Happy UN-birthday!

Maddie taking a picture of herself

Anna sitting up like a big girl.

Anna turned 6 months yesterday. She had her checkup today. She weighs in at 16 pounds 2 ounces, is 25.5 inches tall and, get this, her noggin is in the 79th percentile. She still isn't close to her big sisters 95th percentile noggin, but she's close. As John says "we make the biggest-headed babies". She had the last round of shots until her birthday. While we were at Anna's apt, we asked the pediatrician to check Maddie's ears (her weight was 39 pounds). Lo and behold Madeline has an ear infection in one of her ears. This marks the first time in 2.5 years that Maddie has been sick enough to require an antibiotic. Needless to say we were flabbergasted when we heard she had an infection. Oh well, once in nearly 3 years isn't bad! She'll be feeling much better by tomorrow once the antibiotic has had a good chance to kick in. I am still on mine so Ryan is the only one not on meds. Anna is by default since she's drinking my medicated milk. :)

Lots happened last week. Let's see if I can remember everything. Anna is sitting up really well. She's scooting, like I said last time. Maddie is writing several words. Maddie attended kindergarden "roundup" last Monday. She's not sure whether or not she wants to attend public or private school. We need to tour another private school to get more information. Maddie had fun with Aunt Mary and Teddy last Friday. They made a big sleepout bed from blankets and pillows on the floor of the living room. Tonight we met Joyce and Steve for dinner at McFosters Natural Kind Cafe (which is always a good time). Tomorrow we head over to the park for an Easter egg hunt. Maddie thought she might want to try riding her bike without training wheels so Ryan removed them, to which Maddie exclaimed "what is WRONG with this thing" and Ryan quickly replaced the training wheels. She's definitely not interested in trying that again for a little while. He did manage to get them a little higher so she can start inching herself to removing the extra set of wheels. She actually tried to get Ryan to take of the normal wheels because she thought all wheels were training wheels. Of course I had to ask "how will the bike move forward if there are no wheel left on it?" Hmmmm, now THAT is something.....

Scoots and Skips

Yet another week has gone by and several new developments are at hand.

I remember reading from cover to cover the American Pediatrics Association book when Maddie was a baby. With extra time on my hands I tracked her past present and future development through that book. I remember looking at skipping as a developmental milestone. Maddie enrolled in dance class at two and a half years old and they focused on skipping routinely. She did a couple skips here and there but really preferred galloping and was not interested in actual skipping. We moved from Lincoln and her new dance class never worked on skipping. This past week Madeline spontaneously started skipping. Real big actual skips. I am excited because it's the first time she's really done it. Her and I skipped most of the way to the park last week. Ryan and I commented that Anna will skip earlier because she'll be trying to keep up with Sissy. Ryan just called and said Maddie has a temperature and is fighting some infection. He was headed home now anyway to till up the garden and plant his starter plants. Today he's planting the first crop of starter plants, tomorrow he's planting cherry and pear trees and we head to a College of Architecture dinner.

On the other hand Anna is sitting up very well and scooting. She rolls and scoots herself all over the place now. She surprised the daycare gals because she was getting herself pretty far. As usual her infectious smile lights up the daycare. Jodi, the director, said in a hushed tone that Anna is her favorite despite her resolution to not have favorites. Anna tried carrots and green beans last week. She loves her oatmeal too. She'll be 6 months in just a few more days.

My big event for the week was a severely plugged milk duct. It was plugged for almost 2 full days. I visited the doctor's office twice and planned a trip to the lactation consultant. Luckily last night I was able to get it worked out. I sure hope I never have to deal with that again as it was painful and worrisome. I think it worried me more than anything. Anna did great throughout but was a little irritated. She was able to get milk from that side, but only about 25% of normal production. I am still very sore, but relieved that everything is flowing normally again.

This weekend we're going to a dinner and working in the garden and enjoying the rain showers and mild weather.

How many weeks?

I can't even remember how old Anna is today. She's a whole bunch of weeks old, or 5.5 months for the "week-challenged" folks like me.

She loves to grab her legs when she's on her back. The moment the diaper comes off her legs shoot up and she's trying to shove them in her mouth. So I usually let her have some toe time while she gets nice and aired out. She's a chunk monster, at least she looks like a chunk monster but she still measures in the 50% range. She tried peas last night and tonight. She likes them ok, but they're certainly not her favorite food thus far. She'll get some green beans in a couple of days. By the time she turns 6 months old she will probably have tasted everything she's allowed to.

Madeline is practicing for her recital. It's coming up pretty soon. I have to admit that I am a little sad to think about her recital because my mom is not here to see it. I guess she's watching from a different perspective. I hope anyway. The tap dance is similar to last years, but the ballet is different. She announced a week ago that she's going to be a dance (part time) when she gets older. I can't remember what the other occupation was going to be. I think it was a city planner. That's a staple for her and she's been saying city planner for well over a year now. Maddie visited the Omaha Symphony today and had a lot of fun. Ryan helped chaparone her class. He said it was a western theme. She enjoyed it last year too when I chaparoned and the theme last year was related to weather and foreign countries. They made rainmakers for it last year and this year made kazoos.

Last weekend she went looking at flower girl dresses with Mary. She had a blast trying on dresses. They didn't find the perfect dress yet, but that's ok since there's plenty of time. Before dress shopping we had the pleasure of going to the Amazing Pizza Machine with our friends the Kriegers. Ashley and Audrey are some of Maddie's best friends. They all had a great time. That was the day before we left for Great Wolf Lodge. It's been a busy week to say the least.

Ryan is presently installing a new dishwasher. We got tired of the existing dishwasher because it wouldn't clean anything. It had been getting progressively worse and about a week ago it didn't wash the glasses at all! Ryan's had to wash the dishes by hand for the last few days. Thankfully we were out of town for several days and didn't have any dirty dishes to wash. Regardless, the new one is almost in and we'll soon be in dishwasher heaven.

We're now trying to plan our fall vacation which is a road trip to Florida. We were originally planning a direct drive (via motor home) but now are considering swinging by the Liberty Bell, Washington DC, Newport News VA, then on to Florida. We're all looking forward to lounging on the beach while we visit our friends in Jacksonville. Nothing going on this weekend nor next week that I can think of.

Great Wolf Lodge

We just returned from a four day jaunt at Great Wolf Lodge. We had a great time and no one wanted to leave. Maddie informed me that we were to stay for fifty days. I told her that my work expected to see me tomorrow, so that just wasn't going to work. Poor girl shed a bunch of tears over our return. She definitely had a good time. We were so lucky that Aunt Mary was able to come Tuesday and stay through today. Mary had a good time at Legends mall because they had her favorite store; Forever 21. (she's a lot closer to 21 than I am) The top picture is of Maddie and Garrett (Kurt and Jamie Kraisinger's son) at the T-Rex restuarant. They spent some time in the excavation area. The others are of us at the lodge.

Anyway, we're headed to bed but I wanted to get a quick post on. I will provide a more detailed account later.

Imaginary Friend

On the way to school a couple of weeks ago Madeline tells me she has an imaginary friend. I've never had an imaginary friend, though I've heard about them mostly on cartoons and in the comics. I am very interested in learning more about these elusive "friends" so I asked her to tell me what she looks like. Madeline, very seriously, states "I don't know". Of course I have to ask "why" and she, very seriously, says "because she's invisible". Now we've always known Madeline to be a very logical and pragmatic child so this does keep in line with her general operative. But I am still very curious to know more about these invisible imaginary friends people sometimes have. I ask her what she says to Maddie to which she responds "nothing, she doesn't talk". Now I'm having a hard time keeping a straight face because I realize that Madeline must like the idea of having an imaginary friend and must have decided she was going to go ahead and get herself one of those "imaginary friends" just like D.W. Reed has on Arthur and some of the other cartoon characters have in stories we read. She then started to tell me some funny things about how everyone has two imaginary friends (a good one and a bad one); sortof like our conscience and the symbolic angel versus devil analogy. Madeline has a tendency to be extremely intuitive and very logical so this "imaginary friend" embdies just that. We've never talked about her friend since that day and I've come to realize that Maddie doesn't need any anti-psychotic medication and she's not seeing ghosts but in actuality she's just a person who wants to be like a cartoon caracter and thinks it would be cool if we all had a little extra good guidance and a little devil upon which to blame our mistakes; kind of like the rest of us. She did tell me her little naughty friend was attacking my good friend, so she's got a great imagination going on there mixed in with her very logical invisible, mute, imaginary friend.

Anna is 23 weeks today. She's had 4 experiences with cereal; all of which she enjoyed. It has not impacted her desire or ability to nurse well. She's beginning to get better balance when she sits up. She tripods and grabs for toys. One of her favorites is a rattle that has little pieces of pvc pellets inside and makes noise when she shakes it. She is a very happy content baby. We gave her a taste of sweet potatoes tonight. She loved them.

We've changed our routine a bit. I used to take Maddie to school and Ryan dropped off Anna. This caused me to backtrack on my way in to work, took me longer to get to work and used a lot more gas. Maddie had been asking Ryan to take her to school because she likes to ride in the car versus the truck. So now, Ryan takes Madeline and I take Anna. All I can say is that it's a wonderful change! I love only driving 5 minutes to work and Maddie loves getting to school before everyone else so she can do "work". She's starting to sprout; she's up a quarter inch since the last time I checked and her feet are getting bigger. Several pairs of shoes no longer fit. She brought home the cutest drawings yesterday; her people have curly hair! I need to scan and post these. I also have a drawing that she did a couple of weeks ago where she drew Arthur from memory, then wrote his name and her own (which is nothing new). She's been writing Dad, Daddy, Mom, Mommy and Anna recently as well.

Ryan is looking to make another trip to Virginia in the near future but a flight schedule has not been developed. In the meantime we're just enjoying the wonderfully warm weather beginning of spring.

Oh, I almost forgot! Tomorrow we're going to the Amazing Pizza Machine. It will surely be a blast!

First cereal!

We couldn't hold out any longer. After chatting with the lactation consultant about it this afternoon I decided it was time. Anna has been begging for food so tonight at dinner she finally had her first taste of rice cereal. She sucked it down like she'd been doing it her whole life. She was really mad when it was gone. None of it came back out at us. We started with a few spoonfuls of breastmilk and she gobbled those down well so we followed it up with the cereal. Anyway, I just wanted to share. At 5 months and three days she finally had some cereal.

In other news she weighed 15 pounds which is in the 50th percentile.

5 Months and counting

Anna is 5 months old today. I noticed a major change today. Her eyes are in the process of changing color. They're now turning into a hazel green just like the rest of us. I thought she might keep her blue eyes, but unless MY eyes are deceiving me hers have begun to change. She loves blowing bubbles and babbling. She is SO into our food I don't know if we can make it much longer. She got mad at me this afternoon when I ate my lunch. She seriously yelled at me.

In other news we're having a lovely blizzard today. We're up about a foot at this point. The wind is blowing pretty hard.

Maddie's big news is that she's growing. She gobbles down a good two or more helpings of dinner plus veggies and then asks for several fruits. We've already had dinner, treat, snack plus a banana and she just informed me that she would like watermelon and cantelope when she gets out of the tub. A couple of days ago she kept eating and eating right after dinner. Once it was all said and done she had three fruits, two bowls of cereal and an ice cream bar. That was immediately following dinner where she had two large helpings of the main dish and side dish of veggies. I just looked at Ryan and said "must be growing". So I will keep watch and let you know her stats when she sprouts. For now she's developing her root growth.