10.5 months!

I wish I could do justice to the sheer amount of joy, challenges, and changes that have happened since I last posted!  But I know I'm likely to forget some of these; please forgive me for doing so.

Owen's dental appointment went very well; I cannot recommend Small to Tall Dentistry enough--especially Dr. Psaltis!  (It helps that I know him from Unity of Olympia too...)  Owen's holes aren't cavities--yet.  They're very likely to become cavities because of the shape of them, sugar can easily rest there and start decay.  So...we're doing a fluoride rinse once a day, just dabbing it on the spots with a Q-tip.  I [still!] have mixed feelings about fluoride, but Dr. Psaltis was very knowledgable, and I feel confident that it was the right choice.

June, at the Bellevue Botanical Garden

Some joy:

Owen's first word: CAT!  Though now that I announced it, he's completely stopped.  Go figure. 

My little munchkin is continuing to inch forward towards crawling, though he hasn't figured it out yet.

He is SO SMART!  The way he 'reads' to himself, and to me, is heart-breaking in it's adorableness.  And now he's waving, gesturing at things...he knows what 'cat' is, what 'fan' is, and what 'Roberto Balano' is (Colleen named our plant after one of her beloved authors).

His 9 month appointment clocked him at 27 lbs, 8 oz.  

And...I just love him more and more with every breath I take.

Some challenges:

He's having trouble with bowel movements.  This is very scary.  Not to go into details, I'll just say we're trying everything.  Everything you could suggest, we're doing.  And I'm frustrated.  I'm frustrated at all of the suggestions, I'm frustrated that the nurse-practitioner's suggestion was, "before we recommend suppositories, we try to change his diet."  "Really," I wanted to say.  "Who the F do you think you're talking to???"  So...introducing more solids is at a plateau for now.  He's getting about 3-4oz in the morning, and about 2-3 for a second meal in the evening.

And.  I am having trouble producing breast milk.  And everything you could suggest, I'm doing.  Seriously.  AND I can't just give him more solids to compensate, because as you read above, his little body is having trouble digesting those.  So I feel caught between a rock and a hard place.  I need to work to survive (and I love my job~I'd cry without it), but I can't produce enough milk to make it through a whole work day.  I can't go in just a little bit every day because I only have childcare for the three days.  I just don't know what to do.

Other things of note, he (and the rest of us) caught a terrible cold (his first real one) that made him have crap in his little lungs.  We were real worried for a little bit, but we used the humidifier & I rubbed diluted ravintsara EO on his feet, and it's finally passed.

He apparently had a case of 'nursemaid's elbow' that landed us in the ER.  I think x-rays are terrible, horrible things, but they have their use, and we had to get his arm x-rayed.  But the upshot is that we have adorable chubby Owen-arm x-rays.  :)

So there's, finally, a little update.