the dirty projectors dance

Summer is upon us. The last week was very hot and Iris spent much of the time in diaper only. She is increasingly active and loves to run across the room. She also loves music, as you'll see below. She is dancing to "Impregnable Question" by The Dirty Projectors. 

We have a pulmonary check-up in about a month. Iris continues to have increased oxygen needs, her happy spot is somewhere between 1/4L and 1/2L. This is more than double what it was in October of last year, when she was down to 1/8L. I try not to think about this troubling fact very much because there's nothing we can do about it and the doctors are firm in saying that she will, eventually, grow out of the need for oxygen supplementation.

Iris was sick with a stomach bug again. It seemed worse than the stomach bug at the end of April, if it was in fact a stomach bug. She lost some weight and that really worried me. She's much better now, though, and has gained back the weight she lost. She really has the appetite of a horse.

When Evan feeds her, he models the deliciousness of the food by pretending to put the spoon of food in his mouth and gives a satisfied, "Haummm!" grunt that is supposed to suggest satisfaction. The effect has been that Iris has started giving the same sound effect when she eats something she likes. It's very adorable. She also has heard me say "Achoo!" after she sneezes a lot so she has started mimicking that noise by saying, "Atoo!"

The last piece of news is that we've had to confiscate all books from Iris's toddling radius for the time being. She is teething and has found books to be particularly tasty. This means that she is literally devouring books. She is usually pretty loud when she plays, if not squealing or babbling, then she is banging things together. Sometimes when I'm in the kitchen and not watching very closely, I realize that things have suddenly gotten very quiet. This is never a good sign. And recently it has meant that yet another book has been sacrificed for the sake of Iris's teeth. 

texas trip

Evan's friend from high school was getting married in Austin. We packed up almost all of our earthly possessions and took a direct flight to Austin for a five-day vacation. We had to rent a portable oxygen concentrator for Iris so that she could fly. They don't allow oxygen tanks on airplanes.

Iris in sling, toting oxygen concentrator behind

Once we got to Texas we found that her oxygen saturation levels were super high since we were down at sea level. So we left her off oxygen for the duration of the trip. We both started wondering to ourselves whether we might have to move to sea level if Iris's lungs don't improve. We've both been disappointed that she's still on oxygen and I had been sure she'd be off by December. Maybe I've mentioned that. 

So we got spoiled in Texas letting Iris run around without a cord. 

Evan's parents drove in from Houston to babysit Iris for us while we went to the wedding. They had tons of fun reading books together.

The five of us went out to the Ladybird Johnson Wildflower Center one day. It was really beautiful even though there were not many wildflowers to speak of. We did end up seeing some wildflowers on our drive to Houston later during the vacation.

Evan, Iris, and her bunny at the wildflower center

The wedding events themselves were a lot of fun, and for those interested I may cover them in more detail in a separate post. 

Here we are at the wedding

Iris did very well during all the driving. There was a bit of fussing, some of which I captured below.

Iris is mad

The vacation was sorely needed. In addition to reconnecting with some high school friends, Evan managed to work very little and truly take a break. Iris is on the cusp of becoming a walker. She is taking increasingly confident steps and has sprouted another tooth. On the top this time. 

first tooth

While I was feeding Iris yesterday morning, I kept thinking I heard and felt some hard object in her mouth. She wouldn't let me look in her mouth so I spent the rest of the day not thinking about it. Then when Evan got home he said, "Does she have a tooth?" I forget what they were doing, but evidently it was something that involved her putting stuff in her mouth. So I felt around on her gums and -- eureka! -- found a tiny little tooth breaking through her gums.

With my mom in town I have been able to get some work done on my dissertation. I'm mostly working from home but am getting ready to venture out of the house. It took Iris a little while to warm up to Grandma, but they are good friends now. Iris is keeping Grandma very busy. They have been singing a lot and practicing walking and learning how to make new mouth sounds. Iris has been clicking her tongue a lot today.  She is also finally figuring out how to put both hands together, which is very cute.

I am starting to understand what it is to miss one's child. I am almost never without her and when I do leave her, it is usually just for a short time. It is very weird to suddenly have someone else around who can watch Iris while I do other stuff. This means that I have been doing minimal child rearing the last few days. Surely, this strange feeling will only become stronger once we start daycare...and every other growing up phase after that. Mainly I finally have enough time now to realize how quickly Iris is going up and have been able to start to savor these fleeting days. It is very difficult to gain perspective when you're right in the middle of it.

By the time Grandma goes back to North Dakota Iris will be an entirely different little girl. She might have multiple teeth and might be crawling. I can't imagine what else she will figure out how to do in the next few weeks.

seven months old

Iris turned seven months old on Veteran's Day. She is doing everything a seven-month-old is supposed to do: sitting up by herself, drooling all the time (see the spittle on the chin below), increasing the volume of her vocalizations, and developing separation anxiety. Her favorite foods are oatmeal, sweet potatoes, and peas. I have finally started using cloth diapers, something I had planned to do since the beginning. All her medical issues grounded that plan because I somehow found dealing with cloth diapers to be very stressful. 

My dad is in town for a conference this week so we met him downtown yesterday and watched him give his talk. I know nothing about plasma physics but basically understood his talk to express that his model was better at explaining a reaction than another model. Dad was very happy to show off his granddaughter to his other physicist friends and colleagues and Iris was very happy to have the social interaction. She was also very interested in Granddad's name tag.

And here is yet another photo of her, in case you haven't figured out how she looks these days. She looks way too skinny for my liking in this photo but at least she's happy. Iris won't take a bottle so I am trying to get her to learn how to drink from a cup. This is a slow going process but I think she'll get the hang of it in a few months.

I signed her up for daycare today -- she won't start until late February/early March. It's a for-profit center. I am uneasy about sending her to a for-profit daycare, but I'll write more about that later. Despite my reservations, it seems to be a great place and it is close to Evan's work so he can deliver her.

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.

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.

chewing on oxygen

This is Iris's new favorite thing to do. Technically, the oxygen is still in the right area, but it's probably not having the intended effect.

I try to stop her as much as possible but it's not clear to me how you discipline a three-month old in this regard. I mostly rely on trying to distract her or by giving her something else to put in her mouth. My mom thinks she is in the early stages of teething and it seems like I've felt the start of some teeth in her gums.

Here are some of her without her oxygen on. It's easy to forget what she looks like without the tube running across her face.

Iris is basically sleeping through the night now, by which I mean from about 8:30pm to about 7am. I still have to get up around 3:30am to give her a dose of Sildenafil but otherwise she'd sleep straight through the night. I also take that time to nurse her but if she doesn't nurse properly then I have to pump, so I am up for about an hour total. Evan and I are both quite pleased with how well she sleeps and naps. She fusses just a little bit right before she falls asleep and it's really out of character for her to cry for extended periods of time. This is a drastic difference from before the surgery and even just after the surgery when I think she was in a lot of pain. 

Since my mom is in town Evan and I have been able to do a lot of grown-up things. We went to yoga Thursday night, tennis Friday morning and had a date on Friday night. Unprecedented.

It looks as if we are going to close on a house by the end of July. We have been in negotiations with various housing people since May and we are hopeful that we will own a home in Colorado shortly. The house needs some work so we won't move in right away but we both look forward to finally settling somewhere after having moved so much in the past few years. I think the official count is that we have moved four times in the past three years. Exhausting. But after move number five I hope we don't have to do it again for a long, long time.