snot and whining

[thanate]

The Megatherium got her first (half of her first) flu shot on Thursday for which I cheerfully marked her off as not sick, and then her cold became obviously symptomatic about eight hours later. Possibly some of the bouts of mild crankiness of a few days previous were from the sore throat that I've presently got, but the day and a half of buckets of snot were a bit unmistakable, poor thing. Though she's got to be about the second most cheerful sick baby on the planet; as long as I wasn't trying to wipe her nose for her or feed her chicken soup (NOT the thing; all she wanted was rice puffs (which she can eat without assistance) and freeze dried strawberries) she mostly entertained herself by making horrible bubbly noises. I don't know if it's just my kid, or if this is a thing, but she's gone through a slew of noises that sound to the concerned parent as if she's dying, and are actually just her investigating new things she can do, yay!

Anyway. After a night of getting up to try to feed the baby who cried wolf (tho once she actually did want to eat, around 2:30, she slept through till morning), she's mostly better and working on longer & longer intervals of free-standing, and I am exhausted, sore of throat and eyeballs, and get to get up at 4 tomorrow morning to take grauwulf to the airport so he can spend a week in CA. And despite running around to three different stores today, we still didn't manage to find a baby gate that fits our criteria for closing off the bottom of the stairs to control her other new favorite passtime: climbing up them. (I have no objection to her doing so with an adult spotter, but there's still a complete lack of concepts involved with down, including sitting mid-flight on the step that doesn't extend past her feet.)

So, yeah; it'll be a week. With luck there will be more happy baby of happiness than cranky mommy. Cheerful anecdotes welcome.

Sleep now.

Comments

[heuchera.livejournal.com]

I hope you are both continuing to mend from sickness and getting better sleep. Matthew currently delights in making a noise that sounds rather like a car not starting (that is, a noise like the starter:"eh- eh-eh-eh, only more glottal and painful sounding). He also laughs hysterically if I make it back at him. I will also say freeze dried fruit sounds like a really good idea -- the fresh stuff is extremely slippery. Strawberries have been less popular for that reason, though he can manage banana and peeled quartered grapes OK. Broccoli is very popular here right now since it comes with handy stems to hold and has nice florets to mash up your nose and all around your face. Sorry I have no good thoughts on the stairs. We have only let him tackle the single step out of the kitchen; he likewise shows no concept of down when it comes to himself.

[thanate.livejournal.com]

Trader Joe's! They have several varieties of freeze-dried fruits: thus far we've tried strawberries, blueberries & raspberries, but I've also seen banana & mandarin orange. The strawberries are by far the best, but the others are also worthy, and they're sans additives of any sort and very intensely flavorful. I've been looking for real food alternatives to cheerios or those baby puff things, and these seem like a good nutritional compliment to the organic puffed grain cereals I picked up. (M will happily eat rice puffs all day, since she's allowed to do so by herself, but I feel that there is more to food somewhere...) We have intermittent tolerance for the mini veggie mix, and broccoli has been acceptable once or twice, but the crunchy things seem to be preferred, and she's suddenly developed the trick of pulling something back out of her mouth and dropping it off the edge of the high chair. All the fun.

My mother tried to interest M in learning how to climb down stairs last night, which resulted in a cheerful baby standing up on a step between Mommy & Grandma and patting things. "Stairs go up, Grandma, what are you trying to do?" Oh well. (There exist baby gates that should work, just I haven't been able to find the right one in stock. This is tomorrow's quest.)

[heuchera.livejournal.com]

So M's adventures with the single step continue. He goes down it occasionally now, semi-purposefully, but the mode leaves something to be desired. He rolls off it sideways. I am afraid his strategy will work less satisfactorily where there are multiple steps.

Food -- we have done small pieces of mozzarella cheese in addition to fruit, veggies, and bread/cheerio/puff things. Macaroni. Hamburger. Bread products are the easiest for him though.

Will have to make a trip to TJ's.

[thanate.livejournal.com]

Heh-- yeah, we attack all our problems head-first in this house. I am experimenting with going downstairs backwards myself to try to convey an alternate idea.

Little bits of cheese stick were excellent the first time, and then the first thing she actively pulled out of her mouth to drop at arm's length. Veggies are kind of hit or miss-- she seems to have taken against carrots for some reason-- and sweet potato, squash, and rice are good things if I want to cook once to feed everyone. We've done a little chicken but not beef yet, and I'm not sure she thinks pasta is food. The oddest thing she's fond of is plain full-fat yogurt, which is good by itself, and also mixes well with the stage 1 cereals we still have a huge amount of to make something thick enough to be interesting.