Amiah's 6 Month Well Visit

Amiah had her 6 month well visit today and continues to be right on track developmentally. She is still on the smaller end of the scale with her weight at 14 lbs 9.8 oz (20th percentile), height 24.5 in (5 %) and her head at 16.3 in (27%). However the doctor said that she has the most beautiful growth curve and has stayed consistent with her growth which is great.  She did great while the doctor did her assessment, but was not happy about having to get 3 shots in her little legs!

Amiah at SIX Months Old

I'm not even sure how it's possible that our baby is yet another month older and half way to her first birthday, but here is all about our baby girl at 6 months old!!

She's wearing size 6-9 month clothes and size 3 diapers

Rolling everywhere and just today started sitting all on her own without falling over instantly

She enjoys most of the baby food she's tried so far

She's still nursing every 4 hours around the clock, which obviously means she's not sleeping through the night yet. 

She loves her pacifiers and still enjoys eating her toes or any fabric that gets near her mouth

She has also become a biter when nursing, and has made me yelp in pain multiple times. 

She has become super wiggly and her ribs are very ticklish

She loves her baths and splashes like crazy, soaking me every time

Sometimes she'll take good naps during the day, other time she only sleeps for an hour here and there. She's also started trying to phase out her late evening nap, which usually ends up with her nursing and going to bed closer to 7 than 8. 

She likes the jumperoo and has finally figured out how to start bouncing in it. 

She hates being left alone where she can't see anyone, but is usually pretty content watching her siblings if they are playing near her. 

She always sounds congested even when she seems perfectly healthy, this is something I actually plan to ask her pediatrician about on Tuesday at her well visit. 

She has been a little more fussy lately, but still a pretty easy going baby, especially considering that she's constantly getting woken up from naps and dragged around to all her siblings activities. 

We sure do love our little miss and how she perfectly completes our family. 

Happy half birthday Amiah!  

Daddy Daughter Dance

Tonight Steven and Emma went to their very first daddy-daughter dance at the rec center and it was the cutest thing ever. Ever since Steven asked her to the dance she has been talking about it and the anticipation of waiting all day for the dance was just killing her today. She helped me pick out her dress, then we painted her nails to match and picked out what jewelry she should wear. We ended up a little rushed to get her hair done cause she was eating her dinner so slow, but eventually we got her all ready just in time for her daddy to come to the door. Watching her just glow with excitement to be going with him totally melted my heart. Of course I had to take a few pictures of my little girl leaving on her first date. 

Steven said they danced a bunch, ate lots of snacks, and took some pictures to appease me! Our old neighbors and Emma's good friend Natalie Dolton was there with her dad which made it even more fun for her. Steven said he kind of got ditched for Natalie as the two girls held hands and swung around together making their dresses twirl. They stayed for the whole 2 hours till 8 o'clock and Steven said the only way he got her to leave was to let her eat cookies on the way home! I couldn't wait to see her when they got home and I loved hearing her tell me all about it. I'm so glad that she had a fun time and that she was able to have that one one one time with her daddy. 

Happy Valentine's Day

I worked the 6:30 am to 3 pm shift today, so I gave the kids their Valentine gifts yesterday morning before breakfast. They each got a new shirt to wear for Valentines, new books, some candy, and a card from grandma and grandpa Wilson with $2 in it. I'd also given them their gifts yesterday so that Emma could wear her new shirt for her school party. Sadly she ended up vomiting and having diarrhea the night before and I couldn't let her go to school. She was so bummed because she had been looking forward to the party for weeks and kept begging me to take her all morning cause she said she was feeling better. It killed me to keep her home, but I didn't want to risk getting anyone else sick. I realized our kids really have a knack for getting sick right before fun class parties, she missed the Christmas one too for being sick! I had told her we'd do something special for her at home since she didn't get to go, but I had so much to catch up on around the house that we didn't end up doing anything. Steven came to the rescue though when he gave her a balloon and a light up rose and asked her to be his Valentine for the Daddy Daughter Dance this coming Friday. Her whole face lit up and she was so excited! She gave her daddy a big hug and the whole thing just about brought on the water works for me it was so sweet!
Anyhow, today Mason had his school Valentine's party and was excited to wear his new shirt. Even though Emma was feeling better and hadn't had any more episodes of vomiting or diarrhea we thought it best if we didn't send the kids to the sitters just in case. Since Steven worked 60+ hours last week with tech he didn't feel to guilty taking the day off to stay home with the kids while I worked.  He was great to do dishes, laundry and clean up the house while he was home too. I got home a little bit early and had a few minutes at home to do Emma's hair before taking her to music class. I had to get a picture of her in her v-day shirt just before she went into class. Steven later picked her up and then brought home Chinese food for dinner. After dinner he was off to take Mason to basketball practice while I stayed home with the other kiddos and got them off to bed. Now that the kids are in bed and I've been up since 5:30 I'm off to bed too. Can you tell we're super exciting on Valentines day!? Hahaha.

Landon's Rash

Well it all started about 2 weeks ago when Landon developed a rash in the front of his diaper area. Since he'd only been potty training for a few weeks at that point and just starting to wear underwear more I thought maybe he was just having a reaction to them, since he already has a history of sensitive skin. I applied Desitin to it and kept an eye on it. Within I'd say 48 hours of it first appearing it became super red and inflamed and he was continually crying and saying it hurt. After taking to our pediatrician's nurse hotline I started to suspect that it was a yeast infection, so late one evening I ran out and bought some Lotrimin cream and put it on him before bed. That next morning (Jan 24th) I had to work and he was at our babysitters who was telling me he was crying in pain and she had to give him Tylenol for it. He had appointment scheduled for the next day to have it checked out, but when I got home from work I tried to give him a bath with baking soda to try and help relieve some of the pain he just started screaming bloody murder that it hurt to bad to even sit in the warm water, so I called and took him straight in. The doctor we saw agreed with me that it looked like a yeast infection and that we should just keep doing the Lotrimin cream, but that it would take 3-4 days before we'd see improvement. So that's what we did along with giving him Motrin and Tylenol around the clock for the pain. It was heartbreaking to watch him be in so much pain and not be able to make it go away. After almost a week on the cream the rash hadn't improved much, and he had ulcers on the tip of his penis making him scream in pain every time he had to pee. I called the doctor back who the prescribed him an oral anti-fungal Diflucan which he then took for 7 days finishing it on Feb 5th. The rash was only mildly better and still causing him discomfort although we'd finally been able to stop giving him medicine for the pain. On February 6th I took him back to the doctor and two different pediatrician's examined him. They too thought that it looked like a yeast infection, but since we'd already treated that for 2 weeks they thought that it could then be either caused by the Strep virus or maybe a bacteria infection. So they swabbed his throat and tested him for Strep, which came back negative. Having ruled that out they decided to treat him like it was a bacteria and prescribed us an anti-bacterial ointment Mupiricon to put on it. We started putting that on it that same day and within 48 hours we saw huge improvements! Now here we are 4 days later and the rash is almost completely gone after almost 4 weeks, and roughly $300 later in creams & doctor visits!

I'm just so glad it has finally cleared up and the one good thing that has come out of all this is that he has learned a very valuable lesson about the importance of hand washing after going potty!

Also speaking of going potty he is officially POTTY TRAINED during the day AND night! Dealing with this rash while potty training certainly made things a little harder, but he has done awesome and hasn't had an accident in a few weeks. We were still doing diapers at night for about a week until we realized that every morning he was waking up dry so now we've officially gone to underwear all the time now. It's amazing to me how we when we tried in September it was a royal disaster, but just 3 months later he was able to do it without a problem! I'm so ecstatic to be back to just one in diapers again! 

Spring PTC for Mason & Emma

Mason~
I met with Mason's teacher Mrs. Sewell first tonight and she had good things to say about Mason. She talked about how much she enjoys him as a student, how smart he is, but that it's obvious he has a lot of untapped potential. He is still rushing through his work at school, his handwriting is still awful and she has started making him redo his work and even kept him in from recess a time or two to redo his work so it was legible. I told her I've been working with him at home and that twice a week we focus on his spelling words and I make him write them out to practice his writing. I also make him rewrite things if I can read them and most the time it is such a battle with him. I'm constantly telling him to slow down, take his time, and do it right the first time so he doesn't have to do it over again. I'm not sure why this is such a struggle for him, but as Mrs Sewell said, his school work is only going to get harder for him and next year they will not be as patient with him or his work. The hardest part is that this isn't something that matters to him, so he has absolutely no motivation to work at improving it for himself. I've tried to suggest different rewards to him for motivation, but even that seems to lose it's appeal after a week or so. I just can't seem to find what motivates him and it's incredibly frustrating. Also, unfortunately it's not just with school, it seems to be with everything he does from brushing his teeth, to chores, to piano practice, etc. He rushes through everything, doing a poor job of it, but doesn't seem to care. Steven and I both seemed to have our own internal drive for school, sports, etc so we really struggle with knowing how to help him when he doesn't have that and it's not something we can give him. Anyways, enough about that, and aside from those things he is still performing where he needs to be for 2nd grade. He scored really high on his tests back in the fall around October, but his scores since have been a little lower and random. Not sure what that is about, but he's still progressing and overall doing well. His strongest skill right now is his reading, and he has certainly made huge strides in his reading this year to the point that he even reads for pleasure now not just cause he has to which is a major step for him.
His class has been learning how to research and he chose to do research about Baboons. The picture is of the Baboons habitat.

Emma~
I then met with Emma's teacher Mrs. Kraemer who really had nothing but good things to say about her. She said she is a joy to have in class, she always participates, she raises her hand and doesn't blurt out answers, and she gets along with everyone. The yellow paper has all the things she knows highlighted. She knows all her letters, can count to 100 by 1's and 10's, knows her shapes, and 22 of her power words so far. She struggles to know her teen numbers when they are placed out of order, and she's still having to sound out a bunch of her power words. I will admit with Amiah being born right after school starting we weren't working with her as much as we should have been during the first part of the year. However, the last couple months I've really tried hard to make sure I'm sitting down with her each day to read and go over her power words. I think things are starting to click for her though and hopefully she'll get them all down here before to long. She has been reading the beginner books and just in the last couple weeks has gotten better at those. Her handwriting and ability to sound out and spell words has also improved from the beginning of the year. 

Kids Dentist Appointment

All three of the older kids had a dental visit today and they all behaved so well. Mason and Emma were in the big room together, but then they had Landon in a smaller room on the other side which made it a little hard for me to see what was going on with all of them at once. Landon and Emma both got really good reports on their brushing and no one had cavities, but Mason got a very poor report on his oral hygiene. This is something we've been battling with him about lately and I'm hoping having him hear it from the dentist will help what we've been telling him sink it more. He rushes through brushing his teeth ridiculously fast, throws a fit when I check them and tell him to do it again, and he doesn't ever seem to brush his gums. The dental hygienist said his gums bled pretty good and he had a lot of built up plaque on his teeth, so she really stressed the importance of brushing well to him and told him he had to let me check them everyday. I was actually kind of surprised he didn't have any cavities. I also talked to the dentist about the spacing in his mouth with all his adult teeth coming in behind his baby teeth. Her recommendation was that we wait another 6 months and see what his teeth do when the rest of his front baby teeth are out and go from there. I have no doubt he'll be in braces, it's just a matter if we'll have to pull any teeth before then. Once his cleaning was over they also put some sealer on his back molars to help fill in the deep crevices to prevent cavities there. The kids then got to pick their prizes and we headed home.