A sad day for the fishies

Yesterday was a very sad day for the fishies.

It has been a sad month, actually.

Around January we had traded in the original Giant Danios in for some Mollies.
- An orange pot-bellied molly (F)
- A spotted molly (M)
- A white molly (F)

Then a few weeks later, we discovered a baby molly. We suspected it was the pot-bellied because it was orange-ish.

In early April, there were suddenly at least 10 more baby mollies. These were also orange colored, but some of them have black spots. We are still not sure who was the mother...

Then the filter got clogged...and the original baby molly was the first to go.

We changed the filter, but the change-filter-indicator the water quality did not improve.

Last night the pot-bellied orange molly has kicked the proverbial bucket. As did many of the new mollies.

We (and by 'we' I mean my hero, Zeb) cleaned out the tank thoroughly last night and reset the filter. So far the remaining mollies seem to be ok. We were able to save 5 of the fry.

Now the filter indicator is looking good. Hopefully it will stay that way.

Mysterious molars

I never knew teeth could take so long to come in.

The right bottom molar the doc mentioned at her 1 yr appointment is finally peeking through. Along with both bottom bicuspids. Poor thing.

Maybe this is one of the reasons the 'bee has been biting at daycare.

The magic of fixed schedules

The 'bee officially moved up to the next room at daycare last week.

The new room has a fixed schedule with snacks and nap at particular times. They also get to play outside. The change is pretty dramatic.

Before:
15-45 minutes at daycare at random times.
Even at home she used to only sleep 1.5 hours at the most.

After:
TWO AND A HALF hours. Sometimes even 3 hours EVERY DAY

Maybe now 'working-from-home' will actually mean more work ;)

Baby Stuff: Part 1

Once upon a time, when I was trying to navigate through the mountains of baby 'stuff' marketed toward expectant parents, I found myself wishing for a time machine so I could avoid getting things that would end up being clutter. I was on the verge of panic attacks every time we were supposed to be adding things to the registry. How am I supposed to know what I'll need? What if we get the wrong things? What is all this stuff used for anyway? This was much more difficult than the wedding registry which was most stuff that we understood. This was future NECESSITY for a life we had absolutely no experience with. If we didn't get the right things we would be BAD PARENTS.

Since I have been finding it difficult to find things to blog about, this post will be the start of a series of posts on useful and not-so-useful baby stuff we've acquired this past year and a half.
Basically, these are the things I wish I had known when I had been 'preparing the nest'.

This first post will cover those items that we had to go back to get more of.

Burp Rags:
There can never be enough burp rags. You may think that 6 would be enough. It is not. Two are needed every night to keep the milk from soaking through to the mattress when co-sleeping. Then there is the one for each feeding to keep milk from soaking into the boppy. Then there is the one for the actual burping after the feeding. So, really the 6 you got...they only last about 4 hours...then either laundry needs to be done or you resort to using some of the diapers from the diaper service. More recently, we are down to one for the night time leakage, and one for pumping and one for miscellaneous drool. After multiple realizations that we _still_ didn't have enough, we settled at about 18.

Flannel blankets:

I think we started with around 4. A nice number, but also not enough. In the beginning, one used for swaddling, one for keeping exposed shoulder/belly warm and/or covered while nursing, one to keep under the 'bee because the sheet is cold under her head and in case of errant fluids. These were better than the fleece or organic ones for swaddling since they were stretchy, but not too stretchy. More recently they are great for an extra layer in the car or the stroller. Then we started losing them at daycare too...so I think we ended up getting a total of around 12.

Pacifiers:
We didn't introduce these until about 6 weeks. Fingers worked at first, but with the introduction of teeth that became a very dangerous substitute. Even then we only used them to facilitate napping in the carseat, stroller and at daycare. It is more of a fun thing to chew on that was usually around. These seem to get lost or dropped entirely too easily. The clips are somewhat useful for keeping them un-lost for longer, but then the clips get lost too. I think we have around 10 but it is hard to keep count.

Sleep, Sweet Sleep.

The 'bee has been starting the night in her own room for a while now since her bedtime is about 3 hours earlier than ours. We have a fairly consistent bedtime routine of bath, stories and nursing to sleep. She would fall asleep within about 15 minutes. Once asleep, getting her to go back to sleep was usually pretty easy as long as nursing was involved.

Now that she likes to crawl on us, stand up, and pull hair when she is awake, nobody gets a good night's sleep.

A few weeks ago we started the process of convincing her she really didn't need to wake up to nurse every hour or two and teaching her to fall asleep on her own. Since she was wanting to nurse but not really hungry we decided Zeb would go in to comfort her back to sleep.

This week was the 11pm waking. At first she was pretty pissed that it wasn't mama. The first night included much yelling at Zeb...his ears are still recovering. The second night there was a long period of lying down and getting back up, but much less yelling.

Then the 'bee slept 8 hours straight last night.

Simply amazing.

Zeb is my hero.