Bring on the salsa and queso

We're still enjoying some holidays (or at least Chad is) so I am not fully back to a regular schedule yet, including posting, and by now much of my Christmas is just a distant fog so it will never likely see the light of day. It's gotten me thinking I need to get a few comments down for posterity before I lose them entirely.

There's been a lot going on with Mallory lately. Besides being the carrier of the flu bug that decimated our entire family, she has recently developed a terrible case of dry skin/eczema/psoriasis. I don't know exactly what it is but she is rough and scaly and red all over. Poor little thing. As luck would have it, our doctor's office has been shut down for the past two weeks and I haven't felt the need to drag her into the ER for six hours, so we're making do. She has her 9 month checkup on Tuesday so we'll have it checked out then. At least it doesn't seem to be bugging her.

She totally lost her appetite for 7-10 days after she was sick. For a while there I was coddling her and feeding her nothing but applesauce and yogurt since that's all she wanted. Lately I have been trying to push the vegetables and other good stuff again without much luck... she is finnicky and simply won't have it, especially if it is the slightest bit chunky (like the stage 2 foods). Then, on New Year's Eve, we were out to dinner and of course the wait for our food was forever... and we had long since run out of the baby food I'd brought for her. So I started handing her french fries and pizza crusts (yep, I am KFC Gravy Mom, no denying it anymore!), and she gobbled them up. Yesterday we were having chicken quesadillas for lunch and Liam (who is now battling a cold and feeling peckish) didn't want any of his - so I handed them to Mallory - she inhaled them too (that's what she's eating in this photo). I am starting to think she doesn't want mush and should go straight from the purees to big people food.

Finally, the best development of all - the past two nights she has slept STRAIGHT THROUGH and it's all because, about a week ago, we decided to let her cry. Which she did, let me tell you - for two nights she wokes up for her normal feeding and bellowed for more than an hour before settling back down again. Then for a couple of nights she woke up 2-3 times and settled herself after just a few minutes each time. And since then, it's been blissful, solid sleep (except for the rest of us all coughing and hacking all night long). Ahhhh. It's been nine months in the making, and I'm so happy that the day has finally come.