Sorry some of the pics are a little fuzzy, but he just doesn't look like himself with flash photography. And he moves so much that it's hard to get a flash-free picture without some motion blur.
He's getting to be a big boy, huh? We had a good week. No dairy-tainted milk=less colic! I can't wait until I can eat what I want, but it's really worth having a happier baby and savings hours of crying to just avoid dairy. I tried the Rice Dream Ice Cream, since I like cooking with that brand rice milk. YUCK! It tasted like the inside of a brown paper bag, with just a hint of chalk. Disgusting. I'll just wait for regular ice cream. I've also heard that the baby formula that one must use if the baby is allergy to soy and milk protein (not lactose) is super expensive, so I'd rather do some diet elimination and breastfeed than to do that.
Apparently milk protein intolerance is sort of common. It passes through to the mother's milk, as does soy and some spices and acidic foods. Most babies allergic to milk will also be allergic to soy (goodbye my sweet Tofutti). There is an elimination diet where you start off (like a baby) eating 1 thing at a time and adding things and seeing what sets them off, but I'm not doing all that. It became really obvious that he was allergic to milk when he got a rash at the end of Aunt Carolyn's stay after I ate SEVERAL bowls of Breyer's Ice Cream (left over from the baby shower) for 4 days in a row. Once I got off dairy and gave it a few days, he was a different baby. I tested it out again by trying to sneak in some small dose of dairy and he was off the chain, once again. Then when I tried to replace dairy with soy, I got milder colic symptoms, but he was still crying WAY more than usual.
So now I eat a bunch of bland junk. I mistakenly ate pizza when friends came over last week and we paid for it the next day in an added hour or two of crying. The things we do for our children. I'll be sure and mention it in our home movies so the kid can see all this when he's older.
I'm currently working on editing his birthday video, in between his crying jags. It's taken me 2 weeks, but I'm almost done. I'll post it here probably when it's done with a link from youtube or something. I love technology. We webchat with Mark's parents and my friend Kenya. I get to blog and share everything with you guys. I'd never go back to the pre-digital age and film! I did have to order some real pictures from Ofoto/Kodak Gallery this week because they were going to delete my pics since I hadn't purchased anything in 2 years or more, but it's a small price to pay to have backups of all my pictures elsewhere. Their purchase requirements are also SUPER low. I think it's $4.99 worth of purchase per year for anything sub 2 GB of space. Above 2 GB, it's $19.99 which still isn't hard to do. And as much as inkjet paper and ink cost, I'd rather pay $0.15 per photo than to fool around with that.
(Check this post again later because I'm going to post pics of all the cute stuff mentioned in the next paragraph soon - didn't want to procrastinate the update)
People are so kind. Presents are still rolling in. I'd heard someone riff on why it's unfair that people who are getting married, who're lucky enough to find love and already have what matters most, get further rewarded by presents raining down. It's funny, but it's sort of true. However, I feel differently about baby presents. I didn't really need much when I got married - we had two of everything already by moving in together. But with a baby, it's the opposite. You have nothing that you need, and especially because I was on bed/house arrest for more than 2 months, I couldn't even really get around to buy anything for the baby myself. So the gifts have been life savers and basic necessities. I think people, especially those who have kids, know the upheaval and financial turmoil you're about to undergo and try to smooth it over by taking out some of the sting!
My neighbor with the 5 month old left me a little bag of baby gifts on my doorstep a couple of days ago. Marks's Aunt Margaret knitted us the CUTEST baby blanket, made of really fabulous yarn, and got him a lil' customized teddy bear with his name on it. My friend Matt from DC/Discovery Channel (we moved to LA together) got Myles another bath blanket. My friend Nancy from BET and Discovery Channel got Myles a big stuffed hippo chair. My sister Pam's friend/coworker Monica bought Myles some SUPER cute, super preppy summer clothes (gotta photograph and blog them so y'all can see), which is great because we don't really have that many 3-6 month clothes yet (lots of 6+ months) and not that many summer clothes at all, even though he'll probably live in onesies unless we crank the A/C per Mark's body temperature! So far, the baby's cold like me.
Speaking of parental attributes, the baby seems mellow like Mark, but social like me. He really liked our company the other day. Our friend from BET, Jude Pago, and his wife Tracye (also our friend) came over with their 4 fabulous kids. That's a lot of people and a lot of noise. And guess what? Myles loved it. He stayed awake and interacted, didn't get fussy and let Tracye and Jude hold him. He kept reaching down Tracye's shirt, though! LOL. Old habits die hard. Their littlest child kept calling him "chocolate chip" which was extra funny because she is the one who's a real chocolate chip. She's the cutest thing and helped out at the baby shower, where everyone kep remarking on how adorable she is. She's a tiny little kid, like Bianca was when she was a baby.
Myles isn't gonna be tiny. He's pretty long and has fairly big hands and feet, so he'll be tall. And he was watching the Laker's game with Mark and Jude when they were over - no kidding. His head turned toward the tv and wouldn't look away until commercial!
