Well, here we are, back at our (temporary) home here in Three Hills. And it's really cold. It snowed when we got back. I think it's nature's way of telling us that we've been spoiled our whole lives living in the Lower Mainland--welcome to the big leagues, son! Oh well, I'm sure there's more of that to come.
On a fun administrative note, we just moved past the 1000-hit mark on this page, and that's only since we've got the counter. Thanks for your continued patronage. It makes me feel good to know that somewhere out there, people are reading this stuff. I work hard on these posts (not to toot my own horn or anything, but ask Steph how much time these take me), so your continued reading of them makes it all worthwhile.
Moving on. Had a fine trip, thanks. Turns out that Theo's just a pleasure on an airplane, which was a great relief not only to his parents, but to the other passengers as well, I'm sure. On the way there, we managed to get a stand-by seat for Theo so that we could take his car seat on board and strap him in (yes, our car seat is certified for air travel. I love that term, "certified." Sounds so official. I happen to be a certified blogger, too. Or maybe I'm confusing that with a different type of "certification."). Although the plane was delayed for an hour, as soon as we started taxiing down the runway, he was sound asleep. Ahh. On the way back, it was the same thing (although this time he had to be in our laps, as there were no standby seats available on the holiday Monday)--as soon as we started taxiing, he was out. Love it. What an awesome baby.
So yeah, we got back last Monday. Why haven't I posted since then? Well, here it is in a nutshell: teething. Yuck. It was bad the first time, but that was nothing compared to this time. For four days, starting on that very holiday Monday, we've had a snotty, screamy mess on our hands (the boy, not the parents, although it's been close, I have to admit). In fact, his teething was so severe that we wondered whether he might have had an ear infection. Well, one way to test that out: go on a plane ride! If he screams and is in excruciating pain due to the change in cabin air pressure, then it's probably an ear infection. Sound cruel? Yeah, probably. But hey, we had to get home, so we had no choice.
Lucky (?) for us, it was just the teething process being particularly nasty. Poor kid. As if he hasn't had enough difficult things to deal with. No matter how much Orajel and Tylenol we pumped into him, the pain never really did subside. It sucked to watch. And knowing that he's looking at you probably wondering why you're not helping also sucks. But it could be worse, and we're well aware of that, and thankful.
Anyway, for four days, he wouldn't really eat because of his pain, which exacerbated things because he was now in pain and hungry. Double-whammy. But on Saturday, I noticed that his top left front tooth has finally broken through the gumline, so it's just a matter of time before the whole thing is out. Going by how this all went down for the bottom teeth, it was terrible until the first tooth poked through, and then within two days they were both there, and the pain tended to subside after the first eruption. Here's hoping.
All that has put a bit of a damper on his solid food eating. In fact, Steph and I just realized the other day that our nurse practitioner told us a while ago that he's supposed to be eating everything we're eating (within reason--no nuts, citrus, or honey) by nine months, which happens to be less than a month away. But wait just a gall-durned minute here, something's amiss. I think the paediatric community needs to get their heads out of their rears and start to think this through a little bit better. For example, we were warned in no uncertain terms that it is most definitely not recommended to start your kid on solid food before he's six months old. And then we're told that for every new food we introduce, we have to do it over a three-day period, gradually increasing the amount he gets, to make sure that he doesn't have a reaction to it (as he did to bananas). Oh, and don't forget that of the four feedings he has during the day, two of them are cereal or grains, one to two is veggies, and one to two is fruits. But since you're introducing food so slowly, you often have two or more different fruits/veggies per day. But then in three months time, he should be fully eating everything you're eating. Okay, let's just stop and do the math here. Start at six months, target nine months; okay, that's three months, or 90 days. If we're trying something new every three days, that means that we can introduce 30 new foods in those three months, theoretically. But that doesn't tell the whole story--if we're spreading out the food introductions between new cereals, fruits, and veggies, we're really only talking 10 of each thing. Okay, there aren't 10 different grains (especially since we're trying to avoid large doses of wheat because of Steph's digestive issues surrounding wheat), so we'll call it 5 grains and 12.5 each of fruits and veggies.
Do you see where I'm going with this? The new qualification for parenting is an advanced degree is nuclear (or perhaps it's nucular) physics with a calculus minor. At what point can we as parents stop being drill sergeants and start, well, just trying different foods with him without worrying that we're not keeping up the pace? If you followed me through that last paragraph, you'll get an idea of how hard this is; we spend more time worrying that we're introducing the wrong foods or somehow messing it up than we do worrying about him. Heck, we even have a food list on our fridge where we write down the results of all the foods we've tried on him and try to schedule ahead what foods we're going to intro next so that we can keep it all straight. Gah!
The other problem with this is that every piece of literature you read is expressly written to make you feel guilty about something you're doing wrong. For example, one of the books we have says that if your child is not allowed to experiment with feeding himself when he wants to, you could be causing serious trouble down the road because he'll never learn to eat for himself. Okay, I understand that he has to learn to feed himself (it's one of those "essentials" in life, I hear), but come on. Isn't that just a little bit too heavy a load to throw at first-time parents? If nothing else, he's a Carroll, and if genetics plays any role in it, I'm sure that he'll have no problem with the food end of things. Sheesh.
Okay, I feel better. Good times. Suffice it to say that I'm sure he's not where he needs to be with food, but GET OFF MY BACK! Sorry. I'm okay. Really.
Here are a couple of him in his car seat--taken while the car was moving, which explains the trees whizzing by in the background (notice the fond attachment to the soother in the first two shots)...
Last Saturday, Steph and her mom took the Albion Ferry across to Maple Ridge to go see Steph's Nana and Aunt Holly (behold the number of proper nouns in that last sentence--I think that's a personal best). They walked on because the car lineup was way too long, and this gave Theo the chance to survey the water...
And here he is with mommy (if you want a fun game, do a head size comparison; guess who's head Theo has)...
No matter how long I live in the Lower Mainland, I never get tired of shots like this one...
One thing I'm really grateful for is the amount of family Theo has around him. Three grandmas, two grandpas, and two great-grandmas that live here, with one more a short time away in Kamloops. Not to mention his auntie Laura, his great-aunt Holly, his cousins and two uncles and aunts. All in the Lower Mainland. Here's just one of the extended family, Theo's Grand-Nana, as we call her (because Steph calls her Nana)...
"Maestro, strike up the orchestra!"...
"See, I told you it was an eighth note, dad!"
Here's the family over at my mom's place...
...and here with my sister. I include this shot because it shows what Theo really thinks of all the picture-taking he's involved in...
But all good things must come to an end, so we came home...
The trip must have been pretty exhausting for Theo, however, because this is what happened when we got home...
Actually, that was a very monumental thing in our house because it was the first time Theo's ever fallen asleep independent of even being in his crib. One minute he was playing with his toys in there, the next he was asleep. It's the day we've been waiting for! Hooray! Not sure if it will ever happen again, but at least we got the photographic evidence that one day it actually did happen. And we'll hold onto that.Finally, proof that the box is really more exciting than what's inside (and it ties in with what's below)...
Okay, I set the precedent last week with the videos, so I'm going to have to keep it up again this week. Just like last week, I've got three to share with you this week (one week when I don't have three, I'm going to go back in the vault and pull out some videos from when he was first born--those are classics!). The first one is the tie-in to the box pictures above. He was having so much fun with the box that I thought that pictures alone wouldn't be able to capture it; immediately after those photos were taken, I took a video...
In this one, we've got a new game that I'm teaching Theo--catch. Okay, he hasn't really gotten it yet, but he'll get there eventually...
Finally, for those of you we didn't get to see last weekend, video of him doing his walking thing. The unexpected upside of this one is that you get a little tour of our place, too...
And that, my friends, is all she (or in this case, he) wrote. It was good to go home, but it's good to be back "home" too. We're hoping that by the end of this week we'll be able to get some tooth shots for you, but don't hold your breath. The posting schedule is a little bit off, but for your info, I'm planning on doing the next post late next weekend. See you back here then.
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