Kate's 6 Month Check Up

We went to the doctor yesterday for Kate's 6 Month visit. Here are the stats:

15 lbs. 7 ozs. - 46th or 47th percentile
26 inches tall - 80th percentile! (must be that old Bawdischweiger again)
I can't remember her exact head measurement, but it's around 40th percentile, which is interesting because Maggie's was always 80th or 90th! Maggie's going to be a TV news pundit when she grows up.

Overall, Kate's doing beautifully. She has good motor skills and is babbling up a storm. She's rolling over and sitting alone now, except that she will randomly crash so I always leave a pillow or the boppy behind her. She's ready to move on to stage 2 foods and we can now give her finger foods like Cheerios and zwieback and soft cooked foods. She's a shiny, happy person.

Poor Maggie also got a little attention from the doctor yesterday, even though it wasn't her visit. She raked her closet door over her toe last week and banged up the toenail pretty good. We talked to the nurse on the phone that day, but we wanted the doctor to just give it the once over to make sure it's really OK. The nail lifted off the bed and turned white; Maggie kept telling us about and showing us her "green toe." Now the nail is just hanging on by a tiny piece on one side. Yuck! The doctor said to try to keep it on as long as possible to protect the nerve endings underneath while the new nail grows in, so we're keeping it under a bandaid. It's not slowing her down at all, and while she will say that it hurts if you ask her, she doesn't seem to notice it much. I will spare you a photo of it as it's pretty gruesome! Boo boo kisses for Maggie.

Thanks for all the requests for more blog posts! It's nice to know that people are interested in what's going on with us and enjoying reading this. I'm trying to get some of my life under control and free up some time for it. We've got a million good stories happening around here, but they are what's keeping me from sitting down for 5 minutes to write! I'll at least get some photos up soon.

Why I Don't Have 3 Kids

Last Friday, I single-handedly took care of Ana (4), Maggie (2.5), and Kate (6 months) while everyone else went to the new house to paint. It was like a hurricane hit our apartment - several times! I picked up toys and picked up toys and picked up toys, and yet they still seemed to be oozing out of the woodwork and spreading themselves in a thick layer over the furniture and floors. At one point the girls had every toy in the house in the living room, and when I stopped them in the hallway on their way towards their pile, arms heavily laden with dolls and blocks, they informed me that they needed all this stuff for their "club." OK, fine, whatever. As long as you're not building a Scientology center, I don't care. But really, they had a riot of fun and they were totally hilarious and adorable. But I'm still glad I gave away all my maternity clothes to Goodwill already.

Weekend Update

This weekend was grueling, but we're past it now, so let's breathe a sigh of relief. Before the bitching and moaning commence, I want to first extend a thousand thanks to Mike's brother Jeff and his wife Jeannette for flying up from Maryland to help us paint the whole house in one weekend and to Mike's parents for also helping to paint (Dale) and for helping take care of the girls (Jane). We're so grateful!

And now, on with the pain and suffering... Painting (almost) a whole house in one weekend is no easy feat people. Early mornings and late nights, red raw hands, fume inhalation, Polar Bear white paint blindness, four trips to Home Depot. It wasn't pretty - but I must say that the house already looks a million times better. The fireplace in the living room looks even better than it did against the fresh, white walls. The paneling actually doesn't look half bad painted. The mint green on the stairs is gone daddy gone. Unfortunately, all of this makes the kitchen look awful! We must remember to pace ourselves. Rome wasn't built in a day, as they say.

And in additional house news, the new locks are in and keeping the bad guys out very effectively. Also, the brand new washer and dryer are in place and ready to launder. Mike will probably wash things that aren't even dirty just to have more opportunity to enjoy his new babies. I know, crazy. The water heater/boiler is NOT broken, don't worry. The emergency switch had just accidentally been turned off, but on the bright side, we lucked into finding a heating oil and maintenance company who will call you back quickly on a Sunday when they don't even know you, so they'll be getting our business this winter. Oh, and we found out that we inherited half a tank of heating oil at a value of more than $700, so that's like Christmas in June. Or maybe it's Festivus for the Rest of Us. I do have more grievances to air...

Sick, sick, sick, sick. We're all sick. The poor little girls are coughing their heads off and snotting all over everything and feeling so puny. I didn't even paint a lick over the weekend because I was taking care of sick girls and hacking up a lung myself. I didn't even see the house until late Sunday night, in fact. The lure of having Ana as a playmate encouraged Maggie to push on through the weekend, and I think she did have a blast, but in Jane's photos she looks a little red eyed and bleary. She was pretty spent when she got home Sunday afternoon. I took Kate to the doctor on Saturday, and after waiting for an hour and a half (Kate was wonderfully behaved, very laid back and subdued rather than exactly sick-acting, quite a difference from Maggie's baby days), the verdict is that we all have the same virus and there's not much to do about it. Antibiotics don't help a virus, and the girls and I (because they're too young and I'm still nursing) can't really have any medication besides Tylenol and Motrin anyway. Cough drops are now my fifth food group. I'm very hopeful though that as of today, we seem to be headed towards recovery. Everyone is sleeping and eating better with perhaps a fraction less snot and hacking.

We're packing up and cleaning out the fridge. Mike's got some more finishing up to do on the paint and is trying to mow if the rain will let him. I'll try to get some photos up of the path of destruction that resulted from my having all three girls here at the apartment by myself last Friday. Good times.

Yes, that's right. Sometimes you have to stop and tell yourself: These are good times.

The Money Pit

...starring Mike as Walter Fielding and Amanda as Anna Fielding.

So it's begun, our inevitable slide into fixer-upper hell. The night before last, Mike was at the house working on the taping and prep for the painting this weekend. As he was leaving, he locked the side door and then pulled on the handle to check to see if it was really locked.

...Let me just pause a moment to say that Mike is a little OCD about checking the locks and he gets a little more violent than I would consider absolutely necessary, but I doubt that he could pull a door clean off its hinges with his bare hands (sorry, hun, but you aren't the Hulk)...

Anyway, he rattles the door handle and the dead bolt falls off!! It's one of those night latch locks that's more external to the door itself than embedded in it (like this), and it had replacement screws holding it on. Those screws just surrendered helplessly under Mike's manly assault, I guess. Anyway, today, after trips to a local shop that specializes in locks and the hardware store plus one evening's failed attempt to install the new, real dead bolt himself (which I can only imagine involved a lot of colorful language), Mike screwed the door shut for now and scheduled a locksmith to come out to the house and sort it all out for us. As Kenny Rogers so wisely sang, you gotta know when to fold 'em.

Pics

Chillin'


Helping Out in the Kitchen


Jumping in the Garden


Maggie Sez... "I like sleeping in the leaves"

Picnic in the Living Room

Murphy, Your Law Sucks

The girls are sick. Did you really expect anything else? Maggie's probably been sick 3 times in her whole life, so it makes perfect sense that she'd get sick now that we have relatives coming in town to help us paint and there's tons of stuff to be packed up and cleaned.

It's really just a cold - Mike's been battling it for about a week (I just want to take this opportunity to blame this all on him!) - but they have low grade fevers and are congested with a phlegmy cough. Kate kept waking herself up all last night (not like she hasn't been a night owl for the past few weeks anyway) until she just got so tired, I think, that she would just go "ooh, ah" in her sleep after coughing. Then she unloaded her diaper all over the swing this morning. Otherwise, though, they seem to be acting pretty normal. Kate's a little cranky but Maggie's in good spirits. It's so much harder when they're limp and sluggish and seem to be suffering.

So instead of heading over to the house to jump in the garden and sleep in the leaves and finish scouring the fridge, we're hanging out on the couch, drinking juice and watching Dora. Maybe I'll get some laundry and packing done instead. That reminds me... I'd better start that load of Kate's pjs and the seat from the swing before it starts stinking up the place.

Our House in the Middle of Our Street

It's official, we're home owners! The signing went very well this morning. At the walk through, Maggie loved the back yard and said she wanted to "jump into this garden" and asked me where her shovel was so she could dig. Hopefully we'll take the girls back over this afternoon after nap time so Maggie can garden. I need to make her a sign that says Maggie's Farm! It was a little awkward because the seller and her family were still in the house carting out the last things and cleaning up. There's a bunch of trash on the curb that won't get picked up until Thursday, so I hope that really happens and we don't end up hauling it off to the dump ourselves. Maxine (the seller) was very sad about leaving the house she's lived in for 45 years. When someone asked her if it was a bitter sweet day for her, she replied, "Bitter." But she seemed to really like the girls and told us which houses had kids living in them. Sounds like there will be a few neighborhood kids around and one family just had a baby girl recently.

Then we had to go to Lexington to the lawyer's office for the actual closing. The girls where incredibly well behaved. Maggie ate her cheerios, raisins, and juice box and watched Dora on Mike's laptop. Kate slept half the time (who is this child? not the one I know - oh, wait, yeah she was up all night partying, so she was just sleeping it off in the office this morning!) and then drank a bottle and sat quietly the rest of the time! Then she napped in the car all the way home. Crazy. We gave Maggie a bowl of ice cream after lunch for being such a good girl this morning. We couldn't have asked for better. No surprises or anything troubling. We'll be taking lots of photos and putting them here and on Snapfish, so keep an eye out!