I vote YES

Teething sucks.

It’s that simple.

It sucks.

It takes your normal, happy go lucky baby and turns her into a cranky, clingy, grouchy, refuses to eat monster.

I became well seasoned to the crappiness of teething pretty quickly. Eva cut her first two teeth at 6.5 months. And they were bad, but not that bad, as I quickly found out. About a month later she decided to bust out four teeth within two weeks. And it was torture. Absolute torture. For all of us.

She was cranky. She did not sleep. And she refused to eat.

That meant I was cranky. I did not sleep. And, well, I probably ate way more than I should have.

After that bout of four teeth, she took a month off and then tooth number 7 showed up on our first night of vacation in July. And let me tell you … that tooth was from the devil. She had such a difficult time with it. It was as if her teething issues were getting worse and worse and worse with each subsequent tooth.

During these bouts of teething related discomfort, I have to admit, I gave her more doses of Tylenol than I was comfortable with. More than I ever expected I would give her. It’s just not like me to give my child medicine flippantly. But I had to. There was no other choice. It was unbearable without it. And, I’m not against medication. Not in the least. I just felt like I was giving it to her too much. There had to be another way.

After tooth #7, I remembered some of my friend’s talking about amber teething necklaces. So I started asking around. A few twitter gals told me that they had them and thought they were great. After some encouragement from Erin I went ahead and checked out Hazel Aid and ordered one. It was under $20 so I figured it was definitely worth a shot. Even if it didn’t work, it was pretty cute.

Let me point out that before those torturous days I thought the idea of a necklace that emitted some kind of resin to help relieve pain was kind of hokey. It seemed like witchcraft to me. But I was desperate. And, in desperation, Mamas will do crazy things.

A few days after ordering, the necklace arrived and Eva started wearing it 24/7, except while in the bath. Since she started wearing it, I’ve had to answer a lot of questions. Mostly: Why is your baby wearing a necklace? and Does it work?

I could always answer the first one but I had trouble answering the second one. I had no idea if it worked because she took a long break from teething and didn’t seem to be working on any new teeth over the next few months. I figured when it was time to teeth again, I’d start seeing the signs and at that point, I’d use my judgement to see if I felt like the necklace was easing her pain at all – compared to the struggles she had with teething before the necklace.

Well, folks, I vote yes. The necklace does help. It is working.

How do I know?

I was feeling around in Eva’s mouth last week, a few days before her first birthday, just to see if there was any sign of anything happening, and know what I found?

Tooth #8. There it was. All sharp and pointy. And I had no clue it was coming. My baby had slept 12 hours the night before. Why hadn’t she been up every half hour for the past three nights if she was teething? I can only assume it’s because she wasn’t uncomfortable. And I can only assume that her lack of discomfort was because of the necklace.

So, I’ll say it again. I vote yes. Best darn twenty bucks I’ve ever spent.

8 Months of Joy

My Pumpkin Pie,

My oh my. You’re eight months old. You’re growing into a precious little lady right before my eyes. Just the other day, your Auntie K said you don’t look like a baby anymore and that you are looking more and more like a toddler every day. I won’t believe it. I just won’t.

My guess is that you weigh somewhere between 17-18 pounds but that’s totally just a guess. We measured you yesterday and you are now 28 inches long. You still fit well into 9 month clothes but I’ve been sneaking you into a few 12 month things on warmer days, too. You wear a size 4 disposable and have just recently moved up to the largest setting on your size medium cloth diaper covers.

Here’s how you’ve changed this month:

This has been a busy, busy month. Because you, my sweet, are a busy, busy girl. You are into e.v.e.r.y.t.h.i.n.g and I’m amazed how quickly you’ve figured what belongs to you and what doesn’t. I’m also amazed at how quickly you’ve figured out that the things that don’t belong to you are more fun. You keep me on my toes. But there’s no one I’d rather be kept on my toes by than you.

Right now your favourite things to get into are the platters on the side table in the kitchen, the door stop on Mommy and Daddy’s door, the DVDs in the coffee table, and the bar stools on the island.

You’ve made some huge progress this month. The biggest thing being that you are now a crawling machine. You did your first official crawl on April 27th, just shortly after your 7 month birthday, and haven’t stopped since. Every day you get faster and more confident – especially now that you’ve figured out that crawling not only gets you around the room you’re in, but can get you to places you can’t see at the moment. Like into the laundry room with Mommy.

You are also very keen on standing up. You like to hold my hands and stand up and have started taking steps that way. About a week and a half ago, you brought yourself to standing holding on to Nika’s back. Lots of times you pull up on things that just aren’t quite the right height to get you to a full standing position, but rather, a glorified downward dog position. You’re figuring it out though. Each day I can tell your legs are getting less and less wobbly.

Now that you are more steady, you sit up in the big bath tub to play with your toys and splash around. The only problem is that you constantly try to stand up in there, too.With that being said, many a bath time has been cut short and you’ve also become quite familiar with the word “no”.

Although you’ve been doing a waving motion for quite some time, it was about a week ago that you started to make the connection between waving, Hi, and Bye. The first time you waved for real was when you were skyping with Nana. And since then, you haven’t stopped. You wave at people all the time now. You also love to give kisses – to your friends and family, as well as to babies in books and your stuffed animals. It melts my heart to see you scoot over to your pile of stuffies and give each one of them a kiss. You prefer kisses of the open mouth variety and make a cutie pie kissing sound every time. You started the month off by blowing raspberries all the time but that habit has kind of faded away. I must admit, I’m sad about that because it was so cute to see you crawling around buzzing your lips all the time.

You are still nursing 5-6 times a day and you have made huge progress with eating solids in the last month. The list of foods you enjoy keeps growing and growing. The newest additions are mango, chicken, blueberries, grapes, prunes, barley, peaches, muffins, broccoli and watermelon. Some of your favourite flavours include cinnamon and curry. You’re easy to please when it comes to food, that’s for sure. In the past month, you’ve developed some funny habits while eating. You constantly stroke your hair while nursing and sometimes, when you’re sitting in your high chair you flap your hands around your face. I’m not sure if you’re trying to make the same motion as you do when you’re nursing or if you’ve made some associations between the signs for “Milk”, “All done” and food. There’s no doubt that you know the word and sign for “milk” and “puppy”. Two of your favourite things.

You cut your third tooth over the past week and handled it like a champ. You were definitely more fussy and whiny than usual but it didn’t seem to affect your sleep quite as badly as your first two did. I knew another tooth was coming because you were constantly nom nom noming on your fingers. Last Saturday, I noticed the white line on your top left gum for the first time. By Tuesday, I could see a slit in your gum and by Thursday I could feel the sharpness. Yesterday we saw that it had fully cut through and so it will be no time at all until it comes all the way down and you have three big chompers. I wonder how far behind its partner will be?

You still nap twice a day, although it seems you may be in the midst of adjusting your nap schedule. With improvements in night time sleeping, I have a feeling that your sleep needs during the day are going to change. The past few weeks have been a little frustrating, but we’ll figure it out.

You love to be outside. Although we’ve had tons of rainy days, we try to get out for a walk as often as possible. Right now, your Daddy is working just down the road, so we’ve made it down to say hi to him a time or two. You sure get excited when you see your Daddy-o. You’re getting more comfortable on the grass but are also happy to chill in your stroller while we hang out with Dad in the shop, too.

As always, you are my joy. You are the most beautiful, most precious, most wonderful gift. Your Daddy and I love you, enjoy you, and are so very proud of the little girl you are becoming.

Stay sweet, my love.

Mama.

Two for the price of one

Let it be known that I am what some may call a bargain shopper. I know how to spot a good deal. And I get excited about good deals. Too excited, sometimes.

It seems as though my sweet daughter has inherited this trait from me. Because, although she was not shopping and purchasing something, she showed me on the weekend that she too enjoys a good deal. In this case, a “two for the price of one deal”.

Friday night was a rough night. She was up for hours straight and both Evan and I were at our wit’s end trying to figure out what to do with her. We were rocking, nursing (well, I was, not we), cuddling, bringing her in bed with us, patting her bum in the crib – you know, all those tricks.

Finally after a few hours, my mommy instinct kicked in (um – hello, why did it have to take that long?) and I thought maybe she was having trouble sleeping because of her little gummers. So, I gave her half a dose of infant tylonel, rocked her for a few minutes, sang to her, laid her in the crib (still wideeeeee eyed) and hoped for the best.

I didn’t hear her again until morning.

On Saturday morning we met up with my SIL and BIL who were in town for a hockey tournament. I told B about our night and how I was suspicious that teething was the culprit. She was playing with Eva for a while and a few minutes later kind of laughed and said, “Um, Linds. I think you are right. She has two teeth in there”.

Um, what?

Two teeth?

Where? Let me see!

Sure enough, her two bottom teeth have broken the surface and started to make their way up.

The one on her right was definitely “more through” than the other. But after last night (another rough time – this time it didn’t take quite as long for mommy instinct to show up and save the day) they are both very clearly there.

And while I feel so bad for the pain she has been going through to make this happen, I do feel like we struck lucky with getting two teeth for the price of one.

Here’s to teething. Not.