Ben and Caroline's Blog

Emily is rolling from her back to her tummy with ease now. Tummy time is a lot more fun on your own terms!

Ben and I are going to Dallas for a wedding tomorrow. Emily is going to Mimi and Grandpa's house for her first overnight trip. Everyone involved is very excited! Emily packed up all her things this evening and is ready to go!

We started Emily on single grain rice cereal this week. Her pediatrician thinks it is best to start at 4 months. The purpose is not so much to increase nutritional value to her diet, but to get her in the habit before it becomes a huge ordeal. Emily has been exclusively breastfed for four months so anything other than the breast is a big change for her. We are starting with one tablespoon of cereal about 20 minutes after her normal morning breastfeeding session. The cereal is not supposed to replace any breastmilk at this point so we aren't cutting out any feedings in it's place. And actually, the doctor has us mixing the cereal with breastmilk instead of water. I made a big deal out of her first bite of cereal, insisting that Ben be there to get it on video. Ben described it as very anti-climactic because he pointed out it is basically just slightly grainy breastmilk in a spoon and not much different. (To be fair, I really built up the whole thing quite a bit...) But considering Emily's aversion to breastmilk in a bottle, the fact that she takes anything from a spoon without fussing is beyond fantastic! So far so good.

When I took Mella for her yearly check up, the vet said that I shouldn't be surprised if our very lean dog who is fed nothing but the regular amount of dog food starts to pack on weight out of nowhere. Apparently a lot of pet owners come in trying to figure out why their dog suddenly gained 5 lbs, until the vet discovers there is a small child in the house that has just started eating solid food. We never give Mella any people food and Mella is always inside with us so the vet warned me this could happen.

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These new pajamas are kind of a pain to put on, but I think she looks so cozy and cute. Definitely picture worthy!

Ben set up an app on my iPhone that allows me to create new blog posts from my phone. It is great because the only time I usually have to get on the Internet is while I'm feeding Emily with my iPhone in one hand, (that is what I'm doing now.) Anyway, my point is that there are several typos in my previous post that are driving me crazy. Please excuse them! It is hard to type one handed and on my phone keyboard. And this thing likes to auto correct - and it's not always correct. For example, the iPhone insists on putting a period after quotations instead of before. I had a professor that used to go nuts when students did that.... Anyways, of course I tried to edit the errors but could not figure out how. I also tried to add pictures from the baptism and the Sip n See party but the pics wouldn't convert to the blog. Uurrrggghh! I'm not good with this stuff!!! I'll have to get Ben to help with this later. In the mean time, please excuse the errors - especially the ridiculous spelling errors!

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Emily had her four month check up today. She is now 24 & 3/4 inches tall and weighs exactly 13 pounds. This puts her in the 70th percentile for her height and the 45th percentile for her weight. The doctor said everything looks perfectly healthy.

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Emily likes sunbathing in her tub (and in the shade)!

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After our trip to Lufkin I decided that Emily was ready for a saucer like the one she tried out at Reid's house. Mimi and Grandy took Emily and I to Target and we picked out the new toy. Of course it came in about 100 pieces, so Ben spent all of one evening putting it together. My mom also got Emily a new jungle mat to keep at their house, which is the mat with the blow up ball in the pic above. It is crazy how excited Emily gets about new toys. Even at (almost) 4 months, she is still able to fully appreciate a new purchase. Great! We also just joined a stroller fit class where she has met several other babies. The pictures of her on the towel are from the mat exercise portion of the class. Emily loves all of her new activities!

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So you might remember that two college baseball powerhouses, The University of Texas and lsu squared off this summer in the College World Series final. This was especially interesting to our family as Caroline and I are both Texas alumni and Caroline's mom's family are residents of Baton Rouge and huge Tiger fans. The final is decided by a 3 game playoff to crown the national champion and this year the tournament came down to a decisive game three. Before the game I was quite confident that the Horns would be victorious and made an overly aggressive wager.

It's been a while since the game was decided and I have yet to "pay up". With Caroline and Emily headed to Baton Rouge this weekend I fear the consequences if I don't go through with the agreement. So, here are the photos I promised, and I also promise to stop gambling with my first born as the stakes.

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Wow, Emily is three months old now. The time is flying by too fast. I have not taken her to the pediatrician since the two month visit so we do not have an official height and weight. But, as you can see from one of the pics below, Emily appears to still be 23 inches tall (according to our own measurements). It took a little while to get an accurate reading on her size chart because Emily kept standing on her tippy toes. She wants us to think she is 24 inches! I'm pretty sure she has gained a good amount of weight since the last visit. Not sure how much, but she is definitely gaining weight quicker than I am gaining upper body strength. Thankfully she enjoys playing on her own more and is demanding less holding time so it all balances out. And by less I mean only about 85% of the time as opposed to about 100% of the time. She still loves her cuddle time!

In the past month Emily has discovered how to grab and kick her toys. Her latest trick is wiggling around on her jungle gym until she is in the right position to kick at the cross bars. Once she gets in the right position she goes to town just shaking the whole thing like crazy and making all kinds of noise. Previously she was just batting or kicking at the toys individually that were dangling. But now she has discovered that kicking the bars is more effective and gives all the toys a good shake at once. I think it is brilliant! You were just thinking that too, right? She is still rolling over from her stomach to back and she is getting close on her back to stomach. Although I have to admit that when Katie and Renee' asked to see a demonstration, Emily just laid there staring at them. They weren't impressed. Emily did preform for the Krugers though, so they can vouch for us. Of course all the family has seen it but we can't be trusted.

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Caroline and I started attending The Journey at MDUMC late last year. We joined the church a couple months later and it has been a remarkable experience. The community and service at The Journey are amazing and we have made many new friends. We are also very excited about having Emily baptized there in August.

The leader of The Journey is Rev. Daniel Irving. Daniel and Jean Irving have become great friends of ours and came over to see Emily soon after we got back from the hospital. The newest member of the Irving family, Boaz, their 8 week old puppy also came over to play with Mella. I shot some video of the dogs playing and have been meaning to put it together for some time now. It's only taken me a little over a month to get to it, not too bad considering all we've had going on. So here are some short clips of Mella playing with her newest friend.

Emily is 2 months old now. I can't believe it! We've had a lot of developments over the past month. She is smiling, pulling herself up when on her tummy, rolling over, cooing and sleeping 6-7 hour stretches at night. She even did one 8 & 1/2 hour stretch! We had her 2 month check up this week, the doctor's report was great and she is a healthy baby girl weighing in at 11 lbs 2 oz and 23 inches long. That is 2&1/2 lbs and 3 inches since birth. Pretty amazing!

Now that she is getting older she is a lot more interested in activity time so I've been experimenting with new things for us to do. In the midst of my experimenting, I noticed she is completely fascinated by the television. I don't feel quite right letting her watch the tube. But it is hard to ignore something that keeps her so engaged and quiet. Now I know why those Baby Einstein videos are so popular - I guess its an acceptable way to prop your kid in front of the tv. I need to get some of those. We've also been working on grasping and playing with toys. I always put the toy in both her right and then left hand to see which way she responds better. Up until recently there was about the same amount of holding time on each. But lately she seems to have a stronger grasp and a much longer hold with her left hand. So she might be a south paw like her Dad and both her grandmas, or I might be reading too much into her rattle hold. Both explanations are possible! I've also been putting her on her tummy a lot as you can tell from the latest gallery. But she is getting so good at rolling over that she flips as soon as I lay her down. I'm not sure how to keep her on her tummy now. I think she figured that out just so she could get out of tummy time. What a rascal!

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Caroline took Emily to the grocery store this afternoon. But I'm not seeing a lot of room left for food in that basket. Hopefully it's just a diaper run.

I wanted to let you know that we added an email subscription feature to the blog. There is a box towards the top of the right sidebar where you can sign up to receive an email whenever Caroline or I put a new post up. (You can also sign up via RSS). This should be a convenient option for those of you that are checking back to see if we have posted anything new, and also for everyone we have been emailing when we put new posts up. Also, if you decide you don't want to be notified any longer you can easily turn it off.

If you try it out and have any problems just let me know and I'll try and help you get it setup.

It's been a while since we posted a new photo gallery. A lot's been going on, Emily is a very busy girl. In this set of photos we document Amma's visit to see her first great-grandchild. It was exciting to see Amma, Carol, Caroline and Emily Carol all together. We also took Emily on her first road trip. The three of us loaded up the car with an amazing amount of gear for a simple weekend trip. Emily got her first taste of the sweet life on Lake Travis and then we took her to her first party. My mom and aunt had a party for my grandparents who were clebrating their 60th anniversary. It was a great trip and Emily was a perfect road trip companion the whole way. As long as we stay over 60 mph she stays asleep and it's smooth sailing.

Also in this photo gallery we have some pics of Emily playing on her activity mat and practicing her latest trick. Emily has learned to roll over from her stomach on to her back. Exciting stuff, I know! (And very advanced for her age, we are such proud parents.) She has also started smiling quite a bit. It's fun to make goofy faces at her and get her to smile at you. This is the first genuine reaction she has shown responding to us. She smiles quite a bit now and Caroline has been working diligently to capture it with the camera.

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