Down for the Count

The stomach flu has descended upon the Fanning household. It started with little Miss. E. I got a call on Thursday from her daycare that she was projectile vomiting. Have you ever seen an eight month old projectile vomit? It's a sad, sad sight. Poor baby was so sick all day Thursday--dry heaves and all. Fortunately, by night time she seemed to have gotten it out of her system and slept soundly that night. She was mostly back to herself the next day. Friday went by without incidence and by Saturday, I thought we were in the clear. Whoo, boy, that was an incorrect assessment.

Saturday afternoon I started to feel a little "off". I thought it was from the spoonfuls of peanut butter and chocolate chips I had inhaled earlier (yeah, I have a thing for chocolate and peanut butter, but not so much anymore, so maybe it was a blessing in disguise). Billy and Will had gone off for the afternoon on a friend's boat and they came back around 8:00 that evening. I had just put Evelyn to bed and told Billy I was headed there myself. One hour later I was up, getting sick. And at the exact same time, Will had gotten up and was getting sick on the other side of the house. Fortunately, Billy was not yet affected and was able to handle Will. The rest of the night was a blur of restless sleep and runs to the bathroom. You know, one of those nights when you don't care that your head is resting on your filthy toilet or that you are lying on your hair-ridden bathroom floor.

Fortunately, both Will and I were feeling better by the next day. Unfortunately, Billy woke up this morning feeling ill, so I called off the babysitter and stayed home from work to watch Evelyn. No need to expose more people to the germs festering in our house.

Is this a little preview of what the cold and flu season has to offer us? I call uncle. UNCLE.

Evelyn: Six and Seven Months

Evelyn is going to be eight months (eight months!) next week already, so I figured I'd better get her six and seven month pictures up now so as not to be a total blog failure.

It's hard to get the little squiggle butt to sit still for pictures these days.

It's been a busy couple of months for Evelyn. During months six and seven:

--She's learned how to crawl. Fast. She started crawling slowly and using her head as leverage at six months. By seven months, she started hoofing it all over the house. Time to put those outlet plugs back in. Which she wants to put in her mouth. Which leads me to...
--She loves to put EVERYTHING in her mouth. Cords, cat fur, food, toys, random pieces of lint on the floor (which may or may not include cat liter). Will did not do this. Perhaps Will was not normal. But this constant putting of things in the mouth is going to give me a heart attack. Or just a lot of stress. Which leads me to...
--She is already trying to pull herself up. If we let her hang on to something, she'll stand for a while by herself. And we have one of those video monitors where I can see her in her crib and the little toot is in there scooting over to the side of the crib, trying to stand up. Or escape. Or a combination of the two. Will did not do this. Will slept in his crib until he was three years old without ever trying to climb out of it one single time. I believe that Evelyn will be trying to do the get-out-of-crib shimmy within the next few months. This too will give me a heart attack.
--Evelyn is happy. I mean she is smiley. I know I've mentioned this before, but I cannot stress this enough. She really is a very easy going kid. She only cries if she's really tired or hungry. And that's despite the fact that she has been sick a couple of times (with sore throat, fever, etc.) and the fact that she has six teeth.
--Six teeth! Yes, she has six teeth, with a seventh coming in already. Will did do this. Perhaps my kids are not normal. Both of them had six teeth by six months (and Will had a full set of chompers by the time he was one). And yes, she has bitten me while breastfeeding. When she first started getting teeth, there were several occasions when she used me as a chew toy. I came thisclose to calling it quits on the breastfeeding at that point. But, one time it caught me so off guard and hurt so badly I shouted really loudly and I think it scared her and we've only had one or two instances since then.
--Sleep is happening in the Fanning household. I finally had to Ferberize her (for those of you sans kids, it's basically a method of letting the baby cry w/ you going in at set intervals to reassure baby you are still there, but you aren't going to feed him/her). It was getting to the point where Evelyn was waking up every two hours and this went on for months, and her pediatrician flat out told me she didn't need to be waking anymore for nutritional purposes and I probably needed to do some sleep training (had to do it w/ Will, too). One especially brutal night after she got up every one to two hours, I hit the wall. I had to get up, go to work and I was spent and out of whack and crying. So, I started immediately. That first night she cried for two hours. The next night 30 minutes and then? SLEEP. She has since started sleeping 10-11 hours straight through! It. is. glorious. We [read: mommy] are much happier.
--Solid food: She is now eating 2-3 meals a day. At first, she HATED solids. HATED. No matter what I tried (cereal, fruit, veggie, etc.), she would gag, spit up and cry. This went on for a few weeks and I was at my wits end. I just kept at it and finally she started accepting more and more things (I think she just had to get used to the texture). Now I can't get the girl to stop. At meal times, she'll screech until I spoon more food in her mouth.

Love this girl. She is definitely going to keep me on my toes (somewhere my mom is silently laughing...)