How do they know?

This pic is a good example of what I'm talking about. The batteries on a sit-n-spin toy that we borrowed needed to be changed. We went and got the screwdriver, and immediately Sasha grabs the screwdriver and starts poking at the screws with it. How did she know how to do that? She seemed so natural. It seems so uncanny sometimes, how young kids seem to just know how to do stuff. Sasha started walking around with a small cloth bag wrapped around her forearm, sort of carrying it like a purse. I don't carry a purse so it seemed so strange for her to just KNOW how to carry a purse without seeing me do it.

Loves that tricycle

Well I'm glad we got Sasha that Kettler Kettrike Tricycle for Christmas. She loves that thing.
Sometimes she decides to sit in it while it's sitting in the living room. She plays with the seat belt. She's always been fascinated by seat belts. She has all the attention span in the world when it comes to trying to figure them out. She's the same way with the lap belt in her high chair. Usually she sits in the bike backwards and just plays with the belt.
About once a day, I take her for a ride around the apartment complex. Usually it's just to get the mail. She loves it. It gets her out of the house. I don't know if babies get bored of being in the same house day after day like adults do but I think it's good to just give her a change of scenery.
Lately, Cassie has started taking Sasha out for bike rides too. Cassie brings her cell phone with her and talks to her friends on the phone as she wheels Sasha along. Yesterday I had a giggle as I watched them return back home. Sasha had a toy cell phone she was yammering into and Cassie was on her cell phone too. It just looked so funny with both of them talking into cell phones.
Sasha never smiles when she's on that bike. It's all very serious business. When she's going for a ride, she sits on it very well. She puts her hands on the handlebars and safely watches the scenery as it passes by.

TOO COOL

Too Cool!
This pic cracks me up so I had to post it again for emphasis. Look at Sasha posing for the camera. The Jeep. The sunglasses. The new haircut. Haha it makes me giggle.

Big sis Cassie took the pic and she's proud of how well the picture lined up for her. She says it took some skill to get the timing right and to get that Jeep in the background.

First Haircut!

Sasha had her first haircut!
There is a place here that specializes in children's haircuts so I decided to take her there. I was very nervous because Sasha can be a bit high strung and easily upset, especially when it comes to strangers. She's fine with strangers if they keep their distance but once they try to get too close to her or touch her, she gets a bad case of stranger anxiety. So when I called and made the appointment I asked them to make sure that the person who does her hair is very patient.
We arrived late because I got lost. Let's not talk about that though. The ladies at the children's salon were very nice, however, and didn't make me cancel my appointment. I brought Cassie along with us so she could take pictures.

They had these neat little seats shaped like cars, with steering wheels and everything. Sasha got a really hot little red Mercedes Benz convertible, and she really liked it. Lately she's loved toy cars. Sasha did not consider the hair stylist to be threatening. She didn't smile for her, but she didn't cry either. She was very neutral, which was still better than I hoped for! I tried to make her feel calm by offering her sips of juice, and the lady offered her a sucker but she didn't care for suckers. The salon had little tv's at each haircut station, with a dvd player. The lady put in a Baby Einstein video, and Sasha was captivated. Once she put the video on, Sasha didn't have a care in the world. She watched the video and we were free to cut away.

We mostly cut her bangs so they don't hang in her face, and straightened the back out. It didn't take long at all.

And the final result. Aww how cute! Just look at those big blue eyes.
Once we were done with the haircut, they saved Sasha's hair in a little bag and made a little "First Haircut" certificate for her. They put a ribbon in her hair and took a polaroid picture to put on the certificate. They gave her a balloon, some suckers, and let her pick a toy from their little toy treasure chest. She picked a mini slinky.
On the way out, Sasha saw a display stand full of sunglasses. Did I mention that glasses are one of her obsessions? She got so excited when she saw all those sunglasses, so we let her look at them. She posed for Cassie and the camera just perfectly, with her new haircut, some sunglasses, and a Jeep.

Isn't it cute? She is just too cool for words!
I had to get the sunglasses :)

Little Copycat

Sasha is finally at that age where we can see her copying us, and it is often very thought provoking to see our actions mirrored back to us by innocent little eyes. I know I'll continue to have many Copycat entries in the future, but here are a few more.

One day last week, my husband told me that Sasha went into our coat closet and got our baby carriers out. This time, she decided that although she wanted my husband to wear her in the carrier, she wanted to figure out how it worked. Eventually she gave the carrier to my husband (insistantly) and had him carry her about the house with it. Again she did it yesterday and I was able to get a picture of her. She tried to affix the carrier around her so she could get into it and couldn't quite get it right.
Today, she was playing with the carrier and I added a little twist. I put it on her like she was the mommy, and I put her glowworm in the baby carrier part of the carrier. She got to 'carry' the glowworm around like a baby, although the carrier is way to big for her so she couldn't really walk around with it. She got a huge kick out of it though.

In Daddy's shoes:


So proud of herself:


Brushing teeth with Daddy:

Personal Trainer

My husband likes to exercise at home to keep himself and his back in shape. Sasha finds the exercise routines to be a lot of fun. She likes to cheer him on, which is great for his morale and keeps him going. He admits he does a few extra sit-ups for her just to see her cheer for him.Trainer's on coffee break. Don't worry, there's no coffee in that coffee cup :)

High Calorie Foods for Toddler Weight Gain

I spent hours doing some research into high calorie foods that can help me out with Sasha's underweight problem. She's finally eating, and I want to make sure that every bite counts.
I'm no expert. Just a desperate mother of a toddler who won't eat and is losing weight instead of gaining. Here's what I found and what I am doing.
First, I had to make sure that she's getting all the vitamins and nutrients she needs. She is now agreeably taking a half of a chewable flintstones vitamin every day so I don't have to worry about those nasty vitamin drops. The flintstone vitamins have more kinds of vitamins in them anyways. However they are lacking in CALCIUM, so I still have to make a special effort to get calcium into her every day.
Second, I needed to know exactly how many calories I should be getting into her every day. For that, I thank this website: http://www.silverscriptwellness.com/topic/calneed
I used it to calculate how many calories Sasha needs each day. She weighed 18lbs 8oz at her last doctor visit, and she is 30 inches long. Therefore her calorie needs were as follows:

She needs at least 595 calories to maintain her current weight and activity level.
Of this, 395 calories are required to meet her body's basic energy needs. That amount (your resting energy expenditure) is what she'd use up if she did nothing but lie in bed all day.
To gain about one pound per week, you'll need to bump up to 1,095 calories per day.

Next I tried to calculate how many calories she was getting. This was hard. After searching around I found this really neat website: http://www.calorieking.com/foods/

It told me the amount of calories in different foods, but I could get the amount of calories in different sizes so it was actually really helpful.
Let's see, she eats about 1/2 cup of brown rice mixed with lentils a day (108 calories), and about 2-3 juice boxes (100 calories each). Plus she nurses about 4-5 times a day (about 60 calories per nursing session). I calculate a total of 548-708 calories a day. Barely enough to maintain her weight. Not enough to gain any weight at all. She needs MORE calories. Much more. But she's not going to take more bites so somehow I have to find ways to pack more calories into the bites she does take.

I spent a few hours trying to find the most calorically dense foods. To do this I made a chart of the amount of calories various foods had per ounce and also per tablespoon. This is what I came up with:
food per oz, per other measurement
tofu 41,
whipping cream 98, 52/tbsp
butter 204, 102/tbsp
half&half 40, 20/tbsp
sour cream 61, 26/tbsp
milk whole 19, 9/tbsp
breastmilk 20,
avocado 45,
brown rice 32, 108/half cup
potato 26, 57 half cup
sweet potato 26, 57 half cup
lard 252, 126 tbsp
flaxseedoil 251, 120 tbsp
oberweis choc ice cream 79, 230 half cup
jelly 71, 50 tbsp
peanut butter 169, 95 tbsp
carnation 103, 130/packet
whipped cream 73, 8/tbsp
Hershey's Ready-To-Drink Milk, Chocolate, 2% Reduced-Fat, 8oz box 200 calories!

Basically it seems that fats are the most calorically dense foods I could think of.
Sasha eats mostly brown rice all day every day now, and chugs down a few juice boxes. I am thinking of doing the following:
1. Replace a juice box or two with higher calorie juice box containers of other stuff than juice, like chocolate milk. It has to come in a juice box or Sasha won't drink it. Hehe!
2. Butter everything.
3. Replace milk with half-and-half, or in some instances, even whipping cream. These are very very high in fat. Babies and toddlers do need fats in their diets, especially skinny little ones. I just have to be careful to make sure she's getting protein and carbohydrates in her diet as well so she's not on an all-fat diet.
4. Offer the occasional spoonful of peanut butter or even jelly/jam if she'll take it.
5. Ice cream and whipped cream! I got a can of that pressurized whipped cream and had my older daughter try to teach my toddler the joys of whipped cream. So far, unsuccessful. She giggles at her older sister with a mouth full of whipped cream but won't eat it herself...yet.
6. Make a super thick high calorie very rich drink with 8oz of half&half and some carnation instant breakfast. If you can get this into your toddler, there's 445 calories in this. Good luck. This tastes like heaven. It tastes like melted ice cream. Sasha wouldn't take more than a few sips of it.

I'm sure there's plenty more ideas but that's all I can think of for now. Basically don't let any bite go into that toddler's mouth that isn't dripping in butter, cream, or an oil of some kind.
These are the desperate measures of a mother of an underweight toddler who is losing weight. Once the weight starts to get closer to a normal range, I'll stop lacing all her foods with fats.

Please, if anyone has any other ideas or suggestions, or anything that has worked for you in a similar situation, please feel free to leave a comment. Or commiserate and share your experiences.

A Walking Stomach

Above: While I was loading up the dishwasher, Sasha decided her legos needed to be washed. I took those things out like 3-4 times and she kept insisting on sneaking them back in.

From one extreme to the other!
The last two days, Sasha has been a walking stomach, consuming everything in her wake. This is in stark contrast to the entire previous week where I was lucky to get a tablespoon of food into her after a whole day of trying. She suddenly decided she was hungry I guess. Now she's been walking around the house and asking for food every few minutes or so. Sort of a constant snacking rather than sitting down for full meals. Today, for example, she was eating from within minutes of getting out of bed. She would run around and play, then she would come up to me with her mouth open saying "ahhhh" and insisting I put food in her mouth. Like a little baby birdy. She decided she loves brown rice. So I keep a bowl of it next to my husband's computer, and throughout the day we give her spoonfuls of it, and eventually she ate the whole thing! Today I made her a bigger bowl of rice with lentils and carrots and a tiny bit of ground beef in it. She ate that just fine, plus she ate some avocado, potato chips, three juice boxes full of juice, some crackers, a few bites of peanut butter toast, some homemade banana pudding. Anything that I tried to eat, she insisted on eating also. I am surprised at all the juice she drank. I refilled her juice box with calcium-enriched orange juice and she didn't seem to mind, although if I try to give her orange juice in a cup she balks at it. I guess it's all in the presentation some times.

She seems to be healthy and in good spirits. She is as affectionate as ever. I swear my virgo toddler is the most affectionate child I've ever known. From the moment I wake up, she is smothering my face in kisses and hugging me. She kisses all her stuffed animals and dolls. Today she was constantly making me laugh. She's a little comedienne and enjoyed making me laugh so she was really putting on a show.

Her language has really been exploding lately. She's learning several new words a day and her vocabulary is building up. Yesterday my husband and I started teaching her about facial features (cheeks, chin, eyebrows, eyes, nose, mouth, teeth, etc) and within minutes we were able to quiz her ("Sasha, where is dad's eyebrows?") and she had it down correctly. She even tries to say the words. I also swear she tries to sing the alphabet song along with one of her refridgerator magnet toys.

New Year

Above: Winter Ready! Good because it's been COLD out.

Happy New Year!
I had to work for New Year's, and Cassie is still visiting my parents, but fortunately our family still got to share the new year together, mostly.
Jon and Sasha came to my work at about 11:30pm. We had a barbecue at work so they got to eat some steak! I called Cassie when the time drew closer to midnight, and was fortunate enough to talk to her when the New Year hit. I felt so fortunate to spend the moment with my loved ones.
Sasha likes coming to my work. She runs around like it's a fun playground. I never noticed all the little steps and railings and incline ramps until she ran around here.
Other than some strange colored diapers, she seems to be mostly recovered from whatever it was that ailed her last week. Her appetite is still not very good either. I wish she would eat but I've been trying to give her vitamin drops with iron, vitamins a, c, and d. They taste horrible and stain her skin and teeth black for a while but she wouldn't eat any chewable vitamins I offered her.

Vitamin D?

I've been thinking. File this in the thinking myself into paranoia category, but I'm starting to wonder whether a vitamin D and calcium deficiency might be a problem for us.
Sasha has been breastfed from the day she was born. She's not eating food very well and never has. She will not drink milk. We are a night shift family so our exposure to sunlight is VERY infrequent. This all is the perfect setup for Rickets, a vitamin D and calcium deficiency.
The thought crossed my mind when I noticed Sasha's belly is a little bit distended outwards. But she doesn't seem to have any other signs of a deficiency that I can tell...no bowed legs, her teeth keep coming in okay. But a deficiency can exist months before there are physical signs and symptoms. I think I can reasonably assume that Sasha has a deficiency of vitamin d, considering she has no current source of it.

I guess it's something that I need to keep an eye on though. I started to give her vitamin drops today. As I mentioned in my previous post, I'd prefer she get her nutrients from natural sources but since she's not eating I don't see much other choice. I will be glad once Sasha is old enough to eat children's chewable multi-vitamins, or if she ever starts eating again.

Recovery from Recovery

Sasha is feeling better it seems. At least she's in a much better mood and not so crabby. She doesn't seem to have a runny nose anymore. I think she's beaten whatever cold or flu that was ailing her. She is still not eating and her diapers are very strange looking (won't go into detail but trust me it's nasty) so I think her belly is still getting rid of something. Maybe a gastrointestinal bug?
I wish she would eat. She's been nursing like a newborn again and not eating food. Today for the first time ever, I had to force her to take a dropperful of vitamin drops against her will. I'm afraid that she might be suffering from nutritional deficiencies. I wish there was a better way but if she's not going to eat I'm going to have to give her the vitamin drops. I'd prefer that she get her nutrients from food.
If she's feeling better, I'm going to have to cut her back on her nursing sessions. I fear that her frequent nursing might be causing her appetite loss. I tolerated it while she was ill but now it's a habit that I have to break again. I am hoping her appetite will pick up once her nursing is cut back. Easier said than done, however. I know that cutting her nursing sessions back will mean lots of temper tantrums, whining, and a very crabby upset little girl. I have to keep offering her foods, even though she refuses, somehow without turning it into a power struggle. That's a delicate balance. I hope I have the strength. It's going to be a long weekend.

Meanwhile, my husband is feeling ill again. Didn't he just finish recovering from being sick? Blah can we get a break?

The bug

There's been some sort of cold bug going through our family lately. Jon started out with it a few weeks ago and it hit him pretty long and hard.
We thought that the rest of us had escaped unscathed. My immune system seems to have been really strong the last two years or so. But of course it's the holidays, so I started getting sick two days before christmas eve. Fortunately, the worst of it was over by Christmas Eve and I felt recovered enough to be able to go to my family's christmas party.


However it was on Christmas eve that I noticed that I had some strange rash all over my neck. I don't know how long it was there before I noticed it. You can see it in this picture the best (click to enlarge), but it's still not clear. (Pic from the family Christmas party. Sasha was riding on a rocking horse, and I carried her, horsey and all, into the living room when it was time to open presents). It really had me worried. It couldn't be a heat rash as I wasn't hot and neither was my neck. I had a heat rash elsewhere on my body to compare it to, and the rashes looked different. I tried to look it up online, but anyone who has ever tried to diagnose a rash by google image search knows how disgusting and scary that can be. Ugh! Closest I could match it to was measles or rubella. Which made me think. Hrm, Sasha had just gotten her MMR (Measles, Mumps, Rubella) shot earlier that week. She had been crabby and not feeling well also. The vaccines are made with weakened viruses, but it is possible to get reactions from the vaccines. Was it also possible for people to actually come down with the actual diseases from the vaccines??? Was it then possible to pass on that disease to other people around you? It was a scary thought! I was actually really worried that maybe Sasha gave me measles from her mmr shot! But the rash disappeared the next day so I have no idea what it was. I guess it wasn't the mmr shot at all. But you can bet that if the rash had spread or if it was still there the next day I would have been asking some questions to the doctors.

Meanwhile, Sasha was not feeling well yesterday. She was very crabby and she stopped eating again. Such bad timing! I'm afraid we're going to lose any gains we might have had. She is back to nursing like a newborn and refusing to eat. I think she probably needs the immunological protection that nursing provides right now but once she's done fighting off whatever bug it is she's suffering from, I'll have to reduce her nursing sessions again in an attempt to get her to eat. Blah! That will be no fun.

Sadly, Sasha signed a new sign yesterday. "Hurt". That was the first time she ever signed it, and I think she was trying to tell us she had a headache. Poor baby. She was so miserable.

She also signed another new sign today. "Banana", which she signed at the mall when we asked her if she wanted us to buy her a banana.

Christmas

Well, my computer has been broken for the last few months. This means that I have been unable to really get pics off my camera, and that's why the pics have been less frequent lately. If I ever get pics off the camera I might go back to the older posts and affix the appropriate pictures. But at least for Christmas, I have pics because my brother took a bunch and gave me the files. Yay!

Sasha riding a little bike at my parents house, soon after we first arrived. Once she sat on it, she just sat there watching all the goings on. She isn't really familiar with my parents or her cousins, and especially not my parents house, so she had to sort of soak it all in before she would do anything. She was a bit overwhelmed. It takes her a bit to warm up to new people or situations and she usually copes with it by withdrawing and observing. She was clinging to my leg for a while. Her uncle was taking the pics of her and she wasn't sure what to make of him and his flashy camera yet.Finally warming up to her Uncle Mikey and his flashy camera :)

Here we have all the kids together. My two girls and my brother's three kids. Baby Madison is about four months old now.

Opening presents with her Daddy. She wasn't really paying much attention to any of the gift opening, especially once she got her first present open. She just wanted to play with that toy. She didn't care there were more toys!
I think she's got another molar coming in. She keeps sticking that tongue out.Playing with one of her christmas presents while sitting in mommy's lap. The particular gift she's playing with is a clear plastic ball with stuff inside it.

Merry Christmas

Just a quick post to wish our family and friends a Merry Christmas.
We travelled up north to visit my family on Christmas Eve, and stayed overnight in a hotel. There, Sasha received many Christmas gifts, and got to see her cousins. She had already received her gifts from her Mom & Dad, a Kettler Kettrike Limited Edition Navigator (fancy German Tricycle), which she really likes! And she had already received some presents in the mail, like a toy cleaning set from her grandma (loves it!) and a Tickle Me Elmo from Mike, relative on my husband's side of the family. She got a set of megablocks from her big sister, which are like larger sized Legos for little ones and she likes those a lot too!
Cassie got a Karaoke machine, which is what she wanted. I gave her a chunk of cash to go shopping with at the mall and she spent it on clothes and jewelery.
Jon and I got a crock pot and some Wii games.
While staying at the hotel, Sasha got to go swimming for her first time! She seemed to like it. She wasn't happy or excited or anything, just very alert and looked like she was taking in the new experience with caution.
We had to drive back home on Christmas day so that I could return to work that night.

Toddler Weight Loss

We are concerned about the weight loss Sasha has experienced over the last three months. At her 12 month exam, she weighed 18lbs 14ounces, and at her 15 month exam, she weighed 18lbs 8oz; so she has lost 6 ounces. I suppose that might not be much, but it's a weight loss when she should be gaining. She used to be at the 50th percentile for weight for her first 9 months, but now she's dropped below the third percentile for her weight at her age.
I know that toddler growth slows down after a year of age, thus requiring less food. But Sasha was always a picky eater. Actually, she just didn't seem to like the eating concept in general. But within the last few weeks or so, Sasha has finally started eating.
I wasn't surprised that her gain wasn't as large as most children should be. But even before her well baby exam, I knew that we would not see much of a weight gain. The loss of weight was a surprise to me, however.
My hope right now is that because Sasha is actually increasing her food intake by leaps and bounds lately, that her growth rate is now increasing. I don't know if it's enough to make up for what she hasn't gained before, but she is definitely improving. Of course, the doctor didn't seem to understand that she was already on the increase.

For now, I think our plan is to continue to offer her foods many times a day. Instead of three meals a day, we do a bunch of mini-meals and try to keep her constantly grazing.
Despite the doctor suggesting we wean Sasha, I really don't want to do that during the middle of the cold and flu season. She gets extra immunological benefits from nursing. Several times I have seen her fight off colds and flus that have laid my husband out and I attribute that to the benefits of nursing. I am encountering a lot of sick coworkers, and I am afraid that I am bringing some extra germs home to my family. So I do not want to wean her now. Instead, I am trying a new tactic. I do not nurse Sasha until after she has eaten all she can at a meal. Then I top her off with a nursing session. She always has room for milk and regardless of how full she is, she never ever refuses nursing. It's like her dessert, lol.

I do want to keep trying to give her nutritional foods, but I do admit it has sort of become a feed-Sasha free-for-all, where we give her anything that interests her. Sweets, high fat foods, anything that she'll eat. Bad foods are better than no food at all, right? I am hoping that we can curb this after we get her weight problem under control so we don't develop some bad eating habits.

Articles I am reading on how to feed picky toddlers:
Dr Sears- FEEDING TODDLERS: 17 TIPS FOR PLEASING THE PICKY EATER
Dr Sears- IS YOUR CHILD GETTING ENOUGH TO EAT? HOW TO TELL
kellymom- Nutrition for nursing toddlers
Boosting Calories in your Child's Diet

Toddlers like mine and their mother's takes on the problem:
Mothering your nursing toddler
Berkeley Parents Network- Toddlers Not Eating

15 Month Well Baby Exam

We had Sasha's routine 15 Month Well Baby Exam on Tuesday.

In her past exams, she usually started crying the moment she sees the nurse. The nurse at the pediatrician's office is the same nurse she sees every visit from the time she was a week old onward, so she recognizes her as bad news. This time, Sasha didn't cry immediately upon seeing her and was mostly cordial at first. We stripped her down to her diaper and she was amused with that. She likes to play with her belly button, so any time she's got no shirt on, she's a happy belly-button picking girl. Sasha also found the scale in the exam room to be a fun toy. She liked to step on and off of it like it was a fun wobbly step. When the nurse came back in the room, Sasha happily stepped on the scale for her. The nurse seemed confused at the weight, 19lbs, and decided to try to weigh Sasha on the scale in the other exam room. That other scale is the scale Sasha had always been weighed on in previous visits and was the baby scale... you know the kind that weighs in pounds and ounces and sits on a tabletop.
The baby scale said Sasha weighed 18lbs 8oz. This was concerning. At her 12 month exam, Sasha weighed 18lbs 14oz. This meant she lost weight instead of a gain. Not good. Sasha doesn't seem to have gained much weight since she was 9 months old.
I've had a difficult time transitioning Sasha to solids, as I've mentioned in previous posts. She kept refusing to eat. Only in the last three weeks has Sasha shown even the slightest interest in solid foods. So I wasn't surprised at the low weight but I wasn't expecting a weight loss.

The nurse measured Sasha's height, and she did gain an inch of height. She is now 30 inches long. Sasha protested the height measurement process by screaming and crying.
The nurse left and the doctor came in the room. He was very upset about the weight loss and about Sasha's weight. According to his growth charts, Sasha is now below the third percentile in weight for her age. He kept saying "No this is not good". He started insisting that I wean Sasha from breastfeeding and implied that nursing is no longer a good source of nutrition for a toddler after a year of age, and that nursing ruins her appetite. I'm not sure what to think of his statement, but I gues that's for another post. He said that Sasha is malnourished, that we were retarding her brain development, and kept saying "This is not good".

Usually, the next pediatric exam wouldn't be until 18 months, but he wants to see her in one month to do a more thorough evaluation of her weight and nutritional status. He is going to do some bloodwork on her at that exam to check if she is anemic or if she has any malnutritional deficiencies.

The doctor continued his examination, under much protest from Sasha. He is very thorough in his examinations. He checked her abdomen, bones, joints, fontanelle status, and had us make her walk so he could observe her gait. All that was good.

They wanted to administer two shots at this visit, the mmr shot, and the chicken pox vaccination. The MMR shot has my husband nervous, with all the accusations of links to autism, but we did allow her to receive the shot. I refused the chicken pox vaccine. I suppose I could write a separate post on that but it is not required by law and I would prefer she get the chicken pox instead of the vaccine.

After the shots, the visit was complete. Sasha was quite mad at that mmr shot. I know it hurt. We set up an appointment for one month from now, and for her 18 month well baby exam. We shall see how her weight is at her evaluation next month.