In all the craziness of Mio’s eye problems, I almost forgot to mention a milestone Mio was able to accomplish this past weekend! On Sunday, we were playing in a nursery room with a bunch of other friends’ children, and though I usually hold Mio, she was intent on joining the big kids in exploring the toys. She was particularly interested in a large wooden block with a wire maze on top. She grabbed a hold of the wires of the wire maze and pulled herself up to a standing position! Although I was spotting her the whole time in case she lost her balance, I let her support herself without my help. Although she wobbled a little here and there, she stayed standing like that for a couple minutes!
Holding onto the wires for support.
The knees are starting to give way a little, but Mio continues to hang on.
The past 24 hours have been rather stressful. Mio was having bouts of inconsolable crying early yesterday afternoon, which is uncharacteristic of her because she’s usually pretty mellow and her cries are usually more whiny. I’d only heard her cry like that when she got her vaccinations, so we were worried she was in pain. We then noticed when she was shifting her eyes that the inner corner her right eye had a noticeably red patch in the sclera. We freaked out and called the emergency hotline of our medical center, but after asking us a bunch of questions, the pediatric advice nurse told us that it sounded like Mio had just poked her eye, and that we could come in the next morning but there was no need to come into urgent care. Later in the evening, the rest of the whites of her eye had gotten pink, she was still crying a lot, and her eyelid had gotten so puffy from the crying that she could only open her eye halfway. We called the hospital a couple more times, and they just kept telling us to come in the next day, and that bringing her in and waiting for hours in the emergency waiting room would only add to her distress. While I understood that and wanted to trust them, at the time I was so scared for Mio that I got really frustrated and upset, and I couldn’t help but weep too as I held Mio and watched her cry herself to sleep in my arms.
My poor Mio, puffy-eyed from all the crying. :'(
The red patch in the white of her eye.
Dan and I took Mio to the pediatrician first thing this morning, and were told that the red patch was a subconjunctival hemorrhage and a possible eye infection. The type of hemorrhage happens when a small blood vessel breaks and bleeds near the surface of the white of the eye. and can be caused by sudden increases in pressures such as a violent sneeze or cough, among other things. It apparently will go away after a few days and does not require treatment. The fact that Mio’s eye was tearing a lot and getting pink and had some slight discharge was a sign that it could be infected, so the pediatrician prescribed us some antibiotic eye ointment to apply three times daily to both eyes (since it can very possibly spread to the other eye) until it goes away. I’ve already discovered that it is a pain in the ass to apply, because Mio starts screaming and clenching her eyes shut whenever I try to apply it to the inner portion of her lower eyelid as directed. But a mother’s gotta do what a mother’s gotta do! And after only two applications, her eye is already looking significantly better. Phew… I can finally breathe a relief.
Hopefully Mio’s eyes will be back to their beautiful normal state again… I miss this sweet, unclouded gaze of hers.
Ch-ch-ch-changes! The car seat and Snap-n-Go stroller that we got from Baby Trend earlier this year has been serving us well for the past few months since Mio’s birth, but we had been setting our sights on getting a big girl stroller for Mio for a while now. Although the car seat claims that it can hold up to 30 lbs of weight (and Mio is still under 20 lbs), she is already just barely fitting in it mass-wise. We’re pretty certain that in a month of two, she’ll be too large for it. So, being the prepared Super Mom — or rather, control freak worrywart — that I am, I started doing my usual extensive research on virtually every stroller out there to figure out what would be the best fit for our little family.
The Quinny Zapp Xtra intrigued me and was a top contender in my mind from the beginning. It was actually the original Quinny Zapp that I initially considered, due to the fact that when folded up, it is the world’s most compact stroller. (Having a stroller with a small footprint is important to us, since we wanted to be able to store it in our small duplex unit when necessary, and keep it in the trunk of our cute little Honda Fit for outings.) It has a sleek design and is originally from the UK. There were some major disadvantages to it, though — it was unable to recline, the sun canopy was not that big, and it could only face forward. That’s when I stumbled upon the updated version, the Quinny Zapp Xtra, which just released in the US market in March. The Zapp Xtra solves all those issues of its predecessor with a new seat that reclines to three positions, has an impressive sun canopy, and the ability to be flipped to be either forward-facing or rear-facing. I had never really thought about the option of having a rear-facing stroller, but I figured it’s nice to have the option, especially when the baby is still young. (I also recently read this article that away-facing strollers stress babies out. While the study’s suggestion that life in such strollers is “emotionally impoverished”and lead to “stressed babies [that] become anxious adults” seems a little extreme, the observation that parents tend to talk more to their babies when they are facing towards them definitely makes sense.)
The drawback to the Zapp Xtra is that the new-and-improved removable seat now adds a bit more weight and takes up a little more space than the original Zapp pushchair, but the frame itself is still just as compact. It can actually be used from birth (with a minimum weight of 5 lbs) to around 4-5 years old, with a maximum weight capacity of 50 lbs. The Zapp Xtra also comes with adapters so that you can attach a Maxi-Cosi Mico infant car seat to the frame as well, so we may get rid of our Baby Trend system and just go that route for any future babies. It’s great for travel (apparently, it’s so lightweight you can even take it on the plane as a carryon), and all around just seems like the perfect urban stroller.
Dan leaves for a business trip this evening to Orlando, Florida, and won’t be back until Thursday evening. I’m a little nervous because this will be the longest I’ll have ever been alone with the Mio, but my mother-in-law will come take care of her on the days I’m at work as usual, and I’ll just have to fly solo with Mio in the evenings when I get off of work, despite my usual exhausted state on such workdays.
We made the best of this long holiday weekend before Dan leaves, though — here is Part I of our eventful Labor Day weekend!
On Saturday, we decided to take a day trip down to Santa Cruz, for Mio’s first time at the beach! We picked up some delicious gourmet sandwiches at The Junket to eat for lunch at the beach, and headed down in the early afternoon. We hit a lot of traffic on the way (to be expected, because of the long weekend) so it took a while to get to Santa Cruz, but we promptly set up spot on the beach as soon as we got there.
Mio's first time at the beach!
She already loves the beach!
The cutest babe on the beach!
(Random coincidence: I realized afterwards that the romper Mio wore that day, which is a hand-me-down from my cousin Yuko’s daughters, is the exact same one that Sakura was wearing exactly a year ago when we visited their family on Labor Day weekend. Except that Mio is 5 months old here, and Sakura was 10 months old at the time. Oh, Mio… you are growing way too fast.)
Anyway, back to Santa Cruz: after about an hour, it started getting pretty cloudy. Not quite the perfect day at the beach that we had been anticipating. 🙁
We got Mio all bundled up, as it started to get chilly.
Our little spot on the beach.
Mio getting grumpy... time to leave!
So the trip to the beach started out nice, but it definitely could have been more enjoyable towards the end — hopefully next time, there’ll be more sun and warmer weather! We’re glad that we got to go to the beach before the summer’s over. Since the Bay Area typically experiences Indian summers, I have hope that we still have some warm weeks left before we enter the rainy season….
We also stopped by Buy Buy Baby in San Jose on our way back home, and picked up something we’ve been researching and eyeing for Mio for a while now. But we’ll save the big reveal for another day. 🙂
