a fungus among us!

D. is at a point in his development where he appears to have multiple chins, but no neck. In fact, there is a neck there, but you'll very rarely see it, as D. has to be relaxed and leaning his head back just so for you to catch a glimpse. If you try to bend his head back to see it at other times, you're likely to provoke fussiness or at least a lot of wiggling.

A few weeks ago, I noticed some whitish buildup in the folds of D.'s neck that smelled a bit like sour milk. I figured it was, in fact, milk that had built up there from an earlier feeding with the bottle (when D. was actually still taking the bottle, those feeding almost always had spillage). Last week D. took his milk only from me, directly, and yet there was still whitish gunk building up even after I'd wash his neck/wipe it off as best as I could. It seems (says the pediatrician) that D. has a fungus as a result of moisture being trapped in the folds of his neck. We have some cream to use that will hopefully clear it up, but I'm also wondering how I can prevent this from happening again? There are so many neckfolds! It's hard to monitor them all when D. is so uncooperative. Am I just a bad mother?

In other news, in the past couple days, D. has really started looking at me, fixing his eyes on mine for minutes at a time. When I talk to him while he's doing this, he'll start smiling. It may be the sweetest thing I've ever seen.