Oops and OMG. I have had this written for like 2-1/2 months now and it’s been sitting patiently in my drafts folder, waiting for me to notice it and post it!!
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Joel and Valerie’s son, Alec Ian, was born on February 24. He’s adorable! He weighed 8 pounds 2 ounces at birth, which was a complete shock to everyone, especially tiny petite Valerie. I think they were expecting a baby in the 6 pound range! We visited them a couple of weeks ago. It’s amazing how tiny they are when they’re that young! It seemed like Jamie was never that small. Of course he was, for a week or so. Alec was very quiet and sweet, and now he is the proud owner of Jamie’s old side-to-side swing. I’m so excited for him to get a little older and be able to play with Jamie.
We have struggled throughout the month to get Jamie to eat more than a few bites at a time. He’s mostly seemed uninterested in food. Until now! The last five days or so (knock on wood) his appetite has picked up. Not so much at breakfast, but better at lunch and by dinnertime he seems really hungry. He’s eating turkey, hot dogs, beans, peas, corn, carrots, applesauce, strawberries, banana, fruit rollups. And of course, his crunchy corn and rice snacks. I’m super pleased that he’s accepting food off of a spoon or fork again. For a few weeks he refused being spoon-fed, which pretty much eliminated veggie or fruit purees from his diet.
He still wakes up twice a night wanting a bottle, and he still gets pediatric soy drink at those times. We have switched his daytime formula from Nutramigen to a soy-based toddler formula. During the day, he’s drinking from a sippy cup almost 100% of the time instead of a bottle, and he’s quickly learning to handle a regular cup without spilling.
Tonight I may try cooking rice or corn/quinoa pasta and see if he’ll eat it.
Overall, he seems to be feeling a lot better, but definitely not 100%. He’s had some bad nights this past month where he wakes 5-6 times per night, crying. Certainly not every night, but enough to make us think that there’s still something going on with his digestive system. His allergist wants to put him on medication. We want to talk to his gastroenterologist before we go that route.
We got Jamie a professional haircut in late February. He had a lot of longer hair up on top, and curly flyaways on the sides. Baby haircuts aren’t particularly cheap, so I closely watched the stylist’s moves so I can try to do it myself next time. Jamie was extremely cooperative, and looks very cute with trimmed hair.
Sickness has been tearing through our house in rounds. I caught a cold in late February, which I passed on to Jamie. He then managed to catch another cold that turned into croup in mid-March. Doc developed a bad cough at the same time (adult croup?), and then as soon as they both seemed better, I got a sore throat and stuffy head. A few days later, Doc got a sore throat and stuffy head. At the moment, we all seem relatively healthy, but clearly we are a family that shares germs amongst ourselves freely!
In early March we drove to Wichita for a few days. Doc’s great-aunt Patty had died after years of illness, and we wanted to see the family and attend the funeral. Jamie was, of course, too fidgety to sit through the service so he and I played outside the funeral home for the duration. At the reception afterwards, he had a good time chasing the ducks around the pond. It was great to see the aunts and uncles, some of the cousins, and of course Grandma Kerry. And later we went with Grandma Kerry to the Sedgwick County Zoo, where Jamie got to pet some sheep and goats at the petting zoo. Those goats were damned aggressive; if they saw you putting change in the goat-food dispenser, they immediately had you surrounded, loudly bleating and pawing at you with their dirty little cloven hooves. In the big cat area, one of the lions was relaxing right up against the plexiglass wall, and he had eyes only for Jamie. Check out the video below. It was kind of unnerving.
It turns out that Jamie likes brooms. It’s tough to sweep the kitchen or the deck because he’s right there, wanting to “help.” Doc got him his own child-sized broom and dustpan, as well as a small toilet plunger (another fascination, LOL). He’ll pick up the deck broom and the outdoor broom and carry them around forever. It’s cute! And he also likes to take rags or paper towels and pretend to wipe surfaces. We think he might be practicing for a future career in the janitorial arts.
In mid-March, we had a weekend where it was 72 degrees on both Friday and Monday, but on Saturday and Sunday we had six inches of snow on the ground. Just when I think that Texas weather can’t surprise me anymore, it does. We’ve had more snow this winter than we have had in, well, ever.
Jamie can now point to many of his body parts when asked, including one we did not specifically teach him. Can you guess which one? Hint: It starts with a W and ends with an IENER. In addition to that one very important part, he knows his eyes, ears, nose, tongue, teeth, mouth, belly, toes, hands, and feet. We’re trying to teach him knees and bottom. And the proper words for everything (no “wee wee” or “bobo”).
And his vocabulary is expanding. In addition to “mama”, “daddy”, “ham”, and ”hi”, he now can say “up”, “yeah”, “diaper”, and (new this morning!) “nine.” He still doesn’t really use the words in context of his own accord, but we can ask him to say them and he will.
