Molars

Seriously, these 2 year molars need to make an appearance soon.  We have to be going on 5 months of this crap with no results.  I think we're getting close, because she is jamming her fingers into the back corners of her mouth and chomping on them with a lot more enthusiasm than she has in a while.  In the meantime, she's been a hot freaking mess, and driving me absolutely bonkers.

Teething Hell

One of the advantages of talking to other moms who have babies around the same age as Judith (her actual age, that is) is hearing about all of the milestones/other things they go through with their little ones - it gives me some perspective for what we will be in for in the coming months.  When so many of my friends talked about how bad the 1 year molars are, I kind of blew it off and thought, "Well, it can't be any worse than the rest of the teeth!"  I know we've been lucky so far, and Judith is a pretty good teether - minor fussiness, generally good eating habits, no major runny noses, etc.

Holy crap, how naive could I be?!  The last week has been a teething nightmare.  Judith's been working on these molars for 6 months.  6 MONTHS!  She's been worse than a beaver, chewing on everything she could get her hands on.  Sunday she was a little fussy, but nothing too serious.  Monday she was a complete bear.  I thought it was the heat until I decided to risk losing my finger and felt her gums.  Success!  She finally cut her first molar!  I realized then that her fussiness was due to that elusive molar making it's appearance in the lineup of her teeth.  A further investigation discovered that 2 more molars should be making an appearance very soon, as there were 2 very hard, pointy knots on her lower gum line, 1 on each side.

4 days later, and we're still waiting for something to happen.  It can't happen soon enough - last night she refused to go to sleep until 10, and that was only after allowing the tylenol to kick in (I generally don't give her anything for her teething pain, as I don't want her body to get too adjusted to it, but she was so miserable that I figured, "What the hell, it's not going to hurt anything!").  Her teeth have always emerged in sets of 2 or 3, so I'm not surprised that these particular teeth are queuing up.  But these suckers are so hard to come through, and I know she's miserable and cranky because of it.

I really want my happy, pleasant toddler back.

Ouch Update (haha)

Our biting situation is getting a bit better.  I'm working on creating an arsenal of supplies to keep handy for entertainment purposes (apparently Anderson Cooper isn't entertainment enough during those morning CPT times), so we'll see what they can do to help turn things around.  Videos and whatnot will probably become therapy treats around here very quickly.

Judith made an attempt to bite my dad last Thursday when he did her CPT (his work schedule finally worked out so I could actually accept one of the teaching days I got called for), but he was able to avoid those little razors.  She started to go after my arm once on Friday, but for some reason stopped.  And after seeing what I saw this afternoon, I may have a reasoning for a small part of the problem: tooth #8 is queued up and ready to rupture through the gums very, very soon.  We're talking a full-blown pit where that sucker will make it's appearance within the next 24-36 hours (based off of her pattern from when I actually notice the pit).  And as a side note, if you never noticed this phenomenon while your child is teething, it's kind of freaky to see.  There's nothing more bizarre than seeing a small hole in your child's gum, then seeing the first portions of a tooth poking through a day later.

Anyway, we currently have 8 small bottles of bubbles that were purchased yesterday at Wal-Mart (4 packs of which will make their way to my parents' house so they have some there), and I want to try using those as an extra treat - the nurses at the CF Clinic will sometimes use bubbles to distract Judith when they're taking her vitals, and she really seemed to enjoy them.  Fingers crossed that the novelty doesn't wear off too quickly, but if she's anything like me that novelty will never wear off.

We'll see how this goes - with any luck, she'll keep her interest in these new things long enough to give me time to think of some backups when stuff becomes stale.

It's A Christmas Eve Update!

I know I haven't been around much in the last week.  Things have been a little busy with rehearsals and getting things ready for Christmas.  My birthday was on Sunday, and I've been enjoying my gifts!  I got a new winter coat from my parents, and bought a new camera lens plus all 7 Harry Potter books with the money from my in-laws (well, part of that was Christmas money too, so I treated myself early!).  So between taking pictures with my new lens, taking care of Judith and the dogs, and burying my nose in books, I lost track of time and forgot to post!

I have to say that I've been enjoying the Harry Potter books immensely!  Believe it or not, I never read them before now (I was kind of bucking the trend for quite a while), and in retrospect that was one of the dumbest things I've done.  Thanks to many of my awesome mommy friends constantly talking about the books and movies, I finally caved and began reading them.  I'm hooked!  I'm getting ready to start the 4th book, and can't wait to get the movies with the rest of my birthday money!  I'm still kicking myself a bit for not reading these sooner (I had a major "WTF self?!" moment after reading the first chapter in book 1), but I'm glad that I'm remedying the error of my ways now!  Hopefully once Judith gets older, she'll decide to read the books herself, and will enjoy them as much as I am enjoying them!

One source of frustration this week has been with the sippy cup.  When Judith was sick last week, we didn't force the sippy on her as much and just gave her the bottle - that way she could use her energy to fight off the virus rather than burn the calories fussing about the sippy.  As a result, we had some minor regression.  So this week I was working with her to get her back to where she was.  She was only taking maybe an ounce or 2 at a time from the straw sippy, and I kept second-guessing our decision to keep working on transitioning/dropping bottles (as a side note, it's not the sucking part that she's having problems with - she can get liquid through the straw fine.  It's the intake that was concerning me).  For some odd reason, I decided to give the soft spout sippy another try, and the little stinker took to that right away!  The past couple of days, she's downed at least 2-3 ounces with each meal.  Talk about easing up on the frustration!  I'm thrilled that she likes it, and while shopping with my mom yesterday we picked up 2 more cups - 10 oz size this time, so we can fit an entire can of Pediasure in it.

We also had a surprise this week: remember when I mentioned before about Judith getting ready to cut one of her upper teeth?  The one right beside the upper front left tooth?  Well, it cut through, and the surprise part is the tooth in the same spot, but on the right side also cut at the same time!  When I felt/looked at her gums, that tooth definitely did not feel like it was anywhere close to emerging, but after a quick swipe I noticed it was there!  Her total tooth count is 5, and the final upper front tooth feels like it will come through in the next week or 2.

I am getting excited for tomorrow!  I know Judith probably won't be super enthusiastic about Christmas this year, but I can't wait to see her open her presents!  This year is a far cry from Christmas last year, and John & I are grateful that we can celebrate Christmas at home with our beautiful little girl.


John, Judith, Buster, Lady, & I would like to wish all of you a very Merry Christmas and a joyous holiday season!

T-Minus 6 Days

It's officially less than a week until Judith is 1.  Less than a week before I no longer have a baby, but a toddler.

Things have been insane around here since Thanksgiving.  We had a great holiday - the Wednesday before we spent the night at my parents' house, and went to church in the evening.  My "other" church hosted the conference-turned-semi-community service, and I played with the brass group (that's the 2nd time in about a month that my trombone has been played, and it's still trying to figure out what hit it - thank goodness it didn't shrivel up once it saw the light of day!).  Thursday John, Judith, & I drove to see John's parents and one of his brothers, and we had breakfast with them.  Turkey dinner was later that day, with my parents and grandmother.

Judith had her first tastes of some Thanksgiving foods, minus the turkey; she doesn't handle meats well, and I'm honestly waiting until she has more teeth (I'd ideally like to hold off until she has molars, based off of some good advice I was given a while back) before really trying meats with her.  Despite the meatless meal, Judith really enjoyed herself!  Mashed potatoes were an especially big hit:

We even put some gravy on them, figuring it would be a good high-calorie option for her.  She didn't seem to be a big fan.  Silly kid.

The rest of the weekend was spent shopping and preparing some things for Judith's upcoming birthday and party.  We have our paper goods & decorations, and yesterday I finished her pictures for our photo wall.  I feel a thousand times better knowing this is done!  I need to find my Pampered Chef easy decorator and wash it so it's ready to go for cupcake decoration, and there are a few small loose ends that we'll need to take care of, but otherwise we're in good shape!


We have another CF Clinic appointment, and it will be the first one with Judith's new doctor.  I have a big list of questions I'm taking with me this time, and hopefully we can get some answers.  I'm so curious to see how long she is, and how much she weighs!  Next week she'll have her 1 year well-baby visit with her regular pediatrician, and that means shots.  I'm seriously contemplating delaying one of them until her 15 month appointment since she's getting her Synagis injections at this appointment as well - I don't want to stick her too many times, and I'm wary of overloading her system too much.  Load these appointments on top of crazy rehearsal schedules to get ready for building dedication at my "other" church, PT changes (since we'll be at clinic during her normal therapy time), and general holiday preparations, I may go nuts.

I am excited that Judith has a new tooth!  Her upper front left tooth made an appearance over the holiday, and it's steadily working its way through her gum.  It'll be a while before it's fully in, but at least it cut through.  She's still teething like crazy though, and there are at least 2-3 other teeth lined up, preparing to come out.  I'm not surprised that she's cutting a bunch at once, but she's also been super cranky because of it - these teeth had better come out quickly for everyone's sake!

We have teeth!

How exciting!  Judith's 2 bottom teeth cut through a couple weeks ago, but I waited to say anything until they were much more visible.  I'm still trying to get a picture of them though - any time you stick your finger in there to check them out she either gnaws on it or sticks her tongue out to taste it.

As soon as I get a picture, I promise I'll post it!