Alessandro - 11 Months Old

Alessandro is 11-months old on Saturday. He has covered a lot of ground in his 10th month: he added 4 new teeth (the upper eyes and fronts), experimented and then mastered crawling, learned to turn around to go down stairs backwards and he's now walking...like a drunken sailor, but he's walking!
He loves getting into the cabinets, dumping out Grandma's recycling basket, playing hide-and-go-seek, throwing the letters from A & B's stools and any bath toys he can reach down the stairs, the Cars toy Elio gave him and in his sisters' new Fairy House. He will be forever embarrassed to find out that, when finally in the bathroom cabinets, his favorite thing to play with is Mommy's tampons! He plays with gusto and enthusiasm, catapulting himself into the throws of things. He loves to do what everyone else is doing and just sort of fit in. He now gets angry when he's fed food that looks different than what everyone else is eating - no more jarred foods or he'll screech! "I want what they've got -- whatever that is..."
Twice this week, he's proven he's trying to communicate. His first word, ironically, was the same as the girls': "dog." I found this very interesting since we don't have a dog anymore. He saw a dog at the park and again at Great-Aunt MaryAnn's house. He pointed and said very clearly, "dog!" He has also repeated back to me "done" when he's finished eating and doesn't want any more. He signs "done," too. He has also started waving hello if you tell him "hi" and is saying, "uh,oh" if he drops something. We can't believe that he'll be a year old next month!! It's gone by very fast...

Ava & Bettina Turn Four!

With an "In the Garden" theme, we welcomed Ava & Bettina's 4th birthday with a party with all their friends and cousins. Here's a video montage of all the fun.... Enjoy!

Photo and video editing at www.OneTrueMedia.com

Grandma Calls Her "Fire Foot"

Bettina at the Bothin Burn Center waiting room

We just came back from a great vacation to the Carolinas. We planned to visit family and friends, see some sites, and attend a beautiful wedding. There was one activity, however, that we didn't have planned in advance: the urgent care.
While visiting my cousin's house in South Carolina, Bettina decided to test the theory that a smoldering ash-fire is hot. There were no live flames since the slow vegetation burn hadn't been fed for awhile. Only a little rising smoke indicated that this was nothing more than a hill of grey ashes piled up high just like an autumn stack of leaves.
We didn't see it happen; all us adults were sitting together inside. However, the screaming told us even from there that something was seriously wrong. Three little footprints inside the ash-pile told us that Bettina likely jumped straight in middle then, after feeling the burn, stepped sideways out and then rolled to the ground where we found her. Quick cooperation brought all us adults together into a team: Paul carrying her into the house, me drawing a quick cold bath and removing her clothes, Jimee googling burn treatments and Barry flipping the yellow pages for hospital and urgent care phone numbers. It's uncanny how well everything came together.
We were lucky that the local urgent care was able to see her right away and was able to prescribe some serious pain meds. It was the first question I had upon entering and I repeated the request about every 3-minutes: "where are the pain meds!" She was wide-eyed and screaming at the top of her lungs in terror and pain....for nearly 2-hours straight! They helped us dress the wounds and determined they were not serious enough to keep her in the hospital - just off her feet. Good thing we traveled with the stroller!
When we got home, our pediatrician took a look and sent us to Bothin Burn Center in San Francisco. The doctor, Dr. Deweese (a burn reconstructive surgeon), is not a man with any bedside manner. In fact, I'm not sure he ever looked me or Bettina straight in the eye. He was direct, efficient, and, apparently knows his stuff. It's a good thing he has a great nurse! She knew everyone by name and her sunny and helpful disposition more than made up for his gruff ways.
The first month, we had a steady regiment of bathing her feet, trimming the skin, applying the salve and gauze, taping it off and putting a pair of socks over the whole thing for protection. Bettina calls this part "putting on the banjos (bandages)." Bettina was very sensitive about the handling of her feet and didn't want to share the bathtub for fear that someone would knock her wounds and hurt her. She started using her feet as a crutch for activities saying she couldn't do things because her feet hurt. The doctors assured us she was no longer in any pain. Perhaps just feeling a bit itchy with the healing. We let her complaints go for about 5-days, then told her she needed to start getting tough. I pretended not to hear her when I dropped her off at school, pretended not to worry when I dropped her off at gymnastics, and didn't let on that I was half-expecting a wince when putting on her ballet slippers. Would they be too tight? She danced, tumbled and played just like normal as long as I pretended everything was normal. A very complex mix of relief and anxiety.
It's been a couple of weeks now and, after a bunch of salves, creams and lots of rolls of bandages, Bettina's feet look much better. After weeks of trimming, they are no longer bubbled or wrinkled, and the grey-white skin has been replaced by fresh bright-pink skin. We need to be very careful with this new skin. I tell Bettina (who doesn't like the look of it) that it's skin that's just been born, so it looks different. We need to take care of it differently, as well. Lots and lots of sunscreen and socks for the next two weeks to boot.
At our last visit to the Bothin Burn Center, there were two other patients waiting, both in electric wheelchairs. One of them, a man in his early 30's, asked Bettina who she was visiting. She answered that she was there to see the doctor and asked me why his hand and arm were covered in a bandage. I answered, "The same reason your feet are in bandages, I guess." He then introduced himself. "My name's Ben. What's yours?" Bettina answered. "Did you get hurt?" he asked. "Fire," is all Bettina said. "Yeah, I guess we all know a little about that, don't we. Fire is bad, huh." "I jumped on fire," she answered. I saw a bond and an instant appreciation start to develop between this little kid and Ben as she started to tell him about her accident. There are fliers in the waiting room describing how Bothin Burn Center addresses all aspects of burn wounds, the emotional, social, recreational and even nutritional therapies burn victims may need. Even though we didn't make an appointment to cover these issues with the hospital, I could see that Ben and Bettina were working out their own. I so had wished I could somehow covertly record this moment. It brought tears to my eyes. It wasn't long before Ben was giving Bettina a tour of his wheelchair, allowing her to try all the buttons and sharing his burn story as well. Ben doesn't always need a wheelchair, just after his accident which happened a week before Bettina's. He will, thankfully, get better, just like Bettina, and will be able to give up his wheelchair as well.
We tease Bettina about her feet now. Grandma calls her Fire Foot and we talk about the lessons we all learned about staying safe, especially around fire. It has been an incredible learning curve as well as an opportunity to feel blessed.

Alessandro - 10 months

Alessandro is a huge cuddler with Mommy -- she is just eating it up! At 10-months, Alessandro is very good at cruising and standing up by himself for awhile, but less than a minute. He can cruise along furniture easily and has even attempted a number of times to walk forward between things. However, each attempt just ends up falling forward on his face. Once, he got one step and a sort of trip before catching himself on the table in front of him. I'll bet by 11-months, he'll be walking!
He is able to crawl up steps, like he did in this play-tube at the San Francisco airport. He went from standing next to the tube to pulling himself inside and crawling to the other side. he plays often with his sisters and other kids, giggling infectiously with games of chase and pee-a-boo. He loves to pounce on and grab people, particularly attracted to faces (noses and eyes). On our trip to Raleigh, NC, we visited with cousins including the kids' second-cousins Ella and Rudy. Rudy is about 9-months older than Alessandro and the two of them were hilarious the way the wrestled and giggled with each other. They were certainly talking each other's language: the language of "boy!"
Although he still uses his pacifier for comfort, he is finally getting better about sleeping in the night. He can start to comfort himself at night and now I'm up only once with him per night, usually around 2:30pm. He has also started drinking from a sippy cup (yea!), but not enough that he would take his milk-meal/snack from it. We use it for water during meal times. It's a good start.
Favorite toys: balls, the sea captain from his bath boat, and he is really starting to enjoy opening kitchen cabinets and pulling everything out. I am very soon going to get those baby-proofer door latches, despite Paul's concerns they will damage/change the cabinets too much. I have also had to tell Paul that we need to get a legitimate door handle for the kitchen pantry as Alessandro opens the unlatched door and will throw all the food on the floor as well. he has two very-tall teeth on his lowers and I've been waiting for those uppers for some time. No sign of them yet, although I blame general crankiness on their anticipated arrival.
This month, Alessandro attended his 5th wedding, my friend Natasha's in Raleigh, NC. Here's another picture with a bride and him. We've put his sportscoat to good use!

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