11 months of Macey J & Camden's first movie

Miss Macey Jean,

You are one month away from being an entire year old. It's bittersweet, yes, but you know what? I absolutely love this age. You are such a fun girl-- so full of life, joy, and happiness. You're an entertainer-- you love to make funny faces and sounds and then look around the room to see who's laughing at you (you get that from your daddy). You love everything with the exception of diaper and clothes changes (because that requires you to be still and that's entirely unacceptable) and sleeping at night. You're easygoing, friendly, and just completely pleasant. I adore you, my sweet girl.

And here's a little bit more about you at 11 months:

• You might possibly be trying to drop a nap. I'm not really sure about this one. Some days, you still take 2 naps like a champ; other days, you fight your afternoon nap like crazy.
• You're eating more and more table foods- yay! You had your first ever donut recently and I'm pretty sure you would've polished off the entire thing if I had let you.
• However, you're still weighing in at less than 16 lbs! You're a peanut.
• You are finally mastering the sippy cup. For the longest time, you would just chew on the spout instead of sucking from it. Over the past couple of days, you've started to get the hang of it.
• You are taking 5-6 steps unassisted!!! I'm pretty certain you'll officially be a walker by your first birthday, if not sooner.
• You point to everything. It's so precious-- it's like you want to share with us what's on your mind. If I'm holding you, you'll point to whatever catches your eye and then make a sound like, "eh?" It's as though you're asking me to explain to you what you're pointing to.
• You're very vocal. In addition to babbling your mamas, babas, dadas, gagas, and nanas, you now say "boo" for boobie, and have started to mimic "bye bye" and "ball".
• You love to blow raspberries. This isn't new and I can't believe I haven't mentioned it in any of your past updates because it's so very you. You blow raspberries at people and then laugh when they do it back at you-- over and over again.
• You climb everything. You're a little monkey. I can't count how many times a day I have to pull you down from the outside of the stairs, or the top of a chair, or the TV stand. I have a feeling you'll be enrolled in gymnastics by age 3.

Now, we count down the days until your first birthday. I'm so very thankful for the past 11 months with you and I'm so excited to continue watching you grow into the sweet, feisty, and loving girl you're becoming.

I love you so much,
Mommy

My big girl.

 

The aforementioned raspberry blowing...

 

...and the climbing. She's a stunt woman.

****************************************************************

In other totally unrelated but equally adorable news, my big boy went to see his first movie with Daddy today! Macey and I took a road trip to go see some relatives in Virginia and Camden stayed behind to have a date with Matt. They went to see Despicable Me 2 and it was a big hit. Camden sat through the entire movie like a pro and finished off almost an entire bag of popcorn that was just about as big as he was. I don't know why, but this picture completely melts my heart. It just shows what a handsome, grown up little guy he is.

Camden-isims (and a small update)

Camden has said a couple of things this week that could not (in my opinion) go without documenting. So, here goes:

The other day, Camden was walking around the family room tugging at his superhero undies. I asked him if something was bothering him and he responded simply, "Yeah. My undies are peeking in my butt crack." Is three years old too young to introduce the term 'wedgie'?

Yesterday, we were riding in the car and Camden called out to me from the back seat in a rather serious tone. "Mommy," he said solemnly, "If I didn't have a face, my nose would fall off." Very true, son, very true.

***

And because I know you've all been sitting on the edge of your seats waiting for an update to my Tick Drama (really? You haven't been??), here's the news: I never did take the doxycycline prescribed to me and waited patiently for my lab results to come in. Friday afternoon (one week later) rolled around and still no results. Just after I called my doctor's office to check in, I got a call from the pharmacy, telling me my prescription was ready to be picked up. Umm-- what prescription?! That's exactly the question I asked the pharmacist, who then explained to me that my doctor had just called in a prescription for Amoxicillin. Still completely confused, I thanked the pharmacist and followed up once again with my doctor. This time, the nurse who took my call informed me that they had, in fact, just received my lab results and I tested positive for Lyme. Kind of. Apparently the testing for Lyme involves two parts-- an ELISA test and a Western Blot test. The ELISA test is highly sensitive and can generate some false positives, so if you test positive on the ELISA, those results need to be confirmed with a Western Blot test. The WB test is considered to be definitive-- the final answer. So, I tested positive on the ELISA but negative on the Western Blot. Because nothing can ever be simple, right? Oh well- my doctor still wants to treat me as though I do have Lyme (and who knows? Maybe I do!) and I'm going to roll with it this time since Amoxicillin is compatible with breastfeeding.

One more small update: Macey is officially night weaned! I know, I know-- she's 10 months old and most babies Macey's age were night weaned a long time ago. But Macey was a co-sleeping, comfort nursing baby (just like her brother!), so night weaning was no small feat. It started when I was sick last week and just couldn't care for her overnight. My mom stayed with us a couple of nights and handled all of Macey's night wakings. Since she's not lactating, she couldn't handle the night wakings the way I normally did. That got the night weaning ball rolling-- then I just had to stick with it. Let me tell you: when it's 3am and your baby has been awake for 2 hours and you know that if you just stuck a boob in her mouth, she'd go right back to sleep? It's really, exceedingly difficult not to succumb to that kind of pressure. But I haven't and I have a night weaned baby to show for it. Hopefully soon I will have a Sleeping Through The Night Baby to show for it. One can dream, right?

When I almost stopped breastfeeding.

Hmm...where do I begin in describing the last few days to you? If I had to choose an adjective to describe the last handful of days, it would be awful. Exhausting, emotionally draining, and just flat out bad were also strong contenders in the choose-an-adjective-for-my-weekend game.

Let me start at the beginning, I suppose. On Thursday night, I started feeling not so hot-- achy, and just completely worn down. I could feel that one of my milk ducts was a little clogged, so I just attributed my feeling a little 'off' to the annoying duct. By the time I woke up on Friday morning, I knew my clogged duct theory was wrong-- I felt downright sick. After confirming that I had a fever, I just laid in my bed, waiting on the kids to wake up and wondering how on earth I was going to manage caring for a 3-year-old and a 10-month-old in my condition. While I was lying there, a thought crossed my mind: I had been bitten by a tick at my parents' lake house about a month before and still had a little rash around the area the tick had been attached. Hmm. Better make a doctor's appointment, I decided, just to confirm that whatever illness I had going on wasn't related to that tick bite. Even as I made my decision, I wasn't truly worried; I figured I had a run-of-the-mill virus, but just wanted to be on the safe side since Lyme Disease isn't something to mess around with.

My mom came into town to watch the kids so I could head to the doctor that afternoon. As soon as the doctor took one look at me upon walking into the exam room, she said, "You look this bad and you were bitten by a tick about a month ago?" When I confirmed those details with her, she checked my temperature (which was sky high by then) and then examined the bite spot. "I'm starting you on antibiotics right away," she said firmly, "For both Lyme Disease and Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever. We'll still do labs, of course, but I don't want to wait to get the results back before you start your medicine. These illnesses can be very grave if not treated right away." Great, I thought to myself, Just give me my prescription and let me get out of here so I can go home and pass out on the couch.

She told me the name of the medication she was prescribing for me-- doxycycline-- and as an afterthought, I muttered, "I'm breastfeeding. That's safe for breastfeeding, right?" She checked for me and said, "Actually, it's not." She suggested that I just pump and dump for two weeks (the course of the antibiotic) and just bottle feed some previously pumped milk or formula in the meantime. Simple, right? Sure, except for the small fact that Macey flat out refuses a bottle. I told her this little detail, and she did her best to try to find another antibiotic that would be effective against both Lyme and RMSF that was also safe for breastfeeding. Guess what? No such antibiotic exists. She sat across from me and said, "You know, sometimes what's best for the mom's health is what's best for the baby. You need this medicine."

I had blood drawn, and then left the office. I made it to my car before I completely broke down. I called my sister, sobbing "I can't breastfeed anymore! I have to start this medicine that's not safe for breastfeeding!" Now, I know that Macey is 10 and a half months old. I had planned on beginning to wean her at 12 months old. I do realize that's only a month and a half early, which shouldn't seem like the end of the world. But being forced to stop breastfeeding unexpectedly one day and having no control over the decision? Well, that was a little traumatic for me. And I just knew how traumatic it would be for Macey, who is a boob girl through and through. Also, though I had planned on beginning to wean at 12 months old, I had planned on it being a gradual process, cutting out one feeding every few days in order to make the transition as gentle as possible on both of us. Now, it seemed I had no choice but to stop breastfeeding cold turkey.

A thought occurred to me as my sister tried to calm me down. Sometimes doctors aren't exactly up-to-date on the latest breastfeeding research. I asked Lauren (my sister) to look up the La Leche League for me and see if she could get in touch with one of their lactation consultants for a second opinion. Lauren, probably thankful for a task other than listening to me cry into the phone, readily agreed and got to work. Meanwhile, I headed to CVS to pick up my prescription. While there, I decided to ask the pharmacist her opinion as well. Except I only got out about half of my question--"My...doctor told me....that I...have...to stop....breastfeeding...."-- before I was sobbing again. Now, I am not normally a public crier, but the combination of a ridiculously high fever, being forced to stop nursing, and the pharmacist's understanding eyes just set me right over the edge. I'm sure I was quite the spectacle to the other customers milling around but I didn't even care. Unfortunately, the pharmacist confirmed what my doctor had already told me-- no more breastfeeding for me. The medication, she said gently, could inhibit bone growth in an infant.

Feeling defeated, I left the pharmacy and headed home. On the way, I talked to my sister who had, in fact, gotten in touch with an LLL rep over the phone. This rep told her that I should feel comfortable breastfeeding on doxycycline, as long as I wasn't planning on taking the medication long term. I started to feel a glimmer of hope, and I put in a call to Macey's pediatrician to get yet another opinion. So far, the jury looked like this: Doctor & Pharmacist: No more breastfeeding! LLL Rep: Keep Breastfeeding! I needed one more opinion. In the meantime, my mom headed out to the store to pick up bottles and formula. Now, I have never bottle fed either of my children, so I know nothing about bottles, nipples, formula-- none of it. I felt like a brand new mom all over again. I desperately sought out pointers from bottle feeding moms and passed along all info to my mom on her "Operation: Bottle Feed" mission. When she returned home about an hour later, I attempted Macey's first bottle (with pumped breastmilk). It was a gigantic failure. She scoffed at the bottle before pushing it away angrily each time it got near her mouth. My mom tried feeding her too, thinking she might just be refusing the bottle from me since she knows I have her favorite milk source attached to my body. No dice. The bottle got a big old smack again. Around this time, the pediatrician's nurse called me back to tell me that my pediatrician was joining Team No More Breastfeeding.

It was time for me to make a decision. After looking up statistics for how common tick borne illnesses are in my state (they're not common) and reviewing my symptoms (some matched up, some key symptoms were missing), I decided that I was going to wait until my blood work came back before beginning the antibiotic. I know, I know-- my doctor advised against this. But the thought that I might put Macey through such a traumatic experience for absolutely no reason if my sickness turned out to be nothing more than a common virus was really hard to swallow. I promised myself, of course, that I'd start the medication right away if I took a turn for the worse. Otherwise, I'd wait it out and keep breastfeeding.

It's been four days now and I still don't have my bloodwork results back. But I'm feeling well again and Camden also got sick a couple of days ago. Obviously, he didn't catch a tick borne disease from me, so I feel pretty confident that what I had all along was simply a virus. I'm feeling very thankful for my decision to wait it out and stick to breastfeeding. I have no doubt that Macey's thankful too. She decided to say her first real word over the weekend-- "boo" (for boobie) when she's ready to nurse. Pretty timely, right?

And we're back!

Actually, I don't know that I even mentioned that we were leaving for a week. But we did and now we're home and while I love the beach and vacations are always nice, returning home is such a good feeling too.

We headed a few hours east to the NC coast last week with my parents, my brother, and my sister & her family. This was Macey's first trip to the beach and Camden's third trip. Camden is at a great age for the beach now-- he loved the ocean and would spend a few hours outside each day. It was surprising how well he did in the water actually, not even caring when waves crashed over his head and splashed water onto his face. His newfound bravery in the water was both awesome and nerve-racking to see. Besides the ocean, the highlight of the trip for Camden was that he got to spend an entire week living in the same house as his 3 cousins. It was a little bittersweet for me to witness how little he needed (wanted?) me during this trip; he was much too busy following Jacob, Alex, and Will around the house. My little guy is growing up. The only negative related to Camden during the trip was that he decided to jump headlong into a poop withholding regression on our second night there. I don't know if it was the change in his routine and scenery or what, but it was like we were back in the throes of our worst withholding days, complete with screaming bloody murder on the potty. I'm praying that we're past that now that we're back in the comfort of our home and he has some normalcy again. Fingers crossed.

My easygoing Macey had no problems adjusting to her new surroundings at the beach. A little extrovert at heart, she enjoyed waving to and smiling at all of the extra faces in the house. Her first outing on the beach was a success. After she ate two fistfuls of sand, I realized that if I just stuck her paci in her mouth, the sand became much less tempting to her. She crawled everywhere at turbo speed and often made a beeline straight for the ocean. Then, on Wednesday afternoon as we were getting ready for lunch, I laid Macey down on the floor to change her diaper. As I pulled off her wet diaper, Camden tripped and fell-- right onto Macey's head. Macey was lying on a rug covering the hard floor when this happened, but the rug was made out of some very brittle material-- it was almost like it was supposed to be an outdoor rug. Anyway, when Camden landed on her head, Macey's cheek and side of her face were smashed against this uncomfortable rug. They both cried pretty hard when it happened, but I figured it was out of being startled more than anything else. However, when Macey still hadn't calmed down about 10 minutes later and cried harder any time I tried to set her down, I knew something was wrong. Macey is super laid back, remember? And she was being anything but easygoing--  she was clinging to my chest as tightly as she could, laying her head on my shoulder, and whimpering. I also noticed that she was squinting her right eye quite a bit. After much deliberation, my mom and I decided that we'd better take her to an urgent care to be on the safe side. Fast forward an hour of torturous eye numbing and eye staining later, and we learned that Macey had suffered a corneal abrasion during her accident with Camden. My poor little girl had a decent sized cut across her eyeball. Couple her eye injury with a fever she developed later that day (I'm still unsure if the two were somehow related?) and she was a pretty uncomfortable girl. Thanks to some Motrin, eye drops, and sleep, she rebounded quickly and was back in good spirits the next morning. That's my Macey-- taking everything in stride.

Now, time for some pictures, but first I have to give credit where credit is due. Despite my ridiculously meticulous Type A "What to pack for the beach" list, I still somehow managed to forget my camera. A huge thank you to my sister for taking the time to capture memories for my family too. It would've been a shame to have this trip go undocumented. Thanks, Lauren!

 

Cousins in tie dye.

This picture is actually courtesy of my father-in-law, who (along with my MIL) visited us at the beach for the day on the 4th of July.

 

 My sweet kids.

 

Baby in a bucket.

 

A little happy to be on the beach.

Watching fireworks on the beach.

 

 

In love with the ocean.

 

Making a beeline for the water, as per usual.

 

Happy Fourth!

 

The BFFs.

 

I just love them.

 

And a couple of my iPhone (aka: much less fancy) pics:

 

Hammock date with my little man.

 Self portrait.

 

 Macey enjoying a Fourth of July cupcake.

And just because my little bro rarely makes an appearance on my blog or Facebook or anywhere on the internet for that matter.

 

10 months? No way!

I'm sitting here in complete disbelief that it's time for Macey's 10 month update. Last year at this time, I was enormously pregnant and filled with anticipation. I was so excited to meet my daughter, but so nervous about the ways in which my life was about to change. And I'll be totally honest: the transition from one to two kids isn't a cakewalk, especially in the earliest days and weeks. Now, I can't imagine it any other way. Of course, there are the daily spats with her brother now that she's mobile and must have everything he has in his hand. And sometimes I swear I might rip my hair out if I hear "MACEY! You always STEAL EVERYTHING!!!!" one more time in any given hour. But sibling disagreements aside, this little girl has changed our family in the best possible ways. It's hard to capture in words just how joyful and full of life and happiness Macey is every single day. She really does light up a room with her gummy smile and friendly wave.

So, here's you, Macey Jean, at 10 months old:

• You nap 2x a day; each nap averages 1.5-2 hours.
• Your night sleep is so terrible that I don't even want to go into detail about it here. We'll save that for a sleep training post coming soon.
• You finally have teeth! Your two bottom teeth to be exact, and they are slightly crooked and perfectly adorable.
• You babble: mama, dada, baba, nana. It seems that you might be starting to use 'mama' and 'dada' correctly some of the time, but who knows at this age.
• You wave. Constantly, and to everyone. Your daddy gets home from work & you wave frantically to him. Then he walks out of the room to change his clothes and gets the same enthusiastic wave when he returns 2 minutes later. You also wave to strangers in the store. I can't count the number of times that I have seen a stranger smiling and waving and looked down at you to see you offering them your best gummy grin. You're a charming girl.
• At your 9 month check-up (which was only a week ago), you weighed in at 15 lbs, 11oz. You're in the 10th %ile for weight and the 20th %ile for height.
• You still nurse every 3-4 hours. You also eat solids (purees) 3 times a day and snacks in between. I plan to start weaning you at a year old.
• Table food is still kind of hit or miss, but your favorites are peas (your absolute favorite, hands down-- you get excited just looking at them when I'm getting your plate ready), mac & cheese, graham crackers, pancakes, puffs, cheerios, and bread. You tolerate yogurt and avocado too.
• Sippy cup is still a work in progress but I make sure to offer it at each meal so you'll get the hang of it.
• You crawl, pull up, and cruise like a champ.
• You love to dance.
• You walk with the assistance of a push toy!
• You have finally discovered the dog food bowl and the toilet. I'm not so happy about these developments.
• You also continue to put every.single.thing in your mouth, which resulted in a quite traumatic experience a couple of weeks ago. I was getting a gift bag out of the hall closet where I keep all of my holiday decorations. In the 5 seconds (seriously, 5 seconds tops) it took me to get that gift bag out, you grabbed a Christmas ornament, dropped it so that a few tiny pieces broke off, and then you shoved a couple of those (very thin glass) pieces into your mouth. As you can imagine, I freaked. I did a quick finger sweep of your mouth and recovered 3 small pieces. But I was terrified that you might've swallowed a piece so I called your pediatrician (after calling your daddy and your Nan in tears). The pediatrician assured me that glass is actually very easily digestible (who knew?) and just to watch your next couple of poops to make sure there was no blood. Thankfully, there wasn't any, so I'm pretty certain you didn't swallow any ornament pieces. Still-- such a traumatic day for me! I will celebrate when you stop popping everything straight into your mouth.
• You're still as happy, easygoing, and loving as ever!

We adore you, Macey. You are such a blessing in all of our lives.

Love,

Mommy

I picked her up from her nap one afternoon just like this: a paci in her mouth, and one in each hand.

 

Her permanent expression.

 

This was taken about 10 minutes post ornament eating episode. Smiling, happy, waving-- typical Macey. You would never know she had just taken a bite of glass.

My puppy...I mean, daughter. See-- everything must go in the mouth.  Always.