The fun and not so fun of today...

Here it is only 11 am and already I have stories to tell.

We have been trying to teach some baby signs to Finn. We started when I realized that he was started to communicate with us by his actions and although they were effective, ("All done" was signified by throwing all his remaining food off his tray) we decided we would like to teach him some more polite ways of expressing himself. We started with the sign for "All Done" and he did eventually stop throwing his food off his tray, but has never attempted the sign. This morning we went through our usual routine of saying the words "All Done" while making the sign and Finn was watching us intently, as he usually does when we make a big deal out of something, and instead of doing anything with his hands he said "Ah Dah," which, being the newbie parents we are, we took to mean he was trying to say "All Done." We made a big deal out of it and praised him, so we'll see where this goes. I am okay if he decides to skip signing and go straight to talking. I'm sure all parents wonder what their children are thinking about long before their communication skills develop into language and so this small sign that we will soon be hearing Finn's thoughts from his own lips is pretty exciting (I think).

Then after we dropped Ben off at work this morning, Finn and I headed to Sharp Hospital to get his 1 year blood work done. I had hoped they would do a heal prick, since it matter less if they wiggle, but they needed to draw blood from a vein. So I asked if they had anyone that specialized in babies and children. I had been given that advice by a good friend of mine who is a nurse at a children's hospital. She often gets patients brought to her from other hospitals, where the staff there has spent an hour trying to draw blood from a small child (how traumatic would that be?!), and she is able to do it in minutes. So they did give me their specialist and she was very good, in that she got the blood draw done quickly. However, her technique for making children feel at ease (she was very loud and animated while making animal noises for Finn from the moment she walked into the room) didn't work well for my child (who prefers to take in new people and experiences quietly and at his own pace). At her first loud "Meow, Meow, Where's the kitty?" he immediately burst into tears and when she touched his arm with one finger to feel a vein, he started to struggle and fight so hard, she had to call for backup. I held him on my lap and it took both my arms to hold his right arm down and the other nurse held his left arm straight while the procedure took place. He stopped crying as soon as we were all done restricting his movements and he and I went outside and I nursed him for a little while. As usual, a little time on the breast makes everything better. By the time we got back in the car, he had recovered from his experience and had begun the work of investigating the cotton ball taped to his arm.

First Steps

Finn took his first 2 steps on August 8th, 2013. Just like when he started crawling, he had had a well baby exam earlier in the day in which I had to report to his doctor that he wasn't walking yet.  I mentioned to her that after his 9 month appointment he had started crawling, so she joked that Finn would probably take his first steps that evening.  Sure enough, that is exactly what happened.  I had placed him in the middle of the living room and I was sitting on the couch urging him to walk towards me.  He wouldn't budge until he spotted the TV remote, at which point he took his first 2 baby steps to get at it.

And since I mention his 1 year check-up, I might as well report on that too. It was disappointing, to say the least.  His weight was recorded at 20.2 pounds (although I think it was actually a little higher, and the nurse took the low mark...why is it no one ever does that for me when I step on the damn thing at the doctor's office?) and his height 30.25 inches. So the weight put him down in the 15th percentile, which caused both his doctor and me some concern. He just keeps falling through the percentiles despite the fact that I am still breastfeeding him every 2-3 hours during the day and on demand all night long, as well as offering him the most nutritional and calorie dense solid foods I can. We went over his diet and all his doctor could say was "You're doing everything right, but..." So she wants me to give him Pediasure. It just kills me to have to do it. There are 17 grams of sugar in one bottle. Sugar is the second ingredient, after water. I feel like I've spent the last six months working hard to give him whole, unprocessed foods and limiting his salt and sugar intake for nothing. I know that's not true and that I have given Finn the best start that I could and that we couldn't avoid sugar forever. I know this. I'm still disappointed. So as a compromise, I've begun adding a little Pediasure to his whole milk, to sweeten it up a bit and make it more palatable for him. If he seemed to like his first taste of whole milk, then he LOVED his first taste of whole milk/Pediasure. And why wouldn't he? It tastes just like a milkshake.

The rest of his appointment went well. We didn't do shots, since he had been sick last week (another thing that probably affected his weight) and she checked carefully to make sure he didn't get an ear infection after his cold.  Its incredible to me that we made it to a year without Finn ever getting sick. His good health is a real blessing, one that hopefully continues a long, long time. When we got to the part about sleep, I felt I couldn't take any more "tsk tsk" from the doctor, so I lied and said how impressed I was by the improvement and that he was sleeping most of the night in his crib and rarely waking up to eat. Its more of a half truth than a lie. Sometimes those things do happen, just not as consistently as one might expect at his age. But since it doesn't really bother me and I would now gladly nurse him all night long if it would fatten him up, I'm not going to worry about it!