Another Update

I have, rightly, been chastised by a friend of mine for not updating my blog (how did three weeks pass without my noticing?!?). My excuse is that the last three weeks have been rather overwhelming, between Judith teething, not sleeping through the night, and learning how to take a bottle.

So here are the updates:
Teething
Judith's second tooth (lower right) broke through yesterday morning (exactly three weeks after the first one). She was pretty miserable for most of that time. MUCH crabbier than normal, and not sleeping well at all. According to what I've heard, she should get the next two teeth (upper middle teeth) "relatively" soon. I'm hoping (though not optimistic) that they'll come in sooner than three weeks each.

Sleeping:
We're pretty sure that Judith's been waking up because her teeth hurt. And they wake her up enough that she recognizes that she hasn't eaten in a while, so she's not willing to just take the pacifier. (In fact, she'll clamp her lips together so that she can't take the pacifier.) Just before this latest tooth came in, she would be up three-four times a night--not enough sleep for her, and not enough sleep for me! To compound the problem, I've been taking the easy way out and feeding her because that way she'll go right back to sleep and I only have to be up for 10-15 minutes. Trying to get her to go to sleep without eating would mean being up for 1/2 an hour. Starting tonight, we're going to try to let her cry for a little while to see if she'll go back to sleep on her own. I'm really not looking forward to it, but I know it'll be worth it if it works. (She also
continues to only nap for 45 minutes at time.)

Bottle Feeding:
Grandma and Grandpa Sjoerdsma are coming at the end of March to visit, and Grandma will be staying through the beginning of April. Lance and I will get to go away for our 10th anniversary (April 3), and Grandma will have Judith overnight for us. Unfortunately, Judith hasn't tried a bottle since November (and hasn't taken one successfully since the middle of October). So we've been doing everything we can think of to get her to take one now. To complicate the issue, I've been getting very little when I pump, so we decided to start trying with formula. Not a good idea - she hated it. Then we tried a sippy cup and differently bottle nipples, without success. Over the last 10 days, I've slowly pumped enough to put a couple ounces in a bottle (it helps that my sister sent me her electric pump instead of my little hand one). We are now to the point where Judith will drink about 1 1/2 oz of my milk from the bottle, if I give it to her - so far she hasn't taken anything when Lance tries. I'm trying to see this a positive step, because at least it means she's associating the bottle with food. We've got three weeks to get her to take more and take it from another person.

Eating:
Judith has progressed through a number of vegetables (beans, peas, carrots, and sweet potato) as well as some fruits (apple, banana, pear). I've now started pureeing my own stuff, which she seems to like pretty well. I try to mix some rice cereal in with whatever veggies or fruits she has, so that it's a little more substantial. So far she likes what she's tried (she didn't like the peas the first time around, but ate them just fine when I tried them later).

Moving:
Judith has progressed from rolling around the room to a combination of rolling, backwards scooting and army crawling. She'll also get up on her hands and knees and rock and rock and rock. Right now she's constantly getting stuck under the futon with just her head stuck out because she's scooted backwards underneath it. Army crawling forward only happens when she has sufficient motivation (like Lance using some toy as a "carrot" for her), probably because it takes so much more work than rolling or scooting backwards. It's no longer a good idea to leave her on the blanket in the middle of the floor, because she'll end up in some other corner of the room chewing on something.

She'll also sit for long periods of time (up to 1/2 an hour if she's engrossed in a toy) before eventually falling over to one side.

Shopping:
Normally, when I shop with Judith I just take the BOB stroller into the store, and put what I need in the bag I carry. That works fine unless I have a lot of stuff to buy, in which case I've generally put the carseat in the back of the cart. For Christmas "judith" asked for one of those cart-seat covers so that I don't have to put her in a yucky seat. This past Friday was the first time we used it, and she didn't seem to love it or hate it. She did tend to slide to one side or another trying to reach things, because it only straps around her waist, which isn't quite enough to hold her upright. But I was happy with how it worked, and we'll use it plenty in the future.

So there - the last three weeks summarized in this blog (with lots of pictures). I'll do my best to not go so long between updates next time!

first tooth!!!

Yesterday morning Judith's first tooth broke through. She won't let me see it (so there're no pictures). Well, I'm not sure there's anything deliberate about my not seeing it - it's just that it's on the bottom, and she won't move her tongue. I almost got a glimpse of it when she was screaming her head off, but otherwise she keeps her tongue over her gums. I can feel it though - a little razor poking through in the middle. Another milestone!

Yesterday was also Judith's first day in the nursery at church. She's been getting to antsy (and loud) to stay in the service, so after the opening worship I took her in. Unfortunately the worker wasn't someone I know very well, and I don't think Judith had even seen her before. Apparently she (Judith, not the worker) cried for the last 15 minutes...although no one came to get me until the 15 minutes was up! So Judith was pretty hysterical by the time I got to her, and I'm really hoping that she doesn't remember the nursery as at traumatic place. My plan is to wait to put her in again until our friend Denise (whom Judith knows quite well) is working. We'll see.

Other updates: Judith now sits on her own (unsupported) for several minutes at a time before losing her balance. She also scoots herself around backwards (pushing with her hands) when she's on the wood floor. And she likes carrots but not peas.

Other updates

It's been SO long since I've blogged, that I probably should add a few more updates :-).

Judith is still loving rice cereal. She's up to eating 1 1/2 Tablespoons of rice cereal in the mornings, and 2 Tablespoons in the evenings (before bed). It almost affected her sleep patterns - for two nights last week she slept 9+ hours straight, but then I think her teeth started waking her up, instead of her belly! (Last night she was up at 2:30, 3:30, 5:00, 6:00, and 7:15!) She now sits her in high chair (instead of being held by one of us) while she eats. And, excitingly, the doctor said she can start on vegetables today!

She's definitely teething seriously now. She is pretty irritable at times, and chews on anything and everything. The doctor pointed the "bumps" to us on her top gums where the teeth are growing in, but she wouldn't move her tongue so that we could see the bumps on the bottom - I can feel them though!

Finally, Judith is getting more and more mobile. She's sitting up for up to a minute (or so) unsupported. She lasts longer if she has something right in front of her that she's reaching for. She also rolls over (and over and over) and can eventually work her way to whatever object she's trying to reach. Occasionally she will raise her head up even farther and look like she's about to crawl. She has the arm movement down, but she doesn't quite know what to do with her legs yet.

Our little girl changes so fast!

6 month checkup

Today is Judith's half-birthday, and so, in celebration (ha) we went to the doctor. Judith is "very healthy" - she weighs 16 lbs, 2 oz (70th percentile) and is 27 1/2 inches long (95th percentile!). She got three boosters today (very nice - we were expecting 5!) and she did quite well with them. She only cried for about 5 seconds. She's a little sore now, I think, because she's been whimpering a lot, and she's pretty tired as well.

All-in-all, I'm quite happy with the appointment.

Rice Cereal!

At her 4 month checkup, the doctor told us that we should wait until she was six months old to give Judith any solid food. And that he'd give us guidelines for doing so at her 6 month checkup. That's only 10 days away, but lately Judith has been SO hungry (eating as often as I'll let her, and waking up twice in the middle of the night because she's so hungry) that I called this morning and asked if I could feed her solids a little early. They said yes! So today Judith and I went out and bought some organic brown rice cereal, and we fed it to her at dinner time.

The cereal itself was different than I expected, because I was equating rice cereal with grits, in my mind, and so I was expecting it to be quite thick. But it wasn't - it's really runny, which makes sense when I think about it! I was also expecting that Judith would eat a few bites and be done with it, but she kept wanting more...and wanting to hold the spoon for herself. It took her a little while to figure out how to actually eat it - mostly she sucked it off the spoon - but toward the end we were both getting a little more coordinated. She ended up eating about 3/4 of the bowl, and I think she'd have finished it if she hadn't got sick of being "held down" on Lance's lap.

So we're off to a good start, and we'll see if this helps the hunger problem!

Trip to Michigan

On January 7, 2009, we flew to Grand Rapids, MI, for a week to visit my family. Judith got to meet her aunts and uncles (and cousin Jada!) for the first time, and she got to spend some more time with her grandparents. Here's how it went:

Wednesday: I had day-mares about how the flights would go for at least a week ahead of time. On the trip out we had three flights (and two layovers) to get to, and a total travel day of about 14 hours or so. And it started out well, even though we left the house at 4:30 a.m. Judith was happy on the first flight and content to be entertained by us in the seat. And the five hour layover in Atlanta was ok too. We put her down on a blanket on the floor for a while and she and Lance played. The flight to Cincinnati wasn't so good. It was much shorter, but it also was the worst pressure-change flight I've ever experienced. Our ears were popping for a good 45 minutes before we landed (and the flight was only 1 1/2 hours) and Judith really felt that. She was eating for the first part of it, so that wasn't so bad, but she fussed until we landed after that. And we got off the plane to discover that our flight to Grand Rapids (the last hour of our day!) was cancelled due to weather! So we had to stay overnight in Cincinnati without our luggage and without a crib for Judith. We got a room with two queen beds, thinking that we'd put Judith in one bed and sleep in the other. But it was so cold in the room that I put her between us in our bed for the first few hours. (Which of course meant that I didn't get any sleep and I moved to the other bed in the middle of the night.)

Thursday: The next morning we got our flight to Grand Rapids. It was a tiny plane, but Judith did just fine. Judith got to meet her cousin Jada (she's 3) - which was way more fun for Jada than for Judith. Jada had a great time showing Judith how all the toys worked! Judith also got to see snow for the first time!

Friday: Judith got to meet her great grandparents (my dad's parents) when we went to their house to celebrate Great Grandpa Sjoerdsma's 80th birthday.

Saturday: We really just hung out at home all day, which was great. Judith got to play with everyone (and I got a break from having to entertain her!).

Sunday: We visited my parents church in the morning and showed Judith off to their friends. In the afternoon we spent some time playing in the snow! (Ok, we spent like five minutes playing and just took pictures.) Judith used a snowsuit that Jada had worn. She looks adorable sitting in the snow, and she certainly was fascinated by the stuff falling on her face.

Monday: We had lunch with Kim Verbrugge Groenenboom (a high school and college friend of mine) and her family, which was a lot of fun for me, and somewhat less fun for Judith and Lance. We said goodbye to Auntie Jen and Cousin Jada :-(.

Tuesday: We had originally planned to head up to Cadillac on this day, but winter weather (and our own colds) prevented us from going. So we hung out at home again. That night we said goodbye to Auntie Lis and Uncle C. J :-(.

Wednesday: Judith started the day by starting another growth spurt. She ate every two hours the whole way back to Sacramento! We said goodbye to Grandma and Grandpa :-(. (Grand Rapids was setting records for low temperatures - our plane left Grand Rapids at noon, and the temperature was 7! We were very glad to be going home to Sacramento where they were setting records for high temperatures.) I was anticipating that the travel home would be better than the travel out to G.R. (especially after our flight was cancelled). At the same time, we did have a two hour flight followed by a 5 1/2 hour layover, followed by a 5 hour flight. And it wasn't so nice. Judith did fine on the first flight. And the layover in Atlanta, while long, wasn't too bad either. But by the time we got on the plane to Sacramento, it was almost Judith's bedtime. But I'd estimate that she didn't even sleep half of the time on the plane. She slept through takeoff, and then was awake for at least two hours. The latter part of the two hours she was pretty fussy - wanting to sleep but finding it difficult with all the distractions. I finally stood up and "rocked" her a little bit, and she drifted off. She slept the rest of the way home, which meant that both Lance and I had sore arms by the time we debarked! Judith woke up as we landed. Uncle Tim drove us home from the airport, and Judith fell asleep, but when we reached home she woke up and wanted to be awake and playing! After a good 45 minutes of fighting with her, I decided to feed her again, which calmed her down enough that she could drift off. Unfortunately she was awake every hour crying for her pacifier!

Today she seems a little jet lagged - out of sorts, and is still eating every two hours. I'm really hoping that she'll sleep better tonight because I need it as much she does!

Sleeping Update (day unknown!)

Right after I blogged the last sleeping update (like two weeks ago) Judith went through a growth spurt. And since I knew that would just throw everything off, I completely stopped any effort at getting her to take longer naps. Two days later she slept almost the whole day because she caught Lance's cold and was sick. And then we flew to MI (see next update) for a week, and her sleeping "schedule" went completely down the tubes. Last night (our first night home) she was awake every hour crying for her pacifier! And today she's going through a growth spurt again (how that's possible after just two weeks since the last one I don't know), so everything's off.

I'm kind of thinking that I'll wait to try any sort of "schedule" until after her six month checkup (I need to call and schedule that) since she gets to start solid food then, and it's my understanding that will also impact her sleeping. Right now I just take it day by day, and am trying to really follow her tiredness cues closely.