Morgan Dahl

6 months old!

Morgan was 6 months old on December 27th.  I was waiting until her 6 month well-visit to the doctor to make a post.  And we did that this morning, so here it goes…

I remember our first trips to the doctor when 6 months/Christmas seemed so very far away.  That simultaneously feels like ages ago and yesterday.  Anyway…

The doctor’s visit went well.  She got her immunizations, the same shots as at the 1 month and 4 month appointments, as well as a flu shot.  The shots seemed to bother her less at the 4 month appt. than at the 1 month and again less at the 6 month appt. than at the 4 month.  She really only cried very briefly after the shots and was relatively easy to console.  So that was great for me and Jim.

Her doctor is very pleased with her growth and her development.  He asked us if she was rolling over (yes), reaching for things (yes), tranfering things from hand to hand without dropping them (yes), and supporting her weight with her legs (definitely yes).  He then pulled her up from a laying position to standing, which she does very well, and had her stand there with him for a minute or two.  She is a champ at this particular game and passed with flying colors.  At her four month visit she most decidedly did not have the head control he wanted to see, so Jim and I were pleased to see her back on track.

Here are the growth stats:

• weight: 15 lb, 3 oz (45th percentile)
• height: 27 1/4 inches (90th percentile)
• head: 17 1/2 inches (90th percentile)

We chatted a bit about her head shape.  The doctor seems pleased with the progress, calling it ‘minimally misshapen.’  Plus her soft spot is still quite large (apparently) so there is still more opportunity for the shape to continue to improve.  Jim and I both really thought her head was improving, but I was pleased to hear the doctor’s take.  Morgan is still sleeping in a wedge (to keep her on the ‘other’ side of her head from the flat spot), but as she is becoming more mobile the wedge is becoming less effective.  She can move out of it too quickly.  Plus Jim and I have been wondering if it has been starting to muck with her sleep, as it doesn’t allow her full movement about the crib and she sometimes gets stuck in it in uncomfortable ways.  The doctor said we could drop the wedge at this point. We’ll probably need to get a bumper for her crib now, since she’ll be moving around more and thus will be more likely to get limbs caught between the slats.

We also chatted a bit about her height.  Her rear-facing infant bucket seat only goes to 30 inches.  She should not hit 30 inches before her 9 month appointment, so we’ve dodged that bullet for a few more months.  Once she hits 30 inches we have to put her in a convertible seat (one that can fact backward and front, not one with a drop top) that stays in the car.  The problem that arises for us is how to get her in and out of this seat in our two-door car while she is still facing backwards.  But we don’t have to worry about that for awhile yet.

In terms of what comes next, we are supposed to add fruits to her diet and then meats (chicken, turkey, and later beef, all unseasoned).  We are also supposed to start to give her water and begin to work on the use of a sippy cup.  This (the sippy cup thing) took me by surprise.  Can’t believe it…We’re also supposed to move from feeding her solids at one meal a day to two-three times a day.  Annabel (her primary person at daycare) will be excited.  She’s been anxious to start feeding Morgan solids during the day.

So that is a pretty solid recap of the doctor’s visit.  I was looking through our infant care book at what to expect during the four through seven month time frame.  The following are basically lists from that book.

Movement milestones to expect by the end of the 7th month (nearly two months away)

• Rolls both ways (she currently rolls well from back to front and occassionally from front to back)
• Sits with, then without, support of her hands (yep…it is apparently still ‘some time’ before she will be able to move herself to a sitting position)
• Supports her whole weight on her legs (yep)
• Reaches with one hand (yep…reaches with both)
• Transfers objects from hand to hand (yep)
• Uses raking grasp, not pincer (yep)

Language Milestones by the end of the 7th month

• Responds to own name (not yet)
• Begins to respond to ‘no’ (not yet)
• Distinguishes emotions by tone of voice (I don’t think so, but I also don’t know exactly how I’d be able to tell)
• Responds to sounds by making sounds (I don’t think so)
• Uses voice to express joy and displeasure (starting to)
• Babbles chains of consonants (not yet)

Cognitive Milestones

• Finds partially hidden object (not really, though if we leave a room she will watch the door waiting for us to come back)
• Explores with hands and mouth (yep)
• Struggles to get objects that are out of reach (yep)

Social/Emotional Milestones

• Enjoys social play (yep.  As I’ve mentioned in the past, she’s been playing with friends at daycare)
• Interested in mirror images (very much so)
• Responds to other people’s expressions of emotion and appears joyful often (yep)

Speaking of which, we’ve been meaning to get some video of her playing in the mirror.  She loves it!  Maybe we’ll do that soon.

Everything seems to be on track, she’s happy and healthy.  We go back at 7 months for the 2nd half of the flu shot (she got the first half today) and then at 9 months for her next well visit.

Whew! Christmas was a whirlwind

We had an awesome Christmas this year.  Morgan got to celebrate twice, both at the Dahl’s in Sioux Falls and at the Wetzel’s in Richmond.  She got to meet her Great-Grandma Lura as well as her Great-Uncle Jake for the first time.  And boy did she clean up in the gifts department.  We had one little bin in which we had kept all her toys before.  That is no longer sufficient.  So we’re going to be continuing to add storage to Morgan’s room.

As an aside, let me say that traveling with an infant is tiring work.  She doesn’t sleep quite as well at night, naps get screwed up, etc.  Nothing too big, but we were glad to be home and back to the routine, such as it is.

Christmas Photos

After Christmas #1 at the Dahl’s in Sioux Falls, Morgan got to celebrate first Christmas #2 at the Wetzel’s!

Misc. pre-Christmas photos

Christmas stuff coming soon, but some house-cleaning to tide you over…

She’s entertaining me more and more, is really starting to get around, sits up ok (if placed there), and touched grass for the first time.

Well again! Though alone in daycare

Morgan’s temp was back to normal yesterday morning when she woke up. She ate and slept as normal yesterday and seemed to be in increasingly good spirits. We brought her in to daycare today (having followed the 24 hrs well before coming back rule).

Bringing Morgan into daycare on Christmas Eve is interesting in its own way.  There are only 3 infants in the daycare today (as opposed to the normal 12). I’m not sure how many older kids there are, but I get the impression that there are very few…

Slowly feeling better

Morgan’s temperature has fallen a bit, to about 100.5. And she has eaten twice (once around 1:30 am and again around 7:00 am) without throwing up. So maybe we’re on the mend here. She’s still exhausted; I expect her to sleep the day away.

Battling her first real illness

Morgan is sick.  Poor thing.  Though she is being a trooper about the whole thing.

When she woke up to eat this morning around 5:30, she threw up immediately after eating.  I got her to eat a little more and then put her down.  She slept late this morning.  When I went to feed her later this morning she again threw up immediately.  And this afternoon she kept some food down for about a half hour before throwing up again.  So she’s thrown up 3 times in the past 12 hours or so.  She is running a fever of 101.5.  She has been sleeping a ton (and when awake is clearly wiped out).

None of this is particularly worrisome.  Kids get sick.  In fact (probably not unrelated), two kids were sent home from daycare last week when they vomited.  But, like a good first-time mom, I called the doctor anyway.  I wanted to know when I should start to worry.  He said we should call back if she has difficulty breathing, shows a lack of awareness, vomits repeatedly without being fed, or runs a temperature of 102.5 or higher for an extended period.  None of those things are happening, so we’re just trying to help her stay comfortable, get plenty of rest, and possibly get more food/liquid into her if we can.

Beginning to sit

Morgan is getting better at staying in a seated position by herself.  She can’t sit up, you have to set her up to sit and she will topple over eventually, but she is definitely holding herself up better and better (for longer and longer stretches of time).

A side effect of this is that she is often trying to pull forward out of her stroller.  Or, as you can see in the picture with her Dad from Sioux Falls below, she pulls forward when sitting on your lap.

And if I stand her next to the flexible bars that arc over her activity mat (they hold the dangling toys and what not) she’ll stand holding on to those bars by herself for quite some time.  Again, you can’t really move away, as she doesn’t have great control, but still, she’s making progress towards serious movement.

Travel (by air) to Sioux Falls

Well, the first flights had loomed large in our minds for quite some time.  We had dreamed that she’d just sleep through each flight, not making a peep.  And while things didn’t quite pan out that way, we did come pretty close.  We took 4 flights in all (2 out, 2 back) and she really only fussed for about 20 minutes at the end of one of the flights.  And even then she wasn’t screaming, but rather fussing with the occasional shriek.   Even better, it wasn’t one of the two completely booked flights, but rather one of the emptier ones.  I did end up apologizing to the nice gentleman who was sitting closest to us and he was very kind.  In short, the flights went reasonably well.

The visit itself was quite fun.  Uncle John was in Sioux Falls as well.  It was great to see him and I think Bill & Sue were happy to have the whole clan around.  And Morgan very much enjoyed seeing her Uncle and her Grandma & Grandpa again.  I even got to sleep in one day, as Bill & Sue offered to watch her in the morning hours (yay!).

I don’t think Morgan was sleeping as well there as she does at home and she certainly wasn’t napping as well as she does at daycare, so by the end of the trip she was pretty tired.  But, a day or two back at daycare with Annabel and her magical napping skills and the world was back on track!

One thing that surprised me a little about the trip was how Morgan does actually get into the opening of gifts.  She likes to tear the paper (and subsequently eat it).  I wasn’t sure how she’d react to that.  And, of course, she loves the new toys.  Though she doesn’t associate the toys with the wrapped packages in any way.

Regarding the weather, it was cold and dry.  I believe it was a high of 2 degrees one day and the next was again in the single digits.  Brrr!  Though, like sensible people, we weren’t spending a whole lot of time outside.  I worked hard to combat the dry skin that comes with such weather.  Tough to know the counterfactual, but I felt my efforts in Sioux Falls were fairly ineffective.  Since being home, however, we’ve been covering her with lotion and things seem to be getting better.

Lots of fun!  It was great to see everyone and we were quite happy to be able to make it out there while Morgan is still in her ‘infant’ stage.

Holiday visit to Grandparents Dahl in Sioux Falls