Wednesday, February 16, 2011

Varied updates

I took my daughter to the doctor today to talk about her lack of eating. She's gaining weight and growing taller, although dropping in the percentiles. Nothing I was not expecting, so I'm not worried. (But still tired and always hungry.) The doctor, however, is sending us to a pediatric dietitian, and told me to feed her "ANYTHING!!" so she will eat, including the various "made for baby" snacks like Baby Mum-mums which I generally avoid since they are just processed white rice and hello, that's kinda ... well, kinda junk food, you know? Processed white carbs? Haven't we yet learned that that kind of stuff is pretty bad for you? Aren't I better off just feeding her .. I don't know ... RICE?

I did go and buy some, just to see if she will take to them, and then spent a few moments eating a Baby Mum-mum because while my daughter will not even deign to put them to her lips (and I respect her judgement when it comes to those, let's be honest), she thinks feeding them to me is HILARIOUS. And as everyone knows the way to encourage a baby to eat is to model the behaviour with great exaggerated mmmm-ing noises. So.

And I was right. They are pretty pointless.

Anyway the good thing to come out of this appointment is that the doctor said to disregard the allergy / feeding recommendations and just feed her whatever she will eat, which I was planning to do anyway, but it's nice to have a doctor's confirmation. And I will go to the dietitian, because you never know what you might learn.

In the meantime my daughter is a master at grabbing food, holding it, playing with it, and making chewing motions that are so realistic I sometimes check to see if she has anything in her mouth, so she has a great career ahead of her as a teenage girl who likes to f*ck with her mother.

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Two and a half months from the end of my leave and I am already panicking about going back to work. I can't leave my BAYBEE, even though chances are I will be leaving her at the exact same place I left her brother that I LOVED and WAXED POETIC about to anyone who would listen (and a few more people besides, who couldn't have cared less). So it's not like I'm sending her to a labour camp, is what I'm saying. And then there's the how will we get the laundry done and what about dinner each night and how will I manage to get two small people to daycare and still get to work before noon and AIIIIEEEEE. It's a little early to worry about this, I know. I didn't worry so early with The Boy, but mostly because we were on vacation until he was 11 months, so moral of the story: go away more.

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We've made a decision regarding kindergarten for The Boy, without nearly as much drama as there seemed to be portrayed here. I hope it'll work out ok. The doctor today told me I should really talk to the teacher ahead of time, and I'm of two minds: one, we have no idea how The Boy will react to a classroom setting, and he might just get into the groove and love it even if the work isn't what he imagined, so why create an issue when there isn't one? OTOH, it might be worth it if only to prevent the teacher from coming back and saying "Man, your kid is a handful and can't sit still and doesn't want to learn and you should get him some drugs." if we could just note that oh yeah, he's already done all the curriculum, so he might be bored sorry.


Meh at this point, kindergarten is seven months away and so I'm giving myself five months off thinking about it.

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Apparently the nut allergy at daycare worsened so we are now to avoid every thing that has even thought about breathing near a nut. Which is fine, yeah, I get it. If I were that kid's parents, I'd be concerned too, and it's not worth my time to get worried about it. The thing is, though, that now I'm planning to start making granola bars for him, since between the ones that have nuts and the ones that are made of plain old crap, there's pretty much nothing left. And since my kitchen is not nut-free (and no, I'm not going to do so, given that it's already gluten-free and *I* have to eat *something*) there's always going to be the possibility of my making peanut butter cookies before I make granola bars and then won't the contagion possibility still be there? I'd think it more but ... man, I know nothing about nut allergies. And I hope it stays that way.

Anyway I will of course endeavour not to make peanut butter cookies the same day I make granola bars, and to run things through the dishwasher in between times. All in all I do feel sorry for the kid and her parents. Just glad it's not me.

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