We took Avery to the doctors office on Tuesday for a checkup. In December when we took Avery in he had the flu and his weight was a little low. Since then we (read: Mommy) have been making sure our son gets plenty to eat. She’s really good about getting him to try new things, and very tolerant when he doesn’t cooperate. I find it more difficult to bear.
The sad news is our doctor, who recently became a father himself, is leaving the 15-hour-days in family practice in favor of 12-hour-days in the urgent care clinic. He’s been a great doctor for us, throughout the pregnancy, delivery, and first 10 months of Avery’s life. We’ll miss seeing him.

Avery hit 10 months old last week. His Birthday is coming up fast. Amazing how quick it slips by.
For today’s entry I’m going to use a slightly different format. Normally I write a little bit about what’s happening in our life and then show a few pictures. For this entry I’m going to share the story with each picture.
This first shot was taken in the morning light as Avery was taking a look out the window. Avery isn’t walking yet, but he’s cruising along couches, windowsills, etc. He’s taken interest in the cords on the blinds so part of the morning routine involves raising all the blinds up just out of Avery’s reach.

This past week Avery had a cold. Lindsey and I felt terrible for him, especially for the first day or so when he had a little fever. In this picture we were getting ready to take him for a walk and he didn’t like getting all dressed up. Poor guy.

In this shot he was having a long bath with Mommy. Avery really enjoys being in the bath, and the steam helped with the congestion. Mommy helped him with the hairdo.

The other day Avery was walking back and forth along the empty bathtub trying to reach in and grab his bath toys. Then he turned around and discovered the lever on the toilet. Maybe we can potty train him early?

Avery is crawling very quickly these days. We have to keep a close eye on him downstairs as he gets into mischief. One of his favorite spots is the pantry. Anytime the door is open he’ll charge towards it with a big grin on his face and if we don’t close it before he gets there he’ll start splashing around in Commodus’ water bowl. The toilets will be next.
He’s also taken an interest in the kitchen cabinets and drawers. We gave him his own drawer to play with and for the most part he focuses on it.
Commodus is being a good sport and lets Avery chase him around. Commodus is very tolerant of Avery, in part because Avery likes to throw Cheerios at Commodus from his high chair.
In between outfits.


Dancing with Mama.

On Thursday night Avery got sick. He threw up a number of times and had some diarrhea. Eventually he got to sleep around 2:00 AM after four mini-bathes to get cleaned up. Lindsey and I felt horrible and even after Avery fell asleep, we spent most of the early morning hours listening to the baby monitor in case he got sick again.
In the morning he still wasn’t able to keep any pedialyte down so I called the doctor and got an appointment for lunch time. Our biggest fear was that he was getting dehydrated which can happen pretty quickly in little babies. It turned out he was only mildly dehydrated. Lindsey and I were relieved.
The doc told us to keep Avery on a mixture of pedialyte and gatorade (to make the pedialyte yummy tasting) for a couple days. He also said to completely avoid breast milk because the fat in it makes diarrhea worse since it has to be broken down by the GI tract. This was interesting advice, because most of the websites we looked at said to keep breast feeding. We’ve been following the doctors advice for the most part. The antibodies in the breast milk are good, but if it just makes the baby more dehydrated then it’s not solving the problem. Avery is getting plenty of fluids now and has energy to play.
[Update:] This morning Lindsey was sick when she woke up so we’re going to delay our trip to Texas for a day or so. I’m hoping I can avoid catching the bug.
Back on his feet last night.

Playing with Commodus earlier on Thursday.