recovering!

I ended up calling Rose's pediatrician yet again on Thursday (I had called Monday and Wednesday as well) and finally they took me seriously and scheduled Rose to come in. Well, it turns out that the fever (104!), vomitting, diarrhea, body aches (we presume), lethargy, and poor sleep wasn't due to "just a cold," as they originally tried to tell me. (Go figure.) It turns out that Little Miss had both influenza and an ear infection!! Poor Rose! No wonder she was so sick and so miserable. We started antiobiotics for the ear infection on Thursday (along with some probiotics to counteract the antiobiotics), and she is feeling so much better already. Whew!

Today (Saturday) Mike had to go in to school since he had stayed home with Rose on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday, so she and I took advantage of the last of the warm-ish weather. (Highs of -8, anyone? That's what our forecast is looking like for the next few days.) We walked to the library and got to play with the fun puzzles and watched the big kids play with the toy kitchen. Then we walked over to Byerly's to get more distilled water for her humidifier. By that time we were both starving, so we picked up sushi for lunch - Rose's first sushi! (Don't worry, mommy police, we just had a california roll so there was no raw fish involved!)

So loved it! Well, mostly she loved the sushi's "innards" (crab, avocado, cucumber) dipped in soy sauce, sucking the flavor off the gari (pickled ginger), and all the little old ladies who stopped by to marvel at her adventurous eating. :) She was the star of the Byerly's cafe!

In other news, I taught Rose how to use the bite valve on my camelbak water bottle. She took to it almost immediately, and now seems to prefer it over her sippy cup. But perhaps I should have thought that decision through a bit more before acting on it, because I now realize it is almost completely incompatible with breastfeeding now that she has six huge teeth! (Ouch!) D'oh! At least she's now learning what "no" means.

Enjoy the rest of your weekend!

Still sick :(

Apparently we jumped the gun on Rose returning to school today, because she got sent home only a couple hours later. Poor girl! Get well soon, Rose!

38 weeks!

Work has been super busy again, so sorry for the delay in posting. Here she is on Sunday, before she got super sick on Monday. Isn't she a cutie?!

She's still not crawling forward, but she is super mobile at scooting herself in circles and getting up on her hands and knees to reach (mostly) whatever she wants!

This next photo cracks me up. Rose isn't deliberately pointing (yet!), but this picture sure makes it look like she's showing off her tea pot!

Maybe next week I'll get a picture of her waving "bye bye," which makes my heart melt it's so cute!!!



In case anyone is curious, this has been Rose's daily routine (give or take, and when she's not sick):

5:15am - Steph wakes up and pumps (ah, Bertha, your days are numbered!!)
6:30am - wake up, morning fresh bottle
7:30am - Mike drops Rose off at school
8am - breakfast
9:30am - second fresh bottle, 30 minute nap (roughly, because the timing of her school naps is so variable!)
11:30am - lunch
1pm - frozen milk bottle, 30 minute nap
3pm - snack
4pm - Steph picks Rose up
4:30pm - nursing, another 30-minute nap
5:30pm - dinner
6pm - "family fun time" (usually we just hang out on the bed and read a book, let Rose play with her egg and cup, and practice standing/sitting or other gross motor skills)
6:30pm - bath time
7pm - nursing, lights out
7:30pm - Mike watches TV, Steph reads, and we go to sleep by 10am at the latest


I can't believe Rose will be 9 months old next week! Time to start planning a birthday party...

Have a great week, everyone!

sickness strikes again

Have you ever seen a sadder girl? Fever of 103.2, endless crying, projectile vomitting,  sick girl eyes...it breaks my heart! Get well soon, Rose!  (and let's hope mommy and daddy can stay well this time!)

bad habit: broken!

I haven't had time to look through Rose's 38-week "portraits" yet - I hope to get to that later this week. But in the meantime I thought I'd tide you over with this shot from dinner last night. Over the past several months, we had gotten into the really bad habit of giving Rose "treats" (Mum Mums, saltines, graham crackers, Puffs, or cheerios) if she didn't like whatever we were serving for dinner. It started off innocently enough back when she wasn't physiologically able to eat what we ate, but recently we started to notice that she would simply thumb her nose at our food and then cry until we gave her a "treat" instead.  Clearly she had quickly  pegged us as dinnertime pushovers.  But we firmly believe that we don't want her eating nutritionally vacuous meals (aka "kid food") while we eat the nutrient-dense "grownup food" we've been trying to incorporate more into our diets. And, on a really practical level, we also didn't want to set the stage for preparing multiple meals for dinner for the foreseeable future.

So, I'm proud to say that after about two weeks of slowly weaning all of us off of this terrible habit, last night Rose simply ate what we served! Yay, Rose! Three cheers for the brown rice with raisins, chickpeas and green peas that Mike made! (And thanks to Trula Anne for the great cook book!) Tonight she wasn't so keen on my veggie quinoa bake (this recipe modified with some additional baked squash and red bell peppers, plus some extra cheese), but c'est la vie - maybe she'll like the leftovers tomorrow, and I'm just proud that we can simply serve one yummy family meal each night from now on.

Have a great week, everyone!

37 weeks!

Rose is just getting cuter and cuter every day! She also keeps us on our toes - the thing she loves most one day is something she wants nothing to do with the next. For example, last night she was madly in love with the yummy lentil soup Mike made for dinner. She smacked her lips after every bite! (It was so cute that I even pulled out the video function on my phone which, if you know me, is really saying something!)

Then tonight she refused to have anything to do with the lentil soup! Ah, Rose and her opinions. :)

But other than her lability regarding food preferences, she pretty consistently enjoys:
* standing
* "petting" the cats (aka ripping their fur out if they're silly enough to get within arm's reach of Little Miss)
* tapping objects together
* being a "milk monster" (this hasn't changed since day 1!)
* chewing on mommy's shoulder while standing
* pulling up to kneel by daddy's legs
* being in her stroller, especially for naps
* smiling at stranger in the mall, at Target, etc.
* splashing in the bathtub (she now knows this word and will splash on command!!!!)

We've also learned that she HATES loud noises (such as the bag of recycling being poured into the bin, or the sound of the vacuum). She also doesn't like when new people force themselves on her too quickly - she may like making smiley faces at you, but if you get too close too soon she will let out a howl!

This weekend Rose got to meet more great grandparents. They gave her plenty of time to warm up and she had a great time! (She also liked that Trula Anne shared her tater tots at lunch - Rose consistently loves tots!)

Rose is not so interested in crawling any more. Any time she tries, her knees lose traction on our slippery wood floors and she ends up further away from whatever she was trying to reach. Frustrating! So now she's decided to devote herself full time to learning how to stand. So far she has gotten proficient at pulling herself to kneeling.

Unfortunately, if she plops on her bottom from kneeling she gets really scared - so she either needs to be "rescued" after plopping or "rescued" from being stuck while kneeling.  You can tell she's so ready to be fully mobile, but she just hasn't quite figured it out yet. So along those lines we preemptively installed the baby gate that my parents gave us for Christmas. It's only a matter of time before we'll have to actually use it!

With that, I'll leave you with her "official" 37-week portrait. (I stayed up too late watching football on Saturday and watching Downton Abbey on Sunday, so this mama needs some rest!)  Hope you all have a great week!

P.S. I forgot to mention - Rose finally got her 6th tooth in this week! :)

Happy Saturday!