We think Dougie’s first tooth has erupted from his gum. It’s his bottom right tooth. Right now, it’s just above the surface of the gum enough that you can sort of see it and you can feel it. The left tooth doesn’t look too far behind. It seems like he has been teething for the last 4 months so its nice to see something finally come of it. Once it comes through a bit more, we’ll get a picture.
Dougie has started a new kind of babbling. He’s starting to make word sounds a bit more and he carries on conversations. This new babbling style just started today but we managed to get it on video and wanted to share. Watch the bottom left corner near the end of the video.
An example of Maggie love, she put herself under him while he was jumping and didn’t care at all when he jumped on her head.
We’re still trying to master crawling. We haven’t worked out how to pull up to sitting or standing yet. But once Dougie is standing, he can hang on there.
Dougie went into the doctor’s today for shots. He got Hib and Prevnar. He did really well with both of them though he wasn’t overly impressed with the experience.
It’s been a really quiet week for us. Tomorrow we have the first board meeting for our MOMS Club though which should be exciting. And of course, we have swimming. Dougie will be very tired by the time we get home. Hopefully, we can sneak a nap in between the meeting and swimming.
Here is a picture of Dougie while I was getting ready this morning. He’s found a great way to keep himself busy for the few minutes I need to get dressed. He’ll make faces at himself in there for as long as I’ll let him sit there.
We decided to redecorate our bedroom a bit. Some new bedding and a bit of paint and it seems like a whole new room. Scott still needs to put the blinds up but here it is.
We’re really happy with the results. We’ve moved Dougie’s crib to the other side of the room so he’s still in with us but a bit further away. Hopefully, not being quite so close will help him not wake up as easily when we come to bed.
Speaking of Dougie, he got some playtime in with Dad this weekend.
He is still trying hard to crawl. He can sometimes go backwards and other times he just gets into position and rocks.
Finally, here is a short video of Dougie playing with one of his shakers.
Okay, perhaps “ever” is a slight exaggeration. Dougie continues to do really well in swimming though. I was talking with his teacher before class and she said they were going over the students to see who will be ready for promotion. The deck manager asked her opinion on “Douglas” and she couldn’t think of who he was, then she said “OH DOUGIE, he’s the best student in my class”. So, our little guy is doing very well. He’s up to 6 seconds under water and has no problem with it. He really loves the class as well which makes it that much better.
Dougie had his last Kindermusik class today with Miss Kat. It was quite sad. She really is a wonderful teacher and I’m going to miss her class a lot. We’re currently in the process of picking another Kindermusik teacher. I think we’re going to take the second summer session off but we’ll see.
In exciting news, we got a new oven installed today. The old oven only had one working burner and it was very hard to cook anything properly in there. I haven’t tried the oven part yet but the microwave works really well. I think we’ll bake a celebration cake or something this weekend.
The last week has sure gone quickly. Let me fill you in on some of the things that have been going on.
Firstly, we went up to St. John’s, Newfoundland for the wedding of a good friend of ours. We had a great time doing some touring and seeing the area. It was the first time any of us had been out there. Here are a few pictures from our site seeing.
The wedding itself was lovely. Jeremy was kind enough to let us bring Dougie to the ceremony. There were actually 3 babies there in total so he fit in. We got him a little suit so he’d be dressed appropriately. Of course, we have pictures of that as well.
This last picture is at the reception. We had a baby sitter arranged for most of the evening but she finished at midnight and the band went until 1. It was actually one of my favorite bands (Irish Descendants) so we decided to bring Dougie down to hear the last little bit. We took Dougie out to dance and the lead singer said that Dougie was their youngest fan. After they finished playing we asked if we could get a picture. He said only if we let him hold Dougie. So, that’s Dougie and the lead singer of the Irish Descendants.
We’re back in Dallas now and settling back into our routine. It’s been nice to have the week broken up by Independence day. Scott isn’t traveling this week so we have him around which always helps.
One more picture, this is Dougie in the middle of playing Giddy Up Horsey.
We went to see Dougie’s pediatric GI today. We had a long wait to get in but it went really well. At this point, the doctor wants me to more aggressively cut out milk and soy products. I was already cutting out obvious sources (milk, ice cream, etc) but this goes a lot further. He suspects that Dougie may have a Milk Soy Protein Intolerance (MSPI). It’s not particularly uncommon and most children grow out of it around age 1.
The new diet isn’t going to be easy. It’s amazing how many foods are out. Ingredients that need to be eliminated are:
milk
modified milk ingredients
milk protein
caseine
caseinate
butter
whey
lactalbumin
lactoglobulin
rennet
cream
soy flour
soy protein
soy
soya beans
This site goes into a lot more detail about the milk side of it. Notice, McDonald’s fries are out… yes, it’s that bad.
And, since I haven’t posted some pictures in a while. A few of Dougie in his swing.
We took Dougie to the pediatric eye specialist yesterday. They dilated Dougie’s eyes and did a basic check-up. The doctor concluded that he did indeed have a blocked tear duct. Otherwise, his eyes are developing normally. This is particularly good news because it means Dougie doesn’t likely have strabismus. So, the doctor said they could open the duct or we could wait longer and see if it opened on its own. Based on the number of infections he’s had and the fact that the longer you wait, the less likely it is to open and the more difficult the opening procedure becomes, we decided to have it done.
********* Procedure Detail *********
Dougie was taken to a procedure room. After we went through the details and signed all the necessary forms the physician’s assistant took him to the table. They wrapped him in a blanked and then strapped him to a board. He did surprisingly well with that. Once they tried to hold his head still and put in the cleansing eye drops, he started to scream. A second drop was applied to numb his eye and duct. Once that had time to take affect, they inserted a small probe into the top opening of the duct. This was used to pop open the bottom of the duct (nearest the nose). The entire procedure didn’t last more than 3 minutes. We picked Dougie up and he stopped screaming quite shortly afterwards.
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We have to apply eye drops for the next few days to make sure there won’t be an infection but so far, Dougie seems to be doing well with everything. His eye was even dry this morning when he got up. We’ll know for sure if it worked within 2 weeks but it’s looking very promising.