Quote of the Day

Tucker: I don't like white sugar, I like chocolate sugar.
Me: Chocolate sugar?
Tucker: Yes, the brown kind.

Pictures

When we were in Florida, my mom and I took the kids to Sears to get their pictures taken. It would've been a horrible experience if I had been the sole adult, but with two of us it worked nicely. Unfortunately, Molly was tired so it was tough getting good pictures of her. But the photographer was amazing (if you're ever in Cocoa Beach, go to Sears and ask for Roni!).

My Baby is Four Months Old

Little Molly is already four months old. Time is certainly flying in our house. She was 15 lbs, 10 oz at the doctor's this week--90th percentile (75th in height)! Tucker was a pound and a half bigger than her at this point, but she seems plenty big to me. She is already wearing some 9 month clothes--in fact she's grown out of some 9 months outfits that run small! It's hard not to miss outfits, we've already missed a couple that ran smaller than advertised.

She continues to be an amazing sleeper. She goes to sleep at 6 pm and usually sleeps to about 6 am, with one dream feed before I go to bed. She is alert enough to make sleeping when we're out and about difficult, which means she usually doesn't get a good morning nap. She makes up for it in the afternoon, though, with often a 3 hour nap (today it was over 4 hours when we finally woke her up).

She seems very interested in food. She leans towards our forks and drools when we hold her while eating, so I decided to give her solids this week for the first time. She is not quite sure what exactly they are, but is very enthusiastic. She opens her mouth and leans towards the spoon, though she hasn't quite mastered swallowing versus letting it all dribble out. She is much better than her brother about eating from a bottle, though she prefers nursing.



Her favorite activities are jumping in the doorway jumper and watching her big brother. The easiest way to make her smile is to repeatedly kiss her chubby cheeks. At Bible study the other day she was mad because she was tired but wouldn't sleep. All it took for her to calm down was to find another 3 year-old boy for her to watch (Tucker was at preschool so he was not available) and she instantly quieted. She also loves music. The week before at the same Bible study she was mad because she was tired and wouldn't sleep. All it took then was for someone to turn on a CD and she immediately relaxed and chilled for the whole song--and then fussed as soon as it was turned off. Not that her fusses are really all that bad--she remains an amazingly relaxed little one.

Sometimes you get what you pay for

Case Study: batteries

Our smoke detectors are always beeping about low batteries. It drives us nuts. They beep intermittently so it's hard to locate the beeping detector until it's 2 am and you can't get back to sleep because a smoke detector somewhere is beeping.

I devised a new system to thwart our battery problems: I would change all the batteries on the same regular schedule, which I decided would be New Year's and the Fourth of July (everything says to replace smoke detector batteries every 6 months). I dutifully replaced all the batteries on New Year's... only to find that one by one they have all started beeping again in the past two weeks.

What does that mean? Our batteries are lousy! They should have lasted at least three times as long as they did.

From now on, as much as it pains me, I'm not going to buy store brand batteries anymore.

Quote of the Day - On the Danger of Driving to Church

"I bet we'll pass a giant deer that will eat us and our car and Willis [Tucker's stuffed dog] and ducky. That would be sad."
-Tucker

Quote of the Day

Tucker accompanied his daddy on a business trip earlier in the week to Maryland. He played with his grandparents while Austin was working, and I got over a cold at home.

When it was rest time at the Blue House (Henny and Papa's), Tucker authoritatively instructed David that he didn't like the room he was sleeping in and that he would sleep in Daddy's room. David obligingly let him switch rooms. Then Tucker instructed David that he needed to sleep with Tucker. David even humored that request. He sat in the easy chair in the room "sleeping." But Tucker still wasn't satisfied and told David that he needed to sleep in the bed. David said no.

Tucker, shocked that Papa might not allow every one of his whims, ran to the stairs and yelled to Henny, "Henny, Papa's not listening to me! You come upstairs and make him listen!"

What I know about you

I realized the other day that Blogger keeps track of this blog's stats, so I looked into them for the first time.

What I learned was...
*The favorite post, by far, was on 6/10/09 about "Hail the Size of Half Dollars"... apparently this comes up when people search on the term "hail"
*I've gotten numerous hits from 9 other countries besides the US
*In the Mac vs PC world, the PCs are winning--2/3 of my readers use Windows and only 25% use Macs (the rest are blackberrys and other devices)
*I get more than 800 page views a month now, and almost 20,000 page views total, which seems like

The things you learn!

Disney World

The kids and I are visiting my mom in Cocoa Beach this week. Austin is having man time in Virginia with a veritable home improvement frenzy. Flying here with the two of them alone was a bit daunting, but we didn't hit any major snags and arrived more or less in one piece (well, three pieces if you consider that there are three of us).

Our big adventure of the trip was yesterday: going to Disney World. Austin told me on Monday night that he would rather fly with the kids (he considers being trapped on an airplane with his two children akin to a small form of torture) than go to Disney World with them. He was wrong, of course, because we had an absolutely fabulous time. I'm not sure how it could have gone better. The key: don't stand in any line longer than 10 minutes. This eliminates a lot of the possible rides, but there are no rides that are worth standing in a line with a 3 year-old longer than 10 minutes.

We rode Dumbo first thing in the morning before the line got long. Tucker had never been on a high-flying ride like that before, and I wondered how he would do. He loved it. He ate it all up. The only hitch was we didn't get a green elephant and he wanted the green one. He seemed satisfied enough when I called the teal one we were on "green."

Next we went to find Mickey. On our way, we stumbled on Goofy's airplane ride and I sent Tucker and my mom on that one. Once they entered the line, I turned to look at the rest of the ride and was shocked to discover that what I thought was a little kiddie ride actually was a medium-sized roller coaster. I frantically tried to call to them not to go, concerned my sensitive little boy would be scarred for the rest of the day. Unfortunately, Tucker's heart was already set on it so they went. He loved it. (The only tears of the day came late in the afternoon when he begged to go on it again.) My mom, though, was scarred from the ride and wants the record to reflect that I sent her as the sacrificial adult on that one. Oops.


After soaking in Goofy's thrills, we wandered into Mickey's house. It wasn't very exciting, but it spit us out in a line that was for some sort of Mickey show, we thought. It wasn't a long line, and there were old Mickey cartoons playing so Tucker was rapt and we just stayed not quite sure where it would lead. It turns out that the line was for a private audience with Mickey. When Tucker got up-close-and-personal with his favorite rodent, he just melted in awe to the ground. He couldn't even look up he was so excited and overwhelmed. It might've been a little cute.



We then had a sit-down lunch with Winnie the Pooh and friends, which was a much-needed break in the middle of the day. Arranging that lunch was a great call. Surprisingly, the Winnie the Pooh lunch wasn't ridiculously priced... only about double what you'd spend on a lunch of hot dogs and fries at a cafeteria in Disney World, and the buffet actually had good food. Of course, it also included large furry friends and Tucker got into the hang of the character thing and started giving them all big hugs.









Other highlights that day: seeing the Mickey show in the middle of the park, the Parade in the afternoon, riding the train around the park, and going on rides.





The very best part of our afternoon was: Winnie the Pooh's house. Tucker loved Pooh's tree. He spent ages hugging Pooh's honey pots, protecting them from bees, eating the honey, and doing it all again, and again and again. It was ridiculous. The only way we were able to get him out of there was that we had tickets to ride in Winnie's honey pot on a ride.





These are some videos of Tucker's playing with the honey:


Molly was a star all day, basically just hanging out and being easy. She specializes in eating quickly so I didn't have to nurse her all the time in random places. She napped in her car seat, snuggled and enjoyed meeting the characters (Mickey and Minnie especially loved her). She also went on the Winnie the Pooh ride and screamed for the part of it in the dark (but the music was loud so no one could here her).


When we got to the car, we were all exhausted. But then Tucker rallied into pure hysteria on the way home, wanting to play his version of peek-a-boo and "break the pickle--tickle, tickle!" for approximately an hour. I don't blame him; it was a pretty exciting day.

Look at Molly Go

I'm shocked that my three and a half month old can actually manage to move herself in this walker. She can't move herself forward yet, but she's only had one day with it so far. She is very enthusiastic about her new found powers.

Playing songs for Jesus

A couple weekends ago, Tucker and Austin had man time while Molly and I went to the gym. First he helped Austin go pick up firewood from a friend, but it was really cold and even the manliest men need time to warm up. Once inside, Tucker decided that they were going to play church together. When I came home, Tucker was playing "hymns" on the piano, had collected assorted implements for the altar (the dining room table), and was making Austin kneel on the prayer kneeler I made Austin for Christmas.

Unfortunately, Molly was sleeping so their service got nixed as the piano is right outside Molly's door. Tucker was bereft, and so Austin got his guitar from storage and Tucker found his recorder and the two of them played songs for Jesus.

Beautiful Baby Girl

I know, I know, I'm biased but I think Molly is a beautiful baby. Here are some of her latest glamour shots. :)







Learning to use a walker--it's amazing, she can already thrust herself backwards in it.

Learning to suck her fingers.

Getting attacked by Tucker's stuffed animals... again.