Whining and Crying? Oh yes.

I'm sorry for the long absence, which I must first explain to be that I have been waiting post until I'm able to upload some great pictures I've taken over the last 10 days from my camera to the computer, but our hard drive is full. Just before the HD filled up, we finally decided on a backup solution (Elephant Drive from Amazon if anyone is interested) that would allow us to do backups off site, and use our current external HD for media storage (which we've been using as our backup drive). The inital backup takes weeks, since it's over the network, and we're waiting for it to finish transferring our pictures before trusting to remove one of the copies from our external or primary HD. Okay, so I'm pretty sure by now I've bored everyone but Jeff, so I'll keep moving. In summary, there will be picture-free posts until the backup finishes, which hopefully will be before baby boy comes.

Frankie had her 15-month well visit this week, and she's a whoping 20 lbs, 13 ounces. That puts her in the 20th percentile for weight, and our pediatrician said we don't need to start worrying, yet. Note the yet. That means momma has started to worry. How to fatten up a picky eater who subsists on pears, peas, chicken nuggets, nutri-grain bars, and oatmeal? She's even dropped off a lot of her cheese eating. Heather and I tried to brainstorm foods that would fatten her up, and I've tried most of them, but she refuses to eat any of them. I know I need to keep trying with her, but it is painful to watch avocado go to waste. Sarah suggested sneaking it in to her grilled cheese, which she does often eat, and we will try this tomorrow. The pediatrician did reassure me that we're doing all the right things to set good eating habits (regularly-timed meals, family dinner where she's served what we're eating, the offering of healthy choices). Sigh. Why do I have a feeling that she'll go through a phase in the future of wanting to eat nothing but grapes, or orange foods, or hot dogs, and that we'll have to put her on those Carnation instant breakfast protein shakes?

One of the other questions the pediatrician had for me was whether or not there was a lot of whining, crying, and tantrums throughout the day. Yes, yes, and yes. It got decidedly worse this week, which has me particularly concerned considering that baby boy should be here in less than 4 weeks, at which point I'll have even less time to try and decipher if she's growling at me and growing red in the face because she wants more to eat or wants me to read her another story, or just wants me to pay attention to her. In the last two days it's gotten so bad she's started screaming at me.

I feel that I have tried patiently to communicate with her and respond in a gentle, respectful tone that I wish her to emulate, but it's clearly not working. Starting today I have chosen to completely ignore any noise that sounds like a growl, scream, grunt, or whine, and I wait for her to use her words. For a while I was encouraging her to use her words while she whined at me (which just means if she makes any noise other than a horrible one I pay attention and try and figure out what she wants), but now I am ignoring her until she makes one of the alternate noises.

Sarah has also been helping me teach her signs, which we have made some progress with. We're starting with "more". I had a training session with her today and a bowl of ice cream (killing two birds with one stone, fattening the kid up and working on her communication), and by the end she was making some progress, and even signed "more" a few times at dinner.

I'll let you know how it goes. It's requiring a lot of patience and strength of will that most days this 36.5-week pregnant momma does not seem to have.