Video: Aletheia's First Word?

Just A-Swingin'

This was Aletheia's first time in a swing. We drove all over town looking for a park with baby swings and never found one. This one at least had leg holes, although no back, so we had to be careful. She seemed to enjoy it, but she's teething (I think), so her hands were in her mouth the whole time.

7 Months, 16 Days

Convalescence

As always, she looks ecstatically happy, but the kid's still sick. She's got a little infection, and it's starting to move into her lungs. Lots of wheezing and coughing. After a trip to the doctor, she's on about five different medicines, including some delightful nebulizer treatment. She hates the little mask that comes with it, but when we take it off, she'll voluntarily stick the tube in her mouth and breathe it in that way. Whatever works. Anyway, she can't be feeling a hundred percent, but you'd never know it by her attitude. And she's not too sick to wrestle teddy bears.

7 Months, 20 Days

Hard at Work

7 Months, 14 Days

Video: Aletheia and "The Baby in the Mirror"

7 Months, 17 Days

I Loved Your Card!

Aletheia really appreciated her Valentine's card from her Memaw.

7 Months, 14 Days

Surgically Remove Pinkie

That's the phrase someone searched for today that lead them to this blog. Enter it in Google and we're the fifth hit. I'm sorry that someone may need their pinkie removed, and I hope glancing at cute baby pictures at least cheered them for a minute. Someone else found this site by looking for adult tonsillectomy information.

I would have thought that there would be enough medical info on the internet that our little blog wouldn't rank so high. Interesting.

First Time to Eat in a High Chair

She seems to like the idea. (And, yeah, we still have a lot to unpack. Who bought 3000 books?)

7 Months, 14 Days

Reclining

This is a nice picture, and she has a sweet smile, but if you look closely, you can tell she is still getting over her cold.

7 Months, 13 Days

Not a Fashion Statement

Aletheia likes to pull my glasses off whenever she can. I finally gave up and just put them on her. I don't think it's a good look for the kid.

6 Months, 28 Days

That Explains It

"Good-looking parents are 36 percent more likely to give birth to a girl than less-attractive couples."

I'm just saying....

Lounging Around

7 Months, 10 Days

Getting Sleepy

7 Months, 7 Days

Hard Night

Aletheia a few minutes after falling and hitting her head on the rocking chair.

7 Months, 5 Days

The Little Turtle, The Giant Ladybug, and Aletheia

7 Months, 4 Days

Defiant

7 Months, 2 Days

Green and Orange Circles

7 Months 2 Days

Non-Pictorial Update

Hi, everyone!

I have read that an adult's recovery from tonsillectomy will normally take from one to two weeks, with some symptoms potentially hanging on for a month or so. It's been almost ten days now, and I have no voice at all, and I'm still in quite a bit of pain, so I guess that puts me in at least the two week camp.

What's weird is the first two or three days I felt pretty good. I ate anything I wanted and could still communicate fine. Days four and five got a little worse and six through eight were miserable. But when I compared my overall torment to the pain I remember from my worst bouts of tonsillitis, I still think it doesn't quite reach the mark. So I think I'm still glad I decided to do this. And you really don't want to hear how my doctor described my tonsils when he took them out. Let's just say he was further convinced that this was the right thing to do.

So, because the past couple of days have mainly consisted of me lying on the couch in a codeine-induced half slumber, I didn't snap any new pictures over the weekend. Which is a shame, because Aletheia turned seven months old on Saturday. We didn't even get a cake.

Here's the report on the kid:
1. At her six month check in she was in the 95th percentile on both height and weight, so she's a big kid, but proportionally so. We mainly put her in nine months' clothes and an occasional twelve month outfit. I know this isn't necessarily an indication of her adult height, but several doctors have told us now that she'll probably be tall, like her aunts but unlike her momma.

2. She loves sitting up, reaching out, grabbing things, turning them upside down and shaking them. She's very hands-on. She does not yet show any interest in trying to crawl, but one of her current favorite pastimes is doing leg squats. If you hold her hands, she'll stand up, squat down and stand up again, over and over, under her own power. So my guess is she might be a little late to start crawling, but an early walker.

3. Her personality has been remarkably consistent so far. (Remarkable to me, a novice parent. Maybe most kids are like that.) She has two moods: content and joyous. That's almost all we ever see. She may not literally be the world's strongest, smartest, prettiest baby girl, but she's definitely a contender for easiest-to-get-along-with. Assertiveness training might be in her future. (Or maybe she'll just be really good at calmly, politely telling people when they need to mind their own business.)

4. She's also remained very verbal (she was ahhing and cooing almost from the start). Lots of sounds, all the time. She recently started doing the consonant-vowel pairings that sound more like real speech. Naturally, I first noticed that when I heard her saying, "Da-da. Da-da."

I had a weird nightmare this week during one of my medicine-induced semi-slumbers. In the dream, we still had Aletheia, but we had adopted her. There was some kind of foul-up with the paperwork, and after raising her from birth to seven months, it seemed that we were probably going to lose her and she would go back to her bio-family. This was one of the super-realistic, vivid dreams, and I woke up in a panic. I almost called our lawyer! The idea of having Allie taken away from us was devastating. I've known two couples that have had that exact thing happen to them, and I know I can't truly understand their ongoing pain, but I think I got a pretty solid half-hour exposure to it.

Aletheia's mom and I do plan on adopting someday, and that exact scenario is one of the reasons that we are going to do it internationally. It's nice to know that once you step off the plane in America with your new baby, she is yours to keep, irrevocably.

Anyway, I'm feeling somewhat better this morning (although if you look at the time stamp you can see that my sleep schedule is thrown way off). I hope to be back in the office Tuesday, although there's no point in showing up if I don't have enough voice to yell at people and intimidate the staff. I plan to get a new picture up sometime today after the kid wakes up.

Over Exposed

6 Months, 30 Days

Aletheia, Devourer of Fireflies

6 Months, 29 Days