Teeeeeeth! Baby Boy hit the 10 month mark on Wednesday and things are significantly crawlier around here. Little dude is motoring. No more leaving him alone to play; I take two steps out of the room and slap-slap-slap... (the universal sound of baby escape). Our babyproofing is still lax at best so I have to keep a close eye. No unattended roaming in this house! (All 3 rooms of it.) There are also many shaky attempts at pulling up (time to lower the crib mattress again) which probably means many shaky attempts at sleep. I hear that babies will often practice standing in the middle of the night and then get stuck, which means many middle of the night visits to help them sit down. (Unless you're my mother, a notorious non-coddler. "Let 'em fall!") We also have many, many, many new teeth. Five, to be exact. I thought they came in one at a time but Jaws here decided to go for gold and cut them all at once. (I think all he has left are molars.) This means new adventures in baby food. I've been trying different things, some good - english muffins topped with goop (butternut squash and applesauce, white bean and red pepper puree), some (like this afternoon's quinoa and lentil disaster) not so much. I'd love recipe suggestions. What does your kid devour?
Fall is in the air and I'm still getting used to the "crispness". (Sounds better than "cold".) The leaves are turning, the farmer's market is teeming, the Halloween candy, disappearing. Baby B and I hit the Bryant Park carousel and I don't know if I've ever seen him happier. (Scratch that - the first time daddy got down the Millenium Falcon we hit full-fledged baby geek-out.) The boy starts chewing the drywall if I don't get him outside at least twice a day. Unfortunately our favorite afternoon spot (the pier) is getting a little brisk. With the temperature hovering around 45 degrees, I pose this: What do you do with kids in the winter? We have an indoor pool so I'm luckier than most, but calling it "heated" is generous at best. (When I walked past it yesterday, the guy who teaches the childrens' swimming class was hopping up and down and slapping his chest to keep warm. Call me a skeptic, but I'm not sold.) Shelling out $20 for a class is okay once in a while, but on a day-to-day basis I'm lost. When I walk into his bedroom to start the day (5:30 am, lest I've forgotten to whine) the first thing he does is reach for the window and cry "Da! Da!" (I translate as "That! That!", versus "da-da" which means dad.) We're one of those hippie parents who doesn't allow television but killing time isn't the real issue - finding a place for him to crawl/toddle/flail is the main deal. Most of you probably have houses so this might not be an issue, but for those of us in teensy dwellings it's major. What do you do?
Continuing the babble (I really ought to eat something) - flu shots. Do you give them to your kid? We vaccinate so it's not an issue in that sense, but at his 12 month appointment he's scheduled for 5 shots (4 immunizations, plus one he missed because they didn't have the vaccine), a blood draw, and (if we choose it) the flu shot, which I hear is actually TWO shots at this age. We're divvying up the shots (I've done the research on immunization and autism and feel comfortable going ahead, but loading the kid feels wrong) but that's still a lot of crap in his system. He's not in pre-school, has very few (okay, no) friends... getting him innoculated seems excessive. That said, who wants to fuck with the flu?
Okay, it's time to eat. I'm starting to get chatty (I was about to go into how much I'm enjoying the teen dramedy "Skins" on BBC America). Here I come, salad greens! Time to feign healthiness!
13 comments:
it will only take one good slug of the flu (in dark, cold february, manifesting on a friday, so you have to wait until monday to see your pedi)to turn you into a flu shot advocate. take it from me. we all got so sick last year that we ended up buying a carpet cleaner. puke and bad poopy everywhere. not to even MENTION the sleep dep with sick kids! gah!
i hear ya, on top of all those other shots (just wait until the 18 month ones!) it does seem extreme... we have an 11 month old and we are told that in order for the shot to work the first time, our baby has to get TWO flu shots! we are still totally doing it. both said 11 month old and our three year old got shots a couple weeks ago, and hubby and i are getting them tomorrow. my personal opinion? not trying to judge, but when you have children, and they are out in the world, you need to dose yourself and your family whenever possible. hopefully it will be the correct blend for that year's illness. even as a crap-shoot, i'll go with the shots. just my two cents. i like wine, too!
The flu shot was two, but not at the same time. We did the first one, and he got waaaaay sicker from it than he ever got from any of the iimunizations, and way sicker than he would have been with the flu, so we didn't do the first one and we won't do any more flu shots.
I'm not trying to be contrary, but I do want to point out that the flu vaccine isn't always effective. Good friends of ours got their shots, and then caught the same strain of flu that they'd been vaccinated against. Maybe they've guessed better this year and the vaccine cocktail will be more accurate....Just sayin' is all.
I decided to give the flu vaccine a try last year. However since one child could not stay well long enough to actually get it we only ended up with one vaccinated child. We also ended up with only one child who got the flu (5 days of NASTY fever and other assorted symptoms, and a middle of the night meltdown where the child asked me if she was going to die.) The child who was sans shot was the one who wound up sick. The other one with the shot had a day or two where she was puny and tired (a few days before the non-shot kid got sick), but she did not even wind up missing any school. Given the closeness of the two episodes, we figured that the immunized child probably had the virus but was able to effectively fight it off, and passed it on to her un-immunized sister. I have to say that experience has made me a believer and I am foaming at the mouth to get them both inoculated ASAP, as we have already known about 4 people who have had the flu. It's a gamble I suppose, and in all fairness, we have had many years of successfully avoiding the flu without any shots. But after the misery #2 went through this year with the flu, my gambling days are over.
The babe is soooo cute!
Flu shots are new territory for me, too.
-EBP-
Now do you think that the flu episodes were because of school exposure? I'm not saying that I'm trying to avoid the shots (I'M TOTALLY TRYING TO AVOID THE SHOTS) but would you get your babies inoculated or just your older critters?
We just did flu #1, and I got one, too. Tinkerbell peed herself so hard watching ME get a shot it escaped her diaper (even though, as an old hand with allergy shots, I flinch not at ALL when stuck with needles I can see). We have a kid in our cohort allergic to eggs, so with a possible vector for flu I'm taking no chances. In the meantime, her shot was received as no worse than a diaper change.
Foods? Tink's still at only 1.5 incisors, so less biting action around here (though much gnashing and mashing). We've had success with tiny pita and hummus, teensy pasta pieces, beans/edamame as finger food, and best of all, itty bitty maki rolls. Yesterday's failure was quesadilla, almost certainly due to toughness of corn tortillas. Will use flour next time. She tried SO HARD to eat the stuff, but it was too tough for toothless.
Oh I am pretty certain my kids were exposed at school, and last year was the first year that we got the shot, it was also the first time our pediatrician recommended it. I think the ante definitely goes up if the kids are in daycare or school. However for your precious boy, he gets experiences like crowded subways, and well crowded everything..so he has more exposure than my kids did at that age, just by virtue of where he lives. Have you talked with his doctor? If you are feeling too wiggly then skip it I say. The worst that will happen is you have to suffer through him having the flu...maybe IF he gets it. Now don't get me wrong, it is unpleasant for sure..but many of us have lived through it relatively unharmed. I don't get the shot for myself. I am allergic to so much crap like that I just take my chances. After so many years of working with small kids I have a pretty good immune buildup.
Victoria, you know you have to send me the maki recipe. Or do you just order them from a sushi place and cut them up? How does your baby handle the hard-to-chew seaweed? And what do you fill the quesadillas with?
Yeah, Mo, the subways make me wonder about exposure... He's on them very rarely (as rarely as possible, as grumpy as they make me) but it's not like he lives in a bubble... Oh, decisions! (Bern's mention about the cocktail being not necessarily this year's model also makes me think.)
I'm pro flu shot. BG was around 10 months old when she got hers last year and didn't have to get two doses, so I don't know about that. But this year with her being more mobile and going to classes and things I definitely want to get it for her (which reminds me I need to schedule that appointment...).
I think that even if the shot doesn't end up matching this year's bug exactly, you still get some protection (sickness won't be quite as bad as without it).
i was unable to refer to myself in the 3rd person when john was a baby :) it resulted in him not saying "mama" or "mommy" till he was around 2...but we both knew who i was so that's all that mattered to me :)
I still refer to myself in the third person all the time, even in lunch box notes ("Mama loves you!") and I can't seem to stop! Glad to know I'm not the only one who does that.
On the flu shots--Lindsey had it when she was 4 and Dinah was too young to be immunized, and that was the year all the babies were dying of the flu--I was terrified. Lindsey missed the entire month of December (preschool, parties, Christmas program), lost about 8% of her body weight, was severly dehydrated and turned me into a ferocious mama-bear who wouldn't take "no appointments today" for an answer and camped out in my doctor's waiting room with her until she agreed to see her.
It was scary, and trying to keep her quarrantined from Dinah was terrible. Then James and I both had it for the week of Christmas. We dragged ourselves to Topeka so my parents could take care of all of us! We just basically missed Christmas that year.
And now, no matter what, we get those flu shots if there are any to be had in the county.
I'm late to the party, as usual, but here's my 5 cents on the issue.
Caitlin got the flu last year and gave it to me. I had a 105 degree fever.
And I was breastfeeding.
I'm NEVER doing that again.
The not-getting-the-flu-shot part of that issue, not the BF-ing. I was lucky as all hell that the twins didn't get the flu, that I didn't give it to them or Caitlin or that Eric didn't ALSO come down with the flu.
So this year, we're all going to get shots. Even if it doesn't stop it completely, anything short of a week of illness and 105 degree fever would be an improvement.
Oh, we also split up the twins' shots. I hate the idea of giving them 6 or 8 different things to process at one time. We still need to set up our appointments. Shots all around!
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