... of science

I am doing an experiment. Selah has been a really amiable baby so far. Really, she has just been sleeping and eating.  A few times she has done some very sad crying during her few awake moments.  The fact that the vigorous pumping of her legs combined with incessant pacifier sucking has produced some very lovely little farts in those moments, I have figured out that there is something happening with her eating that is sometimes making her gassy.  Hence the experiment.  I can't hold all variables constant (as I learned was necessary in 10th grade Chemistry), but I am trying.  So I eliminated what I thought might be the culprits: broccoli, tomatoes, and eggs.  Those might not be the problems, but it's my best guess and so I'm starting there.  I took them all out.  She was fine for a few days.  Then I added eggs back in; and she had a hard day.  So I'm pretty sure eggs are at least one of the problems.  The fact that they may be making her gassy now, doesn't mean that it will stay that way, so I'll keep returning to them every once in awhile to see if she's over it.  In the next few days I'll try tomatoes - I'm hoping we'll get those cleared. I really like marinara and ketchup.  I'm pretty sure I'm just going to cut out the broccoli for good. I don't like it anyway and it gives me a good excuse to not have to eat it.  The gas might also be caused by my over active letdown.  There are times that she has a harder time than others when nursing and she may be getting more foremilk at sometimes.  But she's not like that all of the time, so it's really not all that bad.  She's definitely a lot less fussy than Abram at this point in her life. 

Here are some nice comparison photos of the kiddos at the same age (give or take a few days):

 

Selah is definitely more... round :)  She's a better eater and I have a LOT more milk to give her than I did with Abram, so that's not too surprising.  His nose is more like mine.  Maybe hers is going to get more pointy and less round over time, who knows (or nose, if you are punny!)

On a side note, I wanted to record here that we were having a really hard time with her bottles at night.  We were using the Playtex nursers that worked so well for Abram, but she was choking and gagging and there was milk everywhere and lots of burping and gas.  One of the times we figured out that it was because Quinn had forgotten that we warm up breast milk before giving it to a newborn (it had been awhile!), but the other times we just couldn't figure it out.  Until I realized that it was probably because the single stream of milk was going straight to the back of her throat and gagging her.  So I tried over tipping the bottle so that the nipple was a little pinched and the hole was pointing more toward her tongue that the back of her mouth.  SUCCESS!  Two feedings of almost no gagging or anything at all.  Just a perfect 10 minutes of 3 ounces and a single, awesome burp at the end.  

Burping/snuggle time.

So this is my view for, let's see, 15 minutes of burping, 7 feedings a day, that almost 2 hours a day.

Sometimes I put her in the homemade Baby K'Tan to keep her upright after feedings so that I can do stuff.

  Also, if she won't go to sleep I just have to drop her in there for 5 minutes, max, and she's out.  But getting her out without waking her up is not always successful.

I told Quinn he has to put it on sometime so that he can get the closest feeling he might ever have of what it's like to be pregnant.  

Abram is still loving giving Sissy kisses.  Thankfully, he always goes for the top of her head since that's where we've encouraged it to be given since the beginning.  It feels the most sanitary and the fact that when he's done giving her those kisses, her head is sopping wet, leads me to believe we need to try and be as sanitary as possible.

Playtime.

And a cutie face picture of "Brother".

On a final note, both our computer and our car have decided to slowly stop working at the same time.  The computer's keyboard and mouse stopped working awhile ago, then the speakers, and this is after a fan stopped working and it started overheating and shutting off every time we watched video or skyped.  So we figured it was time for a new one.  It was four years old, which is about the normal lifespan of a laptop.  Now I am finishing my first post on our ENORMOUS new laptop!  Quinn wants to be able to use Photoshop on it.  Because that's what he does all day long, he has some pretty high standards for what he needs.  This includes, but is not limited to, a 17" screen.  Woah.  It's huge.  But really nice, I have to say.  

The car was bought used right before Abram was born.  It has been in the shop for various issues more than any car either one of us has ever owned.  Most recently, it has been dying in the middle of driving it and then picking back up where it left off.  Sometimes it really does die and has to be pulled to the side and restarted, usually with success.  That is scary enough when I have two small children with me most of the time, but today, the breaks started going out.  I mean, they basically went out at one point, but the rest of the time it's like they aren't catching at all.  I have to mash it all the way to the ground and use the emergency break to get it to stop.  Scary.  It's going into the shop on Tuesday, but I'm fearing that it just might be done for.

Anyway.  There's a lengthy update on what's going on in the Smith home lately.  It's 12:30 and I need to go to bed.  I tend to stay up too late because it's the only time that I get any just me time any more. And me time apparently means blog time, but I will be woken up by a lovely little girl in about 2 hours, so blog time is over.  Happy Friday!