Thursday, April 28, 2011

Maya's 7th month

During her 7th month (late January to mid February), Maya got to try a lot of new foods. She had a variety of new baby foods. We gave her oatmeal, juice, and puffies for the first time. Also, she finally switched completely to formula (after we finished our last bag of frozen breast milk).

After her weight had kind of plateaued during the last few weeks, she started growing again (though at a slower rate than her first 5 months), and ended up at 15.75 lbs at the end of month 7. Between 5 and 7 months, she fell from the 50th percentile in weight down to the 25th percentile. Her height stayed about the same at 27", putting her closer to average height (vs early on, when she was up around the 95th percentile). However measuring height is tricky for a baby, and we may have under-measured this month, or over-measured last month.

Maya started to get around a lot more this month. Whereas before, she had been pseudo-crawling (aka, the army crawl...dragging herself with her arms), this month she finally started real crawling on her hands and knees. It was pretty tough at first, taking her forever to make a tiny bit of forward progress. For a while she switched back and forth between army crawling and real crawling. However, it didn't take her long to start getting better (though she probably didn't really master it until during her 8th month).

Now that she could crawl better, she started to get more adventurous, exploring different rooms of the house (previously, she never left the living room on her own). With her crawling around a lot more, she started to get into more trouble. We'd always find her in the cat bed, the kitchen shelves, the bathroom, or somewhere else she didn't belong. She even managed to get her hands on an old, spongy cat ball and bite a chunk out of it. Thus it was time to really clean things up and take baby proofing the house a bit more seriously.

Along with her new crawling ability, Maya also got quite good at climbing up things into a semi-standing position. She'd use anything she could grab to try and pull herself up. She learned she could stand up at the front picture-window (which is less than a foot off the ground) and look outside. This soon became one of her favorite things to do. Of course, with all of the standing came the start of lots of falling. She hit her head often, but she's a pretty tough baby, and barely ever cried about it. And of course, with her now standing up, we had to drop her crib to the bottom setting to make sure she couldn't climb out.

One of Maya's new favorite activities became riding on her dinosaur (which is sort of like a bike...see below). I'd sit her on hit and she'd grab the handle bars and hold on while I pushed her around the house

Previously, whenever we went shopping, we just left Maya in her car seat and put it in the basket. This month, for the first time, we took her out of her car seat and let her ride in the shopping cart's kid seat. It's a little tricky at first, since she's so small, the cart is so big, and often the cart's seat belt isn't all that useful. It can be hard at first to keep her steady in there, but she soon got used to it, and before long she wouldn't want to go back in her car seat when we finished shopping.

Finally, Maya started to display a bit of stranger anxiety this month (which is normal at about this age). Before, she really wouldn't care who held her, but now she'd sometimes cry when seeing someone new (or even someone she hadn't seen in a few weeks). I took her shopping once and stepped just a few feet away to get some produce. Another guy came up and got between us, and she started crying.

Below are a few photos from this month. You can see even more photos here:
http://www.pbase.com/ldkronos/maya_7months


Riding her dinosaur like a chopper


Riding in the shopping cart


Getting into trouble


Drinking her juice


Climbing over everything in her way.


Falling and getting stuck



Maya crawls after her bottle (6 months old)





Maya sticking tongue out (6.5 month old)





Maya tipping her seat (6.5 month old)





Maya playing and making noise (6.5 month old)





Maya crawling for the first time (6.5 month old)





Maya playing with water jugs (7 month old)

Tuesday, April 26, 2011

6 month family photos, and hives

So it's been another 3 months and I'm behind again. A lot has gone on these last 3 months, but I never seem to get around to posting stuff here. And then it seems the further I get behind, the more difficult it is to catch up. Over the next week, I'm gonna try to catch up by each day posting a little bit of info and pictures from the last 3 months. Today, I'll start where I left off: with Maya's 6 months photos, and a bit of info about when she came down with hives.


6 Month Family Photos

Just like when she turned 3 months old, we wanted to commemorate the occasion by dressing her up and taking some nice posed photo. Also, since we hadn't really done any nice family photos yet, Christina and I dressed up too.











Hives

It was only about a week after Maya turned 6 months (end of January). We went out shopping for a couple of hours. Since it was winter, we had Maya bundled up pretty good. While we were out, she fell asleep in her car seat, so we just let her sleep. When we got home and she woke up, we got her out of the seat and took off her jacket. It was then that I noticed some small red bumps on her tummy. We figured it was just heat rash from being bundled up so good for so long, and within an hour or two it went away, so we figured we were right.

Later that evening, we went to change her diaper, and this time we saw a lot more spots had shown up all around her tummy, and this time just barely spreading onto her legs and arms.



At this point were were wondering what the cause was. Heat rash? Reaction to detergent in clothing? Something to do with a change in her diet? All were possible, but they each didn't quite seem to fit for one reason or another. Still, it didn't really seem like a very serious situation, so we figured nothing to be alarmed about. She wasn't crying, itching, running a fever, or showing any other sort of symptoms. She was behaving completely normally. We figured we'd give her a bath (just in case it was something like a detergent reaction or some other allergen on her skin).

By the next morning, her rash was almost completely gone...just a few little pink spots left. So we went on with the day. Then in the middle of the afternoon, suddenly her rash started coming back. This time it was much worse than before, covering almost her entire body. About the only spot not affected was her face. The spots were now becoming puffy, and some of them were white in the center (almost like giant blisters).









We called the pediatrician via the 24 hour on-call service (it was Sunday). After explaining everything to him and answering his questions, he said it didn't sound like anything to be concerned about, and if it was still there on Monday, we could schedule an appointment.

By the following morning, everything was completely gone. She had not even the slightest sign of the rash, so we didn't make an appointment. When I came home for lunch, she was still fine. Just before I left back for work, she had one small little pimple like bump on her face. Not long after that, it began spreading across her face.



We made an appointment with the pediatrician that day. When he saw it, he said it was nothing to be concerned about. It was Urticaria (a.k.a. hives). He said it could have been any of numerous things that caused it, but most likely was a virus, and it would likely clear itself up within a week. Later that day, the rash spread across more of her head. In addition, she had some swelling below her eye and on the back of her head. I did some research and found that the swelling is called Angioedema, and it often occurs in conjunction with Urticaria.




Swelling at the back, lower portion of her head


Swelling below her eye

By the next day, the rash was once again gone. However, this time it never came back again.


Next Up

As I sit here finishing this blog entry, realizing that it's taken me over 3 hours to write in between taking care of an unusually cranky baby today (she has a cold), I'm remembering why it's been so difficult to keep up on this. However, tomorrow I should be able to post a summary from the rest of month 7.