8 months

This past month has been the allergy alert month. Almost every other thought in my head is about your allergies and are you potentially allergic to this or to that. And, how do I make sure you never come in to contact with this substance or that material. Then I start feeling like an obsessed germ-aphobe because there's just no way to avoid breathing in dirt and pollen and coming into contact with dog hair/dander, so I try to relax about it and then what happens? You get a giant rash all over your face and neck because I put you down on the floor in your room to play for two seconds while I went to wipe Sofia's butt. But I didn't just put you directly on the evil, dog-skin festered carpet, I put a clean blanket down first to protect you and handed you a soft fabric block from a bin that I thought was clean, because I obsessively wash everything you come into contact with and yell left and right anytime someone puts anything on the floor. Apparently this block that you, of course, decided to rub all over your face had been compromised with DOG. These incidents make it clear that the dogs need to go but other forces at work don't agree. I washed all the dog beds and the dogs and we're trying to train them --ha!, did I just say "train them". We're trying to scold them into not coming into your room. I bought the "Furminator", a $50 comb to de-shed the dogs and spend several hours working on them yesterday (outside). I will probably spend a small fortune buying the whole Furminator line of products. I'm still doing extensive research on Hepa Air Filters being as it appears that most of them don't do anything at all.

Apparently, your palate disapproves of stage 2 finger foods.

As part of the fight against allergies and other bad things, we've been giving you more baby food (1-2 meals a day) and a cocktail of breast milk, regular formula, and the hypoallergenic, MSG laden Nutramigen formula. Plus your new Zyrtec prescription, 1/4 tsp. each night. I've also found some new cheap BPA free bottles for you at none other than, what I am forced to reluctantly admit may be our second favorite store, Walmart. Yes, I said it, Walmart. The store I once hated so much that I walked out cursing every time swearing never to return. What is it about having children that naturally draws you to this store and wanting a mini van with doors that open and close by themselves? These bottles are the Walmart brand, Parent's Choice, they come in an ugly three pack of green, yellow, and orange tones with markings that can only be read with an ultraviolet light and nipples that drip. The pros - they are BPA free plastic, they cost something around $3.76/3 pk. plus the cost of the fast flow nipples $3.76/6 pk., it could be my imagination but they appear to have a similar air releasing design on the cap like Avent bottles, and you'll drink from them. The colors are even starting to grow on me and just a couple of days ago, you started grasping the bottle with your two hands. It's about time, because all the not so fun aspects of bottle feeding are rapidly coming back to me, like holding the bottle (yes, I'm lazy), preparing the bottle, warming the bottle, washing the bottle, always remembering to bring a bottle, and of course the worst part about formula feeding -- the smell: the smell of the formula, the smell of the spit up, the smell of the burps, the smell of the farts, the smell of the sweat, and the smell of the POOP!


In general, everyone comments about how big you're getting and how good you look, referring to your eczema wrought skin. Your skin has been looking better, even before we went to the allergist we noticed and uptrend but you still scratch violently; looks are deceiving. I've also noticed that you tend to rash up very quickly when you come into contact with some offending material. Last week, you came down with your regularly scheduled cold and managed to get another ear infection (antibiotic round #2, still Amoxicillin). You had a fever for several days and somehow managed to get a nasty rash on the backs of your knees that took several days to clear up with the steroid ointment. We have now gone through one whole tube of steroid ointment. Don't worry, the tube is very small. You insisted on being held 24/7 for several days and used my chest to rub off your snot and slobber on.

But enough about the eczema and allergies lest we forget there's much more to your darling little personality than your ailments. This month you cut your first tooth on the bottom left and about a week later I noticed the one right next to it trying to come up too. I see you too have an affinity for symmetry in life. You've been drooling like crazy but it's starting to taper off now that your tooth is more exposed. You also got several blisters on the fingers on your right hand but I think they are from you biting yourself not from external allergens. I don't think you've grown much, but your last few trips to the doctor, you were around 16 lbs. I'm feeling the weight because you share Sofia's affliction -lazy leg syndrome which apparently prevents you from the normal monkey latch on position most children take when you carry them on your hip. If I only use one arm to hold you, you literally start sliding right down my leg without a care in the world. By this point I'm usually struggling to maintain a grip on the back of your onesie.

You really enjoy splashing in the bath and sometimes express your disappointment when I take you out. Getting dressed is just a bother to you now, so I have to give you something interesting to hold while I change you to prevent you from rebelling. As soon as I sit you on the changing table, you reach your little grabber right over to the basket with lotions and potions. Your hands are like Velcro, as soon as they make contact with something, I pull you away and the object comes along with you. This is usually the entire wire basket containing lotion, petroleum jelly, cotton balls, thermometer, nose sucker, nail clippers and other inappropriate and sharp objects.


I've started reading you a night time book this month and you enjoy this a lot. It can be a bit of a struggle as I fight with your grabber for the pages, but your face lights up and you are very interested. Sometimes if you're crabby, I show you the Meomi poster on your wall and you get so happy like you just want to jump in it and be part of it. I think you've figured out you can't actually grab the little critters out of the picture but you still like to touch them with a petting motion. It gives me much joy and satisfaction to see your appreciation for art that I thoughtfully picked out for you. A sense that often escapes adults as one person said to me when I was considering another to-me-inexpensive illustration, "why would you waste money on that? you're crazy." I love that it makes you so happy and I will no doubt be very sad when you someday replace it with a poster of a car, rock band, or worse, a Victoria's Secret model.

Yesterday, we had to lower your crib mattress because you've shown signs of wanting to do things with your legs. A lot of times we sit you in the middle of the crib, your small fortress of dog-free space, while putting clothes away or doing things in your room. You usually play with your ugly monster doll or your mirror or mostly your feet. But this time, Sofia was clowning around in your room and you had to get closer to the action, so you grabbed on to the side of the crib with one grabber and then with the other and pulled yourself over to peek over the edge. You got yourself into a kneeling position and pushed yourself up. The best part is the look on your face, you act like you've just done the neatest thing ever. It's soooo cute.


Lately, you've been grunting, squealing, and making a lot of noise in general. You still like to say "a-da-da". You like to be near Sofia. You like to put EVERYTHING in your mouth. And you like to be tickled and have the same sort of choked up laugh that Sofia did. It's a short outburst that suddenly gets muted as if all the outward energy gets abruptly cut off by a paralyzing excitement. You are such a cute little boy. Everyone loves your big flirty eyes and your infectious smile.

GQ moment

Green-er

While I'm not usually known to follow popular social trends such as buying organic foods only and hopping on the "green" bandwagon, there is one thing to be said for having children -- they will definitely change you, make you think more about the world around you and look at it from a different perspective. Lately I've been tormented with the safety issue of vaccines, the apparently rising rate of autism and other neurological disorders, why it takes 2 1/2 months to get in to see an allergist, and now with Marcelo's confirmed allergy issues, the changes I must make to the food that sustains him and the bottles he drinks it from.

The new Nutramigen formula from Enfamil recommended by the allergist, I calculated would cost us about $200/month for 4 feedings per day. Wow. When I switched Sofia to formula, I think it only cost us about $50/month and she consumed more than Marcelo does. Unfortunately, in doing my price comparison shopping, I came across some disturbing information about the ingredients in Nutramigen, namely that it contains MSG , 46% corn syrup solids, and a high amount of the heavy metal Mn, a known neurotoxin. What?! Why would a doctor, an allergist no less, recommend that I give my baby a giant dose of corn syrup, MSG and Manganese for Pete's sake! (you know what I really meant to say here). Moreover, if Marcelo is going to go from one bottle to four bottles a day, I'm looking to get rid of all of our rather pricey Avent bottles because they contain BPA which can leach out into the milk. BPA has recently come under scrutiny due to a recent study and is already planned to be baned in Canada, though not in the USA.

Hello?! If you're walking over a bridge that is falling apart several times a day but people say it's still OK because it hasn't yet fallen down, no one has broken an ankle much less died, do you continue to walk it or do you find another route. Duh. Why do we have to wait for mass quantities of people to be have neurological or other tragic and irreversible health issues to safeguard the health of our children. That's like saying -oh yep, fifty people fell of the bridge today so it looks like it's not a safe as we thought; um let's not use it anymore and find a different route instead.

So, there's some companies out there, "green" companies?, that are selling BPA free baby bottles (e.g. BornFree, GreenToGrow) . We need at least 8 new bottles with nipples. At about $14.50 a piece, this would cost us $116 to replace bottles we already have. Plus we need to buy new sippy cups too because the ones we have are made by Avent, a company in denial of the potential hazards of BPA. How ironic that they became famous for developing the wide neck bottle/nipple that was more like the breast but could care less if their bottles could cause serious health problems. Is it because they are now owned by Phillips. I don't know, I don't care. I don't have time to know all these things. I also need to buy a drinking container for Sofia to use at daycare because they like to re-use plastic water bottles. I need one that doesn't have an exposed mouth piece (daycare-falling on the ground-germs, etc.), so I'm looking at this one, $15 -cha ching.

So yes, I realize I'm talking about several things here but the living "green" craze, this is what bothers me. Why does living "green" need to mean that you need to have or just spend a lot of money, like being green means you're being better than everyone else and a related way of feeling better than everyone else is having or just spending more money. It annoys me to no end. I mean $10 to get a cheap plastic bottle that you could get before they started making them with the supposedly more expensive polycarbonate (i.e. BPA). But you can feel good about yourself because you're being "green".

I do like to recycle because our city provides us with a giant recycle bin which they pick up every other week. I have no problem separating my recyclable garbage from my garbage garbage and neither does Sofia. I'm glad she will grow up never questioning the fact that you could just throw everything out together. She knows what goes in which bin and sometimes she'll ask me. The fact that for the first several months we had the new recycle bin, unbeknown to me, Ray had been throwing everything in the regular garbage bin anyway may mean Ray is more brown than green. (I only found this out when we were talking to our neighbor about the new bins and Ray said he didn't even know why they were doing that because we hardly ever had anything to throw in there anyway. I think the aspartame in his diet coke is affecting his brain). We have the low-e bulbs in our house, we have secondary water, I've even recently switched to some organic foods such as eggs and oatmeal. But frankly, there's only so far I can go with the whole green thing. I mean, would I really rather eat lettuce with pesticide or lettuce with e-coli. I don't know. For now, I'm going with the one that doesn't cost four times the price. Last year Earth's Best had a recall on it's organic baby foods. It makes it hard to chose, much less, to pay more for what you know is best for your children when in fact, you can't necessarily know it at all.

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*Update 5/8/08 - I was able to get on a live chat with Dr Greene today and pose my question about the questionable ingredients in Nutramigen. I was very disappointment that he basically skirted the MSG and corn syrup solids issues completely. He did say he was concerned about the high level of Manganese but then later decided it was OK if my child was of solid food eating age. Entirely not helpful nor insightful. He agreed that Nestle Good Start with "comfort proteins" wasn't going to help but I already knew that. So I guess, the only other alternative is Infamil Alimentum which may not be as effective as Nutramigen.
Still looking for bottles, but apparently my Avent sippy cups are OK.
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There's so many links I could include with this post it's ridiculous, but here are just a few
http://www.thegreenguide.com/products/Kids_&_Babies/Baby_Bottles
http://www.naturemoms.com/blog/2007/09/04/bpa-free-safe-sippy-cups/

Visit to the Allergist Reveals....

We finally got in to see the allergist that Marcelo's pediatrician referred us to after his 4 month checkup. I had to fill out a questionnaire about every possible offending substance in our house. Yes, we have animals; yes we live by a field; yes we have carpet, yes he drinks milk .... hello.

Anyway we were there a while, Marcelo started getting a bit irritable as it was getting close to his 2:30 feeding. He started the irate demonstration right when they were going to do the skin test. I'm not normally that comfortable with the whole public nursing thing, but I wasn't going to let him cry hysterically during the whole procedure not to mention, he can develop a full body rash just from angry crying and then we'd never know the difference anyway. So I asserted myself and told the assistant I was going to nurse him first. She decided to test his arm as that was the only small area of skin without some degree of redness to it already. So, he didn't even notice anything was being done to him as he was blissfully nursing the whole time.

They tested him for milk, dog, cat, soy, and wheat allergies, plus the positive and negative controls. Much to my surprise he is not allergic to cats as I am. At least his eyeballs won't be turning into hard boiled pointy eggs, but he is allergic to MILK and DOGS. Well, that explains a lot since he lives off of MILK and we have two furry rodent dogs in the house. His unusual for his age allergy to dogs and the milk allergy prompted the doctor to also ban him from future consumption of eggs and nuts as a "he's most likely allergic to these as well" type of precaution.

Cutting out milk, dairy, eggs, and nuts out of my diet would pretty much leave me with nothing but water to eat seeing as I currently hold the record for most pickiest eater on the planet. Really, I got a stack of handouts with endless lists of what ingredients constitute milk including anything "butter flavored". I always thought "butter flavored" was the opposite of butter, like melted yellow plastic or something. Anyway, it looks like I'm going to be weaning him off to a hypoallergenic formula called Nutramigen which has the advantage of already being partially digested. Umm, doesn't that sound yummy. We got some samples and he refused the first couple bottles of it Ray tried to give him straight, despite the doctor's advise to mix it in gradually because HE'S NOT GOING TO LIKE IT. I haven't checked to see how much this formula costs but I would venture to guess it's the most expensive one out there as it is marketed for colicky babies with digestion problems. So I'm guessing I may be able to exchange gold for it.

Anyway, we've yet to determine what to do with the dogs as Ray would probably rather cut off his right foot than get rid of the dogs. My guess is he'd get rid of the dogs in a second if they were causing him to gauge his head full of wholes every night. But for now I guess we have to vacuum a lot more often, probably get rid of the carpet in his room, get a hepa filter and all those crazy things that sensitive allergy people have to do. It's hard to know how much of a role the dog allergy plays in his eczema anyway although the welt on his arm from dog seemed more severe than the one for the milk. We did get some more potions, a prescription for Zyrtec (we've already tried Benadryl and Atarax), some other lotiony thing and an Epipen Jr in case Sofia decides to feed him a peanut butter egg sandwich with milk and dog hair. (I'm secretly glad to have the Epipen because I've never had a bee sting and, because my reaction to mosquito bites is ridiculous and last for weeks, I'm afraid to know what will happen if I do. Although I might have a hard time jabbing myself in the leg, much less Marcelo, with a needle that's designed to go through your pants.).

It's strange how somehow I had him pegged to be this way. Maybe that's why I vacuumed like crazy, washed everything in our house, and demanded that Ray have the dogs properly bathed at PetsMart (which we never do) a couple of days before he was born. Sadly, I don't think the dogs have been bathed since. If we want to keep them, we'll probably have to hire a cleaning service and someone to come bathe them every week.

Poor little guy. I wish I could just dunk him in some magical potion and make him feel better.

This picture was taken several hours after the skin test was done so the allergic reaction had already calmed itself, but Sofia noticed immediately that someone had "drawn on Marcelo's arm with crayon" and she was very concerned about it when she alerted us to this as though some impostor had somehow caught him unattended and written all over him.