Christmas Break...

This will probably be my last post for awhile, since we'll be off doing the holiday thing with the family. I'm guardedly looking forward to it: I'm looking forward to having R around full-time for a few days, seeing family, going to a house that's actually decorated for Christmas, and enjoying the season with my daughter. I think all my presents are wrapped and my Christmas cards sent, but.... we have a plane to catch and a house to clean and a dog to deal with and 37183102 other little things that need to get done in the next few days. (Yeah, me and everyone else, I know I know...)

I'm definitely looking forward to having R around for this upcoming flight. I fly all the time with Julia by myself, and it's generally fairly smooth going but it's exponentially easier with another person to help out a little. I'm flying back by myself since R is coming back earlier to work, but at least we finally decided to spring for another seat for J so that shouldn't be too miserable either. I was really hesitant to buy another seat since it was way more expensive than they make it sound ("substantially reduced fares for infants!") but as my lap shrunk these past few weeks, I changed my mind. No way I can do an energy-filled 14-month-old on my lap with a 23-weeks-pregnant belly.

Anyways.

We had an extraordinarily slow morning today - crummy weather and obviously wanted to avoid all shopping areas, so we stayed in all morning. Booooorrrrrinnnnnng. So J and I went to the Magic House this afternoon. It's really a local gem - a children's museum that has a whole huge section for younger children, although J likes to go wandering around with the big kids too. We spent almost three hours there. J was whipped by the end, but she had an absolute blast. She started jumping and squirming in my arms as soon as she realized where we were.

It's cool to go someplace like the Magic House, which has safe indoor play areas, on a periodic basis because I can really see how much she changes by what she's able to do each time. This time she walked in, walked right up a flight of stairs and slid down a slide, totally by herself. Me being pregnant is going to be great for her gross motor skills, because I'm all about sitting down on something nearby and letting her do her thing. (I was actually right next to her the one time she bit it on some stairs - thankfully, age-appropriate shallow soft stairs.) I'm trying to be really conscious of letting her explore her physical limits - I keep asking myself if I'd jump up to help or intervene if she were a boy, and frequently the answer is no, so I let her be.

Anyways. She had a blast, and she burnt off a lot of energy. She also did some adorable things, like hug all the dolls in the play dollhouse before flinging them to the ground, that kept me amused too. Now that she's on her new one-nap schedule and the great outdoors is crummy, I foresee a lot more afternoons at that place.

In other news, today was the first day off all formula and totally on milk! We've been putting off the transition because we were worried it was contributing to her diaper rash, but finally concluded it wasn't and we've slowly made the switch. She was NOT happy about milk at first, so this is a victory for me. :) Still have the bottles but I'm not going to mess with that until after the holidays.

And speaking of diaper rash - we went to the pediatrician yesterday morning. Of course she made me eat my bragging words of earlier - she thought the rash Julia had was no longer a yeast rash and was just a regular ol' diaper rash. So, she instructed us to stop all the yeast medication, since we had run through a full course, and to switch back to Desitin. So far, fingers crossed, her tush still looks good. I'm not even going to speculate on whether or not we've beat this thing - I'm bringing all the extra yeast medication with us over the holidays and we'll see what happens over the next week or so.

Okay, all that on Julia and nothing on New Baby? She's good. :) She kicks, mostly at night, and the Braxton-Hicks have slowed down to about 3/day since I quit doing any dog-walking. And I have gotten huge. My back hurts and I'm definitely slowing down ("ugh do I really have to stand up AGAIN?! I just sat down!") but I still feel pretty good overall. New Baby doesn't have a name yet but we might be down to two top choices.

Okay, enough chit-chat. Here's the adorable photo I have of J today. What happens when you're bored with Mama in the house all morning? You put diapers on your head, of course.

This is the most fun I've had all day so far!

Naps and rashes.... the totally unglamorous part of motherhood (wait - there's a glamorous part?)

Despite a weekend, I'm still desperately behind on life. My plan was to take two hours to myself on Saturday, go get a massage, then go to Starbucks and catch up on a whole bunch of things. I ended up upgrading the massage to 90 minutes (not sorry) and then throwing a fit in holiday mall traffic ("I'M NOT EVEN GOING TO THE MALL MY HOUSE IS JUST THAT WAY IHATEYOUALLLLL") and coming home instead. With the best of intentions to catch up later, of course, but then we got to working on our garage and basement and suddenly it was Monday morning.

And of course this isn't helped by the fact that Julia's sleep is still in major flux. She's definitely down to one nap only, but I'm struggling to work out a schedule that works for both of us. She wants to nap earlier in the day, which leads to a too-long stretch of awake time before bed. But my efforts to stretch her out seem to just leave her overtired, meaning she's sleeping poorly overall and not getting enough hours of sleep in a day. Which means I'm on edge too because I need to sleep at night, and I really need her to give me a little more time off during the day.

And - the part that makes me cry - her diaper rash is back. I'm at my wit's end. It was better, almost great, and then Saturday morning it was back. I don't know if this means it's been misdiagnosed this whole time (but why would it have gotten better so clearly in response to the anti-fungals?). Maybe this is normal; these types of rashes are notoriously hard to clear - but going on five months of this? Not normal. Maybe she's managed to breed a super-resistant strain of yeast down there. But - she's a BABY. We can't just hit her with crazy-strong anti-fungals, nor can we keep trying different medicines ad infinitum. I'm so desperate that I'm honestly considering trying to potty train a 14-month-old because I don't know what else could fix this (I know - crazy, but I'm about there).

Anyways, I have an appointment with our pediatrician tomorrow morning. I'm not even going to hope for a resolution, but maybe we'll come up with another approach to try. Fortunately, my crazy-mom tendencies mean I have a photo slideshow of her rash, day-by-day since before we started the latest treatment, on my cell phone, and you'd better believe I'm going to make the pediatrician watch it.

In happier news - we did Christmas with R's family this past weekend. Julia didn't really get the concept but she was adorably excited about her new sled and her new stuffed animals, in particular. Now I actually maybe want it to snow so we can go sledding! She got a horned frog pillow stuffed animal, which she loves, and a giant stuffed lion. She walked into the room with the lion this morning and immediately went, "Raaaar!" Of course the lion has scared the bajeepers out of me several times so far but it's a cool addition to our menagerie.

I also scored a soft and beautiful camera/tablet bag - I'm sure I'll brag about it soon - and R and I got a new tv for our living room. Which is awesome. It's 3D. We are watching 3D television in our home. Let that sink in. Whoa. Awesome. Yes.

And... the whole reason I bothered to post anything at all - photos of the babe:

We had a relatively warm day this past week so we ventured out to the park. She still loves the swings.

She still loves steering wheels and going "brrm brrm."

And turns out she hates mittens.

Last Friday night. Kicking back with Julietta (the doll) after a long week, and not in the mood for a photo.

But she'd rather have her daddy in the chair with her. (Awwww)

Cutie.
(And isn't R's hair so shiny?! It's like long eyelashes on guys - totally wasted. He actually got a haircut today because he didn't want his hair to be shiny for Christmas.)

And her latest thing this past week/weekend - sitting in baskets. I have a bunch of phone photos that I'll have to gather together for a comprehensive post on the subject. Here's a teaser.

Lazy Thursday

R's mom took Julia for several hours today, so I was able to knock off some of my to-do list. And spend some QT with my couch, eating salt & vinegar chips in front of some RHOOC.

I got Christmas presents for R's family all wrapped (still need to finish up a few things for my side but I have another week for that). I got the vast majority of our Christmas cards done (now all I have to do is get over my weirdo performance anxiety and drop that big beautiful stack of finished cards in the mail). I did a decent amount of laundry, culled the too-small clothes out of Julia's closet (all those adorable summer dresses... *sniff*), and busted out the rest of my maternity clothes from storage (eehhhh). And I made two phone calls I had been putting off. I know this is even more boring to read than it was to do, but at the end of these days, I never feel like I actually accomplished anything, so it helps me to write it out. (I'm still way behind on correspondence so if I owe you an email or a message or a thank-you note, it's coming, I promise. Just didn't happen today.)

The amazing news is that Julia's rash is looking WAY better. I'm so happy and relieved that this might be behind us. I told Robert tonight - in the four months she's had this yeast rash, she never once got normal diaper rash on top of it. I'm pretty proud of that. No regular diaper rash - not a speck - in four months. Boo-yah. I talked to the dr's office today and they recommended extending the oral Nystatin another week, because it does seem to be working, just to make sure everything is gone. No problemo - it's way easier to give her medicine four times a day than to do diaper-free time for hours on end.

Julia herself has been pretty adorable lately. Despite some super-weird napping today (I second-guessed myself on the one-nap-only thing and, shockingly, turned out I was wrong), she's been learning like crazy and acting completely delightful. She's turning into a cuddler, even if it's only for a few seconds at a time, but it's the highlight of my day when she comes over to me or asks to be picked up, and then collapses her little body against mine and goes, "Ahhhhh." I melt. We also spent half an hour this morning avoiding the tv and reading on the couch with a blanket instead. Someday I'll be able to read my own book instead of "Baby's First Day!" but it was still lovely. I cannot wait until the weather gets better and we can go to the park and do outdoorsy things. She's so interactive now (I know I keep saying that but it just gets more and more true!) that it's getting much more fun to do things with her.

And, speaking of interaction, here she is, showing us she knows perfectly well how to use an iPhone. So easy, a 13-month-old can use it?

Not too much is new.

It's been busy here, but with nothing special, really. I've just got a few things to report:

1. Julia's rash continues to get better. It's looking very different down there, meaning the old rash is clearing up and it looks like a new one is coming in. I'm hoping it's just irritation from all the anti-fungals but I'm not ready to call "success!" on the rash just yet. However, she's a lot more comfortable, that's for sure, and we still have six more days of the oral medicine to go.

2. I'm twenty weeks today - halfway through this pregnancy - woohoo! It feels good to hit a nice solid milestone, which balances out the fact that I feel really pregnant now. Sometime last week, maybe the baby shifted positions or had a growth spurt or something, but just one day it felt like I gained twenty pounds and got huge overnight.

I'm also feeling Braxton-Hicks on a fairly regular basis, which is weird for me since I never noticed them with Julia. My OB's office says to not do anything that causes more than four in an hour, which means I may not be able to walk the dog the rest of this pregnancy. Not that I'm too torn up about missing those walks in the freezing winter, but I'm a little worried about not having the chance to get any exercise. I know rotting in my own baby fat for the next 20 weeks is just going to mean a rougher pregnancy and delivery and recovery.

But, I'm healthy and baby is healthy, so I have no real complaints.

3. Julia got her photo taken with Santa today. It did not go well, but we got a really hilarious picture. I feel like an awful mom when I do, but I just keep looking at her photo and laughing.

I think that's all I've got. Time for me to buckle down and try to get through some more Christmas cards. Despite my best efforts, they're making no moves to send themselves.

Quick update

J's bloodwork came back normal this time. Whew.

And, I'm hesitant to say it, but for the moment, her diaper rash is looking a little better.

So we're skipping the diabetes test for now, but I have the option of testing her next week if the rash doesn't resolve. It should resolve within a week, otherwise it's back to the dermatologist again.

Keeping those fingers crossed and counting my blessings that she is otherwise healthy!

The diaper saga continues...

I know everyone is just dying to hear what's going on with Julia's diaper rash, so here's the update.

I talked to a pediatrician friend of mine about the whole situation, who asked me if we'd tried oral anti-fungals because that's the next thing to try after the topicals fail (or so says the "Red Book" - he says that means something to those in the know). Anyways, no, we hadn't. Is it really that simple? He seemed to think so, so I called my pediatrician this morning. The nurse hadn't ever heard of this approach and so a few hours later the doctor calls me back on her day off.

She says Julia's bloodwork from last week came back and it's weird. (She doesn't appear to have the thalassemia trait that I do, but something like a certain white blood cell count was low? I was literally walking out the door and she was vague so I'm not sure exactly.) Maybe it's related to the persistent diaper rash. Maybe it's from the fever she had the day before we drew the blood. Maybe it's a fluke and nothing at all. Bottom line, we need to redo the labs (ahhhh!). I didn't even ask what was funny about them, because my objective was to get a prescription for the oral anti-fungal meds. Now I kind of wish I had, so I could spend my evening googling (which means it's probably a blessing in disguise that I hadn't).

So, back we went to the hospital for another traumatic blood draw. Again, the phlebotomist failed on the first try and I asked for a pediatric nurse (next time - go straight to the nurse) (there won't be a next time, right?) who got it on the first try using a vein in her ankle. Poor Julia started crying as soon as her sleeve got pushed up. She knew exactly what was happening and it just broke my heart that we had to go through it again. Fortunately, we had dinner plans immediately afterwards and it obviously took her mind off of the whole experience because she was all smiles for the rest of the evening. (She apparently rebounds better than her mother because I just get more upset about it the more I think about it.)

The other long shot we're looking in to is diabetes, which can also cause a persistent yeast rash. My gut isn't telling me she has this, but it's not outside the realm of possibility so tomorrow I might try to catch some pee and bring it in to the doctor's office. Depends how successful I am on the pee-catch front.

We did end up with oral nystatin in the end, though, so we started that tonight.

I'm a little bit relieved that maybe the oral nystatin will finally clear things up, or at the least that we have a plan. I'm a larger bit pessimistic about it because it's hard to believe that anything will work at this point. And there is a part of me that's growing the more I mull it over, that's absolutely terrified that the bloodwork will come back funny again and something awful will be wrong with my baby.

We should have blood results tomorrow. Keep your fingers crossed for JJ.

Five Things Friday

1. We saw the pediatric dermatologist today. It wasn't near as helpful as I'd hoped it'd be, but honestly I wasn't too surprised. To recap: Julia has had an off-and-on yeast diaper rash for about the past four months. We've tried all sorts of OTC anti-fungal creams, tea tree oil, vinegar in the bathtub, different types of disposable diapers, wool cloth diaper covers, daily baths, tea tree oil, nystatin (prescription anti-fungal), and lots of diaper-free time, and nothing has eliminated it. The ped derm had a few main points, for those interested:

• Don't use commercial wipes; use water and paper towels instead. We haven't and don't use commercial wipes, so this was pretty moot.
• Disposable diapers are better for keeping a baby rash-free than cloth. I think I disagree with her here. She backed up this assertion by talking about a study she helped design for Proctor & Gamble twenty years ago. I respectfully submit that both cloth and disposable diapers have changed a lot since then. Regardless, Julia's been in disposables (with the exception of the cloth/wool diaper covers experiment) since this rash started, since the anti-fungals are bad for the cloth diapers. 
• Our game plan now is: Put 1% hydrocortisone on the diaper area on top of the anti-fungal medicine. Do this for every diaper change when the rash is bad, about three times a day when it's there but not bad, and once a day when it's pretty much all cleared up. This doctor prefers miconazole, sold as Micatin. I'll probably use up the nystatin that we already have first. 
• The doctor also believes that all the other stuff we've been trying is probably unnecessary. I concur with the exception of the diaper-free time. I've noticed a definite improvement in Julia's bum when she gets more diaper-free time, so as much as I'd like to believe the doctor that I don't really need to do that anymore, I'm going to keep it up. Right now, her rash isn't too bad so I feel like I have half a shot at eliminating it soon.
• This rash will be a fact of life until Julia potty trains. I know rashes are part of diapered babies, but the doctor didn't give me a lot of hope that it'll ever clear up. I said, "So you're telling me this is chronic?" She responded, "Oh no! It'll clear up. But it won't go away completely until she's potty trained." Okaaaaay.... Thaaaanks. Is she right? Do I resign myself? I don't know.

Anyways, I'm glad we went just so I know there's not anything else I should be doing, but I'm frustrated that I was basically told to learn to live with this. I also want to get back to our cloth diapers so I'm frustrated by our conversation about those versus disposables. I'm going to have to do some experimenting and sleeping on it to figure out what we're going to do long-term.

And, again, I'm so eternally grateful that Julia is so healthy. We went to Children's (hospital) for this appointment, and I saw SO many babies hooked up to IV's and tubes. There is just nothing sadder than a tiny bald child being pushed around in a brightly-colored wagon with attached IV poles.

2. I am beat. I barely got through today without biting someone's head off and I'm going to bed as soon as this posts. Julia's sleep has been slowly but surely deteriorating this week and I haven't had a good night's rest in awhile (not helped by needing to get up and go to the bathroom 78613409 times a night). I suspect we're at the very beginnings of a "dropping the morning nap" transition and it's affecting her night sleep and her daily schedule. Just have to wait it out and see how this plays out.

3. I saw two people I used to work with today. It made me question (again) what the heck I'm doing with myself. Everyone I graduated with - from both college and law school - is moving along nicely in their careers and learning and getting more experience and getting better and better at what they do. I've just learned to be a really good babysitter.

4. It looks like we're not doing much (well, nothing so far) in the way of Christmas decorating this year. We just have too much other house stuff that's a higher priority; we can't spend 2+ weekends putting up/down Christmas decorations because there's just so much other stuff to do.... and that stuff is kind of on a tight timeline because we need to make a nursery for this new baby by the end of April. It makes me sad, though. I love colored lights and pine things and candy canes and sparkly useless pretty things on my table tops and mantel. And of course it makes the cold weather festive instead of just dreary, and come end of February I'm going to really be wishing I had taken advantage of the festivities.

5. Maybe I ought to rename this "Four Things Friday" because I just can't think of anything else. This post has kind of turned into a pity-party anyways so maybe it's best I wrap it up. Here are a few cute pics of Julia to redeem things a bit:

Finally feeling better

Well, today was full of taking care of Julia.

We have an appointment with the pediatric dermatologist on Friday afternoon, and a double-refill of Nystatin to last us until then. I also discovered our local hospital will do the blood draws that she needs (and I've been putting off), finding a pediatric nurse to do the stick if necessary, so we can avoid Quest, which is awesome.

And her fever finally broke this evening around dinnertime. She's still running a low-grade temp - around 100.0-100.5 - but that's downright cool compared to the 102-103 she was running all day, even with Tylenol. Consequently, we spent most of today hanging out in the house. She was pretty lethargic and we actually spent a solid half hour on the couch cuddling and watching Curious George, which is very uncharacteristic of her. She was never to the point where I couldn't get her to laugh, but she just wasn't her usual perky self. Fever 7-10 days after the MMR vaccine hits about one in ten kids, and I'm keeping my fingers crossed that she doesn't get the 1-in-20 reaction and break out in a rash.

(As an aside - Today was one of those days that made me super-glad I'm still nursing. I pulled her into bed this morning to nurse when she woke up like I usually do, and stripped her down so we could do skin-to-skin, which in theory helps babies regulate their body temperature better. She nursed and slept right next to me for an hour and a half. An hour and a half! I kept trying to get her up - as much as I love the cuddle time, that's kind of boring a long time to just lay there - but she wasn't feeling up to it and would just re-settle and shut her eyes again. I know bottle-fed babies are comforted in other ways, but I don't know what else I could have done for Julia and her poor hot little burning-up body this morning that would have given her what she needed to get a little more rest.  I was just so relieved to be capable of giving her the comfort that she needed this morning.)

And with that, I don't have much else to report. I've discovered the magic that is Costco and despite my newfound obsession with Etsy, I haven't made much of a dent in my Christmas shopping. My mother-in-law is going to spend some QT with Julia tomorrow, so I'll have a chance to get some stuff done. Fingers crossed I don't end up in a Costco-sponsored cookie coma in front of the tv.

And here's the babe, after the fever came down a bit, demonstrating her two new favorite skills:

Monday already?

Our Thanksgiving weekend was awesome, in the "now we're lame because we have a baby" way. Four days off of work for R meant that we made a LOT of progress on our basement, and R and J got to spend a lot of quality time together.

We had Thanksgiving dinner with R's family, which was lovely as always. They do such a nice job that I kind of forget that I'm not spending the holiday with my family. One of these years I'm going to make it back to P-town for a Thanksgiving. (Of course I'm envisioning what it used to be like - sleeping in, the parade and dog show on tv, shelling chestnuts all day for stuffing, and pulling out all the good china to eat in the dining room. I think any new reality would be significantly different.)

The basement is really coming along, which is super-exciting. R finished the ceiling last week so this past weekend we mopped the floors, rolled out the rugs and rug pads, put together five different pieces of furniture and storage, did some touch-up painting, and generally cleaned up and started to organize J's toys down there. We also bought new furniture for our family room, since the family room furniture is moving to the basement. This was our only in-person foray into the post-Thanksgiving shopping, and it wasn't too bad - I guess people aren't busting down the doors to buy furniture on Black Friday, but I think we still got a decent deal. On the to-do list this week is: move furniture (we HAVE to do this because new stuff is coming on Thursday), finish touch-up painting, and do another round of cleaning and organizing. And, the biggie - moving stuff back OUT of the garage and into the storage cabinets we put up. The temperatures are really starting to drop here, so I know Robert will be pretty thrilled to get his garage space back. I'm just excited to have another functional room. Progress pics are boring so I'll just take some "after" pics this week or next and do a final basement wrap-up.

Julia is doing well too. I think it was really nice for her and R to get to hang out as much as they did. She laughs and plays with him in a way that she doesn't for me, and it's really cute to watch. I've been her favorite person for so long that it kind of makes me sad to see her getting so attached to someone else, but I'm more happy for R that he finally gets to see that he has a special place in her life too. Plus, she's getting MUCH better about me leaving her to go run an errand or something, so that's kind of a relief too.

The bad news on the Julia front is twofold, though. First, I think she's having a reaction to the one-year immunizations that she got last week. Poor dear was warm all day and this evening she had a temp of 103. She's largely acting fine - a little cranky but not bad - but sleeping and eating poorly. She's never had that high of a fever before so it really freaked me out when I saw the thermometer reading. (Also, I've never done a rectal temp before either, which I felt compelled to do tonight to make sure I was getting an accurate reading. That also freaked me out a little.) Fortunately I put two and two together and figured it was a vac reaction. So we'll call the ped in the morning to let them know, but it's likely we're going to get through this just fine with some Tylenol.

Her diaper rash is also persisting, to the point where the ped is sending us to a dermatologist sometime this week. It's been almost four months of off-and-on rash, mostly on. The ped gave us nystatin last Monday and said to call if it doesn't clear up in a week, and it hasn't. I feel like I must be doing something wrong for her to have this rash for as long as she has, but I'm clueless. It's not bad, really, just persistent, so a derm seems a little like overkill. But, I'm desperate to get it cleared up once and freaking for all. Not to mention, I'm sick of doing diaper-free time in our house. Babies wear diapers for a reason.

Some non-diaper-free time this past weekend:

My mom recently mentioned to me that I ought to start pouring my sodas into a cup
instead of drinking them out of a can so Julia doesn't start to covet them....

I didn't disagree with Mom at all.

But did I *actually* do anything?

Obviously not.