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It's pouring hard at the tennis club across the street.  On my side of the road, it's not raining at all.  Very weird!

My poor old left breast is having a tough time of it recently.  It took me 7 days of injections followed by 7 days of oral antibiotics to quell the mastitis.  After I finished all the antibiotics, I spent a week engaging in regular bouts of prophylactic breast-pumping just to make sure the infection didn't flare up again.  And I felt better by the weekend.  No more sore nipple and hot, prickly sensation in my breast.

However, I woke up at 5am on Sunday with a sore hard lump in my breast.  I didn't feel sick and I didn't have a fever so I figured it wasn't a recurrence of the mastitis.  After a quick search through my pregnancy books and a google search, I diagnosed myself with a blocked milk duct.

And how does one treat a blocked milk duct?  Massage, hot compresses, keeping the breast as empty as possible.  I diligently prodded, pumped, and poured milk down Petra for a few hours without having much of an impact.  I did another google search and found myself at AskDrSears.  On his advice, I tried pressure massage - pressing the sore spot with the heel of my hand - and shifting Petra's feeding position so that her chin pointed in the general direction of the sore area.  Sounds odd, but it worked.  Today the lump is almost gone.

I'm still pumping and beginning each feed on the affected side to help keep it empty and I hope I'll be completely better in a couple of days.

The cure though has its own problems.  Pumping the breast encourages it to produce more milk, which I have to then get rid of.  And at the same time, Petra's drinking less because she's eating more solid food.  So I have far too much milk which makes it more likely that I'll get another infection.  If my milk supply doesn't ease off, Petra's transition from a milk-only diet to a solid food-only diet could be a painful one for me.

I used to disapprove of lounges that were cluttered with toys.  If I ever had a baby thought I'd be able to resist the temptation to have lots of toys and to keep the toys I did have safely stashed in some hiding place.

Guess what?  My lounge is now knee deep in toys and baby paraphernalia.  We don't have huge numbers of toys, and no big items, because we knew we would be leaving Costa Rica before Petra got very old, but those we do have are scattered all over the place.

And I've discovered the pleasures of toy shopping - I get small things most times we're out because it's so much fun watching Petra's face light up when she gets something new and exciting.

In fact, I'm so focused on baby toys and games that when I noticed a sign the other day advertising Hot Toys, I thought, "Oh, I didn't know there was a toyshop on this street.  I'll have to check it out sometime."   It took me a few minutes to figure out that the "hot toys" on offer were not at all the right kind of toy for Petra.  D'oh!!!

Petra's changing more rapidly now than she has since those busy busy busy first few weeks of life.  Travis commented yesterday that she suddenly doesn't look like a baby any more, she looks like a little girl.  I've noticed the same thing.  She's bigger and busier and much more social.  She's no longer a baby who stays where you put her.  She's in perpetual motion and is making new discoveries daily. 

On Thursday she got up on her knees to pull one of her books off the sofa.  Yesterday she could balance on her knees and bounce up and down.  And yesterday she pulled herself to her feet for the first time.  She also took steps when we held her upright - something she hasn't done since the baby stepping reflex wore off.  Who knows what she'll do today...

Show us something happy.
Submitted by L33tchica.

Petra.  Any excuse to post some cute pictures.  Here she is this afternoon in her summer clothes.  (It's 29 degrees here today and horribly humid.)

Petra's 8 months old today.  We took her to see the pediatrician as a special treat.  She's getting bigger and bigger, gaining a steady 100 grams a week, and is now 8.4 kg.  She's 69 cm long, growing at the rate of about 1 cm a month - way down from the astonishing growth spurt of the first few months, but still on schedule.  She's sitting just above average on the growth curve.  Each time he sees her the pediatrician says, "she's big", "she's doing great" and she is.  She's happy, plump, and healthy.

While we were waiting to see Dr Pacheco, a woman came in with her toddler and a week old baby.  He was tiny, tiny head, tiny curled feet and hands, tiny little legs.  I can't remember that Petra was ever so small.  But she was.  The baby weighed 3900 grams at birth, about 400 grams heavier than Petra's birth weight.  How did we manage, I wonder?  How did we dress and carry and feed such a little creature?  But manage we did, even though neither of us had any experience with newborns.

Petra's very far removed from those first few days and weeks now.  She's mobile, observant, lively, and busy, busy, busy.  She has two teeth and more are on their way, top and bottom.  She's eating more solid food, although boobs are still best.  She's getting bolder with her crawling, making her way into the office and all around the lounge (and finding dust and dirt everywhere she goes, unfortunately).  She says dad dad dad and mum mum mum and it's now clear that she means Travis and me by those sounds.  Travis gets conversational chatty dads; the mums tend to come when Petra wants food, sleep, or comfort.  It would seem that Travis is for play and I'm for work - I'm intrigued that she sees such a clear distinction between our roles.

She's a much more complex character now.  She observes and mimics us.  Today she got her bib and wiped my chin for me, just as I wipe her.  So cute.  I can't wait to find out what she's got to say when she starts talking.  We have so much more to find out about her.

Travis read Petra a Hairy Maclary story last night.  It was a pretty gymnastic event with Petra doing her best to contribute by eating the pages and climbing all over Dad.

  We've been reading a lot of Hairy Maclary books because the language is so wonderful that they're fun for us as well as for Petra.  The author, Lynley Dodd uses really dynamic verbs and isn't afraid to throw in fun, unusual words like rapscallion, cacophony, and caterwaul, so the books are fabulous for reading out loud.  Some of our favourites are:

I've just bought one-way plane tickets from San Jose to Vancouver and Vancouver to Dunedin.  We're really doing it - emigrating to New Zealand.  I'm a bit nervous about the whole thing, but excited as well.

We're leaving here in mid-September, spending a month in Vancouver (I got a really good monthly rate for our accommodation - we're staying in an apartment right on Denman Street, in our old neighbourhood), then flying to New Zealand in mid-October.

We're taking the long way round because we need to deal with all the stuff we left behind when we moved to San Jose, and we want to spend some time with friends before we disappear off to the other side of the world.   I'm also planning to visit all my old haunts to say goodbye - sentimental type that I am.  Flying's gotten so horribly expensive that we might not get back to Canada any time soon, so I plan to soak up as much of the Vancouver experience as I can while we're there.

In honor of Bastille Day, show us something French.

Poor old Petra's teething.  She's dribbling and making squint-eyed, scrunch-nosed, purse-lipped faces, and sliding her tongue over her gums like a lizard.  She's also been pooing a lot more than usual - I'm having trouble keeping up with the nappies.  And her sleep is all disrupted.  We've been getting up several times a night for the past few weeks - something I'm not enjoying. 

Her two bottom front teeth are all the way through and I think more are coming because she's still in pain.  I hope they're quick about it because I don't like to see her so uncomfortable.

Here are a couple of pictures of the teeth hurt faces she makes: