Don't Blink.. seriously.. don't!

I'll probably feel really stupid for saying this when he turns two and really isn't a "baby" anymore, but Reilly is feeling less and less like one everyday. Except for when he is being pissy, he doesn't really cry anymore, we don't have to figure out ways to calm him down, or take turns holding him whenever we go anywhere because he won't sit in his car seat, he is becoming just a well behaved little boy (again, when not pissy) who is interested in more than just me and it's SO much fun! And come to think of it.. I don't even know when the last time I had to nurse him in the car because he wouldn't calm down in his car seat was!

Reilly is officially done with baby food, he doesn't really eat that much on his own though, but I figure at this point it's really just for learning how to eat more than anything else, because he still gets most of what he needs through breast milk anyway. He definitely has his favorites though! It was funny.. the other night I gave him tofu, grapes, puffs, pears, and zucchini all mixed up on his tray and he picked out every single piece of everything except the zucchini.. how he could tell the difference between that, the pears, and the tofu which peeled were all white I do not know.. but he was not having any of that stuff! He also had spaghetti for the first time the other night. Such a mess, but he was shoving fistful after fistful into his mouth.. I've never seen him eat like that before. The toast he gives to the dogs, but most fruit he will eat up.. especially watermelon and mango, SO my kid. Wonder if the fact that I ate at least one container of mango a day towards the end of my pregnancy has anything to do with that.. he likes miso soup as well, so perhaps! :) I hadn't really made it to Whole Foods since we learned more about his allergies, but the other day I made a trip and found so many options for him, including teething biscuits.. and can now make him macaroni and cheese by cooking egg free noodles and melting soy cheese into them. I did make dairy/egg free pancakes for him one morning.. buuut they weren't so fabulous.. probably to the fault of using vegetable spray on the pan, some 'reviewers' recommended adding more sugar too, so we'll see.

He is also learning new skills all the time, as of now.. if I can think of all of them.. he can splash, clap, find his nose, make little crazy signs..ugh, make piggy noises, wave, still dances like nobodies business, never tires of hide and seek.. and you know, the rest of the things babies do. The best part is that he gets so proud of himself for his accomplishments, when asked where his nose is, he barely touches it before getting a huge smile and clapping for himself! It's the best. He's also really into his cd player on his crib and always points to it and looks at me, waiting for me to turn it on and sit through another hour of kid's songs.. so not fun.. seriously, I keep saying I'm going to make him a dance cd, but haven't.. so if anyone wants to.. you'd be our hero! This morning I was exhausted so after I put him down for his 10:00 nap, I too took a nap, and woke up in a panic when I realized it was 12:30 (2 hours is usually his max), I heard him talking and ran to his room.. he never cried, just pulled his cd player off the side of his crib and was sitting happily playing with it.. funny guy.

I can't believe this Saturday he will be ten months old.. what? Are you kidding me? I'm pretty sure he was just born last week.. I cannot even believe that he will be a year pretty soon, and that I have to plan a birthday party already! Insane.. seriously.. IN! SANE! As long as he stays a mommy's boy forever, and never tells me he hates me, or wishes he didn't have parents, or tells me he can't wait to move out.. then I'll be just fine, and he will live.

A is for Anaphalaxia,. part 2!

Reilly had his follow up appointment with his allergist, Dr. Jim Christensen, today. Such a great doctor, if you can handle his staff.. and by staff I mean Michael- the front office know it all who will put you on hold for 5 minutes with every call.. just to stand there. Yes.. I witnessed it today from the waiting room. But, if you can get past him, Dr. Christensen is so nice and informative!

(He still loves to crawl onto his bouncer and play with that panda- it cracks me up!)

Anyway.. he gave us soy and wheat back! Wahoo!! That opens up so many windows for Reilly to actually get some sort of nutrition. Milk and eggs are really bad though, so we need to stay FAR away from those, and the peanut isn't horrible, but bad enough that he would prefer us to avoid them, which is fine by me. He says he should grow out of all of them by the time he is 5 years old, so we are definitely able to relax a little now. And I've officially quite playing the mystery allergy game. If you've had the amazing pleasure of being around Reilly, you've seen him with splotchy red skin and little white bumps, it's a daily occurrence.. he's sensitive, gotta get over it otherwise I'll drive myself and everyone around me mad!

I don't really know what else to update about, his sweet little heart is sleeping right now. He has gotten to the point where most nights he'll let me lay him in his crib, roll over to his stomach, get a blanket over him, and go to sleep. It's really sweet, other nights he cries for..3 minutes and is out. He has starting playing his own little version of hide and seek! He'll duck or move behind pieces of furniture, then pop out and crack up, it's hilarious! He doesn't tire of it though and can pop out front the railing of his crib over and over and over, each time with just as much enthusiasm.

Other than that I think it's gotten to the point where so much happens that I can't update about each thing! Which is great.. he is trying to say words, climbing over everything, starting to enjoy having some private time to play with his toys and not need me there every second, it's really a lot of fun now. He loves to go for walks and if I had to energy he could look around from his stroller for hours. If he could only sleep through the night.. we'll get there. :)

(Trying to get him used to hats for the summer.. considering both of his parents have fair skin.. right now he will wear them backwards because he isn't distracted by the flap!)

"POP"

One of Reilly's favorite times of the day is bath time! He loves playing with his little animals, trying to figure out how the water comes from the shower head, and sometimes eating the bubbles, it looks so cute when he has a little white bubble mustache! He has a little bath book and Jeff reads it to him every night while he is in the tub, once I tried reading it and Jeff informed me that I was doing it wrong because I don't over-exaggerate the word "POP" and I don't splash water all over Rei on the last page where the story refers to bath water splashing. He may just be onto something though.. tonight while Jeff was reading, Reilly watched very carefully as Jeff repeated "POP" a few times, and then he said it right back! When Jeff got to the end of the story, Reilly started splashing independently as the part about splashing approached. For the rest of his bath time, whenever we said "splash", he would splash the water- one more trick to the list! It's crazy how quickly babies pick things up at this age!

On the other hand.. he has decided that he likes to be dipped when we're dancing, and will just throw himself back and laugh, which is fun for the most part. However, as I was going up the stairs tonight he kept doing it, which I told him wasn't the safest idea.. then when we were turning the corner in his room he dipped back and knocked his head on the wall! Whoops!

The Twins.

These are Reilly's monkeys.. or as far as Reilly knows, this is his monkey. I haven't thought to attach him to a "lovey", or any sort of other transitional object, it just didn't cross my mind. However, he has been particularly fond of his sock monkey lately, he likes to cuddle it when he is being held, hold him while he is being read to, and although he doesn't pay much attention to him when he is sleeping at night, he likes to play with him in his crib in the morning. The 8-12 month section of "the book" mentioned that you should have two of whatever your child's "transitional object" becomes, god forbid anything should happen to one, or it needs to be washed, etc. I glazed over that section because.. if you lose it- you get over it, or if you really love it you find a way to reconnect.. yes, I still have Sleeper, Jeff will no longer allow him in the bed, but he is very close by on a bookshelf.. and sometimes sneaks into the bed with us. I can't tell you how many family members had to priority mail that bear back to me, or how many times my grandma had to restuff and sew him up after one stuffed animal tragedy or another. However, Jeff read this section and insisted we have a second monkey.. and considering I have to pull teeth (or threaten their existence) just to get him to read a baby book, I definitely don't want to hinder any motivation. So.. Reilly has two monkeys! Rhonda is the best and picked up the second one at Cracker Barrel this week! As of now, I think he can tell the difference between the two because I experimented multiple times, and each time he chose the original, however.. original is going to be hiding in the closet for a while, while monkey #2 absorbs Reilly's smell, love, etc, and they will just continue to rotate for all of eternity. Until I die an old woman and Reilly is going through my things and finds out I lied to him his whole life about his beloved sock monkey..

A is for Anaphylaxis.

In December I gave Reilly a small bite of ice cream, that same night his face broke out in bumps, but he was also being held by a woman with too much perfume on at a Christmas dinner so I didn't put the two together. In January he got another bite, same rash-so.. no more ice cream. A week later he got mash potatoes, which came with a rash all over his face, red eyes, and eventually welts around his eyes.. and a realization that he might be allergic to dairy. We mentioned to his pediatrician and he said that it sounded like a dairy/cow's milk allergy, and also that he was allergic to dogs due to allergic reactions whenever Max (His aunt and uncle's dog) was around, but no other dogs.. weird. He said if he had a reaction again, just give him some benadryl, but wanted to have him tested for any other allergies just to avoid a worse reaction in the future.

A few weeks ago we had him tested, thought we were just confirming a dairy allergy, no big deal. The did a "prick test" which was AWFUL! It included a tray of little pricks of the allergens pressed into his back, about 10 of them. Within minutes the at one point millimeter sized pricks were almost inch long white welts on his back! Ew.. then the doctor returned to confirm that not only was Reilly allergic to dairy, and not allergic to dogs (just Max), he was also allergic to wheat, soy, eggs, and peanuts. Oh my gosh!! So what is he going to eat? Well right now it's very limited.. he pretty much eats vegetables and fruits, oatmeal although it has a "trace of wheat" and a very small amount of baby food meats that don't have any allergens in them. Not going to lie.. this sucks! We'll manage.. but.. it sucks. Fortunately all except for the peanut allergy should go away by the time he is 4, granted we are very strict about not letting him eat any of them. The peanut allergy he will always have, he is not the type that will go into anaphylactic shock if someone opens a jar in the same room as him, but if he eats a peanut containing product, or if someone else does then touches him, then we'd better have the epi pen ready. Yesterday we had his blood work done.. HORRIBLE, thankfully my dad and Rhonda came along because considering how easily I take a needle myself (not very), there was no way I would be able to hold Reilly down while they drew blood from him. The blood work will determine how allergic he is to each thing, and which could be more dangerous.. crossing my fingers that most of them are not that bad and he can still eat one or two. Otherwise.. 3 more years is not that long.

The other good news is, I never knew how easily replaceable some things were in food.. eggs can be replaced with.. not wanting to look it up right now, but vinegar, yeast.. and other stuff. So that's manageable. And we found a lot of cookbooks on the FAAN website for some really good looking stuff! The not so fun news is that cow's milk cannot be replaced with soy milk when we wean him off of nursing, and rice milk is just not as nutritious so his doctor would prefer I keep him on breast milk as "long as I can".. ugh. So my plan is to still wean him from nursing at one and then just pump after that. Absolutely no offense to anyone who continues to nurse after a year, it's just not for me. And the other fun, but not fun news is.. we are THINKING of getting pregnant again sometime in the near/distant future, however.. in order for Reilly to get his milk, which takes 500 calories a day from me, and baby #2 to get it's nutrients, another 300 calories from me.. I'm pretty much going to have to eat a house everyday of my next pregnancy. Which is exciting because I have a real excuse to be fat.. but not exciting because.. ew... fat.

So anyway.. that is the allergy update. Took a while for me to post about it because I couldn't think of a way for it not to sound like something horrible, which.. it really isn't, we just have to make a few adjustments. He is perfectly healthy and happy, which I am thankful for everyday, he just can't eat a few things. And if anything.. it's just one more motivation to make sure he doesn't consume unhealthy or processed foods.

Hide and Seek

While most of you may be teaching your children sign language and how to read.. my kid is a one man circus show. His "tricks" include making piggy noises and dancing on demand, and now.. hide and seek. We're still working on sticking his tongue out. He's got the rest of his life for literacy!

We played this game for about 5 minutes before I thought to video it, so he was pretty much over it.. but you get the gist.

Laughing Baby.

THIS is my absolutely favorite thing in the universe!