August 30, 2010

Since our last blog post I've been an absentee parent, only coming home to sleep a few hours before hurrying back to work for new student orientation. It's exciting to have all the new students back on campus, but I'm very happy to have spent this evening with Charlotte! I missed her (and Pat) very much!

While I was working Patrick took Charlotte on a tour of the Keweenaw and snapped the above photo. So beautiful! That same day he took Charlotte to see her first triathlon, but unfortunately it was a bit chilly for her to be out too long.

It looks like she enjoyed the time she was there, though. Here Patrick caught her mid-clap. She's started clapping pretty frequently now, and that's been fun.

In addition to clapping, Charlotte has developed many new skills over the past couple of weeks. She first crawled while skyping with my parents; Patrick would pull the computer away and she would crawl toward it. For a while the laptop was the only thing motivating enough to get her to crawl, but that's quickly changing.

She can sit up from lying down completely on her own. It's amazing how coordinated she's become in a matter of days. She is able to pull herself up onto her knees and I'm sure it won't be long until she's able to get up onto her feet.

Since Charlotte can now sit up independently and is starting to pull herself up we lowered her crib tonight. Here she is checking out her new digs.

Such a sweetie! I love seeing her smile and here you can see her teeth! She had about 4 last I checked - two on top and two on the bottom.

The last weight I could find in her blog was from July 30 when she weighed 15 lbs 15 oz. Today she weighed 18 lbs 14 oz. Wow. This is faster weight gain than is recommended for infants and we keep waiting for it to level out, but so far, each day we're shocked at the new number on the scale. Charlotte's pediatrician recommended we feed her less per day, but the dietitian at Children's Hospital wasn't concerned. It's tough when you have to choose whose advice to follow, so we've decided to relax a bit with the amount of time Charlotte is on her pump. Rather than rushing through feed changes to make sure she's being fed for 23 hrs/day we give her a few extra minutes tube free to play and bathe.

The new tube has helped Charlotte to throw up less, she now only throws up 3-4 times/day and it's a small amount of bile. We do about 3 fewer loads of laundry per week and have plenty of extra burp cloths. Yay!

Charlotte loves daycare! At first she wasn't quite sure how to react to the other kids but now she enjoys watching them. She still doesn't like when they touch her (one girl in particular was fascinated by Charlottes hemangioma and wanted to poke it) or play too close but when we dropped her off today she was very interested in what the other kids were doing, so I'm sure she'll be joining in soon enough.

It's a good thing she likes daycare because she already got her first cold. It was pretty nasty and even gave her pink eye (who knew! Not all pink eye is contagious, it can be caused by a cold.). Her nose is still runny today, but she's back to her cheerful self. We're glad she's building up her immune system but are bracing ourselves for a long winter of runny noses.