Where's my health?

I've been sicker and sick more often in the past year than at any time since I was a kid. Shouldn't I be immune to all this stuff? Did they invent new diseases since I was a kid? A couple weeks ago, I had achy joints and an unwell stomach twice in about 10 days. Amanda had it in between my two bouts. Nathaniel, on the other hand, seems to be getting along just fine. Maybe we should have gotten flu shots, like he did. Too late now.

More new foods

We're also starting to give Nathaniel some yogurt. We got some kids yogurt (smaller containers, lower sugar), and he seems pretty happy with them. It's a definite improvement over the cottage cheese I tried last week. Soon, we'll be working a little with eggs, as well.

And of course he'll have a little cake and frosting on Saturday. I'm a little concerned about how he'll react to that (I'm also concerned about what extent one relative will go to in order to get that "ultra-cute" picture ... it's the relative who spread ice cream around the face/mouth of Nathaniel's cousin on her first birthday for that "messy baby" picture after the cousin seemed a little disinterested in the treats). But if that's all we have to worry about, it will be a great day.

Now that I think about it, I'm a little more worried about possible incoming snow storms leading up to the weekend. That could cause some problems. And leave us with large amounts of food.

I guess we'll find out soon enough.

Almost a full year

It's amazing ... Nathaniel will be 1 year old on Friday. A whole year. It really has gone by astonishingly fast, from the excruciating beginning to the awe-inspiring ups and downs since then.

We're having family over to help celebrate this weekend, which should be fun. Nathaniel, of course, has no idea anything is coming up. I just hope he can handle all the excitement of having a couple dozen people hanging around. Usually, when there are people around, he ends up refusing to sleep and barely being able to eat because he's so busy watching everything that's happening.

I guess we'll see how things go.

So now that's he about a year old, we're really starting to try to give him some more "adult" food. We're giving him small bits of some of the stuff we eat (mostly bits of bread, but he's also had some yogurt, potatoes and such). He's also eating some older baby jarred stuff. He went for the turkey and rice stage 3 jar, but he refused the chunkier chicken and vegetables (by "refused" I mean "threw up").

The stage 2 meats look amazingly appetizing on the label. The chicken and pears has this really tasty-looking grilled chicken. Then inside the jar is a bunch of mush. Where's the truth in advertising?

We had hoped to try to make food for Nathaniel. The one time Amanda worked for a while on making a big batch of chicken and potatoes along with some veggies, though, Nathaniel threw it up every time we tried (two or three times) and we ended up with quite a bit of mush that really wasn't all that appetizing.

This weekend, we gave him whole milk for the first time instead of formula ... and he seems to love it! He downs it all, while he'd been leaving some formula behind most of the time recently. It's very exciting to have to simply pour a glass of milk rather than mix up formula for him every time now.

We also went ahead and bought a little toothbrusher thing that fits over your finger and used it on him yesterday ... and while he looked scared of it at first, he didn't have much of a problem with it in the end. Pretty cool.

More to come in this week leading up to his birthday.

Getting the tubes

Well, it looks like Nathaniel will be getting tubes in his ears to deal with the almost constant fluid in them and the too-often-recurring infections. I hope they help relieve the pain on the little guy ... he could use it.

Now we just need to get things lined up to do that ... but it should happen within the next few weeks.

Specialist meeting

Finally, Nathaniel will get to visit an ear-nose-throat specialist today. We made the appointment months ago, but this was the earliest visit available. He's had about five rounds of antibiotics due to ear infections, and who knows how many lesser infections that didn't lead him to scream to the point that we took him to the doctor.

And we're also concerned about the fact that he pretty much always has fluid in his ears because doctors have pointed out he probably doesn't hear quite right at this time ... which could mean it will be more difficult for him to speak as quickly as he might have (he can't hear the words we're saying clearly, so he can't imitate the words well).

Anyway, I guess we'll figure some things out today.

Response to a comment on previous post:
I agree that walking without shoes is best for the young baby ... we only have him wear shoes when he's going out. Now that it's cold, we want a little added protection for his little feet. The socks seem so flimsy when it's windy out. He wears shoes outside and to day care ... then he usually kicks them off fairly quickly at day care.

When is it considered walking?

Nathaniel is walking. Sort of.

Amanda and I have been kind of conservative with declaring him a crawler, a talker or a walker. He can say mama and dada, but we're not considering that talking. And we didn't really consider it crawling until he made crawling his primary means of transport.

So now he's really starting to get around upright. He's taken up to 10 steps or so before either falling down or reaching his destination (admittedly these are extremely cute steps with Nathaniel waving his arms about to try to maintain his balance) . But he still uses crawling as his top method of getting around, so we're not calling him a walker yet. There's no question that he's close, though.

SHOES
How is it that baby shoes -- real, honest-to-goodness shoes designed to help him learn to walk and maintain proper foot structure -- are more expensive than most of the shoes I wore in college? We got a pair of "Stride Rite" shoes over the weekend (he hates them, of course). Man they seemed pricy for baby shoes -- shoes he'll grow out of in a couple of months at most. Dang babies and their fast growing abilities.
We hadn't really done shoes before, but now that he's walking, we decided he should have some foot protection and get used to the concept of shoes. With the shoes on, he falls over far more quickly as he's having trouble feeling the ground. End result? As I said, I think he hates them.

Nathaniel the boxer

Certainly he doesn't mean anything by it, but Nathaniel has really been smacking his mom around a lot lately. He gets excited and starts waving his arms about while she's holding him, and next thing you know there's a pretty serious sounding smack from him to Amanda's face. I've been trying to convince him that he needs to be gentle with his mom, but he doesn't seem to be getting it so far.

Luckily, there have been no bruises ... and I would have to guess that by the time he could bruise someone he'll have learned not to wave his arms around with such abandon.

This weekend was wonderful with Nathaniel. He was very relaxed as we went around to a few furniture stores, an art sale and a restaurant, was playful at home and slept through the night (for the most part). What a relaxing weekend!

And, as if to make up for hitting his mom too much, Nathaniel lovingly mauled her Sunday afternoon. As he laughed and drooled on her, Amanda couldn't help but laugh ... which prompted Nathaniel to continue laughing and drooling.

Definitely a nice weekend.

Getting better...

Thanks to those who replied in comments and via other means to calm my mind about Nathaniel's progress. I think I was somewhat just overwhelmed by his refusal to sleep properly. Now that he's slept 100 percent through two of the past three nights and had very minor wakeups the other night, I'm doing much better.

In addition, we're having a ear-infection followup this afternoon, so I can ask the doctor any other questions about his progress.

But, really, he seems to be doing great. He's almost on the verge of walking, which is amazing to see. He regularly takes a step toward something unassisted. He sometimes manages a step and a half or two before he starts to crumble into a crawl. Yesterday, he stood while picking up a fairly heavy toy, which I thought was very impressive (maintaining balance while dealing with an added weight that was not centered on his body).

On a sad note, his favorite teacher at day care is about to leave the center. She's sad about missing him and I'm not certain how Nathaniel will deal with it either. I guess we'll see soon enough.

Too much!

On top of the exhaustion of the holidays (yesterday was supposed to be a recovery day for us, but Nathaniel was way off throughout the day ... he refused to nap and screamed regularly at us), now we're planning his first birthday. It's all so much.

And then we took a closer look at the "What to Expect" baby book, and we see Nathaniel is supposed to be drinking from a cup these days. From a cup? He regularly refuses a sippy cup! And what's the reality when it comes to brushing a baby's teeth? And he maybe should be able to say a word or two other than "Mama" and "Dada"? Argh! Are we messing up with him? He certainly seems happy (most of the time), and he's hitting the physical milestones (standing unassisted, cruising like mad, slight walking, etc) ... but now I'm all concerned about the brain-related milestones.

It's all too much. Exhausting.