9 Month Appointment and Sophie the Giraffe...

It was Lucy's 9 month appointment yesterday and as luck would have it both Rob and I had the day off! Hurray! This was particularly nice because we started seeing a different pediatrician at the practice that we go to and he had not met her yet. I absolutely adore her so I was excited for him to get to meet her in person.

We got to the appointment and got Miss Lucy Lou stripped down for the stats. At Lucy's 6 month appointment she was in the 75% for everything-- length, weigh and head circumference so I was expecting her to be around that this time around as well. The nurse put her on the scale, looked at the chart and frowned. She asked me to put her back on. Then she filled out the piece of paper with all her of managements and said she wanted to go get the Doctor because it seemed that Lucy had some drastic weight loss since her last appointment. Rob was holding the paper, but me being the nervous sort of person I am immediately snatched it to see what she was looking at. She was in the 10th percentile for weight, TENTH from SEVENTY FIFTH. I looked at Rob with my mouth hanging open. Am I blind? Is my baby wasting away and I don't even notice? Is this my fault with my yo-yo-ing supply issues? Does she look like a lollipop and I don't even know it?

Seconds later, before I had time to totally freak out and blame myself for my clearly starving baby, the nurse bustled back in full of apologies! She had been using the percentage chart for a 12 month old baby instead of a 9 month old. Lucy was actually in the 50th percentile which is completely perfect and normal as very active babies do tend start to slim down a little at this age and Lucy is most definitely one active baby. PHEW! What a relief! Lucy is 18 lbs 9 ounces, 28 inches long and ok, I admit, I stopped listening on the head circumference, to me her head looks lovely and that's all that matters.

The doctor had nothing but wonderful things to say about Lucy. How friendly she was, how active, how much eye contact she was giving and how smart she was (Lucy knows to point to a person's nose when we say "Lucy where is her nose?" and so we showed that off a little bit). Everything looked wonderful.

Since Lucy had the sniffles we didn't do any vaccines this time around but we are going back to a check on her iron levels in a month (which are a tiny bit low, which means more iron fortified cereal for Lucy, lucky she loves her HappyBellies) so we'll be getting a flu shot then. Our clinic is one of the few clinics that offer the no-mercury flu shots, so I'm relieved for that as I've never personally had the flu shot and have always been wary of unnecessary vaccines, but the doctor assured me that this one was as safe as they get and I trust her judgment. That is one of the things I love about her, she's not pushy, just gives you all the facts for you to make the decision.

The doctor's office is located in a really cute, funky part of Portland with fun cafes, restaurants and shops to wander around so after we were done we walked down the street to a tiny coffee shop called Lovecup and had a delish panini sandwich and soup lunch. We then made a quick stop by Mother Nature's cloth diapering store where I picked up some of the much heralded Charlie's Soap, some wool Imse Vimse diaper covers and, most excitingly, Sophie the Giraffe!

Let me tell you a little about Sophie. She's made of soft , 100% natural rubber from the Heva tree, completely phthalate free. She's painted with totally safe food grade paint. She squeaks when squeezed and the soft rubber is great for teething. She's darn cute and Lucy just LOVES her. Sure, she looks (and sounds) like a dog toy, but she's so much more than that...I can tell by the way Lucy squeals whenever I bring her Sophie. Other toys she discards within minutes, obviously they are much more fun to throw than to play with, but she hangs on to Sophie and just cannot get enough squeaking and the rubbery ears and feet to nom on!

When we got home we were all pretty tired, we've been fighting this cold that has been going around. Rob is finally feeling better but he's still pretty worn out from being so sick, and no it wasn't h1n1 thankfully, and amazingly enough I haven't gotten really sick yet! I'm always the one to get sick between the two of us, but all I've had is a little bit of a sore throat for the past couple days and that's it. So we all decided to take it easy when we got home, Lucy took a nap and I got to watch NieNie on Oprah (I just cannot get enough of her blog, she is amazing!).

All in all we had a really lovely little family day off all together yesterday, although it does makes me just yearn to stay home with Lucy. Sad. More tomorrow on my trials and tribulations with exclusively breastfeeding, working, pumping, all the good stuff. I just cannot seem to catch a break and I want to make it to a year damn it!

"Life is full of beauty. Notice it. Notice the bumble bee, the small child, the smiling faces. Smell the rain, and feel the wind. Live your life to the fullest potential and fight for your dreams."
-Ashley Smith

4 Month Doctor's Appointment...

It was Lucy's 4 month doctor's appointment today. We got all dressed in our rockin pink Adidas tracksuit, (she looked like she needed to bust out a tiny Missy Elliot move, instead we just flailed out arms around a bit...close enough) and drove downtown to the doctors office with Nan in tow. My mom was super excited to be "invited" to meet Lucy's doctor and we decided to make a morning of it.

Lucy officially weighs 14 pounds now. My big girl! I can't even wrap my head around the fact that she used to be half the size she is now. It's amazing! Today was a bummer though in that it was a immunization day...boo. I hate them. Lucy is always so happy and cooing, sitting on my lap, and them BAM two shots in each leg! Poor baby. I decided, along with with Lucy's pediatrician, that we are doing a rolling immunization schedule. We break them up since four shots at once really seems like a lot for a tiny baby and my doctor was totally on board for it. Lucy was such a trooper, after the initial shock she was a total doll and didn't cry for the rest of the morning. I do find that nursing her immediately after the shots, whether it is feeding time or not, really calms her down.

After the doctor's appointment we headed off to eat bacon and cheese scones at the tiny coffee shop around the corner, and then headed to Mother Natures, a totally granola baby shop in downtown Portland, (which means it is right up my alley). I have to write a blog post about my transformation from "material girl" to "crunchy mama" because I'm taking this green baby thing all the way. Once I started cloth diapering, the rest of the green, organic, eco-friendly lifestyle just seemed like the way to go. I mean, why not? When I get on a bandwagon I REALLY get on it. Read later on this week to see just how far I'm taking being green (to Rob's dismay, he had no idea he married a hippy! ha!).

At Mother Natures I bought another Bum Genius 3.0 (love these), a couple teethers from Nattursutten since Lucy is really big on just nomming on anything and everything. I wanted to buy more than one diaper but they were out until next week, lucky for me I'm off work next week so I'll be making another trip out there. Love that store!

Now we're just taking it easy for the rest of the day. She's fast asleep on my bed and I'm doing some laundry (when am I NOT doing laundry?). I'm hoping she feels up to a jaunt down the block in the stroller later since the weather is beautiful today, but we'll see how she feels.

Don't forget to ask questions!

"Go gentle ... into the green."

-Charles de Lint, Into the Green

Sleeping Like A Baby...

Thank you all for your suggestions about our cloth diapering problem. I'm going to try her with the Bum Genius 3.0s this next week. One thing I think might have been the problem is that she had some shots on Tuesday and the cloth diapers are rubbing pretty close to where she got her dTap injection, which is supposed to be the most tender. I'm going to give her a couple days to fully get over the shots and then try again. If at first you don't succeed...right?

Speaking of her immunizations, I was really nervous about them. I spoke with her doctor and she agreed that we would put Lucy on a rolling immunization schedule. Instead of all four of the initial immunizations at once she got two on Tuesday and will get the next two next month. I feel better about this because I feel like getting them all at once is hard on a tiny baby like Lucy, hell, it would be hard on a big baby like myself! She did really well, me...well, not so much. She was sitting on my lap all happy and then WHAM! the nurses counted to three and gave her a shot in each leg. She let out a scream that just about tore my heart out. She was fine within 5 minutes but it took my a couple hours to get over feeling guilty about putting my poor sweet Lucy through that!

So, I hate to jinx a good thing but lets get to the title of this post, "Sleeping like a Baby". Who, you may ask, is sleeping like a baby? Answer: We all are! Hurrah! Ever since our vacation in Florida Lucy has been sleeping 6-8 hours every night (apparently she just needed a vacation, it is hard work being a baby, right?). It is pure bliss! We pop her in her bassinet at around 9:00 pm, she sleeps while Rob and I watch whatever show happens to be on that night. I grab her at 10:30 or 11:00 pm and she'll sleep eat, seriously, she won't even wake up, and then I simply pop her back in the bassinet and then she sleeps usually until 5:30 or 6:30 am!

When I told the doctor about it, to make sure it was ok she was going that long without eating, she said that some babies simply get themselves on a nighttime sleeping schedule early in life and to enjoy it while we can (who knows when she'll decide that sleeping through the night is totally boring). It is wonderful, hopefully this continues on when I go back to work next month. We will see!

I'm still plugging away on my SUPER long "Things We Love/Hate" post, bear with me as apparently there are LOTS of things I love/hate. I will show you one thing I love and just cannot live without:



Best thing I've ever done!

"People who say they sleep like a baby usually don't have one. "

-Leo J. Burke