3 Months

Obviously, this has been quite a month.  I didn't realize I'd left things this long!  I have a new slideshow up on the Abigail tab.

After another relapse on Abigail's part, we are finally well aside from some various allergy-related problems now that we have some beautiful warm weather.  We did end up going to a doctor for Abby's ears after she was up crying in pain all night and it turns out we most likely had RSV, which explains why we got so sick.  When my brother Jonathan got RSV at Abigail's age, he was in the hospital for three weeks.  Abigail didn't even get an ear infection; although Ben did and had his eardrum rupture - he's just now able to hear mostly out of that ear again.  Yikes.

I've pretty much been waiting three months to reach the three-month mark, because it's usually at this point that many things get a lot easier.  Babies and parents both learn a lot in that time.  Babies usually have their digestive systems develop a lot better by three months and learn to sleep through the night, among other things.  I'm happy to report that Abigail's now sleeping for about seven hours at a stretch at night, then eats and goes back to sleep for another three hours or so.  Ten hours is a really nice night, folks.  Plus, at three months Abby is starting to find things interesting besides just being walked around, so she can be entertained for ten or fifteen minutes trying to reach for the toy hanging on her carseat, for instance.  And she laughed at peek-a-boo for the first time this morning.  Which is good.  What do you do with a little person who doesn't get the concept of a game yet?

Unfortunately, she hasn't grown out of her digestive issues completely yet.  She can now handle me having some peanuts, but any dairy at all - and because it's the casein in the dairy, it means even sodium caseinate that's an additive in a lot of food - causes three days of crying and her little stomach gurgling uncomfortably every time she eats.  It makes me nervous to eat away from home where I can't read labels because I always wonder what I'm accidentally going to eat without knowing it and have Abigail pay the price for days.  Since I'm not dairy-intolerant myself, I don't get any stomachache or other warning.  It's a little taste of what it would be like to have a serious allergy myself; and I'm glad I don't actually have it, so I won't have to be so very careful the rest of my life.

Thankfully almond milk turns out to be quite good, actually, and it makes a great substitute in baking so I can still make some good stuff like muffins and my favorite raisin bread.  Also thankfully, I'm not doing a gluten-free, egg-free, dairy-free, soy-free, corn-free, peanut-free diet.  If you have a kid with really severe allergies, that's what you'd get; and I think that pretty much means celery sticks and plain chicken for a long time.  Good for the waistline...but boy, it'd get boring!

In other news, lots of work has gone on behind the scenes to prepare for our addition.  We have an amended building permit now posted in the window and we're pretty firmly expecting to start excavating Tuesday - though this could always be changed, having a date to start is new and exciting.  Ben and I have been working around the yard the past couple of days, cleaning things and getting stuff out of the way and moving the little peach tree a little further back so it's in a more convenient location...and also a little more out of harm's way when the big machinery comes through.

We had a little surprise pop up in the middle of our yard - the round circle garden that was so totally full of weeds last year that we pulled everything out sprouted a whole crop of tulips this spring.  Apparently, they must've been choked by the weeds but sprang right up once they were exposed to sun and water.  It's been a serendipitous occurrence; and it's entertained Grandma Lila for weeks as she sits at the breakfast table and looks out at their progress.  I'm probably going to go cut all the flowers tomorrow so they don't get crushed; they're completely in the middle of everything and there's certainly no point making machines drive all over the yard to avoid a few flowers.  But I'd like them to finish blooming on our kitchen table if they can't stay in the yard.

Ben and I have been attempting to put some order back into life so we can get things done.  Abigail definitely slows us up, but we've been gradually taking care of things one at a time and venturing out of the house on little outings.  We went to the library a few weeks ago and came home with a DVD collection of Dirty Jobs with Mike Rowe.  We watched one episode every evening after Abigail was in bed for the night (usually around 10:00) and got kind of hooked.  It's not that all the jobs are really that dirty, but the show focuses on all the small tasks that people make their living at in order to keep what we know as "civilized society" functioning.  One of the amazing byproducts of watching this show is that we're starting to look at our surroundings and say, "huh...I wonder who maintains all those lights on the side of the freeway and what it takes to do that job" or "I wonder what it's like carting produce around to all the grocery stores and making sure it stays fresh and getting rid of rotten stuff".  There are literally thousands of seemingly small jobs that people spend their lifetime doing that we never notice because it all goes into maintaining the infrastructure we've built up and are familiar with.

I will caution that it's definitely not a show for the little guys.  There are some fairly graphic bits involving breeding farm animals (yep, that's definitely a dirty job) and an awful lot of tasks involving what Mike always calls "poo".  And I have to say, if I didn't already not eat pork, I'm not sure I could now.

All in all, this month has gone by really fast and I'm starting to see some light at the end of the adjust-to-the-new-baby tunnel.  There may even begin to be time to sit and write more often again soon.

Then again...there's always construction!

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