Yes, I'm a baby wearing Mama.


Grocery shopping was quite exhausting this morning for Miss Magnolia.

I thought everyone might enjoy seeing some of the pictures Zac took at the game. Here's the sea of Vandals storming the court.

Uncle Brad feeling quite joyous.

Maggie's Work

Hmm, I'm not quite sure how I ended up under here.

Now why would Mommy stack my cups up so pretty?

Well, I took care of that.

Yes, sometimes my mommy puts me in silly ensembles.

Cousin Issac decided he needed to chew on some stuff too, so we decided to lounge and chew on stuff together.

I've been a little scattered this week, so I'll apologize now for the random list below (the only thing my brain could format this evening) of things I felt important to share with everyone.

• Wow, I didn't know that a six month old has so much to do in a day. She's like a crazed little animal, rolling all over the house, grabin stuff, knockin stuff over, eaten stuff. She attacks paper like she's a wild carnivore and it's the best piece of meat ever. She sees her bottle being prepared now, and she starts screeching for it and banging her fists. Tonight she was stomping her feet in the high chair, just glaring at me, as I was getting her cereal ready (obviously not fast enough). She's definitely learning to express herself. It's been interesting to watch, but of course, amazingly fun and entertaining as well!

• We enjoyed a nice dinner out tonight at Smoky Mountian. Of course every waitress had to comment about how cute Maggie was, and then of course Maggie had to give them that beautiful smile where her whole face lights up. It was a great evening.

• We saw Dr. Ally on Tuesday for Maggie's six month well baby checkup, and Ms. Moo is in the 25th percentile for weight and height (she's a petite little nubbin, but still growing well). Her head circumference is still in the 50th percentile.

• Chris had approximately 5 cds of Maggie photos for us today. As soon as I get through them I'll get some more school pictures posted.
  

• Oh ya, and................................GO VANDALS!

It's Official!

Maggie and Mommy at Addie's for Breakfast

Well, we went to Addie's for breakfast this morning. This wouldn't be anything out of the norm for most people, but I haven't eaten at a restaurant for over five months. So yes, the caveman diet is over. I decided to break myself in with some delicious eggs benedict and some coffee with cream. I'm waiting for my stomach to scream in protest, it hasn't handled something like that for a long time. Maggie had a great time watching mommy and daddy eat out. She also enjoyed watching this little girl run all around Addie's. She kept smiling at the little girl, and finally the little girl got a little embarrassed that Maggie was so interested in her and hid in a booth. I warned Zac in the car that if it suddenly hits me harder than I'm expecting (that I can't breastfeed Maggie anymore), that I need him to try and stay calm as I'm having hysterics. His usual response was given, "I don't think you need to cry about that." We'll see though, but yes, my milk protein/soy saturated food was delicious!

Maggie Update

Well, I have lots of cute pictures, but Zac's been "organizing" pictures on his laptop, so this will be just a bunch of boring text---sorry!

Zac and I attended one of the local "parents of children with food allergies" support group meetings last night. We met with the new allergist to Boise, Dr. Fritz. He shared a lot of information with us, very late into the evening, and it appears as though all specialists have different suggestions (of course). It was soooo nice to talk to other parents though. Maggie's the youngest child of the group, so most of the parents have already gone though a lot of what we're about to expect. All the parents really encouraged Zac and I to get into see Barbie Dougherty the nurse practitioner with Idaho Pediatric Gastroenterology. They say she's the best. The woman who organizes this group, her son is now outgrowing his milk protein/soy allergy at two years old. She also told me that he was ALWAYS sick. When children with food allergies spend all their bodily efforts trying to fight the allergy, they aren't as successful with fighting off things like colds. This makes sense, and this is certainly our little Maggie Moo. I'm hoping with the switch over to Neocate this may help build up her immunities some--we'll see.

Some of you may be interested in checking out the Alliance for Kids in Idaho with Food Sensitivities and Allergies website: www.kifsa.org, it has information about elemental formula (which Maggie is on now), etc.

FYI: A cute little baby is going to be six months old on Friday!!!

Yum, yum, yum

Of course we allowed her to attempt feeding herself---I don't tell parents to do this, and ignore my own advice, that would be silly, and yes it was messy!

This was during our morning hike in the foothills, she was working up her appetite!

Well here it is...the first bite of solid food.  She loved it!  I knew she would.  

We're to just formula in her bottles now, and I'm still breast feeding 2-3 times a day.  I've realized how much more convenient breastfeeding is.  I'm also realizing how much formula a baby can go through.   It's sort of freaking me out.  We hadn't been using much because we were mixing with breast milk, now we're flying through it.  I guess that's how it goes.

Going to the doctor is sooo much fun!

So we were into see Dr. Ally again because Maggie has Croup.  She got a steroid treatment to help with her cough and breathing.  She's been finding it very interesting that she has a new voice (the barky scratchy croup voice that is).  She likes to listen to herself make all these new sounds, but it makes me sad to hear it.

I know, isn't' it always fun times for Miss Maggie.  She's had a cold every month since October.  Poor thing, she just keeps catching every little virus she comes into contact with.  It doesn't help that I work with children probably bringing home their colds, and she spends three days a week with her friends at school catching all their colds---that's how it goes though.  We're hoping February will be sick free!  

She's been in a pretty good mood considering, until today that is.  She whined at Zac and I all day.  No crying, just constant whining.  Zac's sick too, and I was quite amazed at the patience he demonstrated--he's changing so much since he became a dad.  

Here's some pics of Maggie at the doctor's office.  Dr. Ally was running a bit behind schedule, so Maggie had lots of time to play with the paper on the table.  She loved it, and that's putting it mildly.  Especially since she's a pro at rolling both ways now.  Paper makes lots of neat sounds when you roll around on it!

Completely Refreshed!

So, when you realize that your stress threshold has been far exceeded, it's about time for some relaxation. By about Friday at 10am I realized that if I continued to be as frazzled as I was, well I wasn't quite sure what was going to happen, but I knew it wasn't going to be good. This is when I called my husband and laid out some plans...
1. We get home from work and throw enough stuff in our bags for the weekend
2. We get in the car and drive
3. We don't come home until we know we feel much better

Of course he agreed, it's Zac! And this is exactly what we did.

Here's our little family (minus our B-dog), on our walk to the lake.

Maggie's been sticking her tongue out at us lately. We're not quite sure if she's just playing around with everything her mouth can do, or expressing her opinion.

So this is our "cabin." I know, it was really roughing it.

Maggie adores her Aunt Sara and Uncle Brad. She enjoyed their company all weekend.

Zac made a delicious dinner for us. He's pretty cute when he cooks, isn't he?

I'm happy to report I'm feeling much better now. We had a FANTASTIC weekend! I'm relaxed, refreshed, and motivated to keep going at all those challenges that seemed so difficult to endure this last week. Maggie had the most fabulous time as well. She loved McCall. She decided she was enjoying herself so much she might as well start rolling from back to stomach. She'd been working on this for awhile, so we were so excited to watch her finally reach this milestone. The "cabin" was beautiful. There was a hot tub on the patio (relaxation guaranteed), three bedrooms, two baths, a beautiful kitchen, and it was within walking distance to downtown McCall. We took a nice walk to the lake, and Maggie enjoyed taking in the beautiful snowy scenery. I couldn't have asked for a better last minute trip.

Thanks Zac, for knowing when I'm in some serious need for a little bit of a breather, loving me so much, and being so up for anything! Thanks Maggie, for being the most beautiful, delightful, and charming little baby (you were pretty funny this weekend too). Thanks Sara and Brad, for also being up for spontaneity, and for being such a great aunt and uncle. Thanks Mom, for always being that last minute dog sitter.

Sure was fun. Love you all!