Hide and Seek

Emily is quite attached to me these days. She likes to have me within eyesight, preferably not moving away from her. She will eat a little from Travis or her grandma if I'm not in the room, but once she sees me, it's game over. It can get a little clingly, but she's an awfully nice little buddy to have around. When she's playing on the floor, she'll crawl over to me and put her little hands on me, just to smile at me and say hi. It's pretty cool. :) But there's been times that I've had to hide from her to avoid the tearful howls when I leave for something so selfish as a quick bathroom break.

Her 9-month checkup was today. She's still 95th percentile for height and head size, but now only 75th for weight - getting to be quite slim!! She's Travis's daughter - so who's surprised?? It was nice to talk to our doctor about her eating habits, or rather, lack thereof, and realize we can be a little more relaxed about it. I don't know why I continue to obsess about it, except that it's frustrating to try to feed her and be greeted with tightly clamped lips and a constant whine. I guess she'll eat when she's ready. My latest theory is that formula-fed babies are much better about taking solid foods because formula is so terrible tasting that they're happy to consume anything that isn't horrendously awful.

Anyway, it was also nice to see that she's growing and developing just like she should. It was a nice reassurance, because I've had a tough last couple of days. Our wireless internet connection has been SO crappy lately, and I can't even call Mediacom to tell them how terrible their service is because their customer service wait times are at least half an hour - and who has time for that?? It means that a lot of the time I'm home with Emily, I'm pretty isolated, and this week I really wanted that connection to the outside world when I was so frustrated with her not napping (or napping at weird times) and not eating, and being so incredibly whiney when I turned to go into another room and then having to carry her wherever I go. It's exhausting. Then I was battling "terrible mother" feelings when I dropped her off at daycare on Wednesday and explained that she was really crabby and I didn't know why. When I picked her up, Amanda told me she had noticed some really painful daiper rash. Poor Emily - I had been annoyed, but she was really actually hurting!! :( I know I'm not a terrible mother, just a rookie mother, but I still felt awful. Today was much better all around, though, and I think I've finally kicked my string of frustrating days (I hope!)

I can't believe Ragbrai is almost upon us! We've been throwing around tentative plans for so long that it'll be interesting to see things fall into place. I had really hoped that Emily would be not nursing so frequently at this point so I could go longer without being near her or a breastpump, but I might end up taking my pump on my bike with me. I would imagine I'd be the only rider out there with that kind of pump on her bike!! Even though it'll be a complicated and stressful couple of days, I plan on getting some good fun in, too. I've gotta say it will be a relief, though, to not have to schedule our evenings around one of us trying to get a bike ride in. Honestly, I am so impressed at how little energy I have for biking. It's not that my leg muscles are tired or sore, but I just don't have anything to give to getting up that next hill. So, we'll see if I am able to do a full day.