Being Sara

Last weekend Xander visited with my parents and sister at their house. Zach and I had made lots of plans for a kid-free weekend, and when offered the opportunity, we jumped on it. In a previous post I had mentioned that Xander is starting to grow teeth on the top of his mouth - which is slightly backwards from most kids, who grow their bottom teeth first. We weren’t overly concerned with this, and though you could definitely feel the start of something coming through his gums, the progress has been slow.

When I picked Xander up from my parents on Sunday, I was shocked to discover two little teeth poking through his bottom gum! They still have some growing to do, but they are much farther along than the upper teeth, and we hadn’t even noticed them! Now when Xander puts my finger in his mouth to ease his gum discomfort, it’s actually a little painful. I suppose now we’re going to have to work on the “no, we don’t bite people” routine. At any rate, it’s just another exciting development in the always adventurous baby-land.

baby, babies, infant, infants, parent, parents, parenting, teeth, teething, baby teeth, baby development

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Well, we have worked our way through every Gerber Stage 1 food we could find - and quite a few of the stage 2’s as well. Xander is eating well, though he’s not really demanding more of anything yet, so we’re still working on about 1/2 a container per meal, which is fine. We’ve also tried some more exciting foods, such as teething crackers (like the one in his hand in the picture) and Zwiebak toast. The teething crackers seem to entertain Xander for about 5 or 10 minutes, though he does an excellent job of coating himself with cracker residue. The Zwiebak toast is definitely off the menu for a while - though his face is pretty funny when he tastes it.

Last night we tried turkey with rice. Although the face was pretty entertaining, it was the hand gesture that had me laughing - he actually stretched out his arms with both of his hands open in a “stop” gesture in front of his face. I don’t think Xander understands what the gesture means, but that didn’t make it any less funny. I just wish I had been able to snap a picture of his reaction.  I think turkey is off the table for a few weeks at least

We’ve also started experimenting with sippy cups. Since Xander uses Avent bottles, I bought a few Avent sippy cups. He mostly likes to chew on the spout. Last night I tried some of the Gerber apple juice in a sippy cup - after he chucked the cup across the kitchen for the third time, I got the hint - no apple juice please. We’ll keep trying with the sippy cup, but I think we’ll stick to water…

baby, babies, infant, infants, parent, parents, parenting, solid food, sippy cup, Avent bottle, Gerber, teething, Zwiebak toast

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After 4 months of heavy drool, Xander is finally starting to get a tooth! I’m starting to see that my child likes to do things in his own way - he’s happy to sit, but don’t ask him to roll over. A tooth decides to poke through, but not on the bottom where most babies start. Instead, Xander has decided to start working on the top row first - which is fine, just a little unexpected. I think his tooth started to bother him on Saturday afternoon when he started crying uncontrollably in the car. The rest of the afternoon and into the next day he was abnormally fussy. We had resisted using Ora gel up until now, but Xander seemed so miserable, that we finally gave in and bought some. We had tried cold washcloths, vibrating teethers, frozen teethers, plastic teethers, massaging his gums, but nothing seemed to help for very long. I think some better rest and the ora gel significantly improved his overall demeanor. The instructions say that we can only use the ora gel for 7 days in a row, so I’m not sure what we’ll do next week if Xander’s teeth are still hurting. It is exciting that he is finally getting a tooth, I just wish it wouldn’t hurt him so much…

baby, babies, infant, infants, parent, parents, parenting, teething, baby tooth, baby’s first tooth, teeth, tooth, baby development, baby milestones

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Our sleepy, happy baby has started to change a bit in the past week or so - he has started crying and fussing more often, and sometimes goes from completely happy to completely freaking out in mere seconds. We haven’t entirely figured out the cause of this change, though we suspect that he may have started teething.

Teething already you say? That’s what we said too. So, we did some research. “The Manual” (What To Expect in the First Year), BabyCenter and PregnancyWeekly all describe excessive drooling as one of the first signs of teething, along with fussiness and sometimes crying for food and then spitting out the bottle or nipple when it’s offered. So, the drooling that we thought was weird last week, and the confusion over whether or not he’s hungry that was starting to worry me all seem to fit into this puzzle. When I first suggested this to Zach, he ran his fingers over Xander’s gums. We can’t feel any little teeth there yet, but Xander seemed pretty happy to have someone touching his gums - all three sources suggest running a clean finger over a baby’s gums to relieve the discomfort, so it seemed like our suspicions have been confirmed - our little guy is growing awfully quickly, and maybe even a little faster than I’m ready for!

baby development, baby teeth, infant dental care, infant development, teething, teething symptoms

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