Poor Baby

Ack, the rash got worse! Here's day 3 of the rash. I'm not really sure why I'm posting this. It's mostly just to document in case this happens again in the future.

Hopefully things will look better tomorrow...

Roseola

AHHH Baby Burrito has baby measles!! I have no idea how he contracted this given that he's been home all week with Ah Ma. Badge and I take him on short walks when we get home from work but we don't take him out of the stroller. It's really a puzzle where he picked this up.

Nevertheless, Big Baby Burrito Head woke up with a fever on Friday. It lasted all day despite the tylenol we gave him. It was gone Saturday morning only to be replaced by a red rash that slowly spread all over his body. After some frantic googling, I decided Roseola was the likely culprit. Also known as "baby measles" (not to be confused with normal measles which I guess is much more serious), Roseola starts with a high fever usually lasting 3-5 days. Once the fever clears, a pink or red rash appears for several days. Aside from the fever, the baby usually seems otherwise healthy, i.e. no runny nose, cough, or congestion. Although Max only had a fever for 1-1.5 days, he seemed to follow this pattern. No cold symptoms, currently covered in an unsightly rash. We called the nurse on call at the hospital and she agreed that it sounded like Roseola. Not much to do except wait it out.




The rash doesn't seem so bad in these pictures but it's really much more red in person. Poor Little Man looks diseased. At least he doesn't seem to notice. That's all that matters. To recovery!

Strawberry Cream Cake

Last weekend, we were invited to my boss's house for a BBQ/pool party. I made Strawberry Cream Cake, a recipe I had previously made a couple years ago and forgotten. It was just as delicious as I remember. Light but creamy. Great summer dessert.

Unfortunately, Baby Burrito was in LA at the time so we didn't get to bring him to the party. Too bad because he would have loved to be in the water. Nevertheless, there was much delicious food and alcohol to be had. Here's to summer!

Controlled Experiment

These last few days, Badge has insisted that Baby Burrito understands what "ball", "car", and "firetruck" mean. I kind of roll my eyes and say it's too early. If he reaches for the ball when Badge says "ball", it's likely coincidence.

Today, we did a controlled experiment where we set all three objects at the far end of the playpen and I held Baby Burrito at the other end. Badge would ask "where's the BALL" a few times, then I'd let baby go. Sure enough, he went to the ball and picked it up. We reset and repeated the experiment multiple times with all three objects. Baby burrito went right to the correct object each time!

Holy $h!t, my baby understands the English language!! Very exciting.

Garden

Thanks to my mom's care, the garden is going quite well. We've harvested many batches of green and red chard and lettuces to cook.

We've also got a couple apples that grew quite large (and tasty to boot). Our grape tree has several clusters on it that will hopefully continue to fatten up as the summer progresses, and our peach tree has a few peaches but they're quite miniscule. Sadly, we have just one lonely fig on our fig tree.

Lastly, I just noticed our large bird of paradise tree finally bloomed! Pretty cool.

At Last

Baby Burrito is finally going to sleep on his own without much hubbub! Over the last couple weeks, he's been crying less and less when I put him in his crib awake. These past few days, he hasn't cried at all! Even my mom, who notoriously rocks him to sleep is now putting him down for naps awake. Hallelujah. I thought this day would never come. Hopefully this continues.

Here's a picture of Baby Burrito dozing when he was just a week old. You've come a long way!

Baby State of Affairs: 10 month

Baby Burrito turned 10 months last Saturday. I can't believe how quickly the time has flown by! In the last couple of weeks, he's perfected the art of pulling himself up to stand, and gingerly lowering himself back down to seated (rather than plopping down). He's quite a little terror in the walker as he bounces back and froth grabbing anything he can get his hands on. When we let him crawl around on the carpet upstairs, he loves to chase after you like a little bulldog. It's adorable.

Last week, he started waving bye bye which was exciting. We haven't been really diligent about teaching him things so it came as a big surprise. Motivated by this recent trick, I'm now trying to teach him to clap. Other than that, he loves to sit in his playpen and flip through books. I think the color blue is really grabbing his attention these days.

On the food front, he's still eating 3 meals a day. We've started giving him little puffs from Whole Foods. At first, he was confused by the notion of finger foods but now he's become quite a pro in feeding himself. On the sleep front, he's still sleeping 11 hours at night and 2 naps a day (each anywhere from 1-2 hours). Thank God. Getting him to actually fall asleep on his own is still a challenge but if he stays asleep that long, I don't care haha.

In the last month, he's also started to say mama and ah ma (means grandma in Taiwanese). He only really says it when he's upset (like if he's crying because I put him in the crib awake), but hey at least he's saying it! Last weekend, we went to a friend's house for lunch and Max's first experience in the pool. I was nervous that he'd freak out but actually he seemed to really enjoy himself. It probably helped that the pool was super warm. Here's the fam!