The adventures of Scarlett and her highchair

Scarlett was acting a little crazy last night. What's even funnier is that I think she knew she was acting crazy - and was a little proud of her craziness. Maybe too proud.
We interrupt your regularly scheduled craziness for a brief moment of normalcy.

And then...we're back. Towards the end of this experience, I began to get slightly concerned. What is she doing in this video? Is her head itching? Or is she doing an impersonation of Stevie Wonder? We may never know.

We're baaaaa-ck!

We couldn't get enough of the New Haven Children's Museum...so we came back this weekend too! We watched "The Snowman" on the big screen while accompaniment was played on piano. Well...Scarlett didn't do too much "watching." She did more squirming, banging, and chewing on museum teddy bears. Val and I learned that children around the age of two have about a fifteen minute attention span. We learned this because about fifteen minutes into the movie it no longer felt like we were in a quiet theatre, but felt more like we were in the mosh pit at a Wiggles concert.

The theme of this trip to the museum was dressing up. We found bee and butterfly costumes. We also found monkey tails. You might ask yourself - could Val and I embarrass our children any more? The answer to that question is - probably not, folks. Probably not. Check us out...

We baffled scientists everywhere when our baby bumblebees magically metamorphosed into exquisite butterflies...with giant floppy more like ears than wings.Best monkey buddies...The museum was fresh out of bananas for our monkeys. Scarlett reverted back to her trusty blueberries from last week. Ask me how many kids I think put this exact blueberry into their mouth prior to Scarlett. Some mirror action...

and some banging action...
and finally, some bed in the "Goodnight Moon" room action.

All that action created one tuckered out tot....or one tuckered out monkey/bee/butterfly baby...however you look at it - Scarlett was pooped.

The Children's Museum in New Haven...

...is so cool! On Saturday, Scarlett and I went to their Saturdays at 2 program where we heard "Jump, Frog, Jump" performed by a storytelling troupe from Yale. Just for listening, we were given a copy of the book to take home and add to the massive library Scarlett has accumulated in the past 8 months. (I have a problem. I know.) As if that wasn't exciting enough, our favorite friend Carson, and our favorite mommy Val joined us. We haven't had a playdate since November! Scarlett was starting to think that Carson had moved on. Here is a picture of Scarlett patiently waiting for Carson to arrive. She was a little shy with the other babies at first, but with Carson by her side she is invincible. They make a good team. After the story, we went into the puppet room. (I'm not quite sure if that's the technical name, but it works.) Scarlett played with possums, and Carson played with turtles. Can you contain your excitement? Then we discovered the room of funky mirrors. I almost felt as if I should supply the museum with a bottle of Windex after Scarlett left this room. I'll assume you've all seen my previous post on Scarlett and mirrors. They're not so...um, reflective after she's done with them.

My favorite room was the "Goodnight Moon" room. It was a total recreation of the room in the book. Val and I waited patiently to tuck Carson in Scarlett into the little bed in the room for what we knew would be an adorable photo, but alas, it was so packed in there and we kept getting cut in line by little kids. The nerve of them wanting to play in the room when there are two first time mothers with a camera. We gave up eventually and got these photos instead. Then it was on to the music room. Scarlett got the hang of her bell shaker initially, but then it kind of turned into her getting the hang of it...deliciously. Observe...Well...what good is a bell shaker if you can't eat it?Then we played with a blueberry bush. We had quite a day! Scarlett had so much fun with Carson that we went over to his house on Sunday too. (I know...two playdates in one weekend?! We're getting good at this).

Uh oh...

I now live in perpetual fear of inexplicable allergic reactions, and Scarlett standing.

Tap tap tap...

Nothing like a little tap dancing before bedtime. Personally, I can think of nothing more relaxing than hopping up on the kitchen counter for a complex tap routine immediately before turning in for the night Oy, will these dads ever learn?

A whole new world

Scarlett is discovering that there is a whole new world which exists roughly 2 feet off of the ground...including our bedroom mirror. She had seen mirrors before - but never from this mouth-to-mirror perspective. I can't pry her away from the thing. I can pick her up and put her on the other side of the room and she crawls right back to it. Repeatedly. Oh Scarlett...you're so vain. You probably think this blog is about you. Don't you? Don't you?

Splish Splash!

Splish Splash she was takin' a bath
long about a Thursday night.
Rub-a-dub, just a splashin’ in her tub
thinkin' everything was alright.

Well, she splished and she splashed and she drenched the bathroom floor,
and Mommy and Daddy
are not so dry anymore, and then -
Splish, Splash! She’s back to splashin’ in the bath…
my little Scarladoodle's got tsunamis going on.

She was a-splishin' and a-splashin',
reelin' with the feelin',
Mom and Dad are groanin’
but she’s a rockin' and a-rollin'.

Can't nobody hold her down

Scarlett is climbing up on everything! We finally had to lower her crib because of this. Naptimes have become particularly difficult because every time we put her down she pulls herself right back up! We had to take her rainforest animals off of her mobile because I walked in to her room and she was swinging from the leaves like George of the jungle. (sigh...I'll miss you rainforest pals, and your soothing jungle noises)Previously Scarlett had needed both knees firmly planted on the ground in order to maintain the status of being upright, but look at this precarious balancing act. Notice the extension of her left leg and the look of total concentration on her face.
Scarlett is so proud of herself in this shot because she has finally figured out she can tip her play table towards herself to play instead of pulling herself up to it. She won this time table. She won this time.
And, as usual, in case you didn't know she had a tongue she'll remind you.
I'm sure your mothers all told you not to sit too close to the television because you'll damage your eyes...well, Scarlett's mother was sleeping when this video was taken.

Scarlett's medical mystery

Sorry for the graphic nature of this photo, but this is what my baby girl had to endure just in order for our allergen specialist to tell us that Scarlett is allergic to nothing (so far) and her anaphylactic attack was caused by an "unknown." Come on. How is a mother supposed to survive with that answer?! I'll explain this photo to you so you know what you're looking at. The letters above the dots indicate two separate panels Scarlett was tested for, "Kids" (airborne allergens), and "Foods" (self explanatory). What the nurse did was take what looked like a large rubber stamp with 10 poky needle bits that had been dipped in commercially generated allergens, and she not so delicately jammed it into Scarlett's back...on two separate occasions...much to Scarlett's dismay. The two bold bumps on her lower back were histamine that they use to make sure that her skin would swell if she actually was allergic to something. They are used as a test. They worked, and established that Scarlett is not currently allergic to any of the common allergens. I guess that should be considered a plus side to this whole mishap, but personally I would almost prefer her to be allergic to something so I know what to keep her away from! Her specialist said that these attacks can happen for unexplained reasons - and they usually just cause the parents some stress. I should have corrected her and said "cause mothers some stress" because I'm pretty sure Joe has already erased the event from his memory. She said they can, or cannot happen again. Great. Something to look forward to for the rest of my life. But that baby girl is just fine. Thank you to all who showed concern through phone calls, emails, brainwaves, blogs, and myspace. We love you all.

Our little (or actually quite big) scare...

So...Thursday night I am driving home from work and I called Joe, as usual, to tell him I was on my way home. Quite suddenly in the background, I could hear Scarlett crying and coughing at the same time (not a pleasant noise for anyone to make, let alone a baby). Scarlett never cries at random (in fact - she never cries at all) - so it was pretty evident something was seriously wrong. Joe thought she was choking on something, hung up the phone, and proceeded to do baby Heimlich per my frantic instructions. So here I am - stuck in horrific traffic 45 minutes from home thinking my 7 month old was choking and waiting desperately for Joe to call me back. Talk about feeling helpless! I just wanted to get out of the car and start running home.

He called me back, but nothing had changed. She had actually gotten quite worse. The cough had subsided, but her nose was running, she was drooling and crying, and her face started to swell a lot. I told Joe to grab one of our neighbors to see if they would go with him to the emergency room. We're only 5 minutes from the hospital. I was still about 20 minutes away when Joe called back and said that Scarlett seemed to be getting better. Her face was still very swollen, but the crying had stopped and she just seemed very tired. We decided we would wait until I got home and all go to the hospital together.

I finally got home and saw my poor little girl. Her face was so swollen that it looked like someone had slapped her across the face about 20 times in a row. She was very happy to see me and seemed to have perked up a bit when I got home. We called her pediatrician to see what she suggested. The "on-call" responder said it was quite probable that Scarlett had swallowed something which caused her to choke and cry, which resulted in a swollen face. She assured us she didn't think it was an allergic reaction (which was our first thought). She said to monitor Scarlett, but not go to the hospital. I called the next day to get a second opinion, and boy, had she been wrong.

Scarlett's true pediatrician believes she had an anaphylactic attack because she is severely allergic to something - which is very rare in babies so young. It turns out her attack was quite serious and we were instructed to call 911 the very second we thought it might be happening again. Problem is - we don't know what it could be that she is allergic to. Scarlett didn't have anything new to eat and she was just playing on the same floor where she has been playing for the last 3 months...and I had just vacuumed. Scarlett has been scheduled for an emergency allergens test with a specialist in Orange, so we'll keep you all posted. But boy...that was some scary stuff. Keep her in your prayers!

And it begins

Look out world, here comes Scarlett. As predicted, Scarlett started crawling on Christmas. Her Christmas present to Joe and I was a little disappearing trick which resulted in her hiding behind the coffee table instead of in front of it where she was so routinely placed. Here is a video of her mastered art - crawling. When she is not crawling in the video she is performing her other mastered art - shrieking at the top of her lungs.

Silly Scarlett...

Scarlett has been testing out some new solids. So far she has tried teething biscuits, whole wheat bread, her special baby cheesy poofs...and plastic toy cookies - the latter being the most delectably delicious (and hilarious) solid of them all.