play date

Jill and Dara came over Thursday morning for a play date. Dara is three weeks younger than Iris. It is really helpful to have another baby around -- and another mom -- to make sure that Iris is basically healthy and developing well.

In the afternoon Iris had an appointment with the pediatrician and was due for her shots. She is gaining weight well -- was 13lbs 2oz -- and her head has gotten quite a bit bigger, which made me happy. She still dislikes being on her belly but we're working on that.

 

baby mouth tricks

learning curve

Since Iris is our first child there is a lot that we don't know about typical babyness. It seems pretty clear that my concern about Iris over the last several days was due to teething. She has a strong affinity for frozen washcloths in her mouth and Tylenol certainly helped. An added benefit to Iris's teething is that she has gone back to breastfeeding full time and is almost never using a pacifier. This make the anti-plastic person in me very happy. I also had the ingenious idea to turn our ice maker on in the freezer. So now we have ice with which to cool her tender gums.

We took Iris to my friend Jill's baby's name ceremony on Saturday. This is a Jewish ceremony. Several of Jill's girlfriends were there along with their babies. It was fun to see all the child energy in the room but I was also preoccupied with trying to get Iris to take her bottle [which she did not].


An update on the house: we are getting all the floors done or re-done this week and the contractors should be done today. We will then work to clean up very well and get rid of any spiders. Evan will install some ceiling fans and then we'll begin moving things in. We are waiting for our kitchen cabinets to arrive, still need to buy a fridge, and then get the concrete countertop installed. My dad and brother plan to come up for a weekend to help us do a lot of the moving and since my brother happens to know a whole lot about tree pruning and tree care he is going to take care of some of our yard mess.

great-grandma's quilt

My Grandma Jaramillo made this quilt for me when I was born. I'm sure it helped me learn my nursery rhymes.

side effects

In the time since returning from Colorado Springs Iris has started afternoon [happy] shouting fests along with tons of drooling and an aversion to eating. Naturally, I am concerned about her weight gain. I talked to the various medical professionals at the pediatrician's office and the cardiac clinic and the consensus seems to be: it's probably just teething but watch her over the weekend and maybe go get her weight checked on Monday. She is not dehydrated. Nor does she have a fever.

She is possibly hyperactive but no one seems to care about that. I think I'll record her next hyperactive session and see if anyone changes her mind. Some of the side effects of her meds include 'psychotic episodes.' How one would determine a psychotic episode in a baby is beyond me. In general I am surprised that the doctors don't seem more concerned about the side effects of the medications. Every time I bring up the issue of side effects they say, "She's on such a small dose that it would be unlikely to see...." Of course it has taken me weeks to come up with the thought that: who cares how small the dose is, if it is big enough to have the intended effect then it is also big enough to have unintended effects and therefore they should be more concerned about those side effects.

a welcome respite

Living in Denver has its perks. One of them is being close to the mountains and another is being close to New Mexico. Evan's job also has its perks. One of them is a company vacation to the Broadmoor in Colorado Springs [incidentally featured in Act Three of This American Life's episode 459: What Kind of Country Is This?].

 

In addition to getting to meet a lot of Evan's co-workers, my dad drove up to help watch Iris. 

Evan, Dad, and Iris heading back to the room.

 Having him there was very helpful not only because he cared for Iris but also because he served as the weekend photographer. 

Dad getting ready to take a few photos of the mountains

Iris did well the entire weekend [with the exception of a difficult drive on Friday]. We took her with us to eat a couple times and she was very well behaved and refrained from testing out her vocal cords.

the media on aniridia and iris implants

I had some time on my hands the other day and found several interesting articles/videos discussing aniridia and the possibility of having surgery to implant irises. I'm posting all this not because I think Iris should get iris implants necessarily, but because I'm hopeful that when the time comes for us to make decisions about what to do with her eye care we will have some legitimate options open to us.

Iris implants are controversial. Below are a selection of videos from the TV show The Drs about a young woman who had iris implants to help correct her aniridia.

The first video is her backstory

 The second video shows a lot of yucky eye surgery stuff.

 
 Third video shows the good outcome of the surgery.

Here's another story about a teenage boy who had similar surgery done. And finally, here's a New York Times article about how risky it is to have iris implants done for cosmetic reasons.