Bringing the R.I.N.D.S. backup system online

Chloe has graduated Rice Academy and moved on to Oat High. Last weekend she suddenly seemed to understand how to eat; she swallowed the food, then gulped it greedily and reached for the spoon. We gave her another couple of days with rice cereal, and now she's on oatmeal. We figure once she's past the oatmeal gauntlet, it's time to start vegetables and fruits.

This is good, because I went to daycare at lunch today (as I usually do) and Miss Mindy told me that Chloe had already had two bottles. "I’m really sorry," she said. "But she was screaming and screaming. And after her first one she was already screaming, like she hadn't had enough. She cried herself to sleep."

"She's a growing girl. Maybe four ounces isn't enough," said Miss Linda, who was nearby.

"She's at four and a half," I replied, because it's annoyed me that they always write "4 oz" on the daily sheet, even when they tell me she drained her bottle, or that she left an ounce.

"Have you considered cereal?" she suggested. "Just a spoonful twice a day?"

"We're already doing that," I said, then realized she meant in the bottles. We've been told not to do this, and now that she's working on cereal by the spoonful it doesn't seem to make a lot of sense. Also I don't know why adding cereal would be better than just adding more milk. Also I resent the implication that we've been starving her for weeks. She's been at daycare having these same bottles for the past few weeks and done just fine with them. And yes, she's a growing girl (16 pounds 4 ounces and 25 inches as of Monday's checkup), so eventually she'd outgrow this size, but we don't feed her bottles at home so how would we know today was the day to move her up?

(Actually, I guess I can excuse that. They're not used to having a breastfed baby; their other two get formula, and one gets a bottle as thick with cereal as they can make it per his mother's request. It probably doesn't occur to them that I wouldn't know how big a bottle she needs day by day.)

So she'll start getting five ounces, and starting next week we should be able to send along some jars of baby food in case the bottles aren't enough. Getting her on solids was already making me excited, and now I'm doubly pleased. Moving up to five ounces means the R.I.N.D.S. need to go back into training--I've been keeping up with her daily daycare feedings by pumping, but just barely, and we've been using the occasional bottle from the frozen stash. I had stopped pumping after every feeding at home, which has been lovely, but it looks like the break is over until production has increased. (The beatings shall continue until morale improves.) So having solids as a second food supply will be a good thing.

Status report: Month 4

Chloe turned four months on Monday. I apologize for the lateness of this update; I've been sick, she's been sick, it was Thanksgiving, and so on. That's been pretty much the word this entire month, actually: I've been sick, she's been sick, and so on. Her first cold was quickly followed by a second, accompanied by a fever and some horrible choking noises that had us calling the doctor just in case. She's been coughing and snorfling ever since. So have I--only I've been a lot more bothered by it than she seems to be. Maybe when you can't blow your own nose you just accept that your breathing is going to sound loud and rumbly.

The big things this month have been sucking, vocalizing, and rolling. Well, that last one maybe not so much, since she did it once and then never again, despite our continual encouragement and occasional nagging. "You don't like being on your tummy? Well, you know how you could get back onto your back? ROLLING."


Everything goes in her mouth now, a change from last month. Her fingers are most often in there, but other things will do--our fingers, our knuckles, Tigger's tail, Ugly Bear's paw, the burp rag (which is especially convenient). She's not teething yet--we think--but I'm planning on pulling out the teething rings anyway because the soft toys are all matted and gross from her saliva. (However, she continues not to take a pacifier well, or long, though she does better than she did. I've decided I don't really care if she never really takes to them.) My hair often gets dried into stiff locks because she grabs it and stuffs it in her mouth. So does anything else within reach that isn't nailed down.

Food is also going into her mouth, in small quantities--rice cereal with milk mixed in. So far she's bewildered and slightly indignant that we keep trying to put this stuff in her mouth, but she may have swallowed a tiny amount accidentally. We're going to keep it up a while, once a day, and see how it goes. I'd hoped to give her a little yam to try on Thanksgiving, but she just wasn't far enough along and we forgot to have a small piece saved out anyway. I did dab a tiny bit of cranberry sauce on my finger before letting her suck it, but I'm not sure it was enough for her to have noticed. Today we tried giving it to her between R.I.N.D.S. units, and she seemed to understand that hey, this stuff is also food. We'll see if the lesson sticks.


We're both scheduling haircuts because it's at risk of a good yank if it gets anywhere close. (Well, that's why I'm doing it. Eric's got some idea that he has to look professional at work.) The grabbing ante has definitely been upped in the past few weeks; she's more interested in it and better at doing it. Board books, not paper books, are definitely the way to go for a while now.

Her bedtime is now where we want it, between about eight-thirty and nine-thirty depending on when her last feeding is. Her napping is not where we want it--it happens only if she naturally falls asleep, usually in the swing, which she's rapidly outgrowing, and not very often--but now that she's sleeping more at night she's not so egregiously overtired at bedtime. She's not sleeping longer at night, though. I get the occasional four-hour stretch, but mostly it's two and three hours now. The books say this can happen during developmental leaps forward, so maybe that's the explanation. Or maybe she's decided that she's been nice enough to me in the past and she's not going to bother anymore.


"Aaaaah" is now her constant communication. Especially at seven on a Saturday morning. She never seems to get tired of it. (Come to that, I only get tired of it at seven on a Saturday morning.) She's done "Hah" a couple of times, and "Gah" once or twice, but mostly it's "Aaaaah. Aaaaah. Aaaaah! Aaaaah..."

She's a very smiley girl. We took her to all-day gaming yesterday (well, it went all day; she didn't) and she passed out free smiles all day. Her smile starts slow and spreads exponentially until her entire face glows. It's the sweetest thing in the world. (Though the increased time between feedings is good too.)

New games

Chloë learned to blow raspberries the day before yesterday. Presumably from someone in daycare; she came home delighting in it and blew them all that night. It seems a little undignified for an evil overlord, but then, what do I know? I'm just a lieutenant.

She's also enjoying a new game: she says "Ah," or "Hah," or "Gah," and I repeat it back to her as part of a word--"Ahhhhh-damantite!" or "Hahhhhhh-rpsichord!" We've got a little magazine called "Playing with Your Baby." It's put out by some toy company and contains lots of advertisements for age-appropriate toys, but it also lists no-prop or minimal-prop games to play for different age ranges. One of them for three to six months suggests that when baby babbles, you repeat her syllable and add on other nonsense syllables, so baby says "Dah" and you say "Dah diddy blo wop." I think using long words works just as well or better. (I also throw in the occasional shorter word: apple, or hobby.)

Food!

Chloë had her first experience with cereal last night. We decided it would be nice to introduce her to yams on Thanksgiving if possible, which would mean getting her used to the idea of food from a spoon rather than from a R.I.N.D.S. beforehand. So, during the early-evening feeding, we mixed a little cereal with a lot of milk--I'm not even sure it deserved the name of gruel--and gave her some.

She did not seem impressed.


She didn't seem to have the tongue-thrust reflex, though, which is good, and she didn't absolutely refuse to have the stuff in her mouth. We're going to try again and see if it goes any better.

She's a natural

Chloe's first word appears to be "Ha." She said it last night, followed by "Ha Ha Ha Ha," just as an evil overlord should.

(Yes, I know it's way too early for her first actual word. It's not too early for her first babble, though.)

She's now really into grabbing at things. She's learned the "Throw the Toy on the Floor and Watch Mom or Dad Retrieve It" game, and appears to enjoy forcing us to do her bidding. And we have a little activity mat, the kind where she lies on the floor and little toys hang above her head, that my friend Courtney gave us because her son had grown too cool and mature for it. A couple of weeks ago she just lay there and looked, but now she reaches up and squeezes the little monkey in her hot fist and bangs at the little parrot, as if to say, "I’m the queen of the jungle."

Our little goomba

"Does this mean I get a 1up?"

We *really* hate tummy time, apparently.

We've known for a while that Chloë doesn't like tummy time very much. After a few minutes, she'll often get cranky about it--or fall asleep entirely.

Today, though, she decided she hated it enough to roll over onto her back. Yay for developmental milestones!