I found picture all the older kids having their first Cereal Experience except Rebecca. I know we had some sort of camera action at her first meal, so I'm thinking we must have videotaped it. We'll have to be content with a picture of her a few months later attacking a baby zwieback cookie with a vengeance.
Cassidy
Braden
Rebecca
From this afternoon's annual Easter Egg Hunt at Nathan's parents' house. And lest you think my baby is perfect: I totally photoshopped a little crusty out of her nose. :-)
This was the first time she had rice cereal. She loved it, ate the whole bowl, even smiled...
But now, a week later, she cries and sticks her tongue out at cereal time. We'll let her take a break and try again in a day or two. I wish I could say I blame her, but have you tasted that stuff? There's a reason people don't keep eating it past infancy.
While looking for pictures of Rebecca this afternoon I came across one that reminded me of a picture of my mom when she was little. Many people tell me Rebecca looks just like a 'mini-Brenda,' but now I'm thinking she looks more like my mom than me at the same age. But it could be just splitting hairs, because I've always been told I look like my mom too.
Rebecca, age 3
Grandma Belliston, age 4
Brenda, age 3
I tried to choose pictures with equally orphan-y hair so you could see an apples to apples comparison. :-)
Just in case anyone has been looking for a Gone with the Wind cookie jar, they're available at Target.com for $90. Don't all log on at once.
During my pregnancy with Rachel I enrolled in our health insurer's Maternity program, which involved monthly phone calls with a nurse caseworker to keep track of my pregnancy progress and manage any complications should they arise. I had been involved with a similar program with a prior insurer, and at the end they sent me a $25 JCPenney gift card as a thank you. I assumed this program would be have a similar end-of-program gift.
On the last phone call, my nurse caseworker told me I would receive a Thank You gift in the mail. A few weeks later it arrived. I unwrapped the package to find a soft white fleece baby blanket with a satin band...and a large embroidered insurance company logo in one corner!!!
Maybe they were trying to say, "Wrap your baby in the warmth and comfort of having health insurance." I thought it was weird.
I get kudos for the most effective use of blogging. Although it was completely unintentional, the culprit behind the Garage Graffiti incident of '09 was discovered when said culprit's mother read my blog! I'm not going to name any names, but since Braden's name was misspelled, we knew it wasn't our own son. (Believe me, I thought about that scenario before moving on to other suspects!)
A few days after my post, a friend from the neighborhood brought her sheepish child over to apologize. He or she was very cute and said, "I'm sorry I drew on your door." The mother knew her child had been in possession of a red dry erase marker (which would explain why it was so hard to get off with the wet Mr. Clean Eraser) and got suspicious after seeing the picture I posted. After a few pointed questions she was able to get the truth about the incident. Nathan had gotten most of it off, but since my friend wanted her child to have the experience of 'making restitution,' they touched up the garage door with some white enamel paint and her son/daughter bought me a new box of Mr. Clean Magic Erasers to replace the one we used up cleaning off the door.
All's well that ends well.
Valentine's Day...
A few weeks later...
Spring hasn't sprung, but it's beginning its yearly tease.
We have raised a family of audiophiles, to be sure. The funny thing is, our kids know their tastes. Braden's favorite song is Enter Sandman by Metallica. Cassidy likes Maroon 5. Rebecca is only three, but she has a top ten list that she requests by name whenever Nathan hooks his ipod up to the car stereo. Seriously. She like The Killers (Human), Pink (So What), The Rolling Stones (Paint it Black), Rihanna (Umbrella), Beyonce (Single Ladies, which she calls "The Sing-a Ladies"), Red Jumpsuit Apparatus (Face Down), Michael Jackson, even some instrumental stuff like Rodrigo y Gabriela (Diablo Rojo) or Eric Johnson (Cliffs of Dover.) Allowing for her youthful indiscretions - we all know Umbrella isn't a lasting classic - I won't deny the girl's got taste!
I took Rachel in for her 4 month well-child visit last week. Much to my surprise, I found out that she is not gaining weight like she should be. I have never had a kid (or, let's be honest, a family member) have trouble with gaining weight. I've had many comments over the past 3 weeks about how she looked 'so little' or 'very delicate' compared to the other babies in our neighborhood that are her age. I didn't think much of it, because Braden and Rebecca were (and are) tall for their ages, so they looked healthy but thin. I thought the same thing was happening with Rachel. At two months old she was 70th percentile for height and 40th for weight. Last week she was 83rd percentile for height and only NINTH percentile for weight!!! I was shocked to find out that in two months she had grown like two inches but she had only gained 10 ounces!
Everything else about her development is normal, so the doctor suggested she drink more formula and that we mix it to a 'high-calorie' concentration with an extra scoop and a half per bottle. That means she now gets two bottles a day and I only nurse her two or three times a day. In two or three weeks we'll start baby cereal, which I expect will help a little. Until then, I gotta make a run to Costco tomorrow, because I'm already running out of this:
I'm totally on board with helping her gain weight and be healthy, but I'm a little bummed about the extra $$$ outlay.
