Our sweet baby turned eleven months old in November. During this month she experienced the first snow of the season, her first Halloween and her first Thanksgiving. There's more about those in my last post.
Around November 10th she started having discharge coming from her right eye. I took her to the pediatrician, who said she would call in a prescription. I asked something like, "So it isn't pinkeye?" And she said it was. (Kind of weird but similar to what she did in February, when the bronchiolitis diagnosis was on paper but she didn't say it out loud.) The white of her eye wasn't pink; the only problem was the discharge and it was only one eye. When we were almost back to our pharmacy I decided to pull over and call a friend of mine. She has four and a half kids and is into natural stuff like herbs and I was curious about what she would say. Sure enough, they had had pinkeye before. She actually had a homeopathic treatment (tiny things that dissolve on the tongue) in her purse still and drove it right to my home, saving me the pharmacy copay. I gave C one dissolvable thing three times a day, I think, and I used a dropper to put some of my breast milk in her eye because that's supposed to help, too. She was probably all better within three days.
Some of the things C likes at this age:
- being outside and look at everything there is to see, including snow
- taking her sock off (or both of them) and holding it and looking proud of herself
- sucking her thumb and sometimes touching her hair with the other hand
- sitting up in the crib when she wakes up
- scooting her bum/legs to get around
- watching and especially getting playtime with her sisters -- First Girl makes her laugh so hard sometimes!
The foods I introduced C to in her 11th month were millet, kiwi, black beans, rolled oats, ground almonds, asparagus, and cherries.
I said in the 9th month and 10th month posts that her growth had slowed down. Well, when we were at First Girl's 6-year well check on November 28th I put Third Girl on the scale and saw that she weighed over 16 pounds. That means she gained over half a pound in a month. Yay!
She has at least two naps a day. Unfortunately for Mom and Dad, some time probably after she turned nine months old, she began waking up during the night some nights, which means she ends up in our bed for a few hours and we don't sleep as well. I don't know what it is -- why she wakes up. She's not pulling herself all the way up to standing yet, so she isn't waking up and doing that and then feeling stuck, ya know? It's really not too bad, though. She falls asleep once she has me.
The photos we took during her 11th month and on the monthday are {HERE}. Enjoy!
:: General Conference ::
Often my husband has not been able to watch it with me because drill weekend often happens the same weekend. It was wonderful that this October's LDS general conference he didn't have drill. During at least one session the girls quietly colored. These and other photos we took this fall are {HERE}.
:: Halloween activities ::
On September 27 my friend Laura L. and I had fun taking our kids to see the witches. I put my baby in a pumpkin and took pictures.
A couple of weeks later I helped the PTA do vision screening, which overlapped with the parent craft activity, but I was able to do both. I painted two little wooden pumpkins, cut and glued on the scrapbook paper, then finished assembling the parts at home.
I also made a wreath for Halloween. I like that it's unique. It's not any of the styles I saw on Pinterest. I tied orange, black, green, and purple fabric scraps around a $1 D.I. wreath and hung it on our front door with clear jewelry elastic (and a piece of packaging tape on the inside of the door). After I had taken it down I accidentally came across the other part I had wanted, so I and added it: silver chipboard letters to spell "BOO." I hot glued these on and decorated the borders of each letter with a black permanent marker.
The most important part of Halloween is the costumes! Like my friend Anne, this year I didn't get the natural light photo I wanted of all of us in our Halloween costumes. I don't know if I ever have; maybe next year. It was just the kids who dressed up this year. They were the three little kittens who lost their mittens. The tails were the challenging part to make; I only made one. I thought that soon after Halloween I'd make two more tails, get the better white clothes (which my husband had moved and I couldn't find them) on the kids, and take a picture outside. Now that it's been so long and there's snow on the ground and I keep forgetting-slash-having-other-things-I-need-to-do, I probably won't.
I thought of the three little kittens idea maybe a couple of months earlier and procrastinated getting the kids' costumes started. I ran out of time to make a costume for me. I was going to be a mama cat, with the mates to their mittens on a string around my neck or something
L is adorable. She always sings the song wrong: "Three little kittens, they lost their mittens and began to cwy and couldn't able to find them."
The kids and I went to our ward party the Friday before Halloween, and it included a trunk-or-treat. On Halloween day Shbogoo gave her class fruit leathers (instead of candy). We watched her school parade at the end of the school day. I let my girls play on the playground before we walked home, and then we headed over to the little party at our leasing office. All five of us spent some time at my mom's; my younger sister and her family came, too. The baby girls are always cute together. I really liked my niece and nephew's costumes. We didn't have our kids go trick-or-treating at all because we had accidentally left the kitten ears at home. For some reason it took us a while to realize this. My mom asked, "So what are their costumes?" It was fine that they didn't trick-or-treat. They had had plenty of candy and even cupcakes at the church, school, and leasing office.
:: Thanksgiving ::
We attended Thanksgiving meals with all of our parents this year. Actually, my husband was going to be able to come to half of them, but since he got sick he missed them all! Both he and the baby were sick Thanksgiving day, so I nursed her before going to Thanksgiving #2 (are you confused yet?), left her home with him, and nursed her right before and right after Thanksgiving #3. The first one (Wednesday night) and the fourth one (Friday at 4:00) he had to work and I of course took all three girls with me. Right now I only have photos of my mom's house and my dad and stepmom's house. The dinner on Wednesday night was the huge one, at my mother-in-law's roommate's parents' house. This was about 60 people, since they've been married a long time and have a lot of posterity. They're so nice to invite us. All four get-togethers were fantastic.
:: Other ::
Shboogoo turned six and had a nature birthday party. She loves dinosaurs so I made sure to have a drawing of a brachiosaurus be part of the decorations. Probably our favorite part was the "cake": banana bread with a rainbow of top make of pieces of fruit, served with a little vanilla ice cream. Not a lot of friends came, and it was simple, but she kept hugging me and thanking me for making it such a fun party. I took a lot of pictures.
Among other things I don't have pictures of but that happened this October-November: two people I knew on my dad's side of the family (and one person whom I hadn't met) died of sad causes. I didn't know them real well, but I had known my cousin's husband Pete my whole life and I first met the other person -- their grandchildren's mom -- ten years ago. It was good to be able to see relatives at Pete's funeral, and to hear that he, a quiet man, had been living the gospel. That day I felt more grateful for my knowledge of Heavenly Father's plan of happiness for all of his children.
I'm going to try to play catch up on my blog this week . . .
Our baby turned ten months old in October. Click {HERE} for some of the photos from her 10th month. We love the professional ones that my in-laws paid for! The photographer took plenty of their whole family plus some of only our little family, and the photo shoot was just a little bit before C's 10th monthday.
I mentioned that her hemoglobin was low. At the follow-up appointment at ten months old it had improved to 9, which was good. She also had the flu shot booster on that day. We were surprised that she had lost a few ounces in the previous month instead of gaining weight. But I was not worried. She eats and pees and poops. Her sisters were the same way: probably above 20th percentile for height and weight when they were two months old and for a while after that, and then they went below their own growth curve. They are now around 5th percentile for weight (which C has been) and slightly higher for height. If you know me, you know that I am small. Growing up I was almost always the shortest kid in the class, and normal weight for my height. Anyway, the pediatrician (who I started taking our kids to six years ago) told me to start adding some butter to C's food, which I am absolutely not going to do. Nobody needs butter.
Animal fats are composed of saturated fats, which are the most dangerous types of fat. Consumption of saturated fats raises cholesterol levels and elevates the risk of heart disease and cancer. [from THIS blog post by Dr. Fuhrman's daughter]
I did increase the amount of good fat, to make sure she has a good amount of ground nuts and/or avocado each day.
Her new foods during this month were whole wheat cereal (oops: I read later in my Disease-Proof Your Child book that wheat is on the list of foods that Dr. Fuhrman recommends waiting until at least the first birthday to introduce), ground walnuts, red potato, mango, tomato, and bok choy.
Have I talked about how she moves herself around in a circle? She does it a lot; I have it on video. She sits with her legs in front of her. scoots one to the right and then the other to the right, and rotates usually all the way around -- or just enough to be able to see her sisters or whatever. Later, the day after Thanksgiving, my dad asked if she always goes clockwise. I realized that it is always that direction. :)
It's fun when she claps or gives me five. She touches my face and gently plays with or pulls on my hair while breastfeeding. I love that she wants me to pull her up to stand, with her facing me and her hands holding my thumbs. When I put her in font of something the right height and make her hold onto it, she stands there for a long time and even lets go with one hand for a second if she wants a toy. She gets basically in crawling or push-up position but stretches out her hand for an object instead of crawling.
She's pretty attached to me, but is fine with just Daddy or her grandparents. Our neighbor Paula babysat all our kids and C cried almost the whole time even though she had been around her without me before! I think she was tired that evening, too, though.
