Taking advantage of her already confused state, and in order to maximize time with her grandparents, I decided to go ahead and start experimenting with new wake-time lengths by just keeping her up for two hours and then seeing where she was at. Worked like a charm!
Last week Blueberry also started babbling a lot more. She's always chattered to us, but consonants had not featured prominently in her vocabulary. Last week that changed completely. One afternoon she just started jabbering away with several consonants. Quite a conversationalist she is proving herself to be. And, just to make the deal all the sweeter, she said Mama! We weren't sure if it was intentional or not at first, but it quickly became clear that Mama was went she meant. Yay!!
Her understanding of communication has been so much fun to watch. We've been starting to use sign language with her the last month and a half or so. We've been able to watch her slowly begin playing around with waving bye-bye, etc. However, her first real sign was one she has made up herself. And again, it's a call for Mama. Basically she makes circles with her hand in the air. Watching closely, she only makes that sign when she wants me.
On a down note though, we had to go to the pediatrician on Monday as soon as we returned from Arizona. A little over a month ago, I had noticed some dry patches on her skin. Figured it was just the dry winter air, applied extra lotion, etc. Well, they didn't go away. In fact, they were increasing. So then I thought maybe the lotion was a problem and we found some alcohol free/fragrance free lotion. No improvement. In fact, last week the dry patches began to increase steadily.
Racked my brain. Maybe it was the fact that I had changed from using a liquid detergent on her clothes to a powder detergent (same brand). Rewashed all of her clothes that we had with us in the liquid stuff. No change (although, admittedly, it would be hard to see a change super fast--but still don't think it was working well enough).
My other thought was the Baby Mumm Mumm crackers she's been eating. In and of themselves they're very simple ingredients. However, on the package, it did say that there may be some milk contamination possible. So we've taken her off of those and we're going to see what happens.
Decided that she needed to go see the doctor. Called them and was able to get her in as soon as we returned. Doctor took one look at her and confirmed it was eczema. The appointment was a bit irritating, to be honest, as the doctor didn't even correlate eczema with food at all, but just called it dry skin and said to avoid fragrance lotions/soaps. Also wanted me to douse Blueberry in hydrocortisone, which I don't particularly want to do. So instead we've bought some new soaps/shampoo and an additional thick lotion (additional to what I had bought earlier which was Burt's Bees Fragrance free, alcohol free, etc which should be fine to continue using) to apply directly to the really dry patches. Will also be trying a shea butter/almond oil mixture (thanks Hillery--my source of knowledge in all things eczema related) once I can get the ingredients.
And then once we know it's clearing up, we will start some experimenting. I want to know for sure (if at all possible) what's causing this. We've known from early on that she hasn't responded well to dairy in my system. I want to know if this is a result of directly ingesting dairy herself or if it's something else altogether.
In the meantime, I just researched homemade baby biscuits and found some fun recipes that we will be trying. Love this website that I ran across a few months ago: Wholesome Baby Food. Lots of great recipe ideas, starting solids, information on allergies, etc.
So, that's the Blueberry news. Love my baby girl!
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