Juicy

Ava looking for deals on formula and diapers, originally uploaded by Ava's Antics.

Last night Ava covertly peed on me while I was holding her. I didn't even realize it for what I can only assume was five minutes or so. So not cool babe.

...One Giant Leap for Baby-kind

Ava has been really clingy lately. The cause is probably multifactorial. She has been cutting teeth recently (we're up to five now) and may or may not be cutting more. She had to stop taking her third antibiotic for her third ear infection in a month due to diarrhea (we love us some diaper blow-outs). She has an appointment to get her ears checked on Monday. If she STILL has an ear infection we're going to have to see an ENT (Ear, Nose, and Throat) doctor about possibly getting tubes in her ears. You'd think with all the ears I've looked in I'd be able to check her ears, but you'd be wrong. I have tried many, many times, but there's something about Ava's ears that makes it impossible for me to see her eardrum! Give me anyone else's ears and I'd probably have a 95% chance of success. But I digress....

One good thing about Ava's clinginess is that it has spurred her to begin crawling. If we set her down to play on the floor and then walk away, she starts crying. Wanting to be with us, she attempts to move in our direction. It was quite a sight at first. She would lift her hands off the floor one at a time as you would when crawling, but her hands would return to the same place they had just left when she put them back down. Not making any progress, she altered her technique a little by lifting her contralateral leg (opposite side of the body) as she would lift her hand. She soon found out that she would make even less progress with this method as she would be balancing herself on one hand and one leg. Eventually she started to make piecemeal progress with her hand motions and discovered that her legs also had a role in forward motion. Thankfully, she has dropped the crying and crawling combo and resorted to purely crawling with the agility of a drunk groundhog. She's making progress and soon she's be crawling with the speed and sense of purpose I imagine Jackie Joyner-Kersey had at a young age.

The queen of beta-carotene

At Ava's nine month well-baby checkup our doctor asked what kinds of foods Ava liked.

"She likes apples, pears... most fruits, but she loves sweet potatoes!"

Apparently this was already clear, because the reason he had asked was Ava had a distinct orangish color to her. It's funny how when you see someone every day you can be so blind to the obvious changes. We were told that this isn't harmful to her in any way, but that she was definitely getting pumpkin-esque. Ava's not happy about it, but we've had to cut back on how often she gets sweet potatoes or carrots. All this time we thought she just had a good, warm, natural color to her skin.

It's kind of interesting to me that I missed this. Recently I saw a patient at the hospital that had jaundice to the Nth degree. I only saw the patient in passing, but, if I hadn't known better, I would have said she was positively glowing yellow. Something like that catches your eye across the room (speaking of eyes, here's a picture of icterus... aka jaundice changes in the eye). Yet, somehow, I was unable to perceive my own daughter's changes.

Granted, she wasn't extremely orange. She should be back to her normal pink-cheeked self again in no time. Otherwise, she's doomed to go trick-or-treating as a pumpkin again.

Teeth: The first WMD

With Ava's newly growth upper incisors, which I must mention seem downright huge in comparison to her lower incisors, we have been introducing her to new foods. Well, that's not entirely true... its the same old foods, just not pureed to a broth-like consistency. Ava's chicken noodle baby food now has noodles, albeight baby sized noodles. The solid parts of her food tend to find their way out of her mouth as she attempts to master mastication. Thus, our relatively clean feeding sessions have progressed into a contest to see how fast we can plaster a bib out of sight.

Ava picks up the small bits of solid food we place on her high-chair tray, but, to improve her chances of actually getting anything in her mouth, she picks up 5 or 6 things at a time before trying to feed herself. Doni tried to help her out by hand feeding her small pieces of banana. Engrossed in her newfound skills, Ava promptly bit down on Doni's finger.

Biting her own lip to prevent from teaching Ava a series of four letter words, she relayed to me that it was worse than being bit by a dog. Little did she know that this reiterated what I had learned in medical school. The bacteria in a human's mouth are more pathologic than the bacteria in a dog's mouth and tend to lead to worse infections. But I digress..... (besides, Ava didn't break the skin).

As Ava began feeding herself again, I wondered out loud how long it would be till she bit herself. Little did I know that 60 seconds later what I spoke would become a reality. Ava cried and cried and cried. It's hard to explain to a 9 month old the perils of finger foods.

If you'll excuse me, I have to go wonder out loud how long it will be till I win the lottery.