Like Mother Like Son

Well, there are a few things Dane takes after me with, his big brown eyes, his smiling face, and his long body....aaaaaaaaand his ear infections :(

I took him into the docs today and his right ear is infected again...well, the doc said it might be the original infection from a few weeks ago that just never went away with one round of antibiotics. After this round of amoxicillin, I am to take him in to make sure the infection is gone. Poor Guy!

I got some answers as to his other symptoms:

Diarrhea: was from him not eating solids (due to teething) and his snotty runny nose (he was swallowing a ton of mucus)...she said it really wasn't diarrhea per se', just loose stool. (what's the difference????)

Cough/Congestion: He has a cold (duh)

Ear Pulling: His ear is infected (duh)

Not Eating Solids: Teething, he has lost 3/4lb :(....that doesn't seem like a lot, but it really is!

He actually ate today at Daycare!! He had carrots and pizza. This is the first time in about a week he has eaten solids!! I am really glad I stockpiled all that breast milk or I wouldn't know what I would have done....he HATES formula....so it all worked out really well!! And i still have about 120-150 ounces of breast milk in the freezer for next time....heehee!

I think all in all he is getting better, no fever and only really coughing at night. So hopefully once the amoxicillin kicks in he will be good to go!!

Downward facing dog....

That is Dane's favorite new position to put his body in to! He gets up on all fours, then sticks his hiney waaaaaay up in the air! He doesn't know what to do then and gets frustrated, but it's the cutest thing! (of course I don't have pics or videos of it yet....)

He has also been very sick all week (me too, I was diagnosed with Bronchitis (was told if I waited any longer it would have turned into pneumonia) and pinkeye in both eyes) plus he is STILL teething! Three teeth have popped through, so we are just waiting on one more.

He has had diarrhea for 4 days now, but according to the doctors office it isn't enough times a day for them to be concerned. He only has 2-3 poopy diapers, and they would want me to bring him in if there were 8 or more. Also if he wasn't producing tears when crying, or if his mouth is dry, or if he is not wetting his diapers.

They said to try and give him pedialyte - I've tried 4 different flavors, warm, cold, frozen, diluted, in a sippy cup, bottle, or big boy cup and he will not drink it! It's OK though, breast milk has plenty of electrolytes in it so I am not too worried.

What I am worried about is he wont eat any solids whatsoever and I can tell he is losing weight from only intaking breast milk for almost a week now. The doctors office said it is more than likely from teething and that only breastfeeding him is perfectly fine, but how long should this go on?

Am I overreacting????

His coughing is really bad too....so I think I am going to take him in to the doc whether they think it is necessary or not. I'd rather be safe than sorry at this point. If i have bronchitis I am sure he does too. Plus he keeps pulling at his ears again, so he might have another ear infection....POOR GUY!!

The Hartensickies

All three of us are sick! Sore throat, coughing, congestion, low grade temps, itchy watery eyes, and my new symptom is I woke up this morning with my eyes glued shut! gross! We haven't gotten out of our PJ's at all yet this weekend, and we just all kinda lay around coughing and sneezing....

Last night Mr. man woke up screaming his little head off at around 12:30. He was really really warm so I took his temp and it was 102 :o( I took his clothes off and rocked him to sleep - it took about an hour - poor guy. I put him back in his crib and he slept for about an hour, and then woke up screaming again. Our bedroom is much cooler in temp than the nursery so I brought him into bed with me and he slept from 2:30 till 7:30. I am so glad I did that because we both needed some sleep! Had I kept trying to put him in his crib he would have been crying all night and I would have spent the entire time awake....This morning his temp is back to normal, so the sequence of events broke his temp thank goodness!

Darren is feeling the best out of all three of us (or he is hiding his symptoms) and he is actually up and about today doing projects around the house (go darren!!). I have a ton of housework to do that will just have to wait!

Woodchuck!!

Our monkey has turned into a woodchuck!!

How much wood could a wood chuck chuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood? Ha!

Dane has learned to pull himself up in his crib - and as a result he can now chew on the crib itself! Those little tiny teeth of his sure do some damage! I need to make a run to Baby's R Us and get one of those crib protector things (they don't have them at Target...boo) but until then I have to make sure when he wakes up from his naps he isn't eating his crib!

We are still waiting on the three upper teeth to come in (there are 4 total, but one already popped through). The upper teeth are much harder on him than the bottom two were. Poor guy. If I give him Motrin and the Teething Tablets, he will sleep from about 7:00pm till 11:00pm...which is better than before. I will then give him another dose of Motrin and more Teething Tablets and he will make it till about 2:00 or 3:00 depending. I do let him cry it out when he is "sleep crying", but if he is hollering I go into get him....It must be so confusing and scary to have your mouth hurt so bad and you don't understand why :(

Dane LOVES his new classroom at daycare! There is so much more to do and play with and crawl to! He is getting really good at army crawling! He still rolls/falls to the side every once and a while, but for the most part he is crawling! I won't put it in the baby book yet as "official" because he still needs more practice on staying up on all fours, but he gets around and is mostly army crawling at this point. He is also furniture cruising! If I put him (standing) next to the sofa, he will walk along the sofa holding on! We also "walk" him around the house so he gets the hang of putting one foot in front of the other. He is really good at it!

I packed away even more of his clothes this weekend....he is now wearing 9-12 months shirts/onsies, 12-18 month pants, and size 4 diapers! He fits into the size 3 diapers still, but the weight limit goes to 22lbs, and he is 23lbs or so.

He is also enjoying being in the big boy car seat. I HATED it at first, but I am growing to like it. Before, when he was in the infant carrier/car seat - we would put him in the car seat inside the house and get him all bundled up so that when we went outside he was warm and cozy in his little cocoon of blankets...now the car seats are left in the car so we carry him to the car and bundle him up in there. It is bittersweet - my arms and shoulders feel so much better now that I am not carrying him in that thing, and Dane doesn't seem to mind at all....actually I think he likes it because now when we go to the store he gets to sit in the shopping cart like a big boy (those shopping cart covers are AWESOME by the way!) and he gets to look around when I carry him to and from the car. The only part of this transition I am not too fond of is now it takes about 3 minutes to buckle him up and bundle him up in the car seat....that's 3 extra minutes I am standing outside in the freezing cold. Oh well! Luckily it's been pretty warm lately (when I say warm, I mean like in the 20's - 30's - which is warm for MN this time of year)

Hopefully I will get some video's uploaded to our SmugMug site....I haven't quite figured out how to do it, and I.T. (Darren) has been really busy with work stuff....soon!! I promise!!

G.I.Joe and the Mouse Tail

My little monkey has learned to army crawl!

He's my little GI Joe! I will have to get it on video (among other things, I know I know!) He is just so close to actually crawling it's incredible! I can't keep up with him sometimes....I look away for a second and he is halfway across the room! We thought we had everything baby proofed, but boy were we wrong! He gets into EVERYTHING! I am also vacuuming every stinkin' day too...ugh...I think this summer we are going to shave Cora - haha!



Speaking of Cora, her surgery went well. She had two cysts removed and has a total of 10 stitches. She already popped two of them because she wont stop licking them, but we took her into the vet to have them re-stitched and they said she is healing so nicely that there isn't a need to re-stitch - yahoo! She is on 1250 milligrams of Cephalexin twice a day - that's a lot of antibiotics if you ask me! We did put a long sleeve t-shirt on her to see if that would deter her from licking the stitches, but she just rolls the sleeves up....smarty pants!



Dane is still going strong with eating table food - and in fact last night he had pepperoni/mushroom pizza! He of course loved it! He really liked the mushrooms - yay! Now I am not the only one in this house that will eat them! He even had BROCCOLI today!! I am so glad my little man loves his veggies!

He has also moved into the Infant B classroom - which is for mobile infants...waaahhhh! It's bittersweet - he isn't going to be in the itty bitty baby room anymore, but the Infant B room is just so great! Miss Lera will still be his teacher which I am so happy about! He is already learning sign language (apparently him waving his arms at his sides and making "spirit fingers" means he is finished...I just thought he was excited or something...oops!) and is eating like a big boy at the table (an itty bitty table naturally) and they are going to start being stern with a schedule for him - I think it goes like this (she went over it really fast with me today so I can't be too sure, but you get the idea):

• 8:00am breakfast
• 9:30 - 10:00am bottle/snack
• 10:30 - 11:30 nap
• 12:00 lunch

By creating this schedule for him (well, all kids in the Infant B class are on the same schedule, makes it easier for the teachers) it makes it easier for me on the weekends too - and easier on Dane. If I keep the same schedule he has during the week, Monday's wont be so bad for him. And if any of you know me well, you know I love schedules!!!!



Sleeping through the night is still a no go....He cut a tooth on the top, but still has three more just at the surface. I've been brushing his gums with his toothbrush (the dentist told me to do that because it helps the teeth come out quicker) so hopefully any day now the next three follow suit. I did give him Hylands Teething Tablets and they worked the first night - he slept almost 9 hours in a row! But for some reason they aren't working anymore (at least I think they aren't since he wakes up every two hours or so crying and wont go back to sleep no matter what I do...nursing him is the only thing that works, and honestly I've missed the cuddle time from when he was sleeping through the night, so I am happy to do it again!). I still give the teething tables to him, they are all natural and hey - it's better than nothing. He does get Motrin at night too, but I don't think that is helping either....these darn teeth just need to pop through already!

He has been napping since 1:30 today and it's 4:30 - so I guess he had a busy first day in Infant B!


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So, I was sitting here at my desk (at home) and I have a spider plant on my desk. One of the leaves started moving and I thought "I don't feel a breeze in here, where is it coming from?" I look all around to see where the breeze might have been coming from (open door or window) and didnt find anything so I just forgot about it. A couple of minutes later I see it again and this time, it's not the leaf I see - but a MOUSE TAIL!! ARGH!! About a week ago we noticed we had mice downstairs, so we've put out traps and plugged holes, etc....and we actually caught a few of them....well, one of the buggers must have made it upstairs (hopefully only one) and must have fallen off the dining room floor onto my desk (we have a split level house and my desk is level with the dining room floor) AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!! I haven't screamed like that in such a long time! I gave myself a headache! Luckily Darren was home, so we trapped the darn thing (took us about 30 minutes and a lot of screaming)....I wouldn't let Darren kill it (or at least tell me he killed it) so luckily today was trash day so he put it (alive) in the trash and now the mouse is in hog heaven eating all kinds of trash and whatnot. I am now going to spend my day disinfecting all of Dane's toys that are on the floor, and disinfecting the floors themselves....I've already bleached everything on my desk! Wah!!! Hopefully that was the last little bugger....I am so scared to walk into the kitchen anymore, and the dogs were USELESS!!! Cora and Chai just sat there...literally...and watch the mouse run all around while Darren and I tried to catch it...sheesh.

Itchy Itchy Scratchy Scratchy

I took my little man to the doctor today because he has been tugging at his right ear. That is the ear that had the infection the other week, so I thought maybe his infection either didn't go away, or it's back....Luckily there is NO infection! His ears are completely clear (the doctor let me look in them with the scope thing...pretty cool!) except for a minute amount of wax. When I saw the wax I started to get worried that it was taking over his whole entire inner ear, but she looked at me funny and said it was because i was looking at it through a scope - DUH!! Hee Hee

Anyway, the reason he is pulling (the doctor thinks) is because there is dry skin behind his ears. She said it was eczema, but I don't see anything at all. She said to put hydro cortisone on it, but I have some Eucerin here that I will try instead. If it doesn't work, then I will put on the hydro cortisone.

She also said his top four teeth are "bulging" and will pop through any day now - which could be causing him discomfort - yah think!??! Poor little guy! It was bad enough when his two bottom teeth were coming in, but four at a time on the top? I am surprised he isn't just a grumpy gus all day....the only time he is really grumpy is at bedtime, but that is just completely normal.

Today at daycare for lunch Dane had a soft shell chicken taco!! The ladies said he LOVED re fried beans, so I went to Target today to buy some and a big bottle of gas drops...hahah!

He is going to keep me guessing!

This little boy of mine, I tell yah! :o)

If you have been reading my blog you will now that for a while now Dane has wanted to be a BIG boy and only feed himself....i couldn't get a spoon anywhere near his mouth without him shutting his lips tight. I had a nice chat with the ladies at daycare too because they were having the same issue. They even tried putting food on the end of a nuk to see if they could trick him (I knew that wouldn't work, Dane hasn't sucked on a nuk for who knows how long...I don't even know where any are in my house and didn't even know they still had one of his at daycare for him). So I asked if they would be able to try giving him table food since that is what I have been doing at home (I really thought I already had this talk with them last week, but maybe that was in my head?).

Wouldn't you know it, yesterday at daycare he ate a roll with a piece of cheese, and allowed them to feed him a jar of banana/strawberry/granola jar food, plus he had 10 yogurt bites all in one sitting. A couple of hours later he had a 6 ounce bottle of breast milk and another roll with a piece of cheese. He didn't nap ALL DAY at daycare, so naturally when i picked him up he slept from 12:30 - 2:30pm. He wasn't grumpy at all from not napping...the ladies said that when babies are going through growth spurts they tend to not sleep as much and eat a whole lot....GREAT! I have all this 9 months clothes that is brand spankin' new that he isn't going to get to be able to wear too much longer!! Thank goodness cousin Jamie gave me a HUGE bag of her son's clothes that will fit Dane just at the right times! I don't think I need to buy Dane clothes now till summer! Woo Hoo!!

Anyway, come dinner time last night he was still so hungry even though I gave him some cheerios and a biter biscuit as a snack. (I cannot confirm or deny if Chai actually is the one that ate the biter biscuit though). For dinner I fed him 1/2 a chicken nugget, 2 jars of baby food (he would actually let ME feed HIM this time!) and 1/2 a nutrigrain bar (thanks for the suggestion Stephanie! he LOVES nutrigrain bars!!)

He ate so much that he was in a food coma during bath time. It was too cute. He kinda just sat in the tub and was like "ahhhhhh, this is the life!" With his chubby tummy rolls sticking out, the only thing he was missing was a beer in his hand!

I have to admit though, I really do miss the infant breast milk poops....all this food makes for some interesting (and smelly) diapers!! It is easier to clean up, but boy does it stink!!

*****
Dane got up on all fours again last night!! This time he took a "step" or two and then just kinda stopped and decided rolling to his destination was way easier. Soon!!

*****
Monkey has learned to "click" with his tongue and the roof of his mouth! It's so funny - I did video tape it with my phone, so it's not so good a video. I also held the phone sideways so the video is now sideways (oopsies). Either I am going to have I.T. (a.k.a. Darren) fix it, or I am just going to re-record him clicking using our real video camera. He does it all the time so I am sure to catch him on video....Funny!!

One day at a time....

If there is anything I learned since being a parent, it's that you have to take everything one day at a time!

My monkey just now for lunch ate 1/4 a kosher turkey hot dog, 10 cheese puffs, and a JAR OF BABY FOOD! I couldn't believe he went for it! He of course had to hold the spoon and "feed himself", but I guess he got tired of doing that and decided it was easier just to open his mouth. I am so happy!! He started off putting the hot dog pieces in his mouth with his hands, and then i put a piece on the spoon and he would guide the spoon in his mouth....since he was doing that i decided to try putting baby food on the spoon and viola!! (isn't it funny how just a couple of weeks ago I was so upset that it was time to start feeding him food other than breast milk, and not i get upset when he doesn't eat?!?!) Ha!

He is now in his pack and play having a conversation with his bowl of cheerios and sippy cup....it's quite comical!

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I know I've said this before, but i really do believe his is going to start crawling any day. Yesterday he got up on all fours and was rocking back and forth. I started going "GO DANE! YOU CAN DO IT!" and he kinda looked at me and toppled over...oops....I must have broken his concentration....ha! He still rolls everywhere and I will find him in the most peculiar of positions sometimes. The house is almost baby proof thank goodness!! When he sits he scoots his hiney forward and gets around that way too....whatever works I suppose!

****

We had a wonderful New Years! Some friends came over with their little boy and we played the wii and had a smorgasbord of food and drinks. Dane was a champ, he took a late nap from 5:00pm - 7:30pm, was up till about 9:00pm then stayed asleep till about 2:30am!! I was surprised I was able to stay awake till after midnight...I sure was paying for it the next day too (or it could have been all that wine and champagne I drank....ugh, champagne...that really kicks your butt!). Dane went back to sleep from 2:30am till about 6:00am....Luckily Darren was up and he let me sleep in while he watched Dane....He's such a great dad and husband!!

Vroom!! Vroom!!

Dane's Great Uncle Larry taught him how to drive a car....enjoy!!

I can DO IT MYSELF mom!!!

OK, so I thought I cracked the code on getting this child of mine to eat. I just don't understand, he was doing so well for such a long time eating baby food three times a day and then all of a sudden he decided to not eat! I thought that we were all good when Darren heated up his cereal and Dane ate it like a champ (The "Its Miller Time" post), but that was a one time thing I suppose.

Now, Dane will eat - only if he feeds himself!! If I put food on his plate, he will feed himself. But if I try and put the food in his mouth - he wont eat it! I guess this is a good sign!! We are going to start just giving him pieces of whatever we are eating. We went out and bought frozen peas, carrots, and other veggies that will get nice and soft when we boil them for him to eat. He also ate some banana and apples this morning. He still loves his puffs and biter biscuits - he feeds himself those of course.

I gave it one last shot this morning and tried to feed him some apple/chicken baby food - and he grabbed the spoon and fed himself! I put more food on the spoon and he did the same thing. It's pretty messy, so I am going to have to remember to take his clothes off before he eats, but sheesh!! What a big boy he has become!!

Other than fruits and veggies, pasta, and hot dogs (turkey, kosher - not the gross kind) does anyone have any other suggestions for finger foods for him? any thing to stay away from?