10.24.2008

She pooped!

And it was everything you'd imagine a 7-day poop would be. ;)

Quirks

So Annie's feet get really cold at night. We put a sleeper with feet and warm fuzzy socks on her every night, and in the morning they are so cold they're white. The bottoms of her legs are always cold too. The rest of her is fine. It only happens at night, during the day they're fine. I didn't really think too much of it, until the day Paul was taking her out of her car seat and noticed that the lower part of her legs were blue. Huh. So we mentioned it to our pediatrician at her 4-month check-up. She was a little concerned, especially because for some reason at the appointment her feet were hot and bright purple/pink. I told her that was unusual, that we hadn't seen that before. She asked if Raynauds runs in our family and I told her I had never heard anything like that so I didn't think so. So she did lots of pulse-checking and poking around her legs and belly and decided that maybe it would be best to get an ultrasound to check things out, make sure nothing was getting cut off on the way down to her legs.

My mom came with me to the ultrasound on Tuesday. It took forever. They took a ton of pictures of her insides, all around her belly. The first technician asked me to tell her why my doctor wanted us there, because she said she was a bit confused by her notes. I explained what the problem was and told her she was wondering if her aorta is being cut off somewhere in her groin area. She responded, "but she hasn't felt any masses or anything?" I had been really good about not worrying up to that point, telling myself it was most likely nothing to worry about. But as soon as she said the word "masses" a million worries flooded to the front of my mind. "Great," I thought to myself. "Here we go."

The exam took forever. The first technician couldn't find one of her ovaries so she went to get someone to take another look. Annie was so patient through the first part, which took about 45 minutes, but she was getting really tired and hungry, plus we had to hold her arms and legs down because she kept grabbing the wand cord, so she screamed through the second half. Poor baby! We finally got out of there about two and a half hours after we got there. And then I waited for 2 days, the word "masses" floating around my brains the whole time.

I talked to the doctor last night, and she said the results looked good. They didn't really find anything. Phew! But she did say they said it was a "suboptimal view" since they couldn't see everything in her belly due to "bowel gas." Surprise, surprise. Especially since she hadn't pooped in a few days! So to be safe she called a pediatric cardiologist. He said she's most likely fine, since the pulse and oxygen counts were fine. But he wants us to schedule an appointment to come in, just to be safe. It will probably be a few months before we can get in, but I'm not going to worry until then. I think she probably just gets cold feet. I am glad that our doctor is so thorough though. Nice to know she doesn't just brush things off! I'm going to need to learn to be more like her though. As I learned from my "cyst that could have been a blood clot" incident back when I was pregnant, I really need to learn to pay more attention to these things and not just brush them off as nothing! You really never know.

So yeah, the poop thing. That was Tuesday, and now it's Friday, still no poop. It's been 7 days! It's normal for a breastfed baby to go a few days, even 5 or 6 in between poops (formula-fed babies poop once or twice a day!) But she usually poops every 2 or 3 days, so 7 was getting a little ridiculous. And I'll tell you what. Her gas stinks. It could knock you over at this point. Also: I'm a little afraid of what a 7-day poop is going to look like. The 2 or 3 day poops are pretty explosive.
Our doctor gave us a few options. Pear juice sounded the best to me. Unfortunately, I just tried giving it to her and she hates it! She kept making that baby "what the hell is this crap?" face and pushing it away. I tried telling her that this was her most pleasant option, but she didn't listen. So now we're going to try the baking soda bath. I hope that works, because otherwise we will need to "take her temperature." Which really isn't so bad, we have to do that every once in a while anyway, but doesn't pear juice sound so much better??

Tell this kid to poop already!

10.10.2008

4 Month Outtakes

So we attempted to get Annie's 4-month picture for her monthly series last Sunday. It was too dark so we weren't successful (as evidenced by the following crappy pictures), but there were lots of fun developments during this photo shoot.


It was the first time she's noticed Puppy sitting next to her.

It was the first time she decided to lean over to try to grab Puppy.
It was the first time she didn't fall forward onto her face when she tried to sit without leaning back on the chair. She sat like that for a while too, just looking around!
It seems way too early for her to be sitting on her own, but I think she's definitely moving in that direction!


In other news, she's in the 75th percentile for weight, 95th for length. She is wearing sizes 6 months and 9 months because her legs are so long. She wears 12 month socks! I think Paul just might get his volleyball player!

10.04.2008

5 Years

Last Saturday, September 27th, was our 5th wedding anniversary. We decided to take an impromptu trip up to Niagara Falls to celebrate. The plan was to go to Niagara-on-the-Lake, check out the falls, and take Annie swimming in the hotel pool. We had to keep her out of the sun all summer because she's too young to wear sunscreen, and I couldn't wait to take her for her first swim. I took 488 pictures over the weekend! I whittled it down to 88 good ones though. Man, I love digital cameras. :) On our way up to find Niagara-on-the-Lake, we saw a sign for the butterfly conservatory and decided to check it out. I'm glad we did, we really enjoyed ourselves. Plus, it was fitting that we visit there: we released butterflies at our wedding as a tribute to my grandmother (the one Annie is named for). She loved butterflies. The butterfly house was huge and had a million butterflies (I don't really know how many they have, it just seemed like a whole lot), and the Niagara botanical gardens surrounded the house. Gorgeous. We saw lots of flowers and trees that we want for our yard. Annie was enthralled with the butterflies when we first walked in. So cute!

Butterfly Conservatory from porkchop on Vimeo.

On our way out of the conservatory, I got a phone call from my sister Megan. I didn't answer right away because we were packing up the car, so when we got in the car to start driving to the falls, I listened to her message. She said to call her back when I got a chance, she had exciting news. I said, "She is so engaged." Paul got all excited. I haven't been wondering when they were going to get engaged or anything, so I don't know why I thought that right away. She and Tim have been together for 7 years and there was no doubt in my mind that they would be married someday. He is wonderful to her, and they are perfect for each other. They are both in grad school, and have a lot going on, so it made sense for them to wait a few years before getting married. But as soon as I heard that message I was so excited. I'm glad I turned out to be right, I might have been disappointed! ;) Paul was like, "call her back, call her back!!" Sure enough, Tim proposed that morning at a cider mill near their apartment in Michigan. Yay!! And too cool that they got engaged on our 5-year anniversary. Tim had no idea, but was pretty pleased with himself when Meg told him. How perfect is that?? So now we're all thrilled and excited for their wedding, which should be the summer after next. Can't wait! So after that excitement, we checked into our hotel right around the corner from Clifton Hill, and took a walk down to the falls. It was getting dark, the falls were beautiful. After our walk, we stopped by the restaurant that shares a parking lot with our hotel. We ate on the patio because it was beautiful out. I had spinach gnocchi and Paul had some sort of meat (I'm pretty sure it was steak). :) Their bread was fabulous. The staff was really nice and loved Annie. We got free dessert to go because they screwed up our ticket in the kitchen so it took a while for our food to arrive. Which figured because Annie was happy for the amount of time it would have taken us to get our dinner if they had brought it out on time. She got cranky when we were waiting and I had to hold her while I was eating. Which is what we end up doing at home a lot of the time anyway! She has a knack for getting fussy right when we want to eat. She's such a good baby otherwise though, I really can't complain about that one thing!

Since dinner was so late, we only had about 20 minutes in the pool before it closed. Which turned out to be just the right amount of time. The pool was a bit cold, and I didn't feed her before going for fear that she would puke in the pool. ;) So she seemed to not mind it for a few minutes, and then let out a little scream, probably because it was cold. It was pretty cute anyway.

The next day I tried the hotel breakfast and decided it was gross, so we found a breakfast buffet at a restaurant on Lundy's Lane and pigged out. Yum. We walked down to the falls in a drizzling rain, but it cleared up and the sun came out a while later. It turned into a beautiful weekend, which was great because they said it was supposed to rain all weekend. We never did end up going to Niagara-on-the-Lake, we spent too much time walking along the falls. We wanted to go down to the barge stuck at the top of the falls to read the plaque about it because Paul had never seen it, and all I could remember was that two guys were stuck there overnight. I told him I thought it happened in the 30's, but he couldn't believe that it would be stuck there that long. Turns out it happened in 1918! They saved themselves by opening the bottom doors which wedged into the rocks. It's amazing that they survived. Plus they probably had no idea how close they were since it was dark. Terrifying!Anyway, it was a really long walk, but we enjoyed it. I fed Annie in the little park by the barge and Paul took a little nap on our blanket. On our walk back the sun came out full force and we saw rainbows over the falls. Overall, a wonderful way to celebrate 5 years of marriage, and the next phase of our marriage as parents. Yesterday a woman at the outlet mall was telling me how cute Annie is, and then said, "you are so lucky." She was so right.