Henry is sick

Madi, Henry and I have all had a little cold. Madi and I have recovered, but Henry took a sudden turn for the worse on Friday. We took him to the doctor, and found out that he has a severe ear infection. Plus his eyes were all inflamed. Plus his diaper rash from the dairy-eating incident had developed a bacterial infection. Copious antibiotics were prescribed and promptly utilized.

It will come as no surprise for me to tell you that he has not been feeling well or sleeping well.

None of this stopped him from having his favorite Thai dish, Pad See Ew, on Friday night. We get it with just egg (no meat). It involves soy sauce, but that didn't bother him. At least not in a way that was detectable over all of his other ailments. Henry favors Asian cuisine because it doesn't involve dairy.

Here he is today in his exersaucer (a.k.a., perfectly legal baby restraining device). You can see the nature of his mood the last 24 hours.

Dang, he can practically get out of it now, he's so tall. The exersaucer's days are numbered.

Not a happy boy lately.

Madi fortunately seems to have been spared. Here she finishes up a nap with Ace, her baby doll.

Henry was starting to perk up a little by afternoon, but that is a relative statement.

You can see in this video from this evening that he remains generally pretty unhappy. Plus he's teething, I suppose, on top of it all. We are looking forward to his recovery, for his sake and ours!

Madi doesn't seem to mind, though. She had a good time 'dancing' despite the soundtrack.

Fresh snow

We had a weather system come along and whisk away the inversion, so the air is nice again. We got some new snow, which was good, because our old snow was getting crusty.

Henry's rash continues to improve slowly. We hope by PDD (Post-Dairy Day) 14 it will be gone.

Here he nonchalantly gnoshes on Egg Foo Young. I think this qualifies as pretty amazing eating for a babe, considering it involves mushrooms, green onions, bean sprouts, soy sauce ... 

Did I say soy sauce? Oops. We remembered that after he had already eaten a lot. He did get diarrhea, but it wasn't too bad. His rash didn't get any worse. So soy is maybe not too bad, at least in that form. At least not nearly so bad as dairy might be. We will have to see how things go.

Henry loves talking to his grandparents by Skype. Here he chats with Grandmother and Granddaddy. He loves talking to Ga Ga and Pap Pap too. Not quite as good as being there, but a lot better than just a voice.

Food trials (and tribulations)

So this past week has seen the return of the annual temperature inversion season and subsequent poor air quality in Cache Valley. Imagine a bowl with lots of cars and cows in it. Then imagine putting a lid on the bowl. Then imagine all of the people in the bowl getting really tired really fast of breathing the output of their cars and cows and the interaction of the output of their cars and cows. That's us.

On a brighter note, we went skiing again last Sunday. Madi took another lesson. Here she is hanging out with Henry, waiting for her lesson.

Here's Henry in the lodge with our friend Kate, her daughter Maggie, and her son Finnegan. We really enjoy their company. Maggie and Henry share the same birthday. They were so close together, I had to wait on Kate so I could get a room at the hospital!

Finnegan is already a great skier. He skis on a harness. Sort of like skiing on a leash. We plan to try it tomorrow with Madi.

The narcissus bulbs we planted have started blooming.

Ok, so now what you've all been waiting for: the beginning of the food trials. We have started trying to figure out what food Henry is and is not okay with yet. First, here are some photos of him sampling new foods with no suspect ingredients. 

He definitely got into the corn spaghetti noodles.

Fresh spinach was  winner too.

Here, he does his version of the baby sign for 'drink'.

As you may have inferred by now, and from all of my previous posts, he is a bold and adventurous eater. He is done with baby food. That is so yesterday. He wants to eat anything and everything we eat.

So finally we have relented and started letting him eat the things we suspected bothered him before. We were doing this in a semi-orderly fashion to start with. We started letting him eat things with wheat in them, but still no dairy or soy. This seemed to go pretty well for a few days. Nothing seemed to change.

Then one evening this week, he just insisted on trying my garden burger. So I thought, what the heck, I'll let him have a little taste, and I gave him a DIME-SIZED PIECE. Afterwards, I checked the ingredients, and it had a little bit of cheese in it. Well, I thought, no big deal, I just gave him a little nip.

That evening, as I was putting him to bed, I noticed he was getting a diaper rash. Then he got diarrhea. His rash got worse. Blisters developed. His appetite suffered. The second night he didn't really sleep very much at all. The whole family got pretty out of sorts. The diarrhea got worse. The rash got worse ...

At this point, we're about 5 days out from the dairy-eating incident. His rash is slowly starting to fade. He's sleeping soundly again. His appetite is still a little off, but he's teething, so who knows what that is about?

Based on this little trial, we have decided to persist with wheat and hold off on any more dairy until everything (hopefully) clears up. Then we will try a little teeny tiny bit of dairy again. If the same thing occurs, then we conclude there is no need for us to try dairy any more and move on to soy. 

So the good news: wheat is okay (maybe).

The bad news: dairy is not okay (maybe).

President Obama!

Madi was there for the making of history.

Ok, so she caught it on the t.v. at day care. 

Why not celebrate all week?

Henry continued his gala birthday week with a 'well baby' visit to the doctor. He weighs about 23 pounds (50th percentile) and is 31 inches long (80th percentile). He got a number of vaccinations at the visit. That was not his favorite part.

Here he celebrates his birthday at daycare. They had a big party with cupcakes, and he got this stylin' hat. 

The whole family has been enjoying the wonderful Honeybell citrus fruit sent by Grandmother and Granddaddy. It's a cross between a tangerine and grapefruit, and it is pretty close to indescribably delicious. Everyone stuffed themselves. Henry ate so much he got a wicked diaper rash. Oops. His butt should make a full recovery by some time next week.

Henry loves climbing the stairs, and we love watching him in his bear suit.

Tonight we had sushi at our favorite place in Logan, Happy Sushi. Madi and Henry both love the seaweed salad.

Special video section coming right up!

Animal encounters ...

Cruising ...

Walking (with a lot of help). Madi seems strangely pleased with her abilities relative to Henry's at this stage. 

Henry's first birthday!

January 9th was Henry's first birthday. This is what it looked like at sunset yesterday, right around the time he was born one year ago.

Leyden scoped out the presents, making sure everything was all ready for the party.

First, the Bates-Domenech clan joined us for Indian food from our favorite place, the Tandoori Oven in Logan.

Then Pap Pap and Grandmother and Granddaddy joined us by Skype.

Check out the banana cake! Thanks to Tio Scott for the recipe.

Henry really loved it. 

He shared some with Ga Ga too. We were all relieved that it tasted really good, because I made it gluten- and dairy-free for the sake of Henry. At least I think it was for Henry's sake - we will be conducting some food tolerance tests soon to find out what he's ready for now.  At any rate, it was delicious!

Next ... presents! Are you ready Henry?

He was so cute opening his gifts. He needed some pointers. 

Thank goodness he had some able assistants or we would have been there all night.

The paper was fun too, of course.

He and Ga Ga enjoyed the dinosaur egg pop-up toy.

Everybody had a great time at the party.

Today, Saturday, was Ga Ga's last day. We'll miss you Ga Ga! Thanks for visiting us.

Fun with Ga Ga

The kids have been having a great time with Ga Ga here. Henry has developed a new talent: tickling Madi!

Everyone has had fun choosing clothes together. 

Purple day ...

... red day.

Henry continues his culinary exploits. Here he discovers the joys of avocado.

We planted some indoor narcissus bulbs to brighten the winter time.

Madi took another skiing lesson. Here she is in the new part of the lodge at Beaver Mountain.

Her instuctor, Eric, took her up the Little Beaver lift. You can see from their boots and skis they were hitting the powder!

She's doing really well. Thank you Grandmother and Granddaddy for the skis and boots! 

Tonight we made a cake for Henry's birthday tomorrow. Everyone had a lot of fun watching the mixer do its thing.

Ga Ga Arrives

Wednesday, December 31st, was a busy day. We drove down to Salt Lake City to pick up Ga Ga, who flew in from West Virginia. While there, we went to see Body Worlds 3, an exhibit of plastinated bodies, mostly of the human variety. The adults found it very interesting. Madi thought it was pretty interesting, too. Henry liked looking at all the live people better.

After we got back to Cache Valley, Ga Ga stayed with the kids and rested while Tim and Amy went to Dan and Rene's house for a New Year's Eve Party. It was an exciting party.

The kids are happy to have Ga Ga here. They exchanged gifts today.

Henry is happy to have another person to read to him.

Yesterday Ga Ga and Madi made a snow man with the warm snow. Previously it had been too cold and powdery to stick enough. We had a huge windstorm last night and then rain today. We're not sure if he blew away or melted, but the snowman was gone in the morning.

Yesterday Madi tried out her new snowshoes. You can see she regarded this as an high impact activity, because she needed her ski helmet and goggles.

Some video of the snow shoe expedition ...