Visitors

Alice is getting ready for Uncle James, Uncle Charles, and Grandpa Rice’s (hopefully) visit this weekend! She’s busy helping Mommy clean and this afternoon we’re going to make Uncle Mike jealous and bake some of GG’s peach custard pies for James’s birthday. It should be a fun weekend!

Walkers and Talkers

I’m pretty convinced that most babies are either one or the other, and I have several girlfriends who agree with me. Alice is definitely a talker, but her cousins Kaylee and James are both walkers. Yes babies develop at different rates (Alice LOVES to reach milestones like rolling JUST after we have a doctors check-up and we get the “I’m a little concerned” look from our GP), but I’m pretty convinced that kids are either one or the other.

All I Want For Xmas

Well Mommy was right, Alice is cutting teeth! This morning I found two little white teeth just below the surface. In a few days they should both be little sharp nubs. Hooray! More things to hurt Mommy with! Her eating and mood have already improved (I haven’t seen my little piggy in weeks!) so I’m pretty happy about that.





May 08, 2010.
I can't believe this image was stolen from me, AND is on the front page of google images if you search for "angry baby".

Sorry Kid…

But you’re destined to be a geek* -- it’s ingrained in your DNA.

Alice’s current most prized possessions are as follows:

--An obsolete computer keyboard
--A cheesy engraved computer mouse Matt got as a gift
--Daddy’s laptop

All but the latter can be found in her toy box.

*Not that there's anything wrong with that. :D

You Catch More Flys With Honey Than With Vinegar

A non Alice related post, but I just couldn’t resist.

This old adage is definitely not true, unfortunately I know from experience. Due to all the fruit we keep in the house we’ve recently had some fruit fly issues. After trying a few things we found on the web to no avail, I decided to put out some bowls of cider vinegar mixed with a bit of dish soap. It worked! There are still a few, but most of them are gone now. So apparently that old adage was just a ploy to make me act nice. :)

Happy 10 Months, Alice!

Not long now and we’ll be celebrating her birthday! Gah…I don’t know where time goes. Yeah, I know I say that every month, but it’s true!

So What’s Alice Been Up To?

Chasing cats. Ok so she’s done this for a while but now instead of steamrolling across the house, she crawls at lightening speed. She’s getting it down pretty well and I think she may just end up being one of those babies who just army crawl and not on their hands and knees. That’s fine with me, but she does look awfully silly flopping around the house!

Being defiant. Man does this kid have a temper! God help the person who tells her NO for they may just lose a toe – or their hearing. Especially when she starts dropping food from her high chair on purpose. We’ll tell her no-no and she throws a HUGE fit, then proceeds to do it again. She only stops when you remove her from the situation. Like I said before, at least she comes by it honestly. :)

Her favorite games: the dropping game (doesn’t every kid at some point?!), peek-a-boo (she’s just stared doing it herself), and of course chase the kitty!

She’s regressing. ;) Alice has said numerous things (and known what they mean) since about five months old, but recently everything is “DA DA”. I swear she knows that all I want to hear is “MA MA” again and she’s just messing with my head. The only other thing she seems to call by its proper name (other than when she really does mean “DA DA” for daddy) is the “KI KA” or kitty cat. Oh I take that back, she is saying “HI” now too, as in “HI DADDY”. What are you doing to me kid!! Matt just smiles and tells me that now I know how HE felt all those months.

Keeping Mommy and Daddy on their toes. Whether it’s tugging on telephone cords or shutting off the computer when Mommy is trying to update the family on all things Alice she’s getting into everything.

Teething. I’m pretty sure the reason she hasn’t slept well in nearly three weeks is that her two front teeth are coming in. Her gums are SO swollen and she hasn’t been eating well at all. Hopefully they’ll break through soon!

Stacking blocks. The set she got from Great Aunt Mary in December of last year have become one of her new favorite toys. It’s one of the only things that will keep her entertained for longer than a minute.

Attempting to pull up. The key word is attempting. :)

She's a big girl. At 10 months she's already wearing size 4 diapers and she's in to 12 month clothing. I'm again dealing with trying to find clothes that fit her because she's so long. If it fits her length wise it's huge on her width wise. Needless to say I've been putting her in a lot of unsnapped onesies tucked into pants or dresses.

Keep an eye on your mailboxes! I just finished her b-day invites and I should be receiving them in the mail shortly and I’ll be sending them out soon after that.

For Crying Out Loud

Alice has always been a very good sleeper, but lately we've been letting her cry herself to sleep at night. We've always done this to some degree, but now we literally won't go in there unless her cry sounds like a "I'm hurt" cry. Sometimes it will take her no more than 10 minutes to get to sleep, and other nights it takes over an hour - unfortunately she can't seem to find a happy medium. She has been sick for the past few weeks, and she's definitely cutting her top two front teeth (her gums are SUPER swollen and her fingers have a permanent home in her mouth) so I'm going to chalk it up to that. All I know for sure is that I'm sleeping better and her middle of the night crying fits seemed to have stopped (or maybe I'm just ignoring them?). Whatever works, right?

Oh, I'll have to see if I can get a picture of this, now that Alice can get to a seated position on her own she always sits up to cry. Well since we started letting her cry herself to sleep I've caught her sleeping half sitting up, half laying down many times. It's almost like she eventually gets so tired that she doesn't have the energy to lay down the right way, instead she just folds herself over. It's too stinkin cute, albeit very uncomfortable looking.

Not a pic of Alice sleeping, but it will have to do.
And yes I know she's mismatched today.
That was my homage to those of you who are colorblind. :)

Keeping My Cool

I called the doctor's office today only to get the rudest, most B***** woman I've ever had to deal with at that office. Thankfully I knew that this wasn't a battle worth fighting so I didn't say anything. Wouldn't want anything going down on my permanent record. ;) So I got some names and phone #s of dermatologists in the area that my GP's office recommends. I got wind of some awesome salve that one of my girlfriends uses so I placed an order for that. We'll try that as a last ditch effort before making her a derm appointment. I'm crossing my fingers that it works, but I'm not going to hold my breath.

Ugh...

What does Alice think of doctors?
EDIT, she thinks this of RUDE, B***** nurses too.

Well for starters the cream Alice was put on is the same stuff she was on originally (it didn't do anything) so I was kind of pissed off about that. We decided to try it anyway just in case this time it would help - surprise, it didn't. In fact it just made her worse so today was her last day on it. I'm going to call the doc on Monday to get some dermatologist phone numbers. Ugh...

Well, She Certainly Has My Temper

At least she comes by it honestly.

Alice definitely understands no now. If she's getting ready to go after something that I've told her time and time again not to do (like the phone wires) she'll look at me to see if I'm watching and then go after it. If I turn to her and say "ALICE!" she starts crawling faster and faster to beat me to the object. :)

BUT the terrible thing is if she's close enough to you when you tell her no she'll yell and then try and BITE you!!! Ugh...I just don't know what to do about this one. I don't even know where she would have got that from.

Innocent looking, isn't she? Looks can certainly be deceiving.

Rash Update

Well we're now entering month 4 with this beast of a rash. The only good thing I can say is I THINK using washcloths and water instead of wipes is helping to some degree. It's been looking so-so instead of terrible for a few weeks with only one or two days of a milder flareup. Mind you the rash is still there and what looks "so-so" you might actually think looks horrendous.

So we took alice to the doc today and I insisted on cultures. My doc proceeded to tell me that with the way her bum looks today they wouldn't find much with a culture. I was going to insist on one anyway b/c it couldn't hurt, when he told me that if this next cream he just Rxed (it's an antifungal + steroid) that he's going to refer her to a dermatologist. Once I knew that there would be an end to the madness of "well that didn't work, try this" I was ok with not doing a culture.

So the plan is to use this new stuff for 2 weeks and if no improvement we'll see a dermatologist. I don't know what else to do, we've tried everything.

Alice hasn't been doing a lot of this lately.
Good thing she has an appointment to see the doc tomorrow.

What's worse than having a sick baby?

Having a sick baby, feeling like crap yourself, and having to clean up baby puke instead of going to bed - and that was just Sunday night. Cut to this morning when she woke with what had to be one of the worst runny noses I've ever seen. She was happy for the most part, but she definitely wasn't herself. Twice she practically passed out on me while I was holding her, and this kid hasn't fallen asleep on me since she was just a few months old.

Flash forward to this afternoon when my SIL, whom we spent the entire weekend with, calls to tell me that she just got back from the hospital and she's been diagnosed with bronchitis and pneumonia. Fun. I hope and pray that Alice is just teething.

Despite the camera difficulties, and her illness, I got a few good pics of Alice today.

Gee, do you think I need a new camera??

We'll see what Matt says when he gets home from work. :)

Alice is crawling...

Well it's more like inching at the moment.



This was taken on Saturday and surprisingly she's already gotten a lot faster. Today she also got herself to the sitting position for the first time and she's starting to pull up on things. It truly has been a week of milestones and it's not even over yet!

BTW, that is Daddy snorting, not Mommy. :)

What are you feeding that child?!

Alice's current favorite food: Dirt, Portobello Mushrooms.

Bad Mommy

I've started letting Alice play for a 1/2 hour - 45 minutes in the morning when she wakes up. She loves to just talk and play with the toys in her crib so I figured I'd just let her do that and use that time to get up and shower and make her breakfast. So today was going great, she sounded all happy and chipper on the monitor as usual so there was no reason to go check on her - so I thought. After about a half hour I go in to change her diaper and all appears well. She was happy and smiling and then I caught a glimpse of something stuck to the roof of her mouth! It was orangish yellow so my first instinct was that it was food from last night (long story short, she had some 3rd foods that were EXTRA thick - so thick in fact that it got stuck to the roof of her mouth and she gagged on it and refused to eat much).

I ran for the phone to call Matt, bawling my eyes out, deathly afraid to fish this thing out of her mouth for fear that she'd choke on it. Matt talks me off the ledge and calms me down enough so that I can fish it out. Well it wasn't food - it was PAPER! I unfolded this wad of slimy yellow paper and on it reads Woman's Exchange - Memphis Tennessee. One of the toys in the crib is a Raggedy Ann doll I got from GG when I was a kid and apparently there was still a little tag on it SAFETY PINNED under her clothing.

I'm grateful she didn't choke on it - and I'm even more grateful she didn't get the safety pin.

I feel like such a bad mom today.

On the plus side, letting her play by herself seems to be curing Alice's separation anxiety, knock on wood. I can now fold laundry two feet away from her without so much as a peep out of her. I guess this means more housework for me. ;)