Solids, rolling over, and date night drama
Woo. I've been trying to post once a week, but I missed last week. I want to keep some kind of log, even a perfunctory one, of Spawn's changes over time.
Last week, she started blowing raspberries and spent three days sticking her tongue out as far as she could. This week she doesn't seem to be much interested in either of these things.
We also bought a high chair and offered her her first solids, baby oatmeal. She seemed to love her first taste and ate it all with a shockingly small degree of mess for a 4-month-old. The next couple of attempts were much less successful. She spit it out, cried, and once gagged and threw up. I later saw that babies gagging while trying to figure out how to eat is pretty common. Since I wasn't sure she was ready, I decided to stop for a few days and tried again on Monday. That was a huge success. She clearly recognized the oatmeal as food and sucked it off the spoon, demanding more. I'm learning that the issue is, not illogically, how hungry she is. If she's filled up on formula too recently, then she doesn't want to eat solids too. If she's hungry enough to demand formula, she considers solids to be too slow and cries for a bottle. The problem is that the sweet spot of hungry but not frantic is not easy to diagnose. I'm settling on offering her solids 1-2 hours after a formula feeding.
For some silly reason, one thing I have really wanted to do since I learned I was pregnant is make baby food. I cooked a sweet potato in the slow cooker and pureed it, and she seems to like it. It's turning out to be as much fun as it was in my head.
This week has been an adventure in good and bad ways. Spawn is now rolling over from back to front and laughing, though it's not always clear what she finds worthy of laughter. The rolling over is a big deal. She's now mobile after a fashion; she can roll sideways. Suddenly, she loves being on her belly and is working hard to push herself forward with her feet. It won't be long before we have to do some serious baby-proofing. She also seems to be obsessed with rolling over right now. She woke us up several times in the night by rolling in her cradle and cramming her face uncomfortably into the corner while half asleep. Not sure what to do about that; we're going to try putting some bumpers into the sides of her cradle. She already has a bumper at the head of her cradle from a couple of nights where she scooted on her back until she banged her head.
On the down side, she caused a serious Mother's Day date fail. The nanny agreed to watch Spawn for Sunday afternoon so that SB and I could have our first non-baby date since she was born. We decided to go a play and got dressed up. Then when I handed Spawn to the nanny, she started to scream. Not just fuss, but scream like she did in the acid reflux days. We were flabbergasted. We got her calmed down just barely and left for the play. The play itself turned out to be funny in a bad way and shorter than we expected. I called to be sure Spawn was OK afterward, and it turned out she'd been screaming for a lot of the time we'd been gone. And the nanny wasn't exaggerating -- I could hear Spawn screaming in the background. So we rushed home instead of going to dinner. SB started looking for a pediatric urgent care that was open, and we called the pediatrician helpline to try to get some advice on how bad this might be. Spawn cried herself into an exhausted sleep in my arms, and I sent the nanny home. Then, about the time the pediatrician called back, Spawn opened her eyes blearily and smiled at me. She was happy and comfortable for the rest of the evening. WTF? I realize that babies cry, but wow.
Then she was fine on Monday, but on Tuesday (yesterday) spent several hours either crying or sleeping in the nanny's arms after being fine with me in the morning. She cheered up about 1.5 hours before the nanny left and stayed cheerful through the evening. Again today she started screaming within a half hour of me handing her off to the nanny after being fine until noon. The poor nanny is a little unnerved, as am I. As far as I know, Spawn should be too young for separation anxiety, and the nanny is someone she's known since she was 2.5 months old. It seems like the timing has to be mostly coincidence, though it's possible that I have mommy power and can calm Spawn more easily when she gets fussy. I recall that she was a bit of a handful on Monday afternoon, and maybe she'd have really started crying if I wasn't there to calm her.
At any rate, I'm at the office for meetings today. When I left Spawn and the nanny, Spawn was recently up from a nap but seemed stable. When I get back, I'll find out how it went. I hope Spawn didn't make the nanny's life hell.
At the end of this month, Spawn goes into daycare, and I go back to work full-time. I still have mixed feelings about that.
In baby-unrelated news, we went to an all-ages performance of Treasure Island at the Aux Dog theater for our first date night. It turned out to be terrible, but at least in an amusing way. We were surprised. The last performance we went to at Aux Dog was in November, and we really enjoyed it. In this case, the script was a lot of fun, and the sets and props were really well-designed for the style of the show. But almost everyone's acting went clunk, particularly young Jim's, which was kind of necessary to make the performance work. It opened and closed with a song, which was a BIG MISTAKE, since apparently nobody could sing, or at least not together with other people. The collection of rhythms and keys was painful to hear. At least it was bad in a funny way, and we were able to laugh at it. But I think we're going to postpone say that this Mother's Day date night was a trial run and do it again in two weeks, at which point hopefully we can find a better play.
Last week, she started blowing raspberries and spent three days sticking her tongue out as far as she could. This week she doesn't seem to be much interested in either of these things.
We also bought a high chair and offered her her first solids, baby oatmeal. She seemed to love her first taste and ate it all with a shockingly small degree of mess for a 4-month-old. The next couple of attempts were much less successful. She spit it out, cried, and once gagged and threw up. I later saw that babies gagging while trying to figure out how to eat is pretty common. Since I wasn't sure she was ready, I decided to stop for a few days and tried again on Monday. That was a huge success. She clearly recognized the oatmeal as food and sucked it off the spoon, demanding more. I'm learning that the issue is, not illogically, how hungry she is. If she's filled up on formula too recently, then she doesn't want to eat solids too. If she's hungry enough to demand formula, she considers solids to be too slow and cries for a bottle. The problem is that the sweet spot of hungry but not frantic is not easy to diagnose. I'm settling on offering her solids 1-2 hours after a formula feeding.
For some silly reason, one thing I have really wanted to do since I learned I was pregnant is make baby food. I cooked a sweet potato in the slow cooker and pureed it, and she seems to like it. It's turning out to be as much fun as it was in my head.
This week has been an adventure in good and bad ways. Spawn is now rolling over from back to front and laughing, though it's not always clear what she finds worthy of laughter. The rolling over is a big deal. She's now mobile after a fashion; she can roll sideways. Suddenly, she loves being on her belly and is working hard to push herself forward with her feet. It won't be long before we have to do some serious baby-proofing. She also seems to be obsessed with rolling over right now. She woke us up several times in the night by rolling in her cradle and cramming her face uncomfortably into the corner while half asleep. Not sure what to do about that; we're going to try putting some bumpers into the sides of her cradle. She already has a bumper at the head of her cradle from a couple of nights where she scooted on her back until she banged her head.
On the down side, she caused a serious Mother's Day date fail. The nanny agreed to watch Spawn for Sunday afternoon so that SB and I could have our first non-baby date since she was born. We decided to go a play and got dressed up. Then when I handed Spawn to the nanny, she started to scream. Not just fuss, but scream like she did in the acid reflux days. We were flabbergasted. We got her calmed down just barely and left for the play. The play itself turned out to be funny in a bad way and shorter than we expected. I called to be sure Spawn was OK afterward, and it turned out she'd been screaming for a lot of the time we'd been gone. And the nanny wasn't exaggerating -- I could hear Spawn screaming in the background. So we rushed home instead of going to dinner. SB started looking for a pediatric urgent care that was open, and we called the pediatrician helpline to try to get some advice on how bad this might be. Spawn cried herself into an exhausted sleep in my arms, and I sent the nanny home. Then, about the time the pediatrician called back, Spawn opened her eyes blearily and smiled at me. She was happy and comfortable for the rest of the evening. WTF? I realize that babies cry, but wow.
Then she was fine on Monday, but on Tuesday (yesterday) spent several hours either crying or sleeping in the nanny's arms after being fine with me in the morning. She cheered up about 1.5 hours before the nanny left and stayed cheerful through the evening. Again today she started screaming within a half hour of me handing her off to the nanny after being fine until noon. The poor nanny is a little unnerved, as am I. As far as I know, Spawn should be too young for separation anxiety, and the nanny is someone she's known since she was 2.5 months old. It seems like the timing has to be mostly coincidence, though it's possible that I have mommy power and can calm Spawn more easily when she gets fussy. I recall that she was a bit of a handful on Monday afternoon, and maybe she'd have really started crying if I wasn't there to calm her.
At any rate, I'm at the office for meetings today. When I left Spawn and the nanny, Spawn was recently up from a nap but seemed stable. When I get back, I'll find out how it went. I hope Spawn didn't make the nanny's life hell.
At the end of this month, Spawn goes into daycare, and I go back to work full-time. I still have mixed feelings about that.
In baby-unrelated news, we went to an all-ages performance of Treasure Island at the Aux Dog theater for our first date night. It turned out to be terrible, but at least in an amusing way. We were surprised. The last performance we went to at Aux Dog was in November, and we really enjoyed it. In this case, the script was a lot of fun, and the sets and props were really well-designed for the style of the show. But almost everyone's acting went clunk, particularly young Jim's, which was kind of necessary to make the performance work. It opened and closed with a song, which was a BIG MISTAKE, since apparently nobody could sing, or at least not together with other people. The collection of rhythms and keys was painful to hear. At least it was bad in a funny way, and we were able to laugh at it. But I think we're going to postpone say that this Mother's Day date night was a trial run and do it again in two weeks, at which point hopefully we can find a better play.