0515

Alex and I had waffles with Eitan yesterday - ended up being around lunch time by the time everyone was synchronized nap-wise. Leora (Eitan's mom) made waffles without eggs that had some pumpkin in them - they were tasty. Alex enjoyed his quite a bit, with some pear on the side. Laura took care of him after that, followed by a video chat via Skype with Angela. Alex gets very excited when he sees her on screen & hears her voice! It's nice that we can do this - Angela can sing him a goodnight song. Alex might start to think that she now exists only in the computer, but hey - maybe she does - how should I know for sure?

I have decided to try to re-Ferberize Alex while Angela is gone. Trouble has been that we sleep in the same room with him, and so he knows we are there. He wakes up at night & cries until we give up because we need to get our sleep. But last night, after he woke up at 1:30, I just slept on the couch. Tonight I plan to sleep on the mattress that I've inflated for my mom to use - it's in the study. I plan to ignore his cries until 6 am.

Today was 9-month doctor-visit day (check your calendars - I think it's a national holiday.) He's 75th percentile for height and 30th for weight (which is good.) He's 29" tall, weighs 19lbs 2oz (or perhaps it's 19.2 lbs - I can't tell from the note.) Because of the allergic reaction he had to eating hummus the other day, and the fact that we will be traveling to Thailand before we come in again, she wrote a script for a Jr. Epi-Pen in case of allergic emergency while we are out of the country. And told us to bring benadryl. Other than that, she says we can feed him just about anything except the most allergenic of foods (egg whites, crab, citrus, nuts, some others) and of course nothing that he can choke on. All kinds of spices are fine, too - I'm looking forward to experimenting with all sort of stuff, and I kinda started tonight.

He got a shot, too - Hep B (third round.) And he'll need to go to the traveler's health place in a few weeks and might get more shots. Loves those!

For food today he had his usual assortment of fruits (bananas, applesauce, and pear, mostly), pancakes, peas, some pasta that Laura cooked for him yesterday, and tonight he also had some baby food containing pumpkin, cinnamon, ginger (we've given him both of those before,) cardamom (whatever that is,) and nutmeg. He seemed to like it.

OK - enough - here are pictures! Three of them are from Eitan's family's apartment - one picture is just of Eitan (for Angela - the rest of you probably won't be amused.) The others are from today, before the doctor appt.