Salty

This pregnancy I'm craving salty - McDonalds french fries (though I try not to give in to that one very often), sun flower seeds, li hing mui, pickled onions, preserved calamancines....salty, salty, salty. It's amazing how with Kaua I wanted sweet, but with this one, I want salt. Ok now, I'm going to go back to eating my pickled onions.

9 months update

This post is a week or so late in coming but Kaua is 9 months old now! He weighs approximately 21 pounds and is 29 inches long. He's 75th percentile for height and 50th for weight. This has been the trend for the past two visits now, so he's been staying pretty constant.

This past pedi appointment, there were no vaccinations...you're thinking yay, no needles?! Yeah right!!! He had to get a TB skin test, which wasn't so bad AND a blood draw. Again, if it had been just a needle, it wouldn't have been so bad, but the nurse wasn't able to locate a vein in the usual spot in his arms, soooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo she had to nick his finger tip and DRAIN THE BLOOD MANUALLY (think: squeeze his finger/hand so that blood dripped down and out) and fill TWO VIALS! OMG!!! Talk about traumatic (for me mostly, not him). He was a trooper for the nick in the finger and for a little bit of the blood dripping, but she had to squeeze his finger and hand for at least 1-2 minutes to get enough blood to fill the vials and boy oh boy the poor baby was screaming and trying to yank his hand away. I normally sing to him to keep him distracted and I clearly remember going through several stanzas of Twinkle Twinkle Little Star and Old MacDonald Had A Farm before she was through. It took sheer will power to keep my voice steady and not break out into tears. And I had to go through this all on my own, DH was at work for this appointment (Had I Known It was going to be BLOOD LETTING, I would have made sure he was off). But anyways, moving on.

The little goober is sure getting an attitude. He will definitely let me know what he wants and doesn't want and is starting to see if throwing a fit will help achieve his goal. These fits include tears, screaming, back arching and general difficultness. I've decided that when he gets like this (for no reason, b/c sometimes he does have a legitimate need), I simply put him down on the floor and let him continue on throwing a fit. I'm trying to find the happy medium between meeting his needs and letting him know that this type of behavior is not acceptable and not the proper way to get what he wants. Of course, he is JUST nine months old, so I'm not sure how much of my explanations are getting through to him, but I console myself by thinking that "at least I'm trying and one day he will understand what I'm saying."

On the tooth front, he's got 1 tooth on top and a 4TH tooth coming in on the bottom (5 toots total now). =) He still dislikes most baby foods and is still a finicky solid foods eater. He likes yogurt, crackers, noodles, bread and rice with gravy/sauce on it. We try to sneak in baby foods filled with veggies and fruits into these starches so that he gets the nutrients that his body needs to grow. But feeding time is still a challenge.

ON the mobility front, he's still army crawling, though we have seen him crawl on his hands and knees. He just seems to prefer his old faithful method of traveling. He can pull up well and has been starting to cruise, but still cant get himself back down without plopping down. He hasn't stood on his own (without support of furniture or a person) yet. He can clap and we're working on teaching him bye-bye. He likes to copy certain sounds we make, one of the most funniest being the sound "ah" one would say after eating or drinking. Super funny.

It's been a while since I've posted a picture of the goober boy, so here are a couple.

Feed the boy!

Oh man, Kaua's appetite is growing.

I've been trying to keep up with his appetite but its a losing battle. I think it may be time for baby food, but I want to hold out till we see his pediatrician, but that's not until April 20!

Ok let me back up.

So we started giving him rice cereal and I think I posted about that. It went fine for a few days. He pooped for two days of the three that we started him on rice cereal (just a teaspoon 1x a day with his breast milk). But then day #3 rolls around and he doesn't poop. I figure, no biggie, he's gone a day or two without poop, but I decide to lay off on the rice cereal till he poops. But then 4 days roll by and I'm getting worried.

I call the KP advice line and the nurse tells me to try manual stimulation, prune juice or glycerin suppositories. The manual stimulation did nothing. So the next day we bought prune juice and fed him about 1 oz in a bottle (which was hard, I didn't think to mix it with breast milk...duh!). Later that night, hallelujah, we had a poop.

I waited a week to make sure his system was back on track and it was. So we fed him rice cereal yesterday. We got two poops today (no rice cereal feeding though). So I'm going to feed him some more rice cereal tomorrow and wait a couple days for a poop. If this goes off without a hitch, I may increase his rice cereal intake to a thicker consistency. I'm hoping this will help satiate the boy's appetite, because I swear he is ALWAYS hungry.

For those of you who are pumping BM. How much was your 4 month old eating? I was doing 3 oz per bottle, but am now moving up to 4 oz per bottle. He tends to drink at least 3 - 4 bottles during my 8 hour work day (that doesn't count his morning feedings or evening feedings or middle of the night feedings!) Does this sound about right?