Apologies...

I know there has been a severe lack of posts here lately, and I apologize for that. Blogger is ending support for the type of blog that I have (that is, one where I publish it to my own server) and I'm evaluating what, exactly, if anything, to do to keep Laleblog going.

I should know in a couple of weeks where I'm going to go with this. In the meantime, if you see some funky things going on here, I'm just testing out new software.

I'll be back soon...

Merry Christmas to all...

Rachel quote of the month

Dodd: "Would you like me to bring you a doughnut?"
Rachel: "YES!"
Dodd: "What kind would you like?"
Rachel: "A pink one. (Long pause) With wrinkles."

November 2009

Dear Girls,

Yet another month flies by. As I sit here writing this, I can hardly believe that we're almost to Christmas, and that so many firsts for Emily are flying by.

Rachel, your favorite phrase this month has been "See, you told me!" Evidently we've been telling you "I told you" too much. But that's how you work. We tell you something, you don't believe us, so you go check it out for yourself, and now you're beating us to the punch on the "I told you so" line.


Your biggest wish for the year has finally come true - your grandparents have arrived! They got here on Sunday while you were taking a nap, and once you woke up, the smile didn't leave your face the entire rest of the day.


You have been writing a drawing quite a bit at school, and everything is starting to become much more clear to us. At the beginning of the year, it was all just scribbles, and you'd tell us what the letters were that you wrote, or what the picture was that you had drawn. Now, you are writing letters and we can see which letters they are. You can even write your entire name, in order. And just the other night, you were making a drawing of a baby, and I could see where the head, eyes, and neck were on the baby.


Your are still being a great big sister, and help us take care of Emily, or get out of our way when we need to do something specifically with her. You've been very understanding, and you always say how much you love your little sister. You've also been asking to hold her more often, even though she is getting heavier and harder for you to hold.


Emily, you turned fourth months old a couple of weeks ago, which meant one thing: shots. Lots of shots. Four of them, to be exact, and evidently the nurse who gave you the shots went to the Torturing Babies School of Nursing because she gave you each shot excruciatingly slowly. Like she enjoyed hearing you scream as she plunged the needle into your leg. When your big sister was that age, I remember your mother telling me that the nurse was so fast she almost missed it. Well, that nurse made dang sure that I saw it all. You were a trooper, though, and only cried as long as she was digging around in your leg with a needle, then you stopped, and when we got into the car, you promptly fell asleep.


Your have been talking to us almost the entire month, and man, are you ever LOUD! If no one is in the room with you, and you want some attention, you won't cry, you'll just start talking and babbling to yourself as loud as you can. You're making a lot of different sounds, which is really good, and next month we'll probably try a hearing aide on you to see if it makes a difference in the sounds you hear and produce. But you're doing really well, we think.


You are grabbing at everything now. You grab onto the little toys we have on your car seat and play with them, you grab onto the rings and other toys we have hanging from your play mat, you grab onto my thumbs while you're drinking your bottle, and the other day, you grabbed onto your sister's hair and wouldn't let go!


You have also gained a lot of strength in your neck and abdomen, and you don't get quite so cranky when we put you on your belly anymore. You are able to hold your head up on your own, and you can sit up on your own in your bumbo seat, and you love to sit up while you're leaning against a pillow. In fact, you get kind of mad if we put you on your back, unless there are toys for you to play with.


Speaking of gaining, you gained a couple of more pounds since your last doctor's visit. You're now over 15 pounds and boy can my back ever tell! You're getting so big that we are having to put away all of the 3 month clothes and start to get out the 6 month stuff.



It is amazing to watch both of your grow and learn so many new things. As always, we can't wait to see what the next month will bring. We love you both very much.

Love,
Daddy

October 2009

Dear Girls,

This has been another amazing month for both of you. There is always something new and exciting for each of you, and this month has been no exception.


Emily, you've started talking to us quite a bit this past month. This is what we've been waiting for, because if you didn't start talking, it meant that you probably weren't hearing very much. But you've been gurgling, cooing, and making all kinds of wonderful baby noises. You also have started laughing at silly things we do. It's so much fun to make you smile and laugh, and sometimes you'll just lay there and laugh and talk to yourself.


You're using your hands a lot more now, and you'll grab your own hands, grab at your head, and the other day, you finally grabbed your bottle by yourself. You are eating less often, but more each time...currently, we're feeding you about 8 ounces of formula every 5 hours. Give or take.


With all that food, you're getting big really quickly. We went to the doctor a couple of weeks ago because your eye was all red, and when they weighed you, you were over 13 pounds. You'd gained over a pound since your last visit.


You still are working on keeping your head up. It will wobble from time to time, but you're really good at keeping it up to look around. We've been working with you on "tummy time" too, to help you get your neck stronger. A lot of the time, you're perfectly happy to just lay there and not pick up your head at all. You're such a snuggler, that whenever you have a chance to lay your head on something and just snuggle in, you do it.


We finally got you on a schedule this month, too. You've been sleeping through the night for the past few weeks, but over the last few days, you've decided that 4 AM is a great time to wake up. I don't know what caused the change, but we're hoping you go back to sleeping until we wake you up soon. Of course, with the time change tomorrow, you're going to be all screwed up again.


Rachel, you've been pretending a lot this month. It seems like every time we talk, you're pretending to do this, or pretending to do that. You came home from school a few weeks ago and told Mommy that you'd gone to the nurse. When she sounded surprised (because neither of us had gotten a call that you'd been to the nurse) you very quickly clarified, "The pretend nurse, Mommy!"


You've been working a lot at school on your writing, and it's really paying off. Last weekend, you were coloring, and you told me that you were going to draw an "A." In the past, you've just drawn a couple of lines on the paper and told us what letter it was. This time, when I looked at your paper, you sure enough had made and "A." I was so excited, and I asked you to do it again just to make sure it wasn't a fluke. I gave you a big hug and a high five, and pretty soon, your whole paper was filled with "A's," each one requiring a hug and a high five.


You've been obsessed with Halloween ever since the month started. You asked us how long until Halloween starting at the beginning of the month when you got the lunch calendar and it was decorated in Halloween colors. When we went to pick out costumes earlier this month, you decided that you wanted to be Ariel, the little Mermaid. You've never even seen the movie, but she's one of the princesses on your princess stuff, and you're totally sold on the whole Disney princess empire. You refuse to wear any underwear that doesn't have a princess on it.


So Ariel it was, and you were all about what princesses wear every time we put it on. "Do princesses wear shoes?" "Do princesses have pony tails?" "Does my costume have legs?" And when it ended up being a little cool tonight for trick-or-treating, you had a fit when I tried to make you wear a shirt under your Ariel dress. "Princesses don't wear shirts under their dress!"


You've been walking around the house for the past couple of weeks saying the Pledge of Allegiance, for both the US and Texas flags, which you say at school every day. It's funny to see how the 3 year old mind puts things together, and how you get stuck in a loop because you mix them up. The US pledge comes first, and we all know how that goes, but immediately after comes the Texas pledge, and it goes like this:

Honor the Texas flag.
I pledge allegiance to the, Texas.
One state, under God.
One and indivisible.

Except that you mix it up with the US pledge, as 3 year olds are prone to doing, and when you get to the "One state" part, you say, "One state, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all." Then, because you've just said the last part of the US pledge, you immediately launch into the Texas pledge, which you screw up with the US pledge, and then go into the Texas pledge again. And over, and over, and over, until we stop you.


You have also become a puzzle freak. You love doing puzzles, and according to your mother, you have this ability to see where pieces are supposed to go that she claims you get from me and my mother. You'll ask us to do a puzzle with you, and you'll just pick up random pieces and put them in the right sopt.


You're such a good big sister, too, and you love to watch and imitate what we do with Emily. You'll even repeat things that we say to her, often right after we say them, which is annoying, and we're trying to break you of that. But you'll also get your dolls and put them in Emily's bouncy chair, or have tummy time with them. You do a great job of being a mommy to your dolls.


We only have one more month before Nana and Dodd come down for the winter. We're all very excited to see them, and as always, your mother and I can't wait to see what this next month brings for the both of you. We love you very much.

Love,
Daddy

September 2009

Dear Girls,

This past month has seen a couple of firsts. Rachel, you had your first day of school, Emily had her first time going to Miss Judy's, and your mother had her first day back at work. A few days ago, Emily turned two months old, and a couple of weeks ago, Rachel turned 3 years and three months old.


Emily, you've been very busy taking everything in. You're still not on much of a schedule yet, but you are getting closer. We have a pretty good schedule once we all get home, but I don't know how consistent you are with sleeping (which is the key to any schedule) at Judy's house. When we're all home, you generally are awake until about 10 PM, then we feed you and put you to bed. Every once in a while you're sleep the entire night, but usually you're awake somewhere between 3:30 and 4:30 in the morning.


You are eating bigger bottles less frequently now, and I've been kicking myself because I never wrote any of this stuff down about your big sister. If I had, we could compare, and jog our memories about the things we were doing to get her to sleep and be on more of a regular schedule


You've started smiling a lot, and I'm sure at this point it's more than gas. You smile whenever you see someone you recognize, like me, your mother, or your big sister. You also turn to look at us when we talk to you or when we walk by.


You're also able to keep your head up on your own quite a bit now. You still get tired and let it flop over from time to time, but you have a lot of control over your head, and we can see your neck getting stronger every day.


We found out that you do indeed have some hearing loss in your left ear. We had some extensive tests (to the tune of several hours) run on you, and it was determined that you have mild to severe hearing loss in your left ear. You can hear low pitches really well, with just a little bit of amplification, but high pitched sounds you have a really hard time with. Since your right ear hears just fine, they're telling us that it's very possible that you will develop speech and language normally, but we're going to have a team of experts helping us keep a close eye on you. We found out that you will need get a CT scan when you turn 6 months to find out exactly what's going on in your left ear.


Rachel, you're still being an amazing big sister. I keep wondering when the honeymoon will end, but I'm really enjoying how much you love your little sister right now. You still want to sit with me every time I feed her, and help me out. You hover right over her face and say "Hiiiieeeeeeee" to her in the high pitched little voice, trying to get her to smile at you.


You wake up every day asking if we go to school today. Never once have you said that you didn't want to go, and most of the time when I drop you off, I have to remind you to come give me a kiss because you're off playing with your friends the second you get there.


You come home singing songs, counting, and telling us about things that we haven't taught you. It is amazing to me how fast you're learning things, and it's fun to listen to you talk and sing to yourself. A couple of weeks ago, you were in sitting on the potty, singing a song to yourself, when I heard you stop and say, "One, two, three....eyes on me!" And then you continued singing your song.


Lately, you've been telling us what letter everything begins with. "D-D-Daddy...does Daddy start with the letter D?" Of course, sometimes you get the sound of the letter and the way you actually say the letter mixed up, but it's very cute. "D-D-Double-U...just like D-D-Daddy" I never truly appreciated just how hard it was to learn things like language and letter sounds!


You have your very own computer now. Since the hinges on Mommy's laptop started going out, we bought her a new one, and set up her old one on a table and hooked it up to a monitor. You know exactly where the PBS Kids shortcut is on the desktop, and you ask all the time if you can play with your computer.


You are both amazing little girls, and we are so lucky to have you. We love you both very much and can't wait to see what this next month will bring.

Love,
Daddy

My sentiments exactly!

Man, it's been a loooooong week.