Saturday, January 27, 2007

Week 30 - Easy to Bed, Early to Rise

We’ve started putting Elise down without nursing her. Specifically, we decided and Meredith has executed, putting Elise down without nursing her. It was pretty much a guarantee that Ellie would fall asleep nursing when Meredith fed her at 7:30-ish each night. However, many experts will tell you and we can confirm, that the way a child falls asleep is the way they are going to want to go back to sleep when they wake up in the middle of the night. Therefore, if you rock a child to sleep, they are going to need to be rocked back asleep at 2:00 AM. If you nurse them, you will have to nurse them back to sleep. So all the Dad’s out there – if you want to guarantee that you will not be the one getting up to take care of junior in the night, then have mom nurse her to sleep- ‘Cause even if she makes you get out of bed, eventually, she’ll have to come in an save the day!
(Note: Dads. A wise man once told me that our job is to keep Mom happy, so I advise against making her be the one to get up and feed the little one. In my experience, Moms like sleep and will reward you for your late night sacrifices.)

So how is it going you ask? Great, surprisingly. Meredith feeds Elise around 6:15 PM, then it's bath time and the whole nighttime ritual which includes the family reading of "Goodnight Moon" and saying goodnight to many things upstairs together. Now, instead of feeding her, we lay her in the crib, and whisper 'goodnight.' We started out singing, ”Goodnight Sweetheart”, but that seemed to make her cry… if you’ve ever heard us sing, you’d understand why. ;-) Anyway, once we stopped singing her to sleep, she went down really easily. We just put on the Ocean Wonders Aquarium and she slips gently into dreamland. The whole process takes 10 minutes tops - it's been wonderful how easy it is to get her to go to sleep with our new process! I wish we'd tried this earlier!

Now, Elise pretty much wakes up in the late 4:00 AM – early 5:00 AM area. This is very early, but it’s a whole lot better than 2:00 AM. Interestingly though, on Thursday night/morning, we woke to the sound of the Ocean Wonders Aquarium lullaby, not Elise – there were some noises, but she was more or less alternating between whining and cooing as she played with the aquarium. When it stopped, there was some silence and then it started again. Meredith and I could not go back to sleep due to a) the noise and b) the fact that over and over again, our genius daughter had figured out how to play and restart the music! Finally, the full on complaining kicked in and Elise was up for the day. We still have not figured out if she was doing this on purpose, or kicking her legs up and hitting it, or how. Further early morning playing will reveal her intentions I'm sure.

One note about the early rising, while it completely disagrees with our circadian rhythms, it’s really nice having a full morning with Elise. She’s usually in a good mood and we can take our time, playing with her, drinking our coffee and getting ready. We’ve really come to rely on it and it’s just a wonderful start to the day. Any chance to get more QT with the baby is a very, very good thing.

Lastly, this week should also be known as the week of the fruit. They say that you should start out by giving your baby vegetables because they are not as sweet, and she needs to develop a taste for them, before fruits come in and ruin the enjoyable bland party. Oh, my lord is that the truth! Last weekend we gave her bananas for the first time and let me tell you it was like she had never eaten before. She wanted more and more and fast wasn’t fast enough. I never thought there would be something she would want more than booby juice, but then came bananas. You couldn’t feed her fast enough. I think she would have been happiest sticking her head into a large vat of them and eating her way out. Then later in the week came applesauce. She’s cooled down a bit in her reactions, but she will happily eat enough applesauce or bananas until her tummy is full and she feels sick. Have you ever seen that scene from Monty Python’s History of the World – Part I where the obese man eats everything and then one last thin after- dinner wafer… yeah, it’s like that!

All in all, the Molloy’s are doing great – settling into a nice routine, which means of course that everything is about to change. Again.

Monday, January 22, 2007

Week 29 – On the Verge

When you have a child, you begin to see the world through the eyes of a parent, therefore appreciating your own parents and what you put them through over the years. (Thanks for the whole giving birth thing, mom!) You also begin to get an understanding of the way they must have felt when you reached certain milestones. It strikes you at the oddest of times. For example, lately I am starting to get a sense of what it must have felt like for my parents when I was about to get my learners permit. I am sure they were terrified that I was going to hurt myself or be hurt by someone else, but at the same time excited about the freedom, adventures and independence I was about to encounter. While Elise is obviously years off from driving, she is on the verge of being mobile…and I think that the same sort of feelings come into play.

She can’t quite crawl yet, but she’s almost there. She can get up on her hands and knees and rock back and forth but goes nowhere. She can also lie on her stomach and move her little legs a mile a minute like she’s swimming. But neither action actually gets her anywhere. She can, however, roll. And boy does that girl know how to roll! Why crawl when you can roll around like a maniac to get where you need to go. Sure, you may get dizzy but it’s so fun! You should try it. I wouldn’t be surprised if Ellie forgoes crawling and walking in favor of rolling. I can just see her now, rolling up on stage to get her high school diploma.

Milestones are just that – milestones. They let us know if we are progressing and how fast. The amazing thing about babies is that they pass milestones left and right… sitting up – check! Eating solids – check! Pooping solids – (grunt) check! Crawling – almost. One month in baby time can mean the difference between being mobile and sitting like a lump. (We love our lump just the way she is!)

In contrast, milestones for adults are so spread out. Granted we cover more ground than Ellie does but the theory is the same. And now that we are married, have a home, child, careers… what’s next? Where’s our next mile marker? Retirement?! Actually, I think we’ll just live vicariously through Ellie for a while. She’s going to be speeding through milestones so fast, it won’t even occur to us that she is our most important milestone yet.

Tuesday, January 16, 2007

Week 28 - Food Wars

Our little sweetie is one tough cookie. She bonks her head in process of rolling over and falling from sitting up, thrashes her feet and arms (when she's excited and happy as much as when she's mad!) banging them really hard on the floor, changing table or whatever...and is generally doing things that make us cringe daily and say "OW" (and she's not even mobile yet! yikes!) Yet these Ouch Moments don't really seem to bother her in the least. But while she may be a tough baby in some aspects, when it comes to digestion, our little girl is as sensitive as they come.

We were a little hesitant to start Ellie on solid foods because of all of the issues that she's had with breast milk and formula. For 22 weeks now I have been avoiding dairy, soy, and a variety of other things (broccoli, tomatoes, etc) that wreak general havoc on our child's gastro-intestinal system. When I eliminated these things back when she was only six weeks old, the doctor told us that 60% of babies outgrow milk and soy allergies and sensitivities by 6 months, while 98% outgrow them by a year.

As you may recall, back around Thanksgiving we gave Ellie her first taste of solid food (rice cereal). She loved it and ate it up like she had been waiting for that moment since birth. Well, two or three weeks later we tried something new: oatmeal. It was a completely different experience - not only did she hate it, but she literally gagged while we were trying to feed it to her (she REALLY hated it...or she is a total drama queen). This set into motion our on-going Food War. Realizing that she wasn't a fan of the oatmeal, we went back to rice cereal. Our smart, stubborn girl remembered the great oatmeal debacle all too clearly and promptly declared rice cereal inedible as well.

After several days of trying to get her back on the rice train, we decided to make things more interesting by mixing some squash in the rice cereal. Thus "squashy-rice," Ellie's favorite treat, was born. She began to eat well again, although not eating too much at one time. The following weeks we offered different vegetables with varying results: sweet potatoes (yum!), green beans (ew!), peas (ew!), carrots (double yum!). With all of ew's came the process of having to "reintroduce" eating to her again, as she was once again leary of being fed something disgusting.

So with all the excitement and variety in her diet, we thought it might be a good time for me to introduce something I have eliminated back into my diet. She seemed to be handling the solid foods pretty well (the ones that she will actually eat) and now that she's over 6 months, maybe she is one of the 60% to outgrow her allergies, right?! Can you see this disaster from a mile away? We honestly didn't!

The last time I had some soy, it resulted in gassy-chaos, but I did go completely overboard with the soy intake, practically eating every soy product imaginable in a ten minute sitting. So, last Saturday I ate a small soy yogurt in the morning and had some stir-fry (with a little soy sauce) at night and waited with fingers crossed. The results were pretty disastrous. She had horrible gas for 3-4 days - so bad that it was waking her up several times throughout the night (she'd wake up screaming bloody murder, pass gas and go back to sleep...eventually), was fairly fussy during the day and would launch into these screaming fits of pain. There is nothing worse than hearing your child scream in pain. Coincidentally we'd introduced carrots for the first time that weekend too, so we're actually unsure if the soy, the carrots, or the perfect storm combo of having the two things at the same time caused the gastro-intestinal wreck. I am not eager to try soy or carrots again anytime soon to figure it out.

I have a feeling that the Food War (her gastro-intestinal troubles and her sensitive pallate) is going to be an on-going battle. It's so hard to introduce new things or reintroduce things into my diet knowing that it could result in excruciating pain for our little baby. But we're taking it one day at a time and crossing our fingers that her little digestive system will mature enough to handle anything by the time she's a year old and that she's not in the 2% that will continue having these problems! In the meantime, I will remain dairy and soy free and we will keep slowly trying new foods hoping that each one will go in (and out) easily.

Sunday, January 07, 2007

Week 27 - Leading Lady

I suppose I knew the time would come, I just didn’t realize it would come so soon. My daughter LOVES being the center of attention. It’s true: she is a limelight junkie – and it’s only getting worse! Ellie loves it when all eyes are on her, and she makes sure you know it. She is never happier, more talkative or more animated than when your face is in her face, giving her your 100% undivided attention.

She can play independently just fine, but while she is playing, you’d better be watching her! She can sit in her Baby Einstein exersaucer/jumper for hours playing with all of the attached toys. But the second you try to leave her to her fun to prepare dinner, go to the bathroom, write checks, read something, etc… she starts to cry. While she is playing, she inevitably takes short breaks to make sure that you are intently watching her every move. Head is down for a second? CRY! It’s not just when she’s playing that she wants your attention. It’s constant! The best part is, if you want to make Elise start smiling immediately, all you have to do is applaud her and say, ‘yay, Baby!’ It’s the cutest thing.

While she is nursing, if I try to do anything other than stare at her (eat, read, talk) she will stop eating and stare up at me until I give her my undivided attention once again. Sometimes if I am talking while she’s nursing, she actually reaches up and grabs my lips! She doesn’t like it when other people are drawing my attention away either – if Marty starts talking to me while she’s nursing, so stops and cranes her neck around and stares at him as if to say “Shut Up! She is busy paying attention to me!” Actually the stare down of Daddy is hilarious. She is so stern.

Maybe this is why daycare is so good for her. We took Elise back to daycare after the eternity of seven days without daycare. This is seven days of constant, in fact, overwhelming attention heaped on Princess Ellie. She was not pleased to say the least. Wednesday, Marty and I walk in the door and there she is, crying her eyes out because God forbid the daycare staff is paying attention to another little baby at that moment. Needless to say, she had a bad day. No sleep, eating sporadically and generally wreaking havoc at the school. The next day, Ellie was a bit better and when we arrived she was being carried by one of the workers after having just thrown a mild fit. By Friday, Ellie had completely given up and was docile and resigned the whole day. Slept well, ate well – it was as if to say, okay, I get it, there are others in this world who also need attention. As of the writing of this blog, Elise seems to have adjusted back to center of attention status fine and we will repeat the cycle at daycare again – we just hope I gets a little milder.


While we're at it, a couple of notes on daycare; the Director of the daycare told us on Friday that in the 17 years she has been doing this, she has never in her memory known a child who did not stop moving as much as Ellie. Perhaps that is why she is so skinny – she just burns calories non-stop. Also, another worker there was joking that Ellie out eats every other child at the daycare and that only a porterhouse steak could satisfy her. The steak part was the joke, she does eat more than all the other kids there. Please take a moment to feel sorry for my milk producers.