Tim and Marci's Family: 4/1/07

Pollen, pollen EVERYWHERE!!

Well it's Masters week again here in Augusta, so 1/2 the town has left and the other 1/2 is doing what they can to make money off of the golf freaks that invade town every year. The traffic on our one busy street is bumper to bumper and getting downtown is quite an ordeal. I for one though, am happy to see it all unfold because last year at this time, I was watching everything from my little bitty hospital room TV on the 5th floor ICU. Another good thing is that a lot of the band is gone (this is one of the weeks you're allowed to take block leave since it can be so hard just to get in to work if you live anywhere near the National golf course), so Tim will be able to take tomorrow morning off (after a prayer breakfast) to watch the girls while I go in for my 3 hour glucose test. That makes me so happy to not have to entertain them both in that little waiting room for 3 - 3 1/2 hours!!

I'm also hoping that the "Masters curse" keeps going so that we'll get some rain, it's usually very nice during the practice rounds (Mon - Wed) and then rains during the actual tournament. The pollen here is so terrible right now. Both of the girls are constantly wiping their noses and they have both developed a cough from the nasal drainage. Emilia's tonsils were a bit swollen again today at the doctors, but he said that it is just the allergies and prescribed her an antihistamine that will hopefully help out some.

I'm putting in some pictures of how thick this stuff is right now, and also some of how it looked during our little sprinkling that we got Sunday night. I think all that did was stir it up more though, rather than washing it all away like we wanted.

Our front steps, they aren't normally yellow like this!!

Nope, that's not dust on the trash can lid, it's ALL pollen

During the rain, it just gathered and clumped together in the drain...YUCK!!

Here it is pooling on our front steps (that's Emilia's bug house sitting there, she had a caterpillar in there for a while which was good since she's learning all about metamorphosis!)

This is the end of our driveway. I sure hope it rains later on this week!!!!

I can't figure out what these flowers are, can you help?

This is the big bush under our triple living room windows. It just started blooming last week, but it wasn't blooming last year when we moved in in June, so it must bloom only in the early spring. It's got these three colors (white, pink, and red) all mixed together. I can't smell, so I don't know what they smell like, but they sure are pretty, aren't they?

Shelby is 1!!!!

I can't believe it, but my littlest baby girl is now a whole 1 year old! It actually happened on Friday, but we all know how slow I am actually getting the pictures up on the computer. Friday was a busy day for us, so we went in at snack time at Emilia's school and took cookies to all the kids in her class. Ms Alison found a candle and they all sang to Shelby (Emilia actually blew the candle out though). Miss Shelby ate her chocolate chip cookie that we brought as well as the other frosted cookie that was their regular snack for the day!! She had lots of fun, she always loves crawling all over that huge gym floor, and immediately fell asleep when we got home. That night was also a fund raiser to get new playground equipment for Emilia's pre-school, so we had a taco dinner there right after Tim got home from work. They also did a dessert auction during the taco bar dinner, and this was my contribution, it's a Care Bear but Emilia told everyone that it was Big Bird since that was the first cake that I'd done. I know now that I'm supposed to do the outlining FIRST, so hopefully my next cake will look a whole lot better!! This is only my second cake like this so I know that I have lots of room for improvement, but hey, it made them $20! Tim had to leave the dinner early to get to church for Cantata practice, so the girls and I stayed 'till the end, and by then it was pretty much bed time. A very busy day for a brand new one year old!

Today (4-2) was her official one year check up as well as Emilia's 6 month weight check. Shelby is 27 3/4" tall and weighed nearly 16 pounds. She's just over the 10th percentile for her height but not on the chart for her weight. The doctor is not worried about her weight at all though since she's eating really well. Now that she can start on milk (she had her first drink of it at lunch and drank about 2 ounces, not bad for her first time!), she'll gain some extra from all the extra fat she'll be getting from the cow. Breast milk doesn't contain a whole lot of extra stuff like cows milk and formula, so breastfed babies are not expected to gain as much weight as quickly as formula fed babies, so that's why he's not worried about her weight. Emilia had stopped growing completely which was why there was some much of a fuss about her weight. Shelby also is going and going like a little energizer baby, so she's working off everything she eats. Her new favorite foods are strawberries, mandarin oranges, tiny pieces of apple, yogurt (that's been a favorite since she was able to start eating it at 9 months!), and of course any kind of carbohydrate you can give her (she's so my daughter!!!). She also got three shots, including her first MMR shot, but she seemed to be doing well with them when I put her down to sleep about 2 hours after she got them, so hopefully there won't be a big reaction. My OB wants me to have her completely weaned by the time I'm 20 weeks (I'm about 9 weeks now), so I'm leaving out her noon feeding this week while she gets used to the milk. She really seemed to like it at lunch, so I'm hoping that she'll not fight me too hard on this.

Miss Emilia was 41" tall (Mommy's only 56"!) and weighed 31 pounds 6 ounces. She is on the chart again YEAH!!! She's at the 50th percentile for her height and between the 5th and 10th for her weight. The doc said that she's looking more and more like a kid her age should and that we can possibly stop monitoring her every 6 months after her 5 year check up if she's still gaining. That makes me so happy, to have two healthy, happy kids YEAH!!!