Spring

Spring has finally arrived, despite the snow last weekend.  Limelet and Thelimey can go outside for a lot of the day, which is a huge relief.  Heck, it's a relief for me that I can take him outside after dinner.  It means that a) he's happy, and b) I don't have to carry him the entire time because he can climb up on the little slide on his own and c) he sleeps better if he's been outside playing.  That's a big one.

 

He's teething again (or still?), which means that there were 5 nights in a row on which he woke up at 3am, then stayed awake for anywhere from 3 to 6 hours.  This means I have been getting a number of 3-hour sleep nights before going to work, which is a frikkin' TORTURE.  And it's not like I can come home and nap, either; I just have to hope that the following night goes better.  So then we had three nights of relatively good sleep (two of which involved baby Motrin), and then a really late night, then a funeral the following day that completely threw off his nap schedule (which takes several days to recover from). 

 

Every time this starts to happen (which is all too frequently, or constantly, really) I tell myself it's teething.  Then after a while I begin to doubt my judgment and start thinking that I just don't have a good handle on keeping his sleep schedule in line.  And then a new tooth appears, and I feel guilty for the breakthrough irritation events (rare as those are despite the severe sleep deprivation!)  This time, I told myself that I would not forget that it is always teething in the end!  And then the pediatrician confirmed the tooth coming through during Limelet's torture--I mean, office visit / vaccination--yesterday.  If there was no possible liver and kidney damage with taking Tylenol or Motrin every night, I'd just dose him up.  But I have to save it for especially bad nights, and...honestly, there's no way of knowing which night is going to be really bad until it's already underway, and then it's more or less too late.

 

A while back he started getting more eczema in random places, for which the pedi gave him some cortisone lotion. I used it because there was a spot on his leg about two inches across that had become so raw that I was worrying about infection.  Keeping in mind what our previous pedi had said about food and eczema, I tried the no-dairy thing for 10 days.  I didn't want it to be milk, but that was my suspicion.  Sure enough, the eczema improved greatly.  Then we let him have a bunch of dairy again for a few days and it came back like crazy.  Stopped it again, and after a week it had diminished dramatically again.  Then I forgot and let him share my ice cream cone one day, and he had a rash again.

 

So, he's allergic to milk.  Crud!  I love dairy.  Actually, so does he.  We tried just reducing his dairy intake to one small cup of milk before bedtime, which he particularly likes, but that led to fresh breakouts.  We hope he may grow out of it.  However, until then, he's getting rice milk, soy milk, fruit juice, and his new favorite, Kidz Dream soy smoothies.

 

It seems like he knows more than he's letting on.  He often seems to understand words after one exposure, but doesn't necessarily try to say them himself.  He's more likely to mimic if the words are sung or chanted than spoken.  He does like to mimic our actions now, including signs.  He still loves music and dancing.

 

He seems like such a boy now instead of a baby.  A small child, but a child nonetheless.  He loves to interact with people in public, usually by waving bah-bah.  He uses bah-bah like aloha, coming or going.  The other day he had some more vaccinations at the doctor.  He hates not only the injections but the examinations.  Maybe especially the examinations--a stranger overpowering him.  Poor little thing.  Anyway, after the exam, as the doctor was leaving the room, TheLimey reports that Limelet waved and sobbed, "bah-bah" through his tears, to the doctor as he left.  Pitiful!

 

It seems like there's tons of other stuff that's been going on that I wanted to blog about, but can't remember it now.