Morgan update

Some random updates on Miss M…

–The teeth–

Her two bottom ones have been in now for two and a half months. One top came in about a month ago. The opposite one on top has been looking like it’s right there for about three weeks. I keep poking at her, thinking it’ll be through, but it’s not. This constant pressure might be what’s causing her to have a harder time sleeping lately? Who knows. It’s rough being a kid sometimes, I suspect.

–Um… mobile?–

Morgan has never really truly crawled. She’ll propel herself forward when she wants to, but mostly she just doesn’t bother. She will, however, grunt until we give her our hands and she can pull herself up, which she has been doing for about three months. She’s getting much better at walking while holding onto our hands, and she’ll transfer from one thing to another (the chair to something next to it, our hands to the couch, etc.). However, now that she has gotten better-at-but-not-perfected the concept of walking, she seems to have decided to move on… to climbing. It’s hilarious. She’s been doing it somewhat for a while, like scaling up my hip and side while I hold her (hence the nickname shoulder or back monkey, depending what we’re letting her climb on). But then this week she used the tin of blocks next to the couch to climb up onto the couch–while we were giving her some balance support, of course. She just constantly wants to do more, get more, see more. She still doesn’t like sitting much; she prefers to be up high where she can see more. Curious kid, I tell you. Her awareness since birth has shocked me.

Holding on to daddy’s hands by the couch. This was on Conference weekend, which was absolutely gorgeous weather wise and just so nice.

–Yogurt, or how we discovered her milk allergy–

Morgan was sitting on my lap as we finished up dinner and kept grabbing for my plate, which had tsaziki and hummus on it. I could understand how that would be fun to grab and play in, so we got her a plate with plain yogurt on it so she could eat it if she wanted to. She had a lot of fun. It was all over her, me, and the tablecloth. Luckily all those things are washable.

Well. Her face got a little red, and as soon as we took her clothes off so we could both shower off we saw that her whole chest, belly, and back were turning bright red. Then she started getting little white welt-y spots on her chest. And she was clawing at her chest and scratching it. Poor kid!

So the good news is that now we know what may have been causing the crazy excema and skin issues she’s been having. I have completely eliminated milk products from my diet–which made me cranky for a day because while we don’t drink milk anyway I do cook with milk and cream and really really like cheese. Plus it’s just a pain because milk is in so much. Even the bread we had has milk in it. But of course feeling sorry for myself made me feel worse because I realized how selfish I was being, feeling sorry for ME when she was so uncomfortable and there was a possible way I could help her.

So far she seems to be improving a little but still is not great. It’s been a week totally milk free (okay, except for the very small amount of parmesan in the pesto I had previously made and frozen).  I’ve also switched laundry detergent and use a whole lot of Aquaphor all over her. A couple nights ago she was waking up a lot, grabbing at her chest and trying to scratch through her clothes. So I suspect something still isn’t right. There’s this old animated version of “Madeline” where Miss Clavel runs through the house and sings “Something is not right, something is quite wrong…” and I sometimes sing that to myself. The next step, however, would be to go on an elimination diet for wheat, soy, and eggs in addition to the milk, and then I would have a hard time knowing what to eat at all. We’ll see where all this gets us.

–Playing and exploring–

This is Morgan playing with Adrian’s old wooden blocks while sitting on a blanket my grandma made for me. Hehe. When I realized how funny and neat that is I had to take a picture. She ate them, knocked over my stacks, and banged them together. Normal kid.

The other day I bought some balloons for a Halloween thing I want to do and to entertain Morgan I blew one up and let out the air, let it fly around, etc. She was laughing so hard, possibly the most I’ve ever seen. She seemed to like watching it get bigger. I love how kids are entertained by such simple things. It’s so fun to watch and experience with them. It’s a reminder to focus on the little wondrous things all around us.

–Mama!!!!–

She’s back in a major “I need mommy!” mode. She has been in it before, certainly, but it seemed like she was starting to be more willing to let me out of her sight for a little bit or even be held by or play with someone else. Not so much anymore. Today I set her down to go wash my hands–in the bathroom that’s about ten feet away–and she was crying by the time I got to the sink. She does it even when she can see me, too. It’s cute, however also sometimes exhausting. Someday she won’t need me to hold her constantly. Happily that day won’t come too soon, and by then my back will be too weak to carry her around anyway. So it all works out.

And, just because: THIS is why I don’t use flash, even when it results in slightly blurry, yellow tinged pictures:

Haha! I know there’s a way to adjust the amount of flash on my camera, but I dislike it so much I’ve never figured it out. I will hopefully never use it again.