molly

Pre-Season

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This may or may not mean anything to Molly, but today she officially saw her first glimpse ever of baseball. We were flipping around the TV during a brief afternoon break, when a pre-season spring training game between the Cubs and White Sox showed up. Wow! The first whiff of summer! We may be one step towards putting this dreary, ill-stricken winter behind us. And Molly just saw the first proof.

Sing-Song Sister

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This morning, Molly was having an especially fun time watching her big sister Claire. She as just laughing and grinning at Claire. So Claire decided to put on sort of a show for Molly to get some extra grins. She got up on a step stool next to Molly’s changing table and started hopping and dancing and singing a silly sort of song without any real words, like “La la la la, fa la la dee dee da!” Molly went hysteric with giggles! They kept this up for a while, with Claire dancing and singing and Molly laughing. Finally, Claire tired out a bit and decided to take the music down a notch. She sang her favorite song, Hark the Herald Angels Sing, all the way through to Molly. It was a really nice rendition of the Christmas classic. Molly liked the song too, but she did not giggle and grin as much as before. I think she wanted more hopping and senseless singing.


Mad Rolling!

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Between stomach problems and various illnesses for the past few weeks, Molly has not been making great strides physically. She is still a very small baby and mostly lays around on her back. But for the first time since early-to-mid January, Molly has had a solid stretch of full health and good eating.

Last weekend, Kit and I both agreed it was time to get Molly exercising again to work up her strength and endurance. Namely, this means tummy time, or laying flat on her belly. This does not sound too tough, but it is a workout for Molly. She strains and cries as she arches her back and lifts her head to look around. After only a few minutes, she is crying and exhausted, and we have to pick her up to let her catch her breath. Last weekend, Kit started Molly on a really tummy time regimen of three times a day.

Well, Molly’s good health and this focus on tummy time seem to be paying off. Molly hit a major milestone at school today. During tummy time, she rolled from her front to her back, and then again from her back to her front. She even repeated this a few times! She also started to relax during the tummy phase, and looked around and giggled instead of straining and crying. Way to go, Molly! we are glad to see you “back” on track!
todo: picture


“It” Spreads Again

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Molly finally got the dreaded stomach virus that everyone else is getting.

She has a fever and has cut way back on eating. She is often very upset by the sight of the bottle and cries instead of eating, even after five or more hours without food. When she does eat, she vomits frequently, a couple of times a day. If you want to feed Molly lately, you better wear a rain coat!

Note from the future:


We eventually had to put Molly on Pedialite to keep her hydrated and out of the emergency room.  She started to get her strength back and managed a good solid recovery.  She missed a full week of school, including the temporary school closing, and got to know a few different temporary nannies.  After her full recovery, she started eating again really well, or “like a horse” as her teacher put it.

The Scourge Continues

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It is not just Molly and Claire who have been suffering from this and that malady over the past few weeks. Heck, even our dog Muffin has it or something like it. She is lethargic and has been vomiting at night! I still keep a plastic bag by my bed waiting for it to hit me. For now, I will happily settle for my constant low-level head cold.
But this is not just affecting our household. Their kids’ whole school is suffering. Almost half the teachers were out this past week, as well as over 30 kids, all due to an impressive variety of ailments. Lacking teachers and students, the school is running on emergency mode, and classes have to be combined. To “help break the cycle of contagion”, the school is closing for a four-day weekend from February 13 to 16. The healthy teachers and some cleaning crew are disinfecting everything in the school from top-to-bottom.

Here is a partial message from Claire’s teacher:
Just want to make sure that you all know that we will be closed on Monday, Feb 16th and now Tuesday, Feb 17th to better ensure that all of our children and staff can fully heal before coming back. There are quite a few different illnesses floating around up there. If you have means of keeping your children at home tomorrow, please do. BELIEVE ME–you do NOT want even the slightest bit of any of those illnesses, the worst of all being the flu. It’s absolutely horrible.

We all want to put the cold, wet, dark, dreary winter of 2009-2010 behind us!


The Dreaded RSV

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I had never heard of RSV before, but now I sure have.
It stands for Respiratory Syncytial Virus. In kids and adults, it is basically just a cold. In a baby of Molly’s age, it is a nasty viral infection that takes 7 to 10 days to clear up. I could go on for some time about this nasty thing, but let me just hit the highlights:

  • Molly came home from school on Friday 1/15 irritable and with a bad cough. The teachers said she “wanted to be held most of the day”, by which I think they meant she was fussy. Either way, this was not the usual Molly.
  • That Friday night, Molly’s cough continued, and she had a lot of trouble sleeping. We had to hold her, taking shifts sitting in the glider most of the night.
  • On Saturday, Molly was in worse shape than ever. She was miserable, and Kit and/or I had to hold her all day to keep her even slightly comfortable. We literally could not put her down without her crying, and she cried in our arms a lot too. We verified that Molly had a low fever. Poor Molly.
  • Saturday night was the worst yet. Molly was uncomfortable, coughing and wheezing all night. There was no peace for Molly or any of the rest of us, except for Claire and Muffin, who were sleeping downstairs across the house.
  • Kit’s mom and dad, and Kit’s uncle Bob came up for a “quick visit” on Sunday afternoon. Kit’s mom ended up staying to help for a few days (and nights). Since it was only supposed to be a day trip, she had not packed anything for the stay. So went to Walgreens only to get a toothbrush. Kit’s mom mostly handled Molly during the weekdays while Kit worked and I got some work done.
  • We ended up making two separate trips to the pediatrician. On the first, they said it might clear in about four days, which seemed like a long time for a cold. On the second visit, they verified it was RSV with a blood test. They said it would be a 7 to 10 day ordeal, and then it would only gradually peter out. They put her on a saline breathing treatment to help a little with the congestion, but there was no medicine they could give to help Molly.
  • Molly’s fever subsided, and she became well enough during the day to take her back to school. The good teachers at school were willing to do Molly’s nebulizer treatment a couple of times a day.
  • Molly’s smile returned, between coughing attacks, after the first couple of rough days.
  • The nights continued to be pretty tough. Molly’s hard-earned ability to put herself to sleep so consistently and her routing of sleeping through the night with one middle-of-the-night feeding were out the window. Hopefully they will be back soon!
  • I am writing this on Jan 25, ten days after this thing started, and Molly is mostly better, but she is still exhausted and sometimes extra fussy. She had 5 or 6 hours of naps today and was still over-tired and cranky when we tried to put her to sleep at 7 tonight. She sometimes still coughs and wakes herself up, but now she does sometimes manage to put herself back to sleep. So this is progress!
So there it is, Molly’s first real nasty illness. We are really glad to gradually be putting this behind us!


Molly’s First TV Show

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Today was the first time I put on a TV show specifically for Molly’s entertainment. Sure, she has seen a little bit of TV just from hanging out in the living room, but this was the first show just for her.

I was looking for a way to help Molly relax while I did her nebulizer sodium chloride treatment for her lingering RSV infection.  Kit and her mom had been using the mobile for this purpose, but it was sort of unwieldy to set up up by myself.  So why not pull out a classic?  I put on the DVD of Claire’s old favorite: Baby Einstein: Baby Shakespeare.  As with Claire, Molly was engrossed by the puppets, music, and moving toys, and she did not mind the nebulizer one bit.

Now these Baby Einstein videos might not may your baby a genius, but you would have to be a real dummy not to use them from time to time!

Future Picasso

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Claire has showed a renewed interest in drawing lately. Ofter months of limited drawing, her drawings really have really taken off lately. Here are a couple of compositions she took home from school this week.

The first one is a family portrait.
It has her mom, her dad, herself,
and her baby sister Molly holding a bottle.

She also made this Picasso-eqsue drawing of a man eating a lilipop.

Carseat Milestone

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Molly reached a rare size milestone today. When we strap her into her car seat, her shoulders were starting to seem kind of cramped. The straps had to go pretty far out of their way to reach up over her shoulders. She had outgrown her newborn car seat settings! We upgraded her car seat straps from the very smallest to the next one up. It is nice to see some real evidence of growth.