Thumb sucking 101

Addy kind of managed to suck her thumb this evening, with somewhat disastrous results.  Allow me to assist you with the demonstration:

1) First and most importantly, use an emery board to file all of the fingernails on your left hand to sharp, jagged points.  In spite of my attempts to keep them trimmed, Addy is quite adept at maintaining a full set of wickedly sharp daggers on the ends of her fingers.

2) Open your left hand in front of your face with your palm facing toward you

3) Rotate your left thumb so that it is now pointing toward your face, keeping your palm facing you

4) Open your mouth

5) Bring your left hand toward your face, inserting your thumb into your mouth

6) Close your mouth around your thumb.  Commence sucking.

7) Slowly curl your fingers down until your claws fingernails are digging into your face.  Attempt to make a fist.

8) Ignore the thumb in your mouth and scream as you draw blood

Other than the aforementioned thumb sucking debacle, Addy continues to do very, very well.  She is definitely getting bigger and is starting to outgrow some of her newborn sized outfits.  Not that I put a whole lot of faith in its accuracy, but according to our bathroom scale she weighed just under 9lb yesterday!

I'm dreaming of a ...

Well, holy hotdogs, Batman: Huntsville had a white Christmas this year!  Don't think this is a big deal?  Check out the history from the NWS.  (My favorite part is the official definition of white Christmas.)  It's a good thing it's a holiday weekend and 99% of businesses are closed, since the roads in the area are pretty much shut down.

Addy's first Christmas has been spent as any good Christmas should: spending every waking minute eating.  Seriously.  I think she's working on a growth spurt.

Hope that all of you have a Merry and blessed Christmas!

Out on the town

We finally decided to take Addy out for some adventures outside the house.  Last night we went to the annual Yuletide Bassoon Concert at church.  The concert was awesome as usual, though I was hoping to hear the arrangement of "Mama Mia" that they played last year (yes, the song by Abba as played by ~20 bassoons).  Miss Sunshine let out quite a belch following the applause after the first song which no one around us seemed to notice, but Derek and I just kind of looked at each other and snickered. 

Today we went out to lunch with some of Derek's coworkers and then stopped by his office to say hi to people there.  The tricky part of taking her out right now is actually what to do with her once we're at our destination since she's still riding in the car bed and getting that thing wrangled in and out of the car is so difficult as to be impossible.  So today we brought the regular car seat in to the restaurant for her to rest in while we ate.  It may not be the best solution, but it worked for a short outing.

Sibling Rivalry

So far, things between Addy and her feline "siblings" seems to be settling down.  There was an initial hiccup the day we brought Addy home: she was fussy because she needed a diaper change and the cats were fussy because we'd been gone for 2 and a half weeks, so Merry decided to introduce herself with her teeth.  So far no additional encounters of the sharp and pointy kind. 

Until this morning.

Merry feels pretty strongly that babies should only maybe be seen and definitely not be heard.  During this morning's diaper change + cath, our soon-to-be-outdoor cat decided that Addy's fussing might be quieted by a swift chomp on the head.  She was quite wrong.  Fortunately, there was no bloodshed and Addy calmed down pretty quickly when I picked her up.  Unfortunately, I had diaper cream all over my fingers when Merry had this horribly wrong idea, which only added to the wrongness of the situation.

In other news, we had our first "problem cath" last night.  Marching orders when we were discharged from the NICU were to call the urologist if she has a residual of more than 40mL.  Generally it's been less than 20mL and often less than 10mL, but last night's 10PM cath was well over the 40mL limit.  My opinion is that Addy just hadn't had time to spontaneously void because she was Starvin' Marvin at 8:30 so she ate earlier than normal.  But I went ahead and called the doctor's office anyway just to be safe.  Since they haven't called back with any different instructions, I'm assuming this is a "keep an eye on it and call back if it happens again" situation.

Maybe the crib isn't such a bad place afterall...

We seem to be making progress on the whole "sleep at night in the crib" situation.  Two nights in a row now she has slept in the crib between 10pm and 2am care time, and last night she also slept in the crib from 2am to 6am.  Now if only we can get the urologist to say that a 2am cath isn't needed...

Addy continues to be a spunky, strong-willed little girl.  The plastic surgeon told us last week that we need to work on having her sleep on the back of her head (instead of having her head turned to the side when she's on her back).  Unless you actually stand over her and keep her head in the right position, she always turns it to her left.  Hand-eye coordination is also coming along, which makes feeding her just a little more interesting.  Bottles aren't so messy, but vitamin drops quickly look like war paint.

Missed Marketing Opportunity

Dear Makers of "Fruit-Like" Flavored Rx Choice Poly-Vitamin Drops With Iron:

I believe you have missed a wonderful marketing opportunity for your infant vitamin supplements.  Please consider renaming your vitamin drops "Goth Drops."  This is not only a clever and entertaining rebranding of your product, but also a more accurate description of the after-effects of feeding it to a child.  My daughter's lips remain stained black and her breath has a slight putrid stench for nearly 24 hours after consuming her vitamins.  I would be happy to consider letting her be your new spokes-baby for this marketing campaign.

Thank you for your consideration.

End of Shunt Pattern Baldness

Addy's hair is starting to grow back where the shunt was placed--yay!  It's long enough to actually be seen instead of just being that soft peach fuzz that can only be felt.  It's kind of hard to tell right now, but it looks like her hair may have a little red to it.

Cross your fingers:  Addy spent quite a bit of time today being awake and alert.  Hopefully she'll sleep like the baby that she is tonight :)