Morgan Dahl

Sippy Cup Time

Snow day

It turned out Morgan didn’t need to visit South Dakota to see snow this winter, we had snow here in D.C.!

Flashback to sick Morgan

Though they include all sorts of guidelines (e.g. fever over 102.5), the baby books and medical advice all say the real indicator of when to call a doctor for your sick baby is when her behavior is atypical (relative to her usual behavior rather than some average standard).  This video is from before we went to the doctor to get the ear infections diagnosed, but after we were sure she needed to visit a doctor.  This is Morgan out of sorts.

Morgan is 7 months old today

And changing all the time.

She essentially sits by herself now. (She still can’t move into or out of the sitting position on her own though.)  Tonight I let her sit on her mat while I fed her and she didn’t topple over or need additional support at all.  And, as an added bonus, I was able to feed her quite a bit.  (My hope being that as her dinners get bigger, she’ll wake up less and less at night).

She eats a ton at daycare at lunch.  Annabel showed me the bowl that they fill for her and she then finishes.  It is just a bit smaller than my hand.  This is way more food than we give her at home (and part of what is spurring me to try to increase the size of her dinner).

She continues to get more and more vocal and more and more smiley.  She loves it when we come into daycare to pick her up.  She also loves it when Annabel greets her in the morning, so that’s great.

She’ll happily play alone for extended periods (20+ minutes) in the morning.  She’ll do it later in the day too, if someone is hanging out near her.

I weighed her the other day.  She’s just broken the 16lb mark.

And, finally, she seems to be showing an interest in scooting.

We’re having a great time!

Playing on mat

She loves thumping on things.  Plastic toys, the ground…

She can spin pretty well (and rolls front-to-back or back-to front at will, though this video doesn’t reflect that).

Sleeping through the night, the addition of breakfast

Morgan’s illness has certainly been the focus of our week, but it might be worth mentioning a couple of other things that have been going on.

As threatened, Jim and I have been working on transitioning Morgan out of the wedge for sleeping.  One, she can overcome the wedge without too much effort, so its effectiveness was becoming questionable.  Two, it seems to have served its purpose, as her head is in pretty good shape these days.  And three, we think that waking up constrained by the wedge was beginning to disrupt her sleep.  So the past several days/nights she’s been napping and sleeping at night without the wedge.  And the past two nights she hasn’t nursed at all between 9pm and 6am, which is a welcome shift.  Without the wedge she really does get around in the crib while sleeping.  You’d think she was doing laps! (I was worried that she’d end up stuck on her stomach several times a night.  While it did happen a few times early on, it turns out she quickly got the hang of flipping herself back onto her back.)

Also as threatened, we’ve started feeding her solids for breakfast. She’s up to 3 meals a day now.

Morgan loves the bubblegum medicine

And it seems to be having some effect. She’s definitely in better spirits today and is nursing a little bit. She’s still super congested, but one battle at a time I suppose.

A new first: Double Ear Infection

This past weekend Morgan was sick.  Tough to know whether it was a sneaky continuation of her illness from the previous weekend or not, but anyway…Starting Sunday we were battling some high temps (103.8 and the like) with Tylenol.  The Tylenol was bringing her fever down and she seemed otherwise not too terrible.  She was congested and coughing.  And sometimes fussy.  But all of that seemed reasonable, given the fever and general illness.  Yesterday (Tuesday) her fever finally broke around noon.  And then she got fussier.  She would scream when I tried to nurse her (frustrating…), so wasn’t eating a ton.  And last night she woke up around 1:15am and was up for quite some time, clearly pissed and hurting.  So today we tromped off to the Drs.  She was diagnosed with not one, but two, count them two, ear infections.  So we got our first prescription filled for Morgan.

The doctor said that we should probably keep her out of daycare tomorrow.  He doesn’t expect her to sleep particularly well tonight.  But hopefully tomorrow night things will be more on track and we’ll be able to bring her into daycare Friday.  In general we’re waiting for her to get a good night’s sleep and to eat normally for a day or so before taking her back in.  If she doesn’t go back until Monday, that’ll be fine too.

Morgan has been off kilter for awhile.  When we went in to the doctor to talk about her neck, he noted that she had fluid behind her ears but no ear infection.  I don’t know if getting rid of these infections will clear up the fluid generally (I doubt it).  Regardless, we go back in three weeks so he can follow up.

She’s a carnivore!

I introduced Morgan to meat yesterday.  She had a delicious dinner of turkey, apples, and carrots.  I was kind of jealous.  (Molly claims that the combination actually makes her an omnivore, I claim that “She’s an omnivore” is a noticeably inferior headline).

Next stop — bacon.

Here are some unrelated photos.

Moving to solid foods and away from nursing

As Morgan has started eating more and more solids she is beginning to start the process of weaning herself.  The last couple of mornings she as been completely uninterested in nursing before work/daycare.  And Annabel tells us that since she’s been feeding Morgan at daycare she has been taking much less milk.  It’ll be a process, nothing is happening overnight, but she is slowly moving on.  It makes me a little sad.