Tag Archives: teething

Holy Toothy Tootherson

Posted on by

Sophia is usually a good kid. She generally goes to bed easily and even if she doesn’t fall asleep right away she’ll talk to herself or rub her pajama bottom feet on the walls until she does. She usually doesn’t cry or otherwise become obnoxious unless she needs something like food. Sure, she has her clingy times, but we’ve come to the understanding that if I ignore her she’ll quickly give up and go play with something she’s not supposed to, like the power supply to my laptop. She is a crafty little tyke.

So when she has her *ahem* moments of the inconsolable grumpies, Kurt invariably asks, “Do you think she’s teething?” We considered that after a horrible trip to Alaska in early December but more than a month later, no teeth showed. She’s had a few other episodes here and there. Then, after sleeping through the night for three days in a row there were two nights in a row in which she woke up screaming her head off for two hours. This happened to coincide with staying up late waiting for my friend to deliver her baby on January 31st and Super bowl Sunday. And now I see SIX teeth coming in at once. She has four molars, two on top and two on bottom, and the two bottom teeth that flank the very front two already there.

bottom molarstoothy grin showing bottom molarshair in the eyes

Do you think I should cut her hair? :P

Related posts:

Giant Teething Ring

Posted on by

Sophia doesn’t put every thing in her mouth like most babies do. She never took to pacifiers and isn’t into teething rings. Usually she mouths her stuffed animals, ‘friend’, cold washcloths, my house keys, the jewel cases to our CD collection, and that’s about it. The teeth marks on her old crib were from the previous owner, but now that we have the new crib, it’s a giant, $145, teething ring.
the crib, her new teething ring

Someone told Kurt about crib rail guards, so we bought some. We should have just saved that ten dollars. When Sophia has sat in her crib long enough (three seconds), she pulls off the rail guard and beats the crib with it. Then proceeds to chew on both.

crib rail guards

Related posts:

Like Fingernails on a Chalkboard

Posted on by

Since I’m a stay at home mom now I’ve gone back to the “living with baby” class/group that I was in before. Last weeks class was about teaching baby to talk through reading and singing with her. All that was covered was straightforward. Nothing significantly new was added about learning language. At the end of it all, the facilitator said that the attention span of a baby is very short, so she suggested baby books with no more than ten words. Really? Why not help them expand their attention span as well as language skills. 10 words? Isn’t that a very very low bar to set? It reminds me of a friend who told me his parents named his younger brother J-o-n instead of J-o-h-n because it would be easier for him to spell like they never expected their kids to be advanced enough for four letter words. *smirk* Ten worded books would just annoy the crap out of me. We read Dr. Seuss in this house. I can’t stand most children’s books, they’re so preachy. When I want to teach Sophia that it’s not nice to hit people, I’m not going to pull out a book to read to her. I’m going to tell her, “Stop hitting your friends or they’ll stop hanging out with you.” It’s that fucking simple. She might not stop right away, but the lesson will be out there and she’ll figure it out.

Speaking of kids that hit… One of the boys in the group who is only a month older than Sophia ran around hitting all the babies. He tried grabbing a toy from Sophia and she wouldn’t let it go. He’d pull and she pulled right back while giving him a well-deserved glare, and then he stood up and pulled her hair. The boy had two fists full of my baby’s hair! She didn’t know what to do about that. She stuck out the boo-boo lip and reached for me then cried.

On Tuesday, Sophia learned a new thing that annoys the crap out of me. I kept hearing a squeaky “creek creek” type sound. I looked down at her and she smiled, then I hear again, “creek creek”. What the? I look at her. She laughs and proceeds to grind her two bottom teeth into her not yet cut upper tooth. AURGH!! Stop it before my ears bleed!

Later that day we went to a state park with maternal grandma. I took Sophia to the lake to get her feet wet. She sat right in the water and started butt scooting around.
butt scooting baby

My throat was scratchy that day and by Wednesday, I had a full-blown sore throat and felt like shit. I was sick AGAIN! Wednesday was hell. Not just because I was sick but because I wanted to sleep and baby innocent angel face was on a multi ten to fifteen minute power nap crusade. I didn’t even get to sleep at night. From two to four in the morning were the erupting baby tooth witching hours. How many more of these does she get? And why can’t it all just happen in one day – maybe even one when I’m not sick?

Related posts:

Sleep Deprevation

Posted on by

Before the whole ER and 911 fiasco Sophia had a pretty regular bedtime and wake time. She was doing well with naps and typically only woke up once during the night. That’s all gone to shit now. I’m not actually sure if it’s the hospital visits that did it or if it’s the teething. It could be the combo. Anyway since Kurt’s been home this whole week he has told be a number of times to go to bed earlier since I wasn’t getting much sleep since Sophia had got into the new habit of waking twice during the night and remaining awake precisely at the butt-crack of pre-dawn (5:30 am), which has forced me to take a nap sometime during the day.

Last night, knowing that I would be getting up to drive Kurt to work (no use disrupting a disrupted sleep schedule to visit daddy in jail for a DUI since he’s still taking painkillers) I went to bed at nine. The darling angel had gone to bed at 6 since she was dead set against a late afternoon nap. She woke up at 11:30, then again at 2:30, and a third time at three in which she decided it was morning time. I of course stayed up – I have no choice. I rocked her, nursed her, then finally I just placed her in the spare bed and laid down beside her. I think she went back to sleep around four. I put pillows around her and went back to my own bed. At 4:50 the cat thought it would be a good idea to tell us it was almost time to get up – he was gingerly placed in the garage by yours truly. 5:30 Kurt’s alarm went off and at 6:20-ish I got to wake the baby so that we could drive Kurt to work.

We are a grumpy bunch. Kurt went to warm up the car and I followed him putting his lunch in the car so he didn’t forget. “Now the light won’t go out,” he complained. “What light?”

“The light, the light,” he says pointing to the light that comes on when we open the car door. I reached in and flipped the switch from the middle setting to the “off” position and it went off. I put it back to the middle and it was back on since I had a door open. I slammed the door and the light magically went off. It was a little like the time a few years ago when he complained that I had too many red sweaters on the drying rack I use for things I don’t want damaged in the drier. Well, my red sweaters took all the space on the rack and there was no room to hang his motorcycle T-shirts. I told him to stop buying so many red sweaters for me.

There was another incident at Christmas time when his mom wanted to go to the mall to exchange the sweater I get her for the next size up. We arrived and Kurt announced that we only had fifteen minutes to spend there because he had to go pay a bill before the office closed for the day. His niece and sister wanted to shop around a bit so I suggested Kurt just leave us all at the mall while he runs his errand. “What? Do you want to spend all day here?” Umm no. He was insistent that there was only one way to do things, his way, the way that was stuck in his mighty melon head. We must all stay together and therefore we can only spend fifteen minutes in the mall. Ugg! I finally convinced him that he could go run his errand and meet us at the food court in an hour.

More recently I’ve been driving Miss Daisy eerr Mr. Kurt around and he insists I must take the route he would drive. I admit his routes are probably shorter and *maybe* faster (one can never tell in this area), but I’m the one driving and I do know where I’m going! So shut the hell up already!

Hhhhmm I think I got off on a bit of a tangent. I need a nap.

Related posts:

Brief baby updates

Posted on by

On Saturday (February 2nd) we gave Sophia a taste of her first doctor and mommy approved solid food. Baby’s first solid food

Tuesday (February 5th), Sophia learned to roll from her back to her side.

Wednesday (February 6th), she began pulling at her ears. I didn’t know what that could mean until a friend of mine suggested that it could be teething. The facilitator at our “living with baby” class confirmed that by saying about pressure building in the ears when their teeth come out and that it’s worse when they lay down. Well, last week it was sort of hard to tell if she would have trouble sleeping since I kept waking her up to go to the hospital. Last night she woke up at midnight to eat, but she didn’t fall back to sleep right away like she usually does at night. This morning she woke up at six am – about an hour and a half before her usual on time schedule. Her ears were red. She had scratches on the side of her face leading into her ears and blood inside her ears. Poor baby. For her morning nap I gave her Baby Orajel. Oh what a beautiful product. Sleep! She slept for two and a half hours. Hint for other parents of teething babies – don’t get the “nighttime” formula. The ingredient list is the same, the product amount is less, and the price is higher – talk about marketing.

Related posts:

Appealing to the senses

Posted on by

Baby Einstein Discover and Play StarI bought this along with two other toys for Sophia on Friday. This one requires batteries and the other two don’t. She likes this one best. *grumble* And from day one she was strong enough to pull on the red triangle at the bottom to make the two morning sounds – a rooster crowing and an alarm clock. I don’t think she cares as much for the sound as she likes to see the cheeks on the smiley face glow when a sound is playing.

Infantino rattlesI also bought a set of rattles that where different shapes and colors with different textured fabric covering each. One side of each of them is a clear plastic so you can see what is making the rattle sound in the inside. Each one also has a different plastic teething thing attached to it – she doesn’t care for that part at all. The only things I’ve seen her put in her mouth are clothing and blankets that she has already drooled or spit up on. I don’t know if it’s the smell, taste or the texture but despite the amount of preteething drool she just isn’t into the teething stuff yet.

Related posts: