4 Months!

Although technically, Mia turned 4 months on Sunday the 25th, I decided to delay this post until we had her 4 month pediatrician visit, so that I could post her stats:

Weight: 13 lbs, 4 oz, 50th percentile

Length: 25", 75th percentile

Head: I forgot the measurement, but 25th percentile.

Shots: 2 - she didn't feel the first one, but screamed bloody murder on the second.

Post-shot nap.

We are clear to stick with soy formula (thank you Mia!), since she seems totally back to normal and no longer has any bloody #2s. She continues to have some trouble with constipation, so we need to continue with prune juice. In a more exciting transition, we are cleared to start solid foods. Mia's head control is good enough for her to start on all fruits and vegetables. We're supposed to get started on the high-fiber foods at once, so that we can cut down on the prune juice, which is a lot of sugar for a little baby to be ingesting every day. I'm excited to get the baby food processor out and get started! She's already started eating some cereal in the past few days, and we have good and bad feedings. Sometimes, she acts as though this baby rice cereal is the most delicious food in the world, and sometimes, she reaches for the bottle that is sitting on the table. Hopefully, she takes a better liking to apples, which we'll start on first.

Mia's makeshift work high chair, Mia says "Gimme mah cereal!"

Mia has hit all the milestones she's supposed to. She's holding her head up 90* when on her stomach and looking around. She's rolled over (although only twice at this point, but I guess it still counts!), and she is really starting to increase the baby talk. Lots of consonants and vowels, though mostly "Ha! Ha! Hoooooo."

We picked up an "exersaucer" at a local secondhand kid's store. I went to the store 3 times before I found one that looked clean and basically new. We picked up the exact one I was planning on buying on amazon and paid $32 instead of $70!

In more Baptism news, Las Vegas's Catholic community continues to astound us with the number of hurdles to get your kid to become Catholic. Once we 1) became registered parishioners, and 2) completed our baptism course, we thought that we were golden to schedule the baptism. It turns out, we need to have both our Godparents complete Baptism classes, and send over their confirmation certificates before we can even pick our mass! Crazytown. We have both Godparents scheduled and hopefully after October 7th, we'll have more definite plans.



Got it!

After a few unsuccessful attempts, we finally got Mia's giggles on video. The other day, she started laughing hysterically when I started playing with Swarley in front of her. Tonight, we decided to try bringing Swarley in again and giving Brian the camera. Here it is! Again, you'll have to excuse my over excited and high pitched voice.

Also, a video taken by one of my co-workers of Mia chatting it up.

On a not as cute note, it turns out Mia has a milk protein allergy. Last week, there were blood streaks in her #2 diaper. I immediately called the pediatrician, and they told me not to freak out, that it was probably just some kind of allergry, and to bring her in to the office in the morning. After a very fitful night of waking up every 2 hours, we went to the pediatrician with dirty diapers wrapped in doggie poop bags. After asking a series of questions about my diet and what kind of formula we've been supplementing with. Since I hate the taste of milk, it hasn't impacted Mia. Lately, I started eating cereal in the mornings for breakfast and eating ice cream after dinner. This spike in dairy apparently aggravated Miss Mia's tummy. So, we are switching to soy formula and sticking to that from now on. Apparently, about 70% of babies with a milk protein allergy tolerate soy just fine, but 30% require a more broken down type of formula that costs about 3 times more than regular formula. So, we are really REALLY hoping that we fit into that 70%. Cross your fingers for us!

So far, we have only seen a little bit of blood in the past couple of diapers. The pediatrician told us not to be alarmed if we saw more in the next few days, because it takes at least one week for the stomach lining to heal up. So, we are going to continue to examine every diaper and hope for the best!

Back by popular demand

Another video! This time, Mia enjoying the bath. Warning, there is a naked baby in this video :) Again, you'll have to ignore my annoying high pitched voice. You can't help it when trying to get your baby excited...

Another Update

Brian's branch is being reassigned. Even though he maintains that it is a lateral move, I'm going to go ahead and tell everyone that it's a quasi-promotion. The new branch is an extra 5 minutes away (We love Vegas traffic). He's being moved from a medium traffic branch to a high traffic branch. At this new branch, he'll be the only licensed banker, meaning that he's the only banker able to handle investments and business accounts. So YAY.

For now, we've also decided to forgo daycare for Mia. Since Mia has stopped going to Kate's, we visited a couple of in-home daycares, but I still don't feel comfortable leaving her with a stranger (not to mention the fact that one stranger's house smelled like cats, and the other stranger's house smelled like curry - we did agree that curry is a better smell than cats...). My company isn't doing particularly well (financially - the healthcare industry has taken a big hit, insurance companies are covering about 30% of what they used to, it's not good), so my paychecks are often delayed by a few days (or weeks....), which has made our bank account levels kind of unpredictable. Read: I don't always know when I'll have wads of cash available to fork over to a babysitter. I have been taking Mia to work. EVERYDAY. It's actually been going well so far. She loves meetings, something about people talking between themselves rather than at her is probably soothing.

As I write this (see? I'm not terribly busy right now) she's napping in her Pack 'n Play. It's awesome, and everyone has gotten used to coming into my office and speaking in hushed tones.

Parish and Baptism Update

After checking out two different churches, we've 100% settled on Christ the King Catholic Community, which is about 15 minutes away from our apartment. We became registered parishioners on Tuesday night, and got to talk at length with the Pastor. We're all set to go to this month's baptism class, which is on September 19th. Once we've completed the class, we'll be able to schedule the baptism. We're aiming for November 13th or November 20th. We'll let everyone know as soon as we know for sure, too.

This Parish is unlike any I've ever seen. Everything about it is completely progressive, something that suits Brian and I very well. Both of us have had issues with Catholicism's rigidity in the past (not to get into too much detail, but in my opinion, the Vatican's stance on many things needs to adapt to the modern world), and this Parish gives such a welcoming and community feel that all is forgiven, at least on my end. 

The Church itself is set up completely differently than your traditional Church. There is not traditional "altar", but the mass is conducted with the priest in the center of the room. His seat is not separated from those of the parishoners. There are no pews, but instead, there are chairs that can be moved according to the seasons. The priest explained to us that the chairs are rearranged into a straight line during Lent, and are in a circle during Advent, etc. The songs are modern and catchy, I swear the Cantor must be from one of the Strip's shows, she had an amazing voice.

This past Sunday's mass had a Baptism, and it was truly moving. The Pastor says that he makes a point of only doing Baptisms during regular Sunday masses, because he wants the babies to be truly welcomed into the Community. Everyone was so excited to see those babies. I don't want to give too much away, but it's a pretty spectacular event. You'll have to make the trip to Las Vegas in November to see what it's all about!

Transitions

This week, we learned that Kate will no longer be able to take Mia while Brian and I are at work. When I first went back to the office, Mia was a mere 7 weeks old. Now, she's a strong and active 3 month old, and she's starting to need more attention and activity. She doesn't like to just sit in her chair or lay in her crib between her naps. She likes to be held, walked around, airplaned and played with.

Now that she's growing out of the infant stage, I am much more comfortable putting her in a more traditional daycare setting, but we're not quite ready for the pre-school like environment (and pricetag) of a big daycare. So, we're looking into a licensed, in-home daycare. Tonight, we are visiting one that is just north of our apartment, so just slightly out of the way for me to get to work. Tomorrow, we'll visit another more conveniently located in-home daycare. The pricing is about the same as we were paying Kate, but they are requiring us to be consistent with our schedules. Since we can't commit to the same 3 days every week, we are only comfortable committing to 2. We'll do something like Mondays and Thursdays, or Mondays and Fridays, since those are the days that Brian gets off the least often. Brian will keep her on his day off, and that leaves 2 take your daughter to work days for me.

I want us to take our time making a decision, but we would like to have something set up by September 12th. I have to be in court on September 16th, and would rather not take her to work to be watched by my co-workers, who have their own work to do (although I am sure they would be happy to pass the baby between them.).

In ancitipation of Mia's new 2-days a week work schedule, I spent a good chunk of my morning setting up her "new room". I brought the pack-n-play into my office, set up the mobile, and the changing station. Having it here has already made a huge difference. She naps much more easily when she's not in her bouncy chair, and I don't have to clear off my desk every time she needs to be changed. We were even able to do tummy time, since the crib surface is hard and stable enough. I'm really glad with the set up, and since I don't see any clients in my office, this shouldn't cause too many problems. I even put on the lullaby pandora station on my laptop!

Mia's first sniffles

This weekend, Mia put on her party dress (or party ruffled jumper) and attended her first birthday party. Tybalt, our babysitter and friend Kate's son turned one and had a jungled-themed birthday. Although not fitting with the theme, Mia brought a nice turtle for her best (and only) friend:

Patchwork turtle, probably the most complicated thing I've made so far.

Mia was minimally fussy at the birthday, despite the larger crowd than she's used to. There were a couple of other babies there, one 4 month old and one 5 month old. She definitely looked smaller than those two, but was infinitely more alert than either one of those, which leads Brian and I to think that our daughter is probably a genius.

Unfortunately, Mia now has what appears to be her first cold. She's got a bit of sniffles going on, and fusses every 3-4 hours, which makes me think that she's got a sore throat similar to the one I have. We're lucky to have avoided any sicknesses to date by shying away from traditional daycare, but I guess we couldn't keep her locked up forever. I brought her to the office yesterday, and she wouldn't let me put her down, or sit down while holding her, so I had to stand up at my computer and type like this:

Moby wrapping it up!

Funnily enough, it felt oddly similar to when I was walking around the office like this:



I recently decided to embrace being a Las Vegan and a Mom, so I joined a Meetup group. On saturday morning, I went to a farmer's market a Tivoli Village, which is a mall that was constructed right before the economic downturn, so it's basically a really nice looking outdoor mall with only a scaterring of shops. The farmer's market had about half of the vendors of the one we attended in L.A., but it is certainly better than nothing. I had some freshly made mini donuts (mini means less calories, right? even if I ate 6 mini donuts? hmm...). We also got a very nice and delicious loaf of multigrain bread for Brian's lunch sandwiches, and some wax beans and fingerling potatoes from a farm in California. I met up with another Vegas Mom and her friend, who were very nice and I'm happy I met them. This mommy group has quite a few outines per week, and I'm looking forward to attending more of them, even though it is dominated by stay-at-home-moms and half of their activities are during work hours. This saturday, there's a storytime that we are going to at a nearby Barnes and Noble. I'll just keep telling myself that Mia will totally be into what's going on at B&N, just like I tell myself that she's paying attention to the stories that we read before her beditme.

Lastly, here's the most adorable Mia pic of the week:

I'll be 3 months old tomorrow!