Been a while

Sorry it's been so long. I've been kinda bummed and unmotivated for the last few weeks -- even Florida isn't enough to prevent shades of S.A.D., I guess. But I'm pulling out of it as the weather gets nicer.

Things have been bit bumpy with A. lately. She appeared to have a reaction to something -- rash, vomiting, loose stools, etc. We suspect a developing soy sensitivity -- she'd had a lot of soy-based foods just before that, and it's not uncommon for kids with a cow's milk sensitivity to develop one to soy or eggs or another food. So we took her off soy in preparation for a challenge that next week.

But before we got to that, it appears she had an exposure to dairy. We haven't been able to track down the source, but since we ate out a lot that week and there's no way to know what really happens back in the kitchen, that's not a surprise. This is the first time she's had a strong reaction since she's been so verbal, and it was so sad. After the first day or two of diarrhea, she started having what appeared to be stomach cramps. She'd grab her stomach, cry and wince, and say, "tummy sad!".

We're finally through that reaction, and we're looking to do a soy challenge next week. That'll tell us our next step.

We had what is hopefully the last of the freezes last night. Three of them this winter, which is just unheard of. They keep happening just as I'm planning to start the garden. But I think I'm going to have to just go for it now, or the plants aren't going to get into the ground soon enough. I've got some pumpkins and carrots sprouted and in pots, some potatoes sprouted and cut up, and packets of seeds for watermelons, onions, and peppers. The rosemary and thyme in my herb garden survived the freezes, but the basil took a hit. I'll probably have to pull them out and re-plant. The cilantro that I never actually got into the ground has rooted down through the pots into the soil, so that'll be an interesting adventure.

Here's the pumpkins:


And here's the carrots:

Endless conversation

A. is usually very quiet when we're out and about. She's a bit more talkative around people she knows. But when it's just the family -- especially just A. and I -- she talks endlessly.

I transcribed the last 5 minutes of her bath tonight. She usually just sits in the tub and babbles as I stand at the counter and read or web surf, helping as she requests. I had to leave out some of the repetition, but hopefully the flavor of it will come across. I stopped transcribing when she started demanding to come out of the tub.

Daddy hungry. Daddy hungry. (unintelligible) More. (She eats bubbles)

Foot foot foot. ? want. ? want.

Horn. Rhyme rhyme rhyme. Dance. (She sings the song we sing when brushing her teeth) da da dadada da da. Brush teeth. Out.

Trouble. Trouble. Done done done.
Hang hang hang (she attempts to hang the bath net).
Up top. Up top.
One. Here! Help. (Still trying to hang it)
Heh. Silly.
Done hang! Done hang! Done done done (hands me the net).

Turtle. Mommy turtle. (She has a mommy turtle bath toy and 2 baby turtles).
Age age age. Baby. Baby baby. Toddler! Baby toddler baby toddler. Age.
[A.] age? (I tell her she's 1)
Mommy turtle? Mommy turtle? (I tell her she's 30)
Baby turtle? [A.] turtle? [A.] turtle?
Mommy say? Mommy say?

Feet.
Friend friend friend friend friend.

Mommy thirty. Mommy say.

Bunnies? (Graham cracker bunnies she gets in the bath) Please? Bunny please? Bunny please? (I give her bees -- we're out of bunnies)
No more. No more. I do not!
Nummy! Nummy tummy. Nummy tummy. Nummy tummy.
More? Bees? More bees?
(I count out 6, tell her no more)
No more!

Soap. Soap. Soap eyes. (I ask if the soap gets in her eyes)
Yes!
Wash eyes. Wash eyes! Wash eyes! Wash eyes.

Kiss. Kiss. Kiss. (She kisses the mommy turtle)
Nose rub. Nose rub. (She rubs noses with the mommy turtle)

Crash Jr.

Poor A has had a rough time recently. The family got wiped out by a nasty cold that left A and I sick for over a week.

Then, just after recovering from that, she stepped on a piece of broken light bulb and had a "boo-boo foot". That didn't slow her down much, luckily.

The next day, during some overly-enthusiastic bouncing at Big Bounce Fun Zone, JJ bounced her feet out from under her and she fell badly. She tweaked her knee and spent two days barely walking. She's back to a barely-noticeable limp now.

Still, it's been a rough few weeks. I think we partially made up for it when JJ took her to the Magic Kingdom for a long day of rides (off-season and cold weather means short lines). I really hope things calm down for a bit now.

Trip north!

We packed up and headed north this week for a quick trip to visit family. We scheduled it between Thanksgiving and Christmas and right around JJ's birthday to take in as many holidays as possible.

We had lots of family to see, so it was quite a whirlwind. We did have time to fit in a trip to a local ski resort for A.'s first peek at snow. She could barely walk in her marshmallow-like suit of snow gear, and she didn't know what to make of sledding at first. But she warmed up to it quickly, and had a blast being pulled up the slope and riding back down with various family members.

We'd spend a few months preparing A. for the trip by writing a book about what would happen and who she'd meet, complete with photos. It seemed to pay off. Her previous visits with the family didn't go well -- lots of screaming and hanging on to us. But she recognized everyone and was very comfortable with them from the get-go. She ended up having a blast.

Two days of travel, two days with family, and we're back home barely knowing what hit us. It was a good trip, though. I think A. is looking forward to our next one.

Not crazy!

We've been dealing with A.'s cow's milk protein intolerance (CMPI) for over a year now. It's been a rough trip. We're very lucky that A. has an intolerance, not an allergy -- her immune system isn't involved, so we don't have the danger of an allergic reaction. But because it's an intolerance, there's no way to clinically test for it. Blood and skin tests won't show a reaction. All we have to go on is the recurrence of symptoms after a challenge.

It's all very vague, and that makes me second-guess a lot. Allergies are a lot more researched and understood, and I felt like I had to be very defensive and assertive to get A.'s issue recognized.

So imagine my relief when I discovered a trove of medical papers relating to CMPI (look, I even have an acronym now!). I'm not crazy! Among the validations I found: a small but noticeable percentage of infants suffer from CMPI (3%). Intolerance is separate from allergy. Food challenges are the "gold standard" for diagnosis. Milk proteins do pass through breast milk and affect the kid. Treatment is the avoidance of CMP for some number of months (they suggest 6) and then a re-challenge.

Guidelines for the diagnosis and management of cow’s milk protein allergy in infants

The diagnosis and management of cow milk protein intolerance in the primary care setting

Cow's Milk Proteins Cause Infantile Colic in Breast-Fed Infants: A Double-Blind Crossover Study

I'm so very glad to have found support in the medical community and not just in the mother-to-mother forums online. I'm a Western medicine sort of girl, and to see A.'s problems scientifically researched and studied is such a weight off. I feel relieved that the approach JJ and I have taken is the right one, and I'm newly energized to keep doing this as long as we need to for A.'s health.

Happy 18 months!

A year and a half. Wow. When A. was born, 12 months seemed ages away. 18 months seemed... impossible.

A.'s in the middle of an amazing developmental spurt. Her independence and language grow every day. She's such a big girl.

In honor of her birthday, I'm going to record A.'s current vocabulary. It's just over 70 words and growing in leaps. I left to go to a 30 minute long HOA meeting, and came back to find that she's working on "hippo" -- she's saying "hipp".

Mommy, Daddy, A., Baby, Nana, Pop-pop

Hi, bye, no, done, happy, nummy, side (nurse), boom, wow, uh-oh, help, beep, cool/cold

Up, down, in, out, play, pull, hop, pee, poop, pat, flap, eat, nap, spin

Eye, knee, hand, arm, toe

Pea, apple, pie, roll, meat

Pink, purple, brown, yellow, blue

Puppy, cat, doll, WALL-E, key, Halloween, boo-boo, bee, boo (ghost), ball, moon, broom, man, Pooh, pen, bow, hat, flag, balloon, bubble, Peep, plane, park, bobby (socks), pool, bump, top, pom-pom, home, tape, bat

Do-over

I know some people are having problems hearing the earlier A. recordings, so I've put them up on a different hosting site. Try these out!

Pie:


Apple:


Random words:

New words

Halloween:


WALL-E:

Language explosion

A. is having a language explosion -- picking up 2 or more words a day, and trying out new words that I suggest (although the ones that stick are the ones she picks on her own). Yesterday it was "Nana" and "Halloween" (seriously -- she skips a syllable, but it's clear what she's saying), today it was "play" and "Pooh".

The other day, her recent love of the word "pie" inspired me to make a (rather mediocre) apple pie. A. loved the pie, and said her first "app-ple" while eating it! While she was in the bath, I tried to record her saying some of her words. She got distracted by the bath toys fairly easily, but you can get an idea, at least.







In other news, I've started an herb garden around the patio that's outside of the kitchen. I have rosemary, thyme, and basil in the ground, cilantro waiting to go in, and room for one more (oregano or parsley). We'll see how they do -- I'm not the best gardener.

Also, I purchased a 10x10 space at our tiny town's sizeable craft fair on November 1st. I've been working every evening and some nap times on crafty toys, and I have 5 crayon rolls, 5 felt crowns, some number of bib clips, and most of 3 felt food picnics. I'll also be selling some balsa gliders and crayon-by-number. I don't expect to make much money, but it'll be neat to see what sells and have an excuse to hang out at the fair all day. :)

The biggest Dee ever!

We took the morning to run down to Animal Kingdom and finally take A. on the safari ride. We got there a tad later than we'd hoped, so we didn't see a ton of animals. But we did see elephants and giraffes, among others. A. had a little antsy moment when she didn't want to sit down any more, but she otherwise seemed to enjoy it a lot, asking for "more" when we got off the truck. The elephants were her favorite, getting lots of signs.

Mostly we wandered after that, but stumbled across a meet-and-greet with Pooh, Eeyore, and Tigger with a very short line. We decided to do A.'s first introduction to full-size characters, see how she'd handle it.

The queue is set up so that you can see other people meeting the characters first, and I think this is a great idea. A. got to see all three from a distance before the up-close. It did mean she got a little impatient as we got to the end, though.

She was really excited to see the characters. Up close, she was a bit shy, but pretty good. A. had been holding on to the wooden giraffe I made her the whole way through the park, and as an ice breaker Pooh took it and pretended to eat it. After that, A. gave her giraffe to each of the other characters as she met them.

We have a cute picture of A. giving Pooh a kiss on the nose. I'll try to get a version of that up soon.

And in memory of her first character meet-and-greet, we bought her an 18" Pooh bear. It's nearly as big as she is. :)

Playhouse

Every so often, my parents get a really big box at the warehouse. They're kind enough to save these and give them to us for use as playhouses for A. They last a few months -- long enough for another box to arrive.

We got a box about a month ago, but A. wasn't too into going inside things. So we left it out, tilted on its side, and she and the cats would explore it occasionally. Gradually she got more and more interested in going inside, so we decided to commit to cutting it up.

I added a door, window, cat door (to prevent the trapped-cat problem we've had in the past -- it took weeks for A. to get near Chaos again), and roof. She loved to play in it, but it was a bit blah.

I was struck by inspiration when we were coloring in the playroom. I told A. that she was free to color on the box, and she took to that immediately. It looked like so much fun, I got in on the action. We had such a blast, bath time got pushed back to 7:30.

Here's the box. There's a half-door she can swing and the flaps are stood up so that there's standing height inside.

The front door. A lucky horseshoe over the door, her house number (0504 -- her birthday), a doorbell, and a mail slot. A. decided the house number needed to be emphasized more.

The side has various flowers, scribbles, and a lizard stuck to the side of the house.

A view through the window. TedDee is over for a visit, and her favorite household item, a phone, is ready for use.

The back wall has her computer desk. Look, she's working on a Python script! Hello, world!

Looking in the front door at the window wall. A family picture, clock, and cat snoozing in the sun. Every time A. sees the cat, she signs "cat" then lays down and pretends to snore.

We had a really good time decorating this. I can't wait until this one wears out and we can take on another!

Absence

I haven't blogged in ages because we've just gone through a string of about 3 colds in a row. We finally seem to be out of it, none too soon.

I've continued to craft, as you may have seen on my Flickr stream. Felt softies, stenciled t-shirts, shopping bags made from old t-shirts, and felt food. If I go a few days without doing anything, I start to feel antsy and unproductive. This is my way of creating something, doing something with my hands. Of having something to show for the day.

I'm hoping to sell some of my creations around Christmas. There's a local festival on November 1st that I might buy a booth at, or I may try to sell through the mommy groups I'm associated with in the area.

I've got almost everything for 3 "Best Friends Picnics" filled with felt food and packaged in a small basket with picnic blanket. I might keep doing more of those, or maybe make a few "Farmer's Market Baskets" of felt food or even try some wooden toys or small dolls. I'm trying to keep things flexible so that I'm not pressuring myself and thus, feel like it's a burden. But to do enough to bring in a few extra dollars would be neat.

A. is doing well -- moving into the verbal stage quickly. She picks up a new word every few days, although her pronunciation is usually off for a few weeks. She isn't replacing her signs with words, but picking up new vocabulary and then combining signs and words. She turns 17 months tomorrow -- almost a year and a half! I can remember thinking that we'd never get here.

Videos

JJ set up his laptop with built-in camera, and set it to record as it displayed the image. A. really enjoyed seeing the baby in the computer, and we grabbed some rather random video.

The first video is A.'s first experience with the camera. There's a lot of "Daddy"s until JJ figures out that she wants to see him in frame, too. She also makes a quick call on his iPhone.

The second video is all three of us. A. makes a puzzling reference to a bunny, then heads off to look for a cat.

There's one more with some signs; I'll update this post once it uploads.

Totally silly

My crazy daughter is sitting in the back of the CR-V, cracking herself up by blowing into her hands to make fart sounds.

That girl is so much fun.

Presto!

Showed A. the short in front of WALL-E, "Presto", this morning. "Bunny" is one of her favorite signs (hold out two fingers like ears and bounce them up and down), so we figured we knew what would happen. Sure enough, she spent the entire short frantically signing "bunny", bouncing her little arm up and down as fast as it would go. That was nearly as funny as the short itself.

Settling

After a long string of events and visitors, life here is finally settling down into what I imagine will be "normal". JJ is working Saturday, Sunday, and Monday nights, so we have all of Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday as a family. We also get nearly all of Saturday (before he leaves for work) and Tuesday afternoon (after a morning nap). On Sunday, A. and I visit with my parents. On Monday, we swim. And on Tuesday morning, we go to the library story time.

As our pediatrician advised, we're teaching A. to swim. The preponderance of swimming pools and lakes down here makes that nearly a necessity. We've decided to forgo the survival swimming -- two intense weeks of having your child dropped into the water and being forceable taught to back float. Instead, we've gotten a membership to a local gym with a pool, and I've been taking A. in the water about 4 times a week.

We're taking it slowly, mostly letting her play around. She loves to be held so that she floats on her stomach, head out of the water, and we propel her around the pool. She likes being dipped, on her side, into the water so that her cheek gets wet. We've done a few submersions, and they go over so-so. Sometimes she comes up surprised but quickly grins, but this last trip she cried a bit after her second dunk. We'll back off a bit and go back to things just being fun. There's no real rush -- I'd rather take longer but have her enjoy it, rather than the horror stories of crying kids and parents that I've heard about the survival training.

The rainy season has started here, so we get thunderstorms every afternoon. Our home's location, in particular, seems to attract even more storms than is normal. My parents, who live only about 7 miles away, get hit by about half the storms that we do. We live a mile or two from a fairly large lake, so part of it is the storms that just pop up over the lake, swoop over us, and die. The rest... just seem to like Montverde.

I'm starting to settle into my role as a stay@home mom, as opposed to the long-term vacation this seemed to be up to this point. I'm trying to see the care of our home as my job, something to be done whether I really want to or not. JJ's wonderful about helping, and has no expectations other than that I care for A. He knows that's a full-time job in itself. But I have a picture in my head of the household I'd like my daughter to grow up in, and there's no one else to make that happen but me.

More animals

I forgot to mention in the last post that she knows fish ("shhhh"). And in the last day, she's learned bunny (bouncing her arm up and down) and giraffe (reaching one arm above her head). I love this!

Puppy spotter extraordinaire

A. can sign for a number of animals now -- puppy (panting), monkey (oo-oo), elephant (trumpeting), and frog (tongue flick). She can spot them like crazy, often causing us to stop and look around to find out what she's signing at. But her favorite, by far, is puppy.

For example... JJ, A., and I stopped by the National Training Center this afternoon to get memberships (this will give us access to the pool). We had to sit at a desk and fill out paperwork while a young woman entered information into a computer that sat on a perpendicular extension of the desk. A. sat in my lap, eating Ritz, pointing at the woman's water bottle, and signing "puppy" every minute or more. JJ and I glanced around the first few times, but there was no sign of a puppy. We told her "sorry, there's no puppy," and chalked it up to her thinking about seeing Gus that morning.

But she kept signing. I thought she had to be seeing SOMETHING for her to be alerting that much. There was a TV with ads cycling through in the direction she was looking -- JJ and I posited that one of them had a puppy. But then she signed when there was a drawing of a man getting a massage. We all laughed (by this time, the membership lady was into it, too), and figured A. was just making it up.

But then, as my eyes wandered to the computer monitor... I saw that stuck to the bottom frame was a small sticker of a white dog.

"YES, there IS a puppy! Very good!"

She looked terribly pleased with herself, and didn't sign puppy again.

Leaving on a jet plane

I'm in the Salt Lake City airport, on my way to California for the weekend. It's a daddy-daughter weekend back home.

This is by far the longest time I've been away from Atlee. It was so, so hard to leave. I never imagined it would be like that.

Toddle toddle toddle

It's taken a while, but we've finally got a real, toddling toddler over here. She always tries to walk before crawling (unless she's chasing us or something else requiring speed), and often gets to her destination by walking. She's still slow and unstable, but she gets there.

She's super-speedy when she can hang onto your hand, but -- and this is typical A. behavior -- she won't let you hold her hand. She'll hang onto a finger or wrist, but if you try to wrap your hand around hers, she'll shake her arm until you get off or just plop down on her butt and refuse to move.

But when you can convince her to hold your finger, she has a blast exploring previously off-limits areas. A. and I went by my parents' warehouse to meet my mom for lunch, and A. got to toddle through the rows of merchandise and stop to explore whatever she wanted (paint-by-number, plastic dollar coin storage tubes, balsa wood airplane models). That was fun -- and had the opportunity for lots of trouble-making. It's going to be crazy when she can really walk/run around in there.