Shots, the Lake, and a Bouncy Seat

Paxton had his four month check-up on Friday.  Jared was able to take off work to come with us this time.  Paxton's appointment was at 2:30 and we were planning on heading to the lake pretty soon after he was done.  Jared and I had talked it over and done some research on rotavirus.  Since he had that terrible reaction to the shot last time, and the risk of him getting seriously sick from rotavirus were fairly slim, we were planning on asking Dr. Campbell if we could skip the shot.

Paxton weighed 15 pounds this time and was 26 inches long.  Dr. Campbell said he was in the 50th percentile for height, weight, and head.  He was in the 95th percentile when he was born and for his first few weeks, but has dropped since then.  Dr. Campbell said that was perfectly normal and that as long as his height and weight were close to each other percentile-wise, he was doing great.  He also talked to us about starting rice cereal and then moving to baby food.  He said we could start rice cereal anytime now.  He talked to us about the benefits of starting right at four months and the benefits of waiting until 6 months.  From that, Jared and I decided to start with rice cereal pretty soon and wait to start baby food until 5 months.  I think Paxton is ready for more food which is why we are going forward with the rice cereal.  At the same time, we don't want to rush him through infancy so we are going to wait on the baby food.

After all that, Dr. Campbell asked if we had any questions before the nurse came back to administer the shots.  I braced myself and asked about skipping the rotavirus vaccine.  We had prepared ourselves for Dr. Campbell to list all the reasons the vaccine was important and talk us out of skipping it.  Instead, he asked what our concerns were.  I told him that we didn't want to go through this horrible 10 days that we had gone through after the two month shots.  He asked if Pax was in day care.  I said no.  He asked if Pax went to a big church nursery.  I said no.  He said that those two places were the most dangerous places as far as contracting things like rotavirus, and that since Pax wouldn't be there we really didn't need to worry about the shot.  He said that the first shot might have boosted his immunity and that if he made it past the first winter without contracting it, he was pretty much guaranteed to skip it.  It was such an amazing feeling to have a doctor that actually listened to our reasoning and let us skip the shot without an ounce of guilt.  It really just reinforced or feelings that we picked the right pediatrician.

Pax before his shots

Once his shots were over, we headed back home to load the car for the lake.  Packing for a trip with a baby is kind of like moving....we had a full car.  I was a little nervous about how Paxton would act on the way to the lake.  He has been getting bored in his car seat lately which makes him fussy, and we were about to be in the car for two and a half hours.  He did great.  He slept part of the way, and then just chilled in the back for the rest of the way.  I think he likes the sound of Jared's truck.

Friday night and Saturday, we had Jared's dad's lake house to ourselves.  We didn't want to take Paxton out on the boat...partly because it was so hot and we knew we didn't want him in the water after only two rounds of shots...but mostly because I have a recurring nightmare of dropping him in the lake and losing him.  I don't think I'm going to be able to take him out on the lake until he can at least kind of swim.  So we just hung out and watched some movies and played with Paxton.  We went to the pool on Saturday afternoon and Pax got to use his pool float.  He liked it for about 10 minutes and then was ready for a nap.  I don't know what it is about those shots, but both times he has slept a ton the next day.  Paxton did great at the lake house.  I was concerned about him not sleeping in his pack and play because he won't take naps in there at home, but he went right to sleep.  Sleeping in the same room with him was not ideal...he is a noisy sleeper and I woke up in the middle of the night a few times to him talking.

Here are some pictures of Paxton playing at the lake house: 

Reading about Elmo

Up to no good

Watching Scarlett play

 On Saturday night, Jared's dad and Elaine got to the lake house.  They watched Paxton while Jared, Scarlett and I hit the lake.  We didn't think we were going to get to go out on the lake this year since we had Pax, so we were so lucky that they offered to do that.  It was also nice to know that he was in good hands.  After Grandpa Mark cooked some amazing steaks for dinner on Sunday night, we loaded up and headed home.  Paxton slept the whole way home (except for a brief bottle break in Shawnee).  It was a great family vacation.  I was so relieved that everything went smoothly.



We have been talking about getting Paxton a "stationary walker" for a few weeks now.  Most of them are recommended for four months and up so we were planning on buying him one for kind of a reward for his four month shots (not that he sees any correlation....).  After reading tons of reviews online, I realized that this was probably one of those things that we would have to wing.  Most of the reviews were individual babies reactions to each seat: "Jerome didn't like the toys", "Christy loved the toys", "Penelope slumped over in this one", "Storm was able to stand up at three weeks old"...so we took Paxton to Target and let him try out some floor models.  We had a budget in our minds and we started by trying him in the ones that fit in our budget.  There was one he seemed to like more than the others, but he wasn't as excited about it as I had expected.  I quickly glanced at the more expensive ones and saw one that I thought was adorable.  I pulled it down for Paxton to try and he loved it.  He played with all the toys and had a huge smile on his face.  Of course, once we saw how much he loved it, we had to get it for him.  Oops.  Well, after getting it home and putting it together (not an amazing experience....why do baby items have the most poorly written instructions of any other product?), Paxton tried it out:
 

 He really likes it!  It's the Fisher Price Jumperoo-Luv U Zoo.  We bought it without reading a single review, which I usually don't do for baby items...so we'll see how this goes.   

For Jared's version of our lake trip and some neat pictures, go here.