8 Months Old!

Wow! Time is truly flying by now. Meredith is another month old and continues to grow and learn. We are having so much fun with her, especially now that the weather has gotten so much nicer!

It's been awhile since I've last blogged and a few things have happened. Last weekend, I brought Meredith down to Blue Earth. Friday night we went out to the Legion for my good friend's mother's 60th Birthday. Meredith's schedule worked pretty well, she took a long nap on the ride home, we stopped briefly at my mom's to feed her a bottle and then headed up to the Legion. I had my travel highchair and put Meredith in it and fed her some puffs! I was able to hang out and catch up with my friends Emily and Danica, while Sheila's mom opened presents and visited. The only difficult thing was Meredith really wanted to get down and crawl around, but the floor was just a bit too dirty there! It was a lot of fun and I'm glad we went. We got back to my mom's about 9:30 and she spent some time getting hugs and kisses from Gma and Gpa and then got her off to bed.

The next day I had brunch with my Gma, mom, sister-in-law and step-sister up at a store for a special mother's day brunch. Then my Gma came over to spend some time with Meredith. Then after a quick nap we headed to my brother's place for a late lunch with my dad! It was very nice spending time with my dad and Meredith, but after a few hours, Meri was ready for another nap. The rest of the evening we spent with my mom and step-dad. We even had time to watch the movie, "The Blind Side" - which was a very good movie.

We headed back up to Minneapolis the next morning and I was greated with flowers, a present and a couple of cards for Mother's Day. Unfortunately, I was feeling very exhausted (I had a horrible cold, that kept me home from work that Friday, and was still sick, plus the weekend had been very busy) and all I wanted to do was take a nap. After feeding Meri, with Jon's help, I did just that! It was fabulous!

And this past weekend, I actually got sick again! We had my Aunt come over on Friday night because we had plans to go out to dinner with another couple to Restaurant Alma. Cory and Stephanie came over about 7pm to have a drink before dinner and to see Meredith. My Aunt was here by 7:15pm. We all headed out to make our reservation by 8pm. But at the restaurant, almost out of nowhere, I got nauseated and ended up getting sick, twice actually. I toughed it out through dinner, but didn't eat any of my food, but we had to leave right after dinner. I felt so bad, because Jon and I had been looking forward to going out for a long time. I ended up getting sick again in the middle of the night and couldn't eat much the next day. In fact, I didn't do much but sleep until about 2 in the afternoon. I still have no idea what happened. I had eaten some focaccia bread on Friday evening, maybe that was bad, I don't know. But it totally bummed me out.

I did still go to a work party on Saturday night with Meredith for about an hour and a half, but I didn't eat or drink anything there, except Ginger Ale! It was a birthday party for a couple of coworkers, that she has had the last few years. She has it at her house in Highland Park in St. Paul, so it's very close to our house. We got there after Meredith's dinner and it was so nice to see all my coworkers outside of work and they all seemed to enjoy meeting Meredith. My friends Nicole and Travis brought there daughter Paisley, too and they seemed to be fastenated with each other. But by 9:30, Meri was getting tired - and so was I, so we headed home.

As far as Meredith is concerned, things are going well in every area - except her eating, as usual. The last couple of weeks she hasn't been eating very well, especially at day care. Like only taking 1 to 3 oz in her two bottles at day care. She's been crying a lot with the bottle, and really only eating well when she's asleep. She's also basically refusing anything by spoon at home, though does eat a bit better by spoon at daycare (probably because she takes so little by bottle there). She does, however, love to eat puffs. I think if she could eat puffs all day long, she would. It's been very stressful for me, and after some encouragement from some coworkers, I'm going to see the feeding clinic at Children's Hospital. I had an appointment with them back in February, but ended up cancelling because she was improving. But the truth is, she does improve at times, but she always comes back to these times where she hates the bottle and it's a struggle to get her to eat. I'm reading to get an expert opinion and I fully intend on going ahead regardless of how she is eating at the time of the appointment. And actually the past couple days have been a bit easier to feed her, which has been great. It doesn't look like we will be able to get appointment until the beginning of June, so we'll see how she is doing then.

But other than that - Meredith is doing so great! She sleeps well at night, she's happy when she's awake. She's always smiling and giggling, she's crawling everywhere and starting to pull up on things, at least to get up on to her knees. She is so inquisitive and independent. She's just a lot of fun!

And as far as Meredith's modeling career. It's off to a very bumpy start. Actually, the Manhattan Toy Company shoot also fell through because the toy Meri was going to model, wasn't finished. So, she didn't end up doing any modeling:( The photographer and my friend at Manhattan Toy Company are going to keep us in mind and maybe we'll end up doing something in the future!

Here she is crawling around, she's getting pretty fast now!

Here's where the red hair comes from, her Auntie Emily! Her and her hubby spent the night with us a few weeks ago before taking an early flight out to Las Vegas the next morning

Meri's spending some quality time with her Gpa Pfaffinger

Here she is snuggling with her Great Auntie Kate, who graciously came over to babysit on Saturday night! Thanks Auntie Kate!

Here we are with the Swingen's who we went out to dinner with, bummer that I got sick :(

Jon's good friend, Pete, was in town for a Surgery meeting. He and Jon have known each other since Med School, then were in General Surgery together and he was even the best man at our wedding - but he now is a Colorectal Surgeon in Ohio and we haven't seen him in a long time. It was nice to see him again!

Meredith is starting to show interest in standing. She can't pull herself up to standing, but can pull herself up to kneeling and is getting close to standing - I think we're in even more trouble!

She's starting to like to crawl into the dog bed, with or without the dog. That equals, lots of dog hair all over Meredith, oh well!

Growing Up So Fast!

I feel like Meredith is growing up so fast. In the past week and a half she is feeding herself, crawling and staying up longer and longer (and thankfully taking longer naps, too!). Our little girl is growing up!

All in all, things are going well. However, she was sent home from daycare on Monday for a "temp" of 101 degrees F. She had been a bit fussier last weekend, she was having diarrhea, coughing, runny nose and not eating that great - but never had a temp for us. I didn't know if she was teething, had a cold, or a GI bug - so I just sent her to daycare. Well, I got a call at work on Monday that she was fussy, not eating, not peeing and had a temp. So, luckily Jon was done operating that day and picked her up. She was fine, at least the same as she's been over the weekend. But because she had a "temp" at daycare, she was out for the next day as well, because she has to be fever free for 24 hours without medications before she can come back. Jon ended up staying home with her on Tuesday and she was the same, maybe a bit better. I also had Wednesday off, so she didn't go back to daycare until Thursday, and all was well!

We did have a little adventure on Wednesday. I took her down to Mankato to have lunch with my Gma Pfaffinger at her Senior Living Apartment. We ate with her down in their dining room with a bunch of the other senior residents. Meredith was well behaved and a big hit with the older folk. I had her in her big stroller, which Jerry - my Gma's "friend", was very impressed by. After lunch we went and checked out Jerry's new apartment - he had lived in apartment across the street and had just moved into the same senior apartment building as my Gma a few month's ago. Then, Meri, my Gma and I went up to her apartment and chatted while Meredith crawled around and rolled around on the floor. All in all in was a good visit. We were able to time it perfectly and Meredith took a nap on our way back up to the Cities.

The only other exciting thing we've done lately is we went to a friend's home last night for a "Wine Club" get together. A group of my college friends had started a wine club several years ago and we've been getting together sporadically to taste wines, learn about wines and generally just have fun. Well, it's been quite awhile - a year I think, since our last get together - so it's long overdue. And the hosts even allowed us to bring our kids, so Meredith tagged along. It actually went great. We got there at 7pm, I warmed up a bottle and fed her in a quiet room upstairs, then I had brought a travel highchair and Jon and I took turns feeding her puffs, bananas and more formula. Then she just hung out, rolled around and crawled for awhile while we started doing our wine tasting. By about 9:30 - she was beat. We changed her into her PJs and brought her to a room upstairs and tucked her into her car seat. It took a little doing, but she eventually fell asleep. We then joined the fun downstairs and kept an ear out for her using the baby monitor we brought (yes, we were prepared and we brought A LOT of stuff). We left a little after 11pm. When we got home I just warmed up her last bottle, swaddled her and fed her and she was back fast asleep until this morning!

And as far as what I first mentioned - yep - Meredith is crawling, like moving forward, crawling. She's still kind of slow, but can definitely get around. It started happening on Tuesday. We were on the floor and the remote was in front of her and she went for it. It was only a few steps, but she was doing it. She did that all night, but only to get to the remote. By Wednesday - she was really getting around - good thing we had the gates put up this week!

And yes, she's feeding herself. Gerber cereal Puffs are her new favorite thing. We started a week and a half ago and she's finished 2 entire containers already. So now, twice a day, I give her a bottle, and then put her in her high chair and put puffs in front of her - the rest of the bottle in the drink holder area of high chair, and also spoon feed her a fruit or veggie mixed with cereal. So, she's feeding herself puffs, occasionally taking bites of food from me and even will reach towards her bottle when she wants a sip. It's hilarious. So, now Jon and I have been eating dinner while she eats her puffs, it's great!

And her napping and awake periods are changing. Especially in the evenings. Since Thursday she has basically dropped her last nap. So she gets up around 5pm and can stay up to 8 or 9pm without getting too fussy. And during the day her naps are about an hour and half to two hours long. And she's still sleeping until about 7am! So many changes, but so much fun!

Next weekend I'm heading to Blue Earth and at the end of the month we're flying to San Francisco to visit Jon's father, his wife and her children. And between now and then we have a few other fun things happening, plus Jon's back at Regions - for his last 2 months of residency, which means a lot busier call and earlier mornings for both of us because we both have to be at work by 6:30am. May will be a fun, but busy month!!

By the way, Meredith was chosen to be a model for the Manhattan toy catalog. We'll be doing that on Tuesday. We also had gotten a call for her to do a Target ad, but it fell through, apparently they were looking for an older baby, maybe next time!

Meredith with her great grandma Pfaffinger