Kisses

After 3 (almost 4) weeks of bronchitis and colds, the Smiths are finally on the mend. It started with Jeff and a nasty case of bronchitis - which took 2 rounds of antibiotics to beat. Then I got it and finally started feeling better this week after 2 weeks of misery . Baby girl just had a runny nose, thank goodness. But she also cut her first tooth in the middle of this sick fest, so between that and waking up all hours of the night because of one of us was coughing, Monday was the first full night of sleep I've had in over a month! Man that felt good!

Emery has been talking up a storm these days. She was kind of clingy over the weekend, and we're hoping it was just her first tooth coming in but could very well be the start of separation anxiety, as she's right at the age where it starts. She's been eating a lot the past couple of weeks. She still doesn't really get the whole feed herself thing yet (gets the food to her mouth then drops her hand like she's forgotten it's there), but she still loves to eat. I have to be very careful about what I feed her for dinner because of overnight stomach issues (see previous post). For the past week she's had mashed banana, avacado and cereal for dinner, which seem to work well. Monday night she seemed exceptionally hungry so I gave her some peas in addition to her main fare, and she woke up in the middle of the night again. So we were back to the usual last night. I hate to feed her the same thing every night, but until her stomach evens out I don't see that we have much of a choice. I haven't found anything she doesn't like yet, although I'm sure that's coming. I haven't really been good about introducing things slowly either, but aside from the rash on her face from oatmeal and a different type of cereal, shes tolerated everything else pretty well.

Emery loves it when we kiss her, and lately she's started putting her slobbery mouth on my cheek to give me a kiss. It is the cutest thing. I ask her to "Give mommy a kiss" and she slobbers all over my cheek, then I of course cover her cheeks with kisses in return. It's probably the cutest thing she's done so far, in my opinion. It's amazing to me how quickly they learn - I had no idea she would even know what a kiss meant at this age. They are little sponges, thats for sure. She also goes "mmmmm, mmmmm" the entire time she is eating. I realized this is because that is what I do when I feed her - I'm always saying "mmmmm, this is good." So she says it back to me now. It's so cute.

I mentioned earlier that she cut her first tooth over the weekend. We are still nursing, but I'm waiting to see if she starts biting or not before I decide if we're going to keep going for a few more months.

I have not been able to taste a single thing for the past 2 weeks, and as a result have finally dropped a few pounds for the first time in five months. I feel so sorry for anyone who has no sense of taste or smell - you don't realize how much those senses affect you until they are gone. I have no desire to eat anything I can't taste, so have essentially been eating just enough to keep my stomach from shriveling up.

That's all for now!