For the Grandmas: 3/1/11

It has been far too long since I posted pictures of the girls. Like, a month. A short month, but still, a month. This might be a long post.

Let's start with Julia. Winter can be hard on a kid, and Julia is no exception. While we've handled it pretty well I think, she is still very excited for spring. She wants to go to the park, she wants to play outside, and I can't blame her. I want to get out and go walking, feel the sunshine, go hiking (flat hikes are still hikes, right?), and maybe even eat on our balcony. Doesn't that sound delightful? Take a couple of chairs out on the patio and enjoy the warm weather. But, it's still winter. So we've had to get creative.

The other day we played The Clip Game. This was entirely of Julia's invention. She got these little clips from her cousin Lauren (I quietly rue the day we got these clips, or as I call them, choking hazards), and she carries them around with her in a little baggie everywhere she goes. She loves them. So The Clip Game is when you take all the clips and put them in her hair.

We also did some pudding fingerpainting. Holy smokes, I had no idea this would go over so well. We minimized the mess by putting her in the highchair, and putting plastic wrap over the highchair tray, and she wore a smock. But it was so much fun I think we'll do it again.
And finally, Julia started checking out books the other day. Do we have another librarian in the family?

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Then there is Ella. In the past month Ella has cut a tooth, learned to crawl, and been to the doctor twice. It's been an eventful month. I realized that I never posted on here about her crawling, just on Facebook, and now I feel bad. I always felt that my blog was the REAL way I posted information about our family, and here I've sold out. Well, no more. Blogging is back, baby! So, here is the video of Ella beginning to crawl.

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While she can get up on her hands and knees and move, she's still not coordinated enough to be fast about it. She much prefers her army crawl, which is usually performed with a toy in one arm. Ella is a girl on the move. She wants to get into EVERYTHING. Well, everything except for toys. Toys are lame. Paper, crayons, books, shoes, THESE are the things she really wants.

Also, she wants to put EVERYTHING in her mouth. Well, everything except for food. We'll have none of that garbage. I really want to know how she knows what is food and what is not. We even gave her one of those fresh food feeders, thinking that it certainly doesn't look like food, but that was a big no. A look of disgust was all she'd grace us with. Then she went to try and reach the electrical cords. Winner.

("See, Mom, this is a fake strawberry. I'll gladly eat that. None of this real food business.")
(This is after giving her water on a spoon. She was none to happy about that one. IT WAS WATER.)

In fact, her hatred of food got so bad that a couple of weeks ago she decided not to nurse either, her only source of nutrition up to this point. I fed her at 5am, and then she refused to partake all day. She's 7 months old. This is not good. So I called the doctor, just to see what they thought. She had no other symptoms, wasn't even fussy really, just wouldn't eat. Of course, this happened on a Friday. So when I talked to the doctor's office, it was 4pm. The nurse was mostly concerned that she could be dehydrated, and with a baby that young you'd just hate to miss something like that. So off to the Urgent Care center we went! What a joy! 2 hours later we saw a doctor. She really didn't know what to tell me, but did discover that Ella had a low grade fever, so she tested for a UTI, just in case. Holding down your baby while they catheterize her is great fun, let me tell you. Anyway, she set her up on an antibiotic and sent the culture off to the lab. Monday morning they called to say it came back negative, but we needed to follow up with our regular pediatrician. The follow up was last Friday. He was a little concerned about her weight gain, so we're going back in a couple of weeks to make sure she's eating enough. In the mean time, I'm to push solid foods. At least try to feed them to her 3 times a day. The thought of all that mess for zero bites makes me weary.

I feel that I should mention that the past couple of days, Ella has decided that solid foods aren't that bad, and has actually eaten them 3 out of the last 5 times I've offered them. Maybe we're finally over our food aversion.

But in general, she is a pretty cute kid.

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And last but not least, a couple of random pictures. Because everyone wants to see Clark in a fairy headband!


And I know you are all dying to know how we deal with our lack of counterspace.


Oh yeah, and Clark had a birthday. Read more here. (I don't write about these things on my own blog, I write on HIS blog.)