Peas, Inspections, and Doctor's Visits, Oh My!

Okay everybody, let's take a little vote here, shall we?  Who says "Oh yum, give me those peas on the right, in the baby food jar!!"  Go ahead.  Raise your hand.  Yeah.  Didn't think so.  What color is that, anyway?  And would YOU want to eat it?  Anyway, our latest baby food making trial was ... you guessed it ... peas.  As beautiful as those lovely homemade peas on the left are, the baby didn't like them.  And for those of you wondering, no, he doesn't like the canned variety either.  He ate the fresh ones, but kept wincing and shaking his head with shivers.  Then after he was done, he kept trying to gag.  Not while he was eating, but after he was finished.  So we're going to lay off the peas for a little while and revisit those another time.  I seem to remember the three year old had a similar response to them when he was little, and he loves peas now, so there is hope.  I personally don't like peas either unless we're talking about snowpeas, which I love. Fickle, yes. I know.

So I've been kind of quiet around here lately.  Sorry for that.  We have had a lot going on.  I had my annual inspection for the daycare today, which we passed without any problems.  But that does take some time to get all the records in order and the house super-cleaned.  Not that we don't clean on a regular basis, but you know what I mean.  You just clean a little better when you know someone is going to be looking at everything closely.  We had the health and sanitation inspection (surprise visit) last week, and it went very well too.  Now we just have to wait for the fire marshall to show up, and we'll be good-to-go for another year.  None of this is really nerve wracking or anything.  It's just time consuming. And it makes that little voice in my head say, "No, you can't make that awesome felt heart bunting you saw on Pinterest.  You need to print out all your updated records instead."  So maybe soon I'll be able to cram in a little craft time.  I'm actually working on something over at the church... thanks to a certain 3 year old of mine who thought it was high time to remove the 1960's era wallpaper from the nursery wall.  Yup.  I'll share some photos of that sometime soon too.  I've really bitten off more than I can chew on this one folks.  But I'll leave that story for another post.

Tomorrow the baby will be 7 months old.  He has a checkup scheduled, so we'll be making the hour and a half drive to the doctor's office.  Hopefully he's gained enough weight that we can stop being so concerned about it, and decrease the number of doctors visits.  At $100+ a pop, we'll be glad to slip into the normal schedule of visits, especially if we can stop having to run all these pricy tests too.  But really, we're very grateful to have access to good healthcare and a doctor who knows what he's doing.  So I won't say a word of complaint about paying those bills.  It was all certainly worth it!  I do think he's gained a lot of weight, and definitely gotten taller.  He's really coming out of his shell and he's a lot of fun.  I'm thinking there must be something else that he is allergic to though.  He's still very itchy and though most of the rash has disappeared, he still has it on his back and his scalp.  It is showing up in more predictable places like you would expect eczema to though, so maybe it's just that rather than more allergies.  But when the doctor suggested trying three different formulas especially designed for babies with allergies, it didn't go well.  All three of them make him spit up a lot more - as in repeatedly until I'm sure he has lost as much as he had taken in.  I don't know what to do about that other than make sure to keep nursing.  Hopefully the doctor will have some idea.  And hopefully it doesn't include cutting any more staples from my diet.  I've done really well staying away from eggs, dairy and nuts.  Not sure what I would eat if I had to cut wheat (which I don't expect to as he tested fine for that) or soy - which I'm thinking is the next likely target.  There just aren't a lot of options for things like substitutes for dairy products that don't contain soy either.  I guess I will find out tomorrow what the next plan is.