{at daycare last week}

Skipping School

This week my parents are in town and Avery doesn't have to go to daycare. This brings many conveniences for myself in particular, not to mention the quality time Avery will get to spend with her grandparents instead of other screaming babies.

These days Avery's breakfasts consist of mixed grain cereal mixed with pears. Lunches have either been sweet potatoes, yellow & zucchini squash, and the latest addition: green beans. In between those big meals she either has Good Start formula or breast milk. Since her food now is a variety of colors and textures, so are her poops. It's always a surprise.

She sits up completely unsupported on her own but does not crawl quite yet. She moves across the floor like she's crawling under a fence and gets pretty far doing so. Today is her 6 month birthday.

Aavery's Keyboard Skills

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Sharing

Avery has already begun to learn this very important life lesson. She has generously shared her cold with me and I am miserable. However, she does not share the humidifier with eucalyptus oil and hogs the entire thing in her room at night. It has helped with her congestion and with her sleep since she is able to breathe better.

At noon today I'm taking her to the doctor since she has had a rough cough for a week now and her head is pretty snotty at times.

Petit Nez

After talking to the doctor we got some Little Noses for Avery. She does not like having a snotty nose at all. It seems as if she is trying to rub her nose off of her face altogether and her cough sounds like hkkkruguskskuhhikfhhckhckskutogkc. She slept for quite a while last night, there was a good 6-hour stretch in there somewhere. A few random coughs were heard here and there, but nothing that woke her up until about 5am this morning.

She is going to visit her Grandma again this evening and next weekend will get to see her Grammy for a whole week for Thanksgiving.

We are having Thanksgiving at the hunting club this year. I am pretty excited to take Avery there since she has never been and since she loves being outdoors.

Today she is sporting a long-sleeved blue, brown, and white onesie with a brown corduroy overall/skirt thing and for breakfast she ate a ton of breastmilk and her own foot.

Chamomile

Last night Avery's cough was not any better so I gave her some hot (well, warm) chamomile tea with a splash of natural apple juice for flavor. I usually put honey in my chamomile tea because it's a little bitter, but honey isn't safe for little babies so I thought apple juice might be a good idea. She washed that little treat down with some breastmilk and slept from about 8:00 to 4:45 this morning. Not bad at all.

For dinner her daddy fed her some pears that I made for her. So far I have made her carrots, sweet potatoes, and pears. For carrots you just steam them until they are mushy, add water and put them in the magic bullet. It makes really good baby food. For sweet potatoes I boiled them in a little bit of water until they were mushy then blended them in the magic bullet. Fruit is really easy because you don't have to cook it first, just blend it as is. With the sweet potatoes you can use the water that you boiled them in to make them creamier, but with carrots you can't use the water that is left after steaming them because of the nitrate levels. Making baby food saves money; we bought a huge sweet potato for 89 cents and it will make 10 or 11 servings for her without having preservatives or other added ingredients. MMM.

metal? really?

Recalled: Mylicon Infant Gas Drops

Tue, Nov 11, 2008 (BabyCenter News) — Johnson & Johnson and Merck & Co have announced a recall of about 12,000 bottles of Mylicon infant anti-gas drops in cooperation with the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC).

The drops may contain metal fragments. The potential for serious injury is low, and any effects are expected to be temporary and resolved without medical treatment. No injuries have been reported.

The recall involves Infants' Mylicon Gas Relief Dye Free (simethicone-antigas) non-staining drops sold in one-ounce plastic bottles with the lot numbers SMF007 or SMF008. The recall does not affect any Original Infants' Mylicon Gas Relief products (1/2-ounce or 1-ounce size) or Infants' Mylicon Gas Relief Dye Free drops non-staining (1/2-ounce size).

The infant drops were distributed nationwide after October 5.

Eh Hem

Avery coughs. Avery wakes up. Avery eats. Avery talks herself to sleep. Avery coughs again and wakes up again and eats again.

She hasn't been running a fever, which is good, but her cough sounds pretty bad. I read that sage and thyme tea will help, along with other witch-doctor remedies involving herbs and essential oils. I gave her half of a dose of tylenol last night to hopefully tackle whatever is coming but her cough is worse today than yesterday. And I read that the sugar in cough syrups and baby medicines aren't good for them and can actually prolong their cold. I cannot remember the last time she slept through the night. This morning she got to swing for about 2 hours... 1 of which she slept, the other she spent talking to herself, grunting, and coughing.

Last night she got to hang out with Grandma and even got to take a bath and a nap over there. She was happy about that.

She has been really good in the car lately. She plays with toys most of the time and ends up falling asleep by the time we get to where we're going. When we're not listening to NPR we sing this Strip Club Moms song:

Fresh water is cypress trout and faded out jeans
lily pads and turtle submarines
large mouth bass and lots of grass
and a cold beer to steer.

Cormorants and anhingas
leopard gar and large mosquitos
lots of minnows that love dorritos
they'll even eat your spit.

Time flies like an arrow, but fruit flies like bananas.

I know we've only known each other for four weeks and three days, but to me it seems like nine weeks and five days. The first day seemed like a week. And the second day seemed like five days. And the third day seemed like a week again. And the fourth day seemed like eight days. But the fifth day, you went to see your mother and that seemed just like a day. But then you came back and later on the sixth day in the evening when we saw each other-- that started seeming like two days. So in the evening it seemed like two days spilling over into the next day and that started seeming like four days. So at the end of the sixth on into the seventh day that seemed like a total of five days. And the sixth day seemed like a week and a half.

Night Crawler

Here is a photo of Avery I took with my phone this morning when I dropped her off at daycare. Her eyebrows are hilarious. Her footie pajamas say "I <3 MOM" and "I <3 DAD" all over.

Avery woke up three times within 4 hours last night. The 4th time she woke up, at 4:00am, she was up for good. Breast milk production is on the rise lately and she eats a pretty hefty midnight snack so I'm not sure why she is waking so frequently other than just to move around. She gets so excited that she can get up on all fours but gets frustrated when, instead of moving herself forward, she is only able to scoot her forehead across the floor or mattress, eventually running into something and crying. Her favorite things is to practice this ritual in between 1 and 3am.

She has also become quite fond of her pacifier, which lately is used only in getting her to sleep or if she is uncontrollably fussy. Now if she finds a pacifier she examines all sides of it (to check for dust or dirt, she is very germ-conscious), tastes the back side (to make sure it's the right flavor), then turns it around and uses it correctly. Her father and I have been wondering when we should stop giving her a pacifier completely, as this type of behavior would not be acceptable, say, on her first day of middle school or in 16 years while on a date at the National Grits Festival in Warwick, Georgia.

This afternoon Avery will be spending some time at her Grandma's house so that Casey and I can get some big chores done. Hopefully Grandma will work some sleep-all-night magic.

Better Late Than Never

Even though Avery will be 6 months old in a couple weeks and has gone through one million changes already, I figured it'd give the grandparents something to do if I posted new things about Avery all of the time, so here it is.

She woke up I don't know how many times last night.. quite the change from a few months ago when she'd sleep for 10 hours straight. At 4:30am this morning she was awake for good. (I am tired.)

This morning she had a cough, and it reminded me of when her cousin Gracie would fake-cough for no reason. Avery coughed this morning, then made a face which I'm assuming means "Did I make that noise?" after which she coughed again on purpose and make a face as if to say "Yep. All me."

Today Avery is sporting a black onesie with tattoo-like artwork on the front with red swallows and blue ribbons that say "PETIT BEBE" with pink fleece pants and white socks. It was 31 degrees this morning.