Week 58: February 18 - 24

Another fun week: Mimi came for a visit!

EC ADVENTURES
We had some awesome successes with EC this week, great learning going on.

[1] Madeleine totally knows the sign for potty. She makes the sign when she sees the potty and when we say "potty." NOW we just need for her to sign before she has to GO potty.
[2] One day, Madeleine was in her high chair, and I saw that she had to go. So we got her up and on the potty. She actually peed (!) for the first time, but I didn't notice it in time to cue her. After a few minutes of playing with her, she seemed to want up, so Mimi cleaned up the pee. THEN Madeleine seemed to need to poop, so we put her back on the potty, and she went almost right away! What a champ!
[3] On another occasion, on Mimi's watch, Madeleine was standing and playing, then just stopped, spread her legs, looked down, and made the sign for potty. Mimi didn't put her on the potty, but she was certain that Madeleine had peed.

One day, I took the advice of my local Diaper Free mentor and put Madeleine on the potty in front of the mirror in her room. It worked really well! I stood behind her and played with her, sang to her. Gave her things to entertain her, special, fun things she doesn't normally play with. One of these items was the nasal aspirator. It hasn't seen use since her last cold, sometime in September or October or something. She was thrilled, and then immediately started using it to brush her hair! Or, at least, to put it up to her head and run it front to back. SO CUTE. So of course, then I got out her actual hairbrush, and all she did with that was play with the bristles. I think she liked the way they felt on her fingers. Finally, I got out her comb, and she tried combing her hair.

On the subject of sitting on the potty in front of the mirror, I think it went a long way to helping Madeleine get more comfortable with the potty. We sat for maybe 15 minutes after I heard a toot (which experience has told me is usually the precursor to a poop!), but nothing happened. Still, she did really well on the potty and sat happily and we played. A little later that day, I heard another toot, so we did it again. This time, Madeleine lifted her leg to help me sit her down, and we enjoyed another 10-15 minutes of play time!

This is all about little steps. Little successes here and there that add up to major success down the road.

While we're on the metaphor of a road, we've hit a speed bump this week (see: NEXT SECTION)

IRRITANT DIAPER DERMATITIS
Madeleine caught a nasty case if IDD ... last week actually, but it got really bad this week. It started out with redness, which I recognized from a couple of spots she's had before, so I immediately started applying diaper cream generously on the spots. Well, by the end of that day, the redness was worse, so the next we did a lot of diaper free time, wearing diapers only for naps. Still got worse. So then we went to disposables and antibiotic ointment that the doctor had recommended last time. STILL got worse. I stripped the diapers, tried again, and just wearing one for an hour made the redness worse. So they were out.

She ended up with sores on her skin that broke open and even started bleeding. So we took her to the doctor on Monday, and he prescribed a different cream for us. It seems to be slowly--VERY SLOWLY--improving. But the doctor recommended no diaper free time, so we haven't done any EC since. :(

(and for the record, here a link to an article on IDD and tips and strategies for dealing with it. I noted with sadness that cloth diapers aren't good for this kind of condition, so we'll definitely be out of those until this is COMPLETELY cleared up, and I will have to do .... something!! ... to keep it from happening again.)

WORDS & SIGNS
Not only has she pretty much mastered the sign for potty, but she's also really coming along in her use of signs to communicate. She told us many times this week when she wanted to drink and eat. And to go along with the sign for drink, Madeleine has started saying "ink" for drink! :)

Baby has started mimicking us when we say "ow!" When she says it, it's much cuter of course, and she doesn't say "ow" when something hurts. She usually just copies whoever just said it.

Mimi had a bandaid on her finger, and she told Madeleine she had a boo-boo. By the end of the week, Madeleine was saying "boo-boo." She pointed to a bandaid on MY finger and said boo-boo. :)

WEIGHT UPDATE
At Madeleine's one year appointment, she'd fallen in the weight percentiles, so the doctor wanted us to come back and do a weight check in 6 weeks. We went ahead and did that while at the doctor for her diaper rash/thing, and her weight was up to 18 pounds, 4 ounces. 8 ounces in 3 months vs. 6 ounces in 1.5 seemed really good. When I plotted it on the growth chart, though, it had fallen slightly in the percentile curve. BUT, still, she is perfectly healthy and happy and thriving. So no worries!

MORE ON SLEEP
I'm sure it looks silly to spend so much effort on Madeleine's sleep, but I know that it is worth it. When she gets messed up, it affects her whole demeanor. She's a different baby when she gets good rest, so it's completely worth all the effort to try and get her all that good sleep.

And we think something is off, something is going on. At first, we thought she was trying to drop a nap, then we thought no. So, we've basically tried to change things around, see how it goes for a few days, and re-evaluate. And we still don't know. LOL. This week she's skipped naps, taken one great nap, had some bad ones and some okay ones. All I know is that things are still not fixed, and we are still working on it.

Madeleine was prescribed an oral antibiotic for her IDD, and it's caused her to poop a lot. A LOT. Instead of pooping once every day or two, she's been pooping 3-4 times A DAY. And I think it might be contributing to short naps because she wakes up from most of her naps with a dirty diaper. Poor baby!

DROPPING A FEEDING!?!?!
On Thursday, Madeleine got up from her second nap (not surprisingly) with a dirty diaper. So mom and I got her changed, put on her clothes, and we went into the living room to play. About an hour later, I realized I hadn't nursed her! ACK! Well, she didn't seem hungry at all, hadn't asked to nurse or indicated that she wanted to, so I didn't. She got food with us, and then I fed her a little earlier than usual before bed.

I AM SO NOT READY FOR THIS!! A big part of me hopes that this won't happen again tomorrow. LOL. I need time to mentally prepare myself for dropping a feeding. I think I can drop one at 15 months, another at 18, then ............. ???

LITTLE THINGS
We had a really exciting shopping trip on Friday. Matt was in the market for new shoes, so we went to a shoe store, and OH BOY was this an excited baby. She loves shoes, loves saying the word shoe, loves pointing to people's shoes. So in a shoe store? SHE WAS SO EXCITED!! I put her down so she could stand next to a low display of shoes, and she just kept walking excitedly up and down, picking up shoes and tossing them on the floor (sometimes) and generally freaking out. It was hilarious.

We've noticed that Madeleine is really good about plates and bowls at her high chair. She's only tossed a bowl twice, and it was mostly empty. She hasn't tossed a plate yet, and we've been letting her eat off our regular dishes. We bought her a baby plate, but only one, so it's usually dirty. I guess if/when she breaks a real plate, then we'll worry about giving her child's plates and bowls. :)

I remember one of the milestones in the "Week by Week" book was for baby to use objects correctly, i.e., trying to talk into a play phone, brushing hair, write with a pen, etc. This week, she played phone with us! We'd answer the phone, hand it to her, and she'd put it up to her ear and talk. Also on the subject of phones, Madeleine now enjoys them for a different reason than before (which was to put in her mouth). Now she likes pressing the buttons and seeing things change on the screen.

People have go to go the bathroom. It's a fact of life. And people have to shower. Sometimes, Madeleine knows that someone is in there, and she stares at the door, says "Mama!" and clearly wants to see whoever is inside. Usually it's Matt. So I knock on the door, Matt responds, and then Madeleine tries to knock too!

Madeleine successfully put the right shape in the right hole in her shapes box this week! Mimi and I could clap for her when she did it, so then she just started putting the blocks ON the box lid and clapping. Which was also quite adorable, and we had no complaints about that. On a similar topic, she tried putting on and taking off lids to tupperware this week. :)

She tried putting socks on her feet! She's nowhere close to being able to do it, but she'll get her little thumbs inside the rim of the sock and them touch the sock to her foot. I mean, how cute is that?

Remember when I wrote about Madeleine looking up at the sky? Well, now she's started noticing lights and light fixtures. She'll point, so we've been saying "light." We'll see if it catches on or not!

Madeleine used to enjoy being read to, but now she doesn't seem to. I don't know if it's a phase or what, but it bums me out. Well, this week, Mimi discovered that if she opened a book to look at it, Madeleine would too! They spent some quality time just looking at (different) books together. She does, however, still love to sit and look at books on her own.


SLIDESHOW!