First Fever

Well, Penny's shots yesterday (including her first flu shot) have yielded her first fever. She feels yucky today - and I feel for her. Hopefully she'll feel better tomorrow. Get well soon baby!

Six Month Appointment

A couple six-month portraits of Penny. This is her new hat "Aunt" Elaine made for her.



She can pretty much stand on her own if she's holding onto something. Unfortunately, the bars of her activity gym aren't the sturdiest things in the world for her to practice on. She tried pulling up on them to sit up, but they just sort of bent back on her. Oh well, I'm sure it won't be long before she figures out how to pull up on the couch or something else instead.

Today she had her six-month check-up at the doctor's office. He pronounced her to be "perfect" and said we make his job easy because there is nothing wrong with her. She weighs 14 lbs 2 oz and is 25 inches long/tall.

The only thing I have to report is that she does have a milk intolerance - when I drink milk (or eat any kind of dairy products) it gives her (to use a polite euphemism) an "upset stomach" and lots of spit up too. But after a few days of no dairy, everything is fine again. It's hard to go dairy free though. Milk is in everything! I did find a wonderful recipe for a dairy-free chocolate cake that is awesome. The thing I miss the most is chocolate - especially with Valentine's Day coming up. I know that I could eat chocolate that didn't have milk in it, but that kind of chocolate messes with my heart so there's pretty much a no-win situation there. Oh well. I do enjoy nursing tremendously, so I don't mind having to make adjustments. Now if I could just stop the weight free-fall - ten pounds off my pre-pregnancy weight so far. In my defense, I'd lost all my pregnancy weight plus three more at my 6 week post-partum visit, so it's not like it is a recent thing. It's been ongoing, but what a great excuse to eat an entire non-dairy chocolate cake all by my lonesome. Ha!

Pet Conspiracy

I think there is a pet conspiracy in our household right now. Last night, Lindy (our 8 (ok - almost 9) year old black lab) became suddenly violently ill. Tray was on the front porch playing guitar and I was working on my computer. The dogs were already inside in their kennels, but the doors weren't shut. I heard Lindy come out of her kennel and then what I thought was an odd noise like she was knocking into something. It happened two or three times and I got up to go see what it was and she was standing there retching. She'd thrown up at least 5 times on our rug in front of the front door. I called Tray and we got her outside and got the rug outside to wash it out and I cleaned up the carpet where some missed the rug. After that, it occurred to me to go check on her to see if she was still throwing up. I called her several times and got no response so I started walking around into the back yard. And that's when I found her. She was just laying in the side yard in a really odd place like she would never lay and she couldn't move. She tapped-tapped her tail a few times when I first found her, but then even that stopped. She couldn't even lift her head up off the ground to look at me. Her breathing was very labored and her belly seemed distended. I thought she was going to die right there. I called Tray and he came and tried to get her up - to no avail. He went and got his truck and picked her up and off they went to the emergency vet.

These were almost the exact circumstances under which Minx passed away several years ago. So, they did an x-ray almost as soon as they got there and found no obvious intestinal blockages or any abdominal mass as they had with Minx. That was a relief. Then they did blood work and a toxicity screen to see if she'd been poisoned somehow. She had not and in fact her blood work was normal. The vet said she was actually quite healthy to be an (almost) 9 year old dog. She was very dehydrated, but otherwise he couldn't find anything and his best guess is that she ate something very, very bad for her. On the positive side, she improved on her own and is now doing fine other than being very thirsty. We are withholding food today and letting her rest to give her a chance to recover. It was a scary evening. I really thought I'd lost her - and with everything that has been going on with Catfish it was very overwhelming.

Heartbeat File

When I was pregnant with Penny, at one of our doctor's visits we took a digital voice recorder (that I had because I used it to do interviews for my dissertation research) and recorded her heartbeat. We wanted to post it at the time, but at one point the doctor says something like, "now she's coming back down to baseline," and that would have given the gender away. Anyway, after she was born, we kind of forgot about it, then found it, accidentally deleted it, and spent an afternoon downloading all manner of data recovery software off the internet before managing to get it back. (Hurray!) But then I discovered that blogger won't let you upload audio files. So I put it on the back burner again, until it occurred to me that I might could get around that. I got around it by importing the audio file into Windows Movie Maker and then just adding some pictures to make a kind of slide show and fool it into thinking it was a "movie". So, it would make more sense to have put ultrasound photos as the pictures, but those are kind of boring and hard to know what you are looking at unless they are yours. So instead I used some early Penny photos. Hard to believe she was ever this small. She's less than 6 lbs in these pics. We go back for her 6 month check up on Wednesday and I bet she's 15 lbs now. She's getting heavy! Anyway, enjoy!

Scary Stories

Ok, so I have recently discovered the world of "mommy-blogs" online. There are a ton of blogs written by moms about their day-to-day experiences as moms. I don't know if you've ever checked it out, but the NYTimes has a blog called Motherlode that's pretty good. I was reading it a couple days ago and got some links to some other good ones out there. One that I linked to is called Finslippy. A recent post was about the anxiety her son was having due to being read scary books in the evenings. The Motherlode blog also ran an entry asking if fairy tales are too scary for today's children. It got me thinking about it. Some of my favorite "children's" books are the Harry Potter series, and a loooove the "His Dark Materials" trilogy (the first book is "The Golden Compass" if you saw that movie advertised). But as I read them, I could not imagine letting my child read them. Maybe a pre-teen.
When I was about 6 or so I remember watching Disney's Alice in Wonderland and hiding behind my dad's (or mom's?) recliner/chair during the scene when the queen yells "Off with her head!" and Alice starts getting chased by all those creepy playing cards with legs. It still gives me the heebies. I also remember being scared by a picture book version of "The Hobbit" (or maybe it was LOTR) my dad read me at about the same age. There was a picture of when he gets his finger cut/bitten off. Gross! And very, very scary. So, all you loyal blog followers (all two or three of you!) - what books/movies/tv shows freaked you out as a child? And do you/did you/would you let your kids watch/read scary things?

Sweet Lindy

Catfish is doing somewhat better today. He ate quite a bit (relatively speaking) and I saw him drinking water. He's also been up and around a few times so I think he is feeling better. I don't know what is going to happen, but today at least he seems to be on the mend. As I type, he is lying in front of the fireplace staying toasty warm. But what I wanted to post was a picture of him earlier. He crawled up into Lindy's kennel with her and she just let him snuggle up to her. She has always had an affectionate relationship with Catfish and has been super-duper sweet since he's been sick. I just had to post this picture.

Jumper

Here is a picture of Penny in the jumper she got for Christmas. She still hasn't figured out how to actually jump in it, but she does enjoy turning herself around to look from room to room. I'd say her tolerance level for being in the jumper is about 5 minutes max - but today the cats were in the living room so she was happy watching them for awhile longer. If anybody has suggestions as to how I could entice her to actually jump, please send them my way.