10 Months Old

I can't believe we have a 10-month old daughter already. And what a little personality. Alli is 'super explorer' with her crawling skills. She goes from room to room (usually following daddy or mommy or Baggy) and explores whatever she sees. She continually runs circles around her "exersaucer" table when we work in the office, and she sings and dances with mommy all the time.

Our happy girl is a real joy.

Here are a few pictures Kim snapped last weekend. This is her table playstation that she now pulls up and kneels next to. If you look closely, you can see her little bottom teeth in the first pic.

A Mobile Infant

Kim and I were kinda dreading the time when Alli went mobile. I mean, we have gotten pretty used to being able to plop her down with her toys and continue doing whatever we needed to do around the house not having to worry about her.

But now here she is, mobile as can be. And WE LOVE IT! If it were ever possible, she's even MORE fun being mobile!! When we work on the computer, we put her in her "exersaucer", but hers is different in that the table is stationary and there is a seat that spins around the outside of the table. She has gotten really good at "running" in that seat - round and round. Now Kim and I have fun "chasing" her and she giggles like crazy.

Alli is a big help putting laundry away too. You give her a basket full of clean clothes and she will empty it for you! On the floor of course, so you have to be pretty quick putting the stuff away, but what a big help! ;)

We're having fun seeing what she explores and where she decides to crawl. It's amazing to watch as her world expands before her eyes. She's able to pull up to a kneeling position at her table play station (but not to standing yet). The toys are almost a thing of the past as she would rather explore than play with the toys right now.

She's active, vocal, mobile... Yes, we like this new version of our baby just as well as the last version! :)

Ma-ma-ma-ma-ma

Alli is continuing to explore with her new-found freedom of crawling. Bagheera, not so happy about it! But the giggles that come out of Alli when she spots the dog and starts going for the attack are just priceless! And yes, we had to get some outlet plugs for a couple of the outlets she seems to like a lot.

Alli's babbles have possibly turned into association, although it could be just my wishing it to be so. There are times when I pick Alli up and she says "mama". I say, "yes, mama". Not sure if she really associates me with "mama", but she seems to say it most often when being held by me or when looking at me. I also find it fun that when Bagheera comes into a room and I say "hello Bagheera" that she'll turn around and say "ba-ba". Sometimes going on her "Bagheera attacks" she will giggle and say "ba-ba".

No "da-da" yet. Kim's bummed, but she doesn't even babble that sound yet. He still gets the bright-eyed giggles though when he enters a room or when she hears his voice. I'm sure we'll be seeing an association with a babbling sound soon.

Switch!

Alli is doing so much better today. I went to work, after dropping her off at Marcie's around 9am. Marcie said that the morning she really didn't feel well, you could tell, but by the afternoon she was our typical Alli - full of energy and smiles.

But here's the funny thing about Alli today. This morning after her morning nursing I put her on a blanket in the great room with her toys. Usually she plays with them while dad and I finish getting ready. Yesterday morning she just sat and stared, all lethargic. This morning, I could hear her giggle as I walked away and I thought "yes, she's feeling better". When I turned around though, there was no Alli on the blanket. Instead she had gotten onto her hands and knees and started following me! This is a big change - she was crawling, but never more than a few "steps" at a time. Now she was going across the great room floor!

Tonight at dinner I gave her some water in a sippy cup. She hasn't taken to the sippy cup yet, she prefers to drink out of a normal cup (like mom and dad do). But we keep trying the sippy cup periodically because she's going to have to get there someday. Tonight I gave her the sippy cup and she took it and started sucking down the water like she had been doing it for months! Wow, that was interesting!!

After dinner, Alli and I went into her room to play with some toys. Suddenly, with her "hey, I can crawl across the room" skill, she zoomed in on the nightlight. She crawled directly over to it and started reaching for it. I told her "no" very sternly. She giggled and put her hand down. Oh boy. She reached again. I said "no" again very sternly. Again, giggle and the hand went down. This kept occurring so I decided maybe I should give her a little swat on the hand. Yep - giggle. Oh boy. So this is going to be interesting over the next bit if "no" is a game that results in laughter. We'll keep working on it. I'm blaming Baggy for her thinking it's a game! :)

Over The Hump

Yesterday I stayed home from work to take care of Alli. The poor thing had had an awful night. She didn't sleep more than about an hour at a time, and just wanted to be held the whole time. Needless to say, mom here had a difficult night as well trying to accommodate. When we finally were up in the morning, I sat her down in the living room with her toys like we do every morning. Instead of grabbing at things, playing, exploring, etc., she just sat there and stared into space. Wow. Not my typical little girl. She didn't cry, she just sat. She also wound up with diarrhea, so I was nursing her often to make sure she had plenty of liquids. She wasn't eating her solid food either.

Being that we were now on day #4 after the ER, I decided to make an appointment with the pediatrician. We went in at 3:00 in the afternoon and the Physicians Assistant said that she probably still has croup, but the steroids are doing their job by keeping the swelling down. All the infection was in the upper throat area, not the lungs, which is a typical thing with croup. She did notice that one of Alli's ears was red, so she prescribed some antibiotics to prevent ear infection.

When we got back from the visit, Alli turned into herself again. She started playing more and talking, crawling around, etc. It was good to see signs of our little girl.

She's still pretty congested and still requires a lot of holding to get her to sleep, but we are seeing the light at the end of the tunnel.

Now I just have to make sure all the coughing that I'm doing is merely allergies, and not the croup virus caught from Alli!

Croup Update #2

Alli had a good day today. She's having problems sleeping (naps as well as night), so I've taken the Boppy and propped her up in her crib to help with the drainage as she sleeps. I did it last night after the 3rd time getting up with her. I put her to bed that way tonight, so we'll see.

She's still spitting up quite a bit and has lots of drainage running out her nose. Some of that I think may be from teething. Hydration looked pretty good today, although appetite is down a little (probably because she's having a hard time breathing through her nose). I used the aspirator tonight before bed to get some extra mucus out. Hopefully it will help.

She did do a new trick today... She wasn't happy about going down for a nap, so she cried for a while. I came in after about 5-10 minutes and saw a face staring at me with hands hanging on the side of the crib. No, she didn't pull up, but she did get to a sitting position and was hanging on waiting to see if we would come in. It just made me realize that it won't be long before she *is* pulling herself up and we'll have to lower the crib mattress. My gosh do they grow fast!!

Croup Update

Alli is doing pretty well. And why shouldn't she - she got an epinephrine enhaler treatment last night because she was having difficulty breathing, and also a steroid shot to help keep the airways from swelling too badly. The thing I'm most worried about now is the fact that she keeps puking and is becoming a little dehydrated. (Last night the first steroid was a liquid, but that came up in about 2 minutes - all over mommy.) I will be nursing her often today, although so far she hasn't been eating as much and small amounts are still coming up. Her poop this morning indicated some dehydration. I will be counting diaper changes today to see how the hydration is looking.

Apparently the virus runs its course in 5 days, so the bulk of the problems should be over the weekend. Looking forward to getting "happy Alli" back. Right now she's just uncomfortable...

Alli in the ER with Croup

Alli's First Trip Via Airplane

This weekend we met a bunch of friends in Park City, Utah for a wonderful 3 days of skiing/snowboarding. Alli did great on the plane - I had heard from a friend to nurse her during take-off and landing so that her ears would pop while she fed. I did and she had no problem. On the way there, she fell asleep - right before we landed! So we got off the plane with Kim carrying *everything* and me carrying our dead-weight child. :) Lucky for me she's only 16 lbs. :) Then things really started to get interested...

We picked up our bags. 2 out of 3 anyway. The car seat didn't arrive. How the ??? Anyway, they gave us a loaner car seat and said maybe it would arrive with the next flight from Phoenix. (BTW, my ski boots were in with the carseat - doh!) So then we went to get our 4WD SUV that we reserved. Yay, that didn't work so well. See we arranged flights to maximize the car-rental. We had a friend from Florida (Wink) and two of his daughters (Grace and Ella), and a friend from South Carolina (Butcher) all ready to fit into our car. That's 7 of us - one in a car seat. So that took a while to straighten out, and we finally got a..... minivan. :( We were stylin'!!!

Well, so be it. Then we drove to the wonderful house where the rest of the crew finally gathered. All together for the weekend we had 17 adults and 12 kids. Whew! Alli was the youngest and Grace (from Florida) was the oldest at 8.

So here's what we found out as first-time travelers with kids. a) Don't forget the nightlights - especially if you are sleeping in the same room as your child! (We had to go run out and get some.) b) Your child's sleep cycle will probably be a bit weird. Yes, Alli would wake up and cry and not go back to sleep. This happened *every* night we were there. Funny thing though, as we would be up trying to calm Alli, we heard crying from other rooms with small kids as well. So most adults didn't get much sleep - and it wasn't from excessive partying like it used to be with the kidless ski trips! Other than that, I think we did well.

BTW, our sleepless nights? To try to prevent Alli from waking the whole house, we wound up nursing her to calm her down and then sleep in our bed with us. It was sorta fun, but we're a little worried about what kind of a week we're going to have now that we're home. She's *not* coming to bed with us here, and I'm not nursing her 3 times during the night!!!

Snow was not a fun thing for her. I guess it's because she can't really play in it yet. Her exposure to it was me dressing her all warm and taking her outside, then putting her bare hand in a snow bank. She just cried. Hmmmm... not the response I was looking for, but I guess that makes sense cause it was really cold!!! :) Maybe next year when she can play more...

And one more fun thing... Alli did crawl! :) She doesn't go very far crawling, about 2-3 leg pushes before she gets down on her belly to try to army crawl/reach, but she's moving - forward! It's been very exciting to watch. In fact even the single guys in the house were excited for her!

And one more first from this trip. Kim and I had our first night out together since Alli was born. Avis (our wonderful trip planner) had arranged babysitters so we could have an adult-only dinner out. This was the first time Kim and I had a sitter for the night. So we toasted - with 15 of our friends. :)

9 Month Checkup

Yesterday was Alli's 9 month checkup. She's doing well. So here are her stats:

Eyes: Yep, still blue.
Weight: 16.7 lbs (15th percentile)
Height: 27 inches (31st percentile)
Head Circumference: 17 inches (27th percentile)

She's lost her momentum in the weight gain area, and dropped slightly on the height. But boy has her head taken off! ;) We think part of the slowing of the weight gain is her recent mobility. We're sure it takes a lot more energy to roll and scoot all over the place, which means we'll be adding solids for breakfast (after our ski trip next weekend).

So here are some sweet Valentine's Day (and 9 month) pictures of Alli. No, we didn't put her here - she rolled and scooted to get in the hallway.