It's chicken pox

Yup, the pediatrician says it's a classic case of chicken pox! Poor Max. Luckily for him, the pediatrician said that by now he's usually been miserably itchy by now. So the chicken pox vaccine is given at 12 months old usually - so on the plus side, guess this means 1 less shot later. On the bad side, we had dinner with friends + their kids on Tuesday and he also went to day care all last week - so I would be amazed if all the day care kids escape it. I already let everyone know to be on the look out, and hopefully Max won't get much fussier than he is. I feel bad that this past week we let him cry it out - apparently he was just feeling under the weather. Poor kid, I thought he had a pimple! Guess I just had it in my mind that he wasn't going to get chicken pox ever!

Something tells me this is not just something he ate!

 

We're heading to the pediatricians office this afternoon. Raleigh Childred & Adolescent Medicine is definitely a convenient pediatrician for us - weekend & evening hours have come in quite handy (they don't charge the urgent care co-pay like some offices). We're still getting to know all the doctors - the one that told us our 4 month old should be able to sleep 10-12 hours a night was not our most favorite, but we've been happy with all the rest. Max seems a little more sleepy/fussy at night than normal and was a bit warm last night, but other than that seems pretty normal...but if it's the chicken pox, then guess the worst is still the come with the itchiness! Wish us luck!

Go to sleep!

For the last few days, Max has NOT wanted to go to sleep. We've tried everything - putting him to be earlier, later, feeding more, nursing him to sleep, rocking, co-sleeping, let him cry a bit, etc. He's been waking at night and early in the morning. He's also gnawing on everything, so I'm sure teething is partly to blame. I think I saw somewhere that with his added mobility the separation anxiety is kicking in & he doesn't want to sleep when he could be crawling around. So, all that nice routine of rocking him til he was sleepy & putting him down for him to go to sleep by himself is all lost for now. :-) hopefully this will pass soon...

CC's birthday

So here are the girls at CC's birthday dinner!

 

And, when you ask for a small glass of water - shot glasses work I guess!

 

Max says, "Auntie Patti, gee you are funny!"

 

And I checked - the last non-Max picture of Wei Yan and I was Sept 2007. That's not counting the pic of just wei yan & I at the hospital...but at least it wasn't the Hong Kong trip (which would be closer to 2 years ago). Someone keep reminding us to take photos of just Wei Yan & I....

 

Family Portrait

 

So, when picking the picture, guess once you have a kid, you go for the shot where your kid looks the best.

Spiderman, Spiderman

So Saturday's crawling with his right foot & left knee that put him crawling in circles was a bit concerning, but then Monday he woke up & we figured out what that was all about!

Pulling Up

So Max has become pretty good with crawling, going from crawling to sitting up & vice versa, pulling up & sitting down from standing (i.e., plopping down on his behind) and walking with assistance. He hasn't done a whole lot of cruising on the furniture yet, but he has bumped his head a few times and also cried because falling scared him. We've also noticed that the cry that was reserved for him hurting (foot caught on something) is now used when Max is unhappy with being put down or just not happy with what he's doing (if you put him down on his back & or he just didn't want to be put down at all). So I guess the separation anxiety is starting. Hopefully it won't be too bad, but it does actually feel kind of nice. Other folks we know have babies that would cry at several weeks old because they had stepped out of the room or let someone else hold him. Max hasn't seemed to care up until now.

cracker?

 

This evening I gave Max a baby cracker. I started with cubes of avacado - max got a few of them (they were really small) in his hand, but he didn't put them in his mouth. I tried to put a few in his mouth, but kept hitting his gums & he'd wince (still no teeth). Figured we'd see what happened with the cracker. He played with it for a while & mouthed it a bit, but not much. He got a taste of the avacado & seemed to want more, so I mashed up a 1/4 of an avacado and he polished that off. Guess it's true. Some days he loves it, others he's not too crazy about it. I started out just trying to give him stuff to keep him occupied while we ate dinner...ended up being a whole meal. 1st day for 3 meals for Max today.

by the way, seems like starting solids is yet another topic where folks all have different strong opinions. i seem to be going through different extremes, but I keep remembering that in the end it will probably not really matter all that much. our family does not have food allergies (one cousin is allergic to strawberries), so we're definitely not in the high risk catagory. and my mother-in-law already tried to give Max some coconut asian dessert thing with a chopstick (who the heck knows what was in that thing) and i gave him a tiny bit of my corned beef hash which he promptly spit up onto me (shows me!). i have a friend who was too poor to afford baby food when her youngest was starting solids, so she ended up just giving her kid food she had already chewed in the beginning. and just a generation or 2 ago, folks gave babies corn syrup & water...who ever heard of formula. so i'm going to try to enjoy max staring solids as much as possible instead of worrying & fretting.

Mama!

so Max hasn't really much in terms of babbling...so I think my hopes of him saying mama soon are dimming, but at least he thinks it's funny.

spit!

So, I know it's been a while. We took this video of Max almost 3 weeks ago, and he's still at it. In the baby world, that's pretty darn long. Tonight he decided to do this with a full mouth of spit & right in my face. Still funny, we have no idea why he does it yet (what does that mean???)

Gasp!

So yesterday afternoon I spent pretty much in bed. Throat hurt & my brain was a fog. Today the March of Dimes 5K was moved to Sunday instead of Saturday, so this afternoon was a blur of moving volunteer efforts 24 hours. So much for getting work done or leaving early to finish purchasing the rest of the decorations for my friends wedding. I still have not decided if I should try to bring Max or I'm pumping for the next (now 2 days) - with all day tomorrow wedding stuff and sunday's race. Ok to the purchase stuff before the rehearsal dinner....

Oh, if anyone can make it on Sunday - http://www.run4babies.org/
We could use some folks at 10:30am to help clean up. Since I will be there at 6am, I would LOVE to see some folks who are ready to get me out of there as soon as possible!