My daughter’s (The Diva) first birthday party was February 13th, and I think it went well overall. The food wasn’t ready in time because my oven just didn’t feel like getting into gear, the pretzel tray we ordered was late because of a mix up at the place, and while trying to pry off the top on a Sterno, the gel spilled all over the decorative table cloth and my new jeans so I smelled like alcohol/gasoline and had to change my clothes. But besides all that drama, it went well. Haha. The important thing is my daughter was in a good mood for most of it, which is a great thing since she’s almost always moody & fussy.

I knew ahead of time that she didn’t like her birthday hat because the prior week I kept trying it on her head and she’d quickly take it off. So when it was time for the cake/singing, I had someone ready with the camera so that they could snap a picture the second I put the hat on her head. Luckily that worked and I have a few pictures of her with the hat, but it made her mad enough to start crying afterwards, so she cried while everyone sang Happy Birthday. My cousin is a very talented baker/cake decorator, and she made The Diva a small personalized birthday cake, while the rest of us had ice cream cake. I expected The Diva to do the classic “face in the cake,” but she surprised me by delicately using her finger to swipe the icing off one finger at a time. This was her first time having a lot of refined sugar because we never gave her cookies or sweets before. She loved it. (Even though the next morning she had the NASTIEST, smelliest poopy diaper I have ever seen. It was gross and huge. It was like a horse went in her diaper!)

She got a lot of clothes which is great because it’s all Spring clothes which I haven’t bought any of yet, so this is perfect. I think her favorite gift was from my cousin: the Little Tikes Pink Cozy Coupe car, and she even included a mini personalized NJ license plate. At first she screamed about being put in the car by herself, but after everyone left the party she was more calm and we attempted to put her in it again. She loved it this time and we pushed her around in it and she squealed with delight. She’s not quite ready for us to remove the floor board so she can move it Flintstone-Style, so we’re fine with just pushing her around in it.

At the end of the night, I think the party was a success, but I’m seriously considering pizza and subs next year. It was just too much work cooking & trying to time all the food, and the sternos and chafing dishes were just too much of a headache. Next year she’ll probably be old enough to have other kids at the party also, so that would be even more people, which gives me more of an incentive just to get pizza. I can’t believe she’s already 1 year old. I guess she’s not considered an infant anymore, or maybe not even a baby (Is she a toddler now)?  It really is true that the time goes by really fast, so I try to remind myself of that all the time, especially when she’s having a meltdown and I tell myself not to get too stressed about it because soon I may actually be missing her meltdown days. Even though that seems crazy to me now.

My daughter “the diva” is now 11 months old, but she’ll be turning 1 in three days. About a week after she turned 11 months, she started to do a real crawl! I was thrilled because most of the other babies I’ve seen were crawling at like 8 months old. She can’t pull herself fully up to a standing position, but she goes to the tippy tops of her knees and then she get frustrated since she can’t get up any further. Sometimes I give her a little boost and she can pull herself up from that point. She now opens & closes her hands, and can also put her hands on her head. Today I looked in her mouth and the poor thing has 4 molars coming in, and 2 incisor teeth. No wonder she’s been super cranky this week. We go to the doctor for her 1-year checkup/shots ON her birthday. Good thing she won’t know it’s her birthday because I feel bad about her having to get shots then.

As for music, she still loves to sway and sing along when her dad plays guitar for her. It’s funny because my husband and I will harmonize on a song and hold the note, and she will belt out a flat note REALLY loudly and makes us crack up. A few weeks ago I was cleaning the floor, so I decided to play some music to help me deal with the chore. I was playing Nine Inch Nails (NIN) and the song “Hurt” came on. “The Diva” was playing with her toys on a mat, and about 10 seconds after Trent Reznor stars singing, she started humming and then singing really loudly. I was surprised because “Hurt” isn’t the kind of song with a strong beat or rhythm, at least in the beginning, and the vocals aren’t high pitched or upbeat. Then I remembered that this child has been hearing the band Ours and other melancholy music her entire life, so why wouldn’t she respond to that sort of music. Haha.

Since her 1st birthday is on February 8th, we were going to have her very first party this Saturday, the 6th. We never throw parties so this is a big deal. I bought all kinds of decorations, I bought lots of food for cooking & baking, I was going to order a pretzel tray, an ice cream cake, and we were going to have just family over, so we were expecting 17 people. Well, as any of you who live in the North East know, it’s freakin’ snowing out as I type this. Let me rephrase that. It’s a blizzard outside! We’re expecting about 12 inches of snow, and all of the people who were supposed to come to the party live about an hour away, and many of them won’t drive even if it’s only 5 inches of snow. I was going back and forth like crazy yesterday trying to decide if I should cancel it or not, because I never trust the forecasts. But it looks like this is definitely going to be a bad one, so I had to cancel it. I rescheduled it for the following Saturday instead, but because it’s last minute and Valentine’s Day weekend, 4 or 5 of the people can’t come to the party now. I’m annoyed with Mother Nature because I bought all this food to make like 2 big ziti’s among other things, and now I don’t need that much. Plus I’ll probably have to buy new produce since that stuff goes bad so quickly. I also heard that we might get snow next wknd also. If that happens, I’m just going to have her party anyway, and whoever shows up, shows up. Even if it’s just us three and maybe I’ll invite the neighbors to help eat the food. I’m not good with change and love consistency, so whenever this last minute stuff comes up it drives me insane. I feel bad for my little girl, but I know that 1 year olds have no clue what’s going on anyway. Hopefully having snow on her birthday doesn’t become a pattern, like that one little girl I saw in the news who is 3 or 4 years old and has never had a birthday party because EVERY one of them has been canceled due to snow. Poor kid.

One of the fun new things that my daughter started doing at 10 months old was swaying side-to-side whenever she heard music playing- either someone singing it to her or hearing it on the radio/tv. Sadly, she even did this to the theme music of the Wendy Williams Show. Haha. Since I love music so much, it’s great to see her react to it. I was playing Bulls on Parade by Rage Against The Machine in the the living room one day, and she actually surprised me when she started rocking back & forth to it. She’s also done this to Toxicity from System of a Down.

My daughter now knows the word “kiss” and whenever I say, “give kisses” she’ll give a kiss, which basically looks like she’s trying to eat your cheek. It’s adorable. She also can point and wave, and when she points at you she does this really serious look like you’re in trouble and she’s pointing at you to scold you.  I’m very happy to say that she’s finally starting to crawl, well kind of. She started “army crawling,” by crawling with her stomach on the ground. Hey, it gets her from point A to point B at least. I’m still blaming it on her huge size, being in the 95th percentile for height and weight. The girl has a belly dragging her down!

She had her first case of being sick–during the week of Christmas. (Or course, you know, when everyone is closed for the holidays.) She was running a fever, so I kept an eye on her, but she was eating and acting totally fine. But then in the early evening  her fever went up to 102.2 and she got really quiet (which is unlike her), so I gave her some Infant’s Tylenol and kept checking her temperature to make sure it went down, which it did. I was so scared though because I had no clue what “too high” is for a baby, plus her normal temperature is lower than the average, so 102.2 was probably more like a 102.9. She cried a lot and was really tired so we put her to bed early. The next day (Christmas Day), she had a low fever of 100.5, but I gave her some Tylenol again because we were going to my mom’s house, and I didn’t want the baby to feel too awful. Well, 3 hours later she was perfectly fine and her fever went away and she became perky and really playful. I was glad her mystery fever only lasted 2-3 days. The next day I noticed she had a rash all over her neck, back, and chest. It looked like small red circles everywhere and when you pressed her red skin it became white for a second. She was acting normal and the rash didn’t seem to itch or bother her, so I checked the internet to do a little searching first, instead of calling the doctor. After researching, I’m pretty sure she had Roseola, which is also known as Sixth Disease. Apparently you are just supposed to wait it out, so I’m happy she didn’t have to get any prescriptions. The rash lasted 3 days, and then it disappeared. I think once you get it you aren’t supposed to get it again, so that’s one illness out of the way!

I’ve held off on writing about this for awhile because it’s a sore subject for me and I feel really sad whenever I think about it. The band Live and I have a history - a long, complicated history that involves lots of late nights rocking out, drunken after-parties, “rockblocking” (I’m not naming names), and of course music. BTW, my concert road trip friend and I coined the term “rockblock” (from “coc*block”) to mean a person who intentionally prevents another person from talking, dancing, or hanging out with a rock star. For instance, you’re in the middle of dancing & talking with said rock star at an Atlantic City club, and someone grabs said rock star from the back of his shirt to pull him away from you, and starts dancing with him herself. You, my friend, have been Rockblocked. Before I became a mom less than a year ago, my total number of concerts attended was over 100. For Live specifically, I think it’s somewhere around 50 shows; I stopped counting after 30. My love of the band started when they became mainstream in the early 90s, and just grew from there. I not only loved the albums Mental Jewelry and Throwing Copper, I loved A LOT of their albums, especially Secret Samadhi. With Live, I loved the sound of the vocals, the chord progressions, the whisper to wailing, the lyrics, their high energy concerts, etc. Once I got to know the band over time, I loved the band members themselves, as people. Really nice, genuine, fun guys to hang out with. I slowly saw things change over the years: the music became softer, the lyrics became more literal, the shows became repeats of prior shows, some band members seemed bored, certain egos developed, and the passion of the music seemed to fade. When I found out that Live was taking some time to split and do their own thing, I wasn’t surprised. What did surprise me was Chad Taylor’s (lead guitarist) blog post saying that Ed Kowalczyk (singer) stabbed the band in the back by signing a hidden contract that the other band members knew nothing about. I don’t know if it’s true or not, but either way, their close ties to each other as friends and musicians seem to be over for good. I feel really sad about it, for them as individuals, and for me personally. Besides the music itself, which has been a big part of my life for various reasons, Live has been the source of many different chapters in my life. Let me explain.

Love. When I first met my husband, I wasn’t interested in him at all. He was hitting on me constantly, but I kept ignoring him. He found out I liked Live and pulled out a guitar and played a Live song. I started to like him after that. Haha. The song “Dance With You” was our “1st dance” song at our wedding. Friendship. My closest friends today are people I’ve met at Live shows. When you go to a ton of shows from one band, you see and meet a lot of the same people, and that’s how I met a bunch of my friends; a few of them are my best friends. Death. We all have certain songs that hit a nerve with us when it comes to love & death. In college when I lost a friend from a drug overdose, the music helped me deal with it. Life. Music will always be my life, and once I heard Live I wanted to learn guitar, which I did. Because of Live, I was introduced to many different bands & musicians, and some of them have even replaced Live as my favorite band. The 6 degrees of separation game can go on and on with this, but briefly…Ed Kowalczyk’s brother, Adam Kowalczyk, tours with the band as a guitarist, and also has his own music. One night after a show, Adam introduced me to his friend, Jimmy Gnecco, who he said is in a band called Ours. I checked out Ours after that and OMG, instant love. Ours is now my passion. I’ve gotten to know Jimmy over the years, along with one of my best friends, and now she basically works for them on the side. One night after a show I was telling Jimmy that there’s this awesome reality show on called Rockstar Supernova. I told him how I loved the original show, Rockstar INXS, and this one is just as good because you get to see some great performers who sing some GOOD songs, not just mindless pop. He laughed at me, thinking it was probably cheesy, but I said how there’s these 2 guys on the show that are especially good: Lukas Rossi and Ryan Star. I told him to give it a chance. Well, a few years later I’m at a Ryan Star show wearing an Ours shirt, and he noticed my shirt right away saying how he LOVES Ours and is a huge fan, and how he was trying to get in touch with Jimmy for something. A few years after that, not only do Jimmy Gnecco/Ours have a tour WITH Lukas Rossi/Stars Down, but Jimmy also performs during Lukas Rossi’s tv show appearance in Canada, doing backup vocals on Lukas’s beautiful song “Enya.” It’s an AWESOME performance:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CR0lwnO2ZjY  . There’s a million more connections like this that all started from me liking the band Live, but you get the point. So that’s why I’m sad about the breakup of Live- because it was the beginning of so many things in my life, and now the band is ending. Maybe that’s why the song Lightning Crashes was Live’s biggest radio hit. It’s about the cycle of life- death & rebirth, beginnings & endings, and everyone can relate to that at some point in their life. So this is my “Lightning Crashes” moment.

I’m an only child. I was never a spoiled only child in the sense of material things, because my parents didn’t have a lot of money. But I received a lot of love and attention and never had the issues that I hear some siblings had growing up…like fighting over who gets the front seat in the car or who gets to sit with dad on a 2-seated roller coaster. I don’t know if those are real issues to most people with siblings, but they seemed to have bothered my husband growing up since he always lost those fights to his older sister. My mom was the disciplinarian in the family while my dad was the one who made everything better, even just by letting me cry in his arms after mom yelled at me. Whenever I wanted to go to a friend’s house for the day or rent a movie, his standard comment was “Go ask your mother.” And if mom wasn’t home it was always, “Sure, that’s fine.” I had a close relationship with my father and was definitely “daddy’s little girl.”

In early 2001, when I was 24, I found out that my dad had prostate cancer, at age 60. He had his prostate removed and received a lot of radiation and chemotherapy. Being the tough blue collar guy he was, he acted like it never bothered him too much. After that it seemed to be in control. A few years later they said that a few cancer cells might still be somewhere because his count was up in his blood. My parents did a horrible job at keeping me informed on his condition and the details–I don’t know if they purposely kept it from me or if they just didn’t want to talk about it, so I never knew  the specifics on everything. Well a few years after that his legs started to swell up like crazy and he would get winded very easily. One day he actually had a seizure because his blood pressure went up too high. It turns out that the chemo destroyed his kidneys, so he had to start dialysis- 3 days a week for 5 hours a day. In retrospect, I think that out of all his different illnesses/conditions, the dialysis is what ruined his quality of life the most. He basically became tied down to a dialysis center, so he couldn’t travel easily, and my parents loved to travel. He always wanted to go on a Panama Canal Cruise, and unfortunately only a few cruise lines offer dialysis on-board, and those that do cost you double the price of a ticket, so they couldn’t afford it. It always killed me inside that he never got to go on his cruise. After a few years of being on dialysis and a ton of other symptoms, he was diagnosed with lung cancer and heart disease and needed several heart stents put in.

I realized when my dad was first diagnosed with prostate cancer in 2001, that my time was probably limited with him, so I made an effort to appreciate every moment I had, and I always hoped that he would be able to see some of my “firsts” in life. I was so thankful that he was able to see me get married and walk me down the aisle in 2006. My next wish was that he’d still be around to see me have a baby. When I got pregnant the first time and miscarried right away (this is in my earlier blog posts), I thought I had lost my chance and it made the miscarriage even harder to deal with. Almost 2 years later I finally got pregnant again and I was thankful he had at least known that I would have a baby. You have to understand that in the past 8 years, he had been in and out of the hospital non-stop, and there were quite a few times that we thought he was on death’s door in the ICU of the hospital wing, so I didn’t know if he would “make it” to see the birth of my daughter. He did make it, and he visited us in the hospital to see his only grandchild. He was a wonderful grandpa to my daughter and always talked to her, played with her, and mostly loved to just stare at her and say how beautiful she was.

In September my dad started the Hospice program, and I took my daughter to see him as much as possible. She really was his source of joy, and whenever he saw her, his face would light up and he we get a huge smile. My husband and I are Halloween fanatics and we do our house up like crazy for it, so in early October, even though he was really weak and never left the house, he wanted to come see the house, so my mom packed up the oxygen tank and he came. He couldn’t stay long, but at least he saw it. I think he just wanted to see our house one last time. On October 9th, his 68th birthday, we visited him and I bought him an ice cream cake. Surprisingly his appetite was back and he ate his piece of birthday cake. It’s the little things like that that make me smile. On November 4th I turned 32, and on November 8th my daughter turned 9 months old. We visited my dad on November 8th and even though he was in and out of consciousness from being so tired and on really strong pain medicine, he managed to laugh and smile when my daughter did the same. As we were leaving he said “thanks for everything.” The next day he passed away, exactly one month after his birthday. Later on my mom told me that before we visited him on the 8th, he kept asking what day I was coming to visit him. I guess to hold out for it.

I am so grateful that he was able to meet his granddaughter. The one thing I’m really heartbroken about though, is that she will never “know” her grandpa. He was the nicest, most generous man, with an awesome sense of humor and I know she would have had a blast with him. When people think of my dad, they think of him as always laughing and making jokes, and that’s how I choose to remember him and what I hope to convey to my daughter about him. People say my daughter doesn’t really look like me or my husband yet, but I think she has my dad’s smile, and that’s truly a gift. I love you dad. 10/9/1941 - 11/9/2009

At nine months old, my daughter developed very strong stranger/separation anxiety from me. It wasn’t bad when I put her down for naps or bedtime, but it was impossible to deal with if I wanted to hand her off to someone else, like either of her grandmothers (and she liked both grandmothers). If I wasn’t in the room and they held her, she was fine. But if she saw me in the corner of her eye or if I just came home from being out, she would suddenly scream and reach for me, with full tears and pure hysteria. This made it really hard at Thanksgiving because relatives wanted to hold her, but she just wasn’t having any of it. I didn’t feel like dealing with the screaming, so I just held her the entire time..and my girl weighs just about 24 pounds. (This is why I weigh less now than before I was pregnant.)

She still isn’t crawling or pulling herself up, but she can drag herself on her belly, using just her arms. Good thing we have hardwood floors in the entire house. Maybe that’s why she isn’t crawling? Hurts her knees? Who knows. She started to clap, which is so adorable to see. Along with her nursery songs, I like to sing and clap to modern rock/alternative rock songs, and she follows my lead and claps also. Nothing like seeing a 9 month old baby girl with pudgy cheeks clapping to Muse’s “Hysteria” from the Absolution album. Priceless.

I’m still nursing her 4 times a day, and after 9 1/2 months of breastfeeding, my period came back. Lucky me. I was wondering when it was gonna show up again. When I first had my daughter, my intention was to become a Stay-At-Home-Mom (SAHM) for a year, and then look for a job again. Now that she’s almost a year old, I’m not ready to put her into daycare with people I don’t know, and miss all her 1st milestones, especially because she’s a little late with a few. If I had a family member that could watch her all the time, I’d happily go get a job, but I don’t want to leave her with strangers, at least not quite yet. I have to sit down and look at the financial issues also and weigh the costs of daycare,  not working, and paying for private health insurance (which is what I do now). Sometimes I feel like I do want to work again because I miss having the extra money, and I miss having a life. Yes, I’m a mom now, which is a life, but I miss parts of my old life, like feeling successful and productive, and going out with the girls after work for a margarita every now and then. Maybe that day will come again, like when my daughter is older and I don’t have to be home right away, but when that time comes I might have another baby at home by then. -SIGH- Do you ever wish that sometimes someone would just make up your mind for you because making decisions can be so stressful.

When my daughter was 9 months old, I noticed she became more cranky than normal and I couldn’t figure out why. It turns out it was more teeth- #7 & #8. Before they fully broke through, she started to scrape me with them when nursing. OMG..it was horrible, and I got little cut marks from it. To help with that, I switched to the football hold position, and that gave me some relief. She’s so tall though, so it looked really funny trying to fit her legs “behind me” in the rocking chair where I nurse her. I guess the football hold isn’t meant for older, longer babies, but oh well, this worked for now. Another thing I found that helped with her scraping her teeth on me is to hold her head really close into me, so that she doesn’t have room to pull her head back and scrape me- in other words, so that she has a deeper latch onto me. She resisted this and didn’t like me holding her head there, but I’m the mommy. She gave up fighting me after 3 nursing sessions like this, and didn’t scrape me anymore. As for biting, she has tried a few times to bite me lightly, but I said “NO!” really loud and stopped nursing immediately whenever she did it. I noticed that the times she would bite me was at the end of her feeding session, like when she wanted to play around. So the trick is to end your session the moment you can tell they’re not hungry anymore. At nine months I dropped her down to 4 nursing sessions a day, and she was doing well with that schedule.

My baby also started to show a really nasty temper at this age. Even more “diva-ish” than normal. She would get so mad if I took something away from her, if I left the room, if I put her down when she wanted to be held, and especially when I laid her down on the changing table. She would get pissed! Her face would get bright red and she’d scream this mean scream as if saying, “Oh you better not put me down!” I remember when she was a newborn and she loved the changing table. Not anymore. The worst is when I’m trying to change a poopy diaper while she’s having a temper tantrum and she’s trying to roll and turn onto her stomach to avoid me, and meanwhile her flailing legs land in the dirty diaper. Ah, not fun. If she’s having a temper tantrum when I’m holding her or while sitting down by herself, she’ll sometimes arch her back and throw herself backwards, and that’s scary when she’s sitting on the ground by herself because she can hit her head, so I catch her and lay her down before she can slam herself backwards. At night this happens a lot because she’s tired, so when she’s in the tub I have to keep my hand on her back the entire time because she loves to buck back while she’s yelling. I hope this isn’t a prediction of what she’s going to be like as a toddler with the terrible 2’s.

A great milestone for her was starting to stand supported, if I stood her up first. She couldn’t pull herself up to a standing position, or chose not to, so we would stand her up and have her hold onto the couch and she held her weight fine. Her doctor thinks she’s just being lazy and that we should try to entice her to pull herself up. I’ve been using toys, her pacifier, and keys up on the couch to get her to pull herself up, but she gets frustrated and starts to have a temper tantrum when she can’t reach it. I’ll keep trying though.

I still can’t seem to find any relief for her Eczema and Cradle Cap. I use the Aquaphor lotion, but it doesn’t seem to help. If anyone knows of any good lotions/products to use, please let me know. The cradle cap is especially bad, and I do the combing out thing before her bath, but the cycle starts all over once I wash her head. (I do use organic, gentle baby shampoo.) Is there a certain product I should be rubbing into her scalp after the bath? I would love any suggestions. I’ve read that it’s not supposed to last past age 1. I hope so.

My daughter had 2 more teeth cut through at 8 months old, bringing the total to 6. To get her to open her mouth so I can see them all, I like to sing to her while she’s on the diaper changing table (she always sings when I sing and opens her mouth wide while doing it). I tested out Bohemian Rhapsody on her, and she cracked up at the up-tempo part. Probably because I looked & sounded funny doing it since I did all the different pitches and accents. She also finally started to roll from her back to belly, so she could now roll fully around like a steamroller- meaning I had to watch her like a hawk from now on if she was on my bed because she could easily roll off. She once was sitting up on the couch next to me playing with a toy and I leaned in the opposite direction to pick a different toy up from the ground, and when I sat up and turned towards her I saw her leaning forward off the couch about to fall. She did fall. She dropped her toy off the couch and leaned forward to get it and winded up doing a somersault, but her head hit the hardwood floor as she tumbled over. It was slow motion to me and I couldn’t get there fast enough, and the thud is etched into my memory. Then I panicked hoping she’d laugh or something, but instead she did that silent scream with her mouth open, where it’s building and building and she’s turning red and you’re dreading the end result of all that energy. She screamed so loud and my heart truly broke. I became _that_ mom who dropped my child on the head– the one that we all have jokingly accused our own mothers of being at one time or another. “Why can’t I think straight mom? Did you drop me on the head when I was a baby?” Only I actually did let my baby fall on her head! She didn’t cry very long, actually not long at all, and she didn’t get a bump or bruise, but I kept an eye on her the rest of that week to be safe. I really felt horrible. I remember a few years ago my friend told me her baby rolled off the changing table while she turned the other way, but she luckily had a pile of laundry on the floor that he fell into. I hate my hardwood floors.

About 2 weeks after the falling incident, I noticed that my daughter started to tilt her head to the right. It was a constant head tilt and it was especially noticeable when she was sitting in the highchair. At first I thought it was just a preference, and that she just liked to lean to the side of the highchair to be comfortable, but then I noticed that her head was cocked to the side even when she was sitting on the floor with nothing supporting her.  I thought maybe she just slept on it wrong or pulled a muscle. After about 7 days it went away, but then a week after that it came back again, only this time it was REALLY tilted and looked really odd. It was like her right ear was almost touching her right shoulder all the time. We called the doctor to get her looked at, because I figured she must have an ear infection or a muscle pull or something. I also looked online before going, and I read that it could also be Torticollis, which is basically when one side of the neck muscle is tighter than the other, so you have to do physical therapy to help fix it.

We go to the Pediatrician and he says he’s not sure what it is because of how it went away & then came back again, and he called another Pediatrician in to get her opinion also. She said she doesn’t think it’s Torticollis or a muscle pull and they both said we should go to the hospital to have my 8 month old baby get a CAT scan because it could be a brain tumor. A freakin’ what??? I thought this was going to be a quick visit to the doctor to get some ear drops or neck stretching exercises, and now my poor little baby has to get a CAT scan to see if she has a tumor? My husband and I were freaking out, and on top of that, the Dr. said we have to go to this special hospital where they can put her to sleep so they can do the scan. At the children’s hospital the doctor there said he thinks it IS Torticollis, but he’s going to have the scan done anyway since the Pediatrician wants it done. It turns out they didn’t have to put her to sleep for it, which I was very thankful for, so they rolled up all these towels to try to prevent her from moving too much. Halfway through she started screaming and moving, but I guess they got enough of what they needed because they didn’t say anything. We waited for a full hour in the hospital room for the results, but it was worth the wait because they said she’s fine and there were no tumors on her brain. I felt SUCH relief! I think I even cried a little. I still feel horrible that she had to get all that radiation from a CAT scan at such a young age, but I guess the doctors figured that it was worth it. I just hope that it doesn’t affect anything with her in the future.

They determined that it was Torticollis and that she’d probably have to get some physical therapy done to stretch out her neck muscle. My husband and I looked online and found some specific stretches that are supposed to help with the condition, so we did them for about a week. Well, her next doctor’s appointment for her regular 9-month old checkup was a week after that, and by then her neck was fine. In fact, the doctor said that she looked fine and she probably won’t need any therapy. I don’t know if her rolling off the couch caused it, or if it was a mild case of Torticollis that didn’t show up until she was 8 months old, but I’m glad that issue is over with. I was really scared having to bring my baby to the hospital, especially for a CAT scan, but many parents tell me that this is only the first case of many “scares” that come with being a parent.

Once things finally started to slow down a little bit and my baby was actually taking a few naps, I had time to reflect on what was going on around me and in my life. My daughter was almost 7 months old already, I became a stay-at-home mom when she was born, and my past life was history. And I missed it. I had a B.A. and was very successful in college, I finally had a career going at a great company, and I was a concert loving girl who would go out and party with friends at shows throughout most of the North East part of the country…and Ohio once. (I once road-tripped from NJ to Cleveland to see a Live concert, and went back to NJ that same night because I had to go to a housewarming party by 4pm the next day.) I loved the adrenaline I would get from live rock shows and the feeling of truly living life and having fun. Now, I haven’t been to a show since I was around 8 months pregnant, and I miss it. Instead, I sneak in a few moments on the computer where I can catch someone’s YouTube video of clips of a show here and there. I try to pretend I’m there, but it doesn’t really work–especially when my baby starts crying to let me know she’s up from her nap. And -SNAP- back to reality I come. I do love and appreciate my new life, and I’ve also accepted it. It’s just every now and then I’ll hear something about a band or artist I love and then it makes me wish I could just go to a show. The reason I can’t is because I’m breastfeeding so I’m literally connected on a chain to my daughter who wants to eat like every 3 hours. I could pump a few days before and leave a bottle for my husband, but I am not bringing a breast pump to a show for when I get “full” from missing a feeding. I don’t think so. Can you picture me going to a show at Maxwells in Hoboken, NJ or the North Star Bar in Philly and trying to use their single-person bathroom for 20 minutes trying to pump? Oh and then carrying around a bag of breast milk during the show? Now that’s classy. haha. Plus, my husband would freak out if I left him with “the Diva” for that long, and unfortunately no one we know would babysit and stay overnight for it.

Since I can’t go to shows for the time being, I fill that void by singing to my daughter the songs I’d like to hear at a show again. Of course I don’t do them justice, but she doesn’t know that. She laughs and “sings” along with her deep sounding, off-key “ahhhhhhhh.” She always does that every time my husband or I sing. Our little harmonizer. As for milestones, she’s finally starting to sit up on her own a little bit, but we have to do the pillow thing where there’s a sea of pillows 360 degrees around her, for when she falls back or does a face plant. She is no where near crawling yet, but I read that only 50% of babies can crawl at 6 months and by 11 months 90% of babies can crawl, if they do at all. She’s a really big baby (95th percentile in height & weight) so I think she needs a lot more muscle to carry around all that extra weight. The one issue I can’t seem to find a solution for is her eczema and cradle cap. The eczema is really bad behind her knees and it looks painful and red, but the doctor says it’s not bad enough to give her medicine for it yet and to continue using the Eucerin Aquaphor ointment. As for the cradle cap, I keep putting the Aquaphor on her head, combing out the flakes, and washing her hair with gentle shampoo, but it’s still there. I’d love some suggestions if anyone knows of how to combat the cradle cap. I thought cradle cap was only a newborn baby issue, but apparently not since my daughter is just about 7 months old.

To think that about 9 months ago I was at an Ours show dancing and rocking out to “Live Again” and now I’m talking about combing out cradle cap flakes. Times do change, huh?

At 6 months old, my daughter was starting to sleep pretty well at night, for about 5 hours straight (this was good to me). She was going strong with that pattern for about 2 weeks and then she went back to waking up 2 or 3 times at night. I didn’t know why this was happening, but I figured it was just her crazy ways.  Well, one night I distinctly remember her waking up EVERY 20 minutes all through the night. I’d go into her room, give her a pacifier, pat her belly, and she’d calm down and go to sleep. Twenty minutes later she’d be up and screaming again. I thought that maybe her teeth were finally ready to cut through, even though she’s been working on that since she was 3 months old (LOTS of drool; gumming everything). The next day I went out to buy some sort of pain reliever for her, and I had no idea which one to choose. Since I prefer natural things most of the time, I first tried the Humphrey’s Teething Tablets. I was a little confused on how to apply it because it says to dissolve the tablets in water and then apply it to the baby’s gums, but when I mixed it up it wasn’t thick enough to form any sort of paste (and I followed the directions) so it was more like trying to rub water on her gums, and it kept trickling down my hand. My daughter liked the taste, but it didn’t seem to help at all with her pain or crying.

I was really nervous about trying Orajel because I read somewhere about how the numbing sensation can close up a baby’s throat and make them stop breathing. I caved in and bought some Infant Tylenol, and the doctor assured me that I can use it. Well, the next night when she started screaming I gave her some and she instantly fell asleep. It was heaven! Normally I am not a medicine person. In fact I hate taking medicine and almost always refuse it. I barely took any pain meds in the hospital after my C-section and the nurses kept yelling at me to take it, but I didn’t want to because I really wasn’t in any pain, and even if I was, I prefer to work through the pain. BUT, in this case with my daughter, I was saying hallelujah to Tylenol and used it almost every night for a week.

After giving Tylenol to my daughter for a week straight, I felt uneasy about using it so often and took the risk and bought Orajel. To test it I gave her the tiniest little drop ever (to make sure her throat didn’t close up), and she was fine. Well, by week 2 of her crazy screaming teething nights, we were all fed up so she was getting Tylenol AND Orajel. It gave her the peace we all needed, so I was happy about that. Finally, a bottom center tooth popped through and one week later the other bottom center tooth came through. YAY!

Once that “first tooth” fiasco was done with, I really enjoyed my daughter at 6 months old. It was my favorite age so far because she was always laughing and a lot of fun to be around. This is the age when I finally was able to sit back and enjoy motherhood. I even talked with my husband about maybe having a second kid (gasp!). I totally understand now how easily you can forget about how hard it was that first month of having a baby, and how it’s a good thing you forget because some people wouldn’t ever have a second child if they remembered!