Anna's four month check up

Today was Anna's 4 month checkup. She's 11.1 lb and 25" with a 15" head circumference. When the doctor starts with, "As many children as there are in the world, there are that many growth curves", you know something's not quite right. While Anna has grown 2.5" in the last 2 months, she's only gained 1 lb. According to the charts I'm looking at (the same ones I used for Emily), Anna has gone from 25th percentile in weight to 5th, 50th percentile in height to 75th, and 10th percentile in head circumference to not even on the charts on the low end.

Obviously, the doctor is a little concerned, but he did say that very few lasting problems come from slight undernourishment in early months. However, he does want me to really push her to nurse more (longer at a time) or we will have to start supplementing formula. We'll go back in one month for a weight check and in two months for her regular six month checkup.

Let's just hope she's just being laid back and that I can start pushing her to nurse more!

Braids

Before

After

Wordless Wednesday--Easter

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Just a few of the almost 900 pictures my sister took this weekend. She whittled it down to the best 50 for us!

18 weeks & Easter

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Yesterday, we headed to my granddad's place for an Easter Egg Hunt. As usual, the hunt was over in about 5 minutes. :-) Emily enjoyed looking for eggs and found quite a few. Don't tell her, but some of the candy in her basket today came from yesterday's hunt. :-)

This morning was a good service at church, followed by lunch at Rosa's and home to open Easter baskets and naps. Following naps, we had an egg hunt here at the house, just Emily...no other kids! She loved it, but, just like last year, wanted to stop and open each egg as she found it. Sure makes the hunt longer!

Anna is so close to rolling from her back to her tummy, but still isn't quite there yet. And, while she's figured out how to take her pacifier out of her mouth, she can't always get it back in and still hasn't figured out that her thumbs are good for sucking on. :-( Hopefully, she'll figure that out soon!

We'll go to the doctor this week for her 4 month check up and I'll update stats next week.

17 weeks/4 months

Here we are at Tuesday again...just now posting Anna's week picture. And, I'll be honest, I didn't even take it until today. But, I guess the important thing is that I'm taking them regularly. Four months means time for another doctor visit (Friday) and the beginning of our treks to Sears for pictures (Thursday). I hope we can get some good ones. The photographer I loved there is no longer there. Bummer!

We got out the Johnny Jump-up this week for Anna to try out. She, obviously, doesn't know what to do so she just hangs out and sucks on the side of it. Hopefully, she'll enjoy it. I also need to get out the Exersaucer, but just haven't had time yet. I think it will get lots of use!


Saturday was the 8AFOFEEH&HDP (8th Annual Families of Faith Easter Egg Hunt & Hot Dog Party, in case you didn't know!). We've been the last couple years and Emily really enjoys it. Anna had a great time, just hanging out and Emily loved finding the eggs. We've got another Easter Egg Hunt at Granddaddy's place this weekend and I'm sure Emily will have a blast there too.

I forgot to take pictures along the way with my Once a Month Cooking adventure last Saturday, but it went well. We now have about 20 meals plus 3 quarts of spaghetti sauce in the freezer. All I have to think about now is side dishes! Yea!

Once a Month Cooking

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A few years ago, I read about freezer cooking or once-a-month-cooking. I even gave it a try with so-so results. The recipes I tried called for the chicken to be cooked before freezing and they just never tasted great when they came out of the freezer. And they were only chicken recipes.

Then, I found Life as Mom. She started talking about freezer cooking and the meals she was making just looked so good. They were normal recipes! So, I started thinking about it some more. A year ago for my birthday, Phillip gave me Once a Month Cooking by Mimi Wilson and Mary Beth Lagerborg. I even planned a freezer cooking day of my own last year, but just couldn't pull it off because I didn't have anyone to watch Emily. So I abandoned the idea.

Until now.

A couple weeks ago, I decided I was going to jump in and do it. I picked this Saturday and picked out one of the two week cycles in my cookbook (only rejecting one recipe due to too much dairy). Each meal makes 4+ servings (some up to 10 or so!) so these 13 meals will make about 20 meals for us...easily enough to last 3-4 weeks.

I'm so excited. I spent last Wednesday doing much of the planning and grocery list making and container list making and supplies list making because I just couldn't wait. Today was the big shopping day and it didn't take as long as I thought it would. I've never picked out meat before (other than chicken breasts, frozen fish and ground beef) so that part was a bit of an adventure, but I made it. I'd read somewhere that you can ask the meat department to cut up ham for you, so I had them slice it for me. Now all I have to do with that is dice it.

Are you curious yet as to what I'm making? Well, here's the list:

Spaghetti Sauce (next time, I'll probably use my own recipe, but I wanted to follow their recipes as close as I could this time)
Baked Fish (tilapia) in Spaghetti Sauce
Baked Jambalaya
Stuffed Pork Chops
Twelve-Boy Curry
Cranberry Chicken
Sweet Soy Marinated Chicken
Karen's Barbecued Chicken
Chili Hamburgers
Beef Goulash
Caraway Pot Roast
Taco Soup
Marinated Flank Steak
Fiesta Shrimp Dinner (rejected because of too much cheese...no easy way to make it dairy free)

The cookbook even offers some suggestions for what to serve with the dishes, though many of them I probably won't use. However, I'm planning to try some new side dishes or at least ones I haven't made in a while because I won't be making a main dish every night.

So, that's where I am right now. Super excited about trying this and hoping that they all taste good! I'll try to take some pictures along the way (if I can remember) and post about how the day went. I'll be taking a break in the middle to go to an Easter egg hunt so I hope I don't lose my momentum too much. As excited as I am, I don't think I will!

16 weeks

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Examining a seed pod from a live oak with Mrs. Nancy

Reading Good Night Moon with Mrs. Nancy (an elementary librarian!)

This weekend was the family retreat at church. Growing up, our family never went so I didn't really know anything about it. We decided that we wanted to try going this time. It's held at the HEB Foundation camps near Leakey. We had a good weekend and enjoyed getting to know some people better, but I think we'll wait until the girls are older to go again. The area is not especially toddler-friendly and we didn't really know enough people to just let Emily go play. We were all exhausted last night after chasing Emily around and dealing with the heat all day. Emily even asked to go to bed! She fell asleep in about 5 minutes! She and Anna both slept all night (for the first time in a few weeks). Yea! We made it home today, unloaded and are resting up for the busy week ahead.

15 weeks

Argh! Sundays just keep slipping away from me. At least I got the pictures taken yesterday (a day late!). I couldn't decide between the two, so you get both today. No information to update you on. Just same old, same old.