just in case, though we didn't end up needing it.

This morning, we all slept in, but Noah looked much better. A little rash was still around, but overall much better. Now I can add food allergy paranoia to my growing list of parental concerns. Great.

Introducing formula

Today Noah had his first try with formula. We thought we'd slowly ease him into it, so Grant mixed in 1 ounce of formula with the breast milk I pumped for him over the course of an entire day. 

So far, not going so well. Noah ate it and didn't seem to have a problem with the taste. However, it appears that he has a bit of a rash on his face and chest, which I'm guessing is an allergic reaction, probably to the cow's milk? Also he's been pretty fussy all day, according to Grant. And he's having trouble going to sleep. Again, fussy. I'm wondering if he has a tummy ache. 

Now we have a giant can of powdered formula that I'm afraid to keep using. I wonder if there is anyone we can give it to so it doesn't go to waste. We're going to have to try and get smaller sizes next time. 

I was really hoping that Noah wouldn't be a kid with allergic reactions to cow's milk. Darn. Formula is officially on hold again.

Little man

I always call Noah "Big Boy" (or Big Boi if you like Outkast) because he is one. I've noticed that our pediatrician and daycare person use the alternative term "Little Man." I've decided that Little Man is exceedingly cuter and think that I will start using that instead.

No pants Noah

Noah had a blow-out poop this morning just as we were about to start our hour walk to daycare. The poop was all over his pants. It was Monday morning, I hadn't had any coffee, I was dealing with poop, and I didn't have any extra pants for him. Anyway, I figured he'd be fine going to daycare without any pants on because the daycare lady has extra changes of clothes for him. So I just piled blankets on his legs for the walk over.

We get there late and with a baby with no pants, so I explain to the daycare lady what happened, which she seems to understand. 

Grant picks up Noah at the end of the day. Noah still has NO PANTS! He is wearing exactly the same thing I dropped him off in. And the lady says, "Tell Mom (i.e. me) he need pants. It's not summer." What?! Seriously?! First of all, it's not like I am in the habit of dropping off my baby with no pants on. Clearly something different happened today, which I explained! Second, you have extra clothes. Change the poor kid's clothes if you think it is too cold. Jeez!

Tracking napping

We had a great weekend with Noah. He was super happy. I think a big part of this was that he took good long naps. Naps are key. We've been reading about sleep training to help Noah get better with sleeping. So far we've been following the plan by Elizabeth Pantley, who does a 'no-cry' sleep solution. I'd say it has been working with moderate success, the failure being that we haven't been super strict about following it. It's not that I'm against 'crying it out', and I think I'm prepared to do it, if and when it comes to that. But until he is eating something besides breast milk, I'm cutting the kid some slack in the sleep department. Anyway, Grant took the initiative to read this book about how to get your baby to nap better and he kept a nap diary to track Noah's sleeping habits from Friday through Sunday. Completely anal, but it helped so much! I guess Noah did have a sleeping pattern, but we just hadn't really been paying attention to it. Once we saw what the pattern was, it made putting him down so much easier! And look how adorably happy he is in the picture!

6 hours, I'm feeling good!

Yay Noah-Big-Boy-Five-Month-Old! He slept for 6 hours without eating. I actually heard him wake up twice, but he put himself back to sleep. I needed this. I've been hurting a bit for sleep lately, and I need to do some serious thinking at work, so a clear head is nice to have. I hope this is the start of a new trend and not a freakish blip on the Noah Sleep-o-Meter.

Noah's 5 month-iversary

Happy 5 months, Noah Silly-Face!

Daycare updates

The 9-month old baby at Noah's daycare left yesterday. So now it is Noah and the two toddlers. Grant said he saw the baby's parents saying good-bye to our daycare woman and she seemed really sad. I will say, it is clear to me that this lady really cares about the kids she watches, which makes me feel better about leaving Noah with her.

The baby left because they finally made it into the UCI daycare system. Noah is also on this waiting list. We have been on this waiting list since I was 8-weeks pregnant. That means we have been on the list for 1-year. I just went in the other day and there are still about 20 people ahead of Noah. Twenty people! Twenty people have to leave UCI before Noah can go there. And this doesn't include the fact that really poor people and people who already have children going to a UCI daycare facility get priority, i.e. get to skip over us. So, I'm guessing we'll finally reach the top of the list sometime next fall or winter...when we will likely (and hopefully) not be at UCI anymore. Fantastic! This situation infuriates me because UCI just redid the Infant/Toddler daycare center last year. If the waitlist is nearly 2-years long, why wouldn't they have accounted for this and hired more staff?! Arg! Daycare, again, the bane of my existance.

Movie, Mistake, and Time Change

Noah experienced his first baby-sitting session outside of daycare this weekend. Our awesome friends, Greg and Vivan (who braved cat allergies to watch Noah), took care of him so we could watch The Watchmen. Even before Noah was born, Grant had set this movie as the first baby-free date we would have.

Greg and Vivan said Noah was good, so I'm glad about that. He didn't sleep well by himself, per usual, thus it looks like they had to hold him to make him sleep (see evidence below). But they said they would baby-sit again, so I'm hoping that means the experience wasn't traumatic overall.
Even though I knew Noah was in good hands, I still held onto my cell phone the entire movie so I wouldn't miss it vibrating. I need to be eased out of my paranoia, give me some time.

Movie was good. Some lady brought her approximately 10 year old son and 5 year old daughter to it. They sat behind us. At one point Grant stood up and told the lady that he had read the comic and that it is super violent. That caused the lady to take her daughter out of the theater, but not her son. I'm not judging, because I feel I was allowed to watch quite violent/sexually suggestive stuff as a kid and have grown up not to be some weird deviant, but definitely I was more uncomfortable during the sex scenes knowing a 10 year old boy was behind me.

In other news, I made a mistake this weekend. I accidentally put a disposable diaper (a clean one, thankfully), into the washing machine. This makes a big mess, do not try at home. Grant spent quite a while cleaning up my mistake. Note-To-Self, try not to put diapers too close to the dirty clothes pile. Or better Note-To-Self, try to put dirty clothes into a hamper and not on floor in the first place.

Finally, Noah had to adjust to Spring Forward. He handled it pretty well. Luckily for us, he was super tired last night and went to bed at 5:30 pm (which would be like 4:30 pm pre-time change for him), so maybe this will help with the transition. We'll see over the next couple of days. This is yet another reason why I wish there weren't time changes, it's hard on children and adults alike.

Noah rolled over!

Yay! Noah rolled over from his back to his front today (on purpose)!