Every day when my husband comes home from work, he has to pick Matthew up, or else he cries and throws a fit because he wants his daddy. 

David comes in and wants to wash his hands, so he ends up doing it while holding a baby.  He washes one hand, then switches Matthew to the other side and washes his other hand.

Today I tried to get him to pass Matthew off to me just for a minute so he could do this sans baby.  He refused, telling me “No, he’ll cry.” 

Maybe. 

But I think the real reason is that David just wants to hold him…

These are the things I want to remember.

I still haven’t caught a particular expression on camera…the mixture of happiness and satisfaction on Matthew’s face when David first picks him up after one of his aforementioned crying fits.  It’s such a gleeful little “I got what I wanted” look.

Matthew had his 9 month well baby visit today.  He was 21 lb and 28.5 inches long, which is around the 60th percentile for each.  He was in the 75th percentile at his 6 month visit, but his Dr isn’t concerned so I am trying not to be.  Though I can’t help but feel like it’s because he doesn’t really eat solids.
She was pleased with the sitting up, crawling and pulling up on things.  I told her he just started pulling up the day before he turned 9 months and it was because she had said he was supposed to be doing that by 9 months, haha.  She said the next things to “work on” are waving bye bye and the pincer grasp. 
She also got to see his temper when he decided he didn’t want her listening with the stethoscope any longer.  He fussed and pushed it away. 
She did say she heard a heart murmur.  She has never heard one before and she said 95% of the time it’s “just a sound” so she will continue to follow up on that at each visit, but it’s probably nothing.
His ears looked great despite how he keeps pulling on them.  He rubs his nose and eyes a lot and she said that could be allergy related.  She is glad we’re going  to the allergist on Wed.  His eczema has been bad enough lately that I’ve been having to put hydrocortisone cream on it, which I hate to do too much.  Poor baby, when I pick him up, he rubs his arm against me because it itches.
I also showed her how when he is in a standing position (supported of course) he stands on his tip toes.  She checked his ankle flexibility and said that it was good, so that isn’t the problem.  She said to keep an eye on it and though they normally say bare feet are best for learning to walk, that shoes may help him learn to stand flat footed if he keeps staying on his toes.
She also said it looked like he is working on his top teeth now.  I couldn’t tell but I guess she could and I hope that is what’s going on because this afternoon he was crying and crying. 
He’s supposed to get his CBC done to check for anemia and we’ll do that when he has his allergy bloodwork done on Wed. 

All in all, a good visit.  More on little bitty boo later!

How?  How can this be?  9 months…that’s how long he grew inside of me and now it is how long he’s grown outside of me…

Soon, I will post more on what he’s up to these days.  But for now, my hubby’s grandparents recently gave me some pictures.  I had never seen these before until a couple of days ago.  How precious it is to have more photos of my baby when he was itsy bitsy.  They are making me totally nostalgic and it makes me want to cry because those newborn days?  They are OVER.  They will never be, ever again.  I will never feel his tiny body in my arms again, for it’s been replaced with  20 whopping pounds of baby who is only going to grow up and get bigger. 

Sigh.

I found this picture of me pregnant…I had forgotten just how big I really was.  Hate me if you will, but now 9 months later, my skinny jeans are falling off of me.  That darling boy (and the crazy diet thing) is sucking the life out of me. 

My itsy baby…

If I could save time in a bottle
The first thing that I’d like to do
Is to save every day
Till Eternity passes away
Just to spend them with you

If I could make days last forever
If words could make wishes come true
I’d save every day like a treasure and then,
Again, I would spend them with you

If I had a box just for wishes
And dreams that had never come true
The box would be empty
Except for the memory
Of how they were answered by you.

David reading to Matthew today from his Jesus storybook bible. 

I was so impressed that he just snuggled with his daddy and looked and listened.  No reaching out and grabbing the pages, which is what expected and the reason why I never read him anything that isn’t a board book.

Matthew had his GI appointment on Friday. I was nervous about it, because I didn’t know what they might want to do/suggest and also just taking your baby to a specialist/big medical center was just kinda scary.

The Dr was nice and he wasn’t super concerned about Matthew and said he is growing well, seems happy and his poo didn’t have any blood in it.   He said he wanted me to not eat dairy, soy or eggs since those were the top offenders. He said nuts, fish and wheat were also up there but he said I had to just do what I could in order to also maintain my own health. So I’m going to stay off nuts b/c I am pretty sure they cause problems, I will probably still eat fish b/c I don’t think that is an issue and I don’t eat it often anyway, and I will still eat wheat b/c it would be hard to cut that out. He said I could start giving solids and just introduce them like they recommend for all babies, one at a time and not give anything allergenic.

He also wants Matthew to see an allergist and get allergy tests so I’ll be making an appointment for that.

I was sooo relieved and impressed that he did not even bring up switching to formula! Didn’t even present it as an option!

A dietician came in to talk to me about my diet (and I have promptly lost the handout I got ) and she was going over the handout and saw on the list something about formula and was like “formula, well you aren’t doing this and breastmilk is the best thing for him” so I was very happy.

I also asked the doctor if eating the offending foods was going to hurt him or his intestines and he said no. So I hope I can figure it out but if for some reason I don’t, then at least I know I’m not hurting him. He just wants me to try to figure it out so we can get his eczema under control.

After talking with David about it, I’m going to trial drinking some soy milk over the next few days and see if Matthew gets any worse. I really didn’t want to, but after seeing that soy is in EVERYTHING (seriously) this way we can see if it is really a problem or not. And if it doesn’t seem to be I can just not stress about the small amounts of soy in everything and if it is then I will proceed to going nutso trying to find soy free alternatives.

I feel so grateful I get to keep breastfeeding my little boy. Now I just want to keep it up as long as I can (as long as he is interested) and I really want to go past a year. Though I have already started a mental list of things I’m going to eat when he weans…spicy cheese dip, a huge thing of ice cream, brownies… I hope he nurses for a long while yet but I definitely have something to look forward to when he stops.

Oh and I am also so grateful that we are looking at “just” allergies. It’s a pain and I hope he outgrows them for his sake, but there are so many worse things out there. We saw some really sick kids when we took Matthew in. I’m so grateful my baby is healthy.

I am sick and now Matthew has a runny nose.  He does NOT like it either.

David took care of him this morning for a bit while I slept in.  And while I was sleeping, it is reported that he was babbling ma ma ma ma.  Awwww, he wanted his mommy!

I look at him all the time now thinking, “When did he get so BIG?!”  Actually, I also think it a lot when I heft him onto my hip and tote him up the stairs. 

He can finally sit unassisted but he’d prefer not to.  He’d rather be on the floor because he is SEMI-MOBILE!   No, he isn’t crawling, but he rolls and turns and scoots and manages to get into things.  We’ve done only a minimum of baby proofing, so we are in for it.  He gets up on all 4’s and rocks and is getting close to crawling.  The other day I saw him hop forward with both of his knees at the same time!  Talent!  But somehow, less than effective considering he hasn’t figured out that he needs to move his arms as well as his knees if he wants to get anywhere. 

A short lived phase that drove my husband crazy:  sticking his tongue out and to the left.  I thought it was hilarious but mostly only because it bugged David.

He babbles up a storm.  I’ve heard:  da, ba, buh, dee, ma, mmm, ssss, puh, gee, goo, guh, and probably a few others.  “Da da” is getting pretty frequent (and even a “Da Dee” one day, but I don’t hear much “ma” going on.  Of course I don’t think he has much clue what he is saying but it is still adorable.

Okay, time to hit publish since I’ve had this sitting in my draft box for a few days.  The pictures are all from when he was 7 months old but hopefully soon I’ll find time to put up his pictures from Christmas!

I should probably first mention that we don’t get snow around these parts.  Very rarely and when we do, it’s a few flakes in the air and it doesn’t stick.

They predicted snow for last Friday and I was trying not to get my hopes up.   Matthew slept in a little later than normal that day and once I heard him up, I went to go get him and happened to glance out the window.  Snow!!!

The poor kid probably thought I was insane.   I burst into his room “Snow Matthew!  It’s your first snow!”  He gave me huge grins because hey, mommy is fun when she’s acting crazy!

We went outside in it and enjoyed it for a few minutes, but at this point it wasn’t sticking.  Went on with our day, time for a nap.  I laid down to take a nap as well.  When we both got up, I glanced out the window again.  Holy cow!  White snow on the ground!  Again with the crazy excited mommy.

I called my husband and he said everyone was going home at noon.  By the time he got home it was really piling on.

We took Matthew out again, took pictures and admired the neighbor’s snowman.  I set out to make a snowman of our own.

Matthew was fussy that day but he liked it each time we took him outside.

I’m thinking we probably got about an inch of snow.  It was a blast! 

Well here we are at almost 7.5 months.  I can’t believe how fast Matthew is learning new things.  His newest tricks are getting up on his hands and knees and rocking back and forth (crawling will be soon!) and he can now sit up by himself for a short time if he has a toy in front of him to help with balance.  He has figured out that he can roll across the floor to get where he wants to be.  He’s going through a phase? (I hope) where he wants attention all the time.  He’ll fuss and cry if you leave him to play by himself on the floor for too long, but he’ll play independently in his exersaucer (which he loves).  He makes this weird gremlin sound these days and is still keeping up the cute babbling.  He holds up his arms at times to let you know he wants to be picked up.  He gives me kisses all the time and I love it, love it, love it!  They are open mouthed and slobbery all over my cheek and I adore them.  I really need photos and video of it.

Will try and post more later (not enough time, isn’t that how it always goes) but for now Matthew would like to give a shout out to his friend Jack.

Things around here have been…stressful as of late, but getting better.  I don’t even really have the energy to re type it all out so I’m going to be lazy and copy and paste what’s been going on from a message board I posted on.

We’ve had problems with mucus in Matthew’s poops off and on since he was born. He has reflux, which he is taking Prevacid for that. I tried cutting out dairy for 2 weeks when he was a month or two old but I didn’t notice a difference so I stopped. We introduced some solids just before he turned 6 months old, rice cereal, oatmeal cereal and butternut squash. At the same time I started eating more nuts and chocolate (around Halloween) which I had previously eaten very little of. After two days of squash he got VERY gassy, waking up every hour or two at night and passing gas. I stopped the solids and cut the nuts and chocolate back out of my diet. After that the gas went away (mostly) but he had several days of green mucusy poops and then just more normal color but still lots of mucus. The pedi checked and there was microscopic blood in his poop. Around this time we also stopped his Prevacid and he started spitting up more but was not fussy about it so I thought it was okay. Then one evening he spit up dried blood, his pedi said he probably retched hard enough that he tore a small blood vessel in his esophagus and to put him back on Prevacid. We did and no more bloody spit up. I have tried probiotics (for me and him), I am block nursing, only one boob for 3-4 hours at a time so I don’t think foremilk/hindmilk imbalance is the problem.

The pedi feels it is something in my diet.  I am now off wheat (or any gluten), dairy and soy . I’m probably getting some trace amounts of soy but no major amounts.  His poops are still almost totally mucus.

This has come and gone ever since he was born though I am a little perplexed as to why it is more consistently there now than when I was consuming whatever I wanted to eat. He used to have at least some good seedy poops but now there is mucus in every poop.
I’m a little discouraged and feeling guilty about the fact that I really want to eat wheat and/or dairy by Thanksgiving, but I don’t know if that’s enough time to give the diet a chance. We’ll be at my in-laws and it’s going to be hard for me to be on such a strict diet.  The diet is really tough for me, I keep obsessing and googling things about food allergies. I am already underweight and have lost even more weight recently because it’s hard to eat enough. I am a fairly picky eater but I am trying to branch out and try to eat healthier.

 He gets fussy but I am pretty sure that it is due to teething and just in general wanting attention and not wanting to play by himself.  He has always gained weight just fine and was 18 lb, 13 oz at his 6 month visit.

Okay now for the next update.  I have put wheat back into my diet but I cut out something that seemed (after perusing my food diary in which I log everything I eat, what his poop is like, how bad his eczema is, if he woke up with gas, etc) to be causing a problem.  And the winner is…..CORN!  Yeah try getting all of THAT out of your diet.  High fructose corn syrup and corn starch are in everything.  I’m still off dairy and soy but I do still end up getting trace amount of soy.  It’s only been two days since I cut corn out but he has slept great the past couple nights, taken great naps the past two mornings AND as we speak he looks to be taking a great afternoon nap.  His poop yesterday wasn’t all mucus for the first time in awhile.  I don’t know if this is the magic bullet but wouldn’t it be awesome if it where?  I’m still going to wait awhile before I try to put dairy and/or soy back in my diet so Thanksgiving will be interesting.  Not sure yet if I will eat the cornbread dressing and test my theory.

I am just stoked that maybe this is going to get better.  This diet sucks but it could be worse and I really really really don’t want to have to give up breastfeeding for a multitude of reasons.  I just don’t want my milk to hurt my boy.

In other news I have a cold AGAIN.  Ugh.  This is the 3rd or 4th one since I’ve had Matthew and I used to only get about one a year.  Somehow having a baby has caused my immune system to go to crap.

I will post more of a fun update on Matthew’s new things he can do soon…he is 7 months old tomorrow!