Yes, We Have a Third Tooth, and No, I Am Not Listening to My Pediatrician

On Friday, after months of waiting, one of Evelyn's top teeth is finally popping through! I thought she would be heading to kindergarten with just two bottom teeth : ) She was a bit fussy-just sensitive really-but slept fine, which is nice. It's so odd to see her take actual bites of food. Just the sound says "growing up" to me. My baby is definitely not a baby for much longer.

Now, on to Pandora's box. Last summer (actually on my birthday), the American Academy of Pediatrics changed it's longstanding recommendations that children between the ages of 1 and 2 drink whole milk and after 2 drink 2%. The new recommendations are for children to switch straight to 2% at 12 months and forgo drinking whole milk due to the childhood obesity epidemic. Now, to be clear, the recommendation is for children who are at risk for being overweight or who have a family history of heart disease or high cholesterol. However, I am not sure I know anyone who does not have some family history of heart disease or high cholesterol, so I think that pretty much applies to everyone.

At our one year appointment our pediatrician said quite specifically that we should start our children on 2%. I emphatically disagree and actually have already started giving Evelyn whole milk. Here is Pandora's Box, because I realize that I have many friends who are in the medical field and/or have very strong opinions on the health of their children, and may think I am wrong for not following this guideline. I welcome your comments, of course if you know me at all you know your arguments are more likely to make me stubbornly dig my heels in ; ) Now, it will probably surprise most of you (and you will either be relieved or disappointed) that I did not make a big stink about this to my pediatrician. But, it was the end of the day, I wanted to go home and watch LOST, and I honestly just didn't care! But, I'll share my reasoning with you.

The AAP is right to be concerned about obesity amongst children, it is truly horrible. And they state that the reason they have discontinued recommending whole milk to children, is not that they don't need the fat (fat is very important for brain development), but more because they are getting the fat elsewhere and don't need the added fat from whole milk. Well here is a duh moment for me. Instead of removing whole milk from our children's diets, wouldn't it make more sense to remove the ice cream, cheetos, and McDonalds? If I had to hazard a guess I would say the junk food is worse for our toddlers than milk is for them. Now, don't get me wrong, I love all those foods and in fact had two out of three of them just in the last week! However, I don't eat them often, I don't feed them to my daughter and when I do, it will be in moderation. There is nothing wrong with fatty foods. I've read the whole bible and although some rather embarrassingly large chunks of the old testament are a bit blurry, I'm fairly sure that sweets and treats are not a sin and won't send you to hell. I am a firm believer in chocolate cake, and since God invented the cocoa bean, I'm pretty sure He is too!

My guess is that the AAP, having said for years that children need to eat more healthy, having finally despaired and just decided to remove fat from children's diets any way they can. But it seems rather ironic to me that the underlying message is if we can't beat 'em join 'em. Okay, maybe not that extreme, but I do find it odd that as parents we should never stop telling our children the right thing to do, no matter how much they ignore us, yet here is the AAP doing just that! I know, I know, I have to live in the real world. But I can still disagree with the way it is!

So, Evelyn is eating dinner right now and enjoying her whole milk. Both Bard and I have parents/grandparents with cholesterol issues and heart problems. But Evelyn eats very healthy in every sense of the word. Most of the food she has is organic, no added preservatives, salt or sugar. She eats more than the recommended daily amount of fruits and vegetables, whole grains- in breads, cereal, oatmeal, and rice/soy cakes, and lean ground turkey or chicken. Her typical day is oatmeal with applesauce or bananas for breakfast, soy cakes for snack, some chicken with peas and bread for lunch, yogurt for snack, and chicken with peas, corn, and bread for dinner. Bard and I are not quite that militant but we eat pretty healthy, don't watch much TV and both have regular work outs and active lifestyles. Of course as she grows, if I see her developing a weight issue, I will adjust her diet and activities. I think it's sad that the AAP has to adjust what are perfectly fine guidelines just because many parents are unable to set good eating habits for their children.

Wow, I can see a lot from up on this soapbox, but I better come down now and go eat some cheetos!

A big fat crazy catch up blog.

Oops. Okay, I think my life is finally returning to normal so maybe I'll have a chance to blog a bit more! Work was crazy busy stress for a while, at worst I worked 46 hours in one week, which was just terrible. But last week was much better and since I'm sitting here blogging, this week must be off to a good start!

So, what have we been up to in the past month? Well mostly I've just been so grateful that Evelyn is such an easy going baby. I've carted her around everywhere, Ikea, home Depot, Value Village, and multiple coffee shops. She takes it all in stride and even gets excited when I start getting her ready. Yes, her little arms flap and she says "Go go go!" It cracks me up. She didn't seem to mind all the long hours I spent at the office either. Our church and office moved so I was there a lot packing, unpacking, cleaning, organizing, etc. I'm not sure why but somehow most of the stuff our church has accumulated in the past five years came under my jurisdiction to take care of and you just wouldn't believe what an odd amount of junk we had! Trust me, it's all gone now, I'm not really known for being a pack rat! Evelyn of course also helped test out all the new toys we bought and liked the plastic wrapping the best. All this while we listened to Cold Play and Slumdog Millionaire. She was rarely fussy and seemed pretty happy to be in different places with different people. The best was when I set up a pacnplay in the office bathroom, plugged in a stereo for music, turned out the lights and shut the door. She went right to sleep and stayed that way for two and a half hours! Now that is a good baby!

Other than being a trooper about work, she has been demonstrating some other fun habits. She is definitely a daredevil child. She loves to be thrown up in the air, spun around, and turned upside down, she laughs until she can't breathe-it's hilarious. She comes by it quite naturally cause as many of you know (sorry Melissa) I love scary roller coasters, they make me laugh out load!

Since she is almost a year old, we have hit some new developmental milestones that are fun as well. She has started drinking real milk (although still nurses/has some formula). That step seems so big to me! She took right to it and didn't seem to mind the difference at all. Unfortunately she has not continued to be so adjustable with other eating habits. She used to eat anything I put in front of her, but I can now see her developing a preference for food items with a certain taste or texture. She doesn't seem to mind slimy banana pieces, but won't eat pieces of tomato. However she loves spaghetti and dried tomato, so I think it's just the raw ones that bother her. She still eats really well, but there are other issues like that one which are just plain confusing to figure out!

She is also moving like crazy. Gone are the days when she would stay still while I changed her diaper. Now she seems determined to fold herself into a pretzel while I am trying to get a diaper on her before she pees everywhere! She has also discovered that it's much more fun to move all over the house than to sit one place. I never knew my floors were so dirty and it's impossible to keep them clean enough for her, she is just going to have to eat gross things and survive! And if I don't know about it, I'll survive too ; ) but nobody tell Bard cause he would freak out! : ) She doesn't crawl all the time but does a mixture of crawling, scooting, rolling, and the army crawl on her belly. I don't know why, but the Dr said they don't even consider crawling a developmental milestone anymore and she'll probably go straight from that to walking. Yikes. The funniest thing to see is that she loves to lay on her stomach and push up, so that she is just on her hands and tips of toes (yes, a man push up although I'll have you know I'm perfectly capable of doing them too!) She'll sometimes walk her hands back toward her legs so it almost looks like she is bending over and touching her toes. It cracks me up! I do love that even though she moves everywhere now, she is still often content to sit on my lap and play and she'll still sit on the floor and read books for quite a long time. : )

She has definitely not gotten quieter in the past month! She talks constantly and if you don't pay attention she will take it up a notch! She says several words now, hi and yay seem to be her favorite. Often when I go in to get her from her nap she'll say "hi yay hi yay!" over and over again when she hears me open the door! She also says, bye bye, sock, car (of course), yum, yuck, and book. And maybe more, I can't remember. We're working on please and diaper. She recognizes many other words and it's so funny to say them and see her stop what she is doing and pay attention to what we are saying. Not sure how long that will last though!

My favorite is experiencing different things with her. I love taking her for walks and reading to her. I love bringing her to the Y with me while I teach dance cause the girls love her and she loves them. I love watching her get excited when she hears Bard come home. I love seeing her face light up when she sees someone she knows (or doesn't know for that matter-no stranger anxiety yet, cross your fingers!) And I love playing new games with her and seeing how she'll respond to something different.

All in all, even with all the craziness, it was a good month because I love my family and am luck to have them.

Happy Eleven Months!