Teething with a Vengance, Part Deux

I just spent the last 2 hours (maybe longer) trying to get my teething baby back to sleep. Belle's been acting strange for the last few days... fussy, only wants Mommy, fever... but it has been in spurts, not consistently "strange". I thought she had a UTI or something, but I guess it's new teeth coming in. She started this strange behavior Tuesday, and I took her to the doctor Wednesday since she had a fever (albiet a low one), but she checked out okay and the fever had even gone away by the time that she went to the doctor. Then tonight (well, technically last night at this point) she got a slightly higher fever (101.5... still not anything to be too alarmed about) but was acting like there was nothing wrong. She actually went to sleep for the night pretty easily, and although she woke up about an hour later, she went right back to sleep. And then there was 2am...

She woke up at 2, which isn't unusual, but she ususally goes back to sleep within 10 minutes... 15 minutes tops! But not tonight, 2 hours and 4+ plays of her lullaby CD (which I normally don't even play in the middle of the night) she FINALLY drifted back off into dreamland. She felt very warm, but the thermometer doesn't read that she has a fever (I don't trust my thermometer, it's very inconsistant... is there a good one that anyone recommends?). I gave her Infant Tylenol anyway. She ate until she was so full that she was turning away from it, so I put her back down in her crib nearly sleeping, only to return 10 minutes later to her sitting up crying hysterically. I noticed that she was chewing her fingers, so I gave her some of the herbal teething stuff and put some orajel on her mouth. I tried rocking and dancing her back to sleep, but she wasn't having it. After 2 hours, I finally went in and asked Daddy to take over. So he did, and I got back in bed only to get back up minutes later because she wanted Mommy. After squirming around a bit more, she FINALLY drifted back off to dancing and rocking to her lullaby CD. Whew!

So, now, I'm awake. I actually went to bed at a decent hour for a change, but I'm up again. Let's see... new things...

We tried stage 3 Chicken Noodle Dinner today (See "New Things" photo album). Annabelle wasn't so sure about the texture from the get-go, but after eating nearly 2/3 of the 6 oz jar, she threw up a little because the texture made her gag. So I guess we won't be trying any stage 3 again for a little while. :)

Annabelle is just getting faster and faster and into more and more things! She's a crazy girl! She's chasing the animals, standing up on anything that she can stand on, has no problem sitting herself up at all, sometimes crawls so fast that she falls on her face, and even stood up on me then let go of my hands today (she balanaced for a second, then fell right down on her butt so I don't think she'll be walking too soon). She plays with us like crazy, and it's so neat to watch her go get the toys (if you can call remotes, wires, phones, and live animals "toys") that she wants to play with. The other day she did the neatest thing... normally she laughs hysterically when we do something silly (or yawn, haha) to make her laugh, but I was taking a bath with her the other day and she was throwing her arms into the water to make a big splash then laughing hysterically at the reaction that it got out of me. She did it over and over again, and continued to laugh. That's the first thing that she's really initiated to make herself laugh like that. It was SO cute!

Annabelle is 7 months old now (well, she was on the 8th). I am tracking her growth and she's still in the 90+ percentile for length and average weight. I haven't made her 7 month digital scrapbook page yet, but hope to do that soon (but hopefully not because I'm awake in the middle of the night because of teething).

There are some new pictures published in the last couple of days of Belle just doing Belle things. The albums are "New Things" and "Just Belle". I've also added a couple of videos of Annabelle crawling to the Belle Podcast.

Ugh... I hear crying again so I better get back to Belle...