I’m here!

I swear I really am around, I just don’t know where my time goes anymore!

Eleanor is growing and growing and growing. She’s getting huge. Even her dinky little feet aren’t so dinky anymore. : ( She’s also learning new words at an amazing rate, and strings two or even three together pretty regularly. Usually it’s just something simple along the lines of “more please” (or “mow pea”). Too cute!

She’s become obsessed with spoons and other kitchen implements, so we’ve decided to get her a play kitchen for Christmas. In the meantime I gave her one of my old pots and a couple wooden spoons to play with, and she has a grand time! She’ll also walk around the house with a “purse” over her arm (really the little box with a handle that came with her sorting blocks), saying bye-bye to you.

It’s not all fun and games though, of course. She’s also becoming more bossy and physical when upset. Out of nowhere she started biting. She doesn’t do it often, but still. We have no idea where she picked it up! None of the other kids she sees on a regular basis has done something like that around her, and she didn’t see it on TV that I know of. It’s odd.

She’s still nursing, but is down to just once a day. I’m really worried she’s going to decide to wean herself before the cold and flu season is over, and that makes me nervous. I had finally wrapped my head around nursing her to 2-2.5 years just a few months ago, only to find out she may not want to nurse that long! It’s such an odd concept that she could so easily negate something that I decided for her benefit. I suppose this is the first in a long line of decisions that will be taken away from me, as she gets older. It’s pretty bittersweet.

Funny note

After writing yesterday that it hadn’t rained here in over 20 days, it’s been raining all day today. Figures!

Doc appt

Eleanor had her 15 month appt on Monday. She now weighs 19lb 13oz and is 30″ tall. So still a skinny-mini! We weren’t able to see her normal doc because of scheduling conflicts, and the doc we were supposed to see was delivering a baby, so we saw a pediatric nurse instead. I actually really liked her! It was a good appt.

Then Eleanor had to get shots. Apparently there’s still a nationwide shortage of HIB, and since she’s already had the first three and is no longer an infant she isn’t high priority for it anymore. So she just got Pc (meningitis). I was hoping that would mean she’d have little if any reaction, but no: she has been one cranky baby the last few days! Ugh. Today she was more her normal self, so hopefully tomorrow she’ll be completely back to normal. Someone had told me before that the reactions get worse with each shot, so I guess I should have expected her fourth Pc shot to be bad. She’s always reacted a bit to that one, though I never knew for sure if it was the Pc or HIB shot. Guess I do now!

Other than that, life’s going well. Enjoying the crazy warm weather here lately. It’s been over 20 days without rain, which in Seattle is unheard of in June. My grass isn’t happy about it, though. Our home improvement project still isn’t done since it seems like something keeps coming up every single weekend. My brother just graduated from high school (woo-hoo!), my SIL/BIL needed help moving, my MIL did something funky to her knee and can’t walk much so we’ve been down at her place helping out a bunch, etc. etc. It’s nice having things to do I suppose, and I like spending time with family, but I’m really hoping we can finish this project soon.

OK, time to watch Burn Notice!

New breastfeeding blinkie

Finally got around to making a 13 month breastfeeding milestone blinkie.  : )  It’s on the Graphics page.

Good-bye, Jim

My father-in-law passed away on Sunday, February 8th, 2009, at 2am, just twelve days after being diagnosed with advanced pancreatic cancer.  He was in his own home and surrounded by his loving family when he passed, though we don’t know how aware he was of any of us at the last.  We spent the time recounting memories, and I think  it was the best last hours we could have given him.

Rest in peace, Jim.  You will be missed terribly.

New page and more shots

I just put up a new page, of Eleanor’s stats. It has her measurements and milestones. It’s nice for me to have a place to write this out, and I figure for those of you who have babies her age or will be having your babies soon, it’ll be useful to see what another baby was doing when.

I completely forgot to mention that she laughed definitely for the first time on Monday! It was this little coughing, barking laugh, and was so cute! She’s tried to laugh before and made sounds that were laugh-like, but this was very clear.

We took her in on Tuesday for her second set of shots. She got more upset this time, but we think it’s because it was two shots instead of one shot and one oral vaccine. She seemingly forgot all about it within a minute though, so obviously it wasn’t too bad! We gave her Tylenol before and one more dose that evening, and yesterday we ended up giving it to her three times. I don’t know if she was uncomfortable because of the shots or teething, but probably both. I’m hoping she won’t need any today, but we’ll see. She’s been a little fussier than usual, but I’m just chalking it up to teething. I really can’t wait for these teeth to pop! I’m not looking forward to nursing a babe with teeth, but at this point I kinda don’t care. ; )

New pics are up!

I finally got the last three weeks’ worth of pics onto my comp and uploaded a few.  They’re on the pictures page.  : )