Teething and stuff

My blogging friends, Stacey and Angele at "2 girls in love" once commented to me that "Teething never ends".

Isn't that the truth.

We've had 7 pretty hard teething days. By my count, Kylie has six teeth that are all sitting there waiting to cut through. And they are causing her lots of pain.

A "teething day" looks like this.

First of all, she has this expression for most of the day. "I'm trying to have fun Mom but I just don't feel right".

Kylie wants to be fed and soothed at around 1am and then again at 5am. (Before this, she was back to sleeping through the night until 6am but I guess those days are over for a while).

She sits and strokes her cheeks over and over or just holds them. After a while, she breaks out in tears.

We have tearful, "I'm hurting Mommy" moments several times throughout the day.

She needs more distraction and more interaction from me during playtime. If she plays quietly on her own, she feels the pain more and cries. But if I can keep her distracted with walks, a daily trip to Gymboree playtime, and really playing with her, she does better. Normally, I'll spend 30 minutes cleaning a room while she's playing in it. But I've not been able to multi-task like this because she needs me so much.

Her appetite is really inconsistent. She'll either be wildly hungry or want nothing at all.

The plus side is that she's napping more. I suspect the pain wears her down or she just wants to sleep to escape it for a bit. The naps are a welcome relief for me because she's wearing me out.

We've been consistent with giving her Motrin. Each morning I hope that she won't be symptomatic but then she starts pulling at her cheeks and crying so I'll give her a dose. She welcomes the medicine. She opens her mouth wide for it and smiles (probably from the good taste). But I think she knows that it helps her.

She hates the teething tablets and they don't seem to help her so I've stopped those. We've had to rub Baby Orajel on her gums a few times. She either grabs and chews a cold teething ring or pushes it away and starts crying. We gave her frozen blueberries yesterday which she loved (either the taste or the fact they were frozen) but then she had purple fingers and lips for several hours.

All of this is to say, "Come on teeth! Cut on through!"

In other news, we've all been enjoying a children's music cd by Justin Roberts titled Yellow Bus.

It's a welcome relief from listening to Jack Johnson when we are in the car. Jack Johnson is Kylie's favorite. She settles down and grins whenever she hears him.

I completed this scrapbook page last night.


Here's another picture of our foot-lovin' girl.


And I did this pageas a placeholder in my 2008 scrapbook album. The journaling explains that there aren't many scrapbook pages for the month of May because I was doing the book project instead.